Free Wild Honey by Veronica Sattler

broke any laws, traffic or otherwise—a legacy of Judith McLean’s rearing. Even as a youth, he’d never experimented with drugs, never raced the little MG they’d given him for graduating prep school with the highest honors. He’d been a super straight arrow, all right. Except for one fine summer night in Cambridge, when he’d gone out on the town and…
    Muttering an expletive, Travis focused on his immediate objective: the life and habits of one Miranda Terhune. The final tidbit he’d learned about the lovely nurse was that she was shortly leaving on a “much deserved” three-week vacation. He hadn’t been able to ascertain where, but that shouldn’t present a problem. Airline tickets and hotel reservations were usually secured with credit cards. And credit-card use was traceable.
    He frowned. The problem was getting past Jason Cord.
    “Y OU NEED TO WHAT ?” Jason Cord thundered, his straight black brows meeting in the middle.
    “I said, I need to use the main computer for a bit.” Travis ignored the scowl that rearranged Cord’s features—his aunt Louise would have called them disgracefully handsome features—and kept his voice casual. “It’s nothin’ that’ll compromise security, Jace, ol’ boy. I’ll only be a few minutes, ‘n’ then—”
    “In a pig’s eye, you will!” Cord rose from behind his desk and thrust out his arm, pointing to the door. “Get your injured hide out of here, McLean, now, and I’ll forget what you just asked.”
    Travis stood his ground. Cord intimidated a lot of people with that scowl. But not Travis. For one thing, he was taller than his superior, although Cord came in over six feet. Foranother, they’d been through hell and back together. In the old days, when they’d been field operatives, along with Rafe O’Hara and Brad Holman. Hell, when they’d lost Brad, Travis and Jason had wept in each other’s arms.
    Not that he was about to mention Brad. His death was still a raw wound to the three men who’d regarded him as a good friend. Brad had been tortured and killed by a Mexican drug lord; Rafe, despite orders to take the man alive, had recently gunned the bastard down. While Travis sympathized totally with Rafe’s action, he doubted Jason felt the same.
    Travis wished he’d confide in him, but fat chance of that. Jason was a closemouthed bastard when he wanted to be; the best thing, when he was in one of his moods, was to avoid him entirely. If he hadn’t needed the info on Terhune, Travis would have already been out the door.
    “Look, Jason,” he said calmly, “you know me. Would I ask for somethin’ like this if it wasn’t important? In fact, when before have I ever—”
    “Stuff it, McLean! You’re asking now, and it’s one time too many. Get the hell out of here.”
    Travis heaved a sigh. He’d known it wouldn’t be easy, yet he’d been hoping…Ah, hell. He hadn’t wanted to tell Cord what this was all about, but it looked like that was the only way.
    “Jace…this really is important,” he said quietly.
    Jason had his mouth set to blister his friend’s ears, but the look on Travis’s face stopped him. McLean was a rogue sometimes, using that Southern charm to get his way. Sometimes, when he had to, he trod the gray areas—they all did—but he wasn’t dishonest and he wasn’t devious.
    In fact, the worst that might be said of him was that he never took life too seriously. Not his personal life, anyway. That break with his family—it could have gotten to some men, but not McLean. “Life’s too short to sweat what you can’t change,” he’d once said when someone asked himabout it. And then there was his famous pronouncement on love—that if it existed, it was for poets and fools.
    No, Travis McLean wasn’t known for getting “deep-down” about things. Not that he didn’t have depths; if McLean were shallow, he’d never have had the bond they shared. It was just that Travis rarely tapped into those depths in the