Silent Truth

by Sherrilyn Kenyon

  “Makes sense he’d be in the test files.” Hunter opened the door to the stairs carefully.

  “Not what I mean. I found a family tie to him. His name in the secret files is Royce Jack.”

  Hunter had started quietly up the stairs and froze.

  Abbie’s brother’s was J. Royce. No. Can’t be.

  “He’s got the exact blood type and matching physical characteristics as a male child by the same woman who birthed Abigail Blanton. Her brother is the JC killer.”

  And Abbie was in her brother’s hands.

  Hunter took the stairs two at a time.

  “We went through Abigail’s records from Kore.”

  “She’s not fucking involved,” Hunter said in sharp whisper even though he was now banging steps to get to her as fast as he could. He’d made it up two floors. Three to go. Abbie needed her brother for her mother, but Hunter wanted the bastard’s blood.

  Shouldn’t take long to get it from a hemophiliac.

  “What I’m talking about is Abigail’s medical file from yesterday and last night. I’m going to assume you know she coded at Kore.”

  Hunter grunted rather than waste breath he needed to race up two more flights of stairs. He would catch that bastard and hand him over to Joe in trade for clearing Abbie out of this mess.

  Gotthard continued. “That’s because Abbie’s white-cell count dropped severely after giving blood. We compared it to her mother’s medical files and there are similarities.”

  “Tell me all this later. He’s a hemophiliac. Going to be tough to take him down without making him bleed, but I’ll do it.” Hunter stuffed the phone in his jeans pocket, freeing his hands as he reached the top floor.

  He thundered down the hallway.

  Why worry about noise? The prick had to know he was coming. Hell, the door was ajar.

  Hunter burst into the room. “Where is she?”

  No one answered… because the apartment was vacant.

  Chapter Forty-two

  Hunter exited the elevator that had dropped two levels below ground into BAD’s mission headquarters beneath downtown Nashville. He followed Korbin, his silent escort, who led him to the mission room.

  Gotthard, Rae, Carlos, and Retter stood or sat around a black acrylic conference table.

  “Told you I was coming in. Think you needed all these to lock me up?” Hunter asked Retter.

  “No,” Retter said, beefed-up arms crossed over his black T-shirt and long black hair pulled back in a ponytail. “I could handle bringing you in on my own. You did save me the trouble of hunting you. So I’m going to give you a choice.”

  Hunter quelled his normal reflex to slam anyone who thought they could actually outmaneuver him in the field. He had one concern and that was getting Abbie back. “What’s my choice?”

  “We can put you in lockdown right now or you can help with this mission.”

  “Easy choice.”

  “Not through.” Retter continued. “When we finish this mission, you come in without any trouble to meet with Joe and Tee. Up to them what they want to do with a renegade.”

  “Renegade?” Hunter scoffed. “You guys not allowed to say asshole anymore?”

  Gotthard’s eyes twinkled, but he didn’t smile.

  Rae and Carlos kept their reactions contained. No surprise there.

  Korbin didn’t hold back his black glare.

  “If you don’t come in without trouble,” Retter went on, “we’ll lock up Blanton forever, then we’ll find that snitch Borys you keep hidden and hand him over to the CIA.”

  Hunter knew coming in that all his moves were gone. “Agreed.”

  “Gotthard and Korbin will fill you in.” Retter turned to walk away.

  Hunter’s phone buzzed. BAD had installed relays for underground access to cell and satellite links, but only two people should have this number. Hunter read the display. Wasn’t Cynthia, and he was looking at Gotthard, whose bark-brown eyebrows lifted in question.

  Hunter answered the phone. “Yes.”

  Rae walked out and came back with Retter.

  “Now the fun begins,” a smooth male voice said into Hunter’s ear.

  “Who’s this?”

  “Abigail’s brother, but you can call me Jackson since you know who I am by now.”

  Using hand signals, Hunter let everyone know who had called. Gotthard swung around to key a trace, but this prick would not be located that easily. “What do you want?”

