Mike nodded.
“Darius, I’ve been thinking about that blip when we all lost network service to our cell phones. I’m still bugged about that.” The day after they arrived in Montana their work and personal cell phones were knocked off the network for several hours. “My phones are still jacked up with static. Probably interference from these damned mountains.”
“Yeah, mine too. Odd, considering the FBI has the most secure network systems. Hey, maybe the Bureau didn’t pay the bill, so it was disconnected.” Darius chuckled, stapling together his six-page report. “Okay, this is done and I included that since this assignment started my sinuses have been killing me, not to mention this assignment has been bullshit, as duly noted by Special Agent Mike Coleman.”
Both men were laughing when Iverson walked in announcing “wheels up”, meaning it was time to leave for the airport.
“I can’t wait to get back to Virginia so I can get a decent crab cake. Jae said she would fix some of that seafood pasta, too,” Iverson said, picking up his bag from the corner.
“You talked to Jae?” Relief flooded Mike’s cocoa brown face. “What’d she say?”
“She said we’ve got a lot of explaining to do. Said she’d called each of us a bunch of times. I told her I didn’t get any calls,” Iverson said. “She didn’t believe the network crashed.”
“Did something happen?” Darius asked, alarmed.
“She said she’d see us when we got in. I told her we’d probably get back in a couple of days, but since the homegrown terrorist twins are in custody, we’re out of here today. ”
The fourth team member, McGuire Webster, strolled in. “Hey, Iverson, did you mention that Jae sounded a little spooked?”
“What the hell does that mean, McGuire?” Mike asked, moving closer to him.
“She probably hooked up with a dude and now she’s in love,” McGuire snickered.
Just then, Darius said, “Come on, guys, let’s get out of here.”
* * * * *
Since returning to work two weeks ago, Jae spent much of the time compiling a profile on Trevor Grant. Thankfully the guys were on assignment, so she could focus without getting distracted. The problem was she kept coming up with dead ends and since she’d already turned over her file on Trevor following her sting in the doctor’s office, Jae was stumped that she could not find the file. Not even an electronic copy was available.
If I’m lucky, I get me back. Trevor’s parting words constantly replayed in her mind. But it wasn’t the only thing that she found herself thinking about. The kisses they shared often found their way into her dreams and daydreams, distracting her.
She tapped on her keyboard to open the report she’d thought about giving to Deputy Director Roberts, Luke Grainger’s replacement. Her fingers halted over the keyboard. For some reason she didn’t believe the memo she’d received when she’d returned to work. In part, it indicated Grainger had volunteered for a special operations OP assignment. When she began asking around about her assignment, everyone thought she was joking and reminded her that she wasn’t on an assignment and that she was at a bridal shower and wedding. Not getting any answers, she decided to play along.
But Grainger would have told his team personally if he was leaving for any reason. So, in addition to investigating two newly assigned cases, she’d compiled a detailed, time-based recollection of her last two conversations with Grainger. And for the hundredth time she wished she’d been more focused on each call.
It nagged at her to no end. Could there have been a background noise she heard? Had he sounded different or had he said something significant? Whatever it was, it was just on the edge of her brain, but for two long weeks it had continued to elude her. Frustrated, she just couldn’t let it drop and flipped through her notepad. In the first call with Grainger, Jae recalled having to shift her conversation with him as a ruse to convince her sisters and cousins she was planning a romantic rendezvous.
Yeah, right. Like I get a lot of those. She frowned.
But Grainger had been adamant that she keep quiet about the assignment, including telling her own teammates. Why? It was a simple extraction, a no brainer, Jae thought.
Before she’d returned to her field office in Virginia, Jae had called the secretary, Jeanie Walker, to get an update on her teammate’s schedule. She’d been dismayed when Jeanie said their assignment had been extended several more days. Sometimes assignments lasted longer than planned. It was just that Jae found the non-communication with her team for almost three weeks very disconcerting. It was out of their normal routine.
Then there was the data drive that Trevor had dropped into the pocket of her pajama top before that kiss. Stop thinking about it!
Shaking the mental image from her head, Jae tried to focus. She’d become stumped when she couldn’t open the drive, not even with the arsenal of computer programs at her fingertips. So far, she was taking to heart what he’d jotted down on a one-inch Post-it Note stuck to the data drive. It read, Don’t share this with anyone you don’t trust.
So, she was staying mum until the guys returned. But a few more days seemed like an eternity especially when there was so much to tell them, like about her getting shot. In any case, Jae didn’t turn in the customary follow-up report. She did however complete it to remember the facts then buried it in a file folder to give to Grainger when he returned.
* * * * *
Lunchtime found Jae sipping the last of her orange soda pop when she looked up and spotted Agent Randy Cross about to come into the investigation unit. Lucky for her, he’d been stopped along the way. She’d avoided seeing him since returning to work.
She hoped he hadn’t seen her reclining in her chair in an attempt to relieve the painful ache in her right side. For the most part, she distanced herself from him because Randy was often unpredictable and erratic. He was a coil ready to spring. She’d seen it firsthand.
