“What about your mom?” Piper was more concerned about Hannah’s welfare. “We can’t leave her here.”
He sighed helplessly. “You’re right. Maybe I can convince her to go visit her sister in Houston for a couple of weeks.” He cast Piper a reassuring glance. “Finish up while I tell her she’s about to take a little trip.”
Chapter Fourteen
After considerable debate, Carter finally convinced his mother into leaving the area, although she dug in her heels on the leaving-Florida part of his original plan. The only concession Hannah had been willing to make was heading to the Gulf side of the state where a dear friend lived in St. Petersburg. Carter was more than willing to compromise, considering he’d expected a major battle over her leaving at all.
In a little over an hour, the trio was out the front door, with Carter hauling his mother’s suitcase along with his and Piper’s bags. They traveled light, but anything else could be bought along the way. They weren’t heading into the wilderness, after all. The highways were lousy with Walmarts, Kmarts and Targets, not to mention significant retail and outlet malls at most every major interchange.
Hannah handed him her hastily packed weekender. “What kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into this time, son?”
“It’s not that big of a deal, Ma. Just a misunderstanding I need to clear up. I just don’t want you caught in the middle until I do.”
As he leaned over to situate her suitcase in the trunk, Carter braced himself for the lightning that would surely strike him for lying to his mother. Except it wasn’t a bolt from out of the blue that caught him by surprise, it was Hannah with a sharp whack across the small of his back near the beltline.
“Tell me it’s none of my business, but don’t hand me that misunderstanding malarkey and expect me to swallow it.”
“Okay, fine,” he said evenly. “It’s none of your business.”
Hannah swatted him again, immediately adding, “I’m sorry, son.”
She rubbed her open palm back and forth across the exact place she’d just smacked him in a loving gesture of contrition. “I don’t know what gets into me sometimes. I know you’ve got your reasons for not confiding in me.”
“Hannah,” Piper interrupted, hastily taking the woman’s offending hand. “Why don’t we let Carter finish here?” She guided the older woman away with a distracting comment about the quiet neighborhood and an earnest inquiry as to the type of bush growing near the corner of the house.
Carter peered over the open trunk at the two women. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to protect them, yet deep-down he knew he wasn’t capable of protecting them from everything. The hairs prickled on the back of his neck as he slammed the trunk shut and scanned up and down the street.
“Let’s move it, ladies,” he said, slapping an open palm against the car roof a couple of times to gain their attention before climbing, or more precisely wedging, himself behind the steering wheel of Hannah’s sub-compact.
“I’m getting in the back and there’ll be no more talk about it.” Hannah cast a doubtful glance at Piper’s long, denim-clad legs and gave a little hoot. “If you tried to cram those gams into that backseat, not even the Jaws of Life could pry you out.”
“Just get in the damn car,” Carter barked.
“Get up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, son?” Hannah asked as she situated herself in the back while Piper obligingly climbed into the passenger seat. It was obvious the little economy car was not designed nor intended for people the height of Carter and Piper. Even with the seats adjusted all the way back, Carter thought they looked like they were riding the bumper cars at the county fair.
“At least it wasn’t the wrong side of the hideaway,” Carter mumbled. He earned himself another sound reprimand from his mother, this time on the shoulder, plus a drop-jawed, I-can’t-believe-you-said-that glare from the woman sitting next to him.
“Don’t be fresh, mister. Is that what they taught you in spy school? Backtalk and disrespect?”
He barked a laugh and rolled his eyes in Piper’s direction. “You’ve got to stop watching those James Bond reruns, Ma. My job’s not nearly as exciting as what you seem to think. Most of the work I do is shuffling paperwork and dealing with bureaucratic bullshit—the stuff on which all government contracts thrive.”
From her cramped perch in the backseat Hannah leaned forward and tapped insistently on Piper’s shoulder. “He’s got no business dragging you into something dangerous.”
Piper cast Carter a regretful glance. “I’m afraid it’s more like what I’ve gotten him into this time.”
“We’re in this together, P.J.,” he said, glancing in the side and rearview mirrors as he pulled away from the curb.
“So, what are you running from? The Russian mob, Al-Qaeda, a drug cartel?”
Carter choked. “Where are you getting this stuff, Ma?”
Piper placed a settling hand on his arm. “Hannah,” she said as she twisted around to look at the intrigued older woman. “What your son is trying very hard not to say is we work together.”
“Piper...” Carter interjected with a low warning tone.
She pretended like she hadn’t heard him and continued, “As much as I’d love to tell you all about the case we’re working on, I can’t breach confidentiality without compromising our security. You can understand that, can’t you?”
“Of course, dear.”
Carter swore his mother’s withering glare was burning a hole in the back of his skull. “You’d better do everything you can to assure her safety. You hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am, but just for the record, Piper is more than capable of taking care of herself.” At the end of the street, he stopped and checked for oncoming cross traffic before entering the intersection. “She could kick my ass from here to Pensacola and back, that’s for damn sure,” he mumbled, once again under his breath, though apparently not low enough to keep his final assessment from his mother’s keen hearing.
