by J. L. Saint
“I’ll beg for forgiveness later. That’s a promise. Meanwhile, interested in a shower?”
“You’re incorrigible.”
“Yes, I am. Bring a condom with you.” She did and he upheld Superman’s reputation just fine.
The bitch! She’d shot him. Conrad couldn’t believe it. She’d shot him in cold blood. Sent a bullet plowing through his shoulder and left him bleeding in his driveway. He’d stuffed paper towels in the wound, applied pressure, and had done everything he could think of to stop the bleeding, but it kept bleeding like a stuck pig. The bullet had gone straight through the fleshy part of his shoulder but it still hurt like a son of a bitch. He walked through the woods, groaning with pain at every jarring step. He’d parked his car down the road, rightly thinking that Lauren’s muscle would be less vigilant if it appeared no one was home.
He still couldn’t believe she’d escaped him. It was a good thing he knew exactly where her conscience would lead her next. To Ray in Savannah, which was a little over a four hour drive from Fair Play. He hoped her muscle man was either dead or a vegetable. By the time she dealt with that, Conrad would be ready for her at Ray’s house on the river. And if by chance she didn’t show, he’d have Bill’s letter and would get Lauren’s sweet ass afterwards. She’d pay long and hard for his pain and trouble.
Dios. The tentative knock on the door to the Magic Carpet Room had Andreas gritting his teeth. Fidel’s assistant was the new Fidel and already had Andreas wishing he’d made George wait until they’d landed before eliminating the old Fidel. George didn’t even arouse from his sleepy-eyed position on the couch. Andreas hoped his son was just enjoying himself too much to bother with intimidating the new servant and not depressed or feeling guilty over Fidel’s death.
“¡Adelante!” he ordered. The new Fidel opened the door and reeled on the threshold. The idiot was afraid of heights, which may be why Andreas chose to set up office in the Magic Carpet Room. The floor and walls surrounding him provided a panoramic view of the world they were flying over. Cameras positioned at strategic angles sent live feed, giving him a true magic carpet ride through the clouds.
George loved it, found the sensation of floating through the air calming. It was amazing the things he had in common with his son.
“¿Ahora que?”
“Good news and bad news. Three of Bill Collins’s colleagues that he sent letters to are dead and no letters were found with them. I am still waiting to hear from the operatives sent out to eliminate the other two. The good news is the operative sent after Conrad Gardner has located Bill Collins’s wife and the military guy helping her. He followed them as they left Gardner’s residence. They’re in a populated motel in Lavonia, Georgia. He’s going to wait until later tonight before taking them. Also, Collins sent a number of erotic emails to a woman in Brazil. I took the liberty of having her escorted to El Santuario for you to question. You may even find her very appealing.”
“Excellente.” Andreas stood and paced over the clouds swirling on the screen at his feet. “Collins’s children?”
“Are not with their mother.”
“Bien. Keep monitoring all communications. Tell the operative to act quickly. The woman has already escaped him once, twice would prove to be adverse to his health and mine, something I guarantee he doesn’t want to have happen. Let me know the minute Collins’s wife is captured and alert the pilot that we will be diverting to the closest airport to her so she may accompany us for the rest of the flight to Peru.”
Fidel left and Andreas joined his son to watch the clouds.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Lavonia, Georgia
2030 hours
The pizza was cold but tasted great. Jack chowed down on a slice as he surfed the net, searching for any thread of information that would connect Collins’s friends to a terrorist group, or any other common element that could give him a handle on what was going on. Thomas fell to his death from his deck. Edward was clubbed to death in a supposed robbery. Gardner was supposedly blown up on his boat. All dead ends, literally. And Jack had almost joined the club.
Who had been at Gardner’s?
Now, according to the phone calls he’d made to Brazil, Collins’s girlfriend was missing. The events chilled Jack to the bone. What had Collins done? Who was behind it all?
And what was up with his body? It disappeared from Lebanon to show up two weeks later in Brazil and now had disappeared again?
He glanced over at Lauren, his heart and gut twisting with guilt, worry and something more, none of which he wanted to face at the moment.
The local evening news blasted from the TV and Lauren had her gaze glued to the tube, hoping to catch a report about Gardner at Lake Hartwell. She was hurting to be with her sons. The call they’d made to Rico a short time ago found the crew already on the way to Disney World. Her goodnight routine with Matt and Mitch reminded him of when Livy was little and unsettled him, disrupting the status quo of his personal life even more.
The deaths of Bill’s friends had her upset as well. She kept saying she should have done more.
Jack wasn’t so sure. After finding out Bill’s girlfriend was missing, he and Lauren had called the local police in Tampa and Savannah where Bob Cantrell and Ray Branson lived. All the police could do was check the residences for signs of trouble, then wait until there was evidence of a crime before they could act. The world was a society of addressing disasters and problems after the fact rather than preventing them from happening in the first place.
Jack wished he could do more to distract Lauren. A humorless grunt escaped him. More?
