“Morgan, it’s Taylor Lee. I’m coming up dry on every front, and I don’t mind telling you it’s pissing me off.” Her sigh crackled static through the phone. “Something’s not right on this whole Bruce thing. I don’t know what it is, but as deep as we’re digging, something should be floating to the surface, you know? But it’s not. It’s almost like someone’s making sure it can’t. Even Snow White wasn’t this damn clean.” Another pause, then, “You know what? I’ve had it for the night. I’m going to grab Rick and go dancing, burn off some stress. Oh, don’t worry. I remember whom we’re up against. No drinking. That’s a promise, so don’t worry.”
Click. Taylor Lee had hung up.
Taylor Lee often drank to wash away the images she saw. It had to be hell to see the horrors inside someone’s mind. Shopping malls brought on three-margarita binges. Sometimes one binge would dull the images enough that she could bear them; sometimes a double binge was required. Morgan and Jazie understood and did what they could to protect Taylor Lee when she needed binge relief. So far, that had worked out fine. Taylor Lee was acidic and blunt and sometimes a royal pain in the ass, but she kept her promises. Confident she would this time, Morgan went on to the next call.
“Hey, Morgan. It’s me, Jazie, checking in. I’ve been thinking about that “help Bruce” message. I took it that Laura wanted us to help him but, you know, I’m wondering now if maybe she wasn’t telling us that he had recruited her to help him with something.” Jazie paused to think on that supposition a second and then added, “Otherwise, what’s going on here … well, the puzzle pieces just don’t fit.” She mumbled something she obviously didn’t mean to convey to Morgan, and then continued. “The silence is deafening on this entire case. I don’t have to tell you how weird that is, Morgan. There’s got to be a reason we haven’t thought of yet, and whatever it is, I think it might be key to figuring it all out.” Jazie let out a sigh that was half yawn. “Anyway, I’ve got to crash now, or I’m going to burn. Think about what I said, okay? We’ll talk it over in the morning.”
Morgan unbuttoned her blouse. Jazie had a point Morgan hadn’t considered. What if Bruce had recruited Laura to help him?
Would he do that?
It wouldn’t be an extraordinary action between a man and his wife. He has a problem. They discuss it and then work through it together as a team. Teamwork is what marriage is all about.
Whoa, wait a minute, Morgan. Think classified information. G. R.I. D. Thomas Kunz, master torturer and mass murderer. Would Bruce really bring Laura in on that? Willingly?
Ordinarily, she’d bet against it. He was into his job, and he loved her. But as a last resort … He might, if she was unwittingly dragged into it and he couldn’t prevent it.
Morgan wondered, and again Joan Foster and her situation came to Morgan’s mind. She glanced at the clock. After eleven. She hated to call so late, especially with Joan being pregnant and up all night last night, but she likely had slept today and odds were decent that she was still awake. Morgan squelched her reluctance and dialed the phone.
Joan answered, sounding groggy. “Foster.”
Morgan winced. “Did I wake you?”
“I was getting up anyway,” she said. “Time for my every-half-hour trip to the bathroom.”
“The joys of pregnancy, huh?”
“This child is constantly bouncing on my bladder. I swear it.”
Morgan chuckled. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I wanted to ask a question only you can answer.”
“Okay. But you have to either wait a minute or go with me to the bathroom.”
“I’ll wait.” Morgan laughed again and walked into her bedroom, stripping off her slacks and top. She snagged her robe from its hook and slid into it.
“Ah, much better,” Joan said, returning to the phone. “Sorry about that, but now I can actually think.”
Morgan tied the sash at her waist and returned to the office, then sat down in her chair and swiveled back and forth. “When Kunz was trying to push you into working for him, did you consider telling Simon about what was happening?” Simon was Joan’s husband, a truly good man in Morgan’s book.
“Not at first,” Joan said. “I was too afraid. But after my grandparents were killed, well, I figured the odds were high that we were all going to die and Simon at least deserved to know why.”
Morgan tapped the floor with her bare toe, stopping the chair. “So you did talk to him about it.”
