Beneath the Surface

by Meredith Fletcher

  He flipped through the huge dossier Allison had assembled on Shannon. The study was so deep and complete that it felt invasive. Guilt worried at Rafe the whole time he read through the file.

  The dismissal at Athena Academy had colored much of Shannon’s life. She just hadn’t gotten over it and moved on with her life.

  Vindictive? Rafe wondered. Or something else?

  Guilty people proclaimed their innocence, too. But after a while, unless they were incarcerated and such proclamations might eventually lead to their freedom, they stopped fighting the system.

  Shannon hadn’t lain down and quit. She’d fought back with Athena. Her primary rival had been Tory Patton—now Tory Forsythe—who had been a reporter for United Broadcasting Studios. Their rivalry had attracted attention in the news world.

  Allison had also flagged many of the stories Shannon had covered. In all of those stories Allison had noted other background she had uncovered: rumors, conflicting stories and investigations she’d conducted of financial assets that showed a steady stream of outgoing capital. All of them had been noted as possible blackmail.

  Some people stopped paying and were summarily broken in the news. Once the cash deliveries had stopped, whatever secret the person had been hiding had been pushed into the public eye.

  But that wasn’t the only reason the victims had been exposed. Sometimes heads of state or CEOs were brought down to undermine their standing. New people had been brought in, and those people had also been blackmailed. If what Allison thought was true, Arachne had propelled people into greater positions and success just so she could leech more from them.

  Rafe was awed and sickened by what he read, both fact and conjecture on Allison’s part. He’d never imagined anyone like Arachne, so malign and so manipulative. The woman had had forty years to build one of the largest criminal empires Rafe had ever heard of.

  But the more he read, the more unsettled Rafe became. There were basic issues that were missing regarding Shannon Connor’s guilt.

  Rafe waited till Allison leaned back in the ergonomic chair, then he asked, “Why?”

  Allison turned to him. She looked confused. “Why?”

  Nodding solemnly, Rafe said, “Why?”

  “You’re going to have to do better than that.”

  “Why was Shannon Connor involved in this? Why was she taking the information you say Arachne was giving her? Why was she using it?”

  “Arachne wanted someone to break the stories in the media.”

  “It could have been any other reporter. Or reporters, for that matter.”

  “Because Shannon is conniving and selfish. And because she’s power-hungry.”

  Rafe folded his arms over his chest. “You don’t like her. I get that. But as intelligent as you are—and I do know you’re intelligent, Allison—I think you’re letting yourself be blinded by your own dislike of Shannon.”

  “Shannon’s betrayal at Athena was unforgivable.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  Allison hesitated for a time, then she did tell him.

  “So you have a vested interest, too,” Rafe said when she finished. “Shannon tried to blame you for her actions.”

  “Damn right.”

  “Let’s look past the problem of all of you being way into the competition at the time—and the fact that you were sixteen years old as well as not necessarily of age to make decisions that are going to be forever. I can remember the cheerleader wars at high school. Not a pretty sight. And it got bloodthirsty when push came to shove for positions on the team. Guys did the same thing in football.”

  “Competition—healthy competition—is part of the curriculum at the academy,” Allison said. “Mom wanted it that way. She felt that was the only way the students would push themselves to succeed.”

  “I’m not a big fan of ‘no child shall be left behind’ either,” Rafe said. “If you’re going to acknowledge the struggling student and build programs suited to him, you also need to acknowledge the achiever and build other programs accordingly. Competition is good when it’s healthy and the playing field is level, but it’s got to be fair at both ends. How many other relationships were damaged at that time?”

  Allison was quiet for a moment. “I don’t think this is pertinent.”

  “I do.”

  “I don’t have time for this.” Allison turned back to the computer.

  Rafe remained steady. “You’ve let this thing go on for fifteen years, Allison. So has Shannon Connor.”

  “It is what it is.”

  “Yeah, I think so, too. And if it’s what I think it is, it’s pretty sick and twisted.”

  Allison looked at him, then sighed. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why?”

  Rafe struggled with that one for a moment. A lot of why he wouldn’t let it go was because over the past couple of weeks of keeping Shannon under surveillance he’d come to like her.

  “Because you let me meet her without knowing all the subtext on this relationship. It didn’t color my view of Shannon Connor.”

  “That was my mistake, but I hadn’t planned on you getting this deeply…involved.” Allison said the last word meaningfully.

  “She’s attractive,” Rafe admitted, knowing he had to own up to it. “I saw that straight off. But there’s more to it than that. I like the way she acts around people.”

  “She’s selfish.”

  “I haven’t met a person yet who didn’t have his or her own agenda.”

  “Meaning me, because I dumped this on you? Fine. I’ll bear the guilt on that one.”

  “Not just you. Me too. When you asked me to take part in this, I did it for me. Not for you. I had my own agenda, too. I wanted to see if I still had what it took to work out in the field.” Rafe shrugged. “I’ve got a little farther to go physically, but my instincts are still good.”

  Allison didn’t argue with that.

