The FBI Thrillers Collection: Vol 11-15

by Catherine Coulter

  “Your father adopted you really fast.”

  “I was just getting used to introducing myself as Rachael Abbott.”

  “Keep his name. Do it to honor him. It doesn’t tie you to the others. We’ll get them, Rachael, we will. I’ll call Savich, see how much longer he wants you kept under wraps. Besides, you and I have a whole lot to discuss. I want every detail, Rachael, beginning with when you met your father for the first time. Come over here, let’s sit under that oak tree. Tell me again about the first time you met your father.”

  She sat, wrapped her arms around her knees, and began talking. “Did I tell you what he said when he first saw me? He shouted, ‘Wait a minute—my God, a man can’t be this lucky.’ And he grabbed my hands and pulled me into his office, past his staff, people waiting. Like I told you, he never doubted for an instant I was his daughter. He was amazing. He had the most beautiful smile. It lit up his face, made these little crinkles at the corners of his eyes. He didn’t want to let me out of his sight. We talked for hours. He told me about what had happened all those years ago, how his father took him and his friend to Spain to get him to forget my mother, only he didn’t, not really. I told him what his father did to my mother, and he was tight-lipped. Of course I told him my mom didn’t tell me about it until after his father died because she was afraid.”

  Rachael sucked in the fresh sweet summer air, and continued when Jack nodded. “He told me the first time in his life he really stood up for himself was when he made the decision to run for the Senate. He said he’d never felt so free as when he told his father to suck it up, it was his life and this was what he wanted. He said toward the end of the campaign, his father poured money into the coffers, probably put him over the top, got him elected.

  “Then he laughed, shook his head. Right after Jimmy took his Senate seat, his father announced that he would now call the shots. Jimmy said he received detailed memos from the old man, telling him exactly what he wanted done. Naturally, he paid no attention. Jimmy told me his father had to manipulate and control everything and everyone until he died, supposedly issuing orders with his last breath. Jimmy said his mother probably died young just to escape him.”

  Jack asked, “How did Laurel and Quincy react to their father?”

  “They both worshipped and feared him, like he was a god, one who was omniscient, one who could smile upon you or crush you.”

  “And how did they react to you?”

  “The first time I met Laurel, her husband Stefanos Kostas, and Quincy was at dinner at Jimmy’s house. He’d told them only that he had a big surprise for them.” She looked up to see a rabbit sitting at the edge of the woods, seemingly content to stare at them. “I remember Laurel looking at me like I was a termite that just crawled out of the woodwork. Her niece? She couldn’t believe it. All she could do was gape at me, and then at Jimmy.” Rachael could hear Laurel saying, “Pardon me? What did you say, John?”

  “This is my daughter, Rachael Janes, soon to be Rachael Janes Abbott. I’m adopting her so she’ll be mine legally, as she should have been from the beginning.

  “Rachael, your uncle Quincy and your aunt Laurel and my brother-in-law Stefanos.” And he rubbed his hands together, he was that happy, that excited. He hugged her against his side, kissed her forehead. “Rachael Abbott—now that has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

  Quincy cleared his throat, looked beyond Rachael’s left shoulder. “She does perhaps resemble you a bit, but you must be responsible here, take your time to do things right. You must have DNA tests, make certain she is who she says she is.”

  Jimmy said simply, “She’s my very image. Come on now, Quin, admit it. And there are simply some things you know to your soul. Listen to me, this is an evening to celebrate. I have another daughter I never knew about. I remember her mother, Angela, have thought of her often over the years. There is no doubt, and just looking at her, you know there’s no question as to her paternity. Now, let’s have some champagne.”

  Rachael sipped the French champagne as she eyed the braised French snails and the French sauced beef tips. The only thing French she liked was baguettes, but there wasn’t any baguette. Laurel and Quincy were civil, but she knew they weren’t happy, knew they distrusted her, believed she’d suckered their brother. As for Stefanos Kostas, he looked at her like he’d just as soon have her sitting naked astride his lap, her tongue down his throat.

  “What does Jacqueline have to say about this?” Quincy asked.

