Tom calmed. He had not anticipated on being declared a bad manager, and for a moment he felt as if the floor had been pulled from under him.
Hamilton turned to Braddock. “What’s your opinion?”
Braddock studied Tom for a painfully long time. “We’ll wire you up and also have a spotter on you at all time. We’ll have a second one on your son.”
Tom’s heart stopped. “My son? He knows nothing. He’s in college. He doesn’t even know where I’m working.”
“I know that. But if you say anything other than what you are authorized to say to Max or your daughter, he’ll pay the price.”
Anger raged through Tom, but he ensured it was contained. “I will refuse to say anything at all to Max, if that’s what you want.”
“Actually, that’s not what we want. I believe Max knows Angel is here rather than dead.”
“I agree.”
“Why?”
“The sabotages were classic Max. Especially the altered protocol manuals.”
Braddock leaned back and studied Tom. “What exactly was your relationship with Max? I mean, he let you live in his house and enjoy his wife. I’m presuming he liked you.”
God, this was not the direction he had wanted this conversation to go. “I was invited into the house by Angel. She chose me as her lover, not Max. However, I went out of my way to get along with him. Angel’s second boy, Tommy is mine.”
“And Max knows this?”
“Yes. He even gave the boy my name. That caused my wife to throw me out of the house, so Angel took me in.”
Braddock shook his head. “He’s one hell of a chess player.”
“He is, and he may think me his pawn, but I’m not.” His eyes went to Hamilton. “I work for you. I’m your pawn.”
“So, you’d be willing to help set up Max?”
“Absolutely.”
“Why?” Braddock barked.
“First, because my allegiance is to Director Hamilton; second, because I believe in this facility. To realize this had always been possible, yet Max chose to daily torture young boys and the woman he claimed to love, angers me beyond words. And now that someone else has created a better solution, he attempts to sabotage it. This makes me realize he doesn’t put his country first. He’s putting his ego ahead of everything, even if it would hurt his country and his wife.”
Braddock nodded. “I’m convinced. He’s our man.”
Tom focused on Braddock. “Then you keep all the spotters on me. I don’t want my son to die because someone unintentionally snags the trigger.”
Braddock grimaced. “I was never putting a spotter on your boy. I was just testing your reaction. While that pissed you off, you weren’t afraid you were about to get your son killed.”
Tom breathed in and out. “I was angry.”
“With cause. So, sit down and let’s discuss exactly what we want you to say,” Hamilton ordered.
Tom sat. “Angel has a ‘stop sabotaging us’ message she wishes to be sent.”
“Yes, we know,” Hamilton replied. “And we’ve incorporated it in the possible responses, depending on what Max says to you.”
Chapter 12
Tom was stopped by marines before he reached the Norfolk dock.
Upon inspecting his ID and pass, one of the marines spoke. “If you could step out of the car, sir. Your son may remain inside the vehicle.”
“Is there a problem?” Tom challenged.
“Just step out of the car, sir.”
“My daughter is arriving soon. I don’t have time for this.”
“Step out of the car, sir.”
Tom cursed beneath his breath and glanced at his son. “Stay in the car.” Toby nodded, but his worried eyes matched Tom’s concerns exactly.
Once out of the car, he was gripped by the arms and forcibly led into a building. Once inside the door, they tossed him forward, so they would have the time to close the door before he could recover from nearly falling. “Damn it! My daughter is coming in and I have to be there!”
“They’re just following orders,” Max’s voice stated from the shadows.
“Your orders?” Tom snapped.
“Yes. We need to talk.”
Davenport had raised the possibility of this situation. Max was obsessed with bugs. Thus, thankfully, Tom was prepared for the scenario. In angry slaps on his sleeves and pant legs, as if trying to remove the soldiers’ manhandling, he activated a small tape recorder lodged in the right toe of slightly larger shoes.
“Can it not wait until I see my daughter?”
“No, it cannot,” Max snapped.
His former boss did not like being challenged and was no doubt infuriated that his obliging former employee would even think of doing so.
“Sorry, I’m just worried sick about Anna.”
“How did you even know? I thought you were in Hamilton’s joke of a facility.”
“I was informed that my daughter had been kidnapped during the terrorist attack that killed Angel and her boys, and that she had been rescued.”
“Were you told who rescued her?”
“No, only that she was coming home today and she’s fragile.”
He noticed a flicker of pain in Max’s face before annoyance took over. “I’ve no doubt Hamilton failed to mention I was the one who saved her.”
“Then you have my gratitude. However, right now, I really need to see her. To my understanding, she holds herself responsible for Angel’s and the boys’ deaths.”
“You’ll see her sooner, if you will stop whining. First, are you wired?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that immediately?”
His lack of worry guaranteed that no signal was leaving this building. Thank God, Davenport knew Max so well. Otherwise, Tom wouldn’t have a tape recorder catching this conversation. “I would have, if we’d met outside. But I’m assuming this building breaks the signal.”
“It does, but I do not appreciate you risking my career on an assumption.”
Tom nodded.
“Hamilton’s letting you back in after your mercy visit?”
“Yes.”
