Inside Out wm-1

by John Ramsey Miller

Martinez turned and put her hands up, and Greg ran his hands over her body and pinched the material of her clothes. He searched her thoroughly, making no apology for checking the contours of her breasts and pressing his fingers against her genitals.

  Mrs. Devlin bit her bottom lip like a child accused of something she was innocent of.

  Greg pointed to a door. “Martinez, take Mrs. Devlin into the bathroom there and search her, please.”

  After the women left, Greg searched Winter, giving them a chance to catch up.

  “We'll bring your bags to you,” Greg told Mrs. Devlin when she returned.

  “I'd appreciate that.”

  “Go right down the hallway, Mrs. Devlin. Your husband is behind the second door on the left. Martinez will be staying across the hall from you. If you need anything, just ask. You don't leave the house without an escort. You will be served meals in the dining room or in your room. Snacks, drinks anytime. We can go over the house rules later. Questions?”

  Wordlessly, Mrs. Devlin turned. She hesitated at the door Greg had indicated, perhaps to compose herself before she entered the room.

  The marshals walked through the arch and into an open living room.

  “Who owns this place?” Martinez asked, looking around. The majority of the paintings were nautical in nature, depicting sailing ships firing cannons or caught in fierce storms. The furnishings looked expensive. The house had the feeling of being someone's home.

  Greg said, “Welcome to Rook Island. Four hundred yards at its widest, a mite over a quarter mile long. House is eight thousand square feet of hand-built space, engineered to withstand a hurricane. The Navy maintains it as a vacation retreat for admirals, commanders, congressmen, and senators who have some impact on military appropriations. I'd doubt the whole shooting match cost much more than a Tomahawk missile.”

  “What's the story on the package?” Winter asked as Greg led them through to the formal dining room. Greg set the suitcases on a gleaming table beneath a brass chandelier.

  “He's a very big deal. Dylan Devlin is the latest mobster to turn state's evidence. His testimony can hang Sam Manelli.”

  Winter whistled, impressed. “I heard Manelli was arrested on conspiracy to commit murder. But they've had that old razorback by the ear before and he's pulled away. I lived in New Orleans years ago. Manelli's an icon. He doesn't get physically close to anything illegal, never writes anything down, never makes a comment where it can be heard. He owns judges, senators, congressmen, local politicos, and cops. The newspaper did a poll years ago, and the majority of the population thought Manelli kept street crime down. His philanthropic gestures are continuously played up by the politicians who take his money. Only in a place as unconventional as New Orleans would Sam Manelli be a pop hero.”

  Greg nodded, his face serious. “He's never spent a day in jail, because no witness has ever testified against him. Our Mr. Devlin flipped on Manelli after he performed a dozen hits for him. So Devlin's a much bigger deal to the Justice Department than Sammy the Bull ever was. He's a bit bruised up from a car crash.”

  Something clicked in Winter's mind. “Wait, was he the guy who got rammed and had the two stiffs shoot out of his trunk in New Orleans a couple weeks back?”

  “That's him,” Greg said.

  “I missed the connection to Manelli,” Winter said.

  “Because nobody made one. That connection is a well-guarded secret. I was told in no uncertain terms that we do not discuss Mr. Devlin's career as Sam Manelli's hired killer or ask him about anything he's done.”

  “Ours is not to question why,” Martinez said.

  Greg was searching Martinez's suitcase. Martinez opened Mrs. Devlin's luggage and carefully ran her hands through it, feeling for any hidden contraband.

  “Anything interesting?” Greg asked her.

  Martinez twisted the suitcase so the open top obstructed Greg's view. “That's none of your business, Inspector Nations, sir.”

  “In my time I've seen it all. Feminine hygiene products, vibrators of every configuration and power level, diaphragms, Hot Rod Mama In Leather magazines. I could tell you stories that would curl your toes, Martinez.”

  “Save it,” Martinez said. “You don't want to get me all excited when none of the men around here are my type.”

  “What type is that?”

  “Sane.”

