by D. L. Wood
They’d wanted to put her up in a hotel, under a protection detail, but she’d insisted on going to the hospital, where she’d stayed at Jack’s bedside for nearly eight hours, waiting for him to wake up. Once he did, they had explained as much as they could about what had happened before he drifted off again.
That had been at ten o’clock last night. She’d stayed over, as had Riley, who slept in a chair in the corner of the little room. He’d refused to leave, insisting he watch over them both. She knew he felt guilty about losing her and how everything had gone south—he’d apologized over and over—but she assured him it wasn’t his fault. It was no one’s fault. Well, no one except Tate.
She sighed and wondered how long it would be before she could really, truly forgive him. Or if she ever would. She liked to think that maybe, someday . . .
Jack stirred. For a moment, she wasn’t sure it had been him. But then he shifted, groaning softly, and she bent over him, her ear close to his face.
“Jack?” she asked hopefully.
He rolled his head towards her and opened his eyes. “Hey you,” he croaked.
“Hey you,” she whispered back and dropped her forehead to his cheek.
“Miss me?” he said softly, still weak.
She lifted her head and smiled. “Just a little. It’s good to see you up again.”
“You okay?”
She nodded.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Just after noon.”
Jack’s eyes flicked to the corner where Riley sat. “I see he’s still here.”
Their voices had apparently roused Riley, because he twisted in the chair and stretched. “Hey brother,” he said. “How you feeling?”
“Like somebody tried to kill me.”
“Yeah, well,” Riley said, prodding Jack’s good leg, “Pretty sad, really. Seem to remember that I got shot in the leg a couple nights ago. As I recall I just got up and walked away.”
“Grazed,” Jack emphasized. “Grazed a couple nights ago.”
“To-may-to, to-mah-to,” Riley grinned. “Look, I’m going to get some coffee—give you guys a minute. I’ll be right outside if you need me, annoying that U.S. Marshall on your door.”
“Thanks, Riley,” Chloe offered.
“No problem. I’ll let ‘em know you’re up, too,” he said, nodding at Jack.
“He’s really worried about you, you know. Won’t leave,” Chloe said, as the door closed behind Riley.
“It’s not his fault.”
“It’s his fault you’re still alive. Slipping that belt around your leg? It kept you from bleeding out.”
“It also almost kept him from getting to you.”
Chloe shook her head, no. “I told you. I was only in that trunk about twenty minutes before your tracker led Riley to me.” She heaved a grateful sigh. “Thank God for Manny and his toys.”
“Thank God you finally took mine, like I told you to.”
Chloe rolled her eyes playfully. “Yeah, yeah. You were right. Again.”
Jack grinned. “So, have you heard anything new from the Feds?”
“No,” Chloe replied, dissatisfaction in her voice. “Still nothing since yesterday. They said they’d know more today. Someone is actually supposed to stop by sometime soon.” As she spoke, the lunch tray that food services had brought in earlier caught her eye. “You hungry?” Chloe asked, motioning to the food.
He said he was, so she set the tray out for him and helped him raise the bed to sit up. They talked while he ate, and by the time he was done, they had just about covered everything that had happened at the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
“But you gave them proof—you actually had something,” Jack said, just before taking the last bite of his dessert brownie.
“Sort of.”
“That account number, even if the account was empty, is still something. Maybe they can trace the cash.”
“Good thing they found your phone on you. Without those photos—”
A knock on the door silenced her.
“Mr. Bartholomew? Ms. McConnaughey?” a tentative female voice asked as the door opened a crack. “It’s Assistant U.S. Attorney Christa Langley. You met me yesterday.”
Chloe nodded at Jack, who called, “Come in.”
The woman, in her early forties, was sharply dressed in a charcoal-on-black pinstriped pants suit. She extended a hand to Chloe.
“Nice to see you again.”
“You too,” Chloe replied, glad it was someone she recognized. They had promised not to send anyone Chloe hadn’t personally met at their offices the day before.
Langley eyed Jack. “And you’re up. That’s good.”
Jack nodded. “I’ll be fine.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“So what’s happening?” Jack asked.
“Sorry about that,” she said, setting down her shoulder carryall and crossing her arms. “We’ve been busy the last twenty-four hours. You gave us a lot to wade through.”
“And?” Chloe asked, her eyebrows raised.
“We looked into the St. Gideon murder investigation. There’s been no extradition request, and we don’t think there will be.” She eyed them, gauging their reaction. “Pete Sampson is missing. They haven’t seen him since shortly after you left the island. After he disappeared, his office started raising questions about the Kreinberg murder investigation—seems he’d made some pretty odd decisions about how to run it.”
“Like what?” Jack asked.
“For one, he kept the entire department out of the details. Second, he explicitly ordered what passes for a Crime Scene Unit there to conduct no DNA testing on evidence found on the corpse or in her house, no fingerprint matching—other than the murder weapon, which was apparently a knife from your house. And he told his people not to contact the States to alert us to Kreinberg’s murder, or to your suspected involvement, which is usually done as a matter of courtesy when Americans are murdered on foreign soil. Then there’s the cash—when Sampson went AWOL, his department tried to find him, and took a look at his finances. He’d received more than $50,000 over the last few months from untraceable sources.”
