by Joss Wood
She was dead, oh, she was so dead...
“Sam, honey, come back to me.”
Jett’s voice, sounding like it was coming down a tube, penetrated the black, noxious cloud in her mind and she latched onto it, wondering if she was starting to hallucinate.
“Sam, baby? You’re safe. He’s dead. I’ve got you.”
I’ve got you, you’re safe.
Sam registered the words but it took another minute for them to sink in, for her to push back the fear. She pulled in a breath and inhaled Jett’s spicy scent, allowing it to ground her. She pushed the black cloud away and with every inch it retreated, sanity returned. Jett held her and knowing that, she climbed him like a monkey, needing to get as close as possible. Her legs encircled his hips and she pressed her nose into his neck, unaware that her tears were rolling underneath his collar and making his shirt damp. Jett held her against him, anchoring him to her.
“Clear.”
“Clear.”
“Clear. The perp has checked out.”
They were words but she didn’t understand any of them.
“I should damn well hope so since I plugged him between the eyes,” Jett said.
Jett patted her butt. He carried her across the room and out of the corner of her eye saw him placing his weapon on the chest of drawers by the door, the barrel pointed to the wall.
“My weapon is going to have to go into evidence,” Jett said, utterly calm. “Kels, can you clear it for me? My hands are a bit full.”
Kelby moved to stand next to Jett and placed a hand on her back. “Glad you’re safe, Red.”
Sam just tightened her grip around Jett’s neck and inhaled another series of deep breaths as that persistent, evil cloud of panic and fear threatened to roll back in. Yeah, she was pretty glad that she was okay too.
Chapter Twelve
Sam, sitting in the corner of her couch in her sitting room, gripped the cup in her hands and stared at the busy hallway, long having lost count of all the people who’d traipsed in and out of her house. Sam desperately wanted to take a sip of coffee but she didn’t trust her shaking fingers to get it where it needed to be without spilling.
She was a wreck and she wasn’t afraid to admit it.
Sam rested her temple against the fabric of her sofa, the last minute of Ross’s life playing on a loop on the big screen of her mind. His wild, evil-saturated eyes, his hand dropping, his shocked expression. The round, red hole between his eyes, that tiny trickle of blood.
Someone perched on the sofa next to Sam and it took enormous effort to drag her eyes open.
Sam tried to smile at Will but it would be a while before that happened. “Hey.”
Will, her hands covered with surgical gloves, sent her a sympathetic smile. “How are you doing, Sam?”
“Funny, I feel like my friend just tried to kill me. Pretty bad, actually,” Sam said, her voice thin with exhaustion. Sam plucked at her dressing gown. “Where’s Jett? And I need to change. Can’t I go... somewhere else?”
Will shook her head. “Jett and Kelby and his two guys have all been transported to the station for questioning.”
Sam felt like she’d been hit by a cattle prod. “Ross was about to hurt me! Jett saved me!”
“I know he did, honey.” Will soothed her. “But he did kill someone and we need to take his statement and, because it involves Pytheon, we have to do this by the book. Luckily, everything that was said in the house was captured by Pytheon’s bugs and cameras so everything they say will be backed up by those audio and video files. They’ll be an hour or two. No more.”
“Don’t you need my statement too?”
“Yeah, but you’re the victim so that can wait,” Will said. “As for your clothes, the crime scene tech will be with you soon. You’ll change into surgical scrubs and she’ll photograph you, take your clothes and she’ll scrape your nails and comb your hair for trace evidence.”
“He barely touched me except to grab my hair,” Sam protested.
“Let’s do it by the book, okay?” Will suggested, her eyes warm. “Are you going to drink that coffee or not?”
Sam shook her head. “I can’t get the cup to my mouth, I’m shaking too much.”
Will wrinkled her nose. “I’d offer to help you but I don’t want to touch you until you’ve been processed. And that sucks because, right now, I want to give you the biggest hug.”
Sam’s eyes filled with tears. “It’s okay.”
