Classified Baby

by Jessica Andersen

  “You, too,” she said, and cut the connection before she said anything else, anything that might stray too close to the strange line she and Ethan had walked for the past eighteen months, a gray area of more than friendship, less than something else. She’d seen him mourn his wife, Caro. He’d sat with her as she’d wept for Robert, a luxury she hadn’t allowed herself in front of anyone else. They’d leaned on each other. They liked each other. And they both knew it was time to change things. At least she did.

  Sometimes, she wondered whether Ethan intended to keep running forever, and whether he was going to run right past something wonderful.

  Shaking her head, she reached down and grabbed the lightweight carry-on duffel that held everything she figured she’d need in Spain: two changes of wash-and-wear clothing, the basic makeup she considered necessary for a put-together woman in her forties, her laptop and her diary, which went wherever she did. She didn’t necessarily write in it every day—sometimes she went for months without adding a line, but her childhood in the foster system had taught her that history was precious.

  As she shouldered the duffel, she thought about adding an entry for the first time in a long while. Maybe later tonight, after she’d connected with the guys and they’d brought her up to speed on the search for Robert. Or maybe, just maybe, they’d already found him. Maybe he’d be waiting for her, ticked off because she’d left the safety of the Vault, but a little bit glad to see her, all the same.

  Holding the image of his reluctant, sharp-edged smile at the forefront of her mind, she headed for the taxi queue. She was halfway there when someone bumped her from behind and she stumbled forward.

  A strong hand caught her arm and kept her from falling, and a man’s voice said, “Perdone!”

  “No problem,” she said, and stepped away so he’d release his grip. He tightened it, instead. That was when she focused on his face and her guts went to water.

  “Actually, there is a problem,” Clive Fuentes said in accentless English. The handsome Spaniard was six feet tall and in his mid-sixties, with dark hair and near-black eyes almost obscured behind tinted lenses. He wore a lightweight navy suit, white shirt, tie and shined shoes, allowing him to blend immaculately with the business commuters in the busy baggage claim area.

  She’d bet most of those commuters weren’t carrying pistols in their pockets, though. She could feel the press of it just above her hip as he held her arm in one hand, the concealed weapon in the other.

  “I won’t bother with the dramatic threats,” he said conversationally. “We’re both professionals, and you know exactly what I’m capable of. Which is why you’re going to smile, and we’re going to walk out of here, nice and easy. Any questions?”

  Heart lodged in her throat, Evangeline shook her head slowly, trying to keep her hands and legs from trembling as Clive hustled her out of the airport and shoved her into a waiting limousine.

  Colorado, USA

  ON THEIR WAY back to the Vault, Ethan spent most of the ride on his cell phone. Nic knew darned well he was avoiding talking to her about Blake, who had offered flat-out to fund the biofuel project.

  Thanks to Ethan, she had her funding. She should’ve been celebrating, should’ve wanted to thank him. Instead, she wanted to strangle him, because if she’d suspected earlier that the visit to Blake’s house had been a setup, Ethan’s passing comment about Sedalia being a great place to raise a family had sealed it.

  Blake might not know it yet, but Ethan was trying to pass her off on a friend. A rich, handsome friend, granted, but still.

  “No,” he snapped into the phone. “I don’t want to talk to him. You two are just going to have to work it out yourselves.”

  As far as Nic could tell, he was trying to mediate an argument between two of the computer techs back at the Vault, and not doing a very good job of it. Annoyed with the whole lot of them, she said, “Give me the phone.”

  Ethan was so startled by her tone—or fed up with the techies—he handed it over.

  “This is Nicole Benedict,” she said into the phone. “What do you want on your pizza?”

  There was dead silence. Then a voice said, “Huh?”

  Moments later, a second voice said, “Pineapple.”

  The first voice immediately shouted, “No pineapple. I hate pineapple.”

  “Quiet!” Nic barked. “Make a list. There’re what, twenty of you splitting shifts? So figure eight or ten pizzas, along with salads and soda. Text the list to this phone.” She hung up without waiting for an answer, and passed the phone back to Ethan. “Find us a pizza joint.”

