She smiled bitterly. Steve McKenzie was the last person who should be allowed to even utter David’s name. He was the reason the man she loved was dead.
And then it struck her. There was still some revenge she could salvage from this mess. “I watched you two going at it like sex-starved rabbits. Figured you’d be busy on that kitchen table for long enough for me to murder your pesky ex. The cops were stupid enough to fall for it and the FBI obediently followed suit.”
Tess tried to struggle but Paula tightened her grip. The people around them didn’t seem to realize Tess had taken a bullet and was slowly bleeding out. “Stay still if you want your brother to live,” she hissed into Tess’s ear.
Paula looked at Cole, who was white-faced with shock. Poor kid. He’d never stood a chance being brought up in such a tainted environment.
“Carolyn?” Cole swallowed noisily. “What are you doing?”
She pursed her lips and shook her head. “Not Carolyn, lover. Paula. Carolyn was an undercover identity I used occasionally.” She watched his forehead crease in confusion. “I was doing what your daddy wanted me to, Cole. Didn’t mean I didn’t love you.”
Tess was leaning heavily against her now. Paula felt the hot, slick slide of blood seeping into her suit.
Mac edged closer. Paula knew he was capable with a pistol. She’d studied him avidly at the gun range. She intended to make him use the weapon to give her the spectacular ending she deserved. She just hoped to delay that inevitable long enough to take the woman he loved with her.
“You’re Henry Jessop’s daughter?” he asked.
A fresh wave of hatred rushed over her but the longer she stretched this out, the more chance she had of making Steve McKenzie weep.
She knew exactly how hard it was to lose the person you loved.
He cocked his head to the side. “I don’t remember seeing you at the compound.”
“David’s bitch of a wife suspected us so I never came over to the compound. We used to meet at the old cabin or in town.” Memories made Paula’s throat clog.
“You were friends with Brandy Jordan?” he asked.
Paula smirked. “Yeah, I heard you were looking for her. She wouldn’t have told you anything.” Finally, she was free of the lies and deception. She didn’t have to pretend to be some little, drone bitch. “Brandy dragged me to the bar one day to meet Eddie and his brother. David was there, too.” It had been fate—beautiful and capricious. Despite all the pain and misery that followed, she wouldn’t swap that one magical year for anything.
“You were young and impressionable. He used you for sex, but he would never have left Francis for you.” Mac’s eyes held pity and she wanted to pull the trigger and obliterate Tess Fallon’s skull just for that. To witness the destruction of all Mac’s hopes and dreams. But this was better. The classic negotiator’s tactic of slowing everything down and getting the hostage-taker to talk was gonna cost Tess her life. Paula was smarter than he was. She was smarter than them all.
“He was gonna leave her but then she got pregnant with Cole.” Her eyes lifted to the young man she’d seduced. “Your mother really was a bitch.”
Mac ignored her. “So you married some guy called Rice or is that another false identity?”
She shrugged and settled Tess’s heavy weight against her chest. Didn’t matter now. “He was one of Dad’s ranch hands. I paid him for the privilege of being my husband and then paid him off a few years later. He was harmless.” She hadn’t even slept with him. The only man she’d slept with since David was Cole. Their relationship hadn’t been about the sex. It had been about love.
“What happened to your son, Paula?”
Icy cold washed over her. How did he know she’d had a child? “Henry raised him, but he…” Her voice cracked. “He died in an accident on the farm when he was fifteen.”
Mac was moving to her right where she was more open. How long before he spotted the blood on Tess’s side? But he didn’t drop his gaze from her eyes.
“It’s over, Paula. Let Tess go and you can have your day in court. You can gloat about how easy it was to make us look like fools. You can brag about all you accomplished. How you infiltrated the FBI.”
“Nah.” Paula kept her shield in place. It was tempting, but prison wasn’t her idea of infamy. “You guys are going to be too busy fighting to prosecute anyone. The courts won’t even exist anymore.”