“Stone is on his way and I called Fern but I can’t reach her,” Will said. “Jett said to tell you that’ll he back with you as soon as he possibly can. Can you hang tough for a little while longer?”
She didn’t have much choice. Sam nodded as Will stood up. “I really want to shower, Will, and change.”
But, more than anything, she wanted Jett.
“I’ll try and make that happen, honey.” Will touched her fingers to her lips and blew her a kiss. “I’m so glad you are okay, Sam. When I got the call, my heart nearly stopped.”
“Yeah, mine too.” Literally. She was running out of lives.
Fifteen minutes later, the crime scene technician, dressed in a white overall with a white hood and a face mask and goggles covering most of her face, walked into the room. Sam understood the gloves and suit, the face mask but the goggles were usually used in situations where there was a lot of blood. Sam frowned when the woman gestured for her to stand up, thinking that Will and her team were really taking the collection of forensic evidence seriously if their crime scenes techs were treating this scene like a horror house massacre.
Exhausted, emotionally and physically played out, Sam didn’t resist when the technician gripped her elbow and led her out of the hall and into the kitchen. Sam scrunched up her face at the bright sunlight pouring through the open window that looked out onto the road and a quick glance outside told her that her yard was teeming with police and there was a row of gawkers standing beyond the yellow tape, drinking their early morning coffee and getting their morning news firsthand. Numerous phones were pointed at her house and Sam thought she might, within an hour or two, become an Internet sensation. The news trucks would be on their way.
The crime scene tech jerked her head and the policeman who was standing just inside the doorway drifted out, obeying her silent order to vacate the room. So, she was going to be processed in her kitchen. Sam hoped the tech dropped the blinds first.
Walking over to the counter, Sam stopped, wishing this day was over and felt the familiar sensation of a gun barrel being pointed into her ribs. “One word, one suggestion that you are calling for help and I’ll blow you away.”
Aw, fuck. Again?
Then the thought hit her that she knew the voice, rough with vitriol and hatred, but damn, and again, she knew the voice as well as she knew her own. The voice had sung happy birthday to her every year for most of her life, had tucked her in, sung her to sleep. The owner of the voice constantly told Sam she was loved, had attended her high school and college graduations, made her chicken soup when she was sick, had helped her with her homework.
Sam gripped the edge of the counter and tossed a distraught look over her shoulder, finally seeing the faded blue eyes behind the mask, a lock of brown hair falling out from under her hood.
“Mary? Fuck! Mary?” Sam’s voice lifted and the barrel of the gun pushed into her ribs. Damn, that hurt but not, she was sure, as much as a bullet would. Funny, she doubted a bullet would hurt as much as the knowledge that her second mother was planning on killing her.
“Keep your voice down!” Mary hissed in her ear. “This ends here and it ends now.”
Sam, now furious, whirled around and, ignoring the gun, stared into Mary’s eyes. “Then if you are going to kill me, at least have the decency to do it without hiding behind the mask and the goggles. Let the Pytheon cameras capture you in all your glory.”
Mary’s little laugh crawled over Sam’s skin. “I’m not stupid, Samantha. On the way in, I told the boys in the
surveillance van that Seth asked me to tell them to shut it down, to report back to HQ.”
Sam’s heart sank.
“And then I watched them drive away,” Mary added.
So, damn, no audio and no video. Sam gripped the counter behind her, furious but clear thinking. She searched Mary’s masked face, looking for a hint of the woman she’d loved all her life. “Want to tell me what this is all about, Mary? But, first, how do you intend on leaving here after you shoot me in a house full of people?”
“Like Jett’s weapon, this one also has a silencer so nobody will hear a damn thing. And I’ll leave the same way I came in, disguised as a CSU. I’ll tell the guy on the door that you are upset, that you need ten minutes alone, that you have been through a hell of an ordeal. He’ll buy it.”
Damn, that plan would probably work too. Keep calm, Sam. But inside she was screaming “Mary is going to kill me!”
