The End Game

by Catherine Coulter

  Why had he changed his mind? What did it prove? Had he planned to see if she’d lose her nerve, not be able to detonate the bomb? Well, it hardly mattered.

  Vanessa looked up at him as she depressed the trigger, a button on her cell phone.

  A fraction of a second later, she felt the explosion. It started in the soles of her feet, pounded up her legs as the ground began to shake and an earsplitting roar tore through the silence. The night sky became day.

  The concussion knocked both of them backward. They landed hard, their breath knocked out of them. When Vanessa managed to pull air into her lungs, she scrambled to her hands and knees, facing the heat of the blaze raging in the refinery. It looked like a bonfire on steroids, much stronger than she’d expected. She saw Ian and his men crouched down behind distant refinery trucks, did a quick head count. Everyone was accounted for.

  So fast, all of it, so fast. The bomb had done its job, and she’d been its builder. She’d proven herself, established herself once and for all. Now she would be in with Matthew Spenser; now he had to accept her into his inner circle. After all, she was the one who’d engineered this marvel for him, and he would know there were more marvels to come. He had to trust her now.

  He was screaming something at her, his voice wild, filled with alarm.

  She couldn’t hear him, pulled out her earplugs, but it didn’t help much. The bomb’s concussion had deafened her.

  Then he leaped on her, rolling on top of her, slapping at her head.

  “Your hair is on fire!”

  Her hair was on fire? She knew she should be panicked, she should freak out, but she didn’t move, and let him worry about it. Matthew jerked off his shirt and smothered her head in it.

  When he pulled his shirt off her head, he stared down at her. “It’s only the ends of your hair. Are you all right?”

  She stared up at him, smelling her burned hair, listening to the roaring flames, and she started to laugh. She rolled away from him and dropped her singed head to the scrubby, ancient land and laughed and laughed.

  Matthew lay beside her, panting, watching her. He rolled up on one arm, raised his hand and fingered the ends of her burned hair. “Vanessa, are you all right?”

  “Oh, yes, I’m perfect,” and she laughed again.

  Ian, his dark hair coated in ash, his men behind him, appeared to their left. “What a blast that was, Van! Wasn’t expecting it to roar like a dragon. What are you two waiting for? It’s time to go. Coppers will be here in a flash. Van, what’d you do to your hair? I told you never to stand so close, and look what you’ve done.”

  Vanessa stood, ran a hand over the crispy ends of her hair, brushed the dirt from her jeans. She looked at the two men—one dark, one light, both crazy like foxes, both grinning at her.

  “Satisfied, Mr. Spenser?”

  Matthew rose slowly, wiped off his hands on his jeans as she had, and smiled down at her. “Oh, yes,” he said, his voice filled with pleasure. “I’m more than satisfied.” And he stared down at her, at her mouth, his eyes hot and manic.

  Monday

  11 p.m.–4 a.m.

  2

  KNIGHT TO F6

  Bayonne, New Jersey

  Present

  Monday Evening

  FBI Special Agent Michaela Caine drove the black Crown Vic with one hand, tucked a hank of loose hair back into her ponytail with the other, then shoved up her glasses.

  It was late and she was tired, ready to go home and crash. But no chance, since they’d gotten a credible tip off the hotline. She looked over at her partner, Special Agent Nicholas Drummond, tapping on a laptop balanced on his knees, doing a background check on their tipster.

  She said, “I’m praying with all my might we’re not on a wild-goose chase and this guy isn’t a thrill chaser.”

  Nicholas looked up. “I’m inclined to think he isn’t. Ben said the man was convinced he had information on COE, and a possible bombing. At this point, I’m willing to listen to anyone, even if it means missing one of Nigel’s dinners. He called me earlier, said it was prime rib.”

  Mike laughed. “Oh, my, that sounds even better than the scrumptious three-day-old chicken salad sandwich I was planning to have at home.” She paused, then sighed. “We’ve been working this case for two weeks now, Nicholas, and gotten nowhere. I hate that. Several oil refineries out west and no leads. I only wish we could keep the frequent-flier miles earned from flying all over the country. And what do we have? This group’s mission statement, over and over, the same thing: No more oil from terrorist countries or you will pay the price.

