by J. M. Madden
Amberly rolled out of bed and headed for the bathroom to get ready.
When she left the bathroom, Devlin was already up and dressed and packed. Amberly moved to her own bag, stuffing a few things in. “School probably starts about eight. You still want to go directly to the principal?”
“I think so,” Devlin said, swinging his bag over his shoulder. He moved to the window, peering out. “We’re ready.”
With a last glance at the room, Amberly followed him.
* * *
Robert Winchester seemed very young to be a principal, but who was she to judge?
Once the overly cautious receptionist let them through the locked main office door, Amberly let Devlin take the lead.
“My wife and I are scouting out schools,” Devlin told the woman, grinning at her, “and we’d like to talk to the principal about a sensitive matter.”
The receptionist/ office guard dog smiled at them and nodded. “If you’ll take a seat, I’ll see if he’s available.”
Within just a couple of minutes, they were hustled into a large office, and a tall young man with a frizzy shock of red hair was shaking their hands. “It’s a pleasure to meet you both. My name is Robert Winchester. This is my first year as principal, but I’m sure your issue won’t be anything we can’t deal with.”
They sat in the two chairs facing Mr. Winchester’s desk and shared a look. Devlin nodded for her to take the lead.
“Mr. Winchester, we’re not actually here for our child. We’re following up on a lead and we need your utmost discretion.” Pulling her CIA badge from her pocket, she held it out long enough for Winchester to get a good look at it. The man looked up at her blankly.
“I don’t understand… You don’t have a child?”
“No, sir. We’re here because… well, can you tell us if you recognize this child?”
Amberly held up the picture of the little girl. Mr. Winchester took it from her, and nodded. “Yes, I know this girl.”
Amberly could have sagged with relief. Finally, a break.
“But I’m not going to tell you any more until I speak with her mother.”
Suiting actions to words, he reached for the phone. Reaching over the desk, Amberly stilled his hand. “Mr. Winchester. Not to be too dramatic, but we’re tracking a homicidal maniac. The safety of your entire school population relies on you answering our questions. If you react in any way to our presence in the school, the person we are after will know we’ve been here.”
Winchester sank back in his chair, brows furrowed over his blue eyes and mouth pursed. “Do you think they’re in danger now?”
“I don’t know,” Amberly answered him honestly. “We have no idea who this girl is, just that her picture was on the desk of a convicted murderer. We don’t know if it’s his daughter or the daughter of someone he’s trying to leverage. What can you tell us about her?”
Mr. Winchester dry-washed his hands. “This is highly unorthodox, not to mention illegal.”
“I know, Mr. Winchester,” Amberly said quietly. “And I appreciate your wanting to protect the children. If there’s any other way we could have done this, we would have. But we have a picture of your school, and the picture of this girl from this man’s desk. Now, what’s her name?”
Winchester sank back into his chair. “Annabelle Jones. She started attending earlier this year and I’ve only met the mother, so far. She’s a nice, working woman by the name of Brea. They moved here from back east, somewhere. No reason why, that I can remember.”
“Are there any other family members?”
Winchester frowned. “She’s talked about her grandfather, but no names.”
Amberly looked at Devlin, wondering what else they should ask.
“I think you’ve answered everything we needed, Mr. Winchester,” Devlin said, smoothly taking up the slack in the conversation. “If you don’t mind, let’s keep this conversation between us. Right now, there’s no obvious danger. We’re just trying to suss out what they’re planning. When we have more information, we’ll let you know.”
Devlin reached out and shook the man’s hand. Amberly did the same, then walked through the office door he held open for her. They smiled at the receptionist but didn’t respond when she tried to start a conversation.
They walked out to their stolen vehicle, quiet. When they settled into the car and Devlin cranked the engine, she glanced across at him. “What do you think?”
“I think he answered what we asked, and we’re a little further ahead in knowledge, but not much else.”
Yeah, that’s kind of where she was, too. Digging in her bag, she pulled out the packet of pictures, flipping through them again. She set the one of the girl and the one of the school aside, and focused on the others. “This one keeps nagging at me,” she said as she pulled one out. It was a picture of handwriting.
“It looks like a shopping list, the way it’s laid out. Hold it out.”
Amberly held it out, away, near the window. Devlin squinted. “Does that say wire? And maybe that second one, 9mm. Or maybe I’m just seeing what’s on my brain. And does that say Zed at the top? Is that the end of a word?”
Amberly gasped. “No, it’s a name, and I know that name!”
Flinging the picture to the dash, she rooted for her file on Regent. Then she started flipping through papers until she stopped on one. It was a list of known associates. Zed Torrance was the fifth name down on the list. Triumphantly, she held the paper up for Devlin to see. He grinned, nodding.
“And now we just have to find Torrance. If he’s with Regent, he’ll be running errands for him. He’s a low-level crook, known more for burglaries and robberies than anything else. But he’s gotten arrested with Regent twice for disorderly conduct. I think they were protesting a natural gas pipeline or something, carrying AR 15s.”
“Ah, yes, let’s dance on the edge of death and hope no one shoots a pipeline to blow everyone up. Does Mr. Torrance have an address?”
