by Dale Mayer
Brenna looked at Jerricho, and she felt the tears in the back of her eyes. “It feels shitty to be duped like that.”
He nodded. “But I already got a trace and a location for them,” he said, looking up at her. “So it’s not over yet.”
She stared at him in shock. “Let’s go get him.”
“Too easy,” he warned. “You need to stay behind.”
“Bullshit,” she snapped. “I might have been a victim up till now but no longer,” she said. “This involves me, and I was the dupe who took her over there. I went to bat for her. She was this idealistic young woman, who wanted to prove herself, and I fell for it,” she said, “so this is my fight as much as it’s yours.”
Jerricho understood how angry Brenna was, and it was a betrayal that would eat at her, but she had to keep it in check. While she’d been talking to Jessie, he’d been triangulating the location. Even now Diesel was getting blueprints of the building, where Jessie and her husband were traced to, and Killian was working on analyzing what the building was, how to get in, and how to get out of it safely. Diesel also recommended contacting MI6. He was never for that, and he hated working with other governments, as their agenda was usually completely different from his own.
In this case, Jerricho would need some backup and possibly some manpower, depending on what they found.
Killian sat beside him. “It’s a warehouse,” he said quietly. “We’ve got three large bays in the front for loading and a small entrance with a single door going in. At the back is another small entrance, a single door heading out to the alley.”
“Interesting that the bays are in the front.”
“Lots of shipping and value-added manufacturing, which are then turned around to be shipped out.”
“Still in business?”
“No, not at all. Hasn’t been in business for a couple years. The lease is owned by a numbered company, stationed out of Greece,” he said. “All of which could play into what we know about this couple.”
“We don’t know that they’ve done anything seriously wrong now, do we?” Brenna asked quietly.
He looked at her. “What about the betrayal?”
She shrugged. “I get it. I really do,” she said, “but is there a reason to go after them? That’s what I’m confused about.”
“Yes,” Jerricho said quietly. “If nothing else, I have to know if he’s had anything to do with the capture of the women and does Jessie have anything to do with the terrorist activity. Because, at all costs, we protect our country.”
She frowned at that. “I see.” And then she nodded slowly. “She didn’t sound like she gave a damn, did she?”
“No, she didn’t.”
“I don’t even know what information she could have taken,” she said. “It’s not as if our offices have anything.”
“No. And maybe that’s not where she took the information from. It could have been handed off to her, and it was her job to get it out of the country.”
“And, of course, we did that for her, by giving her entrance through our media passes, which has a much higher clearance,” she said, with a nod. “But, even if we do catch her, that doesn’t mean that she’ll have the item with her.”
“No,” he said, “it doesn’t. But I think we need to follow through.” When his chat window beeped, Jerricho quickly looked down at his laptop.
Diesel had sent a message. You have full authorization to go after Jessie.
Jerricho sighed and looked at Brenna. “They want us to go after her and to make sure that whatever she’s trying to get out of the country doesn’t leave.”
“I still think it would have been easier on the cloud,” she said in exasperation.
“Easier, yes, but then very traceable.”
She winced at that. “Right. So secrecy is everything.”
“Exactly. For all you know, this is just a simple little thumb drive full of pictures that she’s trying to take out.”
“It’s what she has hanging around her neck, then quite possibly,” she said, “and that’s depressing in itself.”
“I don’t think so. It is what it is.”
“Do you think she’s actually pregnant?”
Both men looked up at her. “Does it matter?”
“No, maybe not,” she said quietly, “just makes me sad if she is.”
“Why?”
“Because of what life the child will have.”
“The child, if Jessie escapes, would be completely fine, I imagine. I doubt that this is a lifestyle that she would willingly want to maintain,” Jerricho said. “She’s probably been tagged or had to do this to prove her worthiness of joining his group. I can’t tell you the details because I don’t know them, but I imagine that, if she’s truly pregnant, she’s doing this as much as anything to get away and to have a life on her own.”
“And yet maybe it’s the same life that she had hoped to find by doing this in the first place,” she argued.
“I won’t argue with you about it,” he said, “because I can’t tell you any of the ups and downs that went with it. All I can tell is, from her behavior and the number of times I caught her sitting there with her hands on her belly, that she’s likely thinking about her child now, even if she wasn’t before.”
“That’s the thing about pregnancy. All of a sudden it’s not just about you. It’s about more than you.”
“Right. And whether her boyfriend could have gotten her out of that nightmare faster is up for discussion because she still had to contact him, and he would have found out that she’d been taken by a dissident group. It would have been much easier if he had come alone, just to take her. But we got in the way.”
“So she said,” Brenna said, with a note of humor. “I’m totally okay with you getting in the way.”
He nodded. “And you are welcome.”
She burst out laughing. “And I’m okay if she gets away too, to be honest. I would like this over with. And, if that’s who she is, then I don’t want anything to do with her.”
