Puppeteer

by Schultz, Tamsen

  Not sure how to respond, Dani said “Did you just liken Ty, the man you claim is my boyfriend, to a horror movie slasher?”

  “You're missing the point, woman,” Fawkes retorted.

  Dani watched families on the beach packing up their belongings, couples taking walks, and others out just enjoying the evening. Fawkes's comments weren't a revelation to her. Though she'd never let herself think about it, now that Fawkes had vocalized it, she knew it was true. And it was a part of what scared her. From almost the first moment they met, there was something different about Ty, something different about the way they were together. It had niggled at her conscience that first morning and had scared the bejeezus out of her when she realized it wasn't going to go away. For a while she wasn't sure if it would be worse if Ty didn't feel the same way, or if he did. And then she realized it wasn't worth worrying about—she knew he felt the same way. They just had to figure out what to do about it. She had to figure out what to do about it. But trusting him, trusting whatever it was between them, meant giving up control.

  Dani sighed and turned toward the ocean. “No, I got your point, Fawkes. Loud and clear.”

  * * *

  Ty lay back on his bed after hanging up the phone. He'd just finished a late-night conversation with Dani, for the second night in a row. He looked at the clock. Two in the morning. And his mind was racing. Talking to Dani did that, but the other reason had to do with the fact that he still couldn't figure out why in the hell Dani and her team were masquerading as DEA. It wasn't that the case didn't look like a DEA case—it did. And that was the problem. If it looked and smelled like a DEA case, it should be a DEA case. Why was the CIA interested?

  Like good little DEA agents, their eyes were focused on the drug aspect of the case. They were keeping an eye on the weapons, for sure. And Getz was always on their radar; he would go down with the rest, that was a given. But their focus, as it should be, seemed to be on how the drugs were getting to the Eagle's Wing, who the contact was, what the channel was.

  Ty's mind flipped through the people working on the case. He spent most of his time with Marmie and Cotter. He rarely saw Drew or anyone else on the team. Maybe he just assumed they were focused on Savendra and Sonny and the drugs. It was possible Drew had a whole team of people in the house researching the weapons.

  But anything they were finding they were keeping close to the vest. Dani had talked a little about Getz during their conversation tonight. But her focus wasn't on the drugs or weapons, it was on how to get into Getz's place. She wanted to set up a mock-up of his house, with all the same security in place, and start running trials on how to get onto the property without triggering any of the underwater alarms. She wanted everyone ready in case they needed a silent raid. Which, given the set-up of the house, Ty thought was the best approach. They could go in with guns blazing but there were so many escape routes, people were bound to slip through the cracks. If they could get around the security and get the team in place, positioned over every damned inch of the peninsula, they'd have the best chance of bringing everyone in. Of accomplishing the goals of the mission—spoken and unspoken.

  Ty sighed and rolled over, wishing Dani were there with him but knowing she wouldn't be, not for a while. Unable to sleep, and taking a gamble his friend would be awake, Ty grabbed the phone and punched in Jay's number. Jay was a devious bastard, maybe he would have some insight.

  Chapter 14

  DANI SNUGGLED BACK INTO BED. Her bed. Well, her bed at her sister's house in Maine, anyway. The flight home had been as brutal as she'd imagined. They had left San Diego at ten in the morning West Coast time and, with stops in Nevada, Texas, and Florida, she'd finally made it into Portland and into bed fifteen hours later, at around four in the morning East Coast time.

  She knew Drew would let her sleep in as long as she wanted and, though she knew she wouldn't sleep late, she pulled the covers tighter around her and savored the feeling of her sister's sheets—sheets that had a thread count higher than most countries' GDPs.

  She let out a little sigh of pleasure and rolled her head deeper into the soft pillow. She opened her eyes to judge the time of day based on the little bit of light coming in from behind the thick curtains and blinked. And blinked again. Then she let out another a little sigh.

