Bad Nights

by Rebecca York

  Which gave her an idea. She returned to the cities and called up a list of car dealerships. In Wilmington, she found a Chevrolet and Cadillac dealer named G. Washburn. Not Washington, but close.

  Focusing on him, she found that he was prominent in the chamber of commerce, in the First Methodist Church, the Rotary Club. He also sponsored a couple of youth sports teams and gave to the local SPCA. He looked like an upstanding member of the community.

  Digging into his personal life, she discovered that he was married, belonged to the most prominent country club in the area, and owned a condo on Longboat Key in south Florida, where he and his wife spent the winter months.

  “Found anything?” Jack asked.

  She looked up and saw him standing nearby. She’d been so intent on her assignment that she hadn’t even heard him come in.

  When she searched his face, she saw that he looked frustrated and tired.

  “You’re not making much progress?” she asked.

  He raised an arm and let it drop back to his side. “I wish I were.” He walked over to the couch and lowered himself to the seat beside her. “What do you have to cheer me up?”

  “Well, I’ve got a lot of information on G. Washington. I know who he is.”

  His face brightened. “You’re sure?”

  “Pretty sure.” When she explained her search process, he nodded. “And he’s got money, although I’m not sure if it’s enough to outfit a militia organization.” She started telling him the facts she’d uncovered.

  He looked impressed. “You said you were good at research.”

  She laughed. “Well, some of my research was tracking down plagiarized term papers.”

  “You get a lot of that?”

  “More than I used to. Or—now there are methods for seeing who’s cheating.” She switched back to G. Washington. “I think GW wasn’t as good at hiding his identity as your guy.” She turned her head toward him. “What about Yarborough?”

  “He doesn’t have any kind of personal persona that I can tie to him.”

  “Too bad.”

  “It means he’s going to great lengths to hide his real name. I did trace his email account, though. It goes through a server in Romania.”

  Morgan moved so that her shoulder was pressed to Jack’s, reassured by his rock-solid body.

  He gave her a measured look. “You’re doing great,” he said. “And I’m not just talking about research. You’re holding up under stress.”

  “I wish I were doing better,” she answered. There were so many things she wanted to talk about, and she didn’t know where to begin.

  “I guess you’ve been under pressure like this a lot,” she murmured.

  “It’s not as bad as sitting around waiting to go into combat. At least we’ve got something to focus on.”

  “True.” She reached for his hand and held on.

  He knitted his fingers with hers.

  “My experience is different from yours,” he said in a low voice.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I went right from high school into the Navy.”

  “And worked your way up.”

  He ignored that and said, “You kept on in school. A BS. An MS. A PhD.”

  “You’ve heard the old joke. Bullshit. More shit, and piled higher and deeper.”

  He laughed, then sobered again. “You’re smart, and you can apply your brainpower to many types of problems.”

  “So can you. But you have a wider background. I’ve never been out of the U.S. There are a lot of things we can teach each other.”

  He was saved from a comeback by the sound of footsteps. They glanced up to see Shane come into the room, a satisfied smirk on his face. “Even more interesting—information on the Cayman Islands account is coming through a server in Romania.”

  “Then it’s him!” Morgan exclaimed.

  “We can’t be absolutely sure, but that’s suggestive,” Shane allowed. He looked at Morgan. “But we still have to keep going with your guy. It would be nice if you could uncover some information that he’s kept hidden.”

  “Like what?”

  “Other affiliations. Or maybe something through his wife.”

  “I’ll get on that,” Morgan said.

  “And we’ll keep trying to find a link between the Yarborough guy and the money.”

  “Will he know you are poking around in his banking business?”

  “Maybe. That might get him to do something rash. Like cut off Trainer’s funding.”

  “Trainer could keep going for a while, couldn’t he?”

  “Probably. But cutting him off from his cash might make him panic.”

  Chapter 26

  Morgan did some more research on G. Washington and couldn’t find anything that he’d tried to keep under cover. Which didn’t mean there wasn’t anything to find. Knowing she needed a break, she got up, wandered into the kitchen, and started looking through the refrigerator and the pantry.

  She had sworn she wasn’t going to cook, but when she found the ingredients for a classic dessert she liked, she decided to go ahead and make it.

  The aroma of cooking apples and cinnamon brought both men into the kitchen.

  “What’s that?” Jack asked.

  “Apple pie.”

  “It smells wonderful.”

  “It will be ready soon. We can have some before dinner.”

  “Isn’t that the wrong order?” Jack teased.

  “You mean like cookies before cheese and crackers in the cave?”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  Forty minutes later, she called them into the kitchen to eat the pie with ice cream she found in the freezer.

  Shane had been standoffish with her, but the treat seemed to thaw him considerably.

  “This is wonderful,” he told her as he finished his first bite. “You didn’t even have a recipe, did you?”

  “I like to cook, and pie is something I can do without a cookbook.” She looked at Jack. “What have you found out about Yarborough?”

