Free Ring of Truth (Devlin Security Force Book 2) by Susan Vaughan Page A

now.
     
    ***
     
    Cort tested the finish. Solid and dry. Good. On his own time, he’d busted ass finishing this commission. Six chairs to match the cherry dining room table built for a regular customer in Connecticut last year. Now he could pack them up to deliver on his way to D.C. He flicked off the workshop lights and headed across the dooryard.
    His time back in Maine had dragged like a load of logs behind a skidder. Assisting a guest instructor from Vermont in a course on boxes with inlays kept him hopping from nine to four through the work week.
    His mind kept wandering to Mara Marton. They’d spoken on the phone while he was away. Usually about what she was uncovering on their suspects and once about her new security system, but whenever he heard her low, sexy voice, the world went away.
    He rammed a hand over his hair as he passed through the shade of a spruce tree. Shit, he wasn’t the kind of guy a classy woman like her should get involved with. She deserved better than hooking up with an ex-con, a loner who lived a hermit’s existence. Special Agent Kaplan had accused him of hiding in the woods. Yeah, so? But starting on the road to changing things made him hunger for sunlight and a new beginning.
    When he opened the cabin door into the darkened living room, he walked into a battering ram. The blow dropped him to all fours and knocked all the air from his lungs.
    He gasped for breath. His stomach rolled. Three sets of legs in dark trousers and polished shoes surrounded him. Brutality wasn’t the usual FBI tactic. Who then?
    Meaty hands dragged him upright and held his elbows in a vise.
    “Merely a tap, Mr. Jones. I hope I now have your full attention.” The deep voice held the merest trace of a foreign accent.
    A click and the table lamp beside the sofa came on, better illuminating the intruders. The fiftyish man watching him with deep-set black eyes pointed a black automatic pistol at his belly. Close-cut hair either white or pale blond. A military demeanor that implied who’d sent him. His two playmates could’ve been his clones, except for the eyes. No intelligence and cunning, only the empty eyes of professional muscle. Years since he’d faced the type but he hadn’t forgotten the soulless look.
    Cort straightened his shoulders and affected an air of confidence. “I told the duke’s man I was searching for the crown jewels. He didn’t have to send his enforcers.”
    The man withdrew a pack of Marlboros from an inside pocket of his black leather jacket. He smiled thinly, revealing bad teeth. “I am aware of the duke’s efforts. The prince’s younger brother is competent but conventional and irrelevant. Allow me to introduce myself.”
    The words threw Cort into Mick Jagger’s song. It would be a mistake to underestimate this man whether he was the devil or merely imitating him. Cort’s nerves crawled like a nest of spiders.
    “I am Colonel Yerik of the Gramornia Security Police, under the command of His Excellency Prime Minister Turkof.” He made a small bow and clicked his heels together. “The prime minister has a different priority.”
    “Yeah? And I should care because?”
    One of Cort’s bookends cracked a fist against the back of his head. He jerked forward, head swimming, but didn’t make a sound. He knew not to show weakness, let alone pain. Been there, done that, learned the fucking lesson.
    “Pay heed, Mr. Jones. Or my men will reinforce my words with their fists.” Yerik blew smoke in his face, then tapped the ash onto the floor. He pocketed the pistol, apparently believing it no longer necessary to ensure Cort’s submission.
    “I’m all ears.”
    Yerik ignored his insolent tone. “You will cease your search. You will continue to tell the FBI and the royal family you have no way of locating the jewels. Do you understand me?”
    If the clones hadn’t been holding him fast, he’d have stumbled backward in shock. The FBI and the Gramornia royal family had pressured him