“He couldn’t.” Joss turned her head a little as she continued to study him. “They must have helped him hide it. Put a little makeup on him and padded his prison coveralls.”
“Why would they do that?”
“His lawyer. She’s apparently very protective over who visits him. Maybe she was hiding it so that I couldn’t tell the press or whoever.”
“Sounds a little fishy to me,” Kirkland said.
“Maybe they were hoping to use it as shock value in court,” David suggested.
Joss turned the blueprints around so everyone could see. “They’ve taken him into this room.” She touched a spot she marked the library. “Most of his guards seem to be hanging around here.” This time she pointed out the room marked living room. “I think if we wait until an hour or two before dawn, we can catch his men unawares and get past them with ease. No one’s going to suspect we’ve figured out the bunker exists, let alone where it is. They’ll be vulnerable to attack.”
Donovan touched the blueprints in two different places, front and back. “These are the entrances. I think we should go in, me and Kirkland in the front, you and Carrington in the back.”
I nodded. “And David, you’ll be our eyes.”
“No problem.”
“We could be in and out in fifteen minutes.” Donovan looked at the layout a second longer. “It’s pretty self-contained, no more than two thousand square feet. Hell, we could probably take it with just me and Kirkland.”
“No, I like your original idea better. You and Kirkland through the front where the majority of his men are sitting. Carrington and I will go straight for Mahoney.”
“Why does a bunker have a back door?” Kirkland suddenly asked.
“It was designed by a man who knew he might need a quick escape,” I spoke up, giving my addition to the conversation. Everyone just kind of nodded.
We headed out a few minutes later. My heart was in my stomach as I held my wife against me, aware that anything could happen in those fifteen minutes Donovan believed it would take us to break into this bunker. Someone was about to die. It could be one of us.
It could be my wife.
Chapter 24
Jules
I watched her sleep, unable to pull my eyes from the long stretch of her legs. I’d tried not to be alone with her too much these last few days, afraid that anything I did or said would give away the fact that I knew who she was. That I knew how she’d used me to get information on Joss.
I hated myself for allowing this to happen. But I was determined to never be that stupid again.
I picked up the cellphone she’d carelessly left on the nightstand and slipped out into the living room of our small apartment, curling up in the window seat as I began going through her contacts. I thought I would have to decipher code names and carefully written text messages, but she hadn’t bothered to hide it. None of it.
The governor’s name was written as boldly as if he were a family member. Stevie had worked for him while he was mayor of Los Angeles. I knew they’d maintained a relationship, but I hadn’t realized it was this kind of relationship.
When I opened the dialogue boxes that showed their saved text messages, it was all written there.
Joss believes they can bribe a US Marshal.
Joss is hoping to grab Mahoney during the transfer.
Joss is enlisting the help of her Gray Wolf team.
Joss is…Joss is…Joss is…
It was all there in black and white, the betrayal. She didn’t try to hide it.
Everything I ever told her about Joss, everything I’d shared with her in confidence. Everything I thought our relationship was built on was right there, shattered on the screen of her phone.
I wanted to throw it across the room and destroy it. Instead, I sent it all to my email and moved to my laptop. I’d sat back and allowed this to happen. Now it was time to do something about it.
I gathered it all into one message and sent it to Mike Spencer, Ash Grayson, and Emily Warren. They needed to know exactly what they were up against. And then I sent a message to Joss, expressing my deepest apologies even though I knew it would never be enough.
My formal resignation would be on her desk when she arrived back from Wyoming, when this was all over. I supposed I’d have to learn the outcome from the papers like everyone else.
I took the phone and placed it back on the side table, the text app still open so that it would be the first thing she saw when she turned the phone on in the morning. It was probably the best Dear John letter she could hope for.
My car was already packed. Time to go home to Mom and regroup, figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life now that my life, as I knew it, was now over.
Chapter 25
Joss
We’d been sitting in the car for so long that my body was stiff. I got out and moved around, stretching the best that I could. Donovan was watching me, this frown line creasing his forehead.
“What?”
He shook his head. “You would have made a damn good general in the Army.”
I laughed. “I don’t think so.”
“I do. I don’t think anyone else could have done all this in this short an amount of time.”
“Ash could have. He would have.”
“He might have. But not quite the way you’ve done it.”
“If that’s a compliment, then I take it.”
“I’m not sure it is.” He moved closer to me, looking down at me from his impressive height. “You sure this is what you want? Are you sure you’re up for what’s going to have to happen in there?”
I tilted my head to one side. “This man orchestrated the kidnapping of my daughter with the intention of giving her to his sister like she was some sort of gift he had a right to offer.” I nodded slowly. “I think I can deal with this.”
“Good. But if I were you I’d keep a close eye on that husband of yours. He looks like he ate something bad, you know?”
