Locked, Loaded and SEALed

by Carol Ericson

  When they edged into the semicircular drive in front of the hotel, he said, “It’s going to be tough having two cars. Just leave it with the valet, and he’ll park it.”

  “Valet? Are you kidding? That costs a fortune.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You have a thing about paying for parking, don’t you?”

  “It’s expensive to park in Boston and spaces are at a premium.”

  “I’ll pay for it—work-related expense.”

  “How long are you going to be on this job, anyway?”

  “Should be hearing something about that soon.”

  She pulled in front of the hotel and jammed on the brakes. He jerked forward and back, his head hitting the headrest. “Wow.”

  “Is there a possibility that you’ll be ordered to return to regular duty?”

  “I was sent out here on a mission to protect Dr. Fazal—that failed.”

  “Okay, but...” She huffed out a breath. “Yeah, you’re not supposed to be here, anyway.”

  She opened the car door for the valet standing at her window and snatched the ticket from him.

  Austin didn’t want to leave any more than Sophia wanted him to, but his job description didn’t include protecting anyone but Fazal—mission over.

  Sophia charged ahead, and he took long strides to follow her. Her stiff back and squared shoulders screamed anger, but he already knew her anger masked fear or disappointment. Maybe he did know Sophia better than he thought he did.

  He caught up with her. “Is this a race?”

  “I just want to be alone, but I can’t even go back to my own apartment, can I?” She punched the elevator button with the side of her fist.

  He ran his hands down her arms and she practically vibrated beneath his touch. “We’ll have you back home soon.”

  “Yeah, when you decide to ditch this place. Then I guess I’ll be free to do what I want—including die.”

  The elevator doors opened and he bit down on his reply as a stream of people exited the car. Three other people entered the elevator after them, and Austin shifted toward the panel of buttons to make room.

  He lowered his voice. “Did you check your call?”

  “It’s from Ginny, probably with some questions about the office. She left a voice mail. I’ll listen to it when we get to the room.”

  When the elevator settled on his floor, they squeezed out of the car and walked silently to the room.

  He opened the door for Sophia, and she took her phone out of her jacket pocket and wedged her shoulder against the window. She tapped her cell and listened, her eyes getting wider and wider with each second.

  His pulse ratcheted up several notches. “What’s wrong? What’s she saying?”

  “I’ll let you listen.” She tapped her phone and a woman’s high-pitched, strained voice came over the line in a rush of words.

  “Where’d you take off to so fast, Sophia? You left, Morgan left and Anna took off right after her. I was stuck doing the patient calls. Do you know how hard it was to repeat over and over that Dr. Fazal was dead?” A sob broke into her words and then she continued.

  “Of course you do. You found him. And if that wasn’t stressful enough, a man came by the office and he was looking for you. I mean, really looking for you. He said he was a friend of Dr. Fazal’s and he did have a similar accent. He just wouldn’t take no for an answer. Finally I told him to give me his number and I’d give it to you. So here it is, but you’d better call me back before you contact him.”

  She recited a phone number and ended the message with an urgent “Call me.”

  Sophia crossed her arms. “What do you think? Is that Patel or...maybe the guy from last night?”

  “I’m not sure, but you’re not calling him back on your phone. You don’t want him to have your number.” He dragged his own phone from his pocket. “We can use mine. It can’t be traced, but you’d better call Ginny first and get all the details. Is she usually...excitable?”

  “She can be, but I’ve never heard her like that before. It could just be the added stress of contacting the patients this morning. I’ll call her now.”

  “Speaker, please.”

  Sophia placed the call. It rang four times, and then a man answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello?” Sophia’s eyes jumped to Austin’s face. “Who’s this?”

  “This is Officer Kelso with the Boston PD. Are you calling Ginny Faraday?”

  Austin’s heart thudded in his chest, and he held his breath.

  Sophia lowered herself to the edge of the chair. “Yes. Why are you answering her phone? Where’s Ginny?”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. Ms. Faraday was just involved in an accident, a hit-and-run.”

  Sophia gasped, and Austin took two steps and crouched beside her.

  “I-is she okay?”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. Ms. Faraday was fatally injured.”

  Chapter Seven

  The man on the other end of the line kept asking questions, but Sophia had slipped into a fog. Ginny had just called her. How had this happened?

  Austin took the phone from her slack fingers. “Officer Kelso, my friend is in shock. Can you tell us what happened?”

  “From witness accounts, Ms. Faraday stepped off the curb and a car careened around the corner and hit her. The car took off.”

  Sophia hugged herself and rocked forward. An accident. It was just an accident.

  “Is your friend related to Ms. Faraday?”

  “No, a coworker.”

  “Does she know a relative we can contact? This just happened. Ms. Faraday is—is still at the scene.”

  Sophia closed her eyes and covered her mouth with both hands. Death and loss. When did it ever end?

