Page 52 of Serve ’N’ Protect

She nodded to his laptop. “Did you finish the video?”

“Yeah.” Disgusted with how much time he’d wasted, he pushed the laptop a few inches away. “And there’s absolutely nothing helpful here.”

“This is the video of that shift you and Jack Barnes did together, right?”

He nodded. “I was hoping I’d see something that I missed, but nothing out of the ordinary happened.”

“Is it possible the killer was after any Secret Service cops and not necessarily you and Jack Barnes?”

“Possibly,” he admitted. “But I’m not ready to accept that.”

“Why not?” She set down the spatula.

“Because this cop-killer hit two cops from the same department. He did this for a reason, some motivating incident that involves the Secret Service. Could be random, but there’ve been no other attacks on agency personnel. So if it’s not random, why me and Jack? Except for that one night we worked together, I didn’t even really know him. Our only link is on this video.”

“Okay, so stick with the video for a second. You said nothing happened”—she hooked her fingers into quotation marks—“out of the ordinary. Does that mean something did happen on that shift?” He shook his head. “Then what made you say it that way? Why didn’t you just say, ‘nothing happened’?”

“Because nothing happened that would have signed our death warrants.”

She raised her brows. “So what did happen?”

“Two people making out in a car. Happens all the time, especially at parties where the alcohol’s flowing nonstop.”

“Maybe to you it was nothing, but since you’ve got nothing to go on other than this video, why not look into it? Whatever it is?”

“We already did. Both men in the car were interviewed.”

“How did you know who to interview?” she asked. “Did you run the license plate and track down the owner?”

“The car had diplomatic tags, but it was a moot point since Jack and I recognized one of the men. He was our POC—point of contact—for the event.”

“Who was he?”

“His name’s Mansfield. He works for the Saudi embassy.”

“Is he American?” Cassidy asked, and Markus nodded. “Is that unusual, an American working in a foreign country’s embassy?”

“Maybe a little, but it’s not unheard of.”

“And the other man?”

“Jack and I didn’t get a good look at him. McMurray said that Mansfield gave up the name. That guy was interviewed, too. Nothing suspicious came of either interview.”

“Can I watch that part of the video?” She came to his side, resting her forearms on the counter and leaning in closer to the screen. “Maybe I’ll see something you missed.”

Markus doubted it, but what the hell? He flipped open the cover, then shifted the laptop so she could view the video better. As he did, their shoulders touched and remained in contact. The top of her head grazed his chin, her hair soft and smelling clean and fresh. She always smelled good, and he couldn’t stop himself from drawing in a deep breath that took him right back to a place he shouldn’t be. In his bed, with his hand on her waist, hers on his chest and— Shit.

When he found the footage he was looking for, he hit the play button. “This is from the camera in the back of the house. Jack had just radioed in that one of the cars in the rear parking lot was rocking. He wanted to make sure it wasn’t being broken into.”

They watched as Markus and Ghost met up with Jack by the back door. Together, they approached the vehicle, a dark-colored BMW, partially illuminated by light spilling out from the house and the small lit portico. Jack went to the driver’s side while Markus and Ghost walked up to the right side of the car. The rocking motion was enough to be picked up on camera. Simultaneously, they shined their flashlights through the windows. A few seconds later, they clicked off.

“And that was the only thing that happened?” Cassidy asked.

“Yeah.” He nodded. “But again, that’s not really out of the norm for a party. We were just grasping at straws.”

“Who did the interviews?”

“The local police.”