The Rapids

by Carla Neggers

  “No,” she lied.

  He seemed to like that, having one over her. “The food was terrible. Here…” He gave a wistful sigh. “I have other safe houses.”

  “Of course.”

  “I want to see my mother’s grave.” His words were soft and yet toneless, as if he’d said them so many times they’d lost their meaning, become an unattainable fantasy. “It’s within walking distance of where I grew up in northern Virginia. She died last winter.”

  Libby squirmed. She’d gone to her father’s grave once, just so she could spit on it. “I’m sorry. Do you have your list?”

  He looked at her again. “Yes. You really are very cold.” But he fished a white index card out of his shirt pocket and passed it to her. “Ten names. A hundred thousand dollars for each.”

  She tucked the card into her canvas bag. “Excellent.”

  “You didn’t look at any of the names.”

  “There’s time for that. I’ll need a deposit of a hundred thousand dollars wired into my account.”

  He nodded. “I’ll take care of it. Should I be arrested—”

  “I’ll work faster and expect a bonus. Double.”

  “That’s two million dollars.”

  “You rich tycoons.” Libby smiled, hoisting her canvas bag higher onto her shoulder. “Always so good at math.”

  She slid smoothly to her feet, noticing that Janssen didn’t so much as glance at her breasts straining against her tank top. Wrapped up in his own problems, she supposed.

  She glanced at her watch. Four-fifteen. What to do with herself the rest of the day?

  “I want this all to be over,” he said quietly.

  “It will be. Patience.”

  “The bonus?”

  She’d started to move away from the bench, but his words—his cool tone—forced her to turn back.

  “Any bonus would be paid only upon my release.” His eyes, a frosty blue, held her in place. “I wouldn’t want you to get any ideas.”

  “Of course. I understand.”

  She did, too.

  She understood that one or two million—whichever amount Janssen ended up paying her—was a miniscule amount to him. And it wouldn’t satisfy her. She was finished being a bit player, a hired gun, an anonymous force in a larger game.

  She wanted it all, and Nick Janssen was her vehicle for getting it.

  You have no fellow feeling, do you?

  The words came out of nowhere. The jolt of memory. Philip Spencer might have been perched on the branch of a nearby linden tree, speaking to her from the dead.

  Her heart pounded, and she actually glanced around her, just to make sure he hadn’t somehow materialized in her shadow.

  He’d tried to save her from herself.

  Leaving Janssen on the bench, Libby hurried away. Glancing around, she noticed a balding man in a rumpled suit break off from the boat tour queue and walk down the street.

  A prickly sensation crawled up her back.

  Something’s wrong.

  She walked into a small café and sat at a table inside, with her back to the wall so that she could see out the open front.

  The balding man had disappeared.

  She had good instincts. She was a superior shooter. But she wasn’t trained at surveillance, countersurveillance, any of those tricks of the trade. Mostly, she got along by guts and a willingness to take risks—and the unexpectedness of being a petite woman in her midthirties who killed people for pay.

  It was possible she was wrong.

  She bit into the small cookie that came with her coffee.

  Five minutes later, Nick Janssen got up from the bench and stretched.

  He walked to a fence overlooking the narrow waterway.

  Ten minutes kicked by. He seemed transfixed. Libby drank her coffee. Something isn’t right.

  Janssen turned and started toward the street. The Dutch police pounced.

  An Arrestatieteam, their version of a SWAT team. They moved fast, intercepting their target, giving him orders in English, getting handcuffs on him.

  Libby joined the onlookers at the outdoor tables.

  There was no sign of the balding man. Was he a police officer?

  Had he seen her on the bench with Janssen?

  Janssen went quietly. He wasn’t a fighter. He relied on others to do his fighting for him.

  And his killing.

  Libby paid for her coffee, wondering if he’d blame her for his arrest.

  There was very little she could do if he did.

  In the meantime, she had a job to do.