  “I'm not even going to begin to wonder why my spidey sense didn't start tingling when you walked in,” she said, rolling onto her side and focusing on Ty, who sat less than four feet away, an ankle propped on his knee, watching her.

  “I'm quiet,” he offered.

  “Have Drew tell you about how I saved his life once in Nicaragua. It involves a dark night, a tiny but deadly snake, and my spidey sense. Speaking of Drew, he would not be happy to hear about you visiting my bedroom.” But even though she could understand why Drew wouldn't be happy about it, she was hard pressed to care all that much. Waking up to see Ty, well, there were a lot worse ways to wake up.

  He smiled at her and she suddenly felt awkward luxuriating in bed. Throwing the covers off, she slid out from under their warmth. Ty snagged her before she could walk away and pulled her onto his lap. Titling her head toward his, he kissed her.

  “Before you ask what that was for,” he said. “It's called a welcome home kiss, or an I'm glad you're back, or an I'm happy to see you kiss. Take your pick, any will do.”

  Dani stared at him for a long moment. God, she wanted more. She always seemed to be wanting more when it came to Ty. But rather than respond, she rose from his lap and walked to the adjoining bathroom, knowing Ty's eyes followed her.

  “Maybe you feel safe with me. Or at least your subconscious does.” Ty's voice carried through the half closed door. “And if it makes you feel any better, which I'm not sure it will, Drew sent me.” Dani turned on the water and didn't answer. She splashed some water on her face, dried it, then grabbed her toothbrush. There were too many implications to the last part of Ty's comment for her to think about before having a cup of coffee.

  “We caught an interesting phone call, yesterday,” Ty started talking again. “Savendra placed a call to his uncle from a pay phone in the airport.”

  * * *

  Ty couldn't help but smile at the picture in front of him. Dani stood in the doorway of the bathroom, hair hanging loose over her bare shoulders, wearing an oversized tank top and a pair of boxers that did nothing to hide her amazing body. She had a toothbrush hanging out of her mouth and look that told him he'd better start talking fast.

  “He wants out of Eagle's Wing,” Ty responded. He was about to go on when Dani held her hand up, telling him to wait, and disappeared back into the bathroom. He heard her finish brushing her teeth and then she marched back into the room.

  “When did this happen and why didn't anyone tell me?” she demanded, her hands planted on her hips. For a brief moment Ty wondered what she would do if he grabbed her and pulled her back onto his lap. He wouldn't do anything else, just hold her. Probably. Not.

  “Don't even think about, it Tyler Fuller.” He looked up to her face, wondering if she could read his thoughts.

  “You're transparent when you get that look on your face,” she raised an eyebrow at him. That answered that question. He raised his hands in mock surrender. “Now tell me about Savendra,” she continued as she began to gather up some clothes.

  “It's not much. But, one of our guys inside the airport heard him talking to his uncle about Eagle's Wing and he wants out. Thinks they're ‘really fucking wacko’ were his exact words.”

  “How do we know he was talking to his uncle?” she asked, disappearing back into the bathroom, presumably to change. A shame.

  “The power of the USA PATRIOT Act. We knew he was going to be there, he's suspected of terrorist activities, we put wires on the phones.”

  Dani popped her head out again, one leg shoved into her jeans, and stared at him.

  “Christ, how many wires did we use? And who the hell still has pay phones around?” she asked. All law enforcement was
knowledgeable about the PATRIOT Act, which was passed days after 9/11. The act expanded the power law enforcement agencies had to fight terrorism both in the US and abroad. Even so, the sheer power it granted to them sometimes came as a shock. Like the ability to place wires on any communications device a person suspected of being involved in terrorist activities might use. This included home phones, work phones, computer communication lines, and, apparently, pay phones in the airport.

  “Never mind,” Dani said, shaking her head and disappearing back behind the door. “I don't want to know the answer to that.”

