by Margaret Kay
His cheek nuzzled hers. When he kissed her, he felt her desperation. She needed him to believe her. Good thing he did. He slid his legs between hers and showed her how much he believed her. He made love to her. Raw emotions and trust flowed between them and was conveyed in each caress, each kiss.
After, he pulled her into the shower and continued to kiss her as his soapy hands caressed and cleansed her everywhere. He washed her hair, wishing he had Madison’s shampoo and conditioner in the shower stall rather than his own generic wash. He wanted her to feel pampered, to feel safe and cared for. He knew women equated those things with luxurious products that made them feel good.
She redressed in the same clothes she’d worn the previous day. Her backpack had been left in the warehouse. She used his comb to detangle her hair. He left the room for a few minutes and brought her a new toothbrush, still in a box.
Garcia led her through the empty, brightly lit, stark-white hallway to the double glass doors of the galley. The others were within. Garcia held her hand and pulled her up to the buffet that was loaded with all the breakfast regulars. Sienna wasn’t sure if she’d be able to eat anything, her stomach was doing flip-flops. She helped herself to a cup of coffee, toast, and some fruit. Garcia loaded his plate until it wouldn’t hold another item. She hesitantly followed him to the table and sat beside him.
Across the table, the blonde man sat beside the blond woman. Her thousands of long ringlets were tied back in a high pony-tale this morning. She had just stuffed a forkful of eggs into her mouth. She tried to smile as she chewed.
“I’m Madison, in case you don’t remember,” she said with a warm smile after she had swallowed. “This is Cooper,” she motioned to the blonde man beside her. “That’s Jackson, and Doc,” she said pointing to the other men. They all had heaping plates in front of them as well.
Sienna smiled politely at each of them. Yes, she remembered them all, especially Doc and his vial of sleepy-juice. She still wasn’t sure she could trust them or believe she was safe. She nervously glanced at Razor, or Garcia, whatever his name was, who sat beside her shoveling food into his mouth.
“Sienna tell us what happened, from the beginning,” Cooper prompted.
She hesitated.
“You’re safe here. We’re the good guys and can help you,” Jackson said.
“You were desperate enough to place yourself in the hands of a biker-gang leader with a questionable reputation,” Garcia said mocking himself. “Your instincts have to be telling you we’re a bit more trustworthy.” He smiled that cocky grin of his.
Sienna had to wonder if Razor and Garcia were any different from each other. Was Razor really just an undercover persona he assumed, or were they one in the same deep down? Her eyes swept the table. Her eyes then settled on Cooper. She assumed him to be in a position of authority on this team. She considered it for a moment. She was in their custody, helpless. She could be making a bigger mistake than going with Razor, but she decided to tell them everything and let the chips fall where they may.
“Where should I start?”
“The beginning, when you knew something was wrong or suspected something wasn’t as it should be,” Cooper said.
All eyes around the table were on her. She took a deep breath. “About a month ago, I came home from work and I didn’t hear the dog bark after I had opened the garage door and parked. My husband’s car was there. The dog still didn’t bark or greet me at the door when I entered like she normally did. I assumed my husband had taken her for a walk. But then I heard her barking upstairs as I walked farther into the house, through the laundry room and the hallway into the kitchen and there.” Her voice caught. She drew in a deep breath and then blew it out, her lips tugging into a quivering frown. “And, um, there sitting in his chair at the kitchen table was my husband. His head was thrown back, like he was gazing at the ceiling. But he wasn’t. He was dead. A bullet hole was in his forehead”
She closed her eyes and sucked in shaky breaths. She could still see the horrible sight of him. It was an image that was burned into her memory. She felt Razor take hold of her hand.
He gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Take your time. You’re doing great.”
When she opened her eyes, tears crested. She wiped them and continued. “I reached out to his neck, to see if he had a pulse, but I knew there wouldn’t be one. I knew when I saw him that he was dead and that was before I even saw the floor behind him and all the blood and tissue. There was just the one hole in his forehead in the front, but most of the back of his head had been blown off and was all over the floor. He was cold when I touched him. I knew for sure he was dead.”
“You called nine-one-one right away?” Cooper asked.
She nodded.
“The police report says you then let the dog out into the back yard,” Madison interjected.
“Before the cops arrived?” Jackson asked.
“I wasn’t thinking clearly, I’m sure. The cops were pretty pissed I let her out before they got there. I figured Greg had been dead a while if he was cold to the touch, so I figured Bailey had been locked in Greg’s office for quite a while. She’d have to go out.”
“Bailey is your chocolate lab?” Cooper asked.
She nodded. “And I wanted her out of the way before the cops came. The backyard is fenced in. She could stay out there for several hours if need be.”
“How’d you know she was locked in the office?” Cooper asked.
