Collateral Damage

by Fern Michaels

  “I went to Russell and asked him to help. He was getting nowhere, all his donors were stepping back and taking a second look at the administration. The funds were drying up fast. We came up with the idea of the stolen donor lists together, but I was really the one who thought it up. Can I go now? I’m freezing.”

  “What about Martine Connor and Pam Lock?”

  “Connor is as pure as the driven snow. Aside from sleeping around, Pam Lock has a good political reputation and is a great fund-raiser. She hit the roof when she was told the lists were stolen. She blamed Russell right off the bat. She didn’t want to hide it. She wanted to go to the press right away. We had a clandestine meeting, and I convinced her—in the interests of national security—to keep quiet. She gave me a time limit. She actually had the gall to give me a time limit. I’ve told you all I know. Ask Russell if you don’t believe me.”

  “Oh, I believe you, Mr. Winters. That’s not my problem right now. My problem is that you blackmailed Elias Cummings. You threatened Pam Lock, and by threatening her, you were threatening Martine Connor. You were going to destroy a very fine federal agent with your lies, and you were going to try, I stress the word, try, to send us all to a federal prison. Well, look where you are, and look at who put you there!”

  “Kathryn, you can stop taping now. Jack, stuff that gag back in his mouth,” Nikki ordered.

  Nikki waved her arms, and Daniel Winters sailed through the air once again. Jack let him dangle over the quicksand pond for a good three minutes before he loosened the cable and let the man slide down, down, down. The quicksand made sucking, gurgling sounds as it swallowed his body. When Winters was up to his nose, Jack hauled him out, then Bert lowered Russell and did the same thing. They did it to each of the men six times and had to stop when the pain in their arms got unbearable.

  The wind kicked up as it whistled through the trees. The snow had a bite to it by the time Jack and Bert pulled up, then lowered the two men like yo-yos one last time. When a second gust of wind roared across the clearing, the group could hear voices.

  The women froze. Bert looked at Jack, who looked at Harry. “Shit!” Bert said succinctly. “Somebody better think of something really quick. It might be some kind of night maneuvers.”

  Kathryn stepped forward. “Yank them all the way to the top and let them dangle among the tree limbs. Everyone, take off your goggles. Get down, and don’t even breathe.”

  No one had to be told twice. They all skittered toward the underbrush, where they burrowed in as deep as they could. Without the eerie green glow of the night vision goggles, the night was totally black. Unless the new arrivals were wearing the same kind of gear, the vigilantes would be invisible.

  Jack, Bert, and Harry hunkered close to the base of the old oak as they waited, hardly daring to breathe.

  The minutes ticked by as the wind picked up yet again. The voices sounded closer, or was it a trick of the wind? They continued to wait until suddenly they saw two sets of green eyes. The men were tall, extremely muscular, and dressed for the weather.

  “Do you see this? Do you? Son of a bitch!” one of the men said. “We’ll be out here all night trying to put that damn fence back up. Goddamn kids. They keep coming around here doing whatever the hell they don’t want their parents to know about, and we have to clean up after them. Jesus, for all we know they might have…Now we’re going to have to get the equipment out here and plumb the quicksand. Okay, here’s the drill. Dzbinsky, go back to headquarters and bring a team along with the equipment. Don’t drag your ass, either, it’s cold out here.”

  The Sisters waited ten full minutes before they crawled forward until they were surrounding the man who had been giving the orders to his partner. As one they clamped on their night vision goggles and stood up.

  “Hey, good-lookin’, you looking for us?” Alexis asked as she sashayed front and center.

  “What the hell!”

  “Shhh. Voices carry in the wind,” Alexis said, wagging her finger under the man’s nose while Kathryn pulled the gun from his holster.

  Nikki made a motion with her hand for Jack, Harry, and Bert to stay out of sight. The three men stepped back into the darkness behind the tree.

  “Allow me to introduce ourselves. However, you go first since we’re trespassing.”

  “I think I know who you are. Chuck Dalton.”

  “And what do you do, Chuck Dalton?” Isabelle asked. “Besides repair fences.”

  “A little of this and a little of that. What I’m told, mostly.”

  “CIA speak,” Annie said. “We need to make some decisions here and we need to make them quickly. For starters, Alexis, take his goggles.”

