Midnight Kiss

by Lisa Marie Rice

  She touched her backpack again and frowned. “What?”

  “Luggage. We don’t know how long we’re going to be in Sacramento. Don’t you want your things, even if they are basically Summer’s things?”

  “Sure.” She smiled. “You carry the bags. Felicity says that the guys at ASI are the muscle.”

  That was true. They were. Without a word, Luke went to get their bags.

  Presidential suite

  Willard Hotel

  It had been an excellent dinner, netting pledges for over ten million dollars for his campaign, and above all netting support from the movers and shakers. But he was tired.

  Court Redfield loosened his tie and sat down on the overstuffed armchair in the suite’s living room. He opened his mouth but before he could speak, a cut glass crystal tumbler half full of a single malt whiskey was put in his hand.

  He looked up at the man who’d put it there and nodded.

  The man nodded back.

  Good man. The best. Captain Lorne Resnick, formerly of the USMC, then of the CIA’s SAD, where Court had met him. While DD of the CIA, Court had met many highly capable men who went … unrecognized. Underpaid. Underused.

  Court recognized their potential. There was a lot to be said for highly trained and competent men willing to do anything as long as you paid them enough. He kept a small army of them on retainer. Their main task up until now had been to make problems go away.

  Court had made many friends in Congress. He knew a lot of stories. He was the kind of man other men confided in. Trusted. The kind of man you told your darkest secrets to, your wildest dreams, your deepest desires, your greatest fears. Late at night, in his darkened den, after a couple of whiskies, men opened up to him. It was essentially the same story, over and over again. They had problems, they wanted things. Court’s men could make things happen, make problems disappear. They could bend your enemies to your will.

  It was never a crass quid pro quo. Money never changed hands. Nothing like a written contract. Just an … understanding. Between gentlemen. No questions asked, no payment requested.

  Except, the next time Senator Court Redfield needed votes for an industry tax break or deregulation, he had it in the bag. And the money poured in, off the books, offshore. He had a fucking fortune in untraceable accounts in Panama, Gibraltar and St. Thomas. His lifestyle didn’t change. You can only drive one car at a time. He had property but not anything flashy, nothing to catch anyone’s eye. A nice house in Virginia, his old home in Sacramento and a condo in Florida. He drove a staid late-model sedan. His clothes were off the rack. His mistresses were quiet and discreet. He didn’t need the things money bought you, he wanted the power money gave you. So he built his power base. And his army.

  He had forty men at his command, all ex-military, almost all former SpecOps, the ultimate beneficiary of the hundred million dollars Uncle Sam had spent training them. Then the military fucked up by not paying them, or not paying them enough. Men who had earned the equivalent of several PhDs, spoke several languages, were almost Olympic-level athletes, who risked their lives daily — they earned basically what a bank teller earned. And if they were seriously injured, they went into the maw of the VA and never came out.

  Court was smart. He paid his men a base salary of half a million dollars a year, completely off the books, completely tax free, and he saw to it that they got the finest medical care in the world.

  They were loyal and worth their weight in gold.

  He stared into his tumbler. He had no qualms about giving kill orders. And his men had no qualms in carrying them out. He just had to make sure no one made the connections.

  “Resnick,” he said.

  Resnick’s head came up. “Sir.”

  “There’s a problem.”

  Resnick nodded. “That’s what we’re here for, sir.”

  “It’s … delicate.”

  Resnick nodded again.

  Court’s team dealt with hard issues all the time. They were smart, efficient and discreet. For a moment, Court had a flash of anger so strong he felt it crackle in his bones. When this problem first emerged almost three decades ago and Bard was being bull-headed as usual, Court had called in a team of men he wasn’t familiar with. They’d reported that the job was done. Court had never heard anything to the contrary since then, until two days ago. If those men had done their goddamned job right the first time …

  His fists clenched, his breathing grew harsh. Resnick watched him, head cocked and Court calmed. Goddammit, only Bard could make him lose his temper, even for a moment.