“Can you tell me why?” Sam asked, buying time.
“Because it was always the plan,” Mary replied, her voice cold and matter of fact. “I always intended to kill you and Stone, to destroy from the inside out. I plan on taking care of Stone soon, and your dreadful friend, Fern, and then I will, because I can, take over Pytheon. Fitting that their arch enemy should run the business Jasper so loved.”
Arch enemy? Who was their arch... Mary’s words were a punch to her stomach. “You are The Recruiter?”
Through the goggles Mary’s eyes glinted with amusement. Someone shouldn’t look so gleeful when they were about to kill, it went against all the laws of nature. Then again, so did Mary. How the hell had this happened?
“Why, Mary? If you’re going to kill me then give me a damn explanation that I can believe.”
Mary’s bird-like shoulders lifted and fell. “I like power. I liked holding it, feeling it, tasting it. I learned that from Jasper. I like having the power of life and death. People are like sheep, you’ve just got to prod and poke them in the right place and they do what you want them to. Oh, and I like money, very much.”
“So, you just woke up one morning and decided that you were going to become a megalomaniac, psychopathic traitor?” Sam’s voice started to rise but she dropped it to a hiss when Mary’s gun pushed into Sam’s stomach.
“Well, my training within the CIA and your father pushed me into it.”
“How did he do that?”
“I was one of the best spies of my generation and I, literally, had a licence to kill. I met Jasper in Berlin and we clicked. We shared everything; it was our dream to start up Pytheon, my idea. I worked counterintelligence and I had a knack for computers and technology. He had the resources to set up the organization. Our only disagreement was around our clientele. I suggested that he not be so patriotic, that there were many people who had a lot of money who wanted to be Pytheon’s clients but he refused to deal with who he called enemies of the US.”
“You were his right hand.”
“I was also his lover, his soul mate. We had something special but then he met and married your mother and they had you two brats. After she died, he came crawling back to me, insisting that we couldn’t let anyone know that he was sleeping with his secretary. His secretary? I was doing what Seth does now!”
Sam didn’t need Mary to continue; she’d been wanting to brag for years, possibly for decades.
“Then it all fell apart. Jasper started grooming Stone to take over Pytheon—my company!—and then Jasper told me that he was moving me to another division, that he didn’t love me anymore.”
“He went to the Met Ball with Courtney Billings. He told the press that he thought she was special, that he could see himself marrying her.”
Sam winced, remembering how happy her father had been after meeting Courtney. Two weeks later he was dead. So, really this was about unrequited love and the loss of power.
“We were in an on-off relationship for over thirty years and he thought that he could move me on? Three dates with that Hollywood slut and he’s talking forever?”
Behind the goggles, Sam saw Mary’s descent into madness and knew she was running out of time. To get more information and to save herself.
“So, you decided to take revenge on him by ruining his company and destroying his children.”
“I told him I would as I injected insulin into him. It was my last promise to him and I always, always keep my promises.”
“But The Recruiter is technologically savvy, brilliant even. You suck at computers!”
Mary’s laugh sounded like it always did, high and girly but, for the first time, Sam heard the malice underneath. “Everything I did as The Recruiter, every deal I set up, every person I contacted, every kid I lured was done from inside Pytheon. That processing power, that speed.” Mary shivered in delight. “You all think Seth is so brilliant, Cracker so marvelous, none of you realized that I could run rings around them, technologically. I helped your father set up the computer systems, I know where the loopholes are, hell, I even built some in.”
Sam felt bile burn the back of her throat. “How many operations did you compromise?”
“If they didn’t affect me, I left Stone and Seth to do what they did. There was no point in taking unnecessary risks.”
“You fired on my house, you planted that bug on my dress, you killed Raul,” Sam whispered, horrified.
“There are people out there, doing what Pytheon does but they have, luckily for me, no morals. They like money. We have a mutually beneficial arrangement. I planted the bug but they do the dirty work.”
