Special Agent's Perfect Cover

by Marie Ferrarella

  With a sudden, jolting start that played along the length of his entire body, Hawk woke up. Initial disorientation dissolved in increments. There was a blanket partially covering him, the bottom half pooling onto the floor. Daylight forcefully pushed its way into the farmhouse through the bay window. Hawk drew in a deep breath, trying to clear his head.

  How long had he been asleep?

  Sitting up, he saw that he wasn’t alone in the room, the way he’d first thought. Carly was propped up in the dilapidated armchair, her rifle laying across her thighs, giving every appearance of being ready to be pressed into service at a moment’s notice.

  She was awake and, unlike him, gave no sign that this was a recent event. When he blinked and looked closer, he realized that she looked tired. Like someone who had been up all night.

  Again, that was his fault.

  “How long have you been sitting there?” he asked.

  The tension that had built up in her neck was practically killing her. She tried to rotate her shoulders to alleviate it a little. It didn’t help. “All night,” she told him.

  Guilt burrowed through him and grew. He was the professional here. He was the one who was supposed to be protecting her, not the other way around. “Did you get any sleep?”

  “Sleep’s highly overrated,” she answered flippantly, then added more honestly, “I thought it would be safer if one of us stayed awake, just in case.” She saw the concern that passed over his chiseled features, and it touched her that he cared. “I can catch up on my sleep some other time,” she assured him. “Right now, I wanted to be sure Charlie didn’t decide to pay us another little visit, maybe this time bringing along some of his little friends to finish what he started.”

  Thinking about it—since she’d had nothing to do all night but watch Hawk sleep, listen for strange sounds and think—it had occurred to her that Grayson’s baby-faced disciple surrounded himself with men who seemed downright dangerous.

  She put nothing past that crew, including torture, rape and murder. “The last thing I wanted was for us to be caught by surprise by those happy henchmen.”

  Carly got up from the armchair, leaning her rifle against it. She watched Hawk with concern. He’d moaned several times during the night, no doubt due to pain, but mercifully, he’d gone on sleeping.

  “How’s the arm?” she asked.

  Right now, it felt pretty stiff and ached like hell. “This wouldn’t be the time to take up juggling,” he cracked. “But all things considered, it’s pretty good,” he pronounced, looking at it as if it had just caught his attention. And then he glanced back at her, a grin slowly curving his lips. “You’re welcome to stitch me up anytime.”

  That was one task she didn’t ever want to repeat. She’d prefer her stitching to be relegated to mending clothes.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ll pass,” she told him. “I’m going to make some coffee. You interested?”

  “Always,” he said, his voice low. And then he added, “And I’d like some coffee, too.”

  That stopped her cold in her tracks for a good minute. Turning slowly, she looked at Hawk. Their eyes met and held for what seemed like forever. Hawk smiled at her as he began to get up again.

  Snapping out of her momentary mental revelry, a revelry that took her to places she told herself he couldn’t have meant for her to go—there had to be some other kind of meaning behind his words than the one that had instantly popped up in her mind—she said in a loud, authoritative voice, “Sit.”

  Hawk remained standing, though for the moment, he leaned his hand on the back of the sofa for subtle support. “That might work on your dog, Carly,” he began on a warning note. He had always hated being ordered around, and she knew it.

  “Don’t have a dog,” she pointed out glibly.

  “I don’t wonder,” he said, taking small steps, each one a little more steady than the last. He was getting his sea legs back, he thought sarcastically. “Any dog of yours would have to run away from home to regain his self-respect.” Switching gears, he told her, “I’ll ‘sit’ in the kitchen. Will that make you happy?”

  What would have made her happy was if she could have gone back and relived her life, this time making sure not to make the same mistakes that would have brought her to this point.

  But there was no point in wishing for what hadn’t a chance in hell of coming true. She had to deal with what was in front of her. She always had, and she didn’t intend to change now.

  So she pretended not to care one way or another and shrugged at what he’d just said. “What you do is entirely up to you.”

  “Good to know we’re on the same page,” he replied, a trace of humor in his voice as well as his eyes.

  What he needed to do right now was to build up his strength and endurance. He approached the kitchen table, reminding himself of all he had to do. He had another twenty-four hours to get ready—and that included getting his body back to working at, if not maximum efficiency, then at least, an acceptable level.

  Carly had risked everything she held dear to save him. He intended to pay her back for that. It was the least he could do.

  Chapter 15

  They were cutting it so close to the actual time of the ceremony, Carly felt she could barely breathe.

  But they had to cut it this close, Hawk had explained to her, and she both understood and fully agreed. Understood that their biggest asset here was the element of surprise, and the timetable for that had to be precise. Since the front door was no longer a viable option, she and Hawk would be gaining access to the community center from within, via an old, long-unused underground route.

  She’d all but forgotten that it even existed.

  There was an old network of underground passages threading their way beneath the various buildings erected in Cold Plains. Since none of the passages were remotely straightforward and had been dug almost two hundred years ago, not many were aware of their existence, and the few who were had no occasion to mention them.

  But Carly did.

