He reached for her hand. “Tell me if I’m out of line here, but you feel it, too, don’t you?”
She nodded, leaving her hand in his, and raised her head. “What do we do about it?”
“I don’t know. Mixing business and pleasure is usually a recipe for disaster, especially in our line of work.”
“I suppose.” She started to withdraw her hand, but he held fast.
“However, it has worked for others.”
“What others?”
“Carla Jordan used to have a hard and fast rule, no fraternizing among the troops.”
“What happened?”
“Her operatives started falling in love with each other.”
“How did she handle it?”
Gavin shrugged. “She gave in to the inevitable. She’d been in love with her second-in-command for years and him with her, but they both kept their feelings bottled up.”
“It’s never a good idea to keep feelings bottled up,” said Cassandra. “It makes you sick.”
“True.” They sat holding hands and smiling at each other until their breakfast arrived.
~*~
Later that afternoon Cassandra stood over Michael’s hospital bed, staring down in disgust at her ex. A myriad of machines whirred and beeped around him. One of his arms contained an IV. A pair of handcuffs circled his other wrist and attached to the bedrail. “Is he unconscious?”
“No, just heavily sedated,” said Gavin, “but according to Tony, he blurted out everything, hoping to cut a deal, before they wheeled him into surgery.”
Cassandra’s jaw dropped. “He wasn’t offered a deal, was he?”
“No way. Changwani is dead, her cohorts from the warehouse rounded up and locked up. Schuster had nothing of substance to offer the Feds. He was played by a terrorist who tricked him into marrying her, then manipulated him to aid her in her plan. The fool didn’t even know she wasn’t really pregnant.”
Cassandra rolled her eyes. “I can believe that. Once I started showing, he didn’t want to have anything to do with me.”
Gavin grunted.
“I still find it hard to believe he planned to murder so many innocent people.”
“He did it for the money,” said Gavin. “You were right about that. She promised him two million dollars. We found their passports and airline tickets in the trunk of her car.”
“Where were they headed?”
“Caracas. Of course, she never planned to take him with her.”
“There’s no fool like a greedy, blind fool.”
Gavin wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “Revenge was a powerful motive for him, as well.”
“How so?”
“He said most of the doctors he dealt with treated him like a second-class citizen. He decided to teach them a lesson.”
“He was always jealous of anyone richer or more successful, especially doctors. Is that why they chose to bomb a building full of medical offices?”
“He chose the target. Changwani didn’t care what they blew up as long as they took out hundreds of lives.”
Cassandra leaned her head on Gavin’s shoulder. “Even if he’d gotten into med school, he would have made a lousy doctor. He never cared about anyone but himself.”
As Gavin led her from the room, she said, “I only have one regret.”
“That you didn’t pull the trigger?”
“No, I’m quite comfortable with not having done that.”
“Then what?”
“I’ll never have the satisfaction of being able to tell him I was the person who brought him down.”
Gavin laughed. “Unfortunately, that’s the one downside of this job.”
A Note from the Author
Dear Reader,
I hope you enjoyed Moms in Black, a Mom Squad Caper. If so, please consider leaving a review at your favorite review site.
I love to hear from readers. You can contact me at lois@loiswinston.com, and if you’d like to stay informed about upcoming releases, events, and other news about me and my books, you can sign up for my author newsletter by clicking here.
Happy reading!
Lois Winston
About the Author
USA Today and Amazon bestselling and award-winning author Lois Winston writes mystery, romance, romantic suspense, chick lit, women’s fiction, children’s chapter books, and nonfiction under her own name and her Emma Carlyle pen name. Kirkus Reviews dubbed her critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” In addition, Lois is a former literary agent and an award-winning craft and needlework designer who often draws much of her source material for both her characters and plots from her experiences in the crafts industry.
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Books by Lois Winston
Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series
Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun
Death by Killer Mop Doll
Revenge of the Crafty Corpse
Decoupage Can Be Deadly
A Stitch to Die For
Scrapbook of Murder
Drop Dead Ornaments
Handmade Ho-Ho Homicide
A Sew Deadly Cruise
Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mini-Mysteries
Crewel Intentions
Mosaic Mayhem
Patchwork Peril
Crafty Crimes (all 3 novellas in one volume)
Empty Nest Mystery Series
Definitely Dead
Literally Dead
Romantic Suspense
Love, Lies and a Double Shot of Deception
Lost in Manhattan (writing as Emma Carlyle)
Someone to Watch Over Me (writing as Emma Carlyle)
Romance and Chick Lit
Talk Gertie to Me
Four Uncles and a Wedding (writing as Emma Carlyle)
Hooking Mr. Right (writing as Emma Carlyle)
Finding Hope (Writing as Emma Carlyle)
Novellas and Novelettes
Elementary, My Dear Gertie
Once Upon a Romance
Finding Mr. Right
Mom Squad
Children’s Chapter Book
The Magic Paintbrush
Nonfiction
Top Ten Reasons Your Novel is Rejected
House Unauthorized
Bake, Love, Write
We’d Rather Be Writing