by Misty Evans
“Everybody over here,” he said, waving the various people over to Del’s makeshift computer station.
The hospital roof had two raised exits north of a small helo pad. One exit was probably stairs, the other an elevator for transporting patients on gurneys. Del had plopped his butt and his miniscule laptop between the two brick outcroppings and went to work.
As the ten people gathered around, Conrad looked his team over. “You got the work order form?” he asked Del.
The techie hit a button and the mobile printer next to his leg hummed to life. “Coming right up.”
“Titus, you, Gunn and Kinnick are going in as hired security specialists. The city’s still trying to turn the courthouse into a real tourist attraction, but crime’s high in this area. You’re here to install camera surveillance. Smitty’s got uniforms and badges in the green van at the corner over there.” He pointed behind him. “Once inside—”
Titus interrupted, excitement over playing spy again getting the better of him. “We know what to do, Flynn.”
The printer spit out a sheet of paper and Titus nabbed it. His eyes scanned the details with careful scrutiny. Folding it, he nodded at Del. “You’re good, son.”
Clearly flustered, Del started pecking at his keyboard again.
Conrad handed the three men two-way radios with wireless headsets. Titus raised a white brow. “We going low-tech on this mission?”
“Without Del’s storeroom of toys, it’s the best I could do on short notice.”
As the three inserts drifted back to try out their new toys, Lawson raised a hand. “Where do you want me?”
“Right here,” Zara said. She was less pale and had kept her breakfast down, but the circles under her eyes and the way she leaned against the bricks let Conrad know she was exhausted. She shouldn’t be here, but he was the idiot who’d assigned her to stay close to Kent’s backside and dig into Donovan’s history. “You’re not going anywhere without me.”
Lawson looked out over the rooftop, as if he wished to avoid the conversation, but finally met her eyes again. “Z, we talked about this. I have a job to do.”
“And so do I.”
Julia placed a hand on Zara’s forearm. “Not a good idea in your condition.”
“In my condition, I need Lawson.”
Julia looked at Conrad. Shit, like Zara wasn’t stubborn enough, throw in hormone-induced bullheadedness and he might as well beat his brains against the bricks. Thank God Julia wasn’t pregnant too. He couldn’t help being totally relieved she wasn’t when he found out the FBI was sending her to Ireland to follow up on Donovan’s escape and murder of O’Bern.
Handing Lawson a radio, he indicated the jail. “I want you to find us a way in. If Donovan’s meeting place is anywhere, it will be inside that jail and I want to know how to get in and get out.”
Zara started to balk, but snapped her lips shut when Conrad handed her another radio and headset. “I’ll allow you to tag along, but you do not under any circumstances follow him onto the grounds. If I have to come in and rescue your butt, I will kick you out of my program so fast the Earth will spin backwards on its axis. You feel me?”
“I second that,” Stone said from the edge of the group. “Family is important, Agent Morgan. The most important thing in the world.”
It was the best kind of intervention they could have done with her, and God help him, the hormones did another dance. Her eyes went moist and she grinned at Lawson. “Family, yeah. I promise not to do anything stupid.”
Stone had sauntered over and was standing behind and off to the side of Brigit. Her head was bowed as if she were counting the puddles at her feet or praying. Conrad saw Stone’s gaze linger on her.
“One ticket for the tour.” He pulled the ticket out of his inside jacket pocket and held it out. “Sure you don’t want to stay here and orchestrate this?”
Brigit turned to Stone, now realizing he was behind her. His gaze immediately shifted to Conrad, the normal controlled expression back on his face. “Nope. My gig.”
“Why?” Brigit demanded.
Stone reached for the ticket, but Brigit was half a second faster and she snatched it from Conrad’s hand, putting it behind her back like a child. “Don’t do this,” she pleaded with him. “Please. Let someone else.”
Conrad exchanged a glance with Julia. She winked at him.