  He kept his attention on the road, but after a moment, the corner of his mouth kicked up. “It wasn’t about the fight, was it?”

  Nic shook her head. “Their office was blown up with most of them inside it, they were hustled out to the middle of nowhere, and now they’re cooped up together, breathing down each other’s necks and not making much progress. Evangeline was doing her best to keep it level in there. With her gone, something was bound to set them off. Doesn’t matter who or what the fight was about, it’s a symptom of a different problem.”

  “And pizza’s the cure?”

  “Think of it as a pepperoni Band-Aid,” she suggested. “And be aware that you’re going to have to do your share of mediating once we’re back inside. You might want to make them run the halls or something, given that there’s no gym. There’s a reason NASA spends a good chunk of its budget on psych testing: human beings don’t do so well cooped up together for extended periods.”

  “Great.” Ethan pinched the bridge of his nose as though warding off a headache. “This is so not what I need right now.”

  “Well, it’s what you’ve got, so deal,” Nic said.

  He glanced over at her. “I don’t suppose you’d care to play den mother?”

  “I’ll help,” she said, “but you’re not dumping it all on me. It won’t kill you to get to know a few of your coworkers.”

  He grimaced, but took the next left. “I’m pretty sure there’s a mom-and-pop pizzeria down here a mile or so.”

  They drove in silence for a minute before guilt prickled and Nic said, “I take it back. I’ll do the den-mother thing. You focus on your work.”

  He slid her a look. “That was quick.”

  She lifted a shoulder. “I owe you for introducing me to Blake.”

  When the corners of his mouth went tight, she couldn’t help feeling a small spurt of satisfaction. Then the phone beeped to announce the arrival of the texted food order, and they spent the next few minutes finding a pizza joint and convincing the teenage girl behind the counter to put a rush on the order.

  Less than a half hour later they were back on the road, with Ethan doubling back to check for pursuit before heading the Jeep toward the Vault. They were nearly there when a new text message came in. It said simply: chpper fnd, reg to TCM.

  “Hot damn.” Ethan stepped on the accelerator, edging the speedometer toward seventy-five mph. “Amazing what a little bribery will do.”

  Ethan and Nic navigated the three-layer security, parked the Jeep and entered the Vault. When they reached the mess hall, the staffers descended on the pizza boxes en masse. They immediately started wrangling over who’d ordered what, but Nic figured the friendly bickering was an improvement.

  A woman around Nic’s own age crossed to Ethan and handed him a thin folder. “An MI-8 military surplus helicopter used to be registered to the west-coast branch of TCM. About three months ago, they replaced it with a custom-built Augusta 109 Executive helicopter. The MI-8 was taken off the books and resold to one of those helicopter tour places.”

  Ethan frowned. “So it’s not connected to TCM anymore?”

  “That’s where it gets interesting.” She retrieved the folder, flipped it open and pointed to several entries in a data spreadsheet. “The chopper tour company, Rocky Mountain Sky, is real enough. It’d have to be in order to pass FAA scrutiny these days. Thing is, look at what they’re flyi
ng, and how often.”

  Nic peered over Ethan’s shoulder as he tapped the spreadsheet and said, “Rocky Mountain Sky has two other helicopters, both smaller birds that are a lot cheaper to run than the MI-8.”

  “How do you know that?” she asked.

  “I wanted to fly choppers when I was in the service, but got sent for medic training instead,” he said shortly, then continued, “It’s certainly possible that they decided to upgrade, but look at this.” He indicated another line in the flight log. “The MI-8 hasn’t been flown from their heliport in a couple of weeks. What do you want to bet it’s not at Rocky Mountain Sky anymore?”

  The female staffer nodded. “One of our people on the outside is checking into it, and we’re looking to see who actually owns the tour company. If we can connect it back to someone at TCM and prove that the bird isn’t where it’s supposed to be, we might have enough to take to the cops.”

