by Lauren Carr
Chuckling at such a bizarre dream, Mac pulled back the curtain to peer out at the garden. “Mayor of Spencer.”
“Is that legal?”
“It was in my dream.” Sensing some commotion toward the entrance of the estate, Mac leaned over to get a closer look. He spied a mob of paparazzi packed in between the twin stone pillars marking the entrance to the driveway. Their cameras were firing on all cylinders in the direction of the flower bed in the center of the circle.
What are they doing? What are they taking pictures of?
“How would he participate in a debate?” Jessica asked.
“I have no idea.” After climbing up on his knees and pressing his face to the window, Mac found the subject of the photographers’ excitement.
A yard sign was stuck in the edge of the circular flower bed so that it could be clearly read out on the street. The sign had Gnarly’s face and the words “He’s not snarly! Vote for Gnarly!” on it.
Lying in a sphinxlike pose under the sign, Gnarly regarded the mob with curiosity, his ears standing tall and proud while the paparazzi snapped away.
“Dad, are you there?”
“It wasn’t a dream?” Mac said. “He’s really running for mayor?”
“He’s not just running,” Archie said. “Polls have Gnarly at thirty-seven percent. Clark and Braxton are tied at twenty percent each. Gnarly is winning.”
“Dad, are you still there?”
Mac handed the phone back to Archie.
“I think he got out of bed too soon,” Archie told Jessica.
“That’s for sure.” Mac stumbled back to the bed and pulled the covers up over his head. “Wake me up when the election is over.”
Chapter Four
Schaarbeek Neighborhood of Brussels, Belgium
Murphy Thornton yearned for daylight.
It was not something that he had thought about missing until after several days, or, rather, nights, of only moving about and working in the dark—not unlike a vampire.
Vampire.
In the back of the van making its way through one of the more depressed neighborhoods in Brussels, he smiled at the thought. During this mission, he had taken on the role of a vampire—moving about only at night with those who thrived on sucking the life out of those who lived in the daylight.
“What’re you grinning about, Thornton?” For a few seconds, Donald Wiley’s bald head shone in the light of a streetlight that the van was passing. Even the brute of a man’s bald head seemed to have muscles.
Not wanting to come across as philosophical, Murphy leaned back against the cold wall of the van’s interior and shrugged his shoulder. “A few hours from now, the sun will be up, and it will be a whole new day.”
“Miss the sun, Thornton?” Seth Monroe asked from where he was sitting behind the van’s driver. When Murphy didn’t answer, he chuckled.
Considering that the two marine majors were at least ten years older than the young navy lieutenant and that they possessed more than twice the experience that he did, Murphy should have guessed that they would know what he was missing. The only thing he missed more was his wife. It was hard being away from Jessica and harder to not be able to communicate with her in any way, shape, or form—not even through a text from an untraceable cell phone, which could’ve made her a possible target for one of his enemies.
“ETA, five minutes,” Monroe said. “Suit up.”
Murphy pulled the ball cap down tight to cover his auburn hair. For this mission, he had let it grow out from his military cut, and it had taken on a slight natural wave. He had ceased shaving in order to grow an unkempt beard and a moustache. He’d also covered up his striking blue eyes with dark-brown contact lenses that had taken him days to get accustomed to.
He patted his outer thighs to ensure that he had a semiautomatic on each hip and then checked that he had a thirty-two-caliber semiautomatic in an ankle holster on one of his ankles. He was wearing a fighting knife on his other leg. His last weapon was a hand grenade that he had tucked into the pocket of his jacket. He had other goodies in his other pockets.
Across from him, Wiley was pulling a skullcap down over his bald head. He was clean-shaven from the top of his head down to around his chin. He zipped his army fatigue jacket all the way up to his chin. He usually had a hard-core demeanor, but in a matter of seconds, Murphy saw it become a shade harder—so hard that a shudder went down his spine when he looked at him.
