Very Special Forces (Lexi Graves Mysteries 12)

  VERY SPECIAL FORCES

  Lexi Graves Mysteries, 12

  Camilla Chafer

  Very Special Forces

  Copyright: Camilla Chafer

  Published: November 2018

  ISBN: 978-1-909577-20-6

  The right of Camilla Chafer to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

  Visit the author online at www.camillachafer.com to sign up to her mailing list and for more information on other titles.

  Contents

  Copyright

  Synopsis

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Mailing list sign-up

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  Very Special Forces

  Private Investigator Lexi Graves couldn’t be happier. All she has left to do is wrap up a case between a fighting married couple before she can focus solely on adding the finishing touches to her own wedding. That case is a snap to solve but a woman suddenly enters the detective agency with a puzzling request and Lexi decides to take a last-minute look into the matter. After all, the only other critical decision she has to make right now is choosing her bridal gown.

  Lexi’s client claims to have observed strange changes in her friend’s behavior but Lexi can’t find anything to suggest any serious problem, despite sharing the same hunch that something isn’t quite right. The deeper Lexi looks into it, the more concerned she gets, and the more likely it appears that her client’s friend could be in serious danger. Proving it, however, seems nearly impossible.

  Just to complicate things a little further, two men from Lexi’s past approach her with a desperate plea for her help after a priceless item is stolen. Certified, top secret discretion is required, lest a national incident be inadvertently triggered.

  Solving her cases before her wedding day arrives is a challenge by itself, of course, but if Lexi fails, the fallout could be far greater than she ever imagined.

  Chapter One

  "I'm hit!" I gasped. My fingers, snug in thick, padded gloves, moved down to the red patch currently widening over my heart. Any moment now, my life would expire and that would be it. Game over. I dropped my head back in the grass where I landed at the impact of the bullet and stared up at the blue sky, so peaceful and still, nary a cloud drifting past. A second later, a face loomed over me.

  Lily pulled back her protective goggles and grinned. "Gotcha!" she said just as the buzzer across my breastplate sounded. "You're dead!"

  "We're on the same team, Lily!" I yelled.

  Lily wrinkled her nose and knit her eyebrows together. "Dammit," she muttered, a confused look spreading across the parts of her face not covered by the protective mask. "I knew I missed something crucial in the game plan." She dropped onto the grass next to me and sighed.

  Pushing up with my elbows, I sat upright and tapped the breastplate until the incessant buzzer stopped sounding. It continued to flash red, alerting the controller that another player was off the field and ensuring that both my opponents and teammates knew there was no point wasting their paintball cartridges on me since I was officially dead.

  "I really thought we would win this," I said. "I thought we nailed the game plan. We would have, if you'd only paid more attention to it."

  "I had my mind on other things," said Lily. She looked down and pulled a face. "Do you think this jumpsuit makes me look fat?"

  "No. Even fat couldn't make you look fat."

  "You say the nicest things." Lily frowned again. "Although I'm struggling to get my head around that one."

  "Would being fat be the worst thing in the world?" I asked. "So long as you feel good, that's the main thing."

  "Nope, it's not the worst. I just want to feel confident in my mom body. I want to feel like the woman who used to dance on tables until two in the morning."

  "You felt like that last week," I reminded her. "We were asked to leave, remember?"

  "Oh yeah!" Lily giggled. "In that case, I feel great and I didn't even have a hangover afterwards."

  "Winning at life," I said as we fist-bumped. I looked around, wondering where the rest of our team was, but did I really care? Paintballing was not my idea of a good time, even if it were fun to run around a fenced-in pitch, shooting the opposite team.

  A yell shattered the silence followed by other manly grunting noises before two camouflaged men appeared from behind a small hill. All their breastplates flashed red and one was covered from head to toe in paint splatters. He pulled off his goggles and laughed as he walked towards us, closely flanked by the other men. Before they reached us, Lily's breastplate began to flash green.

  "Uh-oh," she said, staring down at it. "What did I do?"

  I shook my head. "You won," I told her. "You're the last woman standing."

  "Unbelievable," said Solomon when he reached us. He held his hand out to me and tugged me to my feet before pulling up Lily. After he kissed me, he asked Lily, "How did you win? What was your game plan?"

  "Stealth tactics," she said, her face now serious. "Solid game plan. Nerves of steel."

  Solomon looked at me. I nodded. "That's exactly what happened," I lied.

  "And it had nothing to do with me sitting here while you guys shot each other up," Lily added.

  "Thought so," said Solomon. He pointed to his paint-splattered jumpsuit and glanced toward the sniggering trio behind him. "Your brothers thought it was perfectly fair to team up against me."

  My three older brothers, Garrett, Daniel, and Jord, pulled off their goggles and laughed, clapping each other on their backs and never looking one bit ashamed.

  "You're on our team, Jord," I reminded the youngest of the trio and also Lily's husband. "You shot your own teammate!"