I glanced over at Carrington. He was standing with Kirkland at the back of the SUV, searching through the pile of weapons there. Kirkland had managed to slip more equipment that we could ever use out of Sutherland’s bunkhouse without anyone noticing. How he did it, I hadn’t bothered to ask, but I was more than happy with him for it. We’d need everything we could get tonight and later when this thing finally reached its climax.
And it would. Very soon.
I watched Carrington move away from the vehicle and bend low in the brush. I walked over and patted him between the shoulder blades.
“I threw up the first dozen times I participated in an operation, too.”
He wiped the back of his mouth with his forearm. “Yeah, well, I’m supposed to be the masculine one here.”
“I think we have enough testosterone to go around.”
He glanced over at Kirkland and Donovan who were examining a variety of rifles. “I suppose so.”
“Stay close to me and keep your head down and eyes peeled. It’ll be fine.”
We suited up, pulling on the tactical gear that would protect our vital organs and loaded the utility belts with everything we could comfortably carry. I restricted Carrington to a few rounds of ammo for the rifle he’d chosen, afraid that if I gave him anything else and things went sour, he might make a mistake we’d both regret.
Taking Carrington into this was probably a bad idea, but I needed backup and I wanted David watching the security cameras. Carrington was my best option.
“Alright, David, what are we looking at?”
“Mahoney’s men are spread out between two rooms. The majority of them are in the front room nearest the main entrance, asleep on couches and in chairs. Three men are in an adjoining room watching television. I suppose they’re the night guards, but they don’t seem to be paying much attention to anything but the porn on the television.”
“And Mahoney?”
“He’s still in the library. He’s sitting at a desk, reading. There don’t
appear to be any weapons in that room.”
“How many altogether?” Kirkland asked.
“Eight, including Mahoney,” was David’s quick answer.
I looked from face to face, met with confidence and determination on all but Carrington’s. Carrington just seemed torn between excitement and utter terror.
“Let’s head out. David, keep the coms open.” I looked around once more. “Let’s not get dead.”
We headed out, Kirkland and Donovan going east, Carrington and I headed south. Doubts were dancing in my head, telling me that I was insane leading an operation on a place I hadn’t had time to properly survey. We didn’t know what we were going to find at the entrances to the bunker, didn’t know what kind of traps might be waiting for us. With Mahoney and his paranoia, there was no telling what might be sitting just out of sight in front of the back door. And once we got in, we didn’t know if they might have more men who were just smart enough to stay out of sight of the cameras or if they had more gun power than we suspected. David thought he knew what kind of security system they had, believed he’d taken it out, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something else he wasn’t able to find.
There were too many unknowns. Ash would have scraped the plan and waited until there were no unknowns. But we didn’t have that kind of time now.
I moved low, close to the brush, and gestured for Carrington to follow. The one good thing about the landscape was that there was no place to hide surveillance cameras. Mahoney and his people wouldn’t know we were coming until we were right over them. As we approached the coordinates where the back door should have been, I saw that there were laser cameras low on the ground that were probably motion detectors connected to the security system that David had disconnected. Did Mahoney really think that would be sufficient enough?
Maybe. Maybe he believed the isolation of this place was more than enough.
“Keep an eye out for any movement, any signs we’ve been compromised,” I said to Carrington. “I’m going to pop the lock on the hatch.”
“How?”
I tilted my head, giving him a look that immediately forced him to turn and focus on the landscape around us.
The back door was just a hatch in the ground, kind of like the hatches on that show we watched years ago, the one set on that deserted island. This one had a handle, but it was controlled by a keypad. I pulled the device out of my pocket David had given me that looked for all the world like a small cellphone and attached the leads to the keypad, pushing a couple of buttons that set the software into action. I didn’t understand how these things worked, but they always did. David was too efficient to allow for something that didn’t.
I was getting a little impatient even though only a minute had passed. And then I heard a slight whoosh, a sound so subtle I almost missed it. The door was open.
I put away my equipment and quietly called to Carrington. He backed up toward me like a soldier on a television show, nearly tripping over the edge of the hatch.
We climbed down together, the sounds of gunfire already echoing off the concrete walls. I wasn’t even on the ground when Mahoney, thin and pale, appeared in the doorway of the library.
“Shit! I should have known!”
I gestured at him with my weapon. “Back up, Mahoney! You’re not going anywhere right now.”
“If you’re here to kill me, you might as well get it over with.”
“I wanted to kill you,” I said softly. “More than I wanted anything in the world. But now I need answers.”
“Fuck you! I’m not telling you anything!”
I marched toward him and slammed the muzzle of my gun into his chest. He fell back like he was a child being bullied by an older sibling, fear filling his eyes. This was not the criminal mastermind I’d been led to believe he was. But, again, I was pretty sure he never had been that man. It was all just smoke and mirrors.
Brilliant, yes. But his brilliance? Not really.
Chapter 26
Joss
Mahoney retreated into the library, moving to sit behind the desk he’d abandoned when the gunfire began. We could still hear action at the front of the bunker, but it was cooling down. I knew Kirkland and Donovan were in control because they were openly speaking to David over the coms, keeping him—and indirectly me—up to date. Things were going more smoothly than I could have anticipated.