He was not a man Murphy would’ve wanted to cross.
“What’s the code word?” Monroe asked the team, which included a driver, who was in the front seat of the van.
“Snow,” they said in unison.
The van made such a sharp left turn into an alley that Murphy almost lost his balance. Then it came to a halt. In French, the driver announced that they had arrived.
Monroe checked the time on his cell phone. “We have fewer than fifteen minutes. If we aren’t out of here by the time the Syrians arrive, we’re going to have a war on our hands. Is that clear?”
“Crystal.” Murphy rose to his feet, picked up a duffel bag, and slung it onto his shoulder. “We go in, grab our target, and leave before the real Syrians arrive. No sweat.”
In French, Monroe went over the instructions with the van’s driver while Murphy and Wiley climbed out of the back. As soon as Murphy’s feet hit the ground of the filthy alley, he was aware of eyes watching them from the back door of the dilapidated row house next to them. He didn’t miss the machine gun the doorman was clutching with both of his hands.
Opening his army jacket, Donald Wiley displayed his own automatic weapon. Murphy held the back door of the van open so that Monroe could jump out of it. With Donald taking the lead, the three men stepped up to the door.
In French, Wiley announced that they were the team from Syria that had been sent to deliver the materials needed for their latest batch of explosives. “We’re to meet with Salah al-Hazmi,” Monroe said in a firm tone. “We notified him that we were coming early. Interpol is on our ass. Need to get out of country.”
The guard looked over all three of them before disappearing from the door. After a loud discussion in Farsi, the guard returned to lead them into a squalid kitchen. Food in takeout containers littered the table and counters. The guard closed the door behind them while a slender man with dark hair and a long, ragged beard stepped into the kitchen. He was wearing a gun on his hip. With a jerk of his head, he directed them into the other room.
With Wiley leading the way and Murphy taking up the rear, they filed into what had been a dining room in a previous life. It was then being used as a bomb factory.
Upon seeing them enter, a rail-thin man with wild hair and a long, scruffy beard with bits of forgotten food in it stood up. “Rafael Cannon?”
Monroe stepped forward to offer his hand. “Al-Hazmi. Good to finally meet you.” He took in the assortment of explosives that they were putting together. “I see that you have been very busy.”
Salah al-Hazmi smiled with pride. “We do have a deadline. We refuse to let anything keep us from completing our mission.” His eyes flickered from Monroe to Murphy, who had stepped up to the table for a closer look.
“Even a spy.” Monroe sidestepped to block Salah’s view of Murphy, who had slipped a tiny device under the tabletop.
“Not even a spy,” Salah said with a cold tone.
“Where is he?”
“We have him down in the cellar with the rest of the rats.”
“Bring him to us,” Monroe said.
“But—”
“We are taking him back with us,” Monroe said. “The council intends to make an example of him.”
“But we captured him,” Salah said with a pout.
“And in the last ten days, have you extracted any information from him?” Monroe asked.
Salah looked arou
nd the room at his half dozen men.
During the long silence, Murphy was aware of the ticking of the clock. Each tick signaled the expected arrival of this terrorist group’s real leaders. Pretending to admire a shrine that had been set up on a table under a window, he rubbed his fingers along the edge of the tabletop, leaving yet another surprise gift for the murderous group.
“According to our information, this spy has been in your midst for the last nine months,” Monroe said with displeasure. “And you didn’t even suspect him.” He grabbed Salah by the throat. “You allowed him to work his way up to your top ranks. There’s no telling how much information he’s passed on to the infidels.”
“But we did capture him.” With a flicker of his eyes, he ordered two of his men to fetch their prisoner. Like well-trained dogs, they ran into the kitchen. Murphy heard them scurry down a flight of stairs to the basement.
“Only after we told you to.” Monroe shoved Salah so hard that he fell back onto the table, scattering some of their bomb-making materials. “You’re lucky we’re not going to take you back to our home base to have you executed alongside him.”
