Final Stand

by Lisa Phillips

  It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him again not to call her that. Instead, she said, “Please be careful. There are only two of us left now.” The rest of the committee was dead, as was a US Attorney and one of the FBI agents. She had no interest in losing anyone else to Oscar Langdon.

  “I know. I will.” He paused. “Promise me you’ll stay with your people. Have a care.”

  He didn’t tell her not to go into danger. He also didn’t tell her to let someone else look for Langdon.

  Victoria was grateful for both things.

  Jakeman hung up. The door to the last stall whipped in and hit the wall. Dakota strode out. She stomped to the sink and glared at Victoria in the mirror as she washed her hands. She tugged two paper towels from the dispenser so forcefully, Victoria wondered that the whole thing didn’t fall off the wall.

  “Just spit it out.”

  “I don’t even know where to start.” Dakota balled up the paper towels and tossed them in the trash. “You talk a good game. I’ll give you that.”

  “But you figured me out?”

  “I’ve put up with your…methods for long enough. Now I’m supposed to be all about forgiveness, and loving your neighbors and all that, but you’re making it really difficult.”

  “Sorry.” Her tone clearly stated she was not sorry.

  Dakota sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. “Don’t. It doesn’t suit you. But you know what? I know exactly what you need, because I’ve lived it. Right now you’re too busy making sure you don’t fall apart to realize the answer is right in front of you.”

  “I’m trying to find Langdon.”

  “No, you’re trying to have your cake and eat it.”

  Victoria couldn’t figure that out in the middle of the night, running on next to no sleep in three days. “Just say it.”

  “You need Jesus.”

  “You’re getting married soon,” Victoria reminded her. Like Dakota had forgotten that her fiancé was in the hospital. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

  Dakota made a face, waltzed to the door and hauled it open. Victoria’s phone buzzed. She looked at the screen and read the text from Talia.

  Whatever you two are yelling about, this is more important. I have something.

  Victoria strode back to the office. “We weren’t yelling.”

  Dakota slumped into a chair at her desk. Mark and Niall broke off their conversation and turned to look at her.

  Talia said, “Yeah, cause we couldn’t hear you.”

  “What do you have?” Victoria got herself another cup of coffee, trying to brush off the awkwardness

  Mark met her by the pot with his empty mug. “Is Jakeman all right?”

  She nodded and poured him a refill. “He’s at a safe house.”

  They didn’t need to have another drawn-out conversation with no resolution. She’d just had one of those with Dakota, and it hadn’t made her feel better. Nothing would, until Langdon was dead or in cuffs.

  She turned around and leaned her hips against the cupboards. “What’ve we got?”

  Talia said, “I’ve got a car leaving the scene of that pharmacy robbery. Two blocks away there’s a shot of the interior where we can actually see the driver’s face. It’s our scientist.”

  “And Langdon?”

  “Come and see this.” She clicked on her mouse.

  Victoria wandered over and looked at the image on screen. A man, given the shoulders. His hood was up. “Could be Langdon, holding a gun on the driver. It’s not the child.”

  She sounded about as convinced as everyone else was. But then Victoria had been chasing this guy a long time. She knew him better than anyone—an edge that she needed to pay off in her search for him.

  Talia said, “There’s a shot of the plate in one image, I ran it through the county database and it’s registered to this guy.” She pulled up a screen with a bunch of tiny boxes, name and address. Weight and date of birth. Then she clicked on a picture.

  “I don’t think he’s the one with the gun.” He was nothing like Langdon. An elderly man, listed as disabled. “Has he reported his car stolen recently?”

  “No,” Talia said. “Nothing. But the car passed an ATM camera that’s along the route on from the pharmacy to this guy’s house.”

  “Do we think Langdon has the scientist and the kid at the old man’s house?” Mark asked.

  “If he does,” Victoria said, “that means the old man is likely dead.” And wasn’t that a lovely thought. “So they rob the pharmacy. Medication means the scientist now agrees to build the nuke because his son isn’t in imminent danger of needing a hospital. Where do they go?”

  “We could drive by the house, see if the car is there?” Dakota lifted her feet and planted her shoes on her desk. “Can’t hurt, right?”

  “He probably stashed it out of sight.” Would Langdon really bank on them being so far behind him that he didn’t have to worry about the car being on the drive?

  “What else do we have?”

  She didn’t like Mark’s tone. “Fine, let’s drive out there on the off chance that Langdon is holed up there.” She had figured the nuke components were somewhere like a storage unit, or some kind of abandoned lab. “Anything about where the attack is likely to take place?”

  “I’m running down scenarios.” Talia looked grim. “I have a few options, depending on whether he just wants to kill a lot of people or if he’s going to target someone. Business leaders. Government workers. Civil servants. That kind of thing.”

  “Keep us posted.” She grabbed her coat and tugged it on. Right before it settled onto her shoulders, Mark clasped the collar and assisted her. She lifted her gaze.

  “I’m just trying to help.”

  “You’ve been mad at me all day. Why change your tune now?”

