by Gayle Wilson
That offer was sheer bravado, designed to make Jordan think about the reality that one of them would be dead, no matter how fast he got off his shot. Jake would have already selected his primary target—long before Jordan’s challenge.
And of course, Jordan should have killed Holt outright instead of talking to him. That’s how it should have been done. How any professional would have handled this. Jordan, of course, realized the dangers inherent in trying to do it this way. In trying to make Jake see he couldn’t win. And that there could be no going back to how it had once been.
Somehow, however, Griff found he couldn’t fault Jordan for choosing not to shoot Jake in the back. He, too, would have had a hard time putting a bullet into the back of any one of them. And Jake and Jordan had been friends for a long time, a friendship that was maybe as close as his and Hawk’s.
Which was why Jake had been able to get away with what he had done when he’d sent Jordan to find the Mafia’s sixteen million dollars. Of them all, Jordan was the best equipped for that job. Jake had known that. He had used Jordan’s skills then just as he’d intended to use the skills of the team to kill Diaz and collect on the contract. And his plans had worked in both cases because they had trusted him.
Holt’s gun didn’t waver as he waited for Jordan’s response. From where Jordan stood, Griff knew it would have been hard to say which of the three Jake was targeting. It was even hard for him to be sure.
Not Claire, Griff thought, the unspoken words almost a prayer. It would be him or Hawk. There had been enough underlying bitterness in the things Jake had said to see either of them the focus of his resentment. And his target.
Griff, because he had been born with everything Jake had plotted and schemed and betrayed to acquire. And Hawk? Maybe because he was what Jake had never been. One of the hotshots. Jake had undertaken only one mission, which had come down, finally, to this moment.
“You can kill one of them,” Jordan agreed. “I’m not Hawk, but I’m still good enough that I won’t miss, Jake. Not from this distance. You said you never intended to hurt any member of the team. That you had tried to take care of us. If that’s true, why kill one of us now?”
Jake didn’t respond, but the muzzle of the gun he held didn’t shift a millimeter. Neither did Jordan’s.
“It’s over, Jake,” Jordan said. “Nothing you’ve done so far is a capital offense. Even in Diaz’s death you’re probably only an accessory. But if you do this—”
Jake laughed, the sound as harshly derisive as that he had made earlier. “Wrong threat, old buddy,” he said. “Wrong argument.”
And then the gun he held began to move.
It wasn’t Jordan who reacted. It was Griff who started across the deck, but of course, he never had a chance of reaching Jake in time to prevent what was about to happen. Even though Jake’s hand seemed to be moving in slow motion as Griff ran toward him, his uneven gait making the desperate sprint awkward, he knew he’d never get there in time. The muzzle continued to lift inexorably toward its target.
“Jake!” Griff shouted.
The protest was too late, of course, sounding almost on top of the gun’s report. Even in the open air the noise of the shot was shocking.
Not as shocking as the sight of Jake, his mouth closed around the barrel of the Glock, slumping onto the mahogany deck. His fingers, instructed by some dying reflex of nerves and muscles sent from his shattered brain, seemed unable to release their hold on the weapon, not even in death.
At the shot, Griff had stopped so suddenly he skidded on the polished boards. He knew that this image would linger forever in his head. Etched on his memory by his sense of failure, which was as strong now as the acid of Jake’s betrayal.
“Jake,” he said softly, regretfully. The whispered name had no more effect than his shout had had. And then he closed his eyes, at least physically blocking the sight. Because, just as Jordan had said, it really was all over.
THEY HAD HAD TO DEAL with the authorities, of course. Jake’s death had been too public an event to avoid that. The gunshot had shattered the peaceful south Florida morning as effectively as it had blown out the top of Jake’s skull.
And it had been sheer, blind luck that they had been able to avoid a media circus as well. The only reason they had was that the cops arrived before the cameras. Although it was obvious Jake’s death had been a suicide, after the gunshot enough people had seen Jordan on the flybridge of the next boat, rifle pointing downward, to cause the authorities to take them all in.
None of them was carrying any official identification. If it hadn’t been for Carl Steiner’s long-distance intervention with the locals, Claire thought, they would probably still be answering questions back in Miami.
“Tell them as much of the truth as you can,” Griff had advised before the police arrived. And that’s exactly what she had done. Told them the truth. That Jake had been involved in the kidnapping of her daughter. That they had been in south Florida to pay the ransom the kidnappers had demanded.
Exactly what that ransom demand had been was something she knew Griff and his men would never disclose. If they did, it might lead back to the team. And eventually to the agency. In their loyalty to the CIA, they would see that as a betrayal. And so, for some reason, Claire hadn’t told the cops what they had been asked to do in order to get her daughter back, either.
Not because she had any loyalty to the CIA. But Ramon Diaz was dead. So was Jake, who wouldn’t, of course, now benefit from Diaz’s death. And she had never known who’d put the contract out on Diaz’s life. Or where they had taken Gardner.
That was a secret Jake Holt would take to his grave. Just as Jordan had said, it was all over. And they still didn’t have any idea where Gardner was.
