Her Baby, His Secret

by Gayle Wilson

  As far as he was concerned, killing Diaz had never been an option. What the team had done instead was to arrange a performance. A trick to make the kidnappers think they had done what they been asked to do. And he hadn’t told Claire what was going on.

  “You wanted me to think I had agreed to Diaz’s death,” she said accusingly.

  “I thought if you didn’t know we were planning to do it that way, you wouldn’t worry as much about something going wrong. About the kidnappers finding out. We’ve always operated on a need-to-know basis. If you don’t have a role in the operation, then you aren’t briefed about it.”

  “Oh, I’m sure that’s true,” she said softly, her voice bitter. “But that isn’t why you didn’t tell me, Griff. You didn’t tell me because you wanted me to agree. You wanted to hear me give permission for Diaz to die.”

  Griff hadn’t demanded that. He could have, and to his shame he had even thought about it. What he had done, however, had been almost as despicable. “Unless you tell me no,” he had told her. And she hadn’t. Because her baby’s life was at stake.

  “You wanted me to understand that the decisions you had to make were always hard,” she said. “Maybe as hard as that one.”

  Perhaps he had, he admitted, remembering their arguments. Remembering how many times he had explained the difficult choices involved in what the team did. Remembering how many times he had tried to make her see that sometimes a madman has to be destroyed to protect the innocent. But he had never succeeded in convincing her that taking someone’s life was ever justified. Not under any circumstances.

  “You wanted me to know what making that decision feels like,” she said, her eyes cold.

  He had been right before. Claire Heywood was very smart. Because that was what he had done, of course. He had destroyed the validity of those old arguments by showing her that she, too, would come to that same decision. No matter what they felt about the sanctity of human life, about the sin of destroying it, almost everyone would make such a decision in order to safeguard those they loved.

  “You never intended to kill Diaz,” she said. “You never intended to keep your part of the bargain with the kidnappers, did you, Griff? And Diaz wasn’t dead when you left him with Hawk and Jordan.”

  He hadn’t been. They had all been alive—Diaz and his bodyguards. But like everything else... Just like everything else, this had gone wrong. And it shouldn’t have, Griff thought, going over all the meticulous details of the plan in his mind.

  Hawk and Jordan had gotten everyone off the plane, using the refueling truck as cover. All they’d had to do then was to take Diaz and his men to the rendezvous and hold them there. After Griff blew up the plane, he and Jake would pick up the video of Diaz boarding the plane and exchange it for the baby. Then they would turn Diaz over to the DEA, and hope he’d cut a deal with them, talk his head off in exchange for protection.

  That’s what was supposed to happen. But they hadn’t made that initial rendezvous because the emergency transmitter had failed. And when they’d finally arrived, Hawk and Jordan hadn’t been there. Now Diaz was dead, his body miles from where it was supposed to be. And Griff had no idea who had killed him and brought him here. No idea where Jordan and Hawk were.

  “What do we do about Gardner?” Claire asked softly, her voice full of fear as she realized the rest of it. As she came to the conclusion he’d already reached. “If the kidnappers know this was a double cross, and they must, since they put Diaz’s body here, then...” Her voice faded, her eyes almost pleading. “Then how are we going to get Gardner back?”

  And that was the question, of course, Griff had already asked himself. A question for which he had no answer.

  “SOMEHOW THEY KNEW you hadn’t killed Diaz,” Jake said, “that you didn’t plan on killing him, so they did it for you.”

  They were headed back to Miami, the cruiser cutting through the water like a knife, leaving behind them the island where Ramon Diaz’s body rested in a dark bedroom. Exactly where they had been sent to find it.

  Claire waited for Griffs response to Jake’s comment. His features were hard, as if set in stone, his eyes as bleak as she had ever seen them. Bleaker even than they had been the night she had made him promise he would never try to see her again.

  “How could they know?” Griff asked quietly. “How the hell could the kidnappers have known we didn’t intend to kill him?”

  That wasn’t the primary question Claire wanted an explanation for, but it was a good one. She had assumed it was rhetorical, but surprisingly, Jake answered it. Whether what he said was the answer, she had no way of knowing, but when Griff heard it, the grooves around his mouth deepened, his lips compressing into a thinner line.

  “They knew because somebody told them,” Jake said.

  He looked braced for a scathing denunciation, but Griff said nothing for a long time, his silence indicating that he was at least considering the idea.

  “Only four of us knew,” he said finally. “Are you suggesting that someone on this team—”

  “I’m suggesting there have been a hell of a lot of things going on in the last six months I didn’t understand. Like the situation with Jordan...”

  Jake hesitated, glancing at Claire, as if reluctant to discuss business in front of an outsider. And to them that’s exactly what she was, she realized. She had been forced to acknowledge just how much an outsider when she learned that not only had Griff double-crossed the kidnappers by faking Diaz’s death, he had double-crossed her as well.

  “Go on,” Griff ordered, without following Jake’s gaze to its focus on Claire’s face. “What about the situation with Jordan?”

  “There were too many things about what happened to Cross that never made sense to me. Things nobody should have known about then, either. But they did.”