  She suddenly remembered the stories her mother had told her years ago, passed on from her grandfather, about how the tunnels were initially dug to protect the early Wyoming settlers from the wrath of outraged Native Americans looking to rid their land of the scourge that had oppressed them: the pioneers who were settling all over their precious land.

  “And I know that there’s one right under the community center,” Carly had told Hawk yesterday as they were trying to come up with a way to rescue Mia from what Carly considered a fate worse than death. “It comes up right into the old storage room at the back of the building.”

  “Great.” That gave them a way into the community center, but that still left the little matter of getting into the tunnel to begin with. “Do you know where that particular tunnel starts?”

  Carly did her best to remember. Vague fragments, mosaic pieces from her childhood, tumbled about in her mind, like a kaleidoscope, at first refusing to come together to form any whole.

  She concentrated harder, refusing to give up and eventually, it came to her. “One of the ways into the tunnels was this old, abandoned mine shaft right outside of town.”

  That sounded vaguely familiar to him, like something he’d seen when he was a kid here. “They struck a vein of silver back at the turn of the last century,” he recalled abruptly. It surprised him how easily memories from his childhood came back to him, despite all his efforts to block that part of his life—both man and boy here in Cold Plains—from his mind.

  But then, he reminded himself, he’d never forgotten a single thing about Carly, and she was a huge part of that time.

  She nodded. Tales of the silver mine were as close to a legend as they had in this little town—before Grayson and his crew came.

  “I think I remember my mother saying that the mine stayed open almost twenty years before it was boarded up. People kept hoping to find another mother lode, but all they ever got were just a couple of small veins that
wound up petering out.”

  “We played there as kids.” At the time, he’d never thought to go much farther than the mouth. It was during a period of his childhood when ghosts had held a real threat for him.

  Hawk paused now, thinking about what might be ahead. Taking Carly along was just putting her life in jeopardy. “Listen, Carly, this could get really dangerous.”

  They were already in his car, ready to leave. “What’s your point? I already know that.”

  He shifted in his seat to look at her. “Maybe what you don’t know is that I don’t want to risk you getting hurt.”

  Then don’t leave when this is all over, she thought. Annoyed with herself and her moment of weakness at a time like this, she pushed the thought aside. “It’s my sister we’re rescuing. If anything you should be the one staying behind.” She gazed at the makeshift sling she’d insisted he use. “You’ve only got one good arm.”

  “One’s all it takes,” he assured her. One hand to aim and shoot.

  Hawk took out his cell phone and glanced at the screen. For once, the indicator said he was receiving a decent signal. He’d already gotten in touch with Jeffers, Patterson and Rosenbloom yesterday, instructing the agents to get a SWAT detail out as quickly as possible from Cheyenne because they were going in to take down a potential killer. He even had the excuse covered for going in: it had conveniently been provided for him by Charlie Rhodes. Since Carly had identified Grayson’s second in command as the man who had tried to kill him, they were coming to arrest him, wedding ceremony or no wedding ceremony. Attempting to kill a federal agent was not a crime to be lightly shrugged off with a slap on the wrists. If convicted—and why wouldn’t he be?—Charlie could be facing a great many years in prison.

  With backup alerted, all that was left was to execute the main plan—which hinged heavily on gaining access to the center from within.

  “You sure I can’t talk you into holding down the fort here?” he asked one final time. He really did have enough on his mind without adding someone else to worry about to it.

  There was no reason to “hold down” anything and they both knew it. Anyone who was anyone would be attending this wedding—at Grayson’s behest. And no one crossed Samuel Grayson.

  In response to his query, Carly gave him a long, penetrating look, which felt as if it went clear down to his bones. “What do you think?”

  “I think I’d feel better if I had eyes in the back of my head, because I really don’t like taking you into the thick of things like this,” he said, setting his mouth hard as he stared out through the windshield for a moment. He didn’t like the idea of actually bringing her to a potential crime scene. A crime scene, ironically, that had yet to become one.

  “You’re not ‘taking’ me anywhere,” she informed him as they finally started heading to the cave. “If anything, I’m taking you,” she pointed out. “I’m the one who remembered the tunnels and knows how to get to them.”

  There really was no point in arguing. He would lose, and it was just a waste of time. “I keep forgetting how damn stubborn you are,” he said under his breath. The statement was accompanied by not-quite-silent grumbling.

  “I like the word resourceful better,” she informed him.

  Potato, po-tot-toe, he was still not happy about having her come along with him.

  They arrived at the mine shaft in a short amount of time.

  Carly was right, he thought. She knew every short-cut in this underdeveloped region. Armed with flashlights, they went in. Hawk insisted on going in first. This way, if there was trouble, he’d be the first to know. That left her room to escape—as if she would even try. Carly had already proved that she was the type to stand shoulder to shoulder with someone she cared about, not flee at the first sign of trouble.

  It was, Carly thought at one point, like moving through the bowels of hell. The area was stuffy, dark except for the twin, thin beams of light cast by their separate flashlights. She just knew they were sharing the crammed space with umpteen rodents, which could come swarming around them at any moment.

  She’d had great affection for all animals, big and small. But when it came to rats, she and the animal kingdom parted company. Rats made her flesh creep.

