“Got it.”
Now came the disappointing part. “You do understand that this alone won’t give us a positive ID on the man incarcerated, right?” Morgan warned.
“Why the hell not?” Taylor Lee asked, blustering. “Kunz can’t change a man’s DNA. He can do plastic surgery and behavioral modifications, but no one can do that.”
“True, but Kunz has successfully substituted false and alternate DNA test results in our computer systems before,” she said. “I mentioned it during the conference, but there was a lot going on.”
Taylor Lee’s reaction took a substantial time coming. Clearly, she realized the magnanimity of Morgan’s disclosure, and it worried her as much as it should. “How do we ever prove … Morgan, can we ever know for a fact who we’re dealing with in any of these cases with Kunz?”
“We get creative.” It wouldn’t be easy to determine whether they had Bruce Stern or his double in this case—or any person or a double in any other case. But it could be done. Necessity had demanded they find ways, and they had. Morgan refilled her coffee cup, then returned to the bar and slid onto her padded stool. “We’ve had this problem before,” she said. “We have methods.”
“What? If DNA won’t do it, what does?”
“Joan Foster, doing just what she did for us last night.”
“Oh, hell, Morgan. We can’t let Joan put this incarcerated guy through the paces.” Taylor heaved a sigh. “If we bring her to the brig and she does her thing, word will be all over kingdom come in an hour. And we’d set off so many alarms, they’d still be blaring a month from now.” Taylor Lee huffed, shooting static through the phone. “You know as well as I do that jerk of a commander running Providence isn’t going to lift a finger to help us. There’s no way he’d release the suspect into our custody to bring him to her at the hospital. He wants us to fail.”
He did. Well, he wanted Sally Drake to fail. Pissing contests are so stupid, Morgan thought.
Taylor Lee grunted. “We’re screwed.”
She was right, at least insofar as she went. “True on all fronts,” Morgan said. “But—”
Jackson walked out of the guest bedroom and into the kitchen, wearing a pair of khaki slacks and a soft blue golf shirt. Freshly shaven, smelling of soap, he reached up to adjust his collar.
“Don’t worry. Seriously,” she said into the phone, knowing a way around this. “We have a secret weapon.” She smiled at Jackson. “I’ll handle it.”
“Handle what? What can we do?”
“It’s all relative,” she said, not wanting to be overtly blunt until she’d gained Jackson’s agreement. “I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve worked out the details.”
“Whatever you say,” Taylor told her, then shared an update on other pertinent information.
“Thanks,” Morgan said, mentally noting all she’d been told. She hung up the phone, poured Jackson a cup of coffee, and then warmed up her own. “I need something from you, Jackson.” She passed him the cup.
“Sure.” He sat down and accepted it. “What?”
Morgan looked him right in the eye. “Your blood.”
His hand stilled, and the cup stopped halfway to his mouth. “Do I get to know why?”
Her face went hot. “Can we leave it with, ‘because I asked'?” She could tell him anything, but she needed to know where things stood between them now, not later when she might be relying on him to cover her back.
He stared at her a long moment. “You’re asking me for a lot.” “I am.”
“To trust a woman who shot me twice, drugged me, and then abducted me—” “I remember.”
“Without any explanation whatsoever …”
“Not really.” She gave him a little shrug. “I’m guilty on all counts of everything you said. There’s no dispute.” Her honestly shone in her eyes. “But I’m also the woman trying to save your brother’s life and to find your sister-in-law’s murderer.”
Slowly, Jackson set down his cup, looked at it a long second, and then stuck out his arm, his palm up and the vein at his inner elbow exposed. “Take all you need.”
Trust. Morgan’s chest swelled. It wasn’t uncommon for her patients to come to trust her, but Jackson wasn’t her patient, and he didn’t have the benefit of first getting to know her well. Their first interactions had been adversarial and fierce, then intense and emotionally hyper-charged. They had crosscut a lot of the usual bonding that formed in relationships, zipping past the normal introductory phase and rocketing along at warp speed.
