“What happened?” Laurel asked.
“We were placed together. When Jake was old enough, he got us out of there and took care of both of us until I was old enough to be on my own.”
Shelley handed the pictures to Jake, who ignored them. Instead, he knelt in front of his sister and took her hands in his. “So she has a couple of pictures. She could have gotten them anywhere. We don’t know—”
“It could be.” Laurel heard the tentative hope in Shelley’s voice. “It could be.”
“Asking us to believe that we shared a mother is a lot,” Jake said, turning to Laurel, eyes hard as his voice.
“What about the pictures and clippings?” Shelley asked.
“They don’t prove anything” He started to crush them.
“No!” Shelley grabbed them back. “They don’t belong to us. They belong to Laurel.”
“Why did you come here? Dredge all this up?” Jake demanded of Laurel. “We didn’t need the woman who called herself our mother then. We don’t need any reminders of her now.” Unspoken was the claim that they didn’t need Laurel either.
Laurel didn’t shrink from the words. She held her ground, as she’d been taught in the Army. “I don’t blame you for not believing me. I should have said something sooner. It’s just...”
“Just what?” Shelley prompted softly.
“I wanted to get to know my brother and sister.” A hitch in her voice betrayed just how much she wanted that.
Up until then, Jake had appeared unmoved by her story. With his arms folded across his chest, he looked every inch the ex-Delta she knew him to be. Now his expression softened. “I get that you want a family. I won’t fault you for that.”
Though Shelley barely topped five feet, she was a dynamo of action. Now she paced back and forth. “It took courage for Laurel to come here. I say we give her the benefit of a doubt.”
Laurel flashed Shelley a grateful smile. “Thank you. The last thing I wanted was to hurt you.” She divided a look between Jake and Shelley. “Either of you. But I wanted to meet you.” She shook her head at her phrasing. “I had to meet you.”
“Why?” The single word, baldly said, came from Jake.
“I went through my life thinking there was only her, a woman who made it plain she didn’t want me. I wanted...” She cleared her throat, shook her head once more. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I think it does. You were looking for family.” Shelley reached for Jake’s hand.
The small gesture arrowed straight to Laurel’s heart. An uncharacteristic wistfulness overtook her before she shook it off.
She looked helplessly at the brother and sister she hoped to call her own. Jake was right—she didn’t have any real proof, only a gut-deep feeling that she was right about her relationship with him and Shelley. So maybe that feeling was borne only out of longing; that didn’t mean she was wrong.
She needed proof. They all did.
It was clear Jake was withholding judgment, equally clear that Shelley wanted to believe her. Laurel drew in a breath as resolve stiffened her shoulders. “However you feel about me, it doesn’t change the fact that the Collective is still active, still murdering people.”
“And you’re on its hit list.” Shelley came to a halt. “Laurel gave us valuable intel.” She sent Jake a reproving look. “Whatever brought her here, I’m grateful. We might have a sister.”
Laurel said a silent prayer about what she should do next. The Lord had never let her down. Sometimes, though, He allowed her to work things out on her own. She figured this was one of those times.
Revealing who she was to Shelley and Jake had been harder—infinitely harder—than she’d thought possible.
Well, what had she expected? A woman they’d met only a day before announces to them that she could be their half-sister. Anyone would have been skeptical, especially Jake and Shelley, who had no reason to believe that the mother who had abandoned them had another child.
“We need to do DNA tests. But...” Laurel smiled tremulously. “The pieces fit.” She turned to Mace, who had a way of studying her as though waiting for an opportunity to peel back another layer. “What do you think?”
“This is what you’ve been hiding.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
“Just okay?”
“Yeah.”
Laurel realized she had blindsided not only Shelley and Jake, but Mace as well. It couldn’t be helped, but she heard the censure in his voice that she hadn’t been honest with any of them.
She opened her backpack and booted up the computer, pulling up the file she’d shown Mace less than an hour earlier. After giving everyone a chance to skim it, she said, “You see it, don’t you? The Collective’s growing increasingly violent and is now selling weapons to our enemies.”
Jake’s expression grew grimmer by the moment, as did Mace’s.
“One of the locals who volunteered in our unit when I was stationed in Afghanistan described what war had done to his country as scorched earth, leaving nothing in its wake,” Mace said. “That’s what the Collective does. It’s a cancer. After the attacks on Laurel, it’s clear that they won’t stop until she’s dead. If we want to keep her alive, we have to put an end to it. She’ll never be safe otherwise.”
“So what’s the answer?” Laurel asked.
Silence.
Laurel chewed on her lip. When she looked up to find Shelley doing the same thing, she couldn’t help but laugh, despite the serious nature of the conversation.
Shelley joined in the laughter, and even Jake smiled. “The DNA tests will prove what I already feel,” she said to Jake as she grabbed hold of Laurel’s hand. “We have a sister.”
“We might have a sister,” Jake cautioned, but his voice no longer contained its earlier harshness and he eyed Laurel with a considering look.
Laurel gave thanks that he wasn’t rejecting her outright.