“Greg always locked her in there if he had anyone due. And that was the general direction her barks came from. She was there as I expected.”
“Were all the doors locked?” Cooper asked.
“All but the front door.”
“Did he normally leave it unlocked during the day?” Cooper then asked.
“No, only if he let someone in. I’m sure he let his killer in,” Sienna insisted. “The cops wouldn’t believe me, but the facts were clear to me that he did. The dog was in his office and the door to the safe was closed. He opened it first thing every morning if he was home but closed and locked it if he expected anyone. His pistol was under his hat on the table next to him. He didn’t feel threatened. He knew his killer, I’m sure.”
“His pistol?” Cooper questioned.
“He had his conceal carry license. He kept it on him always and when he was home it was on the table next to him under a ball cap, always,” she emphasized.
“What did he do for a living?” Madison asked.
“He was a software engineer for a defense contractor,” Sienna replied.
“No, I mean what else did he do?” Madison redirected.
Sienna shook her head. “I don’t understand the question.”
“Software engineer my ass,” Madison said sarcastically. “Not many software engineers that I know are armed at all times. Not many of them travel to Colombia, Dubai, and every other third-world shit-hole like he has in the past seven years.”
“Dubai is a shit-hole?” Sienna asked.
“No, it’s a place where power-brokers and the players pulling the strings meet and conduct business, illegal business,” Madison replied. Her intense gaze shifted to Garcia. “I’m glad your back. Maybe you can dig a little deeper into this supposed employer. Everyone in the Ops Center has struck out, but there has to be something more to them than they appear.”
Garcia nodded. He honestly couldn’t wait to get his hands on a keyboard. “Did you ever suspect your husband was into anything?”
“No, and I don’t have a clue what it could be,” Sienna answered honestly. “I still don’t believe he was,” she mumbled as she shook her head and then rubbed her temples.
“He was murdered!” Madison said, throwing her hands in the air. It couldn’t be more obvious he was into something as far as Madison was concerned.
“And the police report said there was nothing missing. It wasn’t a robbery,” Cooper pointed out, reading from his laptop.
“No, there wasn’t, but things were disturbed,�
�� she said.
“That’s not noted in this report,” Cooper informed her.
“I told the detective the following day. It was like all the drawers had been opened and stuff moved around, but nothing was missing that I noticed,” Sienna explained.
“What do you mean?” Garcia asked.
“The kitchen junk drawer for instance, I’d used the scissors that morning. They should have been on the top of the pile in the center where I left them, but they were on the far-right side, near the bottom of the pile.”
“Maybe your husband looked for something and disturbed the contents?” Doc suggested.
“In every drawer in the house including my makeup drawer?” Sienna demanded.
The others exchanged glances. She couldn’t read their expressions.
“And some of the rugs were disturbed, slightly off center from where they should be, tassels tucked under, carpets with footprints in rooms we hadn’t walked in since I vacuumed last, stuff that only I would notice.”
“The cops were all over that house, I’m sure,” Garcia said.
She cut him off. “I noticed the rugs right away, before the house was full of people.”
They exchanged those looks again. She couldn’t tell if they believed her or not. The cops hadn’t, why would they?
Garcia took hold of her hand again. His concern increased. She was very detailed and thorough in her observations and consideration. How could the cops not have taken this seriously? These things were clearly the result of the house being searched.
“Tell us about these break-ins the cops didn’t believe happened,” Jackson prompted, changing the subject.
“The first one was after I came home from the funeral home, after arranging his funeral. Bailey was locked in my room this time, and I know my door wasn’t closed when I left.” She didn’t tell them that she felt something off in the house and knew someone had been in it. That was the mistake she made with the cops.
“Had she ever trapped herself in a room before?” Doc asked.
Sienna shook her head no. “Then it happened the next day, except that time Bailey was locked in the first-floor bathroom. That’s when I started to keep a gun on me at all times.”
“And nothing was taken either time?” Jackson asked.
“No, but my husband’s office door was open, and I know it had been shut since he died. And both times I know things were disturbed in the house. The third time was a few days later. I was out running errands for several hours. I took Bailey with me because I was afraid to leave her home alone, because, you know,” she stuttered.
Cooper gave her a supportive grin and nodded. “Detective Grambo noted that one.” His eyes refocused on the laptop. “He wrote in his report that you met him at the door with a gun in your hand and that you were hysterical. You insisted he search every room including the closets.”
“Someone was in the house when I got home. I’ve never seen Bailey act the way she did. She was hyperalert, nervous, pacing. She whined out sounds I’ve never heard her make before. And when I let her off the leash she ran to each room.”
“But you saw no one, and Detective Grambo found no one either,” Cooper recounted.
“That’s correct,” she said.