Max snorted in contempt. “The man is an idiot, but that just makes this easy. Give Angel the following message: I need her to stop producing for Hamilton. It’s the only way we’ll ever be together again. Tell her to fall in a deep depression and stop eating.”
“Angel is happy, Max. She likes the way this facility is run. I don’t think she’ll agree to this.”
“Then make her, damn it! I just saved your daughter—you owe me, and I’m calling it in now. Tell her if it wasn’t for her, Anna wouldn’t have been kidnapped. Tell her the girl is devastated because she can never have children.”
“Is that true?” Tom asked.
“Yes, this was Angel’s fault. While being constantly raped by friends of the King, Anna was implanted with a capsule of bio-toxin that could have killed a quarter of the country. She lost her reproductive organs during its removal.”
Tom had heard enough. He ran to the door. Thankfully, it opened, and he burst out and rushed to the SUV. He hoped to God Toby remained inside, because he was driving to the dock now, come hell or high water.
When he yanked the door open, his son stared at him with concern. “Everything okay?”
He nodded and climbed in. He threw the car into gear and drove the rest of the way at top speed.
When they turned onto the docks, he couldn’t see Anna. All he saw was a gigantic ship and an empty dock, except for a few crates and a metal table with something…”
Toby leaned forward and squinted. “That isn’t Anna, I hope.”
Barrier’s prevented him from driving closer, so he slammed on the brakes and abandoned the vehicle. The moment he opened the door, he knew with certainty it was his daughter lying on that metal gurney. He could hear her demands to be untied interspersed with threats and curses.
He stormed forward with Toby jogging beside him.
&n
bsp; Toby rolled his eyes. “What the hell is wrong with them? You don’t leave injured people lying out in the sun.”
“We’re here, Anna!” Tom yelled, hoping to calm her. However, she refused to calm until he was above her, smiling down upon his angry but very much alive baby girl.
“Daddy! Undo these straps!” she begged.
His fingers fumbled from all the emotions running through him: relief she was not as fragile as he feared, anger at Max for making her fragile at all, love for his daughter, and rage that Max had touched her. Finally, he released her and pulled her into his arms. “Thank God, I have you back safe and sound.”
Anna burst into tears and cried in heaving sobs against his shirt.
God! She was far more fragile than her initial anger let on. “It’s all right,” he promised as he kissed the top of her hair. “You’re home now.”
A marine in white came from the shade and addressed him. “Sir, you have to sign for the package.”
“Package?” Toby yelled.
Tom understood his son’s anger, but he knew the military often referred to human cargo as packages. He passed his broken child to Toby, so he could sign a myriad of documents releasing the U.S. government of responsibility for her care. He’d been warned by Hamilton to read every damn line of what he was signing, so it took a while. Fortunately, Toby was there to distract his baby girl from her pain.
He frowned at a line stating he would reimburse the government in full for the cost of the rescue. Were they insane? He didn’t have a billion dollars. He marked it out, initialed the mark out and signed the page.
Now reading more carefully than ever, he worked his way through the pages, only catching bits and pieces of his children’s conversation…which sounded like their more familiar squabbling.
“You always were a crybaby, sis. Glad to see they didn’t change you any.” A smack followed. “Not fair! You know I can’t hit you back.”
“Too weak to throw a punch?” she taunted playfully.
“No…too scared. If Dad saw me hit you in your current condition, he’d throw me head first in the ocean.”
Tom glanced at his son to ensure he understood that was the damn truth. He smiled at the sight of Anna, her arms wrapped around Toby’s neck, kissing his cheek. “God, I missed my little brother.”
Returning to the never-ending documents, he kept one ear open to further trouble.
“I’m a six-foot-five, grown man, Anna. Stop calling me your little brother.”
“You’ll always be my little brother.”
A gasp in pain from Anna drew Tom from the paperwork.
“What’s wrong?” Toby asked. “Are you hurt? Did I hurt you?” His hands fluttered about, afraid to let her go, but terrified to hurt her further.
“I just thought about Tommy.”
Tom returned to his paperwork, feeling like shit. She thought Tommy was dead and he was strictly forbidden to tell her otherwise. Any attempt to do so would probably get him taken out by a sniper.
How the hell was this going to work? How was he going to tell his daughter a lie that he knew would rip her heart out? Unlike Toby, she spent her summers at Angel’s house. And the way she favored Tommy over the other boys, he was certain she suspected the precious boy was her brother. But Toby had no clue.
“Angel’s kid. Yeah, that whole thing sucked. You know, I was all set to hate Max for life until he turned the capital upside down to get you back. Some of my well-connected friends at school said it was the talk of the town. He single-handedly forced Congress into an emergency session to clear a bill written to provide everything those bastards asked for so we could get you back.”
Toby’s version of the truth turned Tom’s stomach, but there was nothing he could do to correct that either. Damn it all, this was turning out to be harder than he ever imagined.
“All my friends want to meet you. They figure you must be one hell of a woman to make our country pay over a billion dollars in trade agreements.”
“Oh God…” she whispered.
“You didn’t know that?” Toby asked.
