Deadly Holidays

by Lisa Phillips

  Her dad had always told her to “buck up.” Like pretending you were fine would fix what was wrong. But she knew what he meant. Never let them see you break. Well, it was too late for that.

  She wanted to disappear from her life. Kind of the way Steve had done, but without the “wanted fugitive” part. Sooner or later the FBI and the Marshals hunting him would realize he’d never left DC, despite the trail he’d led them on away from here.

  Rachel sipped her coffee and prayed. Couldn’t hurt, right? Alexis, and now Bradley as well, always said it was the best thing to do. She wasn’t going to tell them it did help her when her head got overwhelmed. Even if it was just ordering her thoughts as though she were communicating with someone else. Maybe God was real, and maybe He listened.

  Her computer chimed. Rachel shook her mouse to see what was in the email from Ellayna. Tension knotted her muscles at the sight of new messages. But there was nothing from that address, the unknown@unknown.com she knew to be communication from the blackmailer.

  She read through the email from Mrs. Anderson. The vice president’s wife was surprised Rachel hadn’t jumped on the opportunity they’d offered her to help victimized women. Considering what she’d been through, why wouldn’t she? Rachel frowned. Was she supposed to always act and react the way other people expected her to? Because that was impossible.

  The email from Ellayna was next.

  Senator Timmons wants to talk to you when you have a minute.

  The rest could wait. She knew what the Senator wanted, and he would accept nothing less than her immediate attention regarding his proposed bill. Rachel sucked down the rest of her coffee and decided this would be a whole lot better in person. Email just lacked the non-verbal communication that confirmed two people conveyed themselves clearly.

  Plus, she was less likely to fall asleep at her desk if she was moving around.

  She grabbed her suit jacket, slipped it back on, and pocketed her ID card. She swept past Ellayna and said, “I’m headed upstairs to Timmons’s office.”

  “I’ll hold down the fort.”

  Rachel nodded and hit the hallway. Before she was a senator, she’d never have imagined it involved this much walking. The talking—schmoozing—and the rest of it, yes. Walking? Not so much. She barely needed to work out, she got so many steps every day.

  One floor up, she turned the corner for Senator Timmons’s office and headed inside. The receptionist’s desk, Ellayna’s spot in Rachel’s office, had a note on the top on a folded piece of paper that said, “Out to lunch. Back at 2pm.”

  Rachel frowned. Why would Timmons want to talk to her so much and then go to lunch? Were none of his staff here? She couldn’t see anyone—

  Out the corner of her eye, a bigger body rushed at her, nothing but a blur of movement.

  She gasped, and he slammed her into the desktop. Office supplies went flying. The man tried to grab for her throat. Her arms came up on a reflex and blocked it. She didn’t slam her head into his. That would hurt. She twisted and elbowed him in the face instead. Took a second to really look at him.

  It was the same man from the alley. The man she got a feeling Steve might’ve known.

  His fingers closed around her neck.

  Rachel felt around on the desk with her hands. There had to be something she could use to…a letter opener.

  Closing off all thought and any doubt over what she was about to do, Rachel swung it toward his body and slammed it into his ribs.

  Chapter 7

  Steve had called ahead. So when he ascended the stairs of the apartment building, Nicola already had the door open, watching for him. Her sculpted eyebrows lifted when she saw him.

  Steve shook his head, passed her into the apartment and turned to face her. She closed the door and cocked a slender hip. “How did you know I wouldn’t call the cops and have them waiting here for you this time?”

  “I didn’t.” Because he trusted her? Maybe. Truth was, he didn’t have many options left. And the ones he did have were quickly being pared down.

  Nicola said, “Fine.” She evidently wasn’t going to waste time trying to convince him that he could trust her.

  As a whole package she had drawn his attention three years ago when they’d first met. She played on her looks to get results in her work, work which garnered her the accolades hanging on her wall, alongside the picture of her with the Obamas, the one of her and the Canadian prime minister, and the one with the Dalai Lama.

  She wore leggings he figured cost a couple of hundred dollars, along with an oversized sweater that hung loose on her slender frame. Aside from her looks and her work, there wasn’t much to her. Something he’d found out after they had dated for a few months. She claimed their lack of things to talk about was due to being totally focused on her career.

  Steve wasn’t sure. But in a world of people who thought he was armed and dangerous, Nicola had seen a different side of him. He’d been a puzzle to her. She just hadn’t wanted to lose that focus long enough to figure out the answers.

  She trailed into the kitchen to where the coffee pot was trickling. “I haven’t found anything on the men you served with under General Thomas, if that’s what you’re here about.”

  He shook his head and settled across the breakfast bar on a stool. The general had been the head of a task force Steve had worked with as part of his CIA career. Top Secret stuff, and nothing he was exactly proud of. The pinnacle of a career that didn’t settle right with him.

  Since starting Double Down, he’d actually been proud of the work he did. Now the company was in tatters and he was on the run. A fugitive.

  The general had also been part of the Venezuela mission that had affected the VP enough to start this whole thing. Early in his career, he’d been on the team. Late in his career, when he’d aged into a grizzled old man with no patience for “young’uns,” as he called the men he trained, Steve had crossed paths with him.