“DiMeico,” Chloe muttered.
“That’s what we’re thinking,” agreed Langley.
“So then maybe they’ll find Sampson washed up on shore next,” Chloe proposed.
Langley shook her head, the tight, brunette bun at the base of her neck not budging. “Doubt it. If it was DiMeico, and he wanted Sampson gone, that body’ll stay gone.”
“But they found Ruby,” Chloe said.
“Ruby they wanted found,” Jack countered, receiving a nod of agreement from Langley. “To frame us.”
“It definitely looks that way. From what we can tell, the only concrete thing linking you to Ruby’s murder is that knife from Chloe’s house. But when you consider the whole story, the whole conspiracy, it’s easy to explain how that could happen—why they’d use your knife and how they’d get it. And then there’s the matter of the missing motive. You just don’t have one. And none of the stolen items are traceable to you. The jewelry never turned up and as for the money, there was a deposit of around $1,000 made into one of Sampson’s accounts the day after Ruby was found—”
“The cash stolen from her house?”
“Maybe. And then there’s Sampson’s suspicious activity, which even his own department admits is against standard procedure. We’re communicating with their police about the whole conspiracy angle. I don’t think it’ll be long before you’re dismissed from the investigation. You might have to have a phone conversation with their police, but that should be it. And you can do that from our offices. Their governor is mortified. This whole thing is terrible for their U.S. tourist business. I think it’ll go away fairly quickly.”
“What about the account? Tate’s account?”
Langley nodded and ran a hand over her still perfectly pinned hair. “The money’s gone. Bounced to another account we could trace, and the
n on to ones we couldn’t. The first account was linked to the name ‘Korrigan.’”
“The man Vargas was concerned about,” Chloe offered.
“Exactly.”
“So where is Korrigan?” Jack asked.
“There’s been a development on that front, too. This morning DiMeico and Korrigan were found dead, apparently shot by each other, in DiMeico’s private office. His secretary found him. Looks like somebody else was injured, too, but there’s no sign of him. There’s all kinds of evidence there proving Korrigan was trying to make off with money from the account, including a laptop that apparently belonged to Korrigan containing some pretty incriminating emails. Looks like he’d been planning this for a while. Maybe even with Tate. It’s consistent with everything you told us about Vargas’s phone call to Korrigan while he had you in the trunk. It appears Vargas just got in Korrigan’s way.
“We also checked out Korrigan’s apartment. There’s enough blood—seems Korrigan tried to clean it up quickly, but not well enough to hide it from our lights—to suggest someone was killed there very recently. We’re testing it against Vargas’s DNA now. And, thanks to that double homicide, now we’ve got access to the records at Inverse. We’re mining their computer files now, but they’re encrypted—”
“I’ll bet they are,” Chloe said regretfully. “Probably Tate’s doing.”
“Could be,” Langley offered with a sympathetic smile. “But we’ll get there. Even the unencrypted stuff will be enough to do what we’ve been trying to do for years. Not just with Inverse, but maybe with some of its nastier clients, too. This could potentially put a lot of bad people out of business, or at least make it harder for them for a while. The good news for you is that with DiMeico and Korrigan dead, and Inverse telling on itself—”
“You’re safe,” Jack declared, and Chloe looked down to see his eyes fixed on hers. “There’s no one left to come after you, and no reason for them to try.”
“He’s right,” Langley confirmed. “Anything you might know will be superseded by the records there. We even found a copy of Tate’s video in DiMeico’s desk. And you don’t have any information on the clients of Inverse, so you can’t help us there. They won’t consider you a threat if we don’t need you two to testify.”
“But the clients don’t know that. What if they think we could hurt them—or that we have their money?”
“We’re planning on giving a press conference this morning highlighting just enough to get you in the clear, but not enough to compromise the investigation. They’ll know you don’t have any damaging information on Inverse’s business to share, that you don’t have the cash, and that you won’t be on any witness list if and when we make a case.”
“Do you have to give our names?”
“We don’t have to, but, unfortunately, we can’t guarantee that your names won’t eventually be leaked. And, if we don’t say something now, it looks like we’re keeping you secret because we still need you. DiMeico’s death forced the investigation into the open much earlier than we would have liked. You should know that apparently someone leaked Tate’s name to the press. About half an hour ago CNN covered the story—what they know of it anyway—and released his name. You weren’t mentioned, of course, but still . . . Given the way this is coming out, a finely tuned statement from our office is the best way to take care of you both.”
“So that’s it?” Chloe asked, disbelief edging her voice.
Langley smiled. “A few more days and you’ll be free to head back to your life. We’ll keep in touch, despite what we’ve said publicly, just to make sure you’re okay. But you’re done running. Nobody is targeting you anymore.”
For the first time in a long time, Chloe’s entire body relaxed. It was over. Jack laced his fingers through hers and squeezed.
