“I’m just glad the guy didn’t decide to shoot me first before Trace got to him.”
“Trace had the element of surprise going for him. Never been happier to see a marine.” He traced a finger down her throat. “It’s still red. The only thing I regret is not killing the bastard myself.”
“You were too busy worrying about me.” She smoothed a thumb against the crease between his eyebrows. “Did you get anything out of the dead guy?”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw you talking to him, or at least trying to talk to him as he lay dying. Did he give you any answers to your questions?”
“He was too busy trying to catch his last breaths.” He patted his jacket pocket. “I did get his prints, though—just in case the SFPD doesn’t care to share his identity.”
“I stuck as closely to the truth as possible—my friend left me a key to his locker at Mission Hope and that man attacked us and held me at gunpoint to get whatever was in the locker.”
Joe massaged his temples. “Which was empty, anyway.”
“Not. Quite.” Hailey slid a slip of paper from inside her bra and proffered it to Joe between thumb and forefinger.
He jerked forward. “You got this out of the locker?”
“My hand was already inside the locker when the fake transient made his move. I snatched the piece of paper and shoved it down my top, pretending to hold my hand against my heart.”
“I’ll be damned.” He punched on the dome light with his knuckle and read aloud. “‘I’m still alive. MDB.’”
“Marten. Marten’s still alive.”
“And this—” Joe waved the slip of paper in the air “—is how he decided to tell you? That son of a...”
Hailey snatched the paper from his hands, crumpled it up and swallowed it.
His eyebrows jumped to his hairline. “Why’d you do that?”
“I don’t want anyone to see it. Nobody needs to know that Marten survived that push or fall or jump from the ferry.” She patted her stomach. “Nobody knows.”
“I think you’re taking this subterfuge a little overboard.” He smacked the dashboard. “He put you in all kinds of danger by leaving you that key just to tell you he was among the living.”
“I don’t think that was his original intent, Joe. I believe he left me something in that locker, and when he survived, he returned to the shelter to collect it and replaced it with that note.”
“You’re probably right. That makes the most sense.” He drummed his fingers on his knee. “Why hasn’t he come forward with his info yet? It would be stupid to change his mind now because the people after him don’t care and wouldn’t trust him, anyway.”
“He must be in hiding, waiting for the right moment.”
“The right moment is now, to protect you and get these people off your back. Doesn’t he realize he’s put your life in danger with his silly spy games?”
“Maybe he’s not aware of the attempts on my life.”
Joe clenched his jaw. “He should’ve been able to figure that out. He knew people were following him. He knew enough to arrange a secret meeting with you and to leave you the evidence in case something happened to him.”
“I’m just amazed Marten was able to survive in the bay that night.”
“You heard Joost. Marten was some kind of Olympic swimmer.”
“That survival is a story I hope to hear someday—straight from Marten’s lips.” Hailey started the engine and cranked up the heater. “I hope Trace is going to be okay. What do you think the police are going to find out about the dead guy?”
“Probably whatever his bosses want them to know. That’s why I took his fingerprints myself.” Joe sawed his lower lip with his teeth as he stared at the alley behind the shelter.
“What’s wrong?”
“The twenty-five-million-dollar question.”
“Which is?”
“How the hell did anyone know about that key? How did that man know we would be at the shelter at precisely that minute?”
“He followed us from the house.”
“Dressed as a transient?”
“He...he—Wait.” She braced her hands against the steering wheel. “You can’t be implying that Patrick had anything to do with this.”
“Patrick? He’s not the only other person besides us who knew about the key and the shelter.”
Hailey knitted her brows. “Not Ayala.”
“She’s the only person outside of Patrick and us and maybe Joost who knew about the key.”
“That’s not possible.” A flash of heat claimed her body, and Hailey turned down the car heater. “Ayala was attacked last night. Poisoned.”
“Was she? That’s not what the toxicology report indicated.”
“But we all agreed that the poison could’ve been something undetectable. She passed out in the bathroom. I saw her, felt her clammy skin.”
“That could’ve been the result of anything—even playacting.”
Hailey clutched her hair at the nape of her neck as her head swam. “Are you saying you think she set up the whole poisoning scene? For what possible purpose?”
“For this purpose.” Joe drew a circle in the air with his finger. “To throw us off her trail. If Ayala is a victim just like you, how could she be responsible for the attacks on you?”
“Joe, this is crazy. I worked with Ayala for over a year in the refugee center.”
“What did you learn about her in that time? You said she was reserved. Where’s her brother? Her husband?”
“Husband? She doesn’t have a husband.”
“Fiancé? She wears a ring with a single red stone on the ring finger of her left hand.”
“She does?”
“She was the only one of you, Marten and Andrew who didn’t ID Denver. Just like the poisoning, she’s trying to keep a low profile. Here I was thinking Siddiqi was the mole when it could very well be Ayala. She knows the area, the language, the people.”
“That’s just it. She cares for those people. You haven’t seen her in action.”