  “Like what?”

  “How did Helms know where to find Jordan and Kathleen Sorrel? How did he get past the security system in your summer house?”

  “Jordan says they tracked him through the e-mail he sent you,” Griff said.

  “An encrypted e-mail, Griff. And nobody’s gotten into one of those. Not yet. And while Jordan was on the run, somebody got into the agency’s system. I told you that. I couldn’t backtrack them, but I knew they’d been there. They could have been reading files. Reading everything I was doing to help Jordan. Tracking his movements, just as I was.”

  “I told you I was in the system, Jake.”

  “Did you betray Jordan?” Jake asked softly.

  The logic was irrefutable. Griff Cabot would be the last person who might be suspected of doing that.

  “And if you didn’t,” Jake continued, “then who did? And how the hell did they do it if not like I said?”

  Griff remained silent for a moment, his eyes considering Jake’s face. “There’s not a system built that can keep a talented hacker out,” he said finally.

  “Not even mine?” Jake asked mockingly.

  His was an arrogance that, given what everyone said about him, was probably deserved, Claire thought.

  “The agency’s got the best security system in the world,” Jake added. “We both know that.”

  “Helms was FBI. He used the bureau to get information about Jordan’s movements.”

  “And the kidnappers? Who you think are some rival drug cartel? Are they using the bureau, too?” Jake asked.

  Griff’s eyes didn’t leave Jake’s, but he didn’t answer.

  “How else can you explain how they could have known—” Claire began, only to have her question overridden by Griff’s.

  “You really think this is someone operating from inside the agency, Jake?” Griff interrupted. “Is that what you’re suggesting?”

  Jake’s mouth pursed, and then he nodded. “Realistically, who else could know about this team and what it does?”

  “How would they find out what we intended for Diaz?”

  “I don’t know. But...Jordan was at the summer house when Helms found hi
m.”

  “You said the house was clean. No listening devices.”

  “Maybe I was wrong,” Jake said.

  “Why would the agency set this up?” Griff asked softly. “What would they have to gain?”

  The silence grew and expanded. Finally Jake broke it, his voice low, expressing the fatigue and disappointment they all felt at what they hadn’t found on that island.

  “I don’t know. Just like I don’t know what’s happened to Hawk and Jordan. Or why we were sent to find Diaz’s body. Or who killed him. But if you’ve got some other logical solution for all that’s happened on this operation, believe me, Griff, I’d be more than happy to listen to it.” He stopped, his eyes holding Griffs, seeming to ask for a denial.

  Griff said nothing. Finally, he turned and limped across the control room toward the stairs that led to the cabins below. Claire listened as the sounds of his footsteps faded, and then she turned back to Jake.

  “What do we do now?” she asked, the words producing a sick sense of déjà vu.

  “Damned if I know,” Jake said softly, his gaze on the dark stairwell where Griff had disappeared. “Damned if I have any idea at all of where we go from here.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Jake’s just trying to make sense of what happened,” Claire said, the tone of her voice comforting. “I think I need help doing that as well.”

  She was standing in the door of his stateroom. Griff wished he’d remembered to close it, but he wondered if even that would have kept her out. He had hoped for more time to come to grips with what had happened, but this confrontation was inevitable.

  He wished to hell, however, that Claire didn’t feel the need to comfort him, he thought savagely. What he heard in her voice now was almost as difficult for him to accept as her help had been last night.

  He had expected to have to deal with her anger over his deception about Diaz. He had been prepared for that. Hearing concern in her voice instead was pretty damned disheartening. Too much had changed between them. Their roles had shifted, somehow. Moved out of the familiar and comfortable dimensions they had once assumed. Or maybe, he acknowledged, those had only been comfortable for him.

  Claire had the right to know the truth, no matter how unpalatable that might be. And figuring out that truth was exactly what he had been trying to do since he’d left the bridge.

  “Jake’s probably right about some of what he said,” Griff admitted, looking up at her, eyes lifting from their pretended contemplation of his joined fingers.

  When Claire appeared in the doorway, she had caught him with his elbows on his knees, forehead resting in his hands. Which went a long way toward explaining what he had heard in her voice. As soon as he realized she was there, he had lifted his head, obviously too late to prevent her from reading the despair his posture implied. A despair he was actually feeling.

  “Right about which parts?” she asked.

  As if taking his response for permission to enter, she stepped into the room and walked over to sit down on the other end of the bed. Griff’s eyes didn’t follow her movement; he was looking down again at his hands instead. Which was safer, of course. And he didn’t look up even as he answered.

  “Whatever’s going on here—and probably most of the problems the members of the team have experienced during the last few months—haven’t been coincidental. Nor have they originated with someone from outside the agency. There are too many things that indicate events are being... manipulated,” he said carefully. “Too many things that point to insider knowledge.”

  “Events are being manipulated by someone on the team?” she asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “From someone within the agency,” he clarified.

  “Why?” Claire asked.

  That was the pertinent question, of course—one he thought he had answered a couple of weeks ago. An answer that had prompted his message to the director. And the timing of that and Gardner’s kidnapping seemed obvious now. He wondered why it hadn’t before. Because he had allowed himself to be thrown off track by Steiner’s visit, he acknowledged. And by Carl’s dismissal of his suspicions.