“I said I considered talking to him. I didn’t say I’d done it,” she corrected Morgan. “Because if I said I had done it, then I’d be admitting that I violated my security clearance.” She paused long enough to let Morgan digest that comment. “We both know how strongly the powers that be frown on that.”
She had talked to Simon. Definitely. But both she and Morgan had to be careful here. “Can we discuss a hypothetical situation, then? You’re the closest I’ve got to the real thing.”
“Sure.”
Okay, the ground rules had been laid and acknowledged. Now they were free to talk turkey. “Hypothetically, if when you were in this situation you had talked to Simon,” Morgan said, protecting Joan’s security clearance, “when do you think you would have done so?”
Joan didn’t pause to think; just responded. “Probably after my parents were killed.”
“Why then?”
“Kunz had come to me through an emissary, and of course that didn’t work. So he killed my grandparents to force the issue. When that didn’t work either, he murdered my parents. I thought they were safe. I stashed them, Morgan. No one could connect either of them or me to the place they were hiding. But he found them—I still have no idea how—and he killed them.” Bitterness stole into her voice. “I nearly lost my mind then.”
“Feeling responsible for the death of someone you love is hell.”
“Multiply that times four.” She grunted to cover a crack in her voice. “Being responsible is worse than hell. You think getting really good at what you do is an asset until something like this happens. Then you wish you were cleaning toilets for a living. No one kills anyone to find out how to clean toilets.”
She had a point. “So, hypothetically, you would have considered talking with Simon then?”
“Hypothetically, yes, I would have.”
“If you had disclosed the situation to him then—or at any other time—would it have been to seek his help in resolving it?”
Joan let out a little laugh devoid of humor. “No, Morgan. My Simon is a brilliant man, and God knows how dear he is to me, but the simple fact is that no man resolves any situation with Thomas Kunz. If you kill him, you win. If you don’t, you lose. If you’re lucky, he kills you. If not, well, you hope to hell you’re strong enough to suffer torture well and you live with the guilt of causing loved ones to die.”
Regret. Remorse. Self-hatred. Morgan sensed it all, and it was so unfair and so strong it nearly bent her double. “You survived, Joan.”
“Yes, I did. But what it cost my family …” She sucked in a sharp breath and dropped her voice. “Speaking honestly? There isn’t a moment in a single day of my life, asleep or awake, that I’m not afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Kunz coming back for me. Of him hurting my family.” Joan’s voice trembled. “He could at any time. And let’s face it—there’s nothing I can do to stop him.”
Feeling Joan’s fear, dread, and mental anguish aroused compassion in Morgan. Her throat tightened, and her voice turned dusty and thick. “How do you stand it?”
“A minute at a time,” she said, repeating the words she’d said to Morgan at the hospital.
Morgan’s eyes burned. The back of her nose tingled, and her vision blurred. “Hypothetically, if you had talked to Simon, would he still be afraid, too?”
“Absolutely,” she said with complete candor. “No parent or spouse could avoid it, and Simon is both.”
In light of all this, there was something Morgan just didn’t understand. “But
you’re comfortable enough in your life to have a new baby.”
“I wish that were true, but it’s not. Oh, the baby coming is real enough, but I’m never comfortable, Morgan. Kunz chills my blood. More than most others, I saw firsthand what he’s capable of doing and the extraordinary measures he’ll take to reach his objective. I might not be in his custody anymore, but I’m still his prisoner. I will be until one of us is dead.”
“But the baby?”
Joan paused, then confessed, “Some things aren’t planned.”
Morgan grabbed a glass from the kitchen cabinet and filled it with water. “I appreciate your being so frank with me … about your considerations and helping me with this hypothetical situation.”
“I’m assuming that the reason you asked wasn’t idle curiosity.”
“No,” Morgan admitted. “It’s not idle curiosity. But I’m not sure enough of anything yet to get into what it is. I need more time.”
“Well, you know where I am if you need me.”
“Thanks, Joan.”