  “Not much. He’s in deep cover, which leads me to believe he’s Trainer’s moneyman—not G. Washington.”

  “Does that do us any good?”

  “It will if we can figure out who he really is.”

  The conversation was interrupted when Max called.

  Shane put him on the speakerphone so that everyone at the safe house could hear. “I’ve been monitoring the video feeds. Trainer and his guys seem to have gone away.”

  “I wish I could be sure that was good news,” Jack answered. “I can’t believe they’re not planning something.”

  “None of them actually came near the building. What do you think I should do?” Max asked.

  “Stay there,” Shane answered. “That’s probably safest—from the point of view of not revealing this location.”

  Jack nodded, but Morgan picked up on his uneasy expression.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked him.

  “That I made Wade Trainer insanely angry by proving to be a traitor in his eyes—then getting away. I’m pretty sure he’s not going to rest until he’s figured out a way to get even.”

  “But not today, apparently,” she answered.

  “Does that make you feel better?” he shot back.

  “I guess not.”

  They discussed possible scenarios before hanging up.

  “I’ve got one more thing I can try,” Shane said. “When I was still doing criminal investigations for the Army, I worked with a banking expert named Hank Bernstein. Maybe he’s willing to look into the Cayman Islands account for us.”

  They had more of the sandwiches for supper, then another small slice of pie apiece.

  “We’ll save the rest for Max,” Jack said.

  “Good idea,” Morgan agreed. “How do you keep from gaining weight—sitting around here?” she asked.

  “I told you, there’s a gym in the basement.”

  “I only saw the safe room.”
<
br />   “You go down a different stairway.”

  “Let me put on shorts and a T-shirt.”

  “I’ll come down with you.”

  They met in the great room again, both dressed for the gym. Jack took her down what looked like the main basement stairway, which landed in the weight room.

  She opted for the elliptical trainer while he started on the weight machines.

  “Tell me some stuff about Trainer,” she said as she moved her arms and legs back and forth.

  Jack kept up his motion on the leg press. “Like what?”

  “I want to get a handle on his personality.”

  Jack kept pressing with his legs. She couldn’t see what weight he was using, but she suspected it was double what she could do.

  “He needs to be in charge, and he’s highly organized, also highly disciplined. He put together the militia compound on his own.”

  “He built the whole thing?”

  “No. It was an old camp, and he modified the buildings to suit his purposes. He keeps his armament in steel buildings.” He paused. “And I think there’s something special in one of them.”

  “Special?”

  “Just a hunch, from the way he acts around it.”

  She nodded as she kept up her aerobic workout.

  “He doesn’t listen to the opinions of others. He’s sure of his mission.” Jack paused for a moment while he switched to the leg curl machine and adjusted the weights. “That’s putting it mildly. I sometimes had the feeling that he thinks he’s got some kind of divine sanction.”

  “That makes him more dangerous.”

  “He doesn’t talk about it a lot. I guess he figures he’d be revealing too much.”

  “Good insights.” She climbed off the machine, walked to the case of water bottles, and unscrewed the cap on one. After taking a long pull, she asked, “He never mentioned his family?”

  “No. But we did some research on him. His family was lower middle class. His dad supplemented the family larder by hunting, sometimes illegally. Probably he was into corporal punishment, and Wade grew up with a healthy disrespect for law and order. His dad worked in a lumber mill and was killed in an accident there—leaving the family in bad shape. Wade was sixteen when it happened, and he had to quit school and get a job at a local convenience store to help his mom make ends meet.”

  Morgan nodded. “All that would have formed some of his attitudes. It sounds like he was a responsible kid—helping to support the family.”

  “Yeah, but he’s broken with them completely. He has two sisters and a brother, and he never sees any of them now.”

  “Did something happen to cause the break?”

  “Well, his brother did get arrested for auto theft and other crimes.”

  “Maybe he was ashamed of that. Or disgusted.”

  Jack joined her and got a bottle of water for himself. “I guess we can only speculate about that.”

  “Yes. And other stuff. But interestingly, the parents’ behavior can cause kids in the same family to go in different directions. His father’s corporal punishment could be a factor in his brother’s going bad. And it could have had the opposite effect on Wade. It could have made him big on harsh discipline,” she said.

  Jack’s eyes took on a faraway look. “I’d say he enjoyed meting out punishment.”

  “What kind?”

  “He liked to gather the troops to watch offenders getting whipped.”

  She dragged in a sharp breath. “Nice.”

  “And we know he likes harsh torture methods.” He gave her a quick look. “Methods that were painful but wouldn’t kill me. I guess he’s studied those techniques.”

  “Nasty.”

  “He wanted information. He was going to kill me later.”

  “But you got away.”

  “Which has made him angry as hell. Not just at me, but at Shane and Max, now that he knows about them. Cunningham was right on that score.”

  “Well, Trainer’s angry with me too,” she added.

  His gaze shot to her again. “Another reason why we need to put him out of commission.”