  He should have double-checked, made absolutely sure.

  No use thinking that way. The team leader on that job was dead. Resnick had been in high school.

  This was in the past goddammit! It should have fucking stayed in the past!

  Court sighed. “I have … an issue. As I said, it’s particularly delicate now that I’ve declared my candidacy.”

  Something flashed in Resnick’s eyes and Court knew what it was. Resnick headed his personal, private army. It was one thing to head the army of a powerful man, a man who’d been number two in the CIA, a man who was currently a sitting Senator and Chairman of the Armed Forces Committee.

  It would be an entirely different thing to be the head of the private army of the president of the United States, with the entire might of the US government behind you. Resnick was about to become the most powerful military man in the world, without being subject to military rules. No wonder his eyes were gleaming.

  “Here.” Court handed Resnick a flash drive. Resnick bent his blond head over it, turning it over in his hands. The flash drive was made of a special titanium alloy. The contents of the flash drive would dissolve in a flash of heat half an hour after first being opened, but the titanium exterior would remain intact, a perfectly normal but non-functioning flash drive. “Everything you need is here. It will self-destruct half an hour after opening.”

  Court had debated redacting names. What he’d just handed Resnick was like a ton of C-4 with the detonator ready to blow. Any hint of what was on the flash drive to the outside world and he’d be a dead man. Not just in the political sense, either. Bard could never know. No one could ever know but particularly Bard could never know.

  Court hadn’t redacted in the end. All the intel was in the clear. He trusted Resnick, who’d proved himself trustworthy over and over again. Inside that flash drive was essentially a confession of murder 25 years ago. Resnick needed to have that info to do what had to be done.

  “That intel is highly confidential,” Court said, keeping his voice emotionless. But something must have bled through because Resnick’s head came up sharply.

  “Understood, sir. You can count on me.”

  Yes, he could. Resnick was a money man. People were driven by sex, money or power. Sometimes by all three. People driven by sex were pathetic and burned out early. What was left was money and power, two highly respectable motivators. Resnick had been born poor and Court understood very well that the money Resnick was accumulating was precious to him in a way he himself could barely understand. He’d come from money and had always earned very well. To him, money was the ladder to power. A tool, nothing more. But to Resnick, it was life itself.

  Resnick was amassing what to him was a fortune. He could never earn anywhere else what Court paid him. Court knew Resnick would rather rip out his lungs than forego the money he was being paid.

  He’d be discreet. Oh yes.

  Shit happens, but Court was counting on shit not happening with Resnick. It was also helpful that Resnick hated Bard. He wasn’t going to talk to Bard, tell him the truth. Which was lucky because if there was one person in the world Court feared, it was his son, Bard Redfield.

  But Bard at the moment was probably OUTCONUS, having ignored his father’s invitations to take part in his campaign. So be it.

  “Who do we have in California?” Court asked.

  Resnick frowned. “Not many operatives, sir. Four.
Hawkins, Peters, Colucci and Li. How many operatives do you need?”

  Damn it! The Ellis creature was one girl, an expert in computers and data analysis. No military training. But she must have powerful protectors if she’d been able to evade his operatives in Boston. And was able to vanish off the face of the earth.

  But if she started digging deep, there was one place she was bound to go.

  Court weighed efficacy and discretion. His men operated well as a team but this was delicate stuff. Not everybody would be as comfortable as Resnick with killing your own blood. So for the moment, he wanted Resnick alone. If he needed help, he could call it in.

  “As many as you can, but put them on stand-by. Pull off everyone you can from non-urgent tasks and have them wait by a plane. I want you to head this team up, but if you can finish the mission on your own, that would be preferable. Intel is there in the flash drive. I want you in Sacramento tomorrow. You’ll know where to go and what to do.”

  Resnick closed his big hand around the flash drive. For a moment, Court hesitated. That flash drive was like a bullet propelled from a gun, stopped an inch from his chest. There were secrets in there that had been kept for 25 years. Secrets that would derail his presidential run if what he planned to do came out. Secrets that would send him to jail.