Stone scrubbed his hair with a fist and walked several paces away. “Brigit, don’t start with this again. I’m not storming the place. It’s a simple recon mission.”
“What if something goes wrong?”
He turned and faced her. “Titus, Brad and Truman are backing me up.”
“With a bogus cover that could be blown before they even get through the gate.”
“Hey,” Del spoke up from the sidelines. “They’ll get through the gate. My work is topnotch.”
Everyone ignored him.
Stone checked his watch and held out a hand for the ticket. “Look, I need to get going. Don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry?” Her voice rang over the rooftop. Titus, Lawson, Kinnick and Zara all looked over at them. Gunn frowned and started forward, but Conrad turned slightly and made a no go motion with his hand.
Gunn stopped, and the rest went back to what they were doing, trying to act like they weren’t listening. Del’s fingers flew across his keyboard as if he might force it to open up and swallow him.
“Don’t worry?” Brigit repeated, a little less loudly, but with no less emotion. “I don’t know what you think we shared last night and this morning, but if anyone here has a reason to worry about you walking into that courthouse, it’s me.”
Stone’s face gave nothing away. “This is not the time or the place to discuss what’s going on between us.”
Like he’d slapped her, Brigit took a step back. “You could be walking into a trap and you want me to just stand here and watch you go without a word? Is that it? You want me to be stoic and brave and all that other bullshit while you risk your life for my family?”
Conrad saw a muscle work in Stone’s jaw before he spoke. “You said yourself this wasn’t a trap. That Tory was on our side now.”
“I know.” She brought the ticket in front of her stomach and looked down at it, back up at him. “I’m having second thoughts.”
Stone shut his eyes for two taps of Del’s fingers and let out a terse sigh. “No time for second thoughts. I can handle this. Trust me.”
She wavered, and Stone pulled the ticket from her fingers. He made it as far as the metal fire escape stairs on the south edge of the building before Brigit spoke again. She raised her voice for him to hear. “I just found you. I just found happiness for the first time in my life. Please don’t take that away from me.”
All motion stopped. Michael. Conrad. Del. Lawson and Zara. Titus, Kinnick, Truman. No one moved.
Except Brigit. She looked around at all of them, settled her attention back on Michael. All her frustration, fear and love threatened to jet out of her in a stream of emotional need. That was not the way to reach Michael, though. “Your group here”—she motioned at them with her hand as she met his gaze—“needs you. Your family needs you. My God, America needs you. If you go in there and something, anything, about this plan goes wrong, everyone loses. Every. Last. One. Loses. Do you understand?”
She drew in a shaky breath and admitted the truth. “It’s not just about me and what I want. It’s about you, Michael. So don’t think you can walk away from me without so much as a goodbye, and tell me not to worry. If you get hurt, or God forbid, die”—her breath stuck in her throat, a solid ball of anguish—“it will be my fault, and I can’t live with that. I can’t live without you.”
Michael hung his head and said, “Jesus Christ” under his breath.
She waited for him, her legs shaking and her fingernails biting into her palms. After a moment, when he said nothing else and made no move to argue, she knew she’d lost.
Batting back the tears
burning her eyes, she raised her chin and faced the open stares of the others head on. Her gaze finally settled on Conrad. “Well, where do you want me?”
“Uh,” he stuttered.
Before he could answer, Michael crossed the distance, swept her into his arms and kissed her hard.
Out of the blue, someone started clapping. Someone else wolf whistled. A few seconds later, everyone was clapping and hooting as Michael went for her tonsils.
The world went away then for a few heartbeats and Brigit poured everything—all the fear and love she was feeling—into kissing Michael back.
It was over too soon. Michael’s lips left hers, but his hands stayed on her hips and his gaze rested on her face.
“All right. All right,” Conrad said, waving his hands to quiet the group. Turning his back on Stone and Brigit, he whirled one finger in a circle. “Move out. Titus, you and your group get down to the van. Once you’re inside the courthouse, get those bugs and cameras planted in the areas I showed you on the map. Especially down the tunnel.”