  She asked a question she’d never thought she’d consider. “Can you do a preemptive strike?”

  “We may end up having to do that.” He kept his gaze on her. “You didn’t like it when I set up that accident for Gibson. How will you like it if we make it look like his men started a revolution?”

  She sucked in a breath and let it out. “I guess my attitude has changed, now that I understand the realities of the situation.”

  He answered with a clipped nod.

  They both worked out for an hour, with Morgan switching to the machines and lowering the weights considerably from the positions Jack had used.

  Both of them were sweating by the time they called it quits. Upstairs, they both grabbed bottles of water and drank thirstily.

  As they stood by the kitchen counter, she could feel the heat coming off Jack.

  “Something we have in common,” she said. “We both like to work out.”

  “Yeah.” He was looking at her like he was thinking about pulling her sweat-slick body against his, and she felt a jolt of awareness. Instead he said, “We should both take a shower and get some sleep.”

  She wanted to make a different suggestion, but she knew he was right.

  “Shane and I will alternate guard duty,” he said.

  “You think we need a guard?”

  “I hope not. Trainer doesn’t know this location, but under the circumstances, it’s a good idea.”

  She nodded, wishing she could take Jack up to her bedroom. Not necessarily to make love but to lie in his arms for a while.

  After her shower, they had dinner, then turned in early. She lay awake for a long time, mulling over the conversation with Jack in the gym.

  Did she really think it was okay to attack Trainer’s compound? And what did that say about her?

  She’d like more information about the militia leader. Maybe they had a file on him that she could read.

  The ringing of the phone woke her, and she heard running feet in the hall.

  Jack must have switched on the speaker upstairs, because she heard Max Lyon’s voice.

  “The troops are back. I’m under attack.”

  “We’ll be right there,” Jack answered, then ran into her room. “We’re going to help Max. You will stay here.”

  She wanted to protest, but she knew that Jack wasn’t going to allow her to come with them.

  “Okay.” Climbing out of bed, she ran to him and dragged him close, holding him tightly. “Be careful.”

  “I will.”

  She reached up and pulled his head down for a fierce kiss, which was over all too quickly.

  “Call me when you know something.”

  “I will.”

  Then he and Shane left the house. She ran to the window, watching them drive away, feeling a sense of foreboding.

  She put on another running suit, then went down to the great room and looked at the time. She was surprised to see it was only 11:00 p.m. Unable to sit still, she paced back and forth, her glance sometimes going to the window as she peered out into the darkness.

  ***

  Max Lyon kept in touch with the other men as they drove toward the Rockfort offices.

  “I’m alternating camera views. They’re holding in formations around the front and back entrances,” he reported.

  “How many?”

  “Six at each door.”

  “They can’t get in,” Jack said.

  “Unless they use a mortar or something big.”

  “We’re still fifteen minutes out,” Jack said. “We’ve got the firepower to chase them away.”

  “And alert the Montgomery County Police.”

  “Trainer started it, not us.”

  “Either way, the cops may be pissed about a gun battle at an industrial park in the county.”

  “I guess we’ll worry about that later. If we’re attacked, we have th
e right to defend ourselves.”

  ***

  About a half-hour after the men had left, the phone rang, and Morgan leaped toward it, hoping for news from Jack.

  The voice on the other end of the line said, “This is Arthur Cunningham.”

  It was the man who’d hired Rockfort Security to keep tabs on the militia leader.

  “Yes.”

  “Jack wanted me to stay with you. I have the remote for the alarm system. I’m coming in.”

  She hesitated. “Why didn’t Jack tell me?”

  “He’s busy.”

  Before she could answer, she saw headlights in the driveway. Then a car came into view through the darkness. As it pulled up in front of the house, floodlights came on. When the vehicle stopped, a man got out, and she could see him clearly. It was the same man she’d met the day before. Earlier he’d been dressed in a business suit. Now he was wearing cargo pants and a windbreaker over a knit shirt.

  He strode up to the house. When she didn’t immediately open the door, he knocked.

  “If you don’t let me in, Jack’s going to be angry,” he said.

  She still hesitated. Something about this didn’t feel right. “I’m going to call Jack,” she said.

  Turning away from the door, she started for the phone.

  Behind her, the door blasted open like it had been hit with a guided missile. Morgan was knocked to the floor, where she lay stunned for a moment, but she knew she couldn’t stay there. She had to get to the safe room.

  She was pushing herself up when Cunningham leaped on her. She hit at him with her fists, but he ignored the blows as he fumbled with something under his jacket.

  She was still fighting him when she felt the prick of a needle through the fabric of her pants. It plunged into her thigh, and Cunningham pushed himself off of her.

  “You’ll take a nice nap now,” he said.

  She was already feeling woozy, but she managed to ask, “Why?”

  “I need your help,” he said.

  She wanted to ask why again, but blackness was already closing in on her.

  ***

  “Wait a second,” Max said.

  “What?”

  “Every one of them is pulling back.”

  “They realize they can’t get in?”