Claire closed her eyes, turning her head toward the dark window of the plane, so that if she couldn’t conquer the almost constant urge to cry, at least no one would see her. She wasn’t sure why that mattered anymore.
She had acknowledged, to herself at least, that her courage was broken, her hope that they would find her baby almost too faint to allow her to go on. For some reason, however, she was determined that those hard men who were flying back to the capital with her wouldn’t be allowed to see her cry.
Griff’s fingers closed around hers, lifting her hand from where it had lain throughout the flight, cold and unmoving, in her lap. She didn’t resist the gesture, but she didn’t respond to it, either.
Illogically, she had again been blaming Griff. He should have known, she thought. Jake Holt was his man, a member of his precious team. And Griff should have known what was going on.
“We have more to work with than we did before,” Griff said softly. “That house on the key, for one thing. We’ll run the ownership records. It should give us somewhere to start. When we figure out who would benefit the most from Diaz’s death, we’ll have an idea about who put out the contract Jake accepted. The DEA is already working on that.”
She turned her head to look at him. Maybe to tell him that it wasn’t enough. Or that all this was his fault. His fault for knowing the Jake Holts of the world. For associating with them. For trusting them.
When she looked into Griff’s eyes, she realized that whatever she was feeling, whatever pain and anger choked her heart, making her chest too tight to take the next breath, she couldn’t say any of those things to Griff. Not now.
His eyes were as haunted as hers. She had caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror of the police station rest room, and startled by the stranger who appeared there, she had turned back to examine her reflection, too clearly illuminated by the garish fluorescent lighting.
Someone else’s face stared back at her. Eyes that had seen too much horror and were imagining more. Skin that beneath its superficial tan was as gray with fatigue, as lined with worry, as Griff’s was.
And so she nodded, clamping her lips over the bitter, accusing words she wanted to throw at him. Intellectually, she knew this wasn’t Griff’s fault.
This was simply the world he had always warned her about. And she had denied what he said, never believing that its evil could touch her life. Or her daughter’s.
“Claire,” he said softly.
“Don’t,” she whispered, too angry and disillusioned to deal with this rationally. To deal with him. “Just...don’t.”
Don’t make me any promises. Or tell me any more lies. Just get my baby back. And then... Maybe then...
She was unsure what the “then” that had formed in her head would be. Or even what it could be. So she turned her eyes back to the window and the night sky and tried very hard not to think. Not to think about anything. Especially not about Gardner.
“WE GO PUBLIC,” Claire’s grandfather suggested. “We flood the media with pictures of Jake Holt, together with pictures of Gardner. And we ask anybody who’s seen either one of them, but especially anyone who has seen them together, to call.”
They were sitting around the kitchen table of Claire’s house in Georgetown three days after their return from Florida. Its familiarity should have been comforting, she thought, but nothing had felt familiar since she’d been home.
Her world no longer existed—the one she had once occupied. The one where babies slept safely in their cribs. Where the worst thing she had to worry about was whether the house was warm enough or whether she’d get home in time to spend an hour or two with Gardner before the nanny put her down for the night.
Now the image of Jake’s body, the back of his skull blown away, was her world instead. The reality of a trusted friend’s betrayal. The mutilated corpse of Ramon Diaz was there as well. Diaz, who might have been killed by the same people who had taken Gardner. And if that were true...
“I’m not sure that will do any good,” Jordan said.
“Has anything else done any good?” Claire asked.
She regretted the bitterness in her voice. She knew Griff would believe she was still blaming him. She was past that now. Her sense of fair play, or her logic maybe, had reasserted itself. It wasn’t Griff’s fault that he had trusted Jake Holt.
After all, that was what she had railed at him for so often in the past. For not trusting. For believing people were capable of the things his team was supposed to guard against. But if one of his vaunted team could do these despicable things, then what hope was there for the rest of the world?
Of course, that was an old argument. One she had made to him during their last quarrel—that Griff and his team were no better than the people they were fighting against.
“What could it hurt?” Hawk asked, his deep voice considering. “Besides sending Steiner and the agency ballistic.”
“For one thing, it will bring out the crackpots to muddy the waters with a lot of false information—all of which would have to be investigated,” Griff said. “It might be better to concentrate on the legitimate leads we have.”
“Which have led exactly nowhere,” Claire said, her bitterness more open this time. She was sorry about that when Griff’s eyes lifted quickly to her face.
The FBI had discovered that the house where they found Diaz’s body had once belonged to Jake’s family. Jake had lived there when he was a child. But as far as they’d been able to ascertain, he had never returned to the island where he’d grown up. Not until he’d put this plan into action.
And as for tracing the people who had put out the contract on Diaz, the DEA was still working on that. There were a dozen emerging potential rivals for Diaz, all of whom would probably like to get in on what he had put together. And all of whom had enough money to make them suspects. So it seemed to her that she and the others were right back where they’d started.
“Doing what your grandfather suggests would also mean a further loss of privacy for you and the baby,” Griff said.
For you and the baby. No mention of his role in their future. Her eyes searched his face, but she could read nothing there. Nothing but professional detachment.
