“You mean when he was kidnapped,” Olivia snapped.
Timmons gave her a long look. “Mighty convenient for Chantry to disappear just when we were getting ready to close in.”
“That’s not proof of anything.”
“What we’re wondering, Ms. Hammond, is how you could not know what your boss and friend was involved in,” the agent said, a scowl digging into his mocha-colored skin. “Doesn’t seem likely, considering how close you say the two of you were.”
“We told you.” Sal cut off the agent’s line of questioning. “Olivia had no knowledge of what Chantry was up to. If he was a part of some plot, he fooled her like he did everyone else.”
“So you say.”
“That’s right. So I say.” Sal let the words hang in the air. He didn’t bother prettying them up. Timmons and his partner might as well know from the get-go where he stood: squarely on Olivia’s side.
The considering look in the agent’s eyes told Sal that the message was received and understood.
“If you think of anything that can help us, we expect to hear from you,” Jeppsen said. He and his partner stalked away. Halfway to his car, he stopped, turned. “You haven’t heard the last of this.”
When the agents had driven away, Olivia looked at Sal. “Thanks for sticking up for me.”
“You were doing a pretty good job of it yourself.”
“Yeah, well, lawyers learn to develop a thick skin or they don’t make it.” She grimaced. “Can you believe them? Accusing me and Calvin of being a part of some plot?”
“Homeland doesn’t like looking bad. It’s not good for the image. They’re going to keep coming at us. They need answers, and right now we’re the only game in town.”
“What they said about Russians made me think about the men who attacked me that first night. I think their accent was Russian.”
“That explains a lot. They were probably the ones who tried to take you outside the courthouse, as well.”
“And run us off the road yesterday.”
Olivia didn’t need Sal to tell her that having Russian agents after them raised the stakes. The Russians had a well-earned reputation of playing rough. Automatically, her hand moved to her cheekbone where a tiny scab remained from the knife prick.
* * *
The following day, Timmons and his partner Jeppsen showed up at Olivia’s townhome with a search warrant.
“This allows us to look anywhere we want,” Jeppsen said.
“Can I see it?” she asked, thinking that Sal hadn’t been joking about Homeland not leaving them alone. She’d known this was coming and had braced herself for it.
She perused the paper, looking for anything, anything at all, that was out of order. Even a mistake in the address or the spelling of her name could invalidate the warrant. “Okay. I guess it’s too much to ask that you clean up after yourselves.” She’d witnessed searches at clients’ homes and had been appalled at the mess the police had made.
“You’re right,” Jeppsen said. “It’s too much to ask.”
The two agents turned the townhouse upside down, unmindful of the shambles they left in their wake.
Three hours later, Timmons said, “Nothing.”
“Which I could have told you if you’d asked,” she said with no small degree of asperity.
“We like to see for ourselves.” Timmons fisted his hands on his hips. “Look, Ms. Hammond. We’re in a fix. Chantry and whoever he was mixed up with were planning something big. We’re grabbing at straws, trying to figure out what it was. Before it’s too late.”
“You gotta admit that it looks fishy that you don’t know anything about this, you being so close to Chantry and all,” Jeppsen said.
Olivia could almost tolerate Timmons, but his partner was another matter. The man seemed determined to make her the villain of the piece or, at the very least, an accomplice in Calvin’s plan.
“Then pay attention,” she said, enunciating each syllable with precision. “I am not part of this. I never was. I never would be. So save yourself some energy and find out who else was in on this. It wasn’t me.”
Timmons shrugged while his partner made no attempt to mask his disbelief.
“You’ll be seeing us again,” Timmons said.
“Count on it,” Jeppsen added.
The two agents took off.
Olivia gave a sigh of relief when Sal arrived to pick her up. She sank back into the truck with a defeated air. She had tons of work to catch up on, especially after spending so much time searching for Calvin, and now she was a suspect.
She wanted to laugh hysterically at the idea that the federal government actually considered her a part of a terrorist cell. Who would they pounce on next? Homeland wielded a tremendous amount of power. No one dared buck them. To do so was to ask for a boatload of trouble.
She worked through what was left of the day. Sal stayed close by, and she was more grateful than ever for his quiet but solid presence. The last few days, which included losing Calvin, being chased by bad guys, spending a night in a cave, and having the DHS accuse both Calvin and herself of terrorism, were catching up to her.
Sal frowned when a text came in just as they were preparing to leave for the day.
“What is it?” Olivia asked.
“Timmons. He wants to meet us at the Sand Dollar Motel. Room 242. Says he has something we need to see. Twenty minutes.” Sal checked his watch. “We need to get moving.”
They drove to the seedy-looking motel in the wrong part of town.
“Why meet here?” Olivia asked, nose wrinkling in distaste.
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Sal didn’t look happy at the setting either.
They tried the door, found it unlocked. He motioned for her to step back and went in first, checked it out. “Looks okay,” he said and gestured for her to go inside, closing the door behind them.
The next moment, it pushed open again, and a portly figure entered.