  Austin poked her arm. “Next of kin for Ginny?”

  Her eyes flew open. “Kara Germanski. She’s Ginny’s sister. I’m sure her number’s in Ginny’s phone.”

  Austin relayed the information to the cop and then ended the call. He placed her phone on the table and remained on the floor by her side.

  Twisting her head toward him, she whispered, “Unbelievable. How can someone just run over a human being and leave her in the street?”

  “Sophia.”

  “No.” She covered her ears.

  “Ginny was murdered.”

  She doubled over and touched her forehead to her knees. “Why? Why would he hurt her? She took his number, gave it to me.”

  “We don’t know that the man she spoke to was the one driving the car or even if they were working together. Maybe the number you have is Peter Patel’s. Maybe someone saw her talking to Patel and took care of business.”

  He put a hand on her bouncing knee. “We need to go back to the office and retrace her steps. I need to get hold of that accident report to see if there were any witnesses who said anything about the car or the driver.”

  She poked at the phone with her fingertip, scooting it away from her. “Should I call him now?”

  “No. Let’s go to the office first. Are you going to tell the nurses?”

  “Oh, my God. I can’t handle that right now. Anna is going to fall apart.” She ran her hands across her face to make sure she wasn’t falling apart. “Do you think the police are going to connect Ginny’s death to Dr. Fazal’s?”

  “Any good detective would. They’ll investigate it.”

  “Should we go back now?”

  “I need to make a few phone calls first. Do you want something from the minibar or the vending machines?”

  “Is that a hint to get me out of the room?”

  “Or I can leave.”

  She pushed up from the chair and swept past him. “I’ll get a soda from the machine. Do you want something?”


  “Anything with caffeine. Do you need some money?”

  “I got it.” When she stepped into the hallway and the door slammed behind her, she leaned against the wall. She couldn’t believe this was happening.

  She thought she’d left the violence and ugliness behind her when she’d finally gotten away from the south side. Hadn’t everyone always told her if she finished school, got a degree and found a good job trouble would stop following her? She’d done all of that, and it looked like trouble had found her, anyway. It always would.

  She launched herself off the wall and crossed the hall to the room with the ice and vending machines.

  She braced her hands against the buzzing machine, hanging her head between her arms. If Austin was in there getting orders to abandon this mission and return overseas where he belonged, she’d be in real trouble.

  Did the US government care about that? Care about her? She puffed out a breath. Who was she kidding? When had any government entity ever cared about what happened to her? Child Protective Services had failed her at every turn.

  Austin cared. She hadn’t been imagining that, but he’d disappear in a flash if his superiors ordered him to scrap the mission.

  She fed a dollar bill into the machine and selected a diet soda for herself. Then she put another bill in and punched the button for a soda for Austin. She couldn’t blame him if he had to follow orders.

  Maybe she could ask the sniper for some shooting pointers before he left. She needed the practice.

  When she returned to the room, she held out a can to Austin, stretched out on the bed, his arms crossed behind his head. “Caffeinated, as you requested.”

  He curled his hand around the can, his fingers pressing against hers so that they were both holding on to the can. His eyes met hers across the space between them. “Good news.”

  “They caught Dr. Fazal’s killers, Ginny’s killers and I’m completely out of danger.”

  His lips twisted. “Why’d you do that? Now my news isn’t going to make an impression.”

  “Try me.” She pulled her hand away from his and popped the tab on her own can.

  “After I told my commanding officer everything that was going down out here, he checked with Ariel, who authorized me to stay at least until I can identify Peter Patel.”

  “That is good news.” Taking a sip from her can, she turned away from him so that he couldn’t see just how much that news meant to her. She had to play it cool because soon he would leave—even if it wasn’t today.

  “I’m ready, even though it doesn’t look like it.” Austin swung his legs off the side of the bed. “Do you want to walk over or drive?”

  “Might as well walk. I could use the fresh air to clear my head.”

  “Me, too.” He held up his can. “We can drink and walk at the same time.”

  She slipped her jacket from the back of the chair. “Do you think the cops will still be at the scene? Ginny won’t still be there, will she?”

  He glanced at the alarm clock by the side of the bed. “It’s a fatality. An accident-investigation team will be at the scene for hours...and Ginny’s body will be, too. Do you want to give it another few hours?”

  “It’ll be getting dark in a few hours.” She stuffed her arms into the sleeves of her jacket. “Besides, you want to talk to the cops, right?”

  “They’re not going to talk to me until I get some sort of approval from the FBI. Since the FBI doesn’t want to acknowledge I’m here looking into Fazal, that’s not going to happen, but I can look at the accident scene myself.”

  With their sodas in hand, they stepped outside the hotel and into a cool, sharp breeze. Sophia flipped up the collar of her jacket while glancing over her shoulder.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m just wondering who’s watching and following.” She hunched her shoulders. “Someone must’ve been watching Ginny. The man who approached her, whether that’s Patel or not, must’ve known the other two had left.”