He laughed. “You think your fellow antigovernment nut jobs are gonna come out of the woodwork and rise up now? Because you parked a truck out front? Give me a break.”
“It’s already happening and you know it,” she hissed.
Tess went completely limp in her arms. Paula struggled to hold her upright but never took her finger off the trigger. Was the bitch dead yet? Or just passed out? Paula took a step along the wall. There was nowhere to go. “They’ll see the truck bomb on the news—”
“We already spun it as a training exercise,” Mac cut her off. Another man discounting her opinions, her value.
“The media knows better,” she ground out. “So do the others who think the same way I do.”
Mac laughed scornfully “They won’t do a damned thing and you know it. They’re chickenshit. You wasted your whole life on some fruitless exercise in revenge and when we round them up, they’ll squeal like babies and head straight to prison.”
“You’ll never find them all. They’re everywhere.” She smiled evilly. “In every facet of law enforcement, in every government department. Even elected officials. The revolution just began and you can’t stop it. Not anymore.”
Mac was shaking his head like he knew more than she did. God, she hated him. Hated his supercilious arrogance and smug over-confidence while his girl died in her arms.
“We have their names and IP addresses from the One-Drop-2-Many site.”
“Liar.” No way could they decrypt that information.
“High school grad hacked the site. Feds are knocking on doors as we speak.” Mac grinned and she swung the gun toward him, determined to wipe the smirk off his handsome face.
* * *
Mac lined up his sites between Paula Rice’s navy blue eyes and smoothly squeezed the trigger.
She crumpled to the floor, no more revolutionary bullshit oozing from her lips. Tess dropped like a deadweight on top of her. He hadn’t hit her—thank God. What was wrong? Had she passed out?
Other agents moved in, blocking his view, kicking Paula’s weapon away from her body. Someone lifted Tess and laid her on the floor. Three agents were attending to Walsh who was in bad shape. Mac pushed past Eban Winters who was checking Paula’s pulse.
“She’s dead,” he declared, catching Mac’s eye. “Nice shot.”
Nice shot, an inch to the left of Tess’s skull with a gun he’d never fired before. He’d put his trust in Alex Parker’s professionalism.
God. He felt sick. Why wasn’t Tess moving? What was wrong?
He knelt beside her on the floor. Moved the hair off her face. “Did she faint?” He felt for her pulse. Then he glanced lower and saw a pool of blood staining the top of her jeans. He ripped up her crimson sweater and saw a bullet hole just above her hip. “Get the medics over here!” he roared.
“Apply pressure to the wound,” Eban ordered, coming in beside him.
Sweat burst out of his pores as Mac ripped off his sweater and folded it several times, and pressed it over the wound. Eban checked her pulse again. Frazer was giving Walsh CPR. Fuck. How had Rice got this far?
“Is she breathing?” Mac asked Eban, holding back a scream of fear and frustration.
“Tess?” Cole’s anguished cry came from behind him. He didn’t want to imagine what the kid was going through. He’d been in love with a woman who didn’t exist, who’d used him and maybe gotten his sister killed.
“Don’t die on me, Tess. Don’t you dare die on me. I’ve got a lot of making up to do.”
“She’s not breathing. Pulse is thready.” Eban started blowing into
her lungs and Mac felt hope draining out of him with every drop of Tess’s blood that seeped into the carpet.
“Where are the fucking medics!” he yelled.
He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up with a glare. It was the director.
“Is there any evidence to suggest she’s involved in this plot?” the director asked.
“No, sir. We’ve checked all her banking activity, online communications, all her known associates. There is no proof she is involved.”
“Then take those handcuffs off.”
Eban obeyed. Mac wasn’t removing his hands from Tess’s injury for anything or anyone.
Finally, he heard running feet and medics burst into the room.
Cole dropped to his knees beside his sister. Tess’s face was blueish-white and last time Mac had seen someone that pale they’d been in the morgue.
The paramedics pushed him out of the way and started pulling Tess’s clothing aside. Cole swore when he saw the small bullet hole was still seeping blood.