  Ty understood Dani's surprise, it still surprised him the stuff they could get away with under the Act. Not that he wasn't an advocate of better tools to fight terrorism. But it sometimes got hard to stomach when the fight included gross violations of innocent people's civil liberties.

  “Yeah, so we know he was talking to his uncle. It looks like his uncle set him up with Bradley Taylor, the founder of Eagle's Wing.”

  Dani came back out, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, and leaned against the door frame, a thoughtful expression on her face.

  “Why would a drug dealer want his nephew to get involved with an organization that is, for all intents and purposes, planning a terrorist attack on the US when everyone knows one of the quickest results of those kinds of attacks is a stranglehold on the drug trade?”

  “Maybe the uncle doesn't know what Eagle's Wing is about,” Ty suggested.

  Dani thought about this for a minute before replying. “Maybe,” she conceded. “But I'm not sure I'd buy that. Militias and foreign drug cartels don't make good bedfellows. It would make sense that the uncle doesn't know what Taylor is up to, but still—” she cut herself off, lost in thought. “What do we know about the relationship between Taylor and the uncle?”

  “Marmie's looking into that,” Ty answered, rising to his feet.

  “So what did Savendra say?” Dani asked as they moved toward the door.

  “Pretty much what I told you. He told his uncle that he didn't like it there. That he wanted to get out but didn't know how. He asked his uncle to talk to Taylor about letting him out.”

  “The kid was afraid.” It wasn't a question.

  “Yeah, and the uncle wasn't too sympathetic. He told the kid to grow some cajones. In much more colorful language than that.”

  “So the uncle wasn't opposed to Savendra leaving the group, he was just irked at being asked to help.” She stopped at the door.

  “Sort of the way it sounded, but Marmie's still looking into it,” Ty agreed.

  “And where is Adam?” Dani asked.

  “He's on his way to Miami now. Sonny is expected to land tomorrow morning. It should give Adam some time to settle in and get to know the locals.”

  “I wish I were with him,” Dani said to herself.

  “I'm sure you do but, in the meantime, you still get to go swimming.” He walked toward her, stopping a few inches away. Keeping an eye on her expression, he looped his arms around her. He expected her to pull away, to turn and walk away. For all her confidence, Dani was skittish when it came to him. But when she didn't move away, when she leaned into him a tiny bit, his reaction was instantaneous. His arms tightened and her head came to rest below his chin.

  “Is that a gun in your pocket, Detective, or are you just happy to see me?” He could feel her smile against his throat.

  “When this is all over, I think we should go somewhere where we can swim. Naked.” His voice was gruff.

  She sighed. “Sounds nice. But, in the meantime, in the real world, we need to track down our wetsuits.”

  * * *

  Thankfully, they didn't need the wetsuits quite so early in the morning. Instead, Ty had arranged a little educational session so that they could all learn everything there was to learn, and probably more, about Getz's underwater surveillance system.

  “Well, damn, look what the cat dragged in. We haven't had anything that gorgeous set foot in here in months,” Jay commented as Dani and Ty walked into his office.

  “He is pretty gorgeous, but you're not really his type,” Dani quipped with a smile.

  Jay tossed his head back and laughed. Ty rolled his eyes.

  “Dani, Jay. Jay, Dani.” Ty made the introductions once Jay stopped laughing.

  “So you're DEA,” Jay commented as he assessed her. She hadn't missed his initial male reaction to her, or his subsequent evaluation that, for a split second, as his eyes swept her body, conveyed doubts about her ability and about how she might have gotten to where she was. But when his eyes met hers in a gaze that didn't waver for a second, Jay nodded in acknowledgement of what she knew he saw there—intelligence, confidence, and the kind of wariness that came with seeing too much of the world and all its nasty bits.

  “Well, that's that, then,” Jay said, rising from his seat. “Did you bring the aluminum foil?”