  He sighed. “We have to find Langdon, right? That’s the priority. Besides, I’m too tired right now to be mad in any way that’s not unfair. I know there’s more you’ve neglected to tell me. I assume at some point I’ll learn what all that is. Until then, there isn’t much I can do about it, right?”

  “Uh…” She shut her mouth before she said something she would regret. Or just spilled everything right then. No, that wouldn’t help. It would only make things so much worse. “Let’s go check out that house.”

  Dakota sat in the front seat of their car. Niall drove, with Victoria in front and Mark in the back, head leaned against the seat and his eyes closed. By the time they got to the house, he was snoring even.

  Victoria’s phone buzzed, and she read the text from Talia. “Nothing on the driveway. They’re going to circle neighboring streets and see if they can get an angle on the backyard.”

  “Copy that.” Niall made a right turn while she studied the map of the neighborhood on her phone.

  Then she looked at every car on the street leading up to the house. “I see it.”

  Niall pulled over right when she picked up. Victoria said, “We have the car.” She gave Talia the street name, so she’d know where.

  “You think they’re in there?”

  Victoria thought it through. “Worth a look.”

  Mark sucked in a breath. “We found them.”

  “Let’s go see.”

  Chapter 28

  Seattle, WA. Sunday 5:22 am

  Mark flattened the Velcro tabs on his vest and followed Victoria toward the house under cover of darkness. The sun wouldn’t be up for two or three more hours this time of year, so there were still plenty of shadows to hide in.

  Niall paced beside him. “We’re assuming this is a trap, right?”

  “Probably.” Mark kept his voice low but had to say what he was thinking. “Help me watch her back?”

  “What do you think this team does?”

  Mark didn’t need unhelpful comments. He blew out a breath. “You know what I mean.”

  “I’m sure I do.”

  He would, since he’d lived that with Haley. They’d both been in danger. The only
difference was that they’d come through it to find a relationship. Not something that would happen with him and Victoria.

  A cat darted across the street. On the other side in an upstairs window someone had their curtains open, and in the window he saw they were watching a cartoon.

  Someone’s young child up early, on a morning no one wanted to leave their warm bed, so they snuggled in and watched TV.

  Not that Mark would know. He was pretty sure his mom had never done that with him. Before she left. Now he barely remembered her, only that she’d had blond hair. His father certainly hadn’t. The guy only ranked lower on the scum scale than Victoria’s grandfather because he’d used his fists. But the abuse had been no less vicious than she suffered from her grandfather’s biting comments, or the emotional manipulation.

  “You need to get your head in this.”

  He stopped beside Niall, along with Victoria, at the front door. “Dakota is taking the back way?”

  She glanced over, her gaze assessing him. “She’s checking out the car first.”

  “I’ll go around,” Niall said, “in case we get a runner.” He wandered off, not waiting for permission.

  Mark had to wonder if he actually had it, at least loosely, considering this was connected to the research facility case. Looking into the fallout. Assisting them. He probably had permission from his boss to be here.

  “You okay?”

  “Is he going to get in trouble if it’s on paper that he was here?”

  Victoria frowned. “That’s what you want to talk about?”

  Mark didn’t want to talk about anything. Now was hardly the time, anyway. “Let’s go in.”

  With one last glance, she turned to the door and tried the handle. They stepped to the side to avoid any gunfire that might blast through the front door. Same reason they wore vests, vital things that might seem small at the time but might mean the difference between death and survival.

  Victoria pushed the door open slowly, and soundlessly. The interior was dark, no sound and no movement. Yet. Despite the car being parked a few streets away, it didn’t seem like anyone was still here. They could have ditched it and gone somewhere else in a new vehicle.

  How would they find them?

  Mark just knew they would. They had to, because the consequence of failure meant the loss of so many lives.

  Enough people had died already. The US Attorney, Pacer. The corrupt FBI Agent, Vance Davies, who’d stepped in front of that car. General Hurst. Now three additional lives were in danger, between the car’s registered owner who lived here, and the scientist and his son.

  Victoria wandered down the hall. It was another single-story house, like the one the scientist lived in. This one smelled like the windows needed to be cracked and the house treated for mold. Entirely too much damp had settled into the air. In a climate like this it was common, but that also meant there were common ways to treat it.

  Mark didn’t want to contemplate the fact it was likely an applicable metaphor for his ongoing “relationship” with Victoria. Something bad had crept in, and they’d allowed it. Question was, would they both be willing to do the work to reverse it. Or was it a case of scrapping everything and starting over. Somewhere else.

  He circled the bedroom, flashlight beam moving as he shifted his weapon. A closet? It was always worth checking everywhere.

  Mark pulled the door open. “Victoria!”

  Within seconds, she and Niall both entered the room.

  “I found the homeowner.”

  Victoria looked over his shoulder and hissed out a breath between clenched teeth.

  “Sorry.”

  She glanced aside at him. “Sorry? Are you responsible for this?”

  He wasn’t, but he also didn’t like her feeling the impact of a loss related to her case. Instead of explaining all that he said, “Cause of death?”

  “I’m not a medical examiner.” She’d crouched and was now almost nose to nose with the dead, old homeowner. “But it might have something to do with the bullet hole in his forehead.”