  Jord shrugged and slung an arm around Lily's shoulders. "It was worth it if only to get the drop on Solomon."

  "It'll never happen again," said Solomon. "Plus, we still won, thanks to Lily's tactics that left her as the last player alive."

  Lily grinned. "Let's go get that trophy!"

  "And pizzas," added Jord, "and beers."

  "We have a baby to get home to," Lily reminded him.

  "Baby? We have a baby?" asked Jord, pretending to look puzzled. He checked the imaginary watch on his wrist. "I think we have plenty of time left for fun."

  "Mom and Dad will love any extra time they can get with Poppy," I told them. "Take advantage of it and enjoy yourselves. Anyway, you know Victoria loves playing with Poppy. Poppy is the only member of the family smaller than her."

  "I don't need to be told twice. Do you?" asked Jord.

  "Lead the way to the bar," replied Lily and they scooted off hand-in-hand with Garrett and Daniel following behind.
r />   I looked around for my colleagues at the Solomon Detective Agency, spying Fletcher, Flaherty and Lucas waiting at the gates to the enclosure. Only Tony Delgado was missing and that was because he was currently on his honeymoon with my sister, Serena. They got married a month before but had to delay their honeymoon slightly due to a combination of work commitments and Serena's fussiness about where they should vacation. With Serena's daughter safely ensconced at my parents’ house for ten days, they headed to white sand and blue seas, their exact location unknown.

  "This was fun. Lily enjoyed it even if she's not an official crimefighter," I said, slipping my hand into Solomon's as we followed our team to the exit.

  "She's one of the family," he replied. "This was much better than just holding a team building day for the private investigator squad. We should do it more often."

  "Maybe next time we could have more padding." I winced as I breathed audibly, certain I would wind up with a bruise or two by the morning. "Fun as this was, I don't want any bruises when I wear my wedding dress."

  "Duly noted. Only two weeks until the wedding." Solomon smiled. "Are you sure you don't need any time off? I don't want you to feel rushed with the planning or overwhelmed by the job."

  "I'm fine," I told him, and I truly was. Having smugly wrapped up my latest case, a simple desk job, mainly running background checks on a department store's employees after a wave of thefts, I was satisfied. It didn't take long to ascertain that one long-standing staff member incurred a bad gambling debt after several bereavements and felt compelled to resort to theft in his effort to solve it. I recommended the staff member be moved to a position of less responsibility, more monitoring, and provided with counseling as well as any reasonable measures the store manager was amenable to. I was feeling more than a little proud of myself for my compassionate response. "I need to do something or I'll just get in Francesca's way," I said, referring to our wedding planner. She picked up the bulk of the wedding work once we decided what we wanted and how we expected our wedding day to play out. Now it was merely days away, and all I had to do was avoid getting into trouble before the happy event. How hard could that be?

  "Then I'll expect to see you in the office at nine sharp tomorrow," said Solomon. "I'm sure we can find something for you to do that doesn't involve chasing down lunatics or getting shot at. Until then, I could use a cold beer, a hot shower and a home-cooked meal. I can cook it."

  "You sound like you're married already. You'll make a terrific husband."

  "Best compliment you've paid me all day," he said, stopping to kiss me again. Behind us, someone cheered.

  ~

  "Nine sharp," I said. I tapped my watch as I pointed to the clock on the wall. Solomon and I entered only a minute earlier, the first to arrive in the PI's shared office. We both made for the small boardroom where we held meetings and I looked around. "Where is everyone?" I wondered as I moved to the window and looked down at the street below.

  "Some of us don't carpool with the boss," said Fletcher, yawning as he walked in. Pulling out a chair, he slumped in it and yawned again. Usually he looked stony, like the hard ex-CIA agent he was, but not today. Today, he looked like he needed to go back to bed.

  "Some of us have to because he makes breakfast," I pointed out. "It would be rude not to carpool. Why are you so tired?"

  "I didn't go to bed until three am, thanks to your brother and sister-in-law insisting that I do shots until the wee hours."

  "There was nothing to ‘insist’ upon," said Flaherty as he strolled in, a box of donuts under his arm. He dropped the box on the table and Fletcher's hand moved towards it automatically, his fingers feebly attempting to flick open the lid. "I'm surprised Fletch can move."

  "Practice," groaned Fletcher. He dragged a donut from the box. "Reflexes."

  I grabbed the back of a chair and pulled it out before dropping into it. "How come you look so awake?" I asked Flaherty. Matt Flaherty was a former detective and long-time friend of Solomon's. He'd been relegated an invalid after being shot in the line of duty but seemed content to work for the agency rather than enjoy an early retirement.

  "I went home at a reasonable hour and didn't imbibe like the world's alcohol was becoming a scarce resource," explained Flaherty. "Not all of us want to look like gnarled, old PIs."