Murphy saw fear come to Salah’s eyes before the two men dragged a beaten, bloody young man into the room and dropped him at Monroe’s feet. The young Iraqi’s clothes were nothing more than bloody rags. One of his eyes was swollen shut. Murphy could see that his nose was broken. His bloody feet were so raw that he couldn’t walk.
Fury made Murphy reach for one of the weapons on his hip. He saw Wiley do the same.
“Very good,” Monroe said when he found his voice. He nodded his head in Murphy’s direction. “Give them the supplies they ordered.”
Murphy placed the duffel bag on the table and unzipped it. Like children getting a present, Salah’s men searched through the contents to find the materials for the sophisticated explosives that would be detonated remotely using a public Wi-Fi signal.
With a wave of his hand, Monroe ordered Murphy and Wiley to pick up the bloody, broken man and carry him off to the van.
“Murph—” he said, regaining consciousness and noticing Murphy, who was laying him down in the back of the van.
“Hey, Tawkeel.” Murphy patted his shoulder. “No man left behind.”
“We’ve got company,” Wiley said.
A pair of headlights bathed their van in light as an SUV pulled up behind them.
“Oh, oh,” Wiley said. “I think those are the Syrians…the real ones.”
All of the men drew their weapons.
“Let’s get out of here!” Monroe said to the driver, who hit the gas.
Two men piled out of the approaching vehicle and fired at them with machine guns. They hit the floor in the back of the van while it raced down the alley in an effort to escape the hailstorm of bullets.
“Time for the big finish, Murphy!” Wiley yelled.
Grasping the remote in his pocket, Murphy sat up from where he had thrown himself over Tawkeel’s broken body. “We need to get farther away, or we’ll get caught in the blast.”
Firing his automatic weapon out of the shattered rear window, Monroe said, “If you don’t detonate it now, we’re gonna be dead anyway!”
Pointing the remote at the Syrian terrorists, Murphy pressed the button, detonating the tiny explosives that he had left all over the room in their bomb factory and the explosives that they had sewn into the lining and secret pockets of the duffle bag that Murphy had generously given to them.
With a single press of the button, the terrorist hideout and group and the leaders who had traveled from Syria to oversee their deadly operation went up in an explosion that was felt throughout the neighborhood.
The force of the blast hit the rear of the van, causing it to buck. The men in the back fell backward.
Catching his breath, Murphy rose up onto his elbows and saw the house they had just left and the Syrians’ SUV engulfed in flames. Next to him, his friend Tawkeel lay unconscious. “It’s over, my friend. Time to go home.”
Chapter Five
Archie was thankful that Mac was not like a demanding child when he was sick. Instead, he sacked in as best he could after coughing all night, which had left him exhausted. After showering and dressing, she went downstairs to the kitchen to see if she could find some breakfast that would interest him only to discover Dallas’ Belgian shepherd curled up with Gnarly on the love seat, a piece of furniture that he had declared was his.
“Storm, what are you doing here?” Archie asked as if the dog could answer.
“Snuggling with Gnarly,” Dallas replied from where she had made herself at home at the dining room table. She had spread out the various reports from the case file that Archie had shown to her the day before. With a mug of coffee and a slice of toast on a saucer next to her hand, she was working away on her laptop.
At the top of the steps leading down into the dining room, Archie planted her hands on her hips. “How did you get in here?”
“I used your key,” Dallas said over the top of her coffee mug before taking a sip.
“My key! Where did you get it? Did David give it to you?”
“David would never do that,” Dallas said. “I think he’s a little afraid of you. He says you’re a crack shot. So am I. My pappy taught me to shoot when I was knee-high on a coyote. We should go to the shootin’ range sometime. How ’bout next week?”
Archie bit off her words. “Where did you get our key?”
“I got it out of that phony rock that you have planted in the garden next to the sidewalk.”