  Ten names to memorize. Ten people to kill.

  Two

  Equal light, level sight.

  Falling back on the basics, Rob Dunnemore aimed his .40-caliber Glock and emptied it into the silhouette twenty-five yards away.

  Four months ago, he’d been the target. Alive, not a paper silhouette.

  Even with ear protection, he could hear the shots echo across the indoor range. He didn’t flinch. He was soaked with sweat under his Kevlar vest. He’d popped off a couple of boxes of ammo and felt the burn in his shoulders and back, another reminder that he was out of practice.

  He racked back, then made sure he’d counted his shots right and hadn’t left a round in the chamber. He didn’t want to ruin his practice by putting a bullet in his foot. Shooting was a perishable skill, and he was rusty—he hadn’t done this much in one outing since he’d taken a round to his gut in Central Park almost four months ago.

  He’d almost bled to death. He’d lost his spleen. Lying in his hospital bed, helpless, he’d nearly lost his family.

  Those hadn’t been good days.

  Shrugging off his goggles and ear protection, he could smell the smoke from the powder and the spent ammunition. His hold on his Glock was tighter than it needed to be. A death grip, like a damn rookie’s.

  He made sure his gun was clear and safe, then set it on the wood counter in front of him and reeled in his target.

  Thirteen in center mass, one a clear miss.

  Not bad. Just a hair off a hundred percent.

  The rest was a mind game that had nothing to do with technical proficiency.

  The door behind him creaked open. “Don’t shoot,” Juliet Longstreet said in her usual cheeky manner. “It’s just me.”

  But Rob could tell from her expression that something was up with his fellow deputy U.S. Marshal, and he unclipped his target, loosened his vest. “Hey, Longstreet.”

  She nodded to his target. “How’d you do?”

  He showed her.

  She whistled. “You’ll be back on the street in no time, taking down bad guys.”

  Her heart wasn’t in her words. Something had definitely happened. “Juliet—”

  “Nick Janssen’s been arrested,” she said quickly.

  “Where?”

  “Some town in Holland. A Dutch SWAT team picked him up on a tip to our embassy there.”

  “When?”

  “A couple hours ago.”

  Rob pushed back an image of a young Nick Janssen in his mother’s college yearbook and studied Longstreet. They’d been an item for a while, splitting up well before the shooting in May. Juliet had her own demons from those difficult days—she’d nearly become one of Janssen’s victims herself.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah. It brings it all back, that’s all. About time we got the bastard.”

  “Any word on extradition?”

  “Legal eagles are already on it. The Dutch say they have enough to charge him with Char Brooker’s murder. If we can’t do better than that—” She shrugged, then gave a dry smile. “It’s not as if he succeeded in killing any of us over here.”

  “Not for lack of trying.”

  Juliet’s eyes seemed to flatten. “Yeah, well. The two goons he sent over here to find out what was going on are dead.”

  And she and a former Special Forces officer—dead army captain Charlene Brooker’s husband—had found the bodies
. A lunatic out of the Dunnemore past had believed he could use his knowledge of their relationship with President Poe to extract a pardon for Nick Janssen and earn millions for his efforts.

  The story, with all its complexities and intricacies, had been fodder for the media for weeks.

  “News of the arrest public yet?” Rob asked, keeping his own emotions in check.

  Juliet shook her head. “You and I are getting a heads-up before reporters get the bit in their teeth and start calling.”

  “For what? To ask us how we feel now that Nick Janssen’s in custody?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “I’m not talking to any reporters.”

  “Me, neither.”

  The shooting range was curiously quiet. Rob still could smell the smoke from his practice. He shoved a full magazine into his Glock, aware of Juliet watching him. “Want to shoot a few rounds?” he asked her.

  “I’m a better shot than you.”

  “Always the ambitious one.”

  She smiled, not taking offense where she would have six months ago. “Just stating the facts, Dunnemore. Let me get some ear protection and goggles. It’s too goddamn hot to wear a vest—”

  “Wear a vest, Juliet.”