  Jimmy shrugged. “Who cares what she thinks? I would like Rachael to meet her half sisters. I think they’d all get along well.” To Rachael, he said, “Elaine and Carla both live in Chicago, as I told you. They’re both married. I’m a grandfather twice over now.”

  A long, long evening, Rachael thought, and felt her face had frozen into a rictus of a smile by the time Jimmy closed the door on his two siblings.

  “They’ll come around,” Jimmy said, hugging her. “Don’t worry,” and he gave her a big sloppy kiss. “Fact is, they’ve got no choice.”

  It seemed so long ago, a different life, but it wasn’t. She felt the sun warm on her face now as she looked over at Jack. “I remember thinking we could simply ignore them if they didn’t like me. As long as I live, I’ll remember how Jimmy never doubted me. Sure, I looked like him, but still he was powerful, rich, and famous, and I was nobody.

  “Even if he’d been a serial killer, I’d have readily forgiven him.”

  “What’d your mom say?”

  Rachael smiled. “She was surprised because it never occurred to her he would even remember her. She’d warned me that a DNA test would be the proper thing to do, didn’t matter that I looked like him, and that when it was brought up, I shouldn’t be insulted.”

  And Rachael told Jack again about the night Jimmy broke down and told her about the little girl on the bicycle. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen such desolation in a person’s eyes, such misery, such despair—”

  There was a yell.

  “Rachael, Jack, come here!” It was Gillette and he was shouting from the front porch. “Hurry! Now!”

  Without a pause, Jack drew his gun, grabbed Rachael’s hand, and they ran in a crouch, back to the house.

  A spray of gunfire erupted as the three of them dove through the open front door.

  TWENTY

  Gillette slammed the door, crawled to the side, and reached over to shoot the dead bolt through.

  Bullets tore through the door, sending splinters flying. The beautiful high arched windows shattered, spewing glass shards everywhere. They heard bullets gouging the walls.

  “Cover your heads,” Jack yelled, pulling Rachael beneath him. “Gillette, stay down.”

  Round after round struck the house. No front window was left unshattered. Rachael struggled to breathe, and finally, Jack leaned up. She yelled over the shots, “Uncle Gillette, how did you know they were here?”

  Gillette was panting as he pulled a wooden splinter out of the back of his hand. “There was a break in the perimeter alarm. I wasn’t expecting anyone, so I knew it had to be trouble. Well, malfunctions sometimes happen, but I wasn’t about to take any chances, not with your situation, Rachael.”

  Glory be, Jack thought, an alarm. The gunfire stopped for a moment. Jack said, “Both of you stay down, don’t go anywhere near that door or the windows.”

  Gillette was already on his hands and knees. “I’ve got weapons upstairs. I’ll get them.”

  “All right, but keep down. No marine hotdogging.”

  Gillette laughed as he elbow crawled toward the stairs. Another spray of bullets tore through the line of front windows, striking a side wall, shattering a beautiful gilded mirror.

  “Don’t you move a muscle, Rachael,” Jack said, elbowing his own way over to the window. At a break in the gunfire, he peered out, saw a shadow of movement and returned fire with his Kimber. He had only one extra clip so he had to pace himself.

  “They’re destroying this beautiful h
ouse,” Rachael said.

  Gillette returned to the foyer, bent nearly double, clutching two rifles. He fell to his knees and crawled between two front windows to get to them.

  Jack said, “Gillette, do you shoot as well as Rachael?”

  “I’m a marine,” he said. “Who do you think taught her?”

  “Good point. The two of you keep the guys out front contained. There are more, I know it, and I don’t want them coming in behind us. Back entrances, Gillette?”

  “There’s only one back door. In the kitchen.”

  “Keep your heads down,” Jack said, and kept low to the floor. He felt the heat of some of the bullets flying over his head on their way to thud into the walls. The gilded mirror finally crashed to the floor, wood and glass flying everywhere.