“No, but his mother does,” Amberly grinned, flipping through the papers again. “Though she’s about a five and a half hour drive North from here.”
“No problem,” Devlin said, settling back into the chair. “That’s the direction we were headed, anyway.”
They fueled up at a truck stop and got on the interstate headed North. Amberly pored over the pictures, trying to figure out what they were.
“We don’t have a scanner,” Devlin said, “but why don’t you take a picture of them with my phone and do a reverse image search.”
“Oh, good idea,” she breathed, grabbing his phone from the center console. Without thinking, she typed in a code. The phone opened. “You still use the same code,” she laughed.
Devlin scowled and shrugged. “Yeah.”
It took a few different shots, but she eventually found the correct lighting to get Google to work its magic.
“One brick building corner has no results, but the different angle of the same corner came up as… a library in Alexandria, Virginia.”
“Outside of Washington, D.C.”
They shared a look. If the info that Necco had given her was correct, there would be an attack at the end of this week, on the anniversary of 9-11. It was the perfect time for Regent to make a splash. Everyone would already be in front of their TVs.
“Obviously, Zed is still working for him. If we find Zed, we probably find Regent.”
“More than likely,” Devlin agreed. “Or maybe Zed has been given the shopping list. That’s why his name is at the top.”
The car accelerated smoothly onto the interstate, and for the first time, Amberly appreciated that he was here. They maybe didn’t get along like they used to, but Devlin could be relied upon in a challenge. He didn’t even bat an eye at needing to travel another six hours, just took the wheel and got to it. Which allowed her to brood over the pictures some more.
Another building corner came up as a coffee shop in Newport News, Virginia. She looked the place up, but it didn’t
seem special for any reason.
Man, if only Necco had taken better pics.
“If I could call this in, I could have a dozen sets of eyes looking at it within minutes,” she sighed.
“And have the CIA breathing down your neck and trying to take Regent in. I plan on taking him out, like the CIA was supposed to do three years ago.”
Amberly shook her head. “We were going to interrogate him, collect his contacts. Then stash him away. But you tried to kill him.”
Devlin gave her a dark look, but didn’t contradict her.
Amberly waited for some response, but he clammed up. “Why won’t you talk to me?”
Devlin shook his head. “Because you won’t believe me if I tell you.”
She blinked, feeling a little defensive. “Try me.”
“Really?”
“Yes!”
He stared at her for a long moment, mouth pursed, then turned back to watch the highway. “The CIA, I assume SAC, blackmailed me into taking the fall for the Regent hit.”
Amberly’s mouth fell open, then she snapped it shut. Seriously?
“Why?” she asked simply.
Devlin sighed, propping one hand on top of the wheel as he drove. “I was supposed to ‘wound’ him, and they would fake his death. They were going to house him in some clandestine location and milk as much info from him as they could, then they were going to dispose of him. Permanently. Imagine my surprise, when, three years later, he pops up on the radar again.”
Devlin glanced at her, and he frowned, shaking his head. “I can see the disbelief in your eyes. Two men approached me with CIA identification, told me to take him out. If I did it with no fuss, they wouldn’t implicate you when I was charged.”
“Me,” she gasped, her mind reeling. “No, wait. They played me a recording of you making a deal…”
“Did they really?” Devlin said, fury suffusing his face. “They said they would only use that recording if I didn’t go along with what they wanted. Another lie.”
He smacked the steering wheel with his fist so hard she worried he’d break something. Then he gripped it in both hands and yelled.
“Pull over, before you wreck us.”
He jerked the wheel to the side, skimming behind another car close enough that the woman honked her horn as she drove away. The Charger skidded to a stop on the berm and Devlin turned off the ignition. “I went along with everything they said, and they still played you that audio. That wasn’t me, Amberly.” Turning his head, he stared her in the eyes. “You’ve known that something wasn’t right. Well, this is it. I was framed by your agency,” he poked a finger at her chest, “and they are still fucking with my life. And fucking with your life.”
Amberly stared at him, hearing the truth in his voice, but not wanting to believe it. “Why would they do that?” Her voice was faint, but he heard her.
“Because your agency is full of sanctimonious assholes who think they’re God, doing what they want by any means necessary. They wanted Regent to disappear, and they needed a fall guy.”
She sat back in her seat, trying to roll through the details as she remembered them. Had she been the leverage they’d needed to make him take the fall? Yes, she probably was. Holy hell.
“Who was it that came to you?”
Devlin shook his head. “Two CIA types. They showed me IDs, but I doubt they’re legit. Holmes and Stacey. They could have passed for twins.”
Something twanged in her brain. She knew who he was talking about. They did everything as a two-man team. The names were wrong, though. She would have to ask Frank… Or Brown. Maybe. Fuck! What was she supposed to do now? This indecision was going to drive her mad!
What Devlin said made a strange kind of sense. He’d never lied to her before. Maybe that was why he hadn’t defended himself to her. Fuck, if this was true, she’d been the worst wife ever.
“So, there was no payoff…”
* * *
Devlin looked at her incredulously. “Seriously? Have you listened to anything I said? I don’t kill for money. Period. Ever.”