“What caused you to go on the run?” Garcia asked.
“I wrote a note and left it on the kitchen table the next day when I left. I wrote: dear intruder, if you tell me what you’re looking for I’ll find it and leave it for you,” she said and then cackled out a sick little laugh. “Imagine my surprise when I got home and there was a response. Someone wrote: if you don’t know what it is, you cannot provide it.” She blew out a shaky breath and her lips curved into a deep frown.
“You called the Detective,” Cooper recounted.
“Yes, you obviously have his file, so you know I did.” She rubbed her forehead and cast her eyes at the table. She hadn’t taken a bite of her food yet, but her coffee cup was empty. After she had gotten another cup of coffee and she retook her seat, she continued. “He took the note to send to the lab to be analyzed, but I think he thought I had written it. Then the two FBI agents showed up, or at least they said they were and that’s what their badges and ID’s said.”
“Grambo’s report mentions you reporting their visit, but the regional FBI office had no record of them when he checked,” Cooper said.
“Tell me something I don’t know, like who they really were. I told them everything.” Her chest tightened. Her breath hurt as she dragged it through her chest, an act that became quite a task.
Garcia watched her difficulty breathing. He wanted to stop this interview. It was too much on her. His concerned gaze flickered to Doc’s. Doc nodded, indicating he thought she could continue.
“Why did they say they were there?” Cooper asked.
“Because of the defense contractor Greg worked for and the sensitive nature of his work, they said. They wanted his laptop and cell phone, but the cops still had them.”
“So that made you go on the run?” Garcia concluded.
“No, but that was when I knew I needed to get my ducks in a row. I liquidated some accounts to have ample cash available if I needed it and I left Bailey with a friend for her safety. Then I started searching my own house to see if I could figure out what this intruder was after.” She shook her head. “I never figured it out, but in the safe in Greg’s office, I found some things I couldn’t explain.”
“Like?” Cooper asked after she had paused too long.
Her gaze rose from the table and met Cooper’s. “Passports in a couple different names with his picture and mine hidden in our previous year’s tax folders. I also found the information on how to try to track down Benjamin with a handwritten note from Greg telling me that he was the only person I should trust if anything happened to him.”
Cooper looked up from the screen. “You didn’t tell the police about that?”
“No,” she confirmed.
“Who’s Benjamin?” Garcia asked.
“An old Army buddy of Greg’s. I’ve met him a couple of times. He lives off the grid in the mountains in Colorado.”
“That’s where you were heading,” Garcia said, now understanding. That had been one of the missing pieces, why she was trying to get to Colorado.
She nodded.
“That’s when you went on the run? Finding that stuff in the safe?” Garcia prompted her when she again fell silent.
“No, it was the two visitors who said they were NSA, there to investigate the fake FBI agents, a man and a woman. I called Grambo when they showed up. I wouldn’t let them in until he got there. He talked to them, made a few phone calls and said he’d checked them out. He urged me to cooperate. They said they believed me about all that had happened and that I was in danger. They had me pack a backpack and were taking me to their regional office, with protective custody the final destination. But as we drove, I got suspicious. As we talked, they knew things that the supposed fake FBI agents said that I didn’t tell them or Grambo about. We got to a parking lot and they wanted to transfer me to a panel van. They opened the door and there was a man in there,” she paused shaking her head. “I just knew something was off. I turned and ran and that man who was in the van shot at me. Bullets hit the dumpster near me, close, too close. He didn’t shoot in warning. He was trying to shoot me.” Her breath caught in her chest, the panic of that moment coming back to her.
“The names those agents gave you belonged to real agents, but not to them. That car was found torched with the real agents in the trunk,” Madison said.
Sienna closed her eyes and fought back the bile that bubbled up into her throat. This could not be happening. What had Greg been mixed up in, and why? She just wanted to crawl under the table and hide, hoping it would all go away.
Garcia’s lips tugged into a frown. She had to have been scared shitless. “What did you do next?”
She opened her eyes at the sound of his voice. “I ditched my phone in a dumpster in that alley
. I had written down a few phone numbers earlier, just in case. I went into a bar and used some guy’s phone to call my cousin Jimmy. I hadn’t seen or even talked to him in over ten years. I knew he didn’t have anyone in his life, no wife or kids, so I figured it was safe for him for me to contact him.”
“Where did McKnight come in?” Garcia asked. That was another missing piece he needed an answer to.
“He was a childhood friend of Jimmy’s. They’ve kept in touch but aren’t tight. Jimmy just sees him to buy pot. He dabbles in all sorts of less than legal, so Jimmy hooked me up with him to help me disappear.”
“Looking at the schematic of your house and the notes from Grambo, you and your husband had separate bedrooms.” Cooper said.