  When Jack was out of the line of fire, he jumped to his feet and ran down the hallway toward the kitchen. He felt a stab of exquisite pain in his thigh, ignored it. He stepped into the kitchen at the exact moment a man came in the back door. Jack fell to his knees and rolled, four bullets stitching the cabinets behind him. He heard one dig into the beautiful marble floor.

  And that really made him mad. He came up on his side and yelled, “Hey!”

  The man fired again, but he was off by a good foot. Jack shot two rounds, both of them missing. The man was crouched behind the washing machine just inside the back door.

  “What are you doing here?” Jack yelled over the pumping gunfire coming from the front of the house.

  The man fired off another half-dozen rounds. Jack felt a sharp spear of wood hit his left arm. He gave a huge cry of pain and slammed his Kimber against the floor. He lay there, still and silent.

  The man fired again. Then he slowly rose and looked beyond the kitchen table to where Jack lay, nearly under one of the kitchen chairs. He took a step, then realized he didn’t see the gun, but it was too late.

  Jack reared up and shot him.

  The man grabbed his shoulder and sank to his knees. His gun dropped onto the floor and skidded against the wall. He toppled over, moaning. Jack walked to the man, struck the back of his head with the gun butt. One down, but of course there had to be one more. Whoever ordered this wasn’t about to take any more chances with only one shooter. No, this was a full-scale assassination squad. He heard two shooters in the front, and likely there was still one more in the back.

  Jack pulled a wallet out of the man’s jacket pocket, then looked at the expanse of green lawn that went back for perhaps thirty feet to the forest, a seemingly impenetrable thick, vibrant green. He looked for movement, shadow play, anything to help him locate the other shooter. Or shooters. He was patient. He waited. Finally he saw a flash of movement. A man was trying to slide between two oak saplings, being careful because he’d heard the shot and the yell. By now he had to realize his partner was down.

  The man held something in his hand—not a gun or a rifle. Jack realized he was speaking on a walkie-talkie, telling the team leader one was down in the kitchen. Jack saw the dark blue of his shirt when he shifted forward, probably to get a better look at the house, to try to see him. Big mistake, Jack thought. He lined up the shot and fired, but the man was good. He’d seen Jack’s shadow, seen a whisper of movement, he supposed, and dove to the ground. Jack’s bullet went into a tree and spewed up a whirlwind of leaves.

  No way was he going to let that man go back around front to join his team. He stretched his arm up and grabbed an apple from the bowl sitting on the breakfast table. He took aim at the trash can container off to his left and threw the apple. It struck hard. He saw the man jerk around, his gun arm swinging smoothly toward the container. Jack stood and fired.

  The man didn’t make a sound.

  Jack watched him pitch forward out of the forest and onto the grass.

  He heard gunfire intensify at the front of the house. He prayed his one civilian and one marine were being careful. He thought the two of them could handle the front. He waited, listened. He was as convinced as he could be that there were no more shooters lurking in the forest. He ran flat out across the backyard, fanning his Kimber, so pumped with adrenaline he could hear his own heart thudding against his chest.

  How had they found Slipper Hollow? Not hard, really. With the Internet, nothing was secret for long.

  He fell to his knees and checked the man he’d shot. The bullet had gone straight through his heart. He pulled out his wallet, stuck it in with the other one in his pocket. He picked up the fallen walkie-talkie and clicked the speak button. He lowered his voice, crumpled leaves in his left hand to create the impression of static, and prayed. “Hey, it’s not going good here. What do you want me to do?”

  “Clay, that you?”

  He wasn’t expecting a woman’s voice. “Yeah, it’s me.”

  He crumpled more leaves. “Hard to hear you.”

  “What about Donley? You said he went in the back and you heard a shot. What happened?”

  “He . . . got . . . clocked.”

  “All right, all right, dammit, we’ll have to wait until dark to go in. They’re hillbillies, of course they’ve got weapons, probably coon rifles, so a frontal assault is out. Do you think you can get in the back?”

  He rubbed his palm over the receiver. “It’s tough, I . . .”

  “Clay? Hey, wait, you’re not Clay—”

  He heard her cursing, then the walkie-talkie went fuzzy.