  She waved a hand. “Yeah, I guess I’d better, given my luck these days.”

  “I suppose we should be relieved now that Janssen’s in custody.”

  “I suppose. So why do I feel like another damn shoe’s about to drop? I’m not that paranoid.”

  Rob had no answer.

  Whether it was instinct or post-trauma stress at work he just knew he shared her sense of dread.

  By the time Maggie dragged herself back up to her small apartment it was after midnight. Without hesitation, Dutch police had followed up on her anonymous tip and arrested Nick Janssen without incident. They had no idea who her “friend” was. Neither did she. She was hungry again and heated up leftover Indonesian fried rice, which she ate standing up, pacing, too wired and uneasy yet to settle down.

  Her gaze landed on a picture of her father on a sailboat in south Florida. Smiling. She remembered how his eyes would crinkle when he smiled. He’d worked as a consultant for small businesses, mostly in eastern Europe and Russia—supposedly. Maggie had had her doubts, more so since his death. Little things didn’t add up. She suspected he’d played some kind of role in the multifaceted world of intelligence—one that he couldn’t talk about even to his DS-agent daughter. As the sharp edges of her grief had worn down, her questions had become more focused, but answers weren’t any easier to come by. She hated the idea that she might have to learn to live with her questions.

  But her father had always been a fairly remote figure to her. Even when she was growing up, he was never around. Her mother finally couldn’t take his long absences anymore, and they’d divorced when Maggie was in high school. He hadn’t changed his ways. He couldn’t. She understood that part. She had that same sense of wanderlust.

  “Well, Pop,” she said, dipping her wooden spoon into her pan of spicy vegetables and rice, “we got the bad guy today.”

  She didn’t know if he’d ever really approved of her career in diplomatic security. He’d seemed okay with her political science degree in college, then her first job at the State Department. She’d hoped her decision to become a DS officer and the prospect of a foreign service career might have intrigued him, but he’d remained outside her life, not disinterested but not a part of it.

  The DS special agent in charge of her field office had given her the news of her father’s death himself.

  Philip Spencer had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Except Maggie hadn’t believed it. Still didn’t. Czech authorities, U.S. authorities—she wasn’t getting the whole story. She’d pushed and bucked and bitten off heads, and everywhere, from everyone, she got the same line.

  Shot by bank robbers who then got away.

  Bullshit.

  There were no witnesses. Newspapers, even in Prague, barely covered the story. And the reaction she got from investigators—American and Czech—amounted to stonewalling. But she’d finally backed off. What was the point in sticking her neck out for a man she’d seen maybe a half-dozen times in the five years before his death?

  Maggie dumped out the rest of her fried rice and ran cold water into the pan, leaving it until morning.

  No one—not the Dutch authorities, not anyone at the American embassy—was celebrating Nick Janssen’s arrest. As pleased as they were with having him in custody, they all knew his tentacles were far-reaching. There was a lot of work yet to be done.

  The media were all over the story. The embassy’s public affairs officers as well as the FBI and USMS people back in Washington were fielding questions. Janssen’s attorneys had descended, screaming and hollering. News of Maggie’s anonymous tip was out.

  On her way to bed, she noticed that her solitary plant, an orchid she’d bought in deference to the collective Dutch green thumb, looked dead. It was supposed to be a hardy variety that she’d have a difficult time killing, but she’d killed it in less than three weeks.

  She took it to the sink, doused it with water and left it next to her soaking leftovers pan. Maybe it’d revive by morning.

  She rolled her eyes. Who was she kidding? The thing was dead. To hope otherwise wasn’t optimism—it was refusing to face reality.

  And if nothing else, Maggie thought, she was a woman determined to face reality.