  “It’s tenuous, but it could work.” He nodded to the woman. “Good job. Get yourself some pizza before it’s all gone.”

  When she had departed, Nic said, “This doesn’t help you figure out how Clive Fuentes is involved, though, does it?”

  “No, but there’s usually more than one way to work a case. If I come at it from this angle while the team in Spain works on finding Robert and capturing Clive, we should be able to close the net.”

  “Have you heard from Evangeline?”

  “I talked to her just after she landed. She’ll call when she meets up with the team and they’ve got a plan in place. When she does, I’d like to have this helicopter thing nailed down.”

  Nic nodded. “Why don’t I grab some pizza for both of us and meet you in the main computer room?”

  “I’ll take the food, but you don’t have to stay,” he said as he turned away. “You should get some rest.”

  She touched his shoulder, stopping him. When he turned back, she said, “It’s my fight now, too, Ethan.”

  He shook his head. “Thanks for the offer, but I’m the professional here. We need to play to our strengths.”

  Which was part of the problem, Nic realized with a rush of frustration. Some days she felt like she’d walked away from her strengths years earlier, when Jonah-the-jerk had urged her to quit grad school and she’d given in.

  Refusing to back down again, she lifted her chin and shot Ethan a defiant look. “I have three years of grad school and a biofuel project that says research is one of my strengths. So give me a thread to pull and I’ll do my best with it. What have you got to lose?”

  He shot her a dark look, but shuffled a page out of the folder. “Okay, Sherlock. Here’s the call number of the ownership transfer for that chopper. I want to know who at TCM signed off on the sale.”

  THEY WORKED side by side as one hour slipped into the next. There were no windows, but Ethan could feel the sunset in his bones, the product of many hours and days spent hiking in the wilderness, alone with nothing but his own thoughts for company, just the way he liked it.

  Surprisingly, he found he didn’t mind working near Nicole nearly as much as he’d feared. He was aware of her, but the distraction was more physical than mental, so he forced himself to focus on the computer trails and phone chains rather than the hint of her subtle scent on the air currents within the underground room.

  Everything took him twice as long as it would have taken Cam or John, making him wish he’d taken Evangeline up on her offer of training him as an investigator, not just a bodyguard.

  Down the hall, the pizza party continued unabated, the happy sounds a necessary break from the stress of the past few days. It’d been a close call, but he’d handled it, making him think he could handle the rest. He could keep the sequestered PPS staff on track while the team in Madrid found Robert and captured Clive, and he could keep his hands off Nicole while they found the last few pieces necessary to topple the stick house TCM had assembled of investors and shell companies.

  And when that was done, they could all go back to their lives. He could go back to the short-term assignments he loved best, and Nicole could return to her classes on schedule, armed with Blake’s help for the biofuel project.

  And if the thought of them together made Ethan grind his teeth hard enough that his jaw cracked, he’d just have to deal.

  “Found it!” Nicole said suddenly. She pushed away from the computer station, eyes gleaming with satisfaction. “The TCM helicopter sale was authorized by a woman named Olivia Turner.”

  “Really?” Ethan blinked, trying to realign his thoughts. “Huh!”

  “I take it she’s not a prime suspect?”

  “Not even close.” He frowned, trying to recall everything he knew about a woman who’d only really nicked the edges of their investigation. “She was Robert’s first wife, which would seem like a valid connection on the surface, but now she’s married to Stephen Turner, the head of TCM. He’s been cleared of all suspicion. Heck, he’s helping fund the PPS investigation in an effort to figure out who was using TCM resources to profit from the oil-rights pyramid and the murders. Besides, Olivia and Robert’s son, Kyle, is Stephen’s second-in-command, and he’s a stand-up guy. They’re both clean as far as we know.”

  “You’re talking about Stephen and Kyle, not Olivia,” Nic pointed out. “Don’t tell me you’re discounting Olivia because she’s a woman?”