SIXTEEN
“Calvin.” Olivia gasped. “You’re alive.” She struggled to wrap her mind around that as well as the fact that he pointed a gun at her and Sal.
“Very much alive.” He held up his right hand. “Minus one finger. It hurt like the dickens, but it had to be done if I was going to sell the whole kidnapping story.”
“You cut off your own finger?”
“Had to make it convincing. I knew you’d recognize the ring.”
Comprehension settled in. “You bought the ring so I could identify the finger as belonging to you.” How long had he been planning this? She thought of something else. “Your teeth were found on the boat.”
“I went to an out-of-town dentist, had a few teeth pulled, made sure they’d be found in the wreckage.”
“And the phone calls? You made them.”
“Give the lady an A. I bought one of those nifty voice synthesizers. I could barely keep from laughing when I called you. You sounded petrified.”
She didn’t bother hiding her disgust.
“How did you always know where I was?” That was something that had troubled her from the beginning.
“I put a tracker in your briefcase a while back,” Calvin said. “You never go anywhere without that piece of junk. I figured a tracker might come in handy someday. Turns out I was right. Then there was the bug in your office. It was almost too easy. I tucked it behind that ridiculous painting.”
“Whose body was that in the explosion?” Sal asked.
“Some stiff I bought online. Turns out you can buy just about anything on the net if you know where to look. Including a dead body. Of course, I had to cut off the finger. By the time the DNA results got in, I’d be long gone. Or I was supposed to be.”
“How did you know about Timmons and Jeppsen?”<
br />
“Those two bozos have been following me for the better part of the year. Why do you think I had to disappear? It was child’s play to spoof Timmons’s phone and get you here.”
His words were a slap in the face, wiping away everything she thought she knew about the man she’d called friend. “I don’t know who you are.” Grief coated each syllable. She thought of all the pain his actions had caused. “I was almost killed because of you. And Bryan, you set him up. He was never a part of this.” Her instincts had been correct, but she’d never suspected Calvin of being behind the plot to pin the kidnapping and murder on Bryan. How could she have been so wrong about him?
“Of course I set him up. He was a patsy waiting to be used. I’ve known about his embezzlement from the first. I bided my time, waiting for the right moment to use it. The little twerp stole from me. Me. He got what he deserved. I put that file about him selling secrets on the drive as insurance. If anyone found it, they’d concentrate on that, wouldn’t look further.
“I knew Homeland was on my tail and that they were closing in. In my hurry to get away, I forgot the drive. Still, everything would have been all right if you had brought the right drive to the exchange.” Accusation rang loud in his voice.
“Why didn’t you just call me, ask me to bring you the drive?” Olivia asked. “Why all this cloak-and-dagger?”
“I’d originally planned to ask for money for ransom, but after leaving the drive, I thought it would be the perfect thing, not to mention throwing blame on Hewston and the drug company.”
Calvin made a rude sound and directed all his venom at Olivia. “How could you have been so stupid as to mix up the drives in the first place? You think I wanted a drive with pictures of leaves on it?” He nearly spat the last.
What was she supposed to say? I’m sorry I interfered with your terrorist plot? She knew a wild desire to laugh at the absurdity of it. She shook her head in bewilderment. “I don’t understand. Any of it.”
“Let’s just say I happen to be really fond of the color green.” He gave a lipless smile that was somehow worse than no smile at all.
And then she got it. It had been obvious, if she’d been looking. Calvin’s extravagant lifestyle. His insistence upon having the best of everything. “Money.”
“You’re catching on.” As he sneered, he didn’t look anything like the man she remembered. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have places to go.” He grabbed her briefcase. “I figure you still have the drive in your briefcase. Once I have it, I’m home free.”
Only the USB drive wasn’t in her briefcase. Not any longer.
“Goodbye, Olivia.” Calvin clicked something, then darted out the door.
She heard the ticking. “What is that?”
Sal scanned the room, pointed to what appeared to be a small clock sitting on a table near the door. “A timer.”
She started for the door, but Sal grabbed her. “The bomb’s rigged to the door.” He pushed her toward the bathroom, then grabbed the mattress from the bed, dragged it in after them. “Bathtub,” he shouted.
She scrambled inside the tub and lay down.
He did the same, covering both of them with the mattress. “Whatever happens, stay down.”
Just as he said the last word, the room exploded. Olivia struggled to breathe beneath Sal’s weight and that of the mattress. Indistinct thuds sounded. Probably pieces of drywall landing on them, she thought with the small portion of her brain still functioning.
She registered Sal’s chest pressed against her back, his arms protecting her head. She prayed the mattress was shielding him from the worst of the falling debris.
The very air seemed to shake. Or maybe it was her. She couldn’t tell. When the aftershocks stopped, she took a shallow breath. Another.
She struggled to get up, but Sal urged her back down. “Not yet.”
“Is it over?” she whispered after several minutes had passed.
“I think so.”
Sal pushed the mattress off them. He climbed out, then helped her out. When her legs threatened to give way, he clamped his hands on her shoulders and held her against him. “Better?”