She hadn’t always felt that way about him. He’d been a good agent to emulate, initially. But over the past couple of years something about him changed, and she didn’t think he was a good person inside, despite having a sweet, although shy wife, Dana.
Jae watched him out in the hallway. She recalled the incident that happened a few months ago, when during an armed bank robbery attempt Randy had gone in with guns blazing. He’d overreacted and ignored direct orders to hold fire, killing the two teenage suspects and wounded the hostage.
When Grainger brought him in and demanded answers for deliberately disobeying orders, Randy became belligerent and confrontational, which led to his subsequent punishment for insubordination. Since then, he’d been confined to desk duty and stripped of any authority, pending the outcome of several investigations, including a lawsuit filed by the hostage who’d been injured by Randy’s careless actions.
When she and Special Agent Webster arrived on the scene, both were surprised and appalled by Randy’s lack of remorse at killing the two young men. To make matters worse, Randy didn’t believe he’d done anything wrong and that’s exactly what Jae put in her report that ultimately lead to Randy being mandated for a psychological assessment.
Watching him turn in her direction and stroll into her office, Jae sat upright. “Hi Randy.” With his unreadable eyes and his schoolboy he teasingly asked if he’d caught her napping. After sharing pleasantries, Jae told him she was still in vacation mode then warily watched as he sat on the edge of her desk.
“Ah, yes, you went home for your sister’s wedding, right?”
“Sure did and it was beautiful and magical.” She smiled, but really wanted him to leave. “How’s Dana?” She changed the subject away from her personal life.
“She’s stressing and worried about the investigations and the sharp drop in my salary.” Randy sighed. “What about you, Jae? You seem more pensive since you’ve returned.”
Reading the brooding expression on his
face, Jae told him not to worry about the investigations and that everything would work out. “Hey, I was thinking about giving Dana a call. She wanted to see the wedding pictures and it’s about time for us to have another facial at that day spa, my treat,” she added hurriedly.
“She’d like that,” Randy said, pointing to a framed wedding photo from the desk. “So, is this the wedding party I’ve heard you bragging about?” He smiled and picked up the picture frame displaying the wedding party.
“Hey, I deserve bragging rights for hiring a photographer that made me look fifteen pounds thinner than I really am, but Ronnie was beautiful.”
“As are you, Jae,” Randy said, setting the picture frame back on the desk with care after hearing his name paged over the intercom system.
As soon as Randy left the office, Jae hit the space bar to disengage the screen saver and brought up the sketchy profile on Dr. Trevor Grant. It was her intent to find the agent who initially put him in witness protection, but even that led to a dead end. Try as she might, she hadn’t been able to find an agent named Dan Willow or anything similar anywhere in the FBI personnel system.
Jae was more than alarmed that most of Trevor’s information had been obliterated from the FBI’s mainframe. There were no previous addresses, no income tax reports filed, no school records, and no pictures. There was nothing on either Trevor or Dan Willow. It was highly unusual to say the least. When she started checking Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, she hadn’t expected to find anything on him, but she did want to see if there was any mention of his research or something similar research, but she’d found nothing spanning six years prior. Thinking she may have misunderstood, Jae also checked other universities in and around Baltimore. Again, it led to another dead end.
“What the hell is going on?” she murmured, easing back in her chair again. “Not even one picture of the doctor either bearded or clean-shaven, anywhere.”
Reviewing her notes, two issues unsettled her. First, Luke Grainger’s sudden Special OP training. And second, Trevor Grant’s unwavering belief that some high-ranking officials, or organization, may have been involved and possibly responsible for the deaths of five Marines in response to what he truly believed was a botched attempt to create “supersoldiers.” To her, it had the ring of a sci-fi movie. Surely that was impossible, right?
But if it was true, then no wonder there was a target on his back. Yet, Jae wouldn’t go so far as to believe there might be a price on his head, as well. Then why was he in protection and why did someone fire a shot at him, not to mention the safe house being compromised?
She also checked flights that had arrived from Afghanistan on the date and time he’d told her about. Again, she found no information. She had to assume either it didn’t happen and he lied or it did happen and somebody powerful had issued an order to make everything disappear without a trace.
She had one more avenue to check and if that failed she decided she was dropping it and would wait until Grainger returned to give him her report. After dialing the telephone, Jae swiveled in her chair to face the window.
Jae reached out to a colleague at NCIS, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. After the call was connected and greeting shared, Jae asked her colleague to check the military flight records for a flight that departed from Afghanistan and arrived in Dulles or Reagan National Airport, and if there was anything unusual about it. She also wanted to know the exact time the flight would have arrived in Washington.
Within minutes of putting her on hold her colleague returned on the line confirming there was such a flight and there were only six on board, three pilots and three passengers: two MPs and one physician who returned stateside, escorted. She didn’t have names, but the flight arrived at the exact time Trevor told her it had, at 3:20 in the morning. Who had that kind of pull besides the FBI? No sooner had that question entered her mind than Jae wondered if Grainger was somehow connected to Trevor. It was an out of the box thought because Trevor denied knowing Grainger. Still, it warranted her covertly looking into the possibility.