“Glad to hear it,” said Hannah. Carter watched his mother in the rearview mirror sit back with a satisfied nod and a gratified smile. She caught his hazel gaze in the mirror with her own. “Last thing in the world you need is a woman who won’t stand up to you.”
“No chance of that ever happening,” replied Carter.
* * *
After several rounds of hugs, Carter and Piper stood back and watched Hannah climb the steps of the Greyhound that would carry her out of harm’s way. She smiled and waved to them from her window seat as the bus pulled away.
“I wish you were on that bus with her,” said Carter, draping his arm across Piper’s shoulder as he waved at the receding bus through a cloud of noxious exhaust fumes.
“No chance of that happening, either, sonny boy,” Piper declared as she spun around and double-timed it toward the parking lot.
“We’ve got to get a bigger car,” Carter said as he folded his much-too-large frame into the much-too-tight driver’s seat of Hannah’s economy-versus-comfort set of wheels. “If my life hinged on getting out of this vehicle in a hurry I’d be dead where I sat,” he added as he worked his knees around the steering wheel with a string of grunts and groans.
The first thing he did when he pulled out of the terminal’s parking was scan the main drag for a car rental office. He spotted one a half block down on the opposite side of the street and headed straight for it.
“What are you going to do with this car?” Piper questioned as he pulled into the rental lot.
“Leave it in the long-term parking lot at the bus terminal and let my mother know where she can find it.”
Using the wallet full of identification and credit cards he’d recovered from his bedroom closet, Riggs took no time at all to settle them in a much roomier blue Grand Cherokee. He signed the necessary paperwork and
they were on their way.
Once Hannah’s car was parked and locked, they loaded their belongings into the backseat of the SUV and took off heading north on Interstate 95.
Piper shuffled through the rental agreement papers he’d asked her to shove in his bag. “Won’t Pritchard be able to track this alias?”
“This one isn’t connected to the agency,” Riggs said, merging into the flow of traffic. “Pull out the laptop.”
“And do what with it?”
“Get online and start snooping around. I need some background on Pritchard.”
“You want me to do that on your agency-issued computer?” Piper did as he requested and reached between the bucket seats to grab the laptop from Riggs’s bag.
“Try military archives first...wait, why’d you ask that about the computer?”
“A lot of electronic devices have factory-installed GPS chips, which can be activated fairly easily with the right software. If Pritchard doesn’t have any qualms in having you chipped without your knowledge, I don’t see him thinking twice about doing the same to company property.” The whole time she talked, Piper had been systematically taking the laptop apart, examining each piece and surface, inside and out, and then putting it back together. “And you’re certain he’s the security leak,” Piper questioned.
“I’m beginning to think he’s a lot more than that,” Carter answered, jabbing a finger at the laptop. “But I don’t believe he’s in it alone. That’s why I need you to start digging into his past and find me the evidence to prove it. Can you use it or not?”
“It appears clean,” was all she could say with absolute certainty.
“It appears clean?” Carter echoed. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means I can’t be any more definitive than that. This is a computer, Riggs. Have you ever seen the inside of one? It’s full of microchips and diodes. A factory-installed GPS chip can look like any other chip. A visual inspection isn’t going to find it. I need diagnostic software to do that. You don’t happen to have anything like that in your bag, do you?”
“So what you’re telling me is if there is a tracking device in my computer they’re probably already using it.”
“Maybe,” she said.
His right hand came off the steering wheel and flapped around like it had a mind of its own. “Are you trying to piss me off?”
“No,” she said, and then realized she might be wise to expand her answer. “Not intentionally anyway, but I can’t give you a yes or no answer here. Some tracking programs activate only when the device is turned on or when certain programs are initiated, others run constantly. It’s impossible to know.” She opened the laptop and hovered her finger an inch above the power button. “Do we take the chance or not? It’s your call.”
He answered without much hesitation. “Leave it off. We’ll just talk this through for now. We can always buy another laptop if we really need one.”
“Does it help to know I think you made the right decision?”
“No.”
Piper shut the computer and returned it to Riggs’s bag. She didn’t speak again until she’d resettled herself in her seat and secured her seat belt. “There are some things that bother me about all this, number one being that Jackson Pritchard built InPro. Isn’t his reputation on the line as much as mine if this gets out? I mean, won’t his accusations against me put the entire organization in a bad light? Why would he jeopardize his government contracts like that?”
“All valid questions and ones I’ve been wondering about myself. That’s why I’ve reached the conclusion that you weren’t supposed to make it out of Colombia alive.”
“That makes sense. An operative killed in the line of duty wouldn’t raise any undue suspicions when appropriation time rolls around. But if my never coming back was his objective, why’d he approve your taking a team down there to pull me out?”
“He didn’t approve anything. I didn’t tell anyone I was going until I was already there.”
“Some of my bad habits are rubbing off.”