  "I definitely don't," I agreed. I glanced down at my pink pants, cream blouse and darling two-tone heels. I couldn't be further from a gnarled PI, which was exactly why Solomon initially hired me. Our targets never suspected me.

  "Anyone know where Lucas is?" asked Solomon. He stood at the head of the table, his arms folded, waiting.

  "Here!" said Lucas as he hurried in, raising his hand and sliding into the chair next to Fletcher. "What happened to you?" he hissed, taking one look at Fletcher's bleary eyes.

  "Seriously?" Fletcher raised his head wearily. "I'm the only one with a hangover?"

  We all nodded and he slumped even further into his seat.

  "Let's get to it," said Solomon. "As a caveat before we start, Lexi and I are both reducing our workloads in the run-up to the wedding; so anything that looks time-consuming will be handed over to you guys."

  There was a small chorus of 'you got it, boss', 'we can handle it' and 'does that mean extra donuts if Lexi wants to fit into her dress?' The last one I took particular offense at. Like I could leave anyone my allotted share of donuts! I reached for a jelly-filled donut dusted with powdered sugar and stuck out my tongue.

  "Glad we're all up to speed," continued Solomon without defending me on the donut issue. He began to hand out a sheaf of thin files. "We have several cases in this week. There's a neighbor problem a realtor has asked us to look into. Something to do with a boundary line potentially being illegally moved. I know, I know. Not riveting stuff but you never can tell when small cases like these can end up generating a big lead later."

  "I can cover this in an hour or two," said Lucas. "It's easy to look up property records."

  "Great. When you have the boundary lines confirmed, Fletcher can head out to the property with a measuring tape and confirm it old school-style. Then you can go home," Solomon added with a pointed look at Fletcher.

  "Thanks, boss," said Fletcher, not even pretending to argue.

  "What else do we have?" asked Flaherty.

  "The register at Dollar Donuts has been coming up short for the past month. The owner wants us to find out who’s behind it."

  "On it," yelled Flaherty as he reached for the file.

  "You don't know all the details yet," said Solomon.

  Flaherty gave a smug smile. "I know all there is to know. Stake out the donut shop. Pretty much my life's dream. Anything else?"

  Solomon shook his head. "That's about it," he agreed. "Don't spend more than a couple days on it. There's a new employee and the assistant manager is apparently behaving oddly. Check them both out and then put surveillance in place. Dollar Donuts doesn't have any cameras so there's no video footage to examine. Next up is a divorce case. Suspected hidden assets, disgruntled spouses. Lexi, do you and Lucas want to team up on this one?"

  "What kind of hidden assets?" I asked.

  "Property, investments and bank accounts. The marriage reportedly lasted a heady forty-three days before the husband suspected that the wife was just in it for the money. He's accusing her of being a gold-digger. She's adamant she's not. The lawyers have agreed to team up to find out what the situation is and who's telling the truth. The information is in the files. It should be mostly desk work."

  "I can do that," I said, "but I'll need to defer to Lucas for any trickier financial angles. There are limits to my talents." Unless we were talking cocktails, cake, and getting into trouble, for which there were no limits.

  "Perfect." Solomon consulted the files that were left. "The first of the last two case requests involves a missing person but since it's only been forty hours, I'm going to pass that one back to the Montgomery Police Department; and the other is a family squabble. Somethin
g about some coins, one that most likely needs a lawyer to really shake that money tree rather than private investigators." Solomon tucked both files under his arm. "No walk-ins for the past two weeks unless someone forgot to mention one?" he added, looking around as we shook our heads. It had actually been very quiet in the office for the past couple of weeks, which was not a bad thing. Usually, I would have been searching for something to do but now that the wedding plans were in the final stages and the big day only a couple of weeks away, I was glad of the quiet time. If I were lucky, it would continue and Solomon and I could get married in peace before embarking on our honeymoon with nothing more to concentrate on than each other. Each other and the sun, the sand, the ocean, and the entire cocktail menu.

  "Lexi?"

  "Hmm?" I looked up and blinked, disappointed that I was still in the office and not on the honeymoon that so briefly occupied my thoughts.

  "Are you okay to get started, or is it too much?" asked Solomon.

  "It's perfect," I assured him.

  "You don't have any dress fittings or other wedding preparations scheduled?"

  "Not today. I'll get started on these and let you know when my report is ready," I said as I stood up and collected the file.

  Lucas waved as he left the office before disappearing upstairs to the upper floor of the detective agency. Fletcher and Flaherty were on his heels, reminiscing about the paintball wars, leaving Solomon and me as the last participants to depart. The phone in Solomon's office began to ring and he jogged over to answer it. A moment later, he strolled out again just as I sat at my desk, holding his jacket in hand. "I have to head out," he said. "I might be gone all afternoon. Do you want to go out for a bite to eat later?"

  "Can we cook at home? I promised Lily I would meet her at the gym after work. We're taking a new class."

  "What kind of class?"