Free Mimosa Grove by Dinah McCall

truck and taken himself home with the promise that before the sun went down on this day, he would know the name and the face of the woman who’d saved his family from tragedy.
     
     
    Back in D.C. that same night, Peter McNamara was going through his own brand of drama—one just as deadly, but one he was determined to survive. Even though he’d grown accustomed to the luxuries afforded U.S. citizens, he wasn’t a fool. He’d forgotten none of his Spartan upbringing, or what he’d been trained to do under the old Soviet regime. Despite the government’s outrage toward him, which was being displayed through the media, he knew there was no paper trail linking him to dirty money. Everything had been done through telephone instructions, then later through the Internet, and bounced off so many other stations that it was impossible to tell where it had originated or ended. The monies were always paid directly to a numbered Swiss bank account. No one he’d done business with had ever seen him, so there were no witnesses to testify against him—except Trigger, the general’s son. Trigger didn’t know it, but even though Peter had believed himself untouchable, he’d still left a back door through which to exit, while implicating Trigger as the man to arrest—and the only man who’d betrayed his country.
    Unless the prosecution knew something he didn’t or Trigger had panicked and talked, most of their case was being based on the fact that the military had discovered their files had been hacked into, and somehow they’d learned he was a Russian spy who’d been living under an alias in the United States of America. He figured they’d put two and two together and were trying to make it add up to five to fit the scenario.
    He figured his best bet was to persuade his lawyer to set up a meeting with the federal prosecutor. He didn’t have a genius IQ for nothing. He figured he could explain and negotiate, and make a far better case for himself than anyone he could hire.
    After a phone call to his lawyer, he went to bed with an easier spirit. Tomorrow he would talk to the prosecution and be out of prison in time for dinner.
    It said something for Peter’s state of mind that he believed his situation could be solved so easily.
    And so he slept without dreaming, certain that his plan would not fail, while Justin Bouvier sat on his front porch, waiting for daylight to meet the woman who’d saved his niece.

5
     
    L aurel woke up the next morning feeling restless. She’d dreamed of the rescue over and over in the night—seeing the face of Rachelle’s rescuer had been startling, then confusing. It was most certainly the man from her dreams, and she’d seen him through the little girl’s eyes, so she hadn’t been imagining him there. The police chief had called him Justin. Now she had a name to go with the face. But she didn’t know what to do next. Should she force the issue and go in search of him, or wait and let the fates that had brought them together in sleep finish the job in their own time? When nothing brilliant occurred to her that would make sense of the latest chaos in her life, she dragged herself out of bed and headed for the bathroom.
    After showering and getting dressed, she did something very out of character. When she went downstairs, instead of going to breakfast, she went to the library to call her father.
     
     
    Robert Scanlon had overslept. It was so unlike him that even as he was finishing his first cup of coffee, he was still rattled by the fact.
    Estelle was bringing a plate of toasted English muffins and a small crystal dish filled with strawberry preserves into the breakfast room as he was getting up from the table.
    He glanced at the short, stocky woman without really noticing she’d recently colored her salt-and-pepper hair a light brown, applied both mascara and lipstick, and was wearing nice shoes with short, but sensible heels instead of her normal flat-soled Hush Puppies.
    Robert eyed