“Do remember my every-half-hour pit stops. Allow me an extra ring or two.”
Morgan smiled through a yawn. “You bet. Night.”
“Night.”
Morgan hung up, went to her bedroom’s bath, brushed her teeth, and then finger-smoothed her hair in the mirror. The humidity had made it wild.
Joan’s disclosure and insights had her mind spinning. Bruce had relied on Laura; she was totally supportive of him, and of his career. Odds were high that if Kunz had approached him—putting it gently—Bruce would have busted security at some point and talked to Laura about it, and Kunz might have killed her because Bruce hadn’t become a believer and wasn’t cooperating.
So had Kunz sent the G.R.I.D. assassins to kill Jackson for the same reason—to coerce Bruce?
For one significant reason, that didn’t fit. Kunz wouldn’t go through all the trouble of framing Bruce for Laura’s murder unless he’d played out his hand with Bruce and his double and he simply wanted Bruce taken out of the game. But from the Intel intercepts, they knew for a fact that Kunz had cut his killers loose on Jackson before he had murdered Laura and framed Bruce.
That made it far more likely that the assassins really had been after Bruce. The intercepts had been on Captain Stern, which didn’t confirm or dismiss either of the brothers as the specific target.
Which likely had poor Jackson half out of his mind, worried that Laura had been killed because of him. And Bruce totally out of his mind, feeling regret, remorse, resentment, and guilt—all the feelings that Joan Foster lived with so intensely that she would not have deliberately conceived a baby to bring into this world.
It didn’t feel quite right to Morgan, but she was getting closer to the truth. She sensed it in the very marrow of her bones. For Jackson’s sake, she wished she had the evidence to back it up and prove Bruce innocent.
She clicked off the bathroom light and returned to the answering machine with one thing troubling her deeply. If Bruce had been framed, and he had been the target, and Laura had been murdered to let Bruce know that Kunz meant business, then Thomas Kunz had to know that Bruce was in the brig before the Sunrise was due at Magnolia Beach harbor, which meant …
Oh, God. Kunz had been targeting Jackson.
The question was, why?
Not knowing set Morgan’s teeth on edge, but her intuition strummed strong. There were still facets of the situation that hadn’t yet surfaced.
Knowing that as well as she knew her own name, she tapped the button to listen to the remaining messages. An unrelated patient with a routine question. A medical supplier wanting to know if she had reviewed the materials he’d left at the office with Jazie.
And another hang-up call.
The fine hair on Morgan’s neck stood on end. She checked the time it had come in. Just minutes before she’d actually arrived home.
Intuitive warnings flashed danger signs, slammed them one upon another through her mind. The men at the Sterns’ house had been Kunz’s men. The man she’d shot in the shoulder had been a G.R.I.D. assassin. They had picked up her license plate number and run it. They did know who she was and where she lived. And they were monitoring her.
Morgan shook and mentally debated on a course of action. She knew what she intuited would prove to be fact, but at the moment she couldn’t prove it. And that left her with no course of action to take outside of alerting Home Base and being vigilant and aware.
She left a message for Darcy on their non-emergency line, then grabbed her car keys and cell phone. The urge to test her alarm system hit her hard. She resisted pressing the panic button, and forced herself to go on to bed. Before she got in, she lifted the edge of the mattress and pulled out the.38 she kept there for personal protection. As tired as she was—it’d been nearly forty-eight hours since she’d really slept—she couldn’t be sure she would awaken easily. But when she did, if the need warranted, she would awaken loudly.
Gun in one hand, car keys in the other, and cell phone next to her hip, Morgan settled back against the pillows. The house alarm was her first line of defense. She glanced at the monitor on the wall near the light switch. Its red button glowed in the dark. It was armed.
And so was she.
The phone rang.
Reflex kicked in before she opened her eyes, and Morgan hit the panic button on her car alarm. Even being at the far end of the house, she could hear it—too clearly.
The sound was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Her car sounded as if it was outside. Not in the garage where she’d left it.