  Jack quickly began making his way around to the front, in a wide circle, hoping to come in behind the shooters, but truth be told, he wasn’t holding out much hope.

  He heard a few more rounds of gunfire, then silence. He pictured the woman and her partner—they were pros, they wouldn’t panic, but they were facing a full-blown screwed-up fiasco. They’d know enough to get out of there fast. Somehow they’d been spotted, and their prey were armed and shooting back. They’d probably believed it would be easy, even though the shooter they’d sent to Parlow was presently residing in Franklin County Hospital. Did they know that? Probably. But what they couldn’t know was that an FBI agent was here with the hillbillies. And one of the hillbillies was a marine, the other a crack shot. What a nice surprise.

  If they had a contingency plan, it was shot to hell now. He ran, hunkered down, ignoring the leaves whipping his face, ignoring the pain in his thigh, the blood seeping from the cut in his left arm, and tried to move as quickly and quietly as possible.

  He heard something, and stopped on a dime. It sounded like a footstep, a single footstep.

  Sunlight speared through the leaves overhead. Silence. Nothing. Then he heard an animal, probably a possum, running away, running from him, he knew.

  No footfalls, no one was near. How much farther?

  He heard some fresh gunshots coming from Gillette and Rachael, but no return fire.

  They were gone.

  He ran straight out toward the edge of the forest until he saw the front of the house. He had to be close to their last position. They could still be nearby, see what he was going to do, kill him if he showed himself. Jack didn’t want to get shot. He nearly ran over their former position—saw the flattened leaves, the shells.

  They were gone.

  He ran all the way back to the road. When he burst out of the woods, he saw two figures in a late-model black Ford Expedition burning rubber down the road.

  They’d had to leave their companions. Not a good idea—but they didn’t have a choice.

  He ran back as fast as he could, yelled before he broke through the woods in front of Gillette’s house, “It’s Jack! They’re gone. Don’t shoot! I’m coming out!”

  Rachael flew out the splintered front door. “Jack! Are you all right? They ran?”

  “I’m fine. You?”

  “Some glass in my arm and neck, nothing bad. Gillette’s okay, too. He went to check out back.”

  “One of the guys is alive. I left him on the kitchen floor. Let’s get in the house,” he said, and grabbed her arm and pulled her inside.

  Gill
ette came running out of the kitchen. “There’s blood on the floor, Jack, but the guy’s gone.”

  He was a moron. He should have shot the goon in the leg. “He won’t get far,” Jack said. “There were two of them, actually. One’s dead at the back of the yard, right at the tree line. I took both their wallets. I’ll bet you these guys are in the system.”

  Rachael said, “I’ll call Sheriff Hollyfield, tell him what happened and get him out here.”

  “I’m going to look outside.”

  When Jack walked into the kitchen five minutes later, he said, “The body’s gone. Our wounded guy carried him out. They must have another vehicle.”

  “The sheriff will be here in thirty minutes, tops,” Rachael said.

  “I forgot, I’ve got some critical information for him,” Jack said, and dialed him up, managed to catch him on the point of leaving his office. Jack gave Sheriff Hollyfield the license plate of the Ford Expedition.

  Rachael ignored the objections of the men and went with Jack to track the shooters through the woods, the rifle pointed down at her side. Jack wasn’t happy, even though he knew she was a good shot. “There’s got to be blood,” he whispered. “Keep as quiet as you can.”

  They found the blood trail quickly enough. “Look,” Jack said, going down on his knees. “He’s carrying his dead buddy. They can’t be too far ahead.”

  The blood trail led back to the road, some thirty feet farther beyond where the Ford Expedition had peeled out.

  Jack said, “They were careful enough to have two vehicles. The guy I shot in the shoulder, he needs major help fast.”

  When they returned to the house, Jack called the nearest hospital. They’d already been alerted, he was told, by Sheriff Hollyfield.

  “Gillette, are there any physicians close by that our wounded guy could find easily?”

  Gillette shook his head. “No, unless he knows of one personally. Or has a phone book. Parlow’s the closest town. Everything’s so spread out around here, someone not familiar with the area couldn’t find his elbow.”