  “Oh, they’re out there.” He gulped down the rest of his drink and crushed the can in one hand. “I’m just wondering if they know you have a bodyguard.”

  “Is that what you are?” She lifted one eyebrow, liking the sound of his job description.

  “The man who approached you in Cambridge might just think I got lucky in disarming him.”

  “Lucky? Yeah, I can’t see your average accountant or engineer taking down a guy with a gun like that.”

  “Of course, they might be wondering why we took off when the officer arrived on the scene and why you never reported the incident.”

  “The first they do know, but how would they know whether or not I reported the incident? We could’ve taken off because we didn’t realize the man approaching us was a cop.”

  “True, but don’t be so sure they don’t know what’s going on with the Boston PD.”

  She choked on her soda and it fizzed in her nose. “Really? They would have access to that information?”

  “Online information is out there for the taking—as long as you know how to access it.”

  “That’s a scary thought.”

  “Don’t you periodically get emails from stores or government agencies telling you that your personal information has been compromised? It’s the same thing—hackers hacking.”

  “Nothing’s safe, is it?”

  He tugged on her purse strap. “You’re safe—with me.”

  She stretched her lips into a smile. The way she’d felt when she discovered that Austin might be leaving proved that she wasn’t safe with him at all. How had she grown so dependent on him when she hadn’t even known him two days ago? She’d never been this dependent on anyone before—except Dr. Fazal.

  They spotted the accident scene a block away. Emergency vehicles formed a barrier around the corner. Sophia swallowed when she saw the coroner’s van.

  Her steps dragged, and Austin touched her shoulder. “Do you want to wait in the coffeehouse, or better yet, the donut shop?”

  “No.”

  Austin’s hand dropped to the small of her back and he kept it there as they drew closer to the scene, and she had no intention of shrugging it off.

  They hung out on the fringes of the crowd still clustered around the corner. Sophia couldn’t see Ginny’s body and didn’t want to.

  Austin turned to the man next to him. “What happened?”

  “Hit-and-run. Car hit a pedestrian, and he died.”

  The guy in front of the stranger cranked his head over his shoulder. “She. It was a woman.”

  Austin whistled. “Anyone see it happen? Anyone get a look at the car?”

  The shorter man in front answered again. “Not that I heard.”

  Austin took her arm and put his lips close to her ear. “Let’s retrace her steps.”

  Leading the way, Austin led her through a clutch of people that had formed behind them, and they walked through the front door of the office building.

  “Did Ginny drive?”

  “She took the T in.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “I’m sure she was on her way to the T stop one block up.”

  They took the elevator up to the office, and she unlocked the door. Ginny and the others had done a good job of cleaning up.

  She stood in the middle of the waiting room and turned around. “This room wasn’t that messed up—nothing to search, but I noticed the magazines had been rifled.”

  “So, they could’ve been looking for something flat, a piece of paper or a disk of some sort.” Austin thumbed through a celebrity magazine and then stuffed it back in the rack.

  She pulled open the door to the back office and gestured to her right. “This was Ginny’s domain, the reception area. They trashed this.”

  “She didn’t say on the phone w
here the man approached her looking for you, did she? In the office or outside?”

  “No, but I’m pretty sure she would’ve kept the office door locked once the other two left. She’d been making patient calls.”

  “So, he knocked or waylaid her when she left the office.” He tipped his head toward the back of the room. “Do you want to show me your office and how Dr. Fazal’s body was positioned?”

  She squeezed past him and stepped into her office. “This is my space. I found the pink sticky note under my desk, here.”

  He got on his hands and knees and peered beneath her desk. “If it became unstuck when the intruders started searching in here, it probably floated to the floor and they never saw it.”

  “Even if they did see it?” She shook her head. “It wouldn’t have meant anything to them. That’s why Dr. Fazal wrote it that way. He didn’t want me talking to Patel...and I’m going to do just that.”

  “Dr. Fazal had no way of knowing I’d be here to help you.”

  “I think he would’ve approved. I know he held the guys who rescued him in high regard. I just never knew it was the SEALs.”

  “He was the hero. He sacrificed everything—his home, his safety—to help us bring down a very dangerous man.”

  She blinked. “Do you want to see where I found him?”

  “Yes.”

  She led him to the doctor’s office, which Ginny and Anna had put back together. Sophia laced her fingers in front of her, twisting them into knots as she moved around the desk. They’d never get rid of that blood on the carpet.

  “There. He was lying on his back, the gun next to his hand.”

  Austin crouched down and looked beneath the desk. “Did it look like he was down before the room was tossed? I mean, did you notice papers on top of him or beneath him? The cops would note that, but probably didn’t tell you.”

  “I think the search went on after his death. I just had that impression. The picture was beneath his leg, but that was the only thing I noticed. It was as if he grabbed it or swept it from the desk when he fell.”