  “My instincts are telling me that something is wrong here,” Rafe said.

  “My instincts aren’t.”

  “You’re not as objective as you could be.” As he watched the color fill Allison’s face, Rafe was certain he’d gone too far. She was going to blow—and then she was going to toss him out on his ear.

  Chapter 17

  “I f you don’t hear me out,” Rafe said, “you’re going to have to have security remove me from the building. And I’ll make it hard on them.”

  Allison studied him and tried to make herself be calm. It was hard. Shannon Connor had been a sore point for a long time.

  But that’s exactly what he’s saying, isn’t it?

  Instead of responding, Allison got up from the chair and paced the room. She could still remember her mom coming to her room and asking about the theft charges against Josie Lockworth.

  Allison hadn’t been able to accept that her mom could believe even for a second that she would do such a thing. But she had. And that had hurt Allison in ways she hadn’t even been able to imagine back then.

  Things had gotten even worse when she thought about some of the things she’d done to Rainy Miller later. In the end, her mom had been right to suspect her. She took a deep breath and let it out as she paced. Then she turned back to Rafe.

  “This can’t be about high school,” Allison declared.

  “Arachne’s part in this, no. Definitely not. But the logjam created by you, Shannon, Tory Patton and possibly some of the other women that came out of that?” Rafe shrugged. “Maybe. None of us really leaves high school completely behind. Biggest social crippler there is.”

  “Shannon is the bad guy in this,” Allison said. “I want Shannon to be the bad guy in this.”

  “Fine,” Rafe said roughly. “Make me believe it.”

  “How?”

  “Tell me what she got out of the relationship with Arachne. Or whoever’s been feeding her the information she’s been getting.”

  “Look at her career. She’s skyrockete
d at ABS.”

  “So?”

  “Without those stories, she wouldn’t ever have gotten the star potential she did.”

  “Maybe. I’ve watched her, Allison. She’s a good journalist. She gets people to open up and talk to her. She listens. She’s not afraid to tackle hard stories or big names.”

  “She gets those opportunities because she rides roughshod over people.”

  “People who’ve screwed up or are hiding something criminal, sure.” Rafe remained stubborn. “You and I track them down and either take them out of power…or—if it comes to it—we kill them. A lot of people would say we’re the bad guys.”

  Allison cursed. He was right. Worse, he knew he was right. But worst of all was that she knew he was right.

  “The payoff is missing,” Rafe said. “If Shannon is working—was working—with Arachne, where’s the payoff?”

  “Her career.”

  “Not good enough. She could have had a good career anyway. She might have settled for a lesser career. Or she could have been doing something else.”

  “There’s no money,” Allison said.

  “You didn’t find any. And you looked. I saw the financials you put together on her. You and I both know that money is easy to follow.”

  “If there’s enough of it.”

  “You know I’m right. I can read between the lines in your reports. You’ve been asking the same questions there. You just haven’t wanted to deal with it.”

  Allison sighed. “I know.”

  Rafe was silent. One hand was massaging his knee.

  “Okay,” Allison said, forcing herself to be analytical. It was hard to do that when the subject was Shannon Connor. “Let’s say that Shannon Connor isn’t—”

  “Wasn’t,” Rafe said with a smile.

  “—wasn’t Arachne’s partner.”

  “Arachne, from your notes, didn’t seem to be the type to take on partners.”

  “What does that make her?”

  Rafe’s smile was grim. “What do you call something you use to accomplish something you want to do?”

  Allison reflected for a moment. “A tool?”

  “That’s pretty much what I’d call it. You said that Arachne was a master manipulator.”

  “She was,” Allison agreed.

  “Then what’s the best tool she could use against your mother and the Athena Academy? And I’m admitting, given the stories Shannon’s been covering, that the academy was a definite target.”

  “Shannon,” Allison said. “Because it’s possible people could see that she was the one failure of Athena Academy. And they could see the attacks she made against the school’s setup, funding and overall mission statement. Even if she didn’t make her story against the academy stick, she could be a reminder that it didn’t always work.”

  “Because it didn’t work in her case.”

  “No.” Allison sipped a breath. “It didn’t.”

  “Arachne used Shannon against you, Allison,” Rafe said.

  “It’s possible,” Allison said grudgingly. Then she shook her head angrily. “It’s probable.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But she’s still not a good person. Look at the way she drugged you and left you there to be killed.”

  “We boxed her,” Rafe stated quietly. “We let her step into that confrontation with Vincent Drago so we could learn her secrets.”

  “You mean I did.”

  Rafe nodded. “I do. And once we fixed it so she had nowhere to go, once she knew she was trapped, how do you think she felt?”

  Allison didn’t answer.

  “How would you have dealt with it?” Rafe asked softly.

  “I would have escaped by whatever means I could,” Allison said.

  “Yeah. So would I. So why are we faulting Shannon for doing what she did? Somebody—” Rafe nodded at the computer monitor with the spider symbol on it “—gave her the chance and she took it. You and I would have done the same thing.”

  Allison stared at the computer monitor. “Whoever sent that is evil.”