* * *
While the others talked, Mace considered what Laurel had told them. Her secretiveness and evasion made sense now. From remarks Shelley and Jake had made, he knew that their mother had neglected and then abandoned them. Apparently the woman had not changed her ways when it came to mothering. No wonder Laurel had described their relationship as “not close.”
He recognized the root of his suspicions. The woman he’d fallen for in Jalal-Abad had deceived him in the worst way possible. Though he’d long since gotten over any feelings he’d once had for her, the sense of betrayal had eroded much of his trust in others, especially women.
“What’s our next step?” Laurel asked, dividing a look between him, Jake and Shelley.
“We learn everything we can about the ledger,” Jake said.
In response to that, Shelley pressed a button and called in Rachel Martin, S&J’s encryption expert. Within a few minutes, the woman appeared. Mace had met her a few times and been impressed with her skills. A former FBI agent, she now led S&J’s cyber section.
After making introductions, Shelley outlined the facts of the case and, after removing the ledger from the safe, showed it to the specialist. “We need this translated ASAP.”
Rachel looked through the pages. “Looks like some kind of binary code.”
“That’s what I thought,” Laurel said, “but I couldn’t make any sense of it beyond that.”
“I’ll do my best,” Rachel said to Shelley.
Shelley smiled warmly. “I know you will.”
After Rachel left, Shelley said, “If anyone can do this, Rachel can. She’s a whiz kid, graduated from high school at fourteen, finished a four-year degree in eighteen months, did grad work at Harvard, and was then scooped up by the Bureau.”
Mace had heard rumors that Martin had left the FBI under some kind of cloud. Not his business. He turned his thoughts back to bringing dow
n the criminal enterprise.
“So, how do we put an end to it?” Laurel asked.
Mace didn’t have to think about it. “We cut off the head.”
“Ronnie Winston?” Jake asked. “He’s already in prison.”
“But he’s still giving orders.” Mace gripped the edge of the desk. “That piece of trash is finding a way to lead the Collective. Behind bars, and he’s still calling the shots. If we cut off his line of communication to the outside world, it would put a big dent in the Collective’s operations.”
“We don’t know who he’s communicating with.” Frustration ripened in Shelley’s voice. “After you called,” she said to Laurel, “I checked the prison logs. No one but his wife has been to visit him. No one’s written him.”
“I want to meet him,” Laurel said.
“Not a good idea,” Mace said. “Winston’s bad news.”
“Hey,” she said and tapped her chest. “Ranger here. Remember?”
“Yeah. But...” He looked to Shelley and Jake for help.
“Maybe Laurel will learn something nobody else has,” Shelley said.
Jake only lifted a shoulder.
“I can hold my own,” Laurel said. “Just before my last mission in the Stand, my team and I hunted down a warlord. I’m not going to let some Collective boss intimidate me.”
Mace didn’t bother arguing his point again. “We’ll arrange it. Just remember—you asked for it.”
SEVEN
Before meeting Winston, Laurel wanted to do some homework on him. Aside from what her contact at the DOJ had sent her, she knew little about the man and wanted to understand his endgame. Knowing what the opponent desired above all else was key to predicting the next move.
The tactic had worked well when she’d led a unit in Afghanistan to take down a band of insurgents. She and her fellow soldiers had determined that the terrorists needed ammunition and would likely try to overtake a munitions bunker thirty-five klicks to the west. Her unit had been waiting.
“Okay if I use my computer here?” she asked Shelley.
“Sure. I’ll set you up in one of our loaner offices.”
“Loaner office? Like a loaner car?”
Dimples winking, Shelley grinned. “Just like.” She showed Laurel to an office and gave her the Wi-Fi password. “Work here all you want.”
“Thank you.” Laurel settled in at the desk and pulled up all the information she could find about Winston and the Collective.
Over and over, she read “Not enough evidence to take to authorities” in reference to further crimes committed by the Collective after Winston’s arrest and conviction.
That segued to the problem Mace had named. Even with sufficient evidence, who could S&J and others working on taking down the organization give that evidence to? With judges and prosecutors in the Collective’s pockets, the possibility of the evidence being thrown out of court was too big to calculate.
Laurel made notes of her own, wrote down impressions and questions that needed follow-up. Her thoughts circled back to Bernice’s involvement with the Collective. What had she done to warrant her murder? Stealing the ledger and money, certainly. But had there been something more?
Laurel stopped, considered. Maybe it wasn’t what Bernice had done but what she’d learned. Bernice hadn’t been above using information or people for her own benefit. Had she tried to blackmail the wrong person?
Ronnie Winston had spent the last twelve months in a federal lockup, but he was still the puppeteer, possessing enough power to order others to do his bidding.
From what Laurel had learned about the Collective, nothing happened without his okay. So how had Winston given the order to kill Bernice and then tried to do the same to Laurel? She returned to Shelley’s office, where she found Mace and Jake, and posed the question.
“How does a prisoner who receives no visitors, no mail, no contact with the outside world manage to control something as far-flung as the Collective? What about Winston’s wife?”