Touched, Morgan had to work to keep her voice level. “Thank you, Jackson,” she said and genuinely meant it. Trust couldn’t come easily to him after a lifetime that included no support. Why Bruce hadn’t been there for Jackson confounded her, because he certainly had been for his brother. In time, she needed to be able to answer that question. But for now, it was more than enough that Jackson had somehow reached beyond all those issues and the baggage he carried because of them. Somehow, he had justified giving his trust to her. Knowing what that had to have cost him, how could she not react to it? Not be touched? Moved? Honored and humbled? And really, really surprised?
She touched his arm, gently pressed down, lowering it to the bar and resting her fingertips against his skin. “We’ll drop by the hospital on the way to see Bruce after we eat something.”
“All right.” He looked at her fingertips on his arm, and an odd expression crossed his face. He blinked, buried it, but didn’t move.
He liked her touching him. A thrill skimmed through her. She lifted her fingers, and he pulled his arm back, dropped it close to his body.
“I know you said you weren’t hungry, but I need fuel.” She walked to the fridge, cracked open the door. “It’s a decent meal now, or I’ll be looking for doughnuts or anything sweet and shoving them down my throat all day.”
“I hate it when I do that,” he confessed.
“Me, too,” she said. “I hit the treadmill for an extra mile, which is hardly enough.”
He tilted his head. “You’re working me, Morgan Cabot, so I eat.”
“Yeah, I guess I am. But every word was true.” She pulled fresh onions and tomatoes out of the fridge, eggs and mushrooms and cheese—all the things needed for her favorite omelets.
“At least you’re honest about it,” he said more to himself than to her, then drank half a cup of coffee in silence, watching her work at the stove. “Ah.”
“Ah?” she asked, setting a plate before him filled with a fluffy omelet and two slices of whole wheat toast.
“You know for a fact I’m Jackson Stern. Now you’re going to compare my blood with Bruce’s to make sure that he’s my blood brother … in case he isn’t.”
Morgan looked away. The man was too sharp for his own good. She added her eggs to the pan and heard the little sizzle.
“There wasn’t a question in that remark, Morgan. You can relax,” he said.
“Good.” She folded the omelet, feeling a slight tremor in her hand and hoping he didn’t notice it.
“But I do have another comment …”
Smelling the green peppers, she flipped the omelet from the pan to her plate. “What’s that?”
Jackson waited until she looked at him to ask. “You’re clearly afraid Bruce—the guy in the brig—isn’t my brother,” Jackson said, his gaze boring, his expression far more sober than curious.
She blinked, and then blinked again. “That was also a remark, not a question,” she said.
“Yes, but there is a question, Morgan,” Jackson warned her, “and I do want it answered.”
She set her plate down and leaned against the bar for support. He seemed emotionally stable enough to handle whatever came up, and she had the authorization for full disclosure, but was he ready? Really? He had been through an enormous amount of devastation in the past twenty-four hours. “All right. I’ll do my best.”
He rimmed his cup with his thumb. “If the man arrested isn’t Bruce, then who is he? And where is
my brother?”
That she could answer honestly. Jackson wouldn’t like what she would say, but it would be the truth. “I don’t know whether or not he’s Bruce,” she confessed. “That’s why I need your blood—to compare it to the detainee’s to make that determination. And if he isn’t Bruce, then I don’t know who he is, or where your brother is located.”
Jackson obviously hadn’t expected an answer that frank. His jaw dropped open, and he just stared at her. It took a moment for him to recover, and when he did, he tossed down the gauntlet of challenge. “Yet. You don’t know yet, right?”
“Yes, that is correct.” She stiffened and accepted it. “I don’t know yet.”
CHAPTER 5
The brig was actually a minimum-security prison located less than a mile from the hospital on Providence Air Force Base.
The facility itself was a muddy-colored, multistory square brick building like most of those on the base, but unlike the others, it was surrounded by an eight-foot fence topped with razor wire. One gate led into it and its associated cluster of buildings, and long before reaching any of them, an entrant was detained at a manned gate until given authorization to continue on inside.