He was all but yelling at the end, and she didn’t blame him. For three years he’d been labeled as treasonous, and no one, including Amberly herself, had stood up for him.
The isolation he must have gone through, and the loneliness. “Oh, Devlin.”
Incredibly, tears started in her eyes. She never cried for anyone, but the thought of Devlin being turned on by everyone he cared about… her own family, and the few members of his… God, his SEAL team, and all of his commanding officers.
“Hell, babe, I didn’t tell you this to make you cry,” he said, voice gruff as he cupped her neck and pulled her close to kiss the edge of her mouth. “I never planned on telling you any of it.”
“Devlin,” she breathed. “I really had no idea. I knew something didn’t seem right, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. It’s that you’re as much of a bleeding heart for this damn country as I am. I knew in my heart that you taking money for a kill sounded wrong, but I was presented with ‘indisputable’ truth in the recording.”
“Not proof. Their version of it.”
“Yes,” she agreed, letting her mouth brush along his own. “I’m sorry, Devlin, for not believing in you.”
He kissed her then, open-mouthed and hungry, and it was one of the sweetest, hungriest kisses she’d ever been given. Her heart thudded with everything he’d told her, and she felt like the lowest of the low not to have believed him. Devlin was a good, kind man at heart, and she’d completely shoved all that aside in her blind support of her corrupt agency.
The thought of all that they’d lost. Their relationship, their marriage, the house they’d bought together. All gone.
So that the agency could have a little more information.
Anger and heartache burned through her, and she knew she had no right to enjoy his touch, his kiss, as much as she was, but she couldn’t help herself. He’d been everything for her for so long, and then he was gone…
The squawk of a police siren jerked them apart and spun them around in their seats.
“Fuck!” Devlin snapped, his eyes going to the rear-view mirror. “I’m going to have to run. We have no documentation…”
Something seemed different about this stop. The cop wasn’t behind them, he was pulling up the side. “No, I don’t think we have to. Roll your window down.”
A Wyoming State Trooper pulled along beside them. “You folks all right?”
“Yes, sir,” Devlin said immediately, forcing a smile. “I apologize. We haven’t seen each other in three years and I had to kiss her.”
The trooper laughed and waved a hand. “Interstate isn’t the place to do that. Take the girl to dinner.”
“Yes, sir,” Devlin laughed, and watched as the trooper pulled away.
They shared an incredulous look before Devlin put the car into gear and they carefully pulled back into traffic.
“That was too close for comfort,” Amberly breathed. “We need to get going anyway. Next big box store you see, stop. I need a burner phone. Or three.”
10
Devlin was still shaking his head as he pulled into a local Wal-Mart for Amberly to run in and get a prepaid phone. She’d been dying to call in for the past two days, and he didn’t really blame her. If she thought there was someone at the agency or in her group she thought she could trust, he would have to trust her judgement.
It had been gratifying finally getting all that shit off his chest. But now it left him with a new problem. She’d been into the kiss, but only because he’d finally defended himself and given her a story she could believe.
Why hadn’t she believed in him without the story?
He understood she was the type that needed proof for everything, but sometimes there needed to be faith in a relationship.
When she returned from the store, she had a bag in hand. Quickly she powered up one of the phones and inserted the sim card, then charged the minutes.
“Y
ou know, as soon as you call in, they’re tracking you,” Devlin warned.
“I know. That’s why I’m calling Deputy Director Brown’s cell phone. It’ll take them a little longer to find me. And if he’s dirty, I want a record of his phone activity right now.”
Dev grinned at her. “Smart.”
Obviously, she had the number memorized, because she punched it in like she’d done it many times before. It rang twice before it was picked up. She punched the button for the speakerphone.
“Brown,” a man snapped on the other end.
“It’s Temple.”
She paused there to get his reaction.
“Where the fuck have you been?” The man exploded, rather dramatically, Dev thought. “This was supposed to be an easy CI meet and I’m somehow cleaning up bodies.”
“Yeah,” Amberly drawled. “Bodies with CIA identification. Why were they trying to take me out, Brown?”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Are you serious? They weren’t CIA. One I ran came back to Georgia Department of Corrections, and the other I’m still looking for. These weren’t our guys. Who is the man you’re with? I know he’s not your CI. We found him dead in the restaurant.”
Amberly rolled her eyes toward him, mouth working. “He’s a witness. How do I know you’re telling me the truth, Brown? I’ve got people after me.”
He paused again, and sighed, which surprised her. It seemed like Brown’s mouth was always running and he never showed weakness. “I don’t know, honestly, so I’m going to tell you to keep going with what you’re doing. I assume you’re on Tango 11’s trail.”
“Yes.”
“Who did you tell you were going to Chicago?”
“Only the people in my group.”
“Okay. I’ll be starting my own investigation. If anything timely happens, I need to be apprised.”
“Agreed.”
And she hung up.
“That was interesting,” he said, finally.
“Very,” she murmured, looking out over the parking lot. “Let’s get a sandwich and a drink at the drive-thru, and we’ll get back on the road.”