  “And now, out of nowhere, this guy pops up in our own backyard with information on COE? On a possible bombing? Do you really think this Hodges character is for real?”

  He looked over at her. “My gut is starting to agree with my brain and say yes. You know what else? I think it’s also about time that we have our turn at bat.”

  Baseball metaphor from a Brit? No, he probably meant cricket. Were you at bat in cricket? She didn’t know. She grinned. Either way, he was right, it was their turn, and if Hodges was for real, it was possible they’d have a chance for a home run.

  Nicholas looked back at his laptop. “Mr. Hodges appears solid, an accountant for a local Bayonne engineering firm. His wife died three years ago, breast cancer.”

  She took a left into an older residential neighborhood, thick with trees and small, well-manicured lawns. Mr. Richard Hodges’s house was on a quiet dead-end cul-de-sac that backed up to the Hudson River. To Nicholas, the block looked like any other older development in a small eastern American town—thirty-year-old single-story house, comfortably settled in with their neighbors. Amazing how quiet it was, considering its proximity to Manhattan. He supposed the lapping water dampened the sound.

  They saw the curtains twitch.

  Nicholas closed his laptop. “I see we’re expected.”

  Mike turned off the engine. “Okay, I’m thinking positively. I’m up at bat and Mr. Hodges is going to give me a perfect pitch.”

  The door opened before they had a chance to ring the bell. A man dressed in jeans and a white polo shirt waved them in and closed the door quietly behind them, as if he didn’t want to wake someone. A habit from when his wife was ill?

  The interior of Mr. Hodges’s house was neat, looked clean, but it smelled musty, somehow sterile, and Mike doubted there’d been another woman living here since his wife’s death. She didn’t see any photos or knickknacks on any surface, only piles of newspapers and newsmagazines. The house, she realized, was now only a place where a lonely man lived off his memories.

  “Mr. Hodges? I’m Agent Caine, and this is Agent Drummond. We were told you have some information about the terrorist group known as Celebrants of Earth, or COE, and a possible bombing.”

  Hodges was a smallish man with a bald spot and a heavy five-o’clock shadow. He looked solid, calm, no indication that he was an alarmist or a wild-hair. Maybe they had finally caught their break. She smelled bacon and toast, a single man’s dinner. She felt a punch of pain for him.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” he said. “Thank you for coming. Shall we sit? Can I get you coffee? I have some already brewed.”

  “We wouldn’t say no to a cup, sir. Thank you.”

  He gestured toward the kitchen.

  Mike and Nicholas took a seat at an ancient table with one leg shorter than the others, held steady with a pile of magazines. Moments later, they both had mugs of coffee and a plate of chocolate-mint Girl Scout Cookies. Nicholas took one to be polite; they’d been floating around the office for the past few weeks and tasted like wax to him.

  Nicholas sipped his coffee, then set the cup on the table. “So, Mr. Hodges, tell us what you know.”

  Hodges blinked at him. “You’re British? I didn’t know people from England could be in the FBI. Are you some sort of s
pecial case?”

  Mike nodded, grinning. “Yes, sir, he is indeed a special case.”

  Nicholas sat forward. “My mother was American. The story, sir, please.”

  Mr. Hodges nodded. “I was at the Dominion Bar tonight, having a drink after work. There was a man there—I don’t know his name, but I’ve seen him around before. He’s works at the Bayway Refinery—doing what, exactly, I don’t know. He’d obviously been drinking a while, looked pretty drunk to me, and I wondered why the bartender, that’s the owner, May Anne, hadn’t cut him off. He was shooting his mouth off, you know the kind of person, they get loud when they’ve had too much to drink and, well, lose all sense. I heard him tell his friend he was celebrating. He’d gotten a big payoff, a lot of money, and more to come, and he was going to retire and move to an island somewhere and have women in bikinis wait on him, and not take his wife and whiny kids with him.

  “I thought that was a pretty crappy thing to say—I lost my Miriam three years ago and I miss her every day—and I didn’t want to listen to him, so I tried to tune him out. But he was sitting in the booth directly behind my stool, and I couldn’t help but hear. His friend asked where the money came from, and he shushed him and lowered his voice like drunks do, whispered real loud that he couldn’t tell, it was top secret. But something really big was going to go down, like what had happened to that oil refinery in Scotland a few months ago—Grangemouth, he said.