  Secrets his son could never know. God knows their relationship was fraught enough.

  Goddammit! Court’s eye caught a portrait photograph in a silver frame on the bookshelf next to his desk. Bard, in full dress uniform, with an impressive array of his medals on his broad chest. The last official photo of him, and only because the Navy insisted. He was so young and so handsome and looked like what he was — a goddamn hero. Someone any father would be proud of. A real asset.

  Even more of an asset would have been Bard leaving the military after an appropriate period, marrying an appropriate woman and having appropriate kids. Court could have had another portrait on his shelf, with Bard, a smiling wife and kids. Maybe a fucking dog. On a slope of green lawn, celebrating July 4th.

  Instead — nothing. Bard had stayed in the military and stayed almost invisible, on covert missions abroad. The very few snapshot photos in existence of his son were on ops. An almost feral being, a tough, frightening man with a graying beard, weather-beaten skin, in filthy combat clothes. Not photogenic, not polished. He looked like what he was — a killer.

  After that woman, Bard never had a long-term relationship, never married. Not even close. It was like he married the fucking Navy.

  So Court was forced to campaign with a ghost son, unobtainable, invisible, legally banned from talking about what he actually did in the Navy.

  Also — a son who hated his father.

  Getting rid of that girl and her spawn was supposed to bring them closer together, but it hadn’t.

  Bard just got angrier and angrier. More and more remote. Tougher and tougher.

  To the point that Court was actually physically frightened at the thought of Bard realizing what he’d done all those years ago. Bard wouldn’t kill his own father, would he? Would he?

  Court didn’t have an answer to that.

  What was supposed to have cemented their relationship by getting an intrusive, trashy little money-grubber out of the way had turned into a mile-high wall that no matter what he did, Court couldn’t climb over.

  Court was rich. Massively rich, though the wealth was mostly hidden. Still, he’d made it clear that Bard could be rich, too. Way way beyond anything a military career could bring. But Bard couldn’t be bought by the prospect of a loan or gifts from his father. He banked almost his entire salary. He lived a spartan life, bunking in the Bachelor Officers Quarters when he was Stateside, living in camps when he was deployed. He had no property to his name and completely ignored Court’s hints at leaving him property. There wasn’t anything Court could give him that Bard wanted.

  He hadn’t even wanted a big military career. Bard should have been an admiral by now, and would have been if he’d made even a slight attempt to rise up. He hadn’t. He just stayed in the field well beyond what was expected of him.

  Bard was also completely indifferent to his father’s campaign. Didn’t give a shit. Once Court lost his temper and alluded to the fact that one day soon he could be Bard’s Commander in Chief.

  Bard had simply glared at him. “You’ll never be my Commander in Chief. Forget it. If you win the presidency, I’ll resign my commission and go to work for Black Inc.” Taking Bard completely out of the chain of command.

  Black Inc was a powerful security company run by former SEAL Jacob Black. He and Bard had been friends forever. Court had tried recruiting Black’s company for an off-the-books job when he was DD at the CIA, but Black refused. And threatened to report him to the Congressional Oversight Committee.

  Resnick and his crew hadn’t refused, which had been a stimulus for creating his own small army. His army never refused him anything.

  “Is that all, sir?” Resnick’s voice was emotionless. If he’d noticed Court getting lost in his own head — which happened often when he thought of his son — he gave no sign.

  “Yes. Get to Sacramento and call your men in if you need to. But only if you need them.”

  Resnick stood. “Yessir.”

  “Oh, and Resnick?”

  “Sir?”

  “Whoever you find that has a bearing on your mission, they are to be terminated. Especially the … main actor. This has to become a dead end. Are we clear?”

  “Absolutely, sir.”

  He turned and walked out the door.

  Court’s head suddenly fell forward as if too heavy for his neck. The past had reached out, a raging torrent he thought was underground, but which had punched its way through to the surface. It would carry him away if he wasn’t careful. He blew out a shaky breath, staring at the ground for a long, long time.

