“I said it was a burner and untraceable.”
In other words, he wasn’t going to tell her who called.
He reached for his shirt and started to put it on, when she caught sight of the tattoo again and frowned. “That tattoo on your arm. What kind of crest is it? It looks familiar.”
He froze. At least it seemed that way at first, but when he turned to look at her, his expression was normal. “You probably have many times. It’s a popular beer.”
She thought for a minute and then it came to her. “You have a Budweiser tattoo?”
He arched an eyebrow. “Not highbrow enough for you?”
“I prefer Coors Light. So yes.”
He bit out a sharp laugh and shook his head. “You don’t back down, do you?”
It was rhetorical, so she didn’t answer. Instead she said, “How did you get the scars?”
She was learning to read him better. His expression gave nothing away on first glance, but the slight tensing of his jaw and whitening of his lips told her the question was not a welcome one.
“Car accident,” he said so indifferently that she knew it was a lie. “I’ll be back in a little bit. If you’re hungry you can go down to breakfast without me.”
“All right.”
“Annie?”
She looked up.
“We’re not done here.”
She wasn’t so sure. It felt as if they were very done.
Twenty-one
Colt got the meeting he’d wanted, although the old bastard made him wait over an hour first in the “drawing room.”
Who the hell had a drawing room anymore? Relics like General Thomas Murray, that’s who. The entire place stank of old money, old family, and old America. A Murray had called “Blairhaven” (named after the family’s ancestral castle in Scotland) home since the time of the Revolution.
Colt had been uncomfortable the first time Kate brought him here, and it had never changed. The old plantation house in Alexandria, Virginia, harked back to a time of Jeffersonian pastoral America that felt not only out of touch, but repressive, given the unavoidable connection with its slave past. It represented an idealized vision of a bucolic world that had never really existed.
The rooms themselves felt like a museum, filled with antiques and oversized paintings of illustrious long-dead relatives. The family’s old and distinguished military service figured in many of them.
Colt sat on one of the sturdier-looking carved mahogany chairs, hoping it would hold his weight. It had a cushion made out of that fabric Kate had loved. Toile, he thought it was called. He’d never been a fan. Probably because it reminded him of this place, and that she’d come from somewhere where people were rich enough to have names for fabric.
He fiddled with the hands of the brass clock on the side table beside him. It was one of three in the room, which made sense, as two didn’t seem to be working.
He’d declined tea from the disapproving maid, having never acquired the taste for it and recalling how he’d broken an “irreplaceable” cup the first time he was here.
Ah, the fond memories.
Finally the butler—yep, the butler—showed him into the general’s study.
The bastard didn’t even look up when he entered the room and was “announced.” The general finished reading some document before slowly lifting his head.
Colt barely hid his shock. General Thomas Murray, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had aged in the three years since Colt last saw him in person. He was in his late fifties, but he looked a good decade older. Whether it was the stress of the job or the loss of his son, Colt didn’t know, but the intervening years had not been kind to him. His once distinguished graying-at-the-temples dark hair had thinned and gone almost completely white, and his skin now sagged with deep lines like a basset hound’s. But it was his eyes that had changed the most. Once sharp with intelligence and suffer-no-fools harshness, they now seemed glassy and weary behind the thick wire-rimmed glasses.
The room smelled of leather, smoke, and whiskey. The latter, Colt suspected, was coming from the man behind the desk. It might be five o’clock somewhere, but here it was only noon.
“What do you want?” the old man snapped impatiently.