Archie held out her hand in a silent order. After Dallas dropped the key into her palm, Archie snapped her hand shut. “And Gnarly didn’t bark, because he knows you,” she said while tucking the key into her pocket.
“He really likes Storm.”
Archie turned around in time to see Gnarly and Storm licking each other’s snouts.
“That means you have to like me,” Dallas said. “We’re kind of related.”
Wordlessly, Archie glared at her from across the table.
Showing no sign that she was intimidated, Dallas held up her mug for Archie to see and shot her a toothy grin. “The coffee is fresh, my friend.”
“I’m not your friend.” Archie stormed through the swinging door leading into the kitchen.
“Oh, but you will be,” Dallas said while turning back to her laptop. She raised her voice a notch to call to her in the kitchen. “Fiona Davis is dead.”
The swinging door swung back open. Archie hurried back out. “Dead?”
“Buzzard bait.”
Archie paused. “Who’s—”
“The witness who had dinner with Sandy Burr when he ate his last meal,” Dallas said. “She committed suicide six weeks later, which I find interestin’ ’cause Burr’s murder was meant to look like a suicide. Maybe Nancy’s hired gun learned from his mistake, and Fiona didn’t really kill herself.”
Warming her hands on the hot coffee mug, Archie lowered herself into a seat across from Dallas. “Did she leave a note?”
Dallas slid a report across the table to her. “I guess Robin Spencer wondered the same thing. There was a copy of the police report in that folder you gave me. Fiona did leave a note sayin’ that she couldn’t stand the grief any longer. Her momma had died the month before—after Burr’s murder, I might add.”
Archie read through the police report. “She took a whole bottle of migraine medication. Then she got sick, threw up, passed out, and drowned in the toilet.”
“One of her friends found her in the bathroom with her head in the toilet.” Dallas shook her head. “That’s not how I want to be found when I trade in my guitar for a harp.”
Archie flipped through the pages to find the medical examiner’s report. “Cause of death is drowning.” She slid the report back across the table to Dallas. “Bull! She was murdered.” Sh
e went into the kitchen.
“Then I was right. It wasn’t suicide.” Dallas followed Archie into the kitchen, where she was taking yogurt out of the fridge. “The police called it a suicide because Fiona’s friends and family told ’em that she was distraught ’bout her momma passin’.”
“Maybe she was depressed.” Archie ripped the lid off of the yogurt. “But there’s no way she drowned in a toilet without help.”
“Come on,” Dallas said. “I’ve heard of people gettin’ drunk and passin’ out after tossin’ their cookies and then drownin’ in a toilet. It ain’t pretty—”
“Name one person who actually drowned in a toilet.”
When Dallas didn’t have an answer, Archie pushed past her and led the way to the half bath located down the hallway from the kitchen. Opening the door, she gestured for Dallas to go inside. “Get down on your knees, and pretend to throw up in the toilet.”
Looking her up and down, Dallas said, “You do it.”
“I already know why it’s impossible. You’ll understand what I’m talking about if you see it yourself.”
Unsure, Dallas bundled her long hair into one of her hands to hold it back and, feeling silly, lifted the toilet seat and knelt down in front of it.
“Now,” Archie said. “When you throw up, you get up onto your knees and put your head over the toilet, right?”
“You really do hate me, don’t you?”
“I’m showing you how Fiona couldn’t have accidentally drowned in the toilet. Put your head down into the toilet. You don’t have to put your head in the water.”
Uncertain, Dallas rose up onto her knees, clutched the sides of the toilet, and lowered her head down toward the water.
“Good,” Archie said. “Now, what’ll happen when you pass out?”
“I’ll lose my grip on the toilet.” Dallas dropped her hands down to the floor. Pushing up, she tried to drop her head into the toilet as best she could without actually touching the water. Allowing her body to go limp as if she were unconscious, she slid away from the toilet and slumped down onto the floor.