  A little like the way Grayson did, she now thought. How could that man hold so many people under his thumb? It had to be some kind of aberration of nature.

  They continued walking.

  An uneasiness began to grow as she started thinking that perhaps she hadn’t been right, that the mine shaft just led farther and farther into the mine and not into the center of town. Just when she was about to voice her concern to Hawk, suggest that they turn back, she heard a strange, thundering noise echoing overhead.

  She looked at Hawk, a question in her eyes.

  “Sounds like footsteps to me,” he acknowledged. “Lots of footsteps.” He let out the breath he’d been holding. “I think we’ve arrived, Columbus. Have to admit I had my doubts there for a while.”

  The man was nothing if not honest. And she hadn’t been when she sent him away, she thought as the guilt flared inside her.

  “You weren’t the only one,” she murmured more to herself than to him.

  Light was seeping in up ahead, coming in where the storage room door didn’t quite meet its frame. She was about to open it when he put his hand up, silently cautioning her to stay where she was. He might not be able to talk her out of coming, but at the very least, if for some reason they wound up walking into a trap, then he wanted to be the first one to go down, not her. It would buy her enough time to get away.

  Not that he was about to say any of this to her, because it would only result in yet another argument. The woman just didn’t know the meaning of the words staying safe. But he intended to teach her—if it was the last thing he ever did.

  Reaching the door, he turned the doorknob ever so slowly and eased the door open. They were in a storage room all right. It appeared to be a catchall for discarded items that had lived out their usefulness from the various rooms and offices. Apparently someone didn’t seem to have the heart to throw them out just yet.

  That was how pack rats got started, he thought. As for him, he was a minimalist. The less he owned, the less those things owned him. Turning, he beckoned for Carly to follow him—not that he actually had to. She’d seemed practically one step ahead of him all morning.

  The hallway looked clear, so they advanced, making their way to the room where the ceremony was about to take place.

  As they turned a corner, they surprised one of Grayson’s henchmen—obviously playing the part of a groomsman/guard. Momentarily getting the drop on the man, Hawk acted swiftly, grabbing him by the head and twisting it—hard. Fresh pain shot through his bandaged shoulder.

  There was a sickening snap.

  Carly didn’t ask if the man was dead. She knew. When Hawk released him, the guard fell bonelessly to the floor.

  Carly waited a second, thinking that a surge of remorse would overcome her at any moment but it didn’t materialize. These were the people who had come in and stripped her friends and neighbors—her sister—of not just their worldly possessions and their integrity but their very souls. She felt nothing about eliminating them before they had a chance to do the same to people she cared about. Death here was the great equalizer, not unlike the weapon she still carried with her.

  “You okay?” Hawk asked, his eyes sweeping over her face.

  “Don’t worry about me,” she told him, waving him on. “We’ve got a wedding to stop.”

  It seemed almost like poetic justice that the words, “If anyone knows why these two should not wed, speak now—” were the ones being said just as Hawk pushed open the doors, causing everything to come to a stunned, crashing halt.

  “Everybody freeze,” Hawk ordered. “I’m a federal agent!”

  “I do,” Carly cried, addressing Grayson who, under the guise of “minister,” was performing the ceremony. “I object.”

  She noted
the angry look on her sister’s face a second before she heard Grayson whisper something to the best man. Color drained from Mia’s face. She’d heard what was being said.

  The next moment, as if in slow motion, Carly saw Charlie Rhodes pull a gun from beneath his tuxedo jacket—he’d apparently tucked it into the back of his waistband, she realized—and fire in her direction.

  She heard Mia scream her name just as she slammed against the floor. Not because she’d been hit but because Hawk had thrown himself over her, protecting her with his own body as he pushed her out of the line of fire.

  “Told you to say behind!” he bit off as he rolled forward to return fire. Charlie hadn’t been the only one who had brought a gun to the ceremony.

  It still might have gone very badly for them, Hawk reflected later, had he not thought to “invite” his own “guests” to the wedding.

  Just as the gunfire began being exchanged, the doors on the other side of the room burst open and Rosenbloom, Patterson and Jeffers, along with several other FBI agents, all wearing Kevlar vests, took over the room.

  “Nobody move!” Hawk ordered again, getting up from the floor. This time, caught between two lines of fire, everyone obeyed. Hawk paused, his eyes and weapon trained on Grayson as he extended his hand to Carly.

  Wrapping her fingers around his hand, Carly rose to her feet.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  She was bruised where she’d hit the floor, but she wasn’t complaining. All things considered, she’d gotten off lucky. “Never better.”

  “Carly! Carly, did he—did Charlie—did Charlie shoot you?” Mia cried almost hysterically. Her arms filled with taffeta and organza, her sister came rushing over to her as fast as she could. Her face was still as pale as her wedding dress. “He tried to kill you,” she said, stunned and clearly very shaken by what she’d just been forced to witness.

  “Not exactly a quality one wants in their best man,” Carly quipped. She wrapped one arm around Mia and hugged her. That was when she realized that Mia was trembling. “Are you all right?” she asked, even as more agents kept coming in, surrounding the wedding guests and ordering everyone over to a corner of the banquet room.