Morgan braked to a stop outside the brick and dark-glass guard shack positioned in the middle of the road, and rolled down her window, ID badge in hand. Jackson rolled a hip to remove his wallet from his slacks’ pocket.
A young airman walked outside to her car door. He was armed with a gun and a scanner. First, he examined her ID; then he examined her. “Would you please remove your sunglasses, Dr. Cabot?”
She did and then held still. Through the open window, he flashed a scanner over her left iris and then her right. When she cleared the security check, he walked around the front of the car to the passenger’s side, checked Jackson’s ID card, scanned him, then returned to Morgan’s side of the vehicle.
“I thought this was a minimum security facility,” Jackson said softly so only she could hear. The air conditioner blew bits of his hair over his forehead.
“It is, but it’s a minimum security federal prison at Providence.” Catching Jackson’s blank look, she added, “It’s under Colonel Gray’s command, and he’s …”
“Anal?”
“And then some,” she confessed, hoping it didn’t come back to haunt her.
The airman continued watching his screen, pretending to be stone deaf. No doubt he also had stories to tell on Gray, but he kept them to himself. Probably wise, considering the man had the power to make his life a living hell. Finally, he said, “Okay, you’re clear.” He looked at Morgan. “Drive straight ahead and park in row C, Dr. Cabot. If you park anywhere else, your car will be impounded and you’ll have to get clearance from the base commander to get it back.” His tone promised it wouldn’t be a pleasant experience.
“Row C. Got it. Thanks.” She rolled up her window, pulled out, and glanced over at Jackson. “In case you had any doubts that I was unfairly biased against Colonel Gray, that policy should prove I wasn’t. He’s … slightly rigid.”
“Slightly?” Jackson asked, cutting loose his sarcasm.
“I was being gracious.”
“Don’t waste your energy,” he said. “It’s obvious he’s still at war with Commander Drake and flexing his muscles wherever he can just to needle her.”
“You know about that?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“Uh, no. Most people have no idea Commander Drake is even here.”
“Not so,” Jackson countered. “Everyone knows where she is and that Gray’s shorts are in a wad because she beat him out of a plum Special Forces command. Though very few know that the plum command entails the S.A.S.S. units.”
How Jackson had access to this highly classified information was anyone’s guess. But it was right on target, which meant he’d been briefed from above and not learned it through the underground grapevine below. “That pretty well covers it.”
“She’s the better commander, and he should grow up.”
“He should, but considering he’s about to retire, I don’t hold out much hope for the growing-up part.”
“Ah, the voice of personal experience from dealing with the man.”
Crossing the D row, Morgan glanced at Jackson.
“Gray hates Commander Drake because he lost out to her,” Jackson explained. “He coveted that job, and there’s only one reason he hasn’t already retired. He was supposed to go last year but pulled his papers.”
“I didn’t know that.” Being a civilian consultant, Morgan didn’t hear all the gossip, though she picked up on a lot during her counseling sessions. “So what’s the one reason?”
“The Providence command,” Jackson said. “These days, his purpose in life is to make everyone under Drake’s command miserable, which naturally includes you.” Jackson’s disgust was evident. “Damn shame. At one time, Gray was a decent officer.”
So Jackson knew about that, too. Her curiosity about how he’d come to know so much grew in leaps. “Have you ever worked under him?”
“No.” He let out a humorless laugh. “Not bloody likely.”
That was pretty adamant talk for a career military officer. They were routinely handed assignments they didn’t want and were given no choice but to take them and give 100 percent on the job. She let out a noncommittal murmur and then decided to just straight out ask what she most wanted to know. “What exactly do you do these days?”
“Officially, I fly into hurricanes. Weather recon.” His eyes smiled, but his lips remained flat. “Unofficially, I dabble.”