  “To make my next task a little challenging. I’m going to Colorado for a small job. If you figure out where I am before I complete my job and leave I’ll tell you where Abigail is. I couldn’t harm her the last time we met because she had not been authorized. But, good news, she was included in my new list of necessary kills as of yesterday.”

  That’s why the bastard had tried to kill her last night at the Kore center. “Where in Colorado?”

  “Be serious. You have to have some challenge, too. Don’t drag your feet. I gave Abigail a cocktail at Kore. Not the same one I gave her mother, but similar. She’s starting to have headaches, like her mother had in the beginning. I altered the files at Kore a long time ago. Abbie and her mother have identical blood to mine so she needs my blood, too.” The phone disconnected.

  Hunter was going to kill that man. Not until Abbie was safe and healthy, but one second afterward. If his guess was right about this wacko, Jackson wouldn’t hurt Abbie until the time came to meet. The question was, what did Jackson have planned then? Jackson wanted a game in play, which meant everyone had to be alive until the point when he decided they died.

  “What’d he say?” Gotthard asked.

  “He told me he’s going to Colorado. If we find him before he finishes his task and leaves, he’ll tell us where Abbie is.”

  “We have a time that may or may not be for an attack in Colorado,” Rae shared. “The contact inside Fratelli said there would be a bombing at 2200 EST tomorrow, but the contact has warned us not to trust that time. We don’t have a lot else, so we’ll add Colorado to the mix.”

  “Anything significant happening in Colorado?” Hunter asked.

  Korbin’s iron-hard glare hadn’t let up since Hunter walked in. He said, “Guess you’ve been too busy to keep up with world events. UK’s prime minister is coming into Denver on Saturday to see a friend, then speaking at a college there on Monday. Then he heads to DC to meet with the president on Tuesday.”

  Hunter scratched his two-day start on a beard. “If the killer is after the prime minister it would be easier to take him out in Colorado before he meets with the president.”

  “Could be,” Retter said. “But why’s he leading you to him? Why not just tap the prime minister and not play this game?”

  “Remember the Fratelli code about ‘no unnecessary kills’?” When the agents nodded, Hunter said, “Killer calls himself Jackson and talks as though he holds to the Fratelli rules of no unauthorized kills. Makes sense. If not, he’d have shot me when I found him at Abbie’s apartment.”

  Korbin scowled. “Knew you had her the whole time.”

  “Her mother’s dying,” Hunter explained for the benefit of some in BAD. Korbin’s opinion didn’t count. “Abbie went to the Wentworth event to talk to Gwen about finding out what happened to her mother, because her mother had been healthy when she visited Kore almost two weeks ago. Jackson just told me he gave her mother a cocktail of some sort and gave Abbie something similar last night before she coded.”

  Rae uncrossed her arms and leaned forward. “Is that how you got the data?”

  “Not the way I wanted to, but yes,” Hunter said. “We had to have Abbie’s fingerprint and her blood sample taken through their machines at the same minute we accessed the Kore computer systems. So if we get her out of this we all owe her for those records.”

  Rae smiled slightly.

  “About the killer,” Gotthard said, pressing him. “Finish explaining why he wants to play this game.”

  Hunter walked over and le
aned against the door frame. “Jackson sounds like a bored killer, handcuffed by too many Fratelli rules. He wants a challenge. Like Dr. Tatum. Jackson must have put him in a no-win situation and threatened to harm his children if Tatum didn’t take the pills and commit suicide. Jackson gets his rocks off by watching people make life-and-death decisions. I’ve thought back on the mission in Kauai four years ago. Jackson wouldn’t consider Eliot’s death a kill since he shot Eliot in the shoulder, which wouldn’t have necessarily been life threatening. Jackson knew there was no way for someone with a blown shoulder to get down. That bastard laughed after Eliot cut the rope.”

  “Eliot?”