After thanking the colleague and disconnecting the call, Jae stared blankly out the window. She didn’t think that exact time was just a coincidence and during her questioning of him, Trevor had been positive of the time that airplane hit the tarmac. “I’ve got to find him and fast,” she said aloud.
“Who do you have to find, Jae, darling?”
McGuire’s Southern drawl brought a smile to her face.
Jae whirled around and practically shot up from her chair and into McGuire’s chest. Behind him came Darius, all six feet of him, dropping his bag onto his desk that was situated next to hers. His red nose stood out in his cocoa brown face, forcing Jae to hold back a grin when he plucked four tissues from the box sitting on the edge of her desk. When he sat in his chair, leaned back with a loud sigh, and sent her a wink, Jae’s laughter rang out.
He was followed by Iverson and Amil.
Jae was delighted to see them and they appeared to be in good spirits, sporting black or navy blue suits. Mike was the last to arrive. They were her brothers, Jae thought, fondly. Her teammates were filling up the empty unit with their masculine voices. Darius honked as he blew his nose, and the others dropped bags and equipment onto the floor or their desks, creating a ruckus, a welcoming sound to her ears.
Jae held back an overwhelming desire to rush over and grab them and never let them go. Truthfully, after she’d been shot and couldn’t reach them, her fear was she would never see them again. But she restrained herself, acting as normally as she could.
Finding her throat oddly constricted, she said, “Hey guys, welcome back. How was that fresh air in the Montana mountains?” She caught Darius’s snort as he stood, plucked three more tissues from the box, and then reached across the desk, giving her a hug so tight, her eyes watered. Then one by one the others came to hug her.
“It was cold and that assignment was pure BS,” Mike complained. “You okay, Jae?”
Nodding yes, Jae’s curiosity was piqued and she asked Mike what he’d meant about a BS assignment. Then, for several minutes she listened intently as each man gave the highs and lows of the assignment, all agreeing it had been a waste of time.
“And now we’re all three weeks behind in our own work,” Iverson said, flipping through a stack of papers in the inbox tray on his desk.
“Why did it take three weeks?” Jae asked.
“That’s the question I have for Grainger when I talk to him again,” Darius said.
“You’ve talked to him, personally? When?” Jae asked, returning to her chair and again favoring her painful side. She listened with rapt attention as Darius explained receiving a text message from Grainger, instructing them to stay on-site in Montana until the agents arrived from California to transfer the suspected terrorists out of state. “So you didn’t talk to Grainger personally?” When Darius admitted that he hadn’t, Jae’s suspicions rose further. “You know I called each of you about twenty times.” Jae bristled as they searched their inboxes. But when McGuire jokingly said he didn’t believe she’d called them because she was too busy having fun with the male strippers at the bachelorette party, Jae held her emotions in check to avoid giving him a piece of her mind.
Iverson picked up the wedding photo from her desk and let out a whistle before angling it for the guys to see. When a round of uh-huhs and snickers filled the room, she retaliated. “Well, I did call you, all of you, damn it and Grainger, and…nobody answered my thirty-something calls,” she snapped defensively. “I-I was alone. I had no one and I put out an emergency signal to each of your cell phones,” she said, her voice rising.
Alarmed at her reaction, the five men gathered around her desk with concern on their faces. But it was Darius who closed and locked the door first. “What the hell happened, Jae?” Darius’s loud baritone voice resonated off the walls.
“I-I was hurt,” Jae croaked
out in a whisper. To say it aloud made it hit home how frightened she had been. All at once their questions were fired at her faster than she could answer them. Who? What? When? And several swear words. For the first time in quite a while, she felt the sting of tears. Jae never considered herself an emotional woman. If anything, she could roll with the punches and hold her own with the best of them. Not even a tearjerker movie could bring her to tears. On the other hand, a TV commercial about abused and unwanted pets found a weepy-eyed Jae on the phone calling the SPCA with a hefty donation, or calling friends and coworkers and begging them to go adopt a pet.
But in that instant, she was on the verge of bursting into tears.
She had no backup and to top that off, she’d had makeshift surgery in a lousy motel room. Even now, two weeks later, Jae often woke during the night reaching for her service weapon as she’d done the morning she’d found Trevor looming over her. In her mind, he was menacing and intimating. As disoriented and drugged as she had been, Jae never felt so vulnerable and powerless, and she hated feeling that way.
Some special agent I am, she thought dismally.
As the questions continued to ring in her ears, Jae looked into their worried faces and told them that she was fine now. “Just some residual pain, but…” She hesitated before standing and lifting the hem of her shirt, which had been worn on the outside of her slacks. Peeling back the bandage, she showed them the scar. Although healing, it still was an ugly reminder of getting shot.
A certified EMT, Amil shouldered everybody aside to get a better look at the wound. His eyes flew up to hers. “Jae, this is a gunshot wound.” His rush of words had everyone closing in again and hovering over his shoulders. “These sutures need to come out immediately. The hospital should have taken these out sooner or used staples to close this wound properly. It’s infected,” he said, placing his hand across her forehead. When she shook her head no, he leaned back and gaped at her. “What part of ‘you have an infection’ didn’t you understand? You need to go back to the hospital,” he enunciated.
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