by L. T. Ryan
“She’s come a long way,” Jack said.
Bear nodded and smiled. “Sure has. Figure with the way her life has gone, might as well teach her everything I can.”
“What are you going to do after this?” Jack said.
Jon interrupted. “Jack, you said you had information for us. Let’s hear it.”
Jack took a deep breath, exhaled, said, “I came to London for a reason. As you may or may not be aware, after I left the Marines I went to work for the U.S. agency, SIS. After that I partnered up with Bear and we became freelance contractors. You up to speed on that?”
Jon looked at Alex and nodded. Men in his position were likely to know of Jack and others like him.
Jack continued. “I’d decided to retire, but a friend called and needed help. I figured one last job and that was it. It was personal anyway. I’d had a run-in with the guy some time ago. It resulted in him taking out some frustration on his old lady.”
“I think I know where this is going,” Jon said. “Jack, you don’t have to say anymore on that.” Jon glanced at Sasha. “It’s probably better that you don’t.”
Jack nodded. “OK, well, I’ll speed this up. I had reservations at the hotel.”
“That hotel?” Alex said, pointing across the street.
“Yes, that hotel.”
“Under what name?”
“Mine.”
Silence for a moment.
“You think you were targeted?” Sasha said.
Jack shrugged. “That or it was one hell of a coincidence. The first day I was in town, I went to the hotel. A sequence of events prevented me from checking in. I went to the restaurant next door. Saw a car pull up. Some guys got out like they were looking for someone. Looked like the kind of guys who’d be sent to find someone like me.”
“Sasha, get your team to look into this,” Jon said.
She nodded, started to leave.
“Don’t go anywhere yet, Sasha,” Jon said.
She stopped, glanced at Jack.
Jack held her gaze for a moment, then said, “So then I went to stay with an old friend. Next day I had a run in with a guy named Mason Sutton. You know him?”
Jon and Alex and Sasha glanced at one another, nodded at Jack.
“Is there a story there?” Jack said.
“Sutton is kind of a,” Sasha paused, looked toward the ceiling. “I guess you could say he’s a loose cannon. He does things his own way. Doesn’t always take things up the chain of command like he should.”
“Why’s he still around?” Jack said.
“Because he’s that effective,” Sasha said.
“Maybe there’s a reason for that,” Alex said.
Jack said, “Yeah, well, I don’t know whether to trust him or not. So far he seems to be on my side. He could have hurt me more than once and he didn’t.”
“He could be setting you up for something,” Jon said.
Jack shrugged. “He already had me in position for that. If he were going to do it, it would have been then.”
“The warehouse?” Sasha said.
“How’d you know?”
Sasha said nothing.
Alex’s cell phone rang. He pulled it out. “Personal line. Give me a moment.” He walked toward the rear of the store.
Jon said, “Jack, can you think of any reason why these guys would want you dead?”
“I can think of plenty of reasons, but none of them make sense. It doesn’t mesh. If I was the target, and these guys carried this out, then someone else put them up to it. I never checked in here. So someone used them, tricked them into believing there was something else behind this.”
“What if they didn’t know that you hadn’t checked in though?” Jon said.
“I don’t buy that. If anything, someone was trying to get my attention. Why? I don’t know.”
Jon nodded, said nothing.
“Who’s come forward to claim responsibility?” Jack said.
“No one credible,” Sasha said.
“It’s gotta be payback for something,” Bear said.
“Yeah, but what?” Jack said.
No one had an answer.
Alex returned. His face looked pale, drained. Sweat covered his brow.
“What is it?” Jon said.
“They just told me that I’m next in line.”
“Who? For what?”
“Them.” Alex licked his lips, coughed. “They told me they’re going to assassinate me.”
CHAPTER 44
The weight of the words hovered over the group, drew the air from their lungs.
“Who was it, Alex?” Jon said.
Alex stared ahead, his gaze fixed on the crumbled remains of the hotel. His lips were parted a half-inch. He didn’t speak.
“Alex?” Jon said. “Who was on the phone?”
Alex shook his head. “A man.”
“What did he sound like?”
“A man.”
“Alex.”
“Jon.”
The men faced off, anger in their eyes. Perhaps not for each other, but anger nonetheless.
“Listen, Jon, he sounded like a man. A normal every day English man. It could have been any one of fifty million people.”
Sasha stepped between Jon and Alex. She faced the Prime Minister. “Sir, what number did the call come from?”
Alex reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone. He tapped at the screen. He and Sasha both shook their heads.
“No number,” Sasha said.
“Maybe they can trace it?” Alex said.
“Doesn’t work that way,” Bear said. “If no number was displayed, that means the receiving switch didn’t get any information.”
No one spoke for a minute.
The woman who owned the store came back inside. “Are you folks going to be taking up my store much longer? I have to get this place cleaned up, you know.”
“Oh, shut the bloody hell up,” Alex said.
The woman stopped dead. “Well, that certainly won’t win my vote in the next election.” She turned and exited through the open doorway.
Silence, then laughter.