As the men filed by to hit the fire escape, Titus punched Michael on the arm. Truman tapped Brigit on her good shoulder. Michael dropped his hands from her hips and stepped back. Brigit kicked at a pebble at her feet.
When he got to the ledge, he grabbed the fire escape’s handrails and swung one leg over to the first step. “Hey, Doc.”
Brigit looked up.
Michael dangled the left-behind rabbit’s foot on a chain from one finger. “I’m not done with you yet. I promise, I’ll be back.”
She nodded, and Michael disappeared, taking her heart with him.
When she faced Conrad and Julia, she shrugged. “I thought for sure the part about his country needing him would work.”
Julia laughed. “So did I.”
“Huh, so did I,” Conrad admitted, handing his binoculars to Julia. “You watch the sidewalk. Keep an eye on the tour group. You”—he pointed to Brigit—“stay here with Del. He’ll be able to show you everything the cameras catch, including the feed coming in from the cell phone Stone’s using.”
Normally she would have balked at being on tech duty, but this job meant she could watch Michael, maybe even be his guardian angel if anything went wrong. Without a word of complaint, she went to sit with Del.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Brigit watched fascinated as one square after another popped up on Del’s tiny screen. The security specialists were inside the courthouse. So was the tour group, including Michael. Video and audio pieces were coming through loud and clear. So far. So good.
Twenty minutes later, Michael had managed to lose the tour group and guides. A camera set high on one of the walls showed a distorted view of the dark tunnel, the farthest point disappearing into darkness.
Brigit’s breath caught in her throat when Michael appeared on screen entering the tunnel. He was moving quickly, checking back over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t followed. As his body became smaller and smaller, her heart beat faster. When he finally disappeared into the darkness at the narrowed end, she thought she would throw up.
“Here,” Del said, typing in a command and pointing at a new square on his screen. “This is coming from Director Stone’s cell phone. I rigged it to send a shot every three seconds.”
Pixilated grays and browns appeared on the screen like a photo had been snapped. The tunnel was dark and dingy with deep shadows, making it difficult to make out much of anything. Seconds later, a new image appeared, not all that different from the previous one, but still different enough Brigit could tell Michael was moving forward.
At the end of the tunnel, enough light filtered through to add more colors, but the dinginess didn’t subside. Into the jailhouse, up the steps, Michael was silent but keeping his cell phone camera moving in arcs so they could see what he was seeing. Narrow stairs with green railings, plaster debris everywhere, fallen lights. Massive locks and inch-thick metal bars. Large, gaping holes in the walls.
Brigit watched, completely enthralled with the tiny square of Michael’s world. While Del kept an eye on the various other feeds and relayed information to Conrad, Brigit tuned it all out. All she cared about was Michael.
A shadow moved in the corner and Brigit leaned closer to the screen. Were her eyes playing tricks on her or was that a man’s shadow? Maybe it was Michael’s? But that couldn’t be right. He would have to be standing on the stairs to his right to throw the shadow the camera was capturing. The next two seconds seemed to take forever.
Without warning, an explosion punched the air nearby. Brigit ducked, all her reflexes contracting as if she’d been hit. The sound reverberated through the rooftop, running over her skin and raising the hair on the back of her neck. The explosion had come from the jail.
She was up and running toward Conrad before she could form coherent thought. “What happened?”
Binoculars in one hand, a radio in the other, he ignored her. “Black King, come in.”
Titus Allen’s voice broke through a bunch of static. “Black King here. We’re okay. What the hell was that?”
“Explosion inside the jail,” Conrad answered, and a shiver ran down Brigit’s spine.
“Blue Knight? You there?”
“Blue Knight here.” It was Lawson. “All clear on our side. Over.”
Brigit jerked on Conrad’s sleeve. “What about Michael?”
“White Knight, you see anything?”
More static and then Ryan Smith’s voice. “Nothing unusual. What’s Del got?”