Mac wanted to scream and rage but needed to focus.
“We’re going to find every last one of the people who thought they could attack us in the heart of the FBI.” The director was talking to him but Mac’s gaze was on Tess. “Frazer, I want you and ASAC McKenzie to nail down every piece of information we have on these people. Stamp out any signs of this so-called uprising.”
Mac nodded. Yes. Law enforcement needed to make sure they rounded up all the crazies involved in this mess before anyone else had any lightbulb moments. The paramedics eased Tess onto a stretcher and lifted it. Started running out the doors.
The director strode off to deal with the fallout.
Frazer squeezed his arm. “This is one of those moments that defines us for the rest of our lives.”
Mac snapped out of his fugue state. He started walking. Then he started running. No way was he letting Tess out of his sight. His job suddenly seemed irrelevant compared to the concept of losing her. The paramedics were about to close the door of the ambulance when he swung up beside them.
“You can’t come in here,” one guy said.
He sat down on the end of Tess’s stretcher and squeezed her foot. “Just try and stop me.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Mac wore a groove in the waiting room floor.
A young man paced in another room across the corridor. Tears streamed down his face. Mac wondered who he was here to see.
Agent Makimi had taken over the task force and confirmed that Paula Rice had been assigned to each of the field offices where similar hate crimes had been committed.
Agents had gone to her apartment with a bomb squad but there had been no explosives. Her workstation, home, vehicle were being examined in minute detail. Carter had left a message saying they’d found the original copy of David Hines’s manifesto in her desk drawer. Alex Parker had told him his people had identified the IP addresses of over a hundred users of the One-Drop-2-Many chat group. Law enforcement were checking every address and shaking down anyone they could get their hands on.
The news cycle kept repeating the footage of the truck being parked outside FBI HQ and showed him and Frazer pulling Cole out of the van and taking him down. Mac was pretty sure Cole was innocent, but they’d need to question him extensively and tear his place and computer apart to make sure they didn’t miss anything.
If Mac concentrated on the case he didn’t have to remember the sound of Tess flat-lining in the ambulance or the shouts of the doctors saying they were losing her again as they rushed her through those wide, double doors. He didn’t have to remember seeing one of his best friends lying pale and bleeding on the stretcher as he was wheeled into the adjacent OR.
Frazer entered the waiting room holding hands with a woman with strawberry blonde hair. Mac didn’t recognize her.
She nodded to him and then disengaged her hand and went to sit in an empty chair.
Tess had no one besides Cole to contact. He stared around the empty room and it hit him just how alone she was, how alone she had always been because of her damn family.
The lump in his throat grew when Frazer pulled him into a rough embrace. Frazer wasn’t the huggy, feeling type. Mac hadn’t realized he’d been crying.
“Did you see her go after an armed woman in a room full of trained federal agents? Wearing handcuffs?”
Frazer nodded.
“She’s never gonna forgive me.”
Frazer gave his arm a squeeze before letting go. “Do you love her?”
Mac closed his eyes. “Yeah. I do.”
“Then grovel and beg until she does. Hell, if she lives, tell her you’ll change and be a better man even though it isn’t true.”
Mac held tight to his ragged emotions. “You want to introduce me to your lady friend?”
“That’s Izzy. But let’s not do proper introductions,” said Frazer. “Not today. Not here.”
Mac nodded.
“Any news?” Frazer asked.
“Not yet.”
The doors opened and a man in green scrubs started looking around. He opened the door to the waiting room and as anxious as Mac was to hear how Tess was, another part of him wanted to run. If she was dead Mac knew he’d never recover.
Was this why his father had drunk himself to death? Grief? Mac had never appreciated it before, but maybe his father had died the same day his mother had, it had just taken longer. For the first time ever, Mac felt a sliver of sympathy for his old man.
“How are they doing, Doc?”
“I’m looking for Mr. Walsh’s family—”
“His parents are on their way. About two hours out. I’m his ASAC. Is he gonna make it?” Mac asked.