“Yes. Thanks.”
A chalky substance covered their faces and arms. Dust from exploding drywall, she thought absently. Her mouth was dry, and she wet her lips.
Cautiously, she and Sal picked their way over the rubble in the room and out to the landing.
“Careful where you step,” he warned. “We don’t know how far the damage goes.”
They hurried off the landing and down the stairs. People were spilling out of doors, bewildered expressions turning to horror when they saw the gaping hole of what had been the motel room. Cell phone cameras were pointed in their direction.
Olivia cringed. The last thing she wanted was for her picture to be trending on social media sites.
Sal kept his arm around her, turned her face toward his side. Another grief-induced breath drew raggedly through her. An unfamiliar sensation in her ear had her putting her hand to it. She wasn’t surprised that her finger came away bloody. Though she’d remembered to open her mouth as Sal had told her during the explosion at the dock, her eardrum had probably ruptured this time due to the proximity of the blast.
“Here.” Sal handed her his handkerchief. “Your ear should be fine in a little while. In the meantime, keep taking shallow breaths.
“Better get ready for questions,” he advised as sirens sounded in the distance. “From the police and the fire investigators.”
Olivia took a bracing breath. Answering a bunch of questions from the authorities was the last thing she wanted to do right now, but better to get it over with. When had her life spun so out of control?
He tightened his arm around her. “We’ll get through this.” The words were simple enough, but, like a quiet smile, they comforted and warmed.
What would she have done if Sal hadn’t been here? He’d saved her life. Again. If not for his quick thinking, they would surely have died in the explosion.
“Calvin tried to kill us.” Her words were as broken as she felt. Even after knowing that Calvin had deceived her, she couldn’t believe that he’d wanted her dead. Had everything she’d ever known about him been a lie?
Her roiling thoughts ripped through her memories, memories going back more than two decades, churning up every experience and every moment spent in Calvin’s company. How had she not seen what he was? How had she been so stupid?
Whatever grief she was feeling was now overshadowed by fury. Fury at Calvin. Fury at herself. Fury that she could be so easily deceived.
This wasn’t over. Calvin had to be brought to justice. He had almost gotten away with his plot all because she’d been too blind to see what he truly was. She should have looked beneath the polished exterior to the ugliness that festered inside.
She turned back to stare at the yawning maw of the blown-out room, the desolation a metaphor of her feelings. Both had been destroyed by a man who put greed above all else.
She and Sal were treated by EMTs who offered to take them to the hospital. Both refused. They had work to do.
* * *
After the police were finished with them, Sal took Olivia home. She’d excused herself to clean up, reappearing thirty minutes later in a white top and jeans.
Floating on exhaustion, she looked almost ethereal in the soft glow cast by moonlight streaming through the plantation-style shutters. Sal barely refrained from reaching for her. It would be a mistake to touch her when his feelings ran so hard and fast.
He knew he was in danger of stepping over his self-imposed boundaries. If he did, what then? The point of no return loomed close. Too close. He needed to take a step back from Olivia and his growing feelings for her.
He focused on the practical. “You need to eat.”
> “I’m not hungry.”
“You still need to eat.” He placed the sandwich he made on a plate and set it on the table.
She picked up the sandwich and took a bite, chewed, swallowed. “You’re right. How could I be hungry and not know it?”
“You’ve been running on fumes for the last week.” He hesitated, not wanting to add to her burden, but this could be important. “There’s something else that’s been nagging me ever since Chantry showed up. He said that if someone found the drive and saw the file about Hewston, they wouldn’t be tempted to look further.”
Olivia nodded. “That’s been bothering me, too.”
“We need to get that drive to someone who knows a lot more than I do about computers.”
“Like Shelley?”
“Like Shelley. If there’s something on there to be found, she’ll find it.”
They shared a smile. There was no one better at decrypting hidden files than Shelley Judd, and she’d be the first to say so.
With that out of the way, Sal focused on how to help Olivia get through the next hours. He knew her boss’s actions had chewed up her heart and then spit it out in little pieces. Her next words proved it.
“I can’t help wondering if everything in my life was a lie. Calvin wasn’t just my boss. He was my friend. What does it say about me if that’s the kind of friends I attract?”
Sal wanted to tell her that it said she looked for the good in everyone, but he knew she didn’t want to hear that. She probably didn’t want to hear anything except that it was all a big mistake.
Tears pooled in her eyes. He watched the movement of her throat, saw her swallow. It was obvious that the effort cost her. Of course, it did.
She’d just learned that the man she had looked up to, had thought of as an uncle and a mentor, was dirty, dirty right up to the starched collar of his designer shirt and the knot of his silk tie. She had believed in him until she couldn’t deny the evidence of his guilt any longer.
Not only was he dirty, he had tried to kill her.
What must that do to her?
Sal wanted to promise to make everything all right, but he was powerless to do that just as he was powerless to take away the pain. With a startled realization, he knew that he wanted to do more than that. He wanted to make a life with her.
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