  Niall actually chuckled.

  Mark shot him a look. As far as they knew, this was the first dead body they’d discovered where the person didn’t know exactly what they’d been up against. The first person without a personal connection to the case, who hadn’t signed up to fight Langdon knowingly.

  He didn’t want the scientist, or his son, to be next.

  Niall’s phone rang. “O’Caran.”

  Mark stayed with Victoria, who was now typing on her phone. An email. They needed to call the local police and report a dead body. “Don’t touch anything.” After all that talk with the police captain, and those two detectives, Victoria’s fingerprints didn’t need to be at the scene of a crime.

  “Copy that.” Niall hung up. “Dakota needs us at the car.”

  Victoria straightened, and they followed Niall to the hallway. “What is it?”

  Mark left everything the way they’d found it, making sure the police would find as true of a crime scene as they could give them, even though they’d walked through the whole place and been the ones to discover the body.

  Niall said, “She’s already called an ambulance.”

  “Wait, what?” Mark caught up with them.

  “The kid was tied up in the trunk of the car. Looks like he was given medicine and then dumped there for us—or someone—to find.”

  Victoria shook her head as they stepped out of the front door. “So Langdon dropped the kid off and then took his father to get the work done?”

  There was something in her expression Mark couldn’t decipher. They strode to the car, then drove to meet Dakota. She had the kid sitting on the hood and was talking to him when they all climbed out. She’d wrapped the scientist’s son up in her coat to keep him warm.

  Mark had to point out one thing to Victoria before they got into this. “He didn’t ‘drop him off’ if he left him in the trunk. The kid could have been there long enough to have had another medical emergency.” He didn’t like the idea of finding a dead child any differently than finding an old man stuffed in his own closet.

  The child and Dakota both looked at them as they approached.

  Niall said, “Ambulance should be here in a minute. As will cops, which means we need a good explanation of why we broke into this car.”

  “It was unlocked,” Dakota said. “I heard the sound of someone in distress.”

  She said it with so little emotion, Mark wondered if that wasn’t exactly what had happened. “I’ll call the police captain and let him know what we’re doing. The responding officers can take all our statements, since we have nothing to hide.”

  He’d been at scenes where the Northwest Counter-Terrorism Taskforce left one person to tell the police a version of what had happened. But the team had been disbanded now, and they all worked at different agencies. He wasn’t sure if the state department would actually claim Victoria Bramlyn as one of their own, a Director.

  Dakota said, “Victoria, you wanna leave and we’ll deal with this? Niall?”

  Of course, Dakota would offer. Despite the argument they’d had at an audible level in the bathroom, she was still prepared to take the heat and be the one who explained it all.

  Mark knew what there was in Victoria that had inspired so much loyalty in people she’d only worked with for a few years. He’d seen the same thing in her since they met. Life had thrown them more curve balls than he ever would’ve imagined.

  Am I supposed to forgive even this, God?

  Mark already knew the answer even before he finished asking the question. He wouldn’t be living out what he believed if he didn’t extend Victoria the same grace he’d been given.

  As he walked away and made phone calls to both the local police captain and his director, explaining what they’d found, he continued thinking on it.

  Victoria didn’t believe, but that didn’t make her any less worthy of what he had the grace to give her. It was part of the reason he�
��d kept her at arm’s length all these years and relegated them to that “friend” zone that had gotten such a bad reputation. But he’d had her in his life. They’d kept each other sane and safe, which was more than what a lot of people had.

  Mark couldn’t count the number of times he’d called her and talked through a case, just to have a sounding board. He had to admit, now that he knew she’d gotten him the assistant director job, it stung. He wasn’t about to thank her for advancing his career, but it was done.

  The only other choice he had, besides accepting it, was to resign, and he wasn’t about to do that anytime soon.

  The director was the one who asked the question, “Can the kid tell us anything about where Langdon took his father?”

  “I’ll find out.” But he doubted the kid could give them actionable intelligence.

  The ambulance showed up. Mark hung up from his calls and moved to where Victoria stood watching as they treated the kid and loaded him into the ambulance.

  “What now?” Mark figured she had an idea, but he’d rather go home and get twelve hours of sleep before taking the next step. He didn’t figure they had the time though, and the sun was up now.

  He looked at his watch.

  “Breakfast?”

  “There’s this place I usually go to before church.” He met a couple of his friends there, normally. Guys he’d done bible study with who were similar in age and either single dads or had no kids and hadn’t been married. Divorced people tended to fall through the cracks in a lot of churches, no one really knowing what to say to them or what to do with them in “family ministry.” Mark tried to make sure it didn’t happen to the guys he knew.

  “That sounds good.”

  “Food?”

  “All of it.” She didn’t lift her gaze, just kept it carefully nonchalant.

  Mark wasn’t going to let it go. “You want to go to church?”

  Victoria shrugged like it was no big deal. “I need a flash of inspiration. Where else am I going to get it?”

  “And you’re not just doing that because I’ve been mad, and you think it’s a way to soften my feelings toward you?”

  “I get that you think I’m capable of running a game on you like that.” She pressed her lips together.