After a moment, Sasha said, “We have to treat this seriously. The men that did this are more than capable of pulling off another attack. They might not come directly for you, sir. Instead, they might choose to attack a place where you’ll be. Maybe even where you might be. Or multiple places at once. It’s not just your life at risk. It could be hundreds, maybe thousands of innocent people that die. You signed up for this full well knowing the possibilities. They didn’t.”
Alex nodded. “We’ll get everyone—”
A cell phone rang. All eyes turned to Alex. He reached in his pocket, pulled out his phone. It was silent.
“That’s me,” Jack said as he pulled his phone out. He stepped a few feet away and answered. “Dottie, we’ve got a crazy situation over here.”
“So do we, Jack,” she said.
“What’s going on there?”
“That man you sent to protect Erin and Mia.”
“Yeah?”
“He’s dead.”
“Dead? How?”
“Murdered.”
“Oh, Christ. What about the girls?”
“Erin was shot in the leg.”
“Is she all right?”
“She’s going to be fine.”
“And Mia? Hannah?”
“Scared, but OK.”
“What happened?”
“We don’t have all the details yet, but what I know is this. They took up outside of Brussels. Your man had a woman with him. She went out early in the morning. The house was attacked shortly after she left. When she returned, found one of the men outside. She crept up on him, knocked him unconscious. Inside the house, she found your guy dead. She killed the second attacker. Erin took a bullet in the shootout.”
“Who’s the woman?”
“I don’t know her name, Jack. Supposedly we’ll meet her shortly.”
“Where
are they now?”
Dottie said nothing.
“Dottie?”
“I don’t know if this line is being monitored, Jack. Best I don’t say. Anyway, what is the problem there?”
“I’m with the Prime Minister now. We’re at the site of the attack.”
“How’s he taking everything? We go back a ways, you know.”
“He was OK.”
“Was?”
“He just got a call.”
“What kind of call?”
“One where someone threatened to kill him.”
Silence for a beat. “Jack, put me on speaker.”
“Why?”
“Because, I want to talk to both of you.”
Jack held the phone out and switched it to speaker. He walked back to the group. “Alex, I’ve got Dottie Carlisle on the phone. She wants to talk to both of us.”
“Hello, Prime Minister.”
“Dottie, you know you can call me Alex.”
“Yes, well, Alex. Jack told me that you just received a rather disturbing call.”
“Correct.”
“Listen to me, Alex. If I was heading things up, I would see to it that Jack Noble does not leave your side.”
“We’ve got things in place,” Jon said.
“Who’s that?”
“That was Jon Hayes, my—”
“I know who he is. Jon, this is not meant to be an insult to you. Frankly, you can’t have too many good men around in a situation like this. You know that. You have to believe me. I trust Jack. Leon trusts Jack. You two have to trust him. He provides a different kind of perspective. He sees things differently. He understands how this works on both ends. He will be valuable both in protecting you and in strategizing when it comes to finding these terrorists. If you don’t keep him around, you’ll only have yourselves to blame when one or both of you ends up dead.”
No one spoke for a minute.
Jack said, “What if I decline? I’ve got things to figure out here too.”
“Jack, we’re tied together on this,” Alex said. “They came after you. They’re after me now.”
“And if we’re together we make their life that much easier,” Jack said.
“They’ll never know,” Dottie said.
“Fifty reporters follow this guy around all day long,” Jack said.
“We can move around in secret if need be,” Jon said.
“If you can manage to get through the front door undetected,” Jack said.
“Are we in agreement, gentlemen?” Dottie said.
Jack and Alex stared at each other. Everyone else stared at them.
Alex extended his hand toward Jack. “Yes.”
Jack shifted the phone from his right to his left and took the Prime Minister’s hand in his own. “OK. But Bear stays with us, too.”
“Excellent. Jack, I’ll call you with details on that other thing in a few hours. Keep your cell switched on.”
She hung up. Jack stuffed the phone in his pocket.
“She would have made one fine Prime Minister,” Alex said.
“No argument there,” Jon said.
“What now?” Jack said.
“I want to look at the damage some more,” Alex said.
“The reporters got their shots,” Jon said.
“You bloody well know this goes beyond public relations.”
Before they could leave the shop, the woman appeared at the door again. She breathed heavily and struggled to talk.
“What is it, you old hen?” Alex said.
“Gas… leak,” she said.
The group looked at each other with confused expressions.
The woman took a deep breath, yelled, “Did you hear me?”
An agent shoved her aside and said, “Get out now! We just discovered a gas leak a half block away. The hotel is still smoldering. It’s only a matter of minutes before there’s an explosion.”
CHAPTER 45
The calm sea split in two. The large ferry cut through the channel like a giant lumbering blue whale. Salt water spray rode the wind. It fell upon Clarissa’s face in sheets of a thousand particles. She let the water dry on her skin. The smell reminded her of summers spent on North Carolina’s outer banks where her family had a beach house. The area had been spared the megaliths built by investors in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Peaceful times. Calmer times.
Mia’s head rested against her arm. The gentle swaying of the ferry had put the girl to sleep moments after they departed. Hannah and Erin sat close by, but inside, protected from the elements by walls and windows.