She snagged the phone, rolled to the floor and over to the edge of the room. Sliding up, she hugged the wall beside the window and peeked outside. Her Jeep was parked at the end of the driveway. Morning had come with a vengeance. Bright sunlight glinted off the vehicle’s front bumper.
“What the hell?” She clicked the button to answer the persistently ringing phone. “Yes, what?”
“Morgan?” Jackson sounded worried. “What’s wrong?”
“Someone’s taken my Jeep out of the garage and parked it at the end of my driveway.”
“You sure you garaged it?”
She frowned into the phone, slung on a pair of jeans, propping the phone between her shoulder and ear. “I’m sure. Totally sure,” she said again, adding weight to her claim. “I was tired, Jackson, not drunk.”
“Don’t touch it,” he said. “It’s probably rigged with explosives.”
She tucked her weapon into her waistband and looked outside again. Nosey’s little boy was walking across the street toward her Jeep. “Call the bomb squad at Providence,” she gushed. “I’ve got to go.”
“What is it?”
“Justin—the kid across the street—he’s by the damn Jeep.” She tossed down the phone and took off running. “Morgan, don’t touch that car!”
Jackson’s shout followed her to the front door. She jerked it open, setting off the house alarm, which turned out to be a good thing. It startled the boy into stopping a full five feet away from the Jeep.
“Justin!” she shouted, running outside, the car and house alarms wailing. “Don’t touch that car!”
He cocked his head, looked at her oddly, and shouted over the sirens, “I wasn’t gonna touch it, Dr. Morgan.”
“Back up, honey.” She reached him and grasped his shoulder. “Get back across the street. All the way, okay?”
“Why?” He dragged his feet, not wanting to go home. “I wasn’t gonna hurt anything, I swear.” He hollered to make sure she had heard him. “I just wanted to see your flat tires.”
She guided him back to his own front yard and then glanced back at her vehicle. Indeed, all four tires were flat. “Stay here.” She looked him right in the eyes. “Justin, stay here. Do you understand me? It’s dangerous, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“From a flat tire?”
“Somebody messed with my car, honey. I don’t know what else they did.”
“All rig
ht.” He stubbed his sneaker’s toe on the concrete curb. “But it wasn’t me,” he said, clearly figuring he was in trouble. “I promise I didn’t touch nothing.”
Several of her neighbors spilled out onto the street to see what all the racket was about. Morgan sprinted back to her house and turned the house alarm off, then went back outside and apologized, eager to get the neighbors back inside their homes and out of harm’s way as quickly as possible.
They listened to her request to retreat, but all the curtains up and down the block were spread open and people were peeking out to see what was happening.
Within minutes, a bomb squad arrived. Morgan met the team at the curb, and she briefly explained that she was a psychologist and one of her patients had apparently gone off the deep end. Satisfied, they began sweeping the Jeep.
Before they finished, a white-faced Jackson arrived in a beat-up blue truck. Who did it belong to?
“Morgan!” He leapt out at the curb and ran over to her. “Are you okay?”
She nodded, and he blew out a steadying breath, but his hands on her arms still shook. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “You called. The phone ringing startled me awake, and I guess I hit the panic button on my key ring.” How humiliating to have to admit she’d been sleeping with it in her hand! “The alarm was louder than it should have been with the Jeep in the garage, so I looked out the window and saw it’d been moved to the foot of the driveway. Justin was heading toward it, to look at the flat tires.” She nodded at the boy sitting on his front porch watching intently.
The same boy who had told her Jackson was sleeping on her front porch.
Jackson’s jaw went rigid. “Were they in the house?”
He didn’t have to identify whom he meant. They both knew he was talking about the G.R.I.D. assassins.
“I don’t know. I haven’t checked yet.” She blocked the glare of the baking sun with a cupped hand at her brow.
“What has the bomb squad found?” Jackson motioned to the team with a nod.
“So far, a device on the ignition, one that would activate on depressing the gas pedal, and another one set to explode when the driver’s door opened,” she said, swallowing convulsively. “But they’re not done yet.”
Vicki Hinze - [War Games 04] Page 17