Any more and he would likely have to go to the hospital after all. He’d carried through with his promise to back her to a wall and make her forget anything to do with Collins. It’d been the shower wall. She’d been gloriously wet inside and out and he’d nearly passed out by the time he’d thrust them both to heaven. Yet, looking at her now, wearing one of his T-shirts, knowing she was naked under it… Damn, but he could already feel another hard-on coming. And the nap they’d taken had restored his—
“Jack!” Lauren leapt from the bed, rushing toward the other side of the room, where the windows were covered with thick curtains. He had his feet propped up on the dinette table and the chair angled back on two legs with his computer across his lab. Driven by the alarm in her voice, he slammed upright and had to catch the computer in midair as he reached for his P226.
“What?” He sucked in air, searching for a threat and found nothing.
“The letter,” she said. “Bill’s letter.” She reached into his backpack and pulled it out of the compartment they’d placed it in this morning.”
Setting aside his pistol and the computer, he joined her. “You scared the crap out of me. Have you remembered something?”
“No. But I just saw a commercial for Coliseum National Bank and Trust based in Rome, Georgia. The letter said NB&T, right?” She opened the letter.
He looked over her shoulder, a tinge of excitement kicking his pulse up a notch.
…our visit to the Coliseum in Rome and the kiss we shared despite our “suspicious minds” this “July”. NBT if you can believe it. The trip was just like our love me tender honeymoon in “blue Hawaii”.
“I think you’re on to something.”
“We can go there first thing in the morning and see if Bill had an account or even a safety deposit box there.”
“Why wait? He’s given you clues. Why not log onto the bank’s website and see what we can do.” He grabbed a pen and paper and she carried the letter over to the computer.
“Now that I’m looking at this as a bank, there aren’t any numbers in the sentence to indicate an account.” She frowned with doubt.
Jack groaned. “I can’t believe he’d make it this easy, but there are quotation marks around three sections of the sentences.”
“Easy? If I hadn’t seen the commercial, I wouldn’t have put it together. You didn’t at first pass either. I don’t
know how he expected I would have figured it out.”
“Maybe he left clues in other places that you haven’t found yet. Let’s log in and see. Passwords usually require you add a number into them. So use suspiciousminds7 for that. Blue Hawaii for the sign in.”
Lauren entered the information and amazingly moved to the next step where it asked her to answer several security questions. Bill’s mother’s maiden name. City where he was born. And the make of his first car. Lauren knew the answers, was likely one of only a handful of people who did, if not the only person. She logged in and nearly fainted from shock. It was a joint account in both her name and Bill’s name. Two million dollars was in it.
“Dear God.”
Jack whistled. “Nice share.”
“What was he into?”
“First, change the email address attached to the account to yours. Second, change the password to something only you would know and I mean only you and don’t tell a soul. Not even me. Then we’ll search through the account’s activity and see if we can find where the money came from.”
“Okay, but the last activity on the account was two weeks ago.”
Jack set his hands on either side of her face and made her look directly into his eyes. “Somebody is killing people. That money could be the reason. I’ll be damned if you’re going to be next. But we also need to do everything we can to stop whoever it is from getting what they want. Bill sent you clues in a letter. He might have sent them to the others too. Damn! If this money is what the whole thing is about and three of Bill’s five friends are dead, that means either Bob or Ray or both of them together could be behind the murders.”
“That would explain a lot and why they’re a step ahead of us.”
He turned away, his gut churning. Bob or Ray might explain what was happening among Bill’s friends, and they might have enough contacts to pull off a kidnapping in Brazil, but it didn’t explain the international aspects to the case. The collateral damage Collins left behind kept escalating without a clue as to why he’d been in Lebanon. More importantly, how was Jack going to protect Lauren and get to the bottom of the cesspool at the same time?
Within in a few minutes Lauren finished changing the password on the account and Jack pulled up the current activity. “There are regular deposits from BioLogics, which we know about, and Novordem. Ever heard of them?”
“No.”
Jack clicked to view the details for one of the Novordem transactions. “They are located in Sao Paulo, Brazil.” Skimming through statements from previous months Jack found that Bill had also made payments from the account over the past year. Over twenty million worth. He jotted down the companies paid, asking Lauren if she was familiar with any of them as he did. “BlueTech, Green Consolidated Industries, IASC, Emir Development, and MCarridas Incorporated. His girlfriend?”
“Sounds like.” Lauren shook her head, her disgust evident. “How much was he paying for it?”
“Ten thousand a month.”
“He got a bargain deal. The million dollar neighborhood near us had two women living in a mansion who were busted for prostitution. Their price was ten thousand a night. Is that insane or what?”
“Were I a rich man you’d be—”
“Don’t even go there.”
“Priceless.”
She rolled her eyes then went to work on reviewing Bill’s letter and he went to work on the computer. The wrenching frustration of the past twenty-four hours channeled itself into excitement the more he investigated. BlueTech was an International Tactical Supply Company. Anything to do with combat gear or accessories excluding the weapons themselves could be bought. IASC turned out to be International Arab Shipping Company, based out of India and just might be Collins’s Middle Eastern connection. Green Consolidated Industries was a black hole. Great website, great spiel on environmental issues. Zero information on who was behind it or what the company did exactly. Novordem purported itself as a humanitarian organization dedicated to the liberation of those dominated by tyranny and very anti-America, his best lead yet because a reporter from Brazil who’d written an article supposedly tying Novordem to drug cartel money and a faction of Hezbollah in South America had been executed last month. He needed access to more information than what he could get on his own. He called Weston.