  He’d learned a lot during that time and had the scars to prove it. What he didn’t have was a way to speak to the man now. General Eric Thomas had been killed when a think tank was destroyed by a rogue FBI agent who had stolen a sonic weapon. Zimmerman had been blackmailed into doing it.

  Now he was dead, and Steve had lost his chance to ask either of those men any questions, which had led him on a search to find the men he’d served with. Enter, Nicola. So far they had zip, except for the man Steve had seen try to kill Rachel. The blackmailer had gotten to them, the way he’d gotten to Steve.

  She motioned to the coffee pot.

  He shook his head. “Things have been escalated.”

  “They weren’t bad enough already?”

  Steve made a face. “I got an email. A mission.”

  She waited.

  “You know the US/France summit on Monday?”

  Nicola nodded. “I’m supposed to be there, reporting on it. Should be interesting.”

  His lips twitched. “I’m sure it will be, considering I’m supposed to kill the president of the United States.”

  She choked on the sip of coffee, lowered the cup and coughed. “You’re…”

  “He set me up with a gun.” He stared at her. “I’m supposed to assassinate the president.”

  A fact he hadn’t shared with Rachel. Yes, it felt strange telling it to Nicola now instead, but he was counting on her being more interested in work than her feelings. She wasn’t going to get wrapped up in the emotion of him being trapped and hunted down by law enforcement. What he was hoping was that she would go public with everything he told her. That she would do what she did best—her job.

  Rachel would give his heart what it needed. She would cry for him, support him and scream to everyone—if necessary—that he was innocent. Steve needed her in his corner because he loved her, and he wanted her behind him.

  While he contemplated the fact that, yes, he did love Rachel, Nicola paced the kitchen. She blew out a breath. Started to say something. Shook her head and took up pacing again.
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br />   “I realize I’ve put you in danger just coming here…”

  She waved away his concern. “I’m glad you did. This is big. Huge.”

  After all, he surmised, it was all about the story. He said, “I know who’s behind it all.”

  “The blackmailer?”

  He nodded. “I know who it is.”

  “Someone who wants the vice president to be sworn in as our commander in chief?”

  Steve nodded again.

  “Hmm.”

  He didn’t know what that meant, but knew he’d given her a lot to think about. And she needed time to do just that. Would he have rather gone to Rachel? Sure. But what he needed was Nicola’s ability to uncover answers—her authority to go public with the truth, married with her drive to be first but also one hundred percent accurate.

  Whichever way this all shook out—and whether he was dead or in jail at the end of it, someone needed to know the truth.

  Nicola had a voice.

  “We could warn him, maybe,” she said, like she was processing it all. “Or place an anonymous tip.” She glanced at him. “You could refuse, but that will create a fallout you’re not going to want.”

  He nodded. He’d kept her apprised of the blackmailer’s activities thus far, at least what they could prove emphatically. She knew what happened to those who refused—like Zimmerman, whose family had been kidnapped and killed.

  “You could miss.”

  He tipped his head to one side. “The fallout might still be the same, but I can probably set up contingencies for when that happens. Circumvent whatever he tries.”

  She said, “That’s probably your best option.”

  “It isn’t a good one, though. The people who have been coerced into taking shots at me and my friends are men I trained with.” He’d only seen one face, but it made sense. “They’ve been doing exactly what you’ve suggested I do for the past couple of days. Not missing me, per se, but they’ve been warning me to be on my guard. If the blackmailer has them pinned down, it won’t last much longer. They’ll have to do some damage soon enough, or they’ll suffer the same fallout.”

  “And we haven’t been able to locate them.” She frowned. “Though I didn’t have a whole lot of time to look, and I had to keep it quiet.”

  Steve said, “The blackmailer probably has them moving around under the radar.”

  Nicola lifted a hand and scratched at her scalp, then ran her fingers through her hair. A light flickered. She dropped her hand back by her side.

  The light settled high on her chest.

  A single red dot over her heart.

  “Gun!”

  She’d been in war zones enough that the reaction was almost immediate. Nicola dropped to the ground at almost the same instant the glass of her kitchen window exploded.

  He saw the shot hit her chest as she fell.

  **

  Rachel had been escorted by Secret Service to an out of the way room she hadn’t even known existed. It looked like a police interrogation room, and she’d sat there for two hours before anyone showed up to speak to her. The one time she’d tried the door handle, she realized they’d locked her in.

  The agent across the table was a man she’d seen before, but had never spoken to. Was he going to accuse her of being unhinged, like the other cops she’d given a statement to?

  He settled in the chair. Didn’t offer her a drink. Hadn’t brought any papers with him. “I’m Agent Meeks.”

  “I’d like to say it’s nice to meet you but…” She spread her fingers, palms up, on the table. There was blood on her hands. “I just killed a man in Senator Timms’s office.”

  His face didn’t change. No reaction at all to what she’d just said.

  What he did was ask her about everything that led to her being in that office. She went all the way back to her meeting with the vice president yesterday morning and the attack afterwards—minus Steve’s involvement.

