Unlike Josie, who had told him she didn’t lie very well, Daniel was an old hand at it. He’d started young, explaining away the occasional bruises on his small body to teachers as nothing more than the result of horseplay or clumsiness. He’d been so good at it, they’d never once suspected the man who had sired him made a habit of beating his beautiful wife and small son when he drank too much.
Daniel had kept right on lying when he faked his age to enter the army at the age of sixteen. He’d been the size of a man, but as undisciplined and untrained in the art of fighting as a small child.
That had changed, but his ability to overcome an aggressor hadn’t helped his mom when she needed it. Daniel wasn’t any good at protecting women…even the ones he loved. Not that he would allow himself to love Josie. To do so would be nothing better than emotional suicide. That was another lesson he would never forget that his mother had taught him.
However, that didn’t mean he could leave her believing she meant nothing to him. Very few people knew the truth about his past, but Josie had earned the right to be one of them.
Chapter 13
Daniel didn’t get a chance to talk to Josie alone for several hours.
First, the detective from the Arson and Explosives Division of the state police showed up ten minutes earlier than expected, and then Hotwire returned from dropping off Claire. He was carrying a box with a new laptop in it for Josie. She went into raptures, and Daniel and the detective both had to sit idly by while she quizzed Hotwire on what the computer could do.
Discussion eventually got back to the investigation. After Josie showed the picture of Jones to the detective, he unbent enough to tell them that a known white supremacist group had a paramilitary compound near the GPS coordinates for the laptop.
Unfortunately, FBI intelligence revealed there were only two ways into the compound: up a narrow path that could be traversed on foot or by a small, powerful ATV, or by helicopter. A clearing suitable for landing was located near the compound, but it would be impossible for the helicopter to land undetected.
“What about parachuting in?” Josie asked.
“It would have to be a long jump for the plane to be high enough not to be suspect,” Daniel replied before the detective had a chance to. “And a drop from that altitude would make it difficult to land on target unless the clearing is fairly large.”
The detective shook his head. “None of you are parachuting in anywhere, undetected or otherwise. This is an official federal investigation at this point, and while they are cooperating with state authorities, the FBI and National Forest Service aren’t going to take kindly to a bunch of mercenaries stepping on their toes.”
“I’m no longer a mercenary,” Josie informed him.
“You’re not FBI either. Stay out of it,” was the detective’s uncompromising response.
Josie’s mouth set in a mutinous line Daniel had learned meant she was about to get stubborn. “These people tried to kill my father. I want to know why.”
“You would do better using your resources trying to locate Mr. McCall than the assailants.” The officer stared Josie down, which was quite a feat in Daniel’s opinion. “If you interfere in a federal investigation, you could be facing charges.”
“I have no intention of interfering,” she said in a tone that would have shriveled most men.
The state police detective merely nodded. “I’m glad to hear that. Stay out of airplanes and we’ll be just fine.”
Glaring, she opened her mouth, and Daniel thought the time had come to interfere. “Why would this group target Tyler McCall?”
Detective Johnson met Daniel’s eyes. “You recently bought in to the school, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“That could be the reason right there. This group is ideologically opposed to Caucasians going into business ventures, or any other legal tie, with non-Caucasians.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Josie’s moss green eyes shot derision at the detective.
She was still mad he’d told her to stay out of his investigation.
“I agree, ma’am. I was only giving you a possible reason for their aggression toward your father.”
“But why target Dad out of all the businessmen in the U.S. who have non-Caucasian business partners?” She frowned in fierce thought. “That’s too flimsy a connection. Besides, we know at least one of them was a student. It has to be something to do with the school itself.”
“What type of training camp did he attend?” the detective asked.
Josie looked through the papers Daniel had left on the table and pulled one out, then handed it to the officer. “One that focused on high-level explosives and the more sophisticated forms of warfare. The particulars are here.”
He took the paper and looked at it, his expression freezing into disapproval. “This is just the type of information we don’t need domestic terrorists getting their hands on.”
“Dad is very particular about what students he takes on. If their background checks link them to domestic or foreign terrorist groups even remotely, he refuses their applications.”
The detective looked unimpressed. “You can fake a background. There’s no way your dad can guarantee the character of the men and women he chooses to train.”
Her gaze shot to Daniel’s, and they shared a moment of perfect understanding, both remembering their discussion along a similar vein earlier. But then she turned back to the officer, deliberately breaking the link. “Neither can the army, but no one has proposed shutting its doors down.”
Stone’s lips quirked. “You have a point, but the fact is, your dad obviously did train some domestic terrorists, and I’m guessing they aren’t wild about there being any record of them learning this stuff.” He waved the paper at Josie.
“You think they blew up an entire compound, tried to kill my father and broke in to my house all just to stop other people from knowing what type of specialized knowledge and training they had?” Josie asked incredulously.
The detective shrugged, looking resigned and weary with the knowledge he had of human nature. “We’re talking about fanatics here. The kind of men who would blow up an elementary school if it was in the way of their agenda.”
Josie was still reeling at the thought of her father unknowingly training domestic terrorists and being attacked because of it when Hotwire left to pick up Claire from her classes. The local police had gotten rid of the reporters, but the more stalwart had returned and were making a nuisance of themselves on the sidewalk.
They’d come into the yard again, but moved to the sidewalk after Daniel went outside and made his presence felt with silent, but palpable anger emanating from his every pore. He was back inside now, going over the records she’d printed earlier despite the detective’s injunction to leave that part of the investigation to the authorities.
He’d taken her jump drive, but had no authority to require her to delete the records she’d already transferred to Hotwire’s hard drive. Not that she’d mentioned them to him.
She was still trying to track down her father’s possible aliases. It required meticulous research and reading through a lot of records that ended up having no information of use, but she’d read the phone book for every major county in the U.S. if it meant finding her dad.
Checking her e-mail, she opened up an automated reply from one of the databases she had sent a query to. It listed the purchase five years ago of a piece of property in the Nevada desert under the name of one of her father’s Vietnam buddies, Andrew Taylor. The man had been dead for almost a decade. Excited at the breakthrough, she narrowed her search on that name to the area surrounding the property and came up with some other interesting pieces of information.