Fort Bragg, North Carolina
Roger’s cell phone vibrated and he jerked awake. His initial heart-hammering burst of alarm eased the moment he realized Mari was safe on the couch, asleep with her bandaged hand in his as he sat on the floor next to her. He must have drifted off after she had because he’d just been dreaming that the sniper bullet had ripped through her stomach and she was dying in his arms. That he couldn’t stop the blood. That he couldn’t save her or her baby.
He drew a deep breath and tried to let go of his choking fear as he answered the phone. Keeping his voice low, he stood and moved to another room in the Fort Bragg apartment he’d borrowed from an out of town buddy and shut the door. “DT. I’m still waiting to hear back about BioLogics. The license plate numbers were from stolen tags. What’s up now?”
“I’ve got three dead men, a missing actress, two million dollars, a list of companies, one attached to drug and Hezbollah rumors and two possible suspects. My only tie-in to it all is Collins.”
Roger whistled. “Been busy.”
“And then some. How is Mari?”
“Not good.” Roger clenched his fist. “We know who the bastard is now. Frank Dugar. Member of the Viper Militia from Washington state with a history of mental illness. He, uh, tried to take her out with a sniper rifle when we left the hospital today. I’ve got her with me on post.”
“Have the cops caught the SOB yet?”
“No.”
DT’s responding curse didn’t even come close to expressing Roger’s anger, frustration and self hatred.
“Give me the info and I’ll see what’s taking Dean so long. He should have been back to me by now. I dropped the ball.” Roger sighed.
“With good reason, Commander. Listen, I need to find out what Lauren’s security options are. In case this situation mushrooms out of control.”
“Like how, DT?” Roger did not like DT’s tone or the hesitation in his voice. “Did something happen?”
“Nothing that I haven’t been able to handle, but I need to know there’s something out there for her and her kids besides me.”
“That’s one thing you don’t have to worry about. I’ll—”
“No disrespect, sir, because I know you’d do anything for your men, but you wouldn’t be able to walk out the door this instant and be here if needed. I already have Rico with her kids, but with our military hands tied, if this gets any bigger than it is, or something happens to me, I need assurance that she’ll be taken care of. Protected.”
Roger focused his gaze on Mari, thinking that his and DT’s current paths were oddly running parallel. “I’ll see what I can line up.”
“Thanks.” DT hung up. Before Roger could call Dean Ramirez at the agency, Beck called. Damn but it was going to be a long night.
“She’s crippled,” Beck said in response to Roger’s greeting.
“What?” Roger frowned, wondering if Beck was on another bender.
“Amanda James. The ambassador’s daughter we tried to rescue in Lebanon. She’s paralyzed from the waist down. They don’t know if she’ll ever walk again. Doesn’t it bother you, Commander? Doesn’t it bother you that both of us had a hand in that?”
Roger sucked in air, sucker punched by Beck, and Jesus, the thick sound of tears in his voice. His man, his responsibility was on the same crumbling edge he was, and being commander might just drag them both over the ledge.
“Every second of every day,” Roger whispered. “I don’t shut my eyes without thinking about how things went down and what I could have done differently. I can’t sleep. I can’t breathe without hearing the cries, seeing the blood, feeling the oppressive vise of having to bury a gut burning secret amid th
at pain and guilt.”
“Then why—?”
“Then I weigh what happened in Lebanon and why against the thousands of Americans who died at Muhammad al Qassem’s hands and the thousands more who could die were he to succeed again. After I do that, I suck it up, knowing only more death would have followed Lebanon if I hadn’t taken him out. And only more death will follow if the wrong spin is given to what happened. Something I have no doubt the media would twist all to hell. Does it make every second any easier? No.”
A long, heavy silence followed. Roger felt as if his guts were slashed open.
Beck hung up.
Roger sat in the dark a minute, trying to breathe, trying to regain a semblance of the strength that had guided him all his life. A strength that failed him now. Then he set to work. He called Dean Ramirez at the agency again.
“Just about to call you,” Dean said.
“I expected to hear from you sooner,” Roger replied.
“Yeah. I thought so too. But something is shaking here. From the time you called last night until I planned to call you back this morning, BioLogics and several other companies went from obscure dots in a sea of nothing to red hot tamales in a storm of intrigue. A Staff Operation Officer (SOO) called for the alert after hearing from his deep cover agent. Now NCS (National Clandestine Service) is in on it. I’ve been trying to find out why before getting back to you. Why is Delta involved with BioLogics?”
“One of my men is caught up in a situation that may or may not have some serious repercussions.” Roger read off the list of new companies DT had given him. “Any of those on the list?”
“I’ll get back to you shortly. I may need more info on the situation as well. I have a call in to the SOO handling this. He’s a real SOB stickler who everyone calls ‘director’. I doubt he’ll tell me anything, but it’s worth a try.”