“You’re afraid this would make them...more vulnerable,” Hawk suggested. “Afraid someone else might try the same thing. Maybe not for the same reasons,” he added.
“Up until this happened, Claire had kept the baby out of the spotlight,” her grandfather said. “Virtually no one knew of her existence. No one but family and close friends. It didn’t seem to make much difference.”
No one knew of her existence. No one except Jake Holt, Claire thought. She remembered Jordan’s words: Jake knows everything. He had known Griff was alive, maybe from backtracking Griff’s invasion of the CIA’s computer system, although he’d denied that. Or maybe from the message Griff had sent to the director just before this had all begun. And he had known about Gardner, the second piece of information he had needed to bring this off. Then he’d just used his computers to interrupt Claire’s security system and he was on his way.
“With all due respect, sir,” Griff said quietly, “I don’t think anything Claire could have done would have made a difference in what happened.”
“Because Holt was really targeting you?” Monty Gardner suggested, his eyes piercing, the intelligence behind them still obvious and demanding, despite his age.
“I’m not even sure that’s true. At least not the whole truth. Jake Holt was brilliant, but...there were a lot of things going on under the surface that none of us suspected. But...maybe it wasn’t about any of us. Maybe it was just what he said it was. Just about the money.”
“But you don’t believe that,” Claire’s grandfather suggested.
No one said anything for a long time, and then Griff said, “Ultimately...I’m not sure I do.”
The old man nodded, and then he turned to look at Claire. “It seems to me we’ve got nothing else to lose, my dear,” he said. “And everything to gain. Cabot’s right, however, about the loss of privacy. About future threats. And especially about the crackpots. They’ll come out of the woodwork. So... I think it must be your decision.”
Nothing to lose. And everything to gain, she thought. First she had lost Griff. And then Gardner. Her grandfather was right. She really had nothing else to lose.
She knew that if they didn’t succeed in getting Gardner back, then nothing could ever be the same between her and Griff. Not because she wouldn’t want it to be, but because she understood Griff Cabot well enough to know that he would never be able to forgive himself for that failure.
Most marriages didn’t survive the loss of a child. And she and Griff didn’t even have a legal connection that would have to be dissolved. Griff would just disappear. He would go out of her world. Disappear from her life. Again.
She knew now that wasn’t what she wanted. What she really wanted was to go back to how things had been before. Such a simple phrase for all it encompassed. Back to what she and Griff had once had. Back to being Gardner’s mother. Back to the idealism about the world that had seemed so easy and so noble.
Maybe she could never go back to the last, but it still seemed that she had to pursue every avenue available to get Gardner back. And then Griff. Nothing else to lose. And everything to gain.
“Do it,” she said softly. “Put Gardner’s picture on the front of every newspaper and on every TV station that beams a signal out tonight,” she said, looking around the table. “A description of what she was wearing. A description of anything about her that might make someone realize...”
Her throat closed suddenly over the rest of it. That might make someone realize they have my baby.
“And I want Jake Holt’s picture right beside hers,” she added, controlling that first surge of emotion with her anger over what Holt had done to them all.
Her grandfather nodded approval. Neither Jordan or Hawk said anything. She could imagine what the CIA would feel about making Jake’s identity and his role in the kidnapping public. They would be afraid, of course, that somehow the media would trace Holt back to them. Maybe even back to the unit known as the External Security Team.
But she didn’t care how Carl Steiner would feel. And by t
he time he had a chance to do anything about it, this could already be accomplished. That would be up to Griff.
“Can you do that?” she asked him. “Can you give them Jake’s picture? And tell them his name?”
His eyes held hers, the concern in their dark depths obvious. He probably knew how fragile her control was. After all, he knew her so well. He knew, and understood, everything about her.
“I can do it,” he said softly.
And he would. She was certain Griff would do what he’d promised. He’d do exactly what she’d asked, no matter what Steiner or anybody else in the CIA thought about it.
“THE CLOTHES ARE different,” Detective Minger said, “but that doesn’t mean anything. They probably bought everything they gave this woman new. Just in case.”
“But you really think this is Gardner?” Claire said softly, her voice strained.
Griff understood her caution, of course. They had almost been afraid to hope. Although, with Claire’s connections, the media outlets had given the news release a lot of play, the pictures of Jake Holt had been out there less than six hours when they got Minger’s call.
“Let’s just say we haven’t discovered anything to make us think she might not be. She seems to be just what she claims. She even gave us references from people whose children she’d cared for in the past,” he said, his voice touched with amusement. “There’s nothing in the computers about her. She doesn’t seem like a crazy, and believe me, I’ve got radar where those are concerned. We all do around here. We think she’s the real thing, Ms. Heywood, although I should warn you we’re still checking out her story. And of course, we can’t be sure about any of the rest of it until you ID the baby,” he added softly.
The crux of the matter, Griff realized. And why they had been sent for. Claire’s identification would end this entire episode as far as the cops were concerned. Minger had already been told what had happened in Florida. Not all of it, but as much as the Miami police knew.