They’d left the car behind. It wasn’t registered in any of their names and it would have drawn unwanted attention to them. The quarter-mile they had to walk had been difficult for Erin. The woman had pushed hard and made it, though. Clarissa glanced back at her, saw her resting her head against the window, eyes closed.
At the rate land approached, Clarissa estimated another ten minutes before they docked. Speculation, of course. She had no real way of knowing.
Laughter from a few seats down woke Mia. The little girl sat up straight, stretched her arms and legs. “Are we there?”
Clarissa shook her head. “Not yet, honey.” She extended her arm toward shore. “We’re close though.”
Mia reached out, grabbed the railing, leaned forward. “It looks pretty. Like a painting.”
“Yes, it does.”
Five minutes later they were close enough for Clarissa to make out the individual cherry trees that lined the bank. Most trees had half their blooms remaining. Others had considerably fewer. She wondered if the shore would be lined with the fallen blooms, or had they floated into the channel and drifted off to sea?
The ship’s loud horn blared. Erin and Hannah met Clarissa and Mia outside. They joined the pedestrian crowd and moved toward the front of the boat. The group molded and conformed to the confines of the bow like an amoeba.
Leon greeted them at the end of the pier. Mia ran to him, hugged him. Hannah hugged him as well. He tried to offer his hand to Erin, but she shook her head, continued on with her crutches.
Leon watched her go, then he turned to Clarissa. “You must be the mystery woman?”
“That’s me. Clarissa Abbott.”
“Thank you for saving our girls.”
“It’s what I’m trained to do.”
“Well, we’re indebted to you. Come on, follow me. It’s going to be a cramped ride, but we had better get going.”
The older woman had remained in the car. She nodded at Clarissa, but did not introduce herself. It left Clarissa feeling uncomfortable.
She took a seat in the back of the vehicle, behind the woman. The doors shut and Leon started the car.
Clarissa had a vague idea of where they were. When Leon picked up the M2 in Faversham, she knew they were headed to London. A series of exits and merges led them to the M25 and soon they were on the southwest side of the city.
They exited the highway and traveled through a few residential areas before turning onto a driveway and stopping in front of a house. The car hid from the street behind high hedges. Clarissa waited a minute, then exited. The older woman stood before her.
“You are about to enter my house, Clarissa. So help me, if you harm a hair on any of my girls, I’ll kill you myself.”
“If I were going to do that, I would have done it in Belgium. You’d think the fact that I got them this far would earn a little trust.”
“I don’t trust anyone.” The woman’s eyes batted between Clarissa’s. She stood there for a moment, said nothing else. She turned and went to the front door.
“Wait, Dottie,” Leon said. He rushed to her side. “Let me check it out first.”
Dottie stepped to the side and he entered. A minute later he appeared in the open doorway and said it was safe to enter. Clarissa followed Dottie inside. The woman turned to the left and disappeared into her study. She shut the doors behind her.
Clarissa felt a hand on her elbow.
&
nbsp; “We’ve got a room for you upstairs,” Leon said.
She followed him up the stairs and into a spare bedroom. It was small, which was fine with her. She didn’t need much more than a bed anyway.
“You can stay as long as you need to,” he said. “If you’re hungry, follow me to the kitchen.”
They left the room and went back down the stairs. Before she had entered the kitchen, she noticed that someone had already started a pot of coffee. The rich aroma comforted her for a moment. For the first time, she realized that she had a headache due to caffeine withdrawal. It amused her, the things she had learned to ignore.
Hannah smiled at Clarissa as she entered the kitchen. “Care for a cup?”
“Please.” Clarissa took a seat at the table next to Mia.
The girl smiled through a mouthful of bread and ham.
“I want to stay and help,” Clarissa said. “For a while, at least.”
“I’ve got a team en route. Old friends and the kind of guys who can take out three times as many men. We’ll have enough help.”
“I want to watch over the girl. You’ve got enough on your hands protecting Dottie and making sure no more harm comes to Erin. Allow me to watch over Mia.”
Leon set his fork down. He stretched his fingers out, wiggled them. “How can I trust you?”
“You trusted Jack.”
“And that turned out to be a mistake. Erin got shot and the girl’s traumatized now. Not to mention a man’s dead.”
“If they hadn’t been with Spiers, they might all be dead. You might be dead. Those men were coming one way or another. I don’t know how they knew, but they knew.”
Leon nodded. “Been wondering that myself. Only answer I can come up with is that man was crooked.”
“Then why’d he end up dead?”
“Collateral damage? I dunno, Miss. Perhaps he knew too much, so they killed him. How do I know it wasn’t you that called for them?”
“If that’s so, why would I kill one of them?”
“To trick us. You wanted to get close. Hell, you can’t get any closer than this, now can you?”
Clarissa shook her head. “It’s not like that. You know it. Hell, I could say that maybe you had a hand in it. You sent them off, didn’t you?”
Leon slapped the table and rose and kicked his chair into the wall. He hovered over Clarissa. “Don’t you ever question my loyalty to this family!”