  Greg unzipped Winter's duffel, then pulled out a picture of Rush and Nemo. “I can't get over how much he has grown in a year.”

  Martinez looked over at the picture. “That a Seeing-Eye harness on his dog?”

  “Yes,” Winter said.

  Greg put the picture back in the duffel. “Martinez, take everything out of her bags and inspect the linings. Make sure every stitch is factory and feel for any differences under the lining anyway.”

  He opened Mrs. Devlin's briefcase and lifted out her Apple laptop computer. “What have we here?” He turned it on and waited until it had booted up. He selected a document, opened it, and started to read. “Little woman writes poems. Proves my point. Poetry's a fantasy thing, right, Winter? Bet Mrs. Devlin's a real firebrand.”

  “Is the poem any good?” Martinez asked.

  “Poetry is personal. Like a diary,” Winter said.

  “Here I was assuming that all a stone killer's wife thought about was if her detergent will get those stubborn bloodstains out of his white shirts,” Greg said.

  “You think she knew?” Martinez wondered. “You think he told her? She doesn't seem like a killer's-wife type.”

  “They never tell their wives,” Greg replied. “I never knew a criminal's wife who knew shit. Like getting fur coats delivered at two in the morning from the trunk of a car is just the way people shop. ‘Aw, babe, do you gotta hang that dead guy upside down in the shower? Can't you take him outside and drain him in the backyard?'”

  Greg shut down the computer, removed the battery and peered inside the cavity. Satisfied, he put the laptop aside and searched the other articles in the briefcase. He opened each of the pens and pressed his fingertips over every inch of the case's interior lining. Then he went through Martinez's Samsonite suitcase equally as carefully. “Aw, Angela, what a boring suitcase. Not so much as a vibrator.”

  “Not on a deputy marshal's salary. Batteries are expensive,” she said flatly.

  8

  Rook Island, North Carolina

  Sean left the bathroom feeling violated. She couldn't look the young deputy who had strip searched her in the eyes. She had persisted in trying to find out what the hell was going on-where Dylan was and why she was being held against her will. If she heard: Ma'am, your husband is fine. You'll be seeing him very soon. I wish I could tell you more. He will explain everything when you see him one more time, she'd lose her mind.

  After Inspector Nations directed her to Dylan's room, she had to fight the urge to run weeping to him.

  Now she was close to seeing Dylan, to understanding what this was all about. She paused at the door and took a deep breath to compose herself before she tapped at it.

  Her heart leaped when she heard his voice call out, “If you ain't my young, brilliant, beautiful wife, don't you dare come through that door!”

  Sean smiled and opened the door. Dylan was propped up against a stack of pillows on the bed, wearing a blue robe. She saw crutches leaning against the wall, bandages around his chest where the robe fell open. She rushed to his open arms and hugged him, careful not to hurt him by squeezing too hard.

  Their kiss was wonderful; she drank in the scent of him, the familiar touch, which erased the memory of being humiliated by the search two minutes earlier. Dylan broke the kiss and held her face in his hands as he studied her, his million-dollar smile warming her heart.

  He drew her in and kissed her again and now she felt the familiar hunger in his kiss. She knew where this was leading.

  “Close the door,” he whispered urgently. “Lock it.”

  “Dylan, first tell me what the hell is going on. I
was grabbed at the airport and nobody will tell me anything. What in God's name has happened? What do they think you did? Why are we here?”

  He held her close and kissed her gently. “It's very simple, kitten. We are together again. You go over there and throw that lock and come back here and I'm going to let you-”

  “Tell me first.”

  He kissed her cheeks, her nose, and gently nibbled her lips. “And come get into this bed and…”

  God, after spending a day surrounded by grim-faced marshals, it was comforting being with him. “Please, Dylan.” Her pent-up fear and resolve to know what had happened was dissipating. “Dylan.” She felt herself sliding into a warm place as his familiar hands moved over her body. “You don't understand what I've been…”

  He pressed a fingertip to her lips. “Please, Sean. Let's not spoil this with words.”