  Hunter tensed, taking in the faces in the room. “Yes. Those of you who were here then know the intel had changed by the time Eliot and I inserted into the Brugmann house. Once we found the CIA list and plans for a terrorist attack in the UK, we had to fight our way out. We’d just started rappelling when the estate went silent too soon for the FBI to have arrived. Eliot knew something had gone very wrong and that we might be the only two who knew about the terrorist attack if someone got to Brugmann’s before the FBI. Eliot’s leg was broken, too. When he realized he couldn’t get down, he wanted to make sure one of us could prevent the attack planned for the hospital in Britain the next day. He cut his rope so I could get down.”

  “Fuck.” Korbin summed up the room’s reaction.

  “Jackson was the shooter.” Hunter could hear the laugh echoing in the back of his skull. “He wounded me to toy with me, to let me know he could have killed me, but I must not have been part of the sanctioned hits. It’s as if he couldn’t give me too mortal a wound to climb down or he’d have broken his oath to the Fratelli.”

  “You went to the Wentworth party looking for him.” Rae had spoken her thoughts out loud.

  Hunter had nothing left to shield from these agents. “Yes, but I had no idea he’d try to make a hit on Gwen. After dropping Abbie at her apartment with a transmitter I’d planted on her, I drove away, parked down the street, and doubled back. I was inside the building when I heard Jackson grab her. He wanted to see my face, but he didn’t kill either of us. He popped a flash bomb and released a tear-gas canister. I carried her out and took her with me.” He looked at Retter and said, “I was bringing her here that night until she told me about her mother dying. In hindsight, I should have put Abbie in protective custody and dealt with the guilt of pulling her away from her mother, because now he’s got her.”

  Hunter turned to Rae in the silence. “That’s why I didn’t want you to be connected to me at the Wentworth party. I had no doubt of your ability to pull off being my companion. I was putting the mission first, but if the opportunity presented itself I was not going to pass up a chance to take down Eliot’s killer. I didn’t want you or anyone else hurt because of me.”

  Rae gave Hunter a look he hadn’t expected. Her eyes softened with understanding.

  Korbin said nothing, but the glare subsided.

  “Abbie was in play before she met you,” Gotthard said.

  “Why do you say that?” Hunter crossed his arms. Felt damn good to utilize the expertise of this group to find Abbie. Gotthard had tried to get him to realize they were greater as a team than as individuals. Too bad Hunter hadn’t accepted that sooner.

  “Rae figured out the Jackson Chameleon puzzle,” Gotthard said. “Jackson disappeared from the U.S. at three years old, but Abbie’s mother had to donate blood for him five years later. I searched customs for that period of time and found clearance within a couple hours after she’d donated. The blood was delivered to a hospital in Shanghai for a child with the last name Jack.”

  Rae picked up the thread. “In the Asian culture a male child is called Son of, as in Jackson, meaning Son of Jack.”

  “So what did that give us?” Hunter asked.

  “That opened up a world of information on one Sigmund Jack who lived in the United States at the right time to have gotten Abbie’s mother pregnant.”

  “Where is he now?”

  Gotthard took over. “Dead. We traced his son’s life until Jackson went into MI6 in his early twenties then disappeared two years ago. Joe tapped his UK contacts to find out MI6 is after Jackson, too. They think Jackson is behind the death of two powerful supporters of the former prime minister and possibly behind the former prime minister’s death.”

  “So why would Jackson kill the current one, who basically opposes so many things the prior prime minister supported?” Hunter wondered aloud.

  “Only the Fratelli can answer that one,” Rae said.

  “Then we have to find him.” Hunter stood away from the desk. “He wants me there for some reason. I’m going.” He looked at Retter to let him know he wouldn’t be stopped.

  “We’ll let you go,” Retter countered. “But I’m telling you now if you make any move that doesn’t put the security of this nation first I’ll take you out myself.”

  “Done. I’ll leave for Colorado tonight.”

  Retter added, “You’re not going anywhere alone.”

  Hunter started to argue, then realized he needed someone with him. One agent in particular. “Do I get to pick who goes with me?”

  Korbin looked at Rae, then at the others. No one spoke up.

  Retter said, “That’ll be up to the agent.”