  Alexis reached up and removed the man’s goggles. She swallowed hard when she looked into his eyes. Nice eyes. Kind eyes. Warm eyes. She licked at her lips. “I’m…I’m sorry, Chuck,” she whispered.

  “I know.”

  Alexis blinked.

  “You women are all my mother talks about. Her sisters, too. And all their friends. What’s the game plan here? You’re beautiful.”

  Kathryn was on him like white on rice as she yanked at his arms and twisted them behind his back. Annie, right behind her, kicked out, and he went to his knees. “Hey, Alexis, look alive here. One more second, and he would have had you in a neck lock.”

  Still, Alexis didn’t move. She looked down at the man on the ground. “Is that true?”

  “Yes. But everything else I said was also true.”

  Alexis didn’t know what she was going to do next but she moved—just in time to dodge Yoko, who appeared out of nowhere, arms and legs flying. Then suddenly Chuck Dalton was unconscious.

  “Now what?” Annie asked. “How long will he be out?”

  “How long do you want him out?” Yoko asked.

  “At least thirty minutes.”

  Yoko bent over and pressed a spot on Dalton’s neck. “You have your thirty minutes.”

  “Let’s huddle, girls,” Nikki said. “We need to make some fast decisions. Either we take Russell and Winters with us and follow through on Charles’s plan, or we leave them for the CIA. C’mon, girls, think fast. Our clock is ticking. I think we should leave them for Mr. Dalton to deal with. And, do we care if they mention our names? Absolutely not. Jack, Harry, and Bert will be given airtight alibis for this evening.”

  “I’ll call Charles to arrange it as soon as we get back to our vehicles,” Myra said. “But now, Nikki, why don’t you give Winters and Russell the word on their future lives.”

  Nikki walked to the edge of the quicksand pool and addressed the two men still dangling high above the swamp. “Listen up, gentlemen. Here’s the way it’s gonna be. When we leave here, the CIA will be showing up to clean up after us, and that’s when they’ll find you. You’re free to say whatever you want about the lovely women you spent your evening with, but say a word about the men, and we will be back. And, know this, by the time you are rescued and out of here, the men will have ironclad alibis for today and tonight, so saying anything will get you nowhere except back in our clutches.

  “When the CIA finally believes you and lets you go, you will not return to Washington. You will go wherever you intend to spend the rest of your lives and submit your resignations immediately. You will drop out of political activity altogether and lead quiet lives from now on. And the reason you will do this? Because if you do not, the tape we made of your confession, Mr. Winters, which implicates you as a coconspirator, Mr. Russell, will be released on every cable channel and show up on the Post’s Web site. After that, I doubt that either of you could get a job mucking out stables for GOP bigwigs, much less working in the political arena.

  “Are we clear, gentlemen? Nod if you understand.”

  After the two men indicated that they understood, the women all agreed that it was time to go.

  “Okay, we’re outta here,” Annie said.

  Bert walked out to the clearing. “Since we’re leaving them, do you want to make this easy for
the spooks? Or do you want to make it hard?”

  The women laughed. “Hard.”

  “You got it!”

  Bert ran back to the tree, lowered the two men so that they could be seen, and cut the cable wire with his bolt cutters. Only twelve inches of slack remained, which meant Dalton’s crew would have to find a way to rescue the two men dangling from the tree.

  Then they were gone, and the night turned even darker as the snow thickened and fell, coating the quicksand pond with a fine layer of glistening white flakes. Suspended above the pond, the two men twirled around and around every time the wind blew in their direction, quite literally twisting in the wind.

  Chuck Dalton slept peacefully, the snow covering him like a fine cashmere blanket.

  Six hours later, sirens and strobes flashing all the way, the two Hummers and the armored-plated SUV roared onto the tarmac at Dulles Airport. On orders from Charles, they ran toward Annie’s sixty-million-dollar Gulfstream 5, which now belonged to the Post, and climbed on board.

  Myra, first aboard, yelped her pleasure when she saw Charles opening a bottle of champagne.

  “Where are we going, Charles?”

  “To an island no one ever heard of, where the people who live there will give Bert, Jack, and Harry the alibi they need. Buckle up now, and as soon as we’re airborne, I will dispense this fine bubbly. Think in terms of three weeks. We’ll be back on the mountain well before Christmas. Not to worry, Bert and Jack are covered. You’re all safe. By the way, Harry, I closed your dojo and had a sign put on the door that said you went fishing.”