  Twenty minutes later, they stood with a couple of guys from Cotter's team in a small conference room in the building where Jay kept his offices. Sitting on the table in front of them were the Hunley and Abram. Both machines were the same make and model as those that surrounded Getz's peninsula.

  “This is the Hunley,” Jay said, placing his hand on the larger of the two machines. It was about two feet tall, a foot in diameter, and shaped like R2-D2. “It's the acoustic monitor Getz has around his place. If it picks up a certain kind of noise, an alarm will sound in the house and you can be sure that, within minutes, some of Getz's finest will be both on and in the water.”

  “What kinds of noises will trigger it? How does it differentiate between regular ocean sounds and abnormal sounds—sounds worth triggering the alarm?” Dani asked.

  “It's a smart system,” Jay began to explain to the group. “It goes through a two-week recognition period where it familiarizes itself with the surrounding sounds. It knows the basics when it's installed but it takes some time to learn the subtleties and the nuances. Once it picks up and stores information on the regular, everyday sounds, it will only trigger an alarm when it hears something else.”

  “Like what else?” Cotter asked.

  Jay shrugged, “Anything, everything. Excess bubbles that come out of a regulator, the sound of any kind of weapon being loaded, human sounds. Even the sound of oars hitting the water or scraping against a boat would set it off.”

  “Yeah, but aluminum foil will, uh, foil the system?” Dani's lips twitched at the bad pun. A couple of the guys laughed. No one could quite believe it.

  “Yeah,” Jay smiled back as he tossed each of them some papers detailing the specs of the system. “It's true, we tested it when we found out. But you still need to understand what might set it off, in case you lose your force field.”

  “Just how much foil are we talking about here?” Spanky asked. Dani heard a couple of the guys shift behind her. They were used to a lot of things: seeing a lot of things, doing a lot of things—ugly things. But not a single one of them relished the idea of covering themselves in foil.

  “Not much,” Jay answered and Dani heard a collective sigh of relief.

  “How much?” Ty asked.

  “We tested it a couple of days ago and a few bands in strategic places was enough.”

  “Will it cause the system to scramble or show any errors?” Dani asked, grabbing a cup of water from the cooler in the corner. The room wasn't meant to hold more than two or three people.

  “No, that's the beauty of it. Something about the composition of aluminum foil makes the machine go deaf for a minute or two, only it doesn't know it.”

  “So what's the layout of these machines?” Cotter asked.

  Jay nodded in acknowledgment and turned toward the back wall of the room. He pulled down a marine map of Getz's peninsula that showed a series of red and blue Xs surrounding the land.

  “The blue Xs are the Hunley monitors. The red ones are the Abram monitors, but we'll get to those later. As you can see, the Hunleys are arced around the peninsula about twenty-five fee
t apart. It creates a basic ‘wall’ around the land.”

  “What's the range of detection?” Dani asked.

  “On a good day, the range can be up to fifty feet.”

  “Getz chose this option,” Jay said, motioning to the map behind him. “It looks cleaner, but from a security perspective, it's suboptimal because, once you get past the single line of machines, you're over the wall, so to speak. And we didn't feel like arguing with him,” he added and cast a glance at two of his employees who were smiling and shaking their heads.

  “Not that Getz's men could do anything to us that we couldn't do to them in half the time. We just didn't like the guy. Real prick. We figured if the system failed he'd get what he deserved anyway,” he added.

  Dani glanced at Drew and saw a wry expression on his face. He hadn't been too keen on bringing Jay in but Ty had convinced him. Dani could tell by the smile that tugged at Drew's lips, he was beginning to like the guy.

  “Any more questions on the Hunley?” Jay asked. They shook their heads. “We've got it set up in a bay not far from here so we'll take some test runs this afternoon, but we need to go over the Abram system next.” A couple of the guys took the opportunity to grab water as Jay moved toward the second machine sitting on the square table. Dani opted for opening a window. They'd gotten spoiled at her sister's place with all that space.