  Chapter Forty-three

  Hunter stopped hiking within a stand of bare aspens protected from the wintry winds by a snow-capped granite ridge rising on his left. A single mountain chalet straight ahead sparkled bright as a spotlighted diamond in a dark room. The helicopter had deposited him and Brendan “Mako” Masterson two miles away, where they’d donned winter gear. The temperature plunged into the thirties, mild for nighttime in the Rocky Mountains in spring.

  He studied the brightly lit trilevel lodge positioned innocently in a dip in the mountains north of Idaho Springs, Colorado.

  A perfect spot for a private party to celebrate the visit of an international dignitary.

  A perfect spot for an assassination attempt.

  Mako dropped his pack alongside Hunter’s, white puffs striking the cold air when he breathed. He read his watch and quietly said, “Time: twenty-one oh two, sixteen seconds.”

  “Check,” Hunter answered.

  Fifty-eight minutes until someone died.

  He considered where the sniper might choose to position himself along the ridge west of the house. Tall windows stood around the curved third floor, which faced west, toward the spectacular sunsets. “Shooter could be anywhere from one hundred feet to three hundred feet up there.” He nodded, indicating the obvious location for the closest shot through the glass windows. “I’ll determine the prime minister’s position in the building. You cover the grounds and see if the shooter’s got any eyes down here. Once we split up, stay far enough off me that he doesn’t see you or he’ll change the game.”

  “Got it.” Armed heavily and dressed in a pewter-gray arctic suit just like Hunter’s, Mako’s wide frame melded into the night when he moved away.

  Hunter owed him for agreeing to be his backup. No one volunteered, that’s for sure. With a little luck, he’d figured Jackson’s intentions correctly.

  If not, Abbie would pay for his mistake.

  Bile stung his throat at the thought of her out here terrified, because Jackson would have to keep her close enough to play out his next move.

  Thinking about that instead of the mission was fruitless and dangerous. He had to focus to have any hope of getting her back alive.

  Hunter moved around to the left, lifting his binoculars to study the quiet cocktail mixer going on. All activity appeared to be contained on the third level of the seven-thousand-square-foot vacation home belonging to British friends of the prime minister.

  The UK leader came into view among a group of men, allowing no clear shot… yet. Hunter’s radio clicked once.

  Mako had detected someone on the grounds.

  Hunter lowered his binoculars, searching for… there.
A tall man with a thick build moved carefully from the building to vehicles strewn across rutted, snow-covered ground to…

  Hunter focused in on the man’s right cheek… a scar.

  Fuck a duck. There was the guy who had been in Brugmann’s compound in Kauai and at the Wentworth party.

  Need a location, Gotthard,” Joe said, striding across the research analyst’s area in BAD’s underground operation center.

  Gotthard hit the refresh button on the chat board where he and Linette left posts on Saturdays. They used a different site for every day of the week and the seven chat boards changed monthly. “Everyone set?”

  Joe paused. “Yes. Twenty teams spread across the country, ready to contact bomb squads and emergency warning systems in every city. Plus our five best bomb specialists. If the detonation time for the bomb was twenty-two hundred Eastern Standard Time it would have happened already. Must be tied to the Colorado event if it’s really going down tonight.”

  “Too bad we don’t have twenty demolition experts as good as Korbin.”

  “No shit.”

  Gotthard hit the refresh button and Linette’s message appeared. “Got something.” He decoded as he copied her text. “She sent coordinates. Strike is in Chicago in twenty-three minutes.”

  Joe stabbed the air with his fist. “Fucking A! Retter and Korbin are in Chicago. Get the coordinates to Retter and I’ll contact local authorities for emergency management in Chicago.”

  Gotthard picked up his phone, hoping Linette had covered her ass with the Fratelli. She was obviously involved up to her neck.

  Retter straddled a Suzuki GSX-R motorcycle, studying the traffic rolling past Chicago’s courthouse. Citizens unaware their city might be scheduled in some terrorist’s Day-Timer for tonight. He glanced around at his team, who were on identical black Jixers.