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couldn’t break with a little patience and a good dose of ingenuity.
    His cell phone started singing Another One Bites the Dust , and he leaned down to stop it from vibrating off the coffee table. The number that flashed across the caller ID tugged a grin from his lips.
    He pressed the phone to his ear. “How’s it hanging, you lucky bastard?”
    “Same as always. You?” Keith King, best bud and former spec ops brother, snorted into the phone. “Why do I even ask? I know I’ll get the standard response out of you.”
    His standard response being his own colorful version of “peachy”, coined during the period in his life he referred to as the dark ages, right after his knee had been blown to hell.
    “Life’s more like a kumquat these days, my friend.”
    Keith laughed. “Yeah? And what the hell is a kumquat?”
    “You know, the little gem of the citrus family, sweet rind, juicy acidic pulp...kind of like me.”
    He could picture Keith, somewhere at Bragg, shaking his head. “Where do you get this stuff?”
    “Books, King. You should try one sometime.” Cam booted up his decryption program and set it to work. “I’m surprised to hear from you. I thought you’d be wheels up with the rest of the team by now.”
    Keith blew out an audible breath over the line. “Actually, I’m thinking of taking a position a little closer to home.”
    Keith was one of the best Engineer Sergeants Cam had ever worked with. His old A-team couldn’t have asked for a better navigator and demolitions expert. Methodical and dedicated, Keith loved being out in the field.
    Cam couldn’t imagine him giving it all up.
    He frowned. “Don’t tell me the King’s about to turn into a Rear Echelon Mother Fucker,” he said, using Army speak for an officer who’s chained to a desk.
    Keith chuckled. “Never.” He cleared his throat. “Grace is pregnant.”
    “Holy shit.”
    “Yeah, that’s what I said when she told me.”
    Keith had fallen hard for Grace last year while tracking down her kidnapped son. Cam liked to think he’d had a hand in pushing the two to work out their differences. Or maybe he’d just given them a tough time.
    He was good at that.
    Except when rendered speechless.
    “Wow, Grace with a mini-King baking in the oven. That’s...” he blew out a breath and shook his head “...congrats, man.”
    A knife-like pang skewered his heart, and he easily recognized it for what it was.
    Envy. Pure and simple.
    He tamped down the tightness in his chest.
    “Listen,” Keith said, bringing him back to the conversation. “I’ll be back in Arizona in a few weeks. We’d love it if you’d come up north for a couple of days.”
    “That would be—”
    Cam caught a flash of a familiar redhead on the five o’clock news and his jaw dropped.
    He slid his laptop on the table and lunged for the remote. Dr. Audra McCain’s face filled the screen. The words ‘Breaking News’ scrolled beneath her shoulders. She flinched when a reporter shoved a microphone to her pale face. The camera zoomed in on her features and he detected the faint purple stirrings of a bruise just under the surface of the scar beneath her right eye.
    “Uh, Cam?”
    “Hang on a sec.”
    He leapt from the recliner, hobbling on one foot, and punched up the volume on the remote.
    He caught her shaky voice. “I have no further comments.”
    A cop nudged her to a police cruiser and the afternoon sun glinted off the handcuffs shackling her wrists behind her back.
    As the police officer shoved her into the back of the car the shot faded replaced by a news anchor.
    “That was the scene this morning outside Nanodyne. Sources would only confirm that an expensive prototype was recently stolen from Nanodyne. Exactly what the prototype is and how much it is worth remains unclear. Dr. Audra McCain was taken into police custody this morning and continues to deny any involvement.”
    The camera shifted away from the news anchor and a facial composite filled the