“Everybody from the DA’s office to the police looked, and looked hard, at his wife, but there was nothing there,” Mace said. “She appeared to be completely in the dark about his activities.”
“I’ve got a friend in the DA’s office,” Jake said. “He told me that there wasn’t a shred of evidence to connect her to anything.”
“So how’s he doing it?” Laurel persisted.
Brother and sister looked to each other and grimaced in unison. Mace’s gaze was fixed on the floor.
“There’s more communication going on inside a prison than you’d believe,” Jake said at last. “There’s the old library book trick. Leave a message in a book, it’s picked up by another inmate, one who does have outside contacts. But that’s old-school. Prisoners today are sophisticated.”
“How so?” Laurel asked. “Technologically?”
“Maybe. But that’s risky in itself,” Shelley said. “Technology leaves a footprint. No matter how well you cover your tracks, someone is going to find it. I’ve ferreted out more information from what people think they’ve deleted than you’d believe.”
Laurel bit her lip as she pondered it. “So how do these sophisticated prisoners pass messages?” She was silent for a moment, trying to figure out how Winston was managing to get messages to his minions. “What does he do in prison? Work in the laundry room? Or the machine shop?”
“That’s something we need to check out,” Shelley said, “though I think Winston would keep communications away from where he’s assigned to work.”
“Then how is he doing it?” Laurel persisted.
“It can be as innocent as a meal tray,” Mace answered. “Leave a little pile of vegetables at the top of your plate and you’ve just ordered a hit.”
“How do they know who the hit is on?”
“That’s where the code comes in to play,” Jake said.
“Code?”
Mace nodded. “Sophisticated doesn’t have to be high-tech. It just needs a code, one that the parties involved have agreed upon in advance. Winston’s considered a big deal in prison. He probably sets the code, then tells others they’d better abide by it or else.”
Laurel paced. “You’re saying Winston can order a hit on someone on the outside just by playing with his food?”
“Something like that,” Shelley said, tapping her fingers on her desk. “Three months ago, almost a year after Winston went to prison, a judge was murdered in his bed. He was one of the good guys and was presiding over a case against a Collective foot soldier. He’d received several warnings and had agreed to have the United States Marshals take his family into protective custody. They were moved to a safe house.”
“And the judge?” Laurel asked.
“He refused to leave, said he’d be safe enough with two sets of marshals on the outside and inside.” A beat of silence. “Turns out he was wrong. All four marshals were found with their throats slit. The hit man saved something special for the judge. He was garroted, after his tongue had been cut out.
“No one’s dared speak against the Collective since.”
Laurel recalled a particularly nasty band of insurgents her unit had been ordered to capture. Rather than chase after them, the unit went after the chief himself. Without him to give the orders, the men made one stupid mistake after another and were quickly rounded up. “Cut off the snake’s head,” she said, “and the snake will curl up and die.”
“Only this snake refuses to die,” Mace said. “No matter what law enforcement does, Ronnie Winston’s still pulling the strings. It doesn’t make a difference that it’s from inside prison. And what are the rest of us doing? We’re dancing to his tune.” Disgust and anger roiled in his voice.
Laurel lifted her chin. “I never was much of a dancer.”
* * *
Shelley motioned for Mace to hold back as Laure
l and Jake filed out of the room. “Laurel has a target on her back. The Collective won’t stop coming, and she won’t retreat.”
Mace watched Shelley, saw the hard swallow of her throat, and knew she was trying to hold back a wave of emotion.
“I’m worried.”
He knew the admission didn’t come easily to Shelley, who was a warrior in her own right. She had served on a police force before moving to the Secret Service and then to opening her own security firm.
“Her instincts are good.” She wouldn’t have made the Rangers if she lacked those all-important instincts. Her courage and daring were tempered with an understanding of combat and a fierce resolution to get the job done.
“Good isn’t good enough,” Shelley said. “Good will get you killed. She needs to be elite. Right now, she’s not up to full speed.”
Mace heard the tremor in Shelley’s voice and knew she was referring to the injuries to Laurel’s shoulder and arm. So Shelley had noticed them as well and understood the significance. Even a fraction of a second could mean the difference between life and death when it came to responding to a threat.
He thought of the determination in Laurel’s eyes, the valiant set of her shoulders.
“She’s nothing like I thought,” he said, more to himself than to his boss. “What about you? What do you think of her, outside this whole Collective thing?”
“I’m still trying to take it in. A sister we never knew about.”
“It’s got to be a shock.”
“Yeah. I think Laurel’s right. I feel it. We have a sister. I never expected that. Victoria—that’s what she was going by then—didn’t know it, but she gave us a wonderful gift.”
Not for the first time, Mace wondered what kind of woman got mixed up in this ugly business, as Laurel’s mother had. Then he looked at Shelley, saw the pain in her eyes. The same kind of woman who abandoned her first two children.
“This has got to be hard on you and Jake.”
Her curt nod was answer in itself. “I haven’t thought of her in years. I thought I was over it, and then this...” Her voice wavered, then firmed. “Whatever brought Laurel here, I’m grateful.”
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