Lily's Outlaw (Once a Marine, Always a Marine Book 2) by Kori David Page B

friend and have him get some info for us, like if the General was tortured or not.”
    “Because that’s what the Huerta cartel is known for.”
    Jesse nodded. She’d gone a little pale and he pulled her into his arms to give her a hug. “I will not let anyone hurt you.”
    She sighed. “I know. I guess I thought I could handle it when they were only after me.”
    Jesse pulled back and looked into her misty cat’s eyes. “I’m not okay with that.”
    “I’m so glad you aren’t.”
    “Now, how about you let me in on what’s really going on?”
    Lily sighed and set the folder on the table. “Whoever searched my house did a very thorough job.”
    “Robert?”
    She shook her head. “He’s the type to hire someone else to do that. Whatever reason he was really here for, it wasn’t to do the initial search. How did you find me so fast?”
    Jesse grinned. He’d wondered when she’d get around to that. “I bugged your camera.”
    “When you found the other one, you planted your own? All my noble effort was worthless, wasn’t it?”
    He nodded. “It would have been nice to wake up with you in my arms, instead of you sneaking out like you missed curfew and were about to get grounded. We could have had morning sex and taken a shower together.”
    Jesse watched as her faced flushed and her eyes dropped to his chest. “That would have been nice.”  
    He was getting hard just thinking about morning sex, and shower sex, and then bed sex. But he willed his body under control. He wanted to hear from her what she’d gotten herself mixed up in and then they needed to leave her home and find a safer place.
    “So next time, don’t leave me high and dry.” He redirected her attention from his chest to the folder on the table. “How did they miss this?”
    Lily grinned. “I have a false bottom to a drawer in my bathroom. I cover it with tampons and pads. I figure it’s safe to assume it’s usually men that do house searches and I have yet to run into a man that wanted to handle anything labeled feminine protection.”
    Jesse laughed. It wouldn’t have stopped him because he had six sisters who used to do that very same thing. He’d learned early on in a house full of women to just ignore anything unpleasant or leave the house during Hell week. But if he wanted dirt on his sisters, he went into the tampon cabinet. They all hid their diaries in there.
    “Anyway,” she continued. “This is the original shot I had.”
    The General was a tall man and kept in shape, but his muscle was running to fat and he’d developed love-handles around the middle that sagged over the tops of his khaki pants. His hair was gray and regulation short and his face was average. Unremarkable.
    Ramon Garcia was a bit of a surprise.
    Even taller than the General, he had sleek wiry muscles and a hard face. There was no mercy there. No give. The wicked looking scar that ran from his chin along his jawline to his left ear told Jesse that this man was brought up hard and would go out that same way. Knife wounds were as easy to read as gunshot wounds.
    “What else do you have?”
    Lily opened the folder again and began sliding out photo after photo. “I knew the General was based out of Fort Hood so I set up camp and began watching his comings and goings. I wanted to know who he was meeting and when.”
    Jesse looked at each photo. Lily gave them to him in a timeline. Most were innocent enough but showed that the General, like most people, had regular habits. Coffee off-base on Tuesday. Dinner with some other brass in town on Thursday. And meetings every so often at a seedy little motel on the outskirts of town. That was the picture he focused on.
    “I recognize this man.” He tapped the face of the man meeting with Maddox. But how he knew him wasn’t coming to him.
    “You should. That’s my stepfather.”
    And just like that, he remembered. William Tate had married Lily’s mother when Lily was ten years old. He owned a chain of gun