  “But I…”

  He put his lips to her ear and whispered, “Lock that door and come back here and I will tell you absolutely everything. Word of honor.. after we say hello.”

  9

  Leaving Mrs. Devlin's things in the dining room, the marshals passed the security room and the closed door to the Devlins' room. Greg showed Martinez the front suite of three rooms, their windows facing the ocean. The Devlins' room, he explained, had windows on the north wall, but there were locked hurricane shutters on them.

  The overstuffed couch was large enough for a man to sleep on comfortably. A solid door opened into the large bedroom, which contained a king-size bed, chest of drawers, writing table and chair, and two closets. Another door opened into the bathroom. Martinez approved, adding that the suite was larger than her apartment.

  The team was bunking in the servants' quarters, four rooms located down a hallway behind the kitchen. The largest one belonged to the cook. The second was where Greg and Winter would be staying. The other four deputies were split up between the third and fourth rooms.

  The servants' rooms might have been a Motel 6 in Kansas. Each bathroom was located directly to the right of the entry; the closet hangers were locked to the rod, as though the military's servants, like transients, needed coat hangers badly enough to steal them. Each twin headboard was attached to the wall, and the mattresses looked like sushi plates.

  Winter unpacked, placing his things in the bottom two drawers as Greg sat watching him from the edge of the nearest bed.

  “Sure good to see you, Win. Brings to mind better times.”

  “So why don't you tell me what I'm doing here?” Winter replied.

  “I was given carte blanche in putting this team together and I wanted the best group in the history of WITSEC. I got a sniper can shoot a fly off a can at a quarter mile: Robert Forsythe.”

  “I saw him shoot in competition a few years ago.”

  “I got Bear Dixon, the strongest son of a bitch I know. He could throw Devlin over his shoulders and run ten miles. Dave Beck and Bill Cross would eat cobras from the tail forward with their hands tied behind their backs to keep a witness safe. And Martinez ain't here because I needed someone to hand Mrs. Devlin tampons. She earned a black belt in tae kwon do before she was ten. Nobody's as good with a handgun, or reacts faster, or sniffs out trouble like you. Dylan Devlin is a huge package, Win. And the payoff at the end can be massive.”

  “Payoff?”

  “It'll look great on our sheets, and when we cash out it'll bring in clients who won't spare any expense to have a piece of us. We'll keep Devlin safe when every professional hitter and connected lowlife with a gun or a bomb is after his hide. Word from the Justice Department is that the contract for Devlin is for millions. Know what that means?”

  “World-class talent.”

  “If we handle this one without a hitch, we're set for life, Winter. We'll be able to open the doors of Massey and Nations Security International and fill the place immediately. I can get plenty of investment money. Tell me you wouldn't dig thousand-dollar suits, a checkbook you don't have to balance. Don't you want to live some, Win? I sure as hell do. The idea of surviving on a pension in a trailer holds no appeal for me. I plan to be stupid rich, and I am taking you with me even if it kills you.”

  “We'll see.” The company again- Greg's dream. He had grown up poor and thought material possessions were more than the temporary distractions Winter believed them to be. Winter preferred his own life simple.

  Winter took the SIG from the shoulder rig and slid a high-rise holster onto his belt, pushed the handgun into it, and snapped the thumb release. He clipped on the dual magazine holder that added twenty-four shots. “I appreciate your confidence and I value your friendship, but your timing sucks rocks,” he said. “I need one big favor.”

  “Anything in my power.”

  “I need to be home Sunday, even if it's just for the day.”

  “Why?”

  “I promised Rush I wouldn't miss his birthday this year. Your request forced me to break it.”

  “You're serious?”

  “When it comes to that boy, I'm always serious.”

  “I'll do what I can.”

  “Way I see it, Greg, is you brought me here, I expect you can get me back home. You want me back on Monday, I'm all yours for as long as you need me, but I need to be home on Sunday.”