“You have a hell of a lot of holes in your security, Mahoney. Did you really think you could hide here for long?”
He shrugged, jumping when Carrington closed the heavy library door.
“I’d sort of hoped that no one would remember I’d bought up this land.”
“Well, when you had my husband organize the sales and never really explained it, I got curious.”
“I should have known better.”
“Who are you hiding from out here, Mahoney?”
His eyebrows rose. “The feds?”
“I doubt the feds scare you half as much as you want us to believe. Especially since you aren’t the real leader of the Mahoney Cartel, are you?”
He stared at me, but didn’t answer.
“You thought you hid it so well. But you left clues. Your refusal to leave your house was seen as a quirk among the feds investigating you. They never stopped to wonder why. They never wondered how you managed to keep your people in line when you wouldn’t get into the trenches with them.”
“I was the leader. I had to remain protected.”
“You were afraid of getting sick, which, if one takes in your current state, would seem justified. What is it? Cancer?”
“Kidney disease brought on by overuse of herbal remedies.”
I wanted to laugh, but didn’t think he’d keep talking if I did. I lowered my weapon and walked toward him, taking a seat in a chair just off to the side of the desk. Carrington whispered my name, clearly concerned for my wellbeing, but I ignored him.
“And Grant Matthews. You are so determined to make Becky pay for his suicide, but it was just a suicide.”
“He only did that because he was so in love with her and she ran away!”
High color came to Mahoney’s face, pushing the pale away for a moment.
“Why does it matter so much to you?”
His eyes narrowed. “He was family.”
“You forced him into law enforcement, forced him into the FBI so that he could be your eyes and ears. It was because of him that the truth remained elusive for so long. But it’s also what ended his marriage. She left him because of you.”
“She was weak. But he loved her.”
“Just like you loved him.”
Mahoney tilted his head to one side, searching my face.
“I know, Jack. I know everything.”
He shook his head. “You can’t. No one knows everything.”
“Yes, well, once the puzzle pieces started fitting together, they seemed to just fall into place, you know?”
He shook his head again as if denying it in that way he could make me stop talking, make me stop pointing out the truth.
“You never had children with your wife because of the infection that left you infertile when you were in your late twenties. But you’re, what, sixty? And Grant was thirty-one?”
“He was thirty-six when he died.”
I nodded slowly. “You would have been twenty-three when he was conceived? A few years before your infection that left you infertile and suffering OCD.”
Mahoney’s face flushed again. “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
“You had two sisters. Lilith, who is the mother of Elizabeth and Carl. Then there was Alice. Alice was a pretty girl, from all accounts. But she was also a sickly child. Cystic fibrosis, wasn’t it?”
Mahoney refused to look at me.
“Alice never had children. She died when she was twelve.”
“You think you know so much!” Mahoney suddenly bellowed, jumping out of his chair. Much to my shock, Carrington rushed toward him, his rifle point
ed straight at his chest.
“Sit the fuck down!”
Mahoney did as he was told, the paleness back in his face.
I glanced at Carrington, gesturing for him to settle down. He did, moving back toward the door.
“Grant Kennedy was your son.”
Mahoney suddenly looked utterly defeated. “Yes.”
“That’s why you can’t forgive Becky for what he did, why you took the chance to take her life.”
“I didn’t know there was a child,” he said softly. “If I’d known…”
I believed him. There was something about the way he said it, the way he stared down at his desk and his shoulders slumped in defeat.
“I’ll tell you,” he suddenly said, “everything you need to know. But you have to promise me one thing.”
“What?”
“You’ll kill me when it’s over.”
“Gladly,” Carrington called from across the room.
I shook my head. “No.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “I’m done with the darkness.”
“Then you might as well leave now.”
I hesitated a moment, then slowly slipped my sidearm from the holster that kept it tight against my ribcage. I set it on the desk.
“Rahul Rush saw and heard things over the years that made him wonder about the leadership of the cartel, but he couldn’t be positive on the identity of the true leader. I have my suspicions…”
Mahoney picked up the pistol and set it in his lap.
“Lilith Mahoney Runion. My sister.” He shook his head, his eyes on the floor. “She’s a fucking psychopath.”
***
We let ourselves out of the library a little less than an hour later, Carrington almost as pale as Mahoney had been. Donovan and Kirkland were waiting at the front of the bunker, Mahoney’s men suitably tied to chairs in the dining room. They were all awake and breathing, but a few had bleeding wounds in their limbs. All in all, it seemed like things had gone well.
“Did you get what you needed?” Donovan asked.
Before I could answer, the sound of a single gunshot reverberated through the bunker. Carrington jumped and the eyes of some of Mahoney’s goons widened, a few even trying to break free of their restraints. But neither Kirkland nor Donovan reacted.
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