Rules of Engagement

CHAPTER NINETEEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

RIFLE SHOTS BOOMED across the green-carpeted acres, their echo resounding over the silent crowd. The casings flew harmlessly toward the clouds, yet Tess Spencer felt each volley as though it tore through her heart.

As the twenty-one-gun salute continued, soldiers in crisp uniforms took their mark, shooting in unison, their somber faces reflecting the seriousness of this final honor.

Tess could barely contain herself as she stared at her twin brother’s coffin. He was too young, they were too young. Even though she’d seen David’s face one last time before the coffin was closed, his dark hair and blue eyes so like her own, she wanted to cry out that it was a mistake. David was coming back. He couldn’t, wouldn’t leave without her.

More tears splashed down her cheeks, wetting the collar of her black dress. Hearing her mother’s quiet sobs, Tess looked at her parents’ dark heads pressed together. Grief couldn’t define their agony. Tears couldn’t erase their pain.

Pain that had begun when the chaplain and another officer had rung the doorbell, then explained how David had died on the other side of the world.

An Army Reservist, he had willingly accepted the call to serve. Loyal to both country and family, David hadn’t questioned his duty. And he’d assured Tess he’d be home safe and soon. David never broke his promises.

The guns were suddenly silent. Then with great dignity, the soldiers lifted the flag draped over the coffin and folded it into the painfully familiar triangle.

Tess’s mother accepted the flag, clutching it close before bowing her head, her body shaking with sobs.

Fingers trembling, Tess reached out toward the coffin. She wasn’t ready to say goodbye. Oh, David. How did this happen?

Throat raw, eyes burning, Tess felt the start of more hot tears. Her world had tilted and she wasn’t sure it would ever be right again.

CHAPTER ONE

Six months later

COLE HARRINGTON gripped the file containing the latest software designs his engineering firm had produced. He’d expected twice as many. Scrapped or missing, he’d been told by his staff. Designs he’d sweated over before his extended deployment to Iraq.

He’d left Mark Cannon in charge of his company, a man he trusted. Or thought he trusted.

Some of his ideas had been good, too good to be scrapped. Had they been stolen? Or worse, secreted out by one of his own people?

Cole looked at his second in command. “I want to know what happened to my work.”

Mark scowled, his brown eyes dark with anger. “You think I don’t? Fredrickson says some of the designs you’re talking about could’ve been obsolete, that—”

Cole slammed the folder on his burl walnut desk, rattling the mariner’s clock on the corner and scattering the morning’s mail. “He heads the research and development team, not the company. I know my work was good.”

“Cole, you’ve only been back a month. And you’ve been playing catch-up most of that time. We only found out yesterday the product was gone. How do you know Frederickson’s not right? Maybe it was outdated. You were gone a lot longer than you thought you’d be.”

“But I didn’t expect the company to be run into the ground!”

Mark stiffened. “This isn’t the first takeover attempt by Alton Tool.”

“It’s the first one that might succeed,” Dan Nelson, the chief financial officer, warned. “We lost out to them on the last three major bids. We’re in deep on research and development with nothing to offset the expense.”

Towering over them, Cole looked from one to the other. “We can’t let Alton get this bid. It’s time to deal with them.” Alton Tool had tried everything to get rid of Harrington Engineering, including poaching software designers and the failed takeover. It wasn’t a stretch to believe Alton had taken the next step in corporate piracy.

Cole glanced at Nate Rogers, head of security, who wore his military experience like a badge of honor. “I don’t want a single paper to get past the exits.”

“You got it.”

“Any luck finding my laptop, Nate?”

The other man shook his head, his face ruddy beneath white-blond hair.

Cole cursed beneath his breath. The laptop had traveled around the world with him, surviving sandstorms and bullets. And on it he’d saved a copy of his work, including the missing designs. He’d brought it to the office with him when he returned and he wasn’t sure just when it disappeared, but he couldn’t find it. Dozens of people roamed the halls and he rarely kept his own door locked.

He wished he’d left the computer at his house, even his parents’ home. It had been crazy since he’d come back from deployment. Readjusting to civilian life, taking back the reins to his business, finding out the trouble it was in.

“Nate, get a second man looking for the laptop. We find it, we have the designs.”

“Right.”

There was one notable person missing in the room—Jim Fredrickson. Cole knew the other men had noted the fact, but he wanted to talk to Jim alone.

“Okay, guys, that’s it for now.”

As they shuffled out, his gaze flicked to each in turn. Nate Rogers. They’d served together in Bosnia. During a skirmish the tall, rangy man had pushed Cole out of the way, taking some incoming shrapnel in his leg. It had busted up his knee, causing a permanent disability, ending Nate’s promising Army career. Cole had sought him out when he’d started up his engineering plant, offering him a premium salary to head his security division.

Mark Cannon. They’d worked together for years, developing both a friendship and deep level of trust. Enough that he’d felt secure when the call to serve in Iraq had come.

Dan Nelson was the newest face on his team but also the oldest. He’d worked for the competition. But he was talented, accomplished and had never given Cole a reason to distrust him. And he was, at most, the numbers man. Not someone who ever touched the creative. Or shouldn’t, anyway.

And the missing man, Jim Fredrickson. He and Cole had worked side by side as budding software designers. Logically Jim had the easiest access, but Cole couldn’t believe his old friend would betray him. They went back too far. But there were plenty of young designers Cole knew little about in Jim’s department, since they tended to come and go frequently. Each one hoped to be the next Bill Gates. Cole had wanted to keep his company small, run it with a hands-on mom-and-pop sense of caring, but the reality of business success was growth. He employed more than two hundred people. He knew a lot of them, but not all.

Cole phoned for Jim to come up. As he waited, he stared out the huge picture window at his plant, which made processing equipment for companies that produced everything from candy to plastics to electronics. His was a hybrid business. One that had to be constantly evolving, thus the importance of the cutting-edge software designs. There was potential for enormous profit. And it enticed corporate raiders like triple-layered, chocolate-decadence cake wooed sugar junkies.

Cole had been protecting his firm since the day he’d opened the doors five years earlier. But its condition had never been this dire. His deployment had lasted nearly a year. And in that time his profitable firm had nearly gone bankrupt.

Bankrupt! Because of the lost bids to Alton Tool. He could still hardly believe it. Although he’d stayed in touch by e-mail, he’d left the firm’s management to Mark. He couldn’t second-guess it from a combat zone.

He heard a knock. “Jim. Come in. Shut the door.”

“Calling me on the carpet, boss?”

Cole took the chair angled next to Jim’s. “The missing designs, Jim.”

“They aren’t missing. I told you. They’re old, so they must’ve been—”

“Scrapped. I know. How well do you know the people in your department?”

Jim shrugged. “I work with them. They’re an efficient team.”

“No one stands out as overly eager? Anyone working more overtime than you’d expect them to?”