  The kitchen seemed scaled to accommodate the woman who ran it. The space had commercial appliances, and the table easily fit eight chairs. There were doors on three of the four walls. Just through an open butler's pantry was a swinging one that led into the formal dining room; a second opened to the main hallway, and the third out onto the porch.

  “Jet Washington, greatest cook on the face of the earth, I want to introduce to you the number-one greatest deputy marshal, Winter James Massey.”

  “Don't get in my way, now,” the cook said, without turning from the huge stove. “I'm at the crossroads with this gumbo.” She was dressed in a starched white uniform, an eye-popping contrast to her skin, which was the color of damp mink. “Okay, here comes the other side of it.” She held a spoon to her lips, sampled the liquid, and murmured gratefully, “Thank you, Jesus! Okay, it's safe now.”

  Only then did she turn and eye Winter with some degree of suspicion. The skin on her face was stretched so tight that he couldn't judge her age within a fifteen-year span. She had an amazingly warm smile and her eyes were so bright that they seemed illuminated, like dials in a dashboard. The rich scent of the food was making his stomach growl.

  “Glad you finally got here,” she told him. “Mr. Gregory been driving everybody crazy with all this talk 'bout Winter this and Winter that and jus' y'all wait till Winter Massey gets here. From the way that man's been going on, I figured you'd be ten feet tall, with a halo made of lightning bolts.”

  “He exaggerates a little,” Winter replied, grinning.

  She wagged a finger at him. “I got three rules nobody breaks, unless they want to be broken. One is, keep your nose out my fridge and your hands off my cookin' utensils. Two is, nobody ever goes hungry in this house. And three is, you want something to eat, you tell me and I'll fix you something filling. Don't matter what time day or night. I'm not in here, just tap on my door. You got all that, Deputy Winter Massey?”

  “Yes, ma'am.”

  Placing her hands on her hips, she countered, “Uh-huh. Then tell it back to me.”

  10

  New York, New York

  Herman Hoffman sat in the communications room of his six-story building studying a pile of satellite pictures, one by one, on the counter in front of him. The shots were so critical to intelligence that the entire operation had hinged on getting them. From here on in, this was all going to be as simple as connecting numbered dots.

  He held a magnifying glass above the first print to examine the detail. He could barely contain his excitement, as he could clearly see two men standing between the surf and the house. He lifted that one from the stack and carefully laid it facedown on the pile to his right.

  He set the magnifying glass down on the
print and rubbed his eyes. “We have a lot to do, Ralph,” Herman said. “They have selected one hell of a safe house-one hell of a safe house, indeed.”

  “Cherry Point is twenty-six miles away. It's a Marine air rework base, but they've added active air power.” Ralph slipped a picture of the base from the left stack: The tarmac was replete with war birds. “There are SEALs training near there. Since that isn't a SEAL training area, I think they're there to add cover for the WITSEC operation.”

  Herman was elated. “The more secure they imagine they are, the more complacent they will be, Ralph. That will work to our advantage. Whether they sit tight or leave, this is checkmate. They will stay on that island until Thursday or a little bird will let us know of any changes. I can't count the times I've had far less time to mount far more complicated operations, with far less intelligence to go on.”

  Herman opened a notebook and studied the equipment inventory carefully. Everything was in hand. The signature of his quartermaster assured him that everything would be waiting at the staging area. He had to be certain he didn't miss anything-one missing object, no matter how small, and the consequences could be catastrophic. This operation would be his masterpiece, even though he would never get the recognition for it. When ops went right, someone else always got the credit.

  “How do you feel?” Herman asked Ralph.

  “Sir?”

  “In your gut. How do you feel?”

  “Fine.”

  “Are you nervous? Any unease? Premonitions?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “And the others? Focused? Eager? Chomping at the bit?”

  “Sure.”

  Herman closed the notebook and stood up. He felt like a hunter at wood's edge, ready to release his dogs.

  11

  Rook Island, North Carolina

  “This is Winter Massey,” Greg told the other five members of the WITSEC team. “Starting with Cross, I want each of you to introduce yourselves.”