  Libby Smith left her window open in her room at her small hotel around the corner from where Dutch police had picked up Nick Janssen. It was brazen of her. A risk. But there was no reason for authorities to investigate hotel guests. Even if they did, they’d never suspect her of being anything but what she was: an American antiques dealer, a woman looking for off-the-beaten-track bargains.

  What if they had him under surveillance and saw you on the bench with him?

  If they caught up with her and asked about it, she’d say she’d stopped to rest her feet and they’d chatted for a few minutes about the sights.

  She couldn’t seem to get cool.

  She lay naked atop the cotton duvet and noticed the sheen of her sweat in the light from the street. She could hear the traffic, the sound of music playing somewhere not too far off, the voices of people under her window, out enjoying the warm summer night.

  The hundred-thousand deposit had been wired into her account. Janssen must have prearranged the transfer.

  Libby had never made such money.

  And it was just the beginning.

  She’d memorized Janssen’s list of targets and burned it, flushing the ashes down her toilet.

  Knowing his enemies—and eliminating them—would help her to understand his network and, in time, replace him.

  His arrest was inevitable, just a bit earlier than she’d hoped for. Some Dutch Goody Two-shoes must have recognized him and called the police.

  The balding man—who was he? Closing her eyes, Libby breathed deeply and tried not to feel as if she were suffocating, told herself the balding man didn’t matter. Only her plan did, her next target. The thrill of her work had satisfied her in the beginning. Now she wanted more.

  Money.

  Power.

  She smiled to herself, relaxing, feeling in control at last.

  Three

  Nate Winter came home to find secret service agents crawling all over his house, a reminder of just how much his life had changed in the past four months.

  His fiancée, Sarah Dunnemore, was on the back porch having peach cobbler with President John Wesley Poe, who regarded her as the daughter he’d never had. Being together brought out their Southern accents.

  Nate had a feeling he knew why Poe was there.

  Nick Janssen.

  The rich, murdering bastard was finally in custody.

  It was hot even on the shaded porch, but the two Tennesseans didn’t seem to mind. While looking for a home of their own in northern Virginia, Nate and Sara
h were living in a corner of an 1850s historic house she was researching and getting ready to open to the public. Supposedly it was haunted by both Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee. Poe liked to joke that he wished he could ask both men for advice. But Sarah, a historical archaeologist, was serious about her ghosts.

  Before they’d met, Nate had been a senior deputy U.S. Marshal dedicated to catching fugitives and not much else.

  He was still a marshal, he was still dedicated to his work—but now he could come home to Sarah, ghosts, peach cobbler and the occasional presidential visit.

  “Mr. President,” Nate said, “it’s good to see you.”

  Poe, already on his feet, put out his hand, and the two men shook. “It’s good to see you, too, Nate. Sarah’s ruining my diet with her peach cobbler.”

  Nate had helped her pick the peaches from one of the trees in the old house’s sprawling yard, knowing she expected to make jam one evening. The cobbler meant she was upset, because otherwise she’d still be up to her elbows in the hundred-year-old dump she’d found out back and was in the process of excavating. When she was upset, she dug out family recipes, usually ones involving a lot of butter.

  Her gray eyes connected with Nate’s for a split second, enough to tell him that Poe’s visit hadn’t been her idea. She had on cropped jeans and a tank top, barefoot even for peach cobbler with the president.

  As welcome as it was, Janssen’s arrest had brought back the trauma of her ordeal last spring. Her twin brother badly injured in a sniper-style attack in Central Park, a killer on the loose in Night’s Landing, the Dunnemore family’s Tennessee home, their refuge. John Wesley Poe happened to have grown up next door.

  Sarah was fair-haired and beautiful, and Nate—tall, lean, impatient—hated for those dark days to prey on her again. But he’d learned that Sarah Dunnemore wasn’t an ivory tower intellectual who wanted to remain aloof from life. She dove in, sometimes without looking.

  “I stopped by to see how Sarah had taken the news of the Janssen arrest,” Poe said. “And Rob. I wondered how he was doing.”