  “His friend asked if he was breaking the law, and he started to laugh, sounded like a hyena, so drunk he couldn’t keep it together. I paid for my drinks and left, but all the way home I couldn’t help thinking about what he said. I knew this group COE claimed responsibility for the Scotland refinery bombing, they’d sent their statement to the news media, and it’s the same as the one they always use here in the U.S. And like I said, I knew this drunk guy worked at Bayway Refinery. That’s why I called your FBI tip line. Thank you for taking me seriously. Do you think this is a real threat?”

  Mike felt the surge of adrenaline to her toes. This was it, the break they’d been waiting for. Nicholas was right, this could be their home run.

  She knew Nicholas felt the same, but his voice was cool and calm. “If you would, Mr. Hodges, please run through it again for us. Every word you remember the man saying.”

  Hodges repeated everything again, then remembered more at their questions, then gave them descriptions of the drunk man and his friend. When they knew the well was dry, Nicholas stood, clapped Hodges on the shoulder, and shook his hand.

  “Thank you, sir, for calling us. We’ll let you know.”

  Hodges walked them back to the front door. “You think this is serious, don’t you? He wasn’t bragging, he knows something is going to happen?”

  Nicholas said, “We’re certainly going to check it out. We’ll know soon enough if it’s serious when we find the guy. So keep thinking about everything you heard and saw, and if you would, please, write it all down. Agent Caine and I will have a visit with the Dominion bartender, see if she knows the customer’s name as well as his friend’s.” He handed Mr. Hodges a card. “And please keep this to yourself.”

  “I sure hope nothing happens. It would be a real problem if they blew up Bayway like they did Grangemouth. What would it do? Raise our oil prices some more? Burn down houses? Make the air we breathe toxic for a year?”

  “We’ll do our best to see it doesn’t happen, Mr. Hodges,” Mike said. “Good night, and thank you again.”

  Mike had her cell to her ear before they got in the Crown Vic. “Ben, we’ve got a real live lead on COE. You need to get a team of agents to Mr. Richard Hodges’s house in Bayonne.” She gave him the address. “I’m also thinking it would be smart to get a sketch artist out here, too, in case we can’t get an ID on the drunk guy from the Dominion’s bartender. But the protection for him is the most important. Just a precaution, but it’d make me feel better.”

  Ben was now as hyped as they were. “Come on, Mike, what did the guy tell you?”

  “Not good, Ben. There may be a bombing at Bayway.”

  3

  PAWN TO C4

  Mike pulled in across from the Dominion Bar on Broadway in Bayonne, not five minutes from Mr. Hodges’s house.

  Nicholas checked out the cozy-looking neighborhood bar, heard no wild yells, no blaring music. “Maybe they have food. A pizza would be good. I’m ready to chew off my arm at the elbow.”

  “If they don’t, there’s a pizza place next door that’s still got its lights on. We can get a slice.”

  “A slice? You’re talking like a girl. I want a whole pie all to myself. I’ll bet you could eat a whole pie, too.”

  He was right about that. “Bartender first, then stomachs.”

  Inside, the Dominion Bar was all dark wood, dim lights, and a long varnished copper bar with wine bottles lined up on shelves along the mirrored wall. There were twenty stools and six booths. It was a place for local couples on dates, or people stopping in after work before heading home, or for widowed men to feel comfortable to have human contact, and Nicholas wondered: Did the drunk live in the neighborhood?

  Mike read his mind. “Mr. Hodges said he’d seen the guy before, which means he’s a regular. Since this place isn’t a dive, I can’t imagine he’s a low-on-the-food-chain roughneck. Probably he’s at least a supervisor at Bayway, otherwise he wouldn’t fit in here.”

  They walked through the large room, checking out the few remaining Monday-night customers. Mike checked everyone out. “I don’t see any guy here who remotely fits Mr. Hodges’s description. Or the guy’s friend.”