“It sure looks that way, doesn’t it?” Carter said with a reluctant grin when he realized what she said was true. “Good and bad, every bit of my recent behavior is because of you.”
“And I’d have to say from Pritchard’s recent behavior, your instincts were right not to tell him. What I still don’t get is, why? Why is he pushing so hard to get me out of the way?”
He tapped the steering wheel with his thumbs. “You need to know you weren’t my first choice to send to Colombia. I wasn’t convinced you were the right person.”
“Really?” she drawled, turning in her seat to face him head-on. “Gee, Riggs, I can’t tell you how warm and fuzzy that makes me feel.”
Carter kept his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road. “It wasn’t that I thought you couldn’t do the job, it’s just that, well, you tend to get reckless when left to your own devices for too long. You’ve always worked better with a partner, someone who can rein in your impulsiveness when necessary.”
“Oh, this just keeps getting better and better.” Hunkering deeper into her seat, she crossed her arms and cast him a long, hard stare. “Please, continue—I can’t wait to hear what else you’ve got to say.”
“It was Pritchard who argued that you were the better candidate for the job. His instincts have always been spot-on. I had no reason to question him.”
“And what exactly is the point you’re trying to make by telling me this now? That he was wrong and you were right after all?”
“Don’t you see? He was just as aware of your weaknesses as I was, maybe more so, and yet he was willing to put you someplace where he knew the chances of you taking unnecessary risks could get you killed.”
“So what you’re saying is you never expected me to come back either?”
He blew out a frustrated sigh. “While I had concerns about your fallibilities, I think he was counting on them. I knew with close monitoring you’d be okay, but my accident prevented me from doing that. I was relieved when Jackson told me he’d sent another agent down there to keep an eye on your progress. Miguel was probably the reason you got out at all.”
In light of Riggs’s gross misconception, Piper knew what she had to do next. She was tired of pretending his attempt on her life never happened. It was time to come clean about Miguel.
“I don’t think that’s the real reason Miguel was sent there.”
Without ever moving his head, Riggs slid a quick glance in her direction. “Is there something about that night you haven’t told me?”
She nodded. “That last night Miguel and Isabel were together he tried to strangle her.”
Riggs was quiet after her confession, and she didn’t have to look at him to know he was royally pissed this time. His anger radiated off him in shock waves. She counted seventeen mile markers before he found his voice.
“I need to know one thing... Why are you just now getting around to telling me this?” His voice was restrained to the point of a grating whisper, but patience and understanding were nowhere to be found in his tempered tone.
“What more do you want from me?” Wasn’t telling him about Miguel enough?
“Oh, let me see, the whole truth might be nice for starters.”
The truth? Piper thought about that for a moment. Did she even know what that was anymore? Now it was her turn for a lengthy pause. Twelve more mile markers zipped past before she found her answer.
“The only thing that ever scared me about this job was disappointing you. I withheld the information about Miguel because I didn’t want you thinking less of me.” There it was, a handful of agonizing words, wrapped in a transparent little package and laid bare at his feet. Riggs’s opinion had always meant more to her than it should have, she knew that, but to openly admit that she’d been so comp
letely fooled by Miguel had simply been too denigrating, too embarrassing to consider exposing herself like that until she’d been forced to look for “the truth” and confess.
Piper folded her stilled hands in her lap and stared straight ahead without really seeing any of the passing Florida landscape. “What I did down there was incredibly stupid and reckless and so many other things we’re never supposed to be, but pointing an accusing finger at Miguel after the fact would have sounded like I was making excuses or trying to shift the blame for my own bad judgment on a man who couldn’t defend himself. I wasn’t sure which sounded worse—admitting how completely fooled I’d been by Miguel or making him the scapegoat.”
Carter reached across the seat and placed his hand on her shoulder. He couldn’t be certain if his reassuring touch helped or not, but touching her made him feel immediately better. “We all make mistakes. Mine was trusting Pritchard all these years. What I still can’t figure out is why he’s set his sights on you. Why now? What’s changed?”
Guiding the Jeep into the right lane, Carter took the next exit and pulled into the first gas station located nearest the off-ramp. He parked at a pump but didn’t get out. “If there’s anything else you haven’t told me, you’d better do it now. I really don’t want any more surprises to bite me in the ass when I least expect it.”
“I’m not sure what else I can tell you.”
It was time to present his own ass-biter. “For starters, who’s Kevin? His name keeps popping up in your nocturnal ranting.”
“Kevin’s my brother.” She stared out the side passenger window. It wasn’t easy to talk about him. Forbidden to mention Kevin after he died, Piper had learned to keep everything about him and the circumstances surrounding his death to herself. To open up about him now was going to take some doing on her part.
“I’m coming to the conclusion that your nightmares have never been about what happened in Colombia.”
No more secrets, she told herself. Riggs was willing to put himself on the line for her, the least she could do was share this part of her past with him. She looked down at her white-knuckled fists lying in her lap, and she shook her head. “No, you’re right,” she said. “It’s all about what happened in Germany a long, long time ago.”
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