“And if she would leave behind whatever information was worth stealing, then that would be fine,” he said. “But, if it was her doing all this, somebody wants it badly.”
“And it’s probably nothing,” she said.
“What about other media correspondents?” he asked. “Do you have any heavy hitters in your group?”
“John Maxwell,” she said. “He just came back from a visit in China.”
“I’m surprised he was allowed in.”
“China is, at the moment, being courteous,” she said. “I’ve never been myself. But anyway he did a couple tours, and then he managed to sneak out and take a couple helicopter rides, where they were looking at what he thought were secret concentration camps.”
“If he happened to get any of that on film,” Jerricho said, “the Chinese government would pay handsomely for it. None of that information is ever allowed out to the Western world.”
“John did say something about the Chinese government.”
“But I presume it was a no.”
“Yes, he’s fairly moral. He was doing a piece to send out to the media and then was contacted by the government about it,” she said. “I forgot about all that. I wasn’t involved in it,” she added. “It was more his deal.”
“But imagine if it, being his deal, also then meant that Jessie had access to the information that he had gotten, if he could have found access.”
“He was pretty sweet on her,” she said quietly. “She was young, flirty, pretty. He’s older, seasoned, and just coming out of a divorce.”
“So he might have given her access or told her where they were, or she found it by some other means.”
“It’s possible,” Brenna said. She shook her head. “It’s against everything we believe in.”
“Oh, you’ll come up against that a couple times in your life,” Killian said. “Particularly in the line of work you do.”
“It’s the first time it’s really been in dir
ect opposition,” she murmured. “Obviously we interview other countries and various government officials because we’re looking for them to expose some of their misdeeds. But I didn’t think Jessie would expose anybody’s misdeeds. She took information that was meant to expose China’s misdeeds. And here instead it looks like she’s taken it and run.”
“Would John have uploaded to the cloud?”
“No, he was very anti-computer, very tightly secretive about his sources. But he has been relaxing his rules a whole lot more easily lately.”
“Is he into booze?”
“A little more since his divorce, yes,” she said. “It hit him pretty hard.”
“It’s also a recipe for a disaster right there,” Killian said, as he printed off something.
She watched as pages spun out of a printer she hadn’t even seen them get. “Where’d that come from?”
“It was here,” he said, “as instructed.”
She sighed. “If your people can do something like this, why can’t they just get that key off her?”
“That’s exactly what’ll happen,” Jerricho said. “But, in that instance, I’ll be the tool to accomplish that.”
She cried out.
“Because it’s what I do,” he said.
She nodded slowly. “And it’s a case of accept it or not, right?”
“It’s a case of accept it,” he said quietly. “It’s part of who I am.”
“And I get that,” she said softly. “I had that conversation with Jessie, oddly enough. That’s why it’s so hard to understand that she might have done this. It seemed like she really understood me.”
“She probably did. She was in an interesting set of circumstances herself,” Killian said. “You don’t know how much of a change of thought she may have had.”
“Just not enough to hand it back, is that it?”
“We’ll never know,” he said, “because that time’s come and gone.”
Chapter 11
Brenna hated the fact that they were making all these plans, and ultimately she was the one who would have to stay in the hotel. They wouldn’t hear anything to do with her going off to capture these two people. “But Jessie knows me,” she tried one more time.
“Exactly. Chances are she’ll see you coming, and she’ll be gone or hidden so deep we’ll never find her.”
“And maybe she won’t see me coming,” she challenged. “Maybe I’m just super quiet.”
“Maybe you are,” he said, “but chances are very good that they will recognize you in a heartbeat.”
She sagged back into the chair. “I still don’t like it.”
“Maybe not. However, you now have time to rest, to have a meal, and to relax. But you will be staying here and under guard, if necessary.”
“Does that mean you’ll stay here and guard me?” she asked in surprise.
“No, but just like the printer arrived,” he said, “I can get a guard too.”
She got up and raised both hands in surrender. “That’s not necessary,” she said. “Any manpower that you can drum up needs to go with you to keep you guys safe.”
“Wow, that’s not a vote of confidence,” Jerricho said.
“Doesn’t matter what my vote of confidence is,” she said. “These people are dangerous.”
“At least you recognize that much,” he said, as he stood up and looked at Killian. “You ready?”
Killian nodded. “We don’t have tons of options,” he said.
“Don’t need them,” Jerricho said. “Just a way in and a way out.”
“The front door works for me,” Killian said, with a big smile.
“That doesn’t even make any sense,” she said. “Why would you even want to go in the front door?”
“Because it’s the least expected.”
“Also will be the one that has the alarms,” she snapped. “And is most likely visible from the closest office.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because that’s the way offices are designed,” she said. “Somebody needs to be aware when that door opens, so a customer doesn’t have to hang around completely unacknowledged.”
“Except this is a warehouse. And chances are there isn’t very much in the way of walk-in traffic.”