  “I think so, too. But Shannon doesn’t know that.”

  “She should.”

  “Shannon thinks we’re the enemy. And there’s that old saying—The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

  “She doesn’t know I’m involved.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that, too. When she handed me that water in the hotel room, she told me, ‘Hydrate or die.’ She asked me if that was what we military types said.”

  Allison caught the inference almost at once. “You didn’t tell her you were a soldier.”

  “No. She’s done a lot of military interviews in Iraq and Berzhaan lately. She’s been around military guys. She could have heard that there, but what made her say that to me?”

  “She could have simply figured you were a soldier.”

  “Or someone could have told her.”

  “While you were in the hotel room?” Allison shook her head.

  “I was monitoring her phone. I didn’t show any activity.”

  “The taps you had on the hotel’s security system were hacked. Whoever you’re working against, they’re as talented as you are.”

  Allison wanted to argue that out of pride, but she couldn’t. It would have been a waste of breath.

  “Her friend told her,” Rafe said. “She worked the hotel room as soon as you booked it.”

  “I put that into play at the same time I ordered the car for you.” Allison thought about the time frame. “There was a window…if whoever did this moved quickly enough.”

  “There could have been someone else shadowing Shannon. You said Drago was supposed to kill her.”

  “Yes.”

  “Whoever set that up would have had someone on hand to make sure it happened. That would put a team down in the D.C. area.”

  “All it would have taken was one person.”

  “One person would have been hard to spot,” Rafe agreed.

  “It also means the Drago countermove was designed to bring me out of hiding.” Allison suddenly felt incredibly stupid.

  “And me,” Rafe added.

  “We’ve been played.”

  “Yeah. Pretty well. You gotta respect that. Drago nearly kills Shannon and I show up just to take her into custody.”

  “We’re the bad guys.” Allison understood everything then.

  “Once your name is mentioned—and I’m pretty sure it was—then Shannon realizes she’s got no way out of the trap she’s in. The D.C. police want her. We have her. But there has to be one other thing her mysterious source offers her to get her to trust her enough to possibly poison me.”

  “You think she worried about that?” As soon as she asked the question, Allison knew she was being too cynical.

  “She put a pillow under my head after I went down,” Rafe said. “Do you think she would have done that if she wasn’t concerned about whether I lived?”

  “No.” Allison breathed out in disgust. “I hate getting played.”

  “Then you do what you do best,” Rafe said. “Get it sorted out. Find this guy’s weak spot, and let’s track him down.”

  “I thought you were out of this.”

  “That’s when I was busy feeling sorry for myself for reading Shannon wrong.”

  “Even if what you’re saying is right, it doesn’t make her a good person.”

  “Hell, Allison,” Rafe said quietly, “good people don’t do what you and I do.”

  Rafe drank another cup of coffee while he watched Allison work. He didn’t know what she was doing and wouldn’t have understood it if she’d tried to explain it. Computers weren’t his forte.

  People were.

  That’s why learning he had gotten Shannon Connor so wrong had thrown him for a loop. After North Korea, after the physical disability he’d dealt with—Are still dealing with, he told himself—he needed to know that he could trust his instincts.

  He’d read Shannon as self-centered. A lot of people were when
it came to relationships and careers. But Shannon had had reason not to trust anyone outside herself. She’d felt as though she had adversaries at every corner and she’d had something to prove. She’d had no choice but to be self-centered.

  Rafe understood that. When he’d first joined the Rangers, he’d worked through the same feelings. Given the family history she’d had, which wasn’t far removed from his, she’d had no choice but to try to excel.

  Shannon had been forced to discover her own worth. Only she’d gotten double-whammied. Her family hadn’t cared that much about her, and she’d gotten kicked out of the Athena Academy.

  All things considered, it was a wonder Shannon had turned out to be any kind of person at all.

  Back aching, knee throbbing, Rafe tried to find a comfortable position and failed. He glanced at his watch. It was almost six in the morning.

  He couldn’t believe Allison was still at it.

  He wanted to know where Shannon was. He held out hope that she was all right. There was no reason for her not to have been one of the victims when the four men came to the hotel room.

  “There’s one thing we’re missing,” Rafe said.

  “What?”

  “Why Shannon’s informer wanted her pushed into a point of no return. It would have been easier to just kill her.”

  “Maybe Drago was supposed to.”

  Rafe shook his head. “You know better than that. You want someone dead, you hire someone unknown to them, have them walk up to them, shoot them and walk away. Easy as buying a paper.”

  Allison looked at him. “There’s only one sure bait this person could have used on Shannon.”

  “Yeah. A story. But it couldn’t be just any story.”

  “It has to be something about Athena Academy.”

  “Yeah. What secrets does that school have?”

  Allison hesitated just a fraction of a second too long. “There aren’t any.”

  Okay, Rafe thought, we’re not completely trusting yet.

  But that was okay. He hadn’t told Allison how he felt about Shannon, either. If he had, she would have already put him out of the op.

  A short time later, Allison leaned back. “I found out how Shannon left.”