  There was no margin for mistakes now.

  Portland

  They did what they’d done the previous day only in reverse.

  Hope was in her super-secret spy getup — big floppy hat with the secret lights under the brim, funky high-tech sunglasses, a wad of toilet paper inside her sneaker to change the gait — and instructions to keep your head down. That last had been said a billion times by Luke, as if she were unable to process a four-word instruction.

  One last thing, Luke had said. Keep your hands palms-down. Satellite photos were astonishingly high resolution these days and a really good shot of a finger would give you a fingerprint as sharp as dipping it in ink and rolling it over the police blotter.

  It was hard to keep your head down, particularly when your floppy hat brim dipped down beneath your eyeline, basically giving you a view of your sneakered feet and not much else.

  Plus, she was dragging the wheelie and carrying her backpack. It was clear to her that Luke, who had muscles to spare, wasn’t short-changing her in the gentleman department. He had an amazingly heavy duffel bag over his left shoulder and his wheelie which he pulled with his left hand. His right hand was kept free at all times. He let her open doors and press elevator buttons.

  She understood why. He wanted to keep one hand free to be able to pull the gun that was in his waistband.

  The thing was, between schlepping all that stuff, the drooping hat, too big sunglasses, annoying wad in her sneaker that made her limp, she felt like she was walking on an alien planet. Hope played a lot of video games where she was on an alien planet, trying to survive. Instinctively, she wanted to check her environment to make sure no tentacled monsters with three rows of shark teeth sprang out of the woodwork.

  Though presumably, keeping a ninja watch out was Luke’s department.

  They made it down to the sub-basement parking area without incident and once she was buckled in, she could take off the awful hat and terrible sunglasses with a sigh of relief.

  “Not made for a life of deceit?” Luke asked, with a sidelong glance.

  “Nope. Not even that good at social engineering. Ril
ey’s good with that, I’m not. Besides —” she turned her head away, but he could probably hear the intensity in her voice, “I hate lies and deception. Just hate them.”

  Her entire life had apparently been a lie and at some level, even as a little girl, she’d understood that. And hated it.

  Luke was a fast but careful driver as he drove them down unfamiliar streets. She didn’t know anything about Portland, still didn’t know anything about Portland, since she’d essentially been hiding out in a hotel room. The city center seemed to be relatively small and soon they were in the green suburbs. Not going to the international airport but the airfield.

  It was overcast, a few drops falling from the sky, threatening a downpour but not delivering yet on the promise. The Pacific Northwest had a rep as a rainy part of the country. Not as cold as Boston, but wetter. Yesterday there’d been late season snow flurries in Boston. She’d checked the weather. Not that she was homesick, far from it. Now that she was here, out West, she realized she wasn’t missing Boston at all. It had never really felt like home. She realized that because she felt exactly the same in Portland as she did in Boston. Pretty city, but there was no connection. That was how she’d felt when she lived in Baltimore, too, the years she worked for the NSA.

  She was … unrooted. Unconnected, unmoored. All the time. Like there was a missing piece in her head where most people held the concept of home. The hole had been there all her life. Luckily, she worked among geeks who had tenuous — if any — ties to their hometown. Tenuous ties to reality, actually. Most of them had spent their formative years in the basement on a computer, hacking. All braces and hormones. Connected to the world but not to their physical location.

  They all lived in a virtual place called Nerddom.

  Luke sped up and she was pressed against the back of the big, soft seat.

  The large suburban homes became smaller, the lawns less well kept, the roads filled with potholes and then suddenly they were there, at the outer reaches of the airfield. She didn’t even know what it was called. Ordinarily, she’d have looked it up. Her laptop shot her cell, in encryption, its location at all times so that if she ever lost it, God forbid, she’d know where it was. And whoever stole it wouldn’t be able to find the geolocator to turn it off and would never crack the password anyway.