“The bullet nicked Mr. Walsh’s spleen and we had to remove it. There was a lot of bleeding but I think we got it under control. It was touch and go.”
Mac was aware of Izzy coming to stand beside him.
“And Tess?” Frazer asked because every time Mac tried to open his mouth his tongue refused to work.
The surgeon drew in a ragged breath and gave his head a little shake. Mac’s knees started to go and he felt an arm grip his waist. Frazer’s girlfriend seemed to be holding him up.
“She’s alive but…” The surgeon searched around as if expecting someone else. “Are you family?”
Mac stood straighter. “Yes. I’m her fiancé.”
It didn’t feel like a lie.
The surgeon nodded. “The bullet hit her pelvis and fragmented. The real damage was to her ovaries.” His lips turned down. “I’m afraid we had to perform an emergency unilateral salpingo-oophorectomy.”
“It’s where they remove a single ovary with its fallopian tube,” Izzy explained in English.
“You’re a doctor?” the surgeon asked her.
She nodded and they spoke gibberish for another minute.
Then she squeezed Mac’s arm again. “She’s been through a lot and will have a long recuperation. She can probably still have kids if she wants but her fertility may be affected.”
Mac kept swallowing and swallowing, but he’d lost the ability to speak.
“But she’s alive? Any other damage?” Frazer asked.
The surgeon nodded. “Her pelvis was broken and we had to put a plate and screws in to fix it. Both patients are very lucky to be alive. They’re in the ICU. I’ll send a nurse down as soon as you can see them.”
Mac drew in a deep breath as the surgeon left. The guy walked across the corridor and started talking to the young man there. The OR must be hellish busy on a Friday night.
“I have to get back to HQ,” Frazer told him. “The director gave me an order so I figure I better see it through even though it’s not my task force.” Frazer loved being involved, though. He was just like Mac in that regard. “We figured out Rice knew each of the victims through her work as an agent. She’d given testimony in Judge Thomas’s court, spoke to Sonja Shiraz and Rabbi Zingel on the phone when they made complaints. Not sure if she knew Trettorri
personally or just chose him because of his prominence. He’s upstairs in a private room, recovering. We’ll interview him when he’s feeling better.”
Mac nodded.
The director had given him an order, too. But if he had to choose between his job and Tess he was going to choose Tess. For once in her life she deserved to be someone’s priority and not an afterthought. What happened when she woke up was up for debate though. Earning forgiveness wasn’t going to be easy and she might never absolve him of his sins. But he’d rather risk everything trying to make her love him, than turn his back on her again.
* * *
Tess opened her eyelids a tiny slit and scanned the dim shadows. She knew she was in the hospital, but she couldn’t remember why.
Her lips were ragged and cracked, mouth dry, throat sore. Beeps sounded from nearby, dragging her further out of the darkness. Constant. Reassuringly steady. Her heartbeat.
She remembered feeling Mac’s pulse after they’d made love. The strong, steady rhythm. The heat of his flesh. The smell of his skin. Then she remembered everything that happened afterwards and the cadence stuttered.
She swallowed tightly. So that’s what a broken heart sounded like.
She tried to move and pain streaked through her body as more details rushed back. She’d been shot. What had happened to the rogue agent in the FBI building? Was Mac safe? Was Cole? Had the bad guys succeeded with their crazy plan?
A shadowy figure moved around the bed and she blinked, trying to clear her vision.
“Joseph? What are you doing here?” Her voice was gravelly.
He sat heavily on a chair beside her bed and took her hand in his. He’d been crying, she realized.
Her heart gave a little flutter. “Is it Cole?”
Was he okay? Was he alive?
Joseph squeezed her hand, but accidentally snagged the IV line and it hurt.
She sucked in a sharp breath. He looked up and something changed in his eyes. He deliberately moved the IV, the needle stabbing into her arm.
“Ouch! Joseph, what are you doing?”
He released her hand and dragged his fingers through his hair. “Sorry. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”
Cold Malice Page 35