“I knew the king planned to negotiate for my release, but I didn’t know the cost. How will I ever repay this?”
“By being the best damn agent they’ve ever had. Well, second best. I might as well tell you now, sis, I plan to be the next Max Straun.”
She stroked her brother’s cheek. “You couldn’t pick a better man in which to aspire.”
Tom’s stomach roiled at her words. Damn it all! Max had truly seduced his baby girl. He could hear love even in those few words.
He finished the last document, having crossed out two lines and signed it. The young man snapped to attention and retrieved the clipboard and gurney.
“Let’s get out of here,” Tom snapped and regretted his tone at once. Before his daughter could misinterpret his anger, he pushed it aside and wrapped his arm around her waist. “Let’s get you to your new home.”
Toby eyed her stride for a moment and then scowled. “There’s nothing wrong with you. You just faked your injury for sympathy.”
“That would be a waste of my time,” she countered. “You have never once shown on ounce of sympathy for anyone other than yourself.”
He moved in between the squabbling pair, while his hands rested on the back nape of their necks. “Clearly, some things don’t change,” he complained. “If you two insist upon bickering during the whole drive, let me know now and I’ll let you walk.”
Anna laughed for a second and then gripped her side as if in pain.
Toby scoffed. “Faker!”
Tom helped Anna into the front passenger seat and nodded for Toby to get in the back. He then hurried to his side. The sooner he got his baby girl settled in her new home, the better for all.
When he climbed in, the two were at it again with playful verbal spars.
“Enough. Now, I know you two are having fun, but Anna is injured and no more funny stuff until she is well. Laughing clearly hurts her.”
“Well, that won’t be hard for you, Dad.” Toby rolled his eyes. “You’ve been gloomy since you picked me up!”
Anna reached across the front seat and gripped his hand. Her eyes filled with sadness and remorse.
He forced a smile to his face, hating to lie to her about something so monumental. But he had no choice. For all of their sakes, he had to play this precisely by Hamilton’s rules.
Chapter 13
Just as they crossed the Delaware Bay, Toby received a phone call. Anna was reminiscing about the rafting trip that ended when Toby ate a plateful of laxative laced brownies, so Tom couldn’t make much out of the one-sided conversation Toby was on. However, a glance in the mirror told him he was not happy.
“Problem?” Tom asked when he finally hung up.
“No…just an asshole professor. I asked for an extension on a project. You’d think I was asking him for his liver.”
The GPS device instructed him to turn left and everyone’s mouth fell open as they drove towards a beautiful, white stone mansion on the Delaware Bay.
“Whoa! Can me and my friends visit you on weekends?” Toby asked.
Anna smiled. “Sure, but I think this is further away from Princeton than you realize.”
“Excuse me, but isn’t that New Jersey on the other side of that bay?”
“Does your car have your old floaties on it, so it can cross water?” she asked.
Tom decided to intercede before this turned into a real fight. Toby was ultra-sensitive about those floaties his mother made him wear. “Hold on, I’m not comfortable about having a bunch of people being here.”
Toby’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, so only Anna gets to live life large. Great. That’s fair. Does mom know you’ve been socking away money all these years, so your favorite child can enjoy the good life?”
“That’s enough!” Tom snapped, outraged his son would start in on his old grievances during Anna’s homecoming. “First of all, I love both of you equally. Second, this
house does not belong to me, nor is it being given to Anna. Truth is, I’ve no idea who owns it, but my boss thought it would be a safe and uplifting place for Anna to recover. Third, if you are going to act like a spoiled three-year-old brat, you can remain in the car.”
His son glared at his feet, refusing to respond. Tom knew his son wanted to back down, but he had his mother’s stubbornness in him.
“Or you can apologize to me and your sister and come see the inside. I believe somewhere inside is a cook who plans to serve us tacos and cheese dip.”
Toby chuckled. “Mea culpa, mea culpa.”
Tom parked the car and hurried to Anna’s door and helped her out. When Toby climbed out the back, he added, “Not crazy about the apology, but I’ll let it slide.”
Anna took Toby’s hand as Tom led the way. “I’m sorry about teasing you over those floaties,” she said. “That was wrong of me. Just so you know, the reason I gave you such hell over them was because Mother never bought me floaties, which seemed yet more proof that she didn’t care if I lived or died. You were her only child worth protecting.”
Tom had no idea his daughter had felt that way. Just as well she hadn’t shared that belief when she was a child, because it would have forced him to lie and tell her it wasn’t so. Unfortunately, Sadie strongly favored her ‘perfect little man’ and Toby reveled in his mother’s admiration, at least until the day she nearly killed him with an overdose of laxatives meant for Angel.
After that, Toby decided to spend more time with his stricter father, who did not spoil and pamper, but was certainly the more stable of the two.
He unlocked the door and stared in amazement at the modern and playful spirit of the house. It was perfect for Anna’s recovery, but absolutely nothing like Director Hamilton. Upon locating the expansive living room, he lost his train of thought.
“Wow!” Anna stated and passed the white and yellow furniture in the living room and focused on the wall of sliding doors letting in the ocean breeze.
A Better Life Page 13