  Harry, who was snuggling with Yoko at the back of the plane, ignored him.

  The women looked at one another. They were grinning from ear to ear as the Gulfstream lifted off the runway and headed to the island no one had ever heard of.

  Epilogue

  It was the third snowfall since the Sisters’ return to Big Pine Mountain.

  “It’s so beautiful,” Annie said wistfully. “And peaceful. It makes me feel…I don’t know, kind of ethereal. And sad.”

  Myra draped her arm around her friend’s shoulder. “I think a lot of it has to do with Christmas being right around the corner. We, you and I, tend to get a little maudlin at this time of year. We had a very good year, Annie. And the best thing of all is you got to speak to Elena.”

  “I know, I know. I think I’m going to get dressed and go for a walk in the snow. Do you want to come along, Myra? We could take the dogs out.”

  “Of course. I thought you’d never ask.” She leaned over and whispered in Annie’s ear.

  “What a wonderful idea.”

  Five minutes later, the front door of the Big House opened, then closed. The Sisters, and Charles, too, ran to the window and watched the two women walk out to the center of the compound and drop to the ground. A moment later they were both moving their arms and legs. Two glorious snow angels appeared in the deep snow as Myra pulled Annie to her feet.

  “What are they doing?” Alexis whispered.

  “I don’t know,” Nikki whispered in return.

  “Look!” Charles said.

  Was it a trick of the light? Was it the swirling snow? Or was there someone else out there with Myra and Annie?

  “There are four snow angels out there,” Yoko said, her nose pressed to the window. “Who made the other two?”

  Charles smiled as Nikki sent off a little salute. The others, their eyes moist, moved away from the window.

  Charles dabbed at his eyes as he poked at the fire. The Sisters sat down, Indian style, and stared into the dancing fire.

  They were waiting for “the boys,” as Charles put it, and their other guests.

  “They’re an hour late,” Kathryn fretted. “Do you think it’s the snow?”

  Charles’s voice was soothing when he said, “They’ll be here, dear, just be patient. Jack said he had to make a stop before he picked up the others. He didn’t say what it was about, though.”

  Earlier, seven hundred miles away, Jack Emery had trudged through the snow to the gates of the Angel of Peace Cemetery. It was dark, but he knew exactly where he was going. He’d done a test run a few days earlier.

  He saw her, snow covering her silvery hair. She was bundled up in a fur coat with a bunch of flowers that were frozen in her hands. If she knew he was there, she gave no sign. She didn’t protest when he reached down and picked her up under her arms. “It’s time to say good-bye, Lizzie.” He took the flowers from her hands and laid them down on top of the stone.

  “Not yet, Jack.”

  Jack scooped her up in his arms and carried her back to the Hummer. She sobbed against his chest. He stroked her snow-filled hair and kissed her cheek. “C’mon, it’s going to be Christmas in a little while. I’m taking you home to our family. They’re all waiting. This is a new beginning for you, Lizzie. Don’t blow it, okay?”

  “Did…did you tell anyone?”

  “No, Lizzie, I didn’t. No one is going to ask you any questions. You okay?”

  “No, Jack, I’m not okay.”

  “That was the right answer, but guess what, you will be. Will you trust me?”

  “Yeah, Jack, you earned my trust. How long is the trip?”

  “With this weather, we should get there around ten o’clock.”

  “I don’t have any clothes or presents.”

  “Nellie took care of that. She did a little breaking and entering when you left to come out here. She said you had presents under your tree, and she packed some things for you. Hey, we had it going on. In case you don’t know it, Lizzie, you got the best damn family in the world looking out for you. Merry Christmas, Counselor.”

  “Merry Christmas, Jack. And thanks. Is everyone really going to be there?”

  “Yep. It’s Christmas, and all is right with our world.”

  “The eternal optimist,” Lizzie said.

  “Thanks for everything, Lizzie.”

  “Cut it out, Jack, or you’ll make me blush. Let’s just go join that family of ours, okay?”

  “You got it, Lizzie.”

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

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  Copyright © 2008 by Fern Michaels

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

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  Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2007933519

  ISBN: 1-4201-0720-8