  Or the fact she’d met up with him later.

  Her entire body felt like lead. It made her want to curl up on the floor and go to sleep. She was seriously dragging and had to rub the grit out of her eyes—without shifting her contacts out of place. Not an easy task when you were as tired as she was.

  “I see.”

  “Yeah.” She lost her Washington DC Senator thing for a moment. “You could say I’ve had a rough week.” She didn’t wait for him to ask his next question. “Do you have any idea who he was?”

  “I haven’t heard back on his identity yet.”

  Was that even the truth?

  He said, “But he appears to have been military. Which begs the question—how did you managed to overpower him so quickly?”

  She blew out a breath. “Instinct? My brother trained me in all kinds of hand-to-hand, and he signed me up for a gym years ago. Not one of those fitness places with treadmills and yoga classes. It’s a dojo. I’ve been taking Krav Maga.”

  His gray eyebrows rose.

  Rachel shrugged. “He wanted me to know how to protect myself.”

  Which probably cut Bradley up even more, considering it hadn’t worked.

  “The man was a professional who weighed nearly a hundred pounds more than you.”

  She said, “It isn’t about brute force. I acted on instinct, grabbed the first thing my fingers found and used it against him. The alternative was to allow him to choke me to death before anyone found me.”

  He nodded slowly. “I see.”

  The door flung open and the vice president rushed in. Anderson looked enraged. “What is this, an interrogation?”

  The agent sputtered.

  “This woman was nearly killed,” his voice rose. His face flushed and he moved to her, holding his hand out. “Let’s get you some tea and somewhere comfortable to sit.”

  Her whole insides shrank, then her stomach flipped over. She was pretty sure she didn’t manage to hold in all of her reaction. Rachel pushed the chair back and stood. She didn’t take his hand. She walked past the vice president without giving the agent any more attention. He didn’t need to see what was probably on her face.

  And it wasn’t just the residual terror of nearly being strangled.

  The vice president’s wife waited in the hall. She gasped when she saw Rachel. “Your throat!” She even reached out.

  Rachel touched her own neck, not realizing until now how much it hurt. Her voice had sounded thick and scratchy. She turned away from Mrs. Anderson’s grasp. They were going to have to accept her detachment.

  Her strides were fast. She was aware of their eyes on her, plus those of a number of Secret Service agents. Security for the building. Office staff poking heads out of their rooms.

  She wanted to run.

  Kick off her pumps and tear out the front door of this building. Run to the Metro station around the corner and get lost somewhere, wander around. Find an airport. Fly to Tahiti.

  Anywhere had to be better than here.

  Ellayna rushed at her. “I’m so sorry.” The agents around them closed in. “They think I set you up. That I knew what was going to happen when I sent you that email. I didn’t know Senator Timmons was at lunch! How could I have known?”

  Rachel didn’t know what to say. The VP stepped in beside her. “Senator Harris has been through enough. Let’s give her have some space, all right?”

  Rachel turned to him. Why was he acting so deferential? It made no sense. This man was the blackmailer. He’d tormented and victimized her. Taken away all the power she’d had—power she was getting back, slowly but surely—and exposed her for all the world to see. She wanted to jump on him and scratch his eyes out until everyone saw him for the disgusting abomination that he really was.

  He turned to the Secret Service. “I’ll have my driver take her back to her house. You can contact her later if you require anything else.”

  He was going to kidnap her again?

  One of Rachel’s staffers shoved her purse and coat into her hands. She slipped it on before anyone
could offer to assist, and she’d have slapped away the hands that did try to help her.

  She was going to leave. But she first turned to the vice president and said, “I can make my own way home. But thank you for your offer.”

  “Nonsense.” He fell into step with her. “I won’t relax until I know you’re home safe.”

  That was assuming, of course, that she was going to go home.

  The VP walked with her to the exit doors and escorted her outside. His wife’s shoes clipped on the floor behind them.

  It didn’t seem right for the sun to be that bright. She slid on her sunglasses and then dug out her gloves. The bite in the air made her breaths puff out in clouds in front of her. That would betray the fact she was almost panting.

  Don’t panic.

  She needed refuge. A place to regroup, to get help.

  “Right here.” He waved her to a town car at the curb. A Secret Service agent stood beside it, another one in the driver’s seat. A car was parked in front of it and another behind. Three-car convoy.

  She wanted to run off down the street, but she would get where she needed to go faster in a car. One full of Secret Service agents.

  She was supposed to trust them, right?

  Rachel climbed in after Mrs. Anderson. As she settled in, she dug in her purse for her phone and found the voice recorder app. When the vice president had shut the door, and the three of them were closed in the back of the limo, she said, “I know you sent that man to kill me.”

  The car set off, and she shifted in the seat with the motion. Leather creaked. The vice president’s wife gasped. “You think William did what?”

  Rachel ignored the outburst and kept all her attention on him.

  His face softened. “You’ve had a hard couple of days, and things in your life aren’t optimal. I can understand how you might be mistaken, due to an extreme situation and stress.”

  “So you’re going to dismiss my accusation and tell everyone I’m unhinged? After what you did to me?”