  “Are you drumming up a conspiracy because you miss it?” Steiner had asked. Because you miss the team? The excitement? The thrill of the chase?” And Griff had thought that maybe, just maybe, Carl was right. But now...

  “They’re trying to destroy the team,” he said softly.

  He had suspected all along that was what the agency was up to. He had known it in his gut, and he had let Carl’s ridicule push those well-honed instincts aside. Because he liked Carl. And because he trusted him.

  “I thought...” Claire hesitated. “I thought they had already done that.”

  “I don’t mean disband it,” Griff said, thinking about the reality of the phrase he had used. “They’re out to destroy us. To get rid of us. I think that’s what has been going on from the beginning.”

  To Claire that would probably sound like a lunatic-fringe theory, Griff supposed. Paranoia, maybe. Or maybe it would simply sound like an excuse to explain his own ineptitude. A cop-out for his responsibility in the fiasco this had become.

  Carl had said they’d retired him because, given the extent of his injuries, they were afraid he could no longer do the job. Maybe they had been right.

  “Destroy you because the existence of the team is potentially an embarrassment to this government?” Claire asked.

  He looked at her then, turning his head and focusing on her face. He could still remember the things she had said in that last brutal argument. About him. About what the team did. And suddenly he remembered Steiner’s remark. “There are a lot of people who think that about all of us in the agency.”

  Griff Cabot had heard all the variations on that theme through the years. All the accusations and insinuations about what the CIA did. He had learned to ignore most of the comments, even those about the immorality of the so-called black operations in which he had played such a major role.

  He had been able to play that role because he truly believed what the team did was essential to the survival of democracy. And because he saw their missions as necessary to defeat the evil that too often threatened the world. Claire, however, had seen the team as something as reprehensible as what they were fighting against. Which meant Carl Steiner was probably right about public opinion. In any case, the new leadership was determined to distance themselves from the kinds of activities the External Security Team had once been involved in.

  And apparently to distance themselves from the men who had once carried out those sanctioned missions. Permanently distance themselves, he thought. And who would be left then to defeat the next madman with a hunger for world domination and a few nuclear weapons at his disposal?

  To preserve and protect. To stand guard over this country. And those they loved. Standing guard. He had repeated that phrase to his team like a litany. Because that had been what he truly believed they were doing. But now the worldwide arena where he had once operated was no longer where that war was being waged. His fight was here. His battle. And at stake this time was the life of a little girl. A baby.

  His baby, he amended, for the first time allowing himself to view this not as an assignment, about which he could be coldly detached and intellectual, but as a personal crusade to find and rescue his daughter. A daughter whom he had never even seen.

  “If what we did ever becomes public knowledge,” he said, “there will be a hue and cry from certain aspects of our society. And a demand for heads to roll,” he added.

  Claire laughed. Surprised, he looked up. Although he hadn’t intended that comment to be a joke, he supposed in a way it was. Ironic, at least. They were the ones being targeted for destruction because they had once done the exact same thing.

  The current government didn’t have the stomach to admit what they knew and had even condoned in the past. That violence is sometimes necessary to preserve democracy. Necessary to insure peace—me fragile, uneasy peac
e that was all the world had at the moment. A peace that would end in an instant with the detonation of just one of those nuclear weapons so readily available on the terrorist black market.

  “Why do they think it might?” Claire asked. “Become public, I mean? Why, all of a sudden, are they so afraid of that?”

  “They made the decision to dissolve the team and then belatedly realized that the connections between the members were far stronger than they had believed. Our loyalties had become more...personal than professional.”

  Carl had even told him that, but Griff hadn’t realized then how much they feared it. The CIA valued loyalty to the agency above almost anything else, because it insured that the code of silence would be maintained. Once they began to suspect that another loyalty might supersede that one, then they would suspect disloyalty where none had existed. Their own brand of paranoia.

  “That’s why they were afraid of Hawk,” Claire said. “Because he threatened to go public with what he knew. Because he disobeyed their orders in order to get the man who had killed you. The man he thought had killed you,” she corrected.

  “Maybe,” Griff acknowledged.

  “So they tried to insure that even if he went public, he would never be able to make anyone believe him. They destroyed all record of Hawk’s existence so he could never tell what he knew,” she said.

  And suddenly, as Claire remembered the cold hatred that had been in Hawk’s eyes that day, a hatred of Steiner and everything he represented, the explanation for everything that had gone wrong with what they were trying to do shifted into place like a piece of a puzzle slipping smoothly between two others. Completing the pattern.

  “Hawk,” she said softly.

  Griff’s eyes, which were once more focused on his hands, lifted to her face. She could only imagine what it must reveal.

  Griff believed that the CIA was out to destroy the team. And maybe he was right. They had been furious because Hawk had disobeyed their orders. Maybe they had targeted Jordan because he had helped Hawk rescue Tyler Stewart at the airport that day and had then protected Hawk by taking the blame. Claire could go along with all that, but maybe...