  Mike showed her creds to the Dominion bartender, the owner, Mr. Hodges had told them, a tiny woman who looked like a middle-aged Peter Pan. She was wiping down the bar, humming an old Elton John tune under her breath. Over a healthy right breast was a nametag: May Anne.

  Mike introduced both herself and Nicholas.

  They saw instant alarm. “What’s the matter? I didn’t do anything, I promise. I own this place and I’ve never had any health violations, ever, and—”

  “No,” Mike said over her. “We simply need information. Do you know a Mr. Richard Hodges?”

  “Dicker? Well, yes, of course I do. He comes in most every night. He always has the house merlot, tells me how his day went, asks me how I’m doing, and then goes home to bacon sandwiches. It’s a shame about his wife; she was such a nice lady. Listen, I know Dicker wouldn’t have done anything, really—”

  Nicholas lightly laid his hand on her arm. “No, Mr. Hodges is fine, he’s in no trouble. He was here earlier tonight?”

  “Yes, he was. Is he okay? Has something happened to him?”

  “No, no, he’s fine, May Anne. We need your help. Now, we need to know if you remember a man who was sitting right behind Mr. Hodges, in a booth, a very drunk man. Tall, on the thin side, grayish hair, middle-aged—”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s our local idiot, Larry Reeves.” May Anne rolled her eyes. “God sent him to punish me, I know it. He doesn’t even live in the neighborhood, but he comes here maybe twice, three times a week. He’s always pushing the limits on the weekends, drives me nuts. I was about to cut him off tonight when his friend took him out to drive him to Bayway; that’s where he works. It was odd, though, because I’ve never known Larry to get that drunk before his shift, and here he is a night supervisor. Why? What’s the fool done?”

  Nicholas’s heart revved. “You said he was going on shift?”

  “Yes, he’s third shift, a supervisor, like I told you. But you know, I think his friend had to take him home first, to shower and sober up. No way he could show up in that condition.”

  Mike leaned over the bar. “Do you know his friend’s name?”

  “Can’t say I do, he’s fairly new to the bar. Does he live in the neighborhood? I can ask Clem, he’s back cleaning up in the kitchen. He knows everything about
everybody.” May Anne turned and called out, “Clem, please come out a minute. I need you!”

  The floor started to shake, rippling in waves, like an earthquake, and a muffled roar filled the bar. Nicholas’s mind registered explosion before he hit the floor, pulling Mike beneath him. He yelled, “Everyone get down!”

  Bottles shimmied and dropped, glasses and bottles skidded off tables and crashed to the floor to shatter, spewing glass everywhere. The windows flexed and burst, sending shards of glass hurtling through the air. May Anne was grabbing bottles as they toppled, but it was a lost cause. The few customers were yelling, diving for cover, hands over their heads. Nicholas felt a shard of glass slice into the back of his hand. He realized Mike was struggling to get out from under him.

  The shuddering stopped.

  “Get off me, Nicholas, get off. What blew up?” But she knew it had to be the Bayway Refinery, as Nicholas did.

  He rolled off her, yelled, “Is everyone okay?”

  People started to stand, all of them clearly shaken. May Anne came out from behind the bar to help brush off her customers, soothing them as best she could. As Mike and Nicholas ran out of the bar, she heard May Anne yell, “Everyone, calm down. You’re all okay. I’ve got insurance! Drinks are on the house!”

  Mike and Nicholas rushed outside to hear car alarms, loud and piercing, and people shouting, pouring out of their homes, out of the pizza parlor. Glass littered the sidewalks. Nicholas jerked open the driver’s-side door and shouted, “We can help, Mike, hurry. You drive.”

  Mike was turning the key in the ignition when their cells began to ring. She floored the Vic down the street as Nicholas answered his. It was their boss, Milo Zachery.

  “Sir, is it the Bayway Refinery?”

  “Yes, a huge explosion. No reports in yet, so I don’t have any idea how bad it is. Where are you and Agent Caine?”

  “We’re nearby, sir. We’ll be on-site in five minutes. Listen, we met with a man who tipped the hotline.” Nicholas told him about Larry Reeves, gave Zachery the description Hodges had given them, found Reeves’s home address on his laptop, and read it off to Zachery. “Sir, we need agents to be on the lookout for him. There’s little doubt he’s involved in the bombing.”