“Dabble?” She waited, and he nodded; then she pushed further. “Which means you’re involved in whatever, wherever, whenever,” she surmised, figuring he was assigned directly to the Secretary of Defense or else to General Shaw, and his Hurricane Hunter job was a cover. He was probably assigned to the secretary; he had been the one who first authorized Colonel Drake to grant Jackson full disclosure. General Shaw had only later confirmed it.
Jackson didn’t respond.
She didn’t really expect that he would, but she couldn’t stop herself from nudging him a little more. “You do know that you’re at liberty to talk to me about anything, right? It’s all authorized and totally confidential.”
“I’m aware of that, yes.”
So since their last meeting, he’d been briefed on her, too. She turned the radio down a notch. “That’s what I do,” she said, “listen to people talk about things they need to talk about but can’t discuss with anyone else.”
Morgan pulled into her assigned space in Row C and slid the gearshift into park. She left the engine running to keep the air conditioner going. It was melt-you-in-five-seconds hot outside and muggy as hell.
Jackson, ignoring Morgan’s last comment, turned to another subject. “I think Laura knew something was seriously wrong with Bruce, Morgan. I can’t prove it, but it’s the only way most of what’s happened makes any sense.” “Why do you think so?”
Jackson turned the radio off and unsnapped his safety belt. It clicked loudly in the silence. “Because she came to you,” he said, twisting in his seat to face her. “And because coming to you would be a career-killer for Bruce, and she knew it.”
It wasn’t really, unless the stress of the job was deemed too much a burden for the individual carrying it. That could compromise the military member and national security. “Not necessarily, Jackson. In three years, I’ve had to recommend fewer than five transfers to less demanding positions.” Ones where high-level security clearances weren’t required and their absence didn’t create command issues.
“Trust me on this,” he countered. “In Bruce’s job, talking to anyone is a career-killer, and Laura knew it. That’s why her coming to you, especially in an official capacity, has bugged the hell out of me since I first heard it. She wouldn’t do it. She would never do something she knew would kill his career. It meant everything to him, and he meant everything to her.”
Jackson believed
what he was saying, and as connected as he was, if he believed it, she’d be a fool not to believe it, too. “But she did come to me.” Surprise trickled up Morgan’s back, and two questions burned in her mind. She doubted Jackson would answer either of them, but she had to ask. “What is Bruce’s job?”
Jackson nodded no.
Disappointment shot through her, and she backed off then tried a different approach. “Do you think Laura wanted Bruce reassigned to a less demanding job? One where maybe he would be less exposed and at home more?”
Fear flittered through Jackson’s eyes, and he nodded. “That’s possible.”
A strong intuitive flash zapped Morgan, cramped her muscles, and she recalled Taylor Lee’s impression of Bruce and Laura arguing and him grabbing her upper arms. He’d squeezed them so tightly they’d bruised.
It took Morgan a moment to recover and speak. “Her interfering with his career, maybe to the point that as a result he’d be removed from his job—you think that could be sufficient motive for Bruce to kill her.”
Jackson’s eyes shone overly bright, and he cleared his throat. “Bruce lived and breathed his job. He’d be lost without Laura, but without his work …” Jackson looked out through the windshield. “Bruce would rather be … dead.”
Morgan’s heart beat hard and fast. “So you think he killed her for talking to me?”
No answer. He dropped his gaze to the floorboard.
Morgan reached over, covered his hand with hers. “Jackson?” She waited until he looked up at her. The pain radiating from him staggered her. “Do you think Bruce killed Laura?”
Regret, remorse, and guilt—so much guilt—pounded off him in deep, rolling waves. “I don’t know what he’s done,” he said, “but to save his job …” Jackson dipped his chin to his chest and cupped his head in his hands. “God, forgive me.”
Morgan stroked his shoulder. “Don’t do this, Jackson,” she whispered. “There’s a lot at stake. You have to consider all possibilities.”
“But he’s my brother, Morgan,” he said, his voice trembling with anguish. “My brother.”
Vicki Hinze - [War Games 04] Page 11