  “No,” he countered. “I’m discounting her because she’s…” He trailed off, trying to find a way to describe Turner’s wife. “She’s not all there. Rumor has it she was a little off before all this started, but a couple of months ago her other son, Peter, was shot by the cops and put in a coma. Since then, she’s been sliding hard.”

  Nicole pursed her lips. “A sane person wouldn’t shoot a rocket into an office building.”

  “True, but the conspiracy has been planned far too precisely for her to be directly involved,” Ethan argued, then paused when another thought occurred to him. “However, Peter was one of the main cogs. I’ll bet he either talked his mother into okaying the helicopter sale, or flat-out forged her signature.”

  Which meant they’d just tied the helicopter lead to a conspirator who was already out of the picture.

  “Darn it,” Nicole muttered, apparently reaching the same conclusion. “Well, maybe we’ll be able to connect Rocky Mountain Sky to someone else.”

  “Fingers crossed.” Ethan turned back to his machine and checked his e-mail on the off chance one of his contacts had already caught his query.

  “What else can I help with?”

  “Give me a minute.” Sure enough, he’d gotten a hit on his request for incorporation papers for the tour company, thanks to a PPS contact named Scoot. “I may be onto something.”

  “I’ll go grab more sodas.” She stood and collected the remains of their dinner. “Be back in five.”

  He didn’t respond as he bent to his work.

  NIC WAS halfway down the hall when the lights went out.

  She gasped, more from surprise than fear, and her low cry was echoed farther along the hall, where the others were gathered. Frozen in her tracks, she thought, It’s probably nothing, just a glitch.

  Moments later, emergency lights kicked on overhead, lighting the darkness.

  Relieved, Nic hurried to the galley-style kitchen, where the others had gone quiet. “Is everyone okay in here?”

  “What’s going on?” demanded a computer tech named Zach. In his mid-forties, he was among the oldest of the bunch, but looked the closest to panic. “What was that noise?”

  Nic shook her head. “I didn’t hear any noise.”

  A split second later, a dull thudding surrounded them. Almost below the level of hearing, the vibration transmitted through the floor to the soles of her feet.

  “That noise!” Zach said, eyes wild. “We heard it right before the lights went out. Is someone bombing us?”

  “We’re in a bomb shelter,” another voice said. To Nic’s surprise, Angel pushed through the shifting bodies and joined he
r at the front of the crowd. “This is the safest place to be if something bad is happening outside.”

  Nic thought fleetingly that they were in pretty serious trouble if Angel was making sense.

  There was a clatter out in the hallway, and Ethan skidded into the room with a small, snub-nosed pistol in one hand, a penlight in the other. His eyes went immediately to Nic, and he stopped in his tracks and exhaled a long breath. “You’re okay.”

  “We all are,” she confirmed, refusing to feel a sneaky sense of warmth that he’d been worried for her. “Do you have any idea what—”

  “Listen!” Zach shouted. “What’s that noise?”

  Nic’s first instinct was to tell the guy to get a grip. Then she heard it, too—not a thud, but a hissing noise that brought a faint, strange odor.

  Gas!

  Moments later, the alarms went off, a whooping din and confusion of flashing lights that was too little, too late. Angel lunged across the room and slapped a panel beside the door, bringing a video monitor to life.

  It showed a cluster of gas-masked figures just inside the main door.

  Ethan cursed, grabbed Nic and hustled her out of the kitchen, shouting, “Everyone follow me! Stay close and don’t touch anything.”

  They fled through the mazelike halls in a thunder of footsteps and panicked breathing, headed away from the front entrance. Within minutes, Ethan had turned away from the familiar corridors and plunged down a dark hallway where there were no emergency lights.

  “Where are we going?” Nic kept her voice low, so the others wouldn’t hear.

  Ethan did the same when he answered, “Evangeline showed me the original blueprints of this installation. There should be—” He broke off and made a low sound of satisfaction when his small flashlight beam shone on a door marked Emergency Supplies.

  Finding the door locked, he gestured for the others to stand back. “Give me some room. I’m going to try to control the ricochet, but you never know.”