“She might care for them on one level, but they’ll never trump her ideology. I’ve run across several extremists. They don’t think like the rest of us do.”
Hailey pinned her unsteady hands between her knees. “You think she came out here to monitor the situation? Gain my trust and then strike?”
“I do. Maybe her associates had already put the plan with Marten in motion, and when they realized Marten had communicated with you, they sent for her to cozy up to you, find out what you knew or suspected.”
“You were suspicious of her from the beginning, weren’t you? Maybe it was your instinct kicking in when you first saw her that told you she posed a threat to me.”
“I took her down because I thought her umbrella was a gun.”
“Makes perfect sense to me, because an umbrella looks just like a gun.” Tipping her head back, she closed her eyes. “I still can’t believe it. You might be wrong.”
“I’m not wrong, Hailey. Nobody else could’ve tipped off the gunman that we were at Mission Hope looking for Marten’s locker.”
“So she got on her phone as soon as we left the house and alerted someone.”
“She did it before that—when we left her to get dressed in the hospital. She knew about the key then. Who knows? She could’ve even left something in this car, like a GPS to track us. She could be on her computer right now cooking up the next plot.”
“She didn’t bring her laptop.”
“Yes, she did...” Joe snapped his fingers. “Now I know it’s her. She told us she didn’t have her computer, didn’t she?”
“That’s why she didn’t see my email. She doesn’t like reading emails on her phone and said she didn’t have her laptop.”
“She does have it. She left it
charging under the bed, and I stubbed my toe on it while I was waiting for you to finish up with Porter this morning.”
“Oh my God. So she lied about the computer. What else?”
“A lot.” He turned toward her and grabbed her arm. “Hailey.”
“What?” His tone sent a river of chills down her spine.
“She knows I’m on to her.”
“How do you know that?”
“I mentioned that she could pass the time this afternoon on her laptop, totally forgetting she wasn’t supposed to have it here. It gave her a start when I said it.”
Hailey shook her head, trying to clear the fuzz in her brain. “When we show up alive, she’s going to be even surer that we’re on to her.”
“If she hasn’t heard from her contact by now, she’s going to assume the plan didn’t work. She already knows we’re on to her.”
“And she’s alone in my house.”
“I doubt she’s going to be hanging around, but step on it anyway.”
Hailey squealed out of the lot behind the shelter and made good time, despite the traffic. She hoped Ayala wasn’t there. She wouldn’t know what to say to her. How did you confront someone you thought was your friend but who was capable of such evil?
As she pulled into the driveway, Joe put a hand on her arm. “Let’s take it easy.”
“You said she wouldn’t be here.” She clenched the steering wheel, her white knuckles practically glowing in the dark. “I don’t want to see her...ever again.”
“I do. I want to finish what I started when I first laid eyes on her, but she’s not gonna be sitting in that chair with a cup of tea waiting for us.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Hailey yanked on the door handle.
“Hailey, we don’t know what kind of surprise she might’ve left us. Her henchman at the shelter wasn’t successful, and these people don’t give up.”
Hailey ducked her head. “Don’t tell me there’s going to be another sniper waiting for me in the tree across the street.”
“I don’t know what might be waiting for us. That’s why we’re going to be careful and take it slow and easy.” He swung open his door. “Wait for me.”
In the rearview mirror, Hailey watched Joe shrug out of his jacket. When he reached the driver’s-side door, she cracked it open for him.
“Okay, come on out, slowly.”
She grabbed her purse from the center console and hugged it to her chest as she slid out of the car.
Joe stepped around her immediately, placed his body between her and the sidewalk, and draped his jacket over her head. With one arm firmly around her shoulders, he walked her up the steps.
She stumbled once or twice, but Joe steadied her.
“No red laser beams on the back of my head?”
“Nope. We’re almost at the door. Keys.”
As she handed him her key chain, she tossed off the jacket and looked over her shoulder. “Safe here?”
“Yeah.” He stretched up and felt along the top of the doorjamb, his fingers trailing over the wood. Then he knelt down and inspected the base of the door and curled up one corner of the mat.
Hailey held her breath through the search when a thought hit her square in the chest. “The food. She could’ve even poisoned my food.”
“Good point.” Joe slid the key into the lock and turned it slowly. He released a breath when it clicked. “Get behind me when I open the door, Hailey.”
She licked her lips. “Do you think she set up an automatic firing squad when the door opens?”
“I wouldn’t put anything past her. Would you?”
“Now that I know she’s responsible for the carnage at the refugee camp? No.” She took a sideways step to huddle behind Joe’s solid frame, putting one hand on his back.
He eased open the door, every muscle in his back tensed and ready for...something.
“No firing squad.” Still feeling exposed on the porch, Hailey started forward, her purse swinging from her hand.
Joe shouted, “Hailey, stop!”
A funny smell assaulted her nostrils, but before she had time to analyze it, Joe grabbed her around the waist and pushed her over the back of the porch into the garden below.
And then the world exploded around her.
