Free A Billionaire's Redemption by Cindy Dees Page B

state. Stunned, she read it again. That was definitely what she’d just read. Someone who worked for this secret committee was killing government officials of another sovereign nation. Last time she checked her civics textbook, that was illegal!
    She opened another folder. This one outlined some sort of mission in the Middle East to fund bombings in a country whose regime she recalled hearing the United States didn’t like. But that was terrorism!
U.S.–sponsored terrorism.
    Very afraid, she clicked on the third folder. God only knew what the dozens of remaining folders held. She started to read. Assassination. California. Oh. My. God. Whoever this Excelsior bunch was, they were killing Americans on American soil, too.
    Folder after folder gave up its secrets, each more horrifying than the last. For nearly two hours she read about the activities of this secret committee. It created mayhem and death wherever it touched.
    Finally, she reached the end of the last file. She leaped up from her father’s desk, pacing in agitation. What was she going to do with this information? She couldn’t just do nothing. But then that stack of paperwork the governor’s assistant had shoved in front of her to sign after the press conference came to mind. Some of it had to do with not revealing classified information. Was she seriously required to keep her mouth shut about this secret committee and whatever it was up to?
    She couldn’t do it. Wouldn’t do it. Even if she was prosecuted for revealing classified information, there was no way she would stand by and let something like this go on in her country. Not in her government. Being a United States senator stood for something, and even if she had to throw herself on her sword, she would not sully that institution.
    She paused by the French doors opening out onto one side of the back patio. The garden was dark, wreathed in shadows that suddenly looked menacing. The room behind her was dark, lit only by the lamp on her father’s desk, and the night seemed to reach right through the window to wrap her in its cold grasp.
    Shivering, she rubbed her arms. And that was when she saw it. Flitting through the garden at the edge of her sight. Something ghostly and gray. She swore under her breath. If that was her father coming back to haunt her, she was going to give him a piece of her mind, all right. He’d had no business condoning the shenanigans of that committee. Miscellaneous Activities, indeed.
    There it was again. Except this time it wasn’t an it. That was a person out there. Someone was creeping around in the garden and doing a freakishly good job of blending into the shadows. Stories of hit squads and covert ops teams fresh on her mind, panic ripped through her.
    She pressed herself back against the wall beside the window in abrupt fear. Who was out there at this time of night? George, the gardener, went to bed at about nine o’clock, and it was after midnight now. Her mother hadn’t even made it downstairs for dinner, and Louise had the night off. Not that the shadow outside looked even remotely female. The intruder was tall and athletically built from what she’d glimpsed.
    Willa crept around the margins of the office, hugging the wall, careful to stay out of the line of sight of the windows. She reached the desk and crouched down behind it as she picked up the phone. Quickly, she dialed 9-1-1.
    “9-1-1. Please state your emergency.”
    “This is Willa Merris. There’s an intruder in our back garden. A man.”
    “I’ll send a unit over to have a look, Miss Merris...err, Senator. I need you to stay in the house. Is there a room you can lock yourself in?”
    “Yes. My bathroom.”
    “Go there and lock yourself in. Wait for an officer to call through the door and tell you it’s all clear.”
    She hung up the phone and crawled on her hands and knees for the hallway door, staying out of sight of the garden. When she reached the foyer’s cavernous darkness, she climbed to her