She nodded. “I get that. But still you need to be careful.”
“Will do,” Jerricho said. He grinned. “Glad to see you care.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “I’m just not sure what or how,” she said, “but you’re bringing back an awful lot of memories.”
“Good ones or bad ones?”
“Both,” she said sadly. “A lot of reminders about who I was, and what we had, and what I lost.”
“You are somebody completely different now,” he said, “so that doesn’t even apply. I’m even different,” he said, “because I’ve grown up. I’m not the gauche young boy I was back then.”
She laughed. “That’s the one thing you never were,” she said. “And you were a whole lot nicer than I was.”
“But it’s all in the past, remember?”
“So, amid all this, did you find food in the hotel room?”
He pulled out his phone. “What would you like?”
“A big salad and some pasta,” she said, “and coffee.”
“Are you sure you want coffee? You won’t sleep.”
“Coffee and red wine then,” she said, with a snap to her tone.
He chuckled. “There you are,” he said. “Sounds like you’re returning to normal.”
“Whatever normal is these days,” she muttered. “So what are we doing now?”
“I’m heading down and hopefully taking out somebody who’s causing us trouble. And you’ll sit here, eat, and rest. Have a bath. Do something fun.”
“Maybe,” she said, “doesn’t mean I’ll stop worrying.”
“Doesn’t matter if you will worry or not,” he said. “Just make sure you keep it all in check, so that you don’t panic.”
“I wasn’t planning on panicking,” she said. “It’s just so frustrating. If we were back in the US or if Jessie hadn’t done this, everything would be that much easier.”
“True, it would be easier, but that doesn’t mean that it would be over. What we don’t want is to leave any threats hanging that could come to haunt America.”
“But why? Why would Jessie and that man care?”
“We’re still responsible for taking down that human trafficking ring,” he said, “so we don’t know exactly whether this thumb drive theft is connected or not.”
“I can’t see that Jessie would want anything to do with the women slavery option,” she murmured.
“But you don’t really know that, do you?”
“No, and I think Jessie’s probably going through her own issues right now,” she said, “because, when you think about it, all of this likely happened before she found out she was pregnant.”
“Maybe, I don’t really care,” Jerricho said. He walked over, shouldering a big duffel bag that she had already seen him pack with weapons. Weapons that she didn’t know where they came from, but were here anyway. “We will be back soon.”
She watched, as they headed out.
He stopped at the doorway, looked back at her, and said, “Your dinner’s here.”
She bounced to her feet in shock. “So fast?”
He nodded, and he spoke with somebody outside, and he pulled in the trolley. He looked at her and said, “As soon as I leave, you lock this door.” He stared at her and waited for her nod. When it didn’t come fast enough, he growled, “Do you hear me?”
“I hear you. I hear you,” she said, walking over. Then the door shut, and she bolted it and turned her attention to the tray. She wasn’t very hungry. She had just been looking for something to compensate for the fact that she was being left behind. She didn’t want to be left behind, and she didn’t feel any safer behind a locked door. But, at the same time, she could hardly complain, when they were heading out to do part
of a job. She was part of a job as well, but her part had been completed at this point.
It still felt off though. She pulled out her phone and, unable to help herself, sent him a text message. Take care of yourself.
She got a response back almost immediately. I will. Remember. This is what I do.
She smiled at that, because, of course, it is what he did. It’s what he’d done for years and years and years, and she’d been the one who had been out of the loop for a long time. But it was amazing just how good it felt to have him back in her life again. She smiled and sent him another message. Okay, I’ll try to trust.
Do that. And, when I come back, we’ll talk about tomorrow.
She sent him a question mark.
But he sent her a heart emoji back. She stared at that heart with a silly smile on her face for the longest time. It was really, really stupid of her. But she couldn’t help but think that maybe, just maybe, something was here. And, of course, something was here. Something had always been here. But she hadn’t thought that it would be coming her direction because she’d already blown the one chance she’d had with him.
He would probably tell her that she was being completely foolish and to stop chastising herself for being human. She laughed at that and walked over and pulled the trolley closer to the small table, where she lifted the lids off the plates. There was enough food for three people; maybe he’d sent the wrong message. But she was more than happy to dig in and to serve herself a nice plateful. By the time she sat down before her dinner, she felt a whole lot better. She tasted the dinner and smiled.
“At least money’s involved,” she said, “because you can’t get this service without it.” And, with a happy smile, she dug in. After she was done and had everything back on the trolley, she found a coffee service underneath. She bent down and picked it up and placed it on the table. The carafe was full, and she poured herself a cup. Even cream and sugar, if she wanted it, but she wanted plain black coffee right now, to get her through until they got back. She didn’t know if he expected her to wait for him or not, but no way she would sleep if he were in danger. He put himself in the line of fire time and time again to save her. No way she would let him get hurt now unnecessarily.