Chapter Thirteen
The ringing in his ears drowned out Hailey’s screaming, or maybe no sound was actually coming from her mouth, wide-open and showing off all her pearly whites.
Joe rolled onto his back, the branches of some bush gouging his bare skin. Black smoke billowed from the porch, the acrid wisps swirling around him, causing his eyes to water.
Voices came from somewhere. He shook his head and spit what looked like dissolved charcoal out of his mouth.
Hailey. His head fell to the side and some leaves scratched his face, but he got a good look at Hailey next to him—in one piece. Maybe.
“Are you hurt?”
She choked in response, and black spittle formed at the corners of her mouth.
The voices he’d heard before seemed to be closer now, and with great effort, he turned his head away from Hailey.
A clutch of people had gathered on the steps up to the house and were leaning over the railing into the garden where he and Hailey had landed like a dazed Adam and Eve.
Joe moved an arm and then a leg. They still seemed attached to his body. The fall into the various bushes and plants had done more damage to him than the bomb had.
Because that was a bomb—not a very good bomb, but it probably could’ve torn them to pieces if they, instead of Hailey’s purse, had crossed that threshold.
Joe struggled to extricate himself from the thorns and sticks that clung to his clothing and skin, trying to make him part of the mulch.
He didn’t want to be mulch. He snatched his arm away from a particularly vicious bush and scooped it beneath Hailey’s back, lifting her up. “Are you all right? Say something to me.”
Her dark eyes clicked into focus, and then they widened and she let loose with a scream right in his face.
It was the sweetest sound he’d heard in a long time. “Are you hurt? Let me help you up.”
One of the neighbors on the steps yelled out, “We called 911. The fire department is on the way, but it looks like the sprinkler system shut down the fire. Is Hailey okay?”
Joe finally maneuvered into a crouched position just as one of the onlookers decided to clamber across the front garden. Since the garden sloped down to the street, the man lost his footing and started to slide down.
Joe held up his hand. “It’s okay. I’ve got my bearings now. I’ll help Hailey. She doesn’t seem to be hurt, but she’s still in shock.”
The sirens racing toward the scene were the second sweetest sound he’d heard today.
Joe gently pulled Hailey toward him with one hand while detaching her from her thorny bed with the other, as she whimpered.
He whispered as he worked. “You’re fine. You’re gonna be okay, my love.”
The sirens stopped, and a commotion erupted on the street as the firefighters unraveled their hoses.
Just as Joe had Hailey up in a seated position, a firefighter clomped into the garden with his boots and protective gear.
Joe called out, “Careful. There’s an incline. We’re being held in place by a few strategically placed bushes.”
“Were you thrown by the explosion?”
“We jumped.”
“Probably a smart move.”
Another firefighter joined him with a stretcher on his back. “Let’s roll her onto this. Does she have any other injuries?”
“Not that I can tell, but she’s still in shock. She gets clarity every now and then and screams bloody murder, but her most serious injuries are from the fall and this damn foliage poking us.”
They secured the stretcher next to Hailey and eased her onto it.
“You need a stretcher?”
“No, but I’m coming with her in the ambulance and don’t even try to stop me.” Joe stood up and hoisted one end of the stretcher.
When they got free of the garden, Joe tipped back his head and surveyed the damage to the door. The explosives had blown the door off its hinges, and it now lay on the sidewalk at the curb. It must’ve sailed over him and Hailey, and he said a silent thanks to God that it hadn’t landed on them.
They loaded Hailey into the back of the ambulance, and Joe climbed in after. On the ride to the hospital, the EMT checked her vitals, cleaned her superficial wounds and put an oxygen mask on her face. Through it all, Hailey maintained consciousness but couldn’t seem to speak or make sense of what was going on around her.
Joe kept hold of her hand, stroking the back of it with his thumb and murmuring ridiculous sentiments like how he’d never leave her side and he’d take care of her forever.
He cranked his head around to the EMT. “Where are you taking her?”
“San Francisco General, emergency.”
“You’re not taking her to the emergency room. She’s going to a private room and seeing a doctor who isn’t too busy to spend more than thirty seconds with her.”
The EMT opened his mouth, and Joe sliced his hand through the air to silence him. “Do you know who this is? This is Hailey Duvall. Her father, Ray Duvall, practically owns San Fran Gen. So just do it.”
The EMT hunched forward and stuck his head into the cab of the ambulance.
Joe glanced down at Hailey. Was that a smile playing about her mouth underneath that oxygen mask?
He leaned down and touched his lips to her ear. “I learned from the best, baby.”
An hour later, with Hailey tucked into a hospital bed in a private room with an IV in her arm, Joe pulled up a chair and laced his fingers through hers.
“Feeling better?”
She croaked in her new raspy voice, “I’m fine. What about you? Has anyone checked you out yet?”
Lifting up his shirt, he twisted around to show off the bandage on his back. “That’s the worst of it. Some sharp branch speared me. Why didn’t your father’s gardeners plant some ice plant in that area?”
Delta Force Die Hard Page 15