Del. Brigit left Conrad and sprinted back to Del and his laptop. “What can you see? Is Michael okay?”
The computer guru was leaning toward his screen. He said nothing, his face pale as he shifted the screen so Brigit could see the display.
The multiple squares were now only one filling the screen with a choppy, pixilated picture. The view seemed to be the ceiling with a light blob in the upper left corner. Brigit squinted. “What is that?”
Del cleared his throat. “I think it’s the director’s ear.”
Dropping to her knees, she stared at the screen with her heart fluttering hard in her throat. The picture stuttered as the video updated and understanding dawned on her. Michael was on his back, the cell phone camera lying beside him, next to his head.
“Oh, God.” Far below, the sounds of the frightened tourists filled the air as they filed out of the courthouse. The three-second update showed a piece of Michael’s arm, as he’d raised it to rub his forehead. Hope soared in her chest. She slid sideways and yelled at Conrad. “Michael’s hurt.”
He came running, radio still glued to his mouth as information continued to be relayed between the teams. “Stone’s down, possibly injured,” he told someone as he stared at the screen. “Get to him. Now.”
Brigit reached to touch the screen, tears welling in her eyes. “Goddamn jerk,” she whispered.
Without another word, she rose and started for the fire escape.
“Hey,” Conrad said. “Where’re you going?”
She didn’t stop, didn’t answer. Just as she put a hand on the rail, he grabbed her by the back of the coat and hauled her around. “Oh, no. You are not allowed to leave this rooftop.”
Struggling against his iron grip, she forced herself to sound calm. She was anything but. “Says who?”
“Stone.”
“He needs help. Let me go.”
Conrad wasn’t as big as Michael, but he was strong enough and fast enough to pin her arm behind her back and march her away from the edge of the roof. “Help’s on the way. I need you here.”
Since he had her left hand jacked behind her and pointing up at her shoulders, she couldn’t ignore the pain to her still sore arm. “I don’t appreciate being manhandled.”
He forced her back to Del’s side. “Don’t try to run off and it won’t happen again.”
“Um,” Del muttered, looking up at her and pointing at the screen. “Who’s that?”
All of Brigit’s senses
screamed in panic. The pale face, the shaved head, the eyes like a shithouse rat. There, staring down at the phone and Michael, was the face of her childhood nightmares.
Her knees kissed the blacktop first. Her hands followed. “That’s Peter Donovan,” she murmured before her stomach heaved.
Chapter Forty
Michael came awake slowly, his ears ringing and his eyes burning. He would have sworn Brad had landed a kick to the back of his head.
Blinking to clear the grit from his eyes, he saw a man’s face looming over him. “Well, who do we have ’ere?” the man muttered. “Yer the man from the alley.”
Though he could barely make out the words over the ringing in his ears, Michael recognized the voice. The nasal tone, combined with deep-sunk eyes and days-old growth of beard, registered with a cold slap. Peter Donovan.
Rubbing his eyes and tapping his right ear—the one ringing the most—with his palm, he shifted his body to sit up. Donovan held a gun by his side and Michael saw his hand tense on the butt. Moving with slow, deliberate motions, he got to his feet. The shadows around him fuzzed out and the floor seemed to move under his feet, making him waver. The damage to his eardrum was knocking his balance off.
Nothing like being half-blind, half-deaf and dizzy as hell when facing the terrorist you planned to apprehend.
“Why’d ya blast the tunnel?” Donovan demanded. “Who’re ya working for?”
His face was even paler than it had been the previous evening in the alley. Sweat beaded his forehead. The bags below his eyes spoke of sleeplessness or perhaps poisoning?
Yer the man from the alley. At least he hadn’t called Michael Brigit’s lover. Maybe Brigit was right and this wasn’t a trap. Or at least not one orchestrated by Donovan.
Pretending to be deaf gave him time to come up with a plausible story. Michael tapped his ear again. “What? My ears are ringing. What happened?”