“Why did you spare our lives that night my house was fired on?”
“I like seeing your fear, I like watching you suffer.” Mary’s answer was simple. “But since Jett won’t let anyone near you, he’s taking the fun out of the game. So, I’m going to console Stone while he mourns you and then, in a month or two, when he starts to recover a bit, I’ll move onto him. Or maybe I’ll have Fern killed first, she’s like another sister to him.”
She was diabolical. Insane. But, unlike Sam, Mary wasn’t stupid. Sam was supposed to be one of the top forensic psychologists in the country and she’d been fooled by two people, both of whom she loved.
If she happened to survive this, and that was not likely, her career was doomed. And, more importantly, Jett would never know she loved him, that she wanted a life with him.
Sam shuffled an inch to the side, trying to release the pressure of the gun pushing into her side. She moved her fingers along the counter and felt the outline of the weapon Jett taped there earlier. Holy shiiitt. She had a gun.
That meant she had a chance.
“Stone! Stone, over here! Can we have a comment?”
Sam heard the yells from the press and so did Mary, her head turning toward the window. Mary cursed, and spun Sam around, putting the gun to the base of her neck. Sam stamped down on her instep, Mary stumbled to the side and Sam grabbed the pistol, swinging it backward, her finger on the trigger. She angled it to the side, pulled the trigger and the gun kicked in her hand, heat and sound and fury filling the room.
Sam spun around and pushed Mary away. Mary screamed, touched her stomach and looked down at her bloodstained hands. Her features twisting with fury, Mary looked at her dripping fingers and, her lip curling, she lifted her gun. Sam, not hesitating, curled her finger around her trigger and pulled, again and again, not stopping until the clip was empty and Mary’s snow-white forensic coveralls was filled with holes and stained a bright red.
Dead. Sam looked down at the woman she’d loved and whom she thought loved her. Sam stared into her fading eyes, saw evil dying and knew that Mary was gone. Only then did she allow the gun to drop to the floor and her tears to fall.
Thanks to the fact Stone was connected to some very powerful people, and because they had surveillance footage of the day’s events—including Mary’s attempt on her life because the Pytheon surveillance team only took orders from Stone and Seth and lately Jett.—Sam’s house was flooded with crime scene technic
ians and was processed with speedy efficiency. It was released to her shortly after midnight and, over a late meal that nobody ate, Jett and Stone both promised that they would accompany her to her house in the morning.
She needed, they agreed, to walk back into the space and reclaim it as her own, to climb—their words, not hers—back on the horse. Sam agreed.
She just wasn’t prepared to wait and shortly after two in the morning, Sam slammed the door to her taxi closed and stood on the curb looking at the wood board-covered windows and the yellow crime scene tape fluttering in the cold night wind. Sam shuddered and gathered the remnants of her courage. Clutching her front door key in her hand, she made her way up to her front door, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps.
God, she wished Jett was with her.
This is just one of the many things you are going to do on your own from now on, Red, so suck it up, cupcake. His bodyguarding duties were over, he’d saved her life, and he had other priorities now. He was going to go back to running into and out of foreign countries, hurtling into and out of situations, all of which could turn dangerous on a gust of wind.
He was going back to being Jett and she’d have to go back to being Sam, but who was that person? Sam didn’t even know if she had a career anymore. Who was going to trust a forensic psychologist who failed to identify not one but two psychos in her life? She was a joke...
Oh, she had enough money to last the rest of her life but that wasn’t the point. She wanted her life back, her career, her calling. She also wanted Jett as her lover, a couple of kids sometime in the future but that was fantastical and absurd, much like her childhood wish for a unicorn.
God, no Jett and no job, what was she going to do? Who was she going to be?
Sam shivered and lifted her shaking hand to put the key in the door, missing the first time. Then a strong hand covered hers, the key found its hole, and the door opened. Sam inhaled Jett’s just showered, sexy scent and her heart settled and sighed. Stupid thing.