“I’m headed back to the office,” Langley said, bending down for her bag before stepping to the door. “We’ll leave the marshal outside for as long as you’re here, Jack, and probably assign one to you, too, Chloe, until we tie everything up on our end. I’ll be in touch,” she promised and slipped through the door, closing it behind her.
“So,” Jack said. “Now what?”
“I don’t know. I guess, well, first thing I need to do is call Izzie as soon as we leave here. And Jonah—oh, that poor dog. I need to get him . . .” She drifted off, then said thoughtfully, “Do you really think it’s over?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Did you notice she didn’t say anything about how we got you out of DiMeico’s? I thought for sure we’d have trouble over that.”
Chloe looked guilty. “I, um, didn’t really tell them everything about how I got away. I just said I was able to run off when they got distracted. I didn’t mention what was distracting them.”
“Seriously?”
“Well, yeah, I mean, what difference does it make? Anyway, apparently no one’s complaining. What are they going to do? Say that after they kidnapped me you didn’t play fair?”
He snorted in amusement, nodding his agreement. “True. And they’ve got bigger concerns now. At least I’m hoping.” They sat quietly for a minute or two against the sound of cool air blowing in from the air conditioning vents.
“So you’re, uh, headed home, then?” he asked, breaking the silence.
She shook her head. “Not till we get you better. Then . . . yeah, I think it’s time for home. What about you, Jack?” Her nerves tightened as she put the question out there, but this time not out of fear, but rather, out of hope. “You’ve got a life back in New York.”
“Mmm,” he mumbled thoughtfully. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’m done running yet. But maybe somewhere a little less exotic this time. Maybe somewhere like . . . Atlanta—”
And with a rush of relief, she bent over him, hugging him awkwardly around the shoulders, kissing him as she squeezed him more tightly.
“Um, ow,” he mumbled.
“Oh! Sorry!” she said sheepishly, pulling back.
“Not complaining,” he said, that grin riveting her, “just, well . . . ow.”
That same rush of possibility she’d felt that night with Jack on the deck at Mendoza’s engulfed her, and for the first time, maybe ever in her life, she didn’t try to squelch it.
Then the door opened again and Langley’s voice called out, “Um, excuse me, again?”
“Sure,” Jack said, his own questioning glance matched by Chloe’s. Langley’s head peeked inside the door. It was obvious from her expression that something was off.
“What . . . what is it?” Chloe asked worriedly.
Chloe’s concern must’ve been evident to Langley, because she quickly clarified, “No, no, everything’s fine. You’re fine. It’s just . . . I’ve had a call come through from the office. Someone who says they saw the CNN piece and called us.” She paused and held out her cell to Chloe.
“He says he’s your father.”
EPILOGUE
The barren cotton fields of Arkansas rolled by the windows of the rented SUV, one boring mile after another. Boring, but safe. Much safer than flying out of any airport in the U.S. Every mile was another little victory, another assurance that, not only would they never find him, they would never even suspect he was still alive.
It had all happened so fast, almost too fast, once he’d put Tate’s video clues together. But because he and Tate had been planning something like this for so long before Tate turned on him, he’d been able to make a go of it at the last minute. And the pieces just all fell into place. Almost like providence.
Stupid kid, Vargas thought. It had been such a good plan. Tate had the access to the money; Vargas had the access to Korrigan. It was perfect: siphon off the money little by little, pin it on Korrigan, then disappear. Pinning it on Korrigan was an element Vargas found particularly appealing since he hated the self-important, egotistical little—
Vargas took a breath, calming himself. Stop. He doesn’t matter anymore. He’s just a corpse on a slab somewhere now. He got what was co
ming to him, pushing me around for years like some idiot lackey without a brain.
It really couldn’t have gone any better. Vargas had known that all the evidence he’d planted would eventually make it into DiMeico’s hands, and that, eventually, he’d take Korrigan out. He just didn’t expect it to happen the same day he’d sent the email. And then, DiMeico dead too? It was almost too good to be true. Somebody up there must really like him.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s press release he’d heard on the satellite news channel, they were all over Inverse now. So that meant they likely had his email to DiMeico. And once they found that blood, or what was left of it after he’d made it look like Korrigan tried to clean it up, they’d believe him to be dead. He’d drawn more than enough from his own veins over the last months to make it look like he’d bled out too much to survive. Cleaning it up had been risky, and had taken more time than he’d planned, but it was necessary to paint the right picture. Fortunately, Korrigan had bought into the story about Port St. Lucie. The drive had kept him away more than long enough for Vargas to do what he needed to do, including planting that laptop.
With all that, there was a strong likelihood that nobody—not the U.S. Attorney, Inverse, or any of its clients—would suspect him as anything more than another casualty of Korrigan’s plan.
And Chloe McConnaughey had done her part. He hadn’t expected her to be found so quickly. He’d actually considered that he might have to place an anonymous call to make that happen. She must’ve had an extra cell on her, he thought.
Still, it had played out all right. From the sound of it she’d gone straight to the Feds and spilled everything. If she’d bought the fake call he’d pretended to make to Korrigan in front of her, which she seemed to, they’d probably heard all about his “suspicions” of Korrigan from her by now.