Moms in Black

by Lois Winston

  “It was downhill after that. Affairs that he’d deny at first. Every time I’d threaten to leave, Dr. Jekyll would suddenly reappear and promise to change. And he would—for a few months. Then Mr. Hyde would show up again. I finally had enough of the roller coaster ride and called it quits.”

  “How did he take it?”

  “Not well. Michael likes being in control. He also doesn’t like spending money on anyone but himself. Now he’s got alimony and child support payments, which are frequently delinquent. Ever since he remarried, he’s even more delinquent. I finally filed contempt charges, and my lawyer is going to request wage garnishment at the next hearing. That’s really going to set him off.”

  Gavin leaned back and steepled his fingers under his chin. “I’ve been thinking about what you said regarding his motives. You could be right, that he’s doing this for the money and not because of some newfound religious or political fanaticism.”

  “Trust me, he’s definitely doing this for money. Anything Michael does, he does for money. If he’s in the process of planning a massive terrorist attack, it’s not over some newfound ideology; it’s because someone promised him several million dollars to blow something or someone up.”

  ~*~

  Alpha and Delta Teams spent the next several days getting nowhere. Not only had Michael’s phone so far not yielded any secrets, monitoring his conversations had also revealed no useful information.

  Gavin held a briefing with the two teams in the third-floor conference room. Alpha Team sat on one side of the table, Delta Team across from them, and Gavin at the head. No one looked happy.

  “It’s almost as if he knows he’s being monitored,” said Hanna.

  “His silence certainly speaks volumes,” added Allison, the Delta Mom who had given Cassandra the thumbs-up sign days before after she’d switched the phones.

  Stunned, Cassandra’s jaw dropped. “You can’t possibly think—”

  “What else should we think?” added one of the other Delta Moms, a woman named Esther. “The guy and his wife hardly speak to each other. Don’t you think that’s pretty odd behavior for a recently married couple, especially a couple expecting twins? Not only aren’t we picking up on anything useful, we’re hardly even hearing any mundane chitchat, just mostly the television blaring.”

  “Which is probably done to mask their real conversations,” said Virginia, the third member of Delta Team.

  “They’re acting like they know their house is bugged,” said Esther. “Someone had to have tipped him off.”

  “Maybe he’s paranoid and just being overly cautious,” said Cassandra. “Maybe his wife has no clue what he’s up to, maybe—”

  “Maybe we’ve got ourselves a mole,” said Allison staring pointedly at her.

  The two other Delta Moms also glared at her with equally accusatory expressions. Cassandra glanced at Noreen and Hanna, but they had both averted their eyes.

  “You all saw and heard what happened at the restaurant,” she said. “You know I didn’t tip him off.”

  “Doesn’t mean you didn’t do it at some other point,” said Virginia.

  Cassandra fought back tears. How could they possibly think she was complicit in a terrorist plot? She turned to Gavin. “Is that what you think, too?”

  Instead of answering her, his gaze swept across the table, capturing the attention of each of the other Moms. “I won’t have wild speculation setting you against one another. There is no place in this organization for catty schoolgirl behavior.”

  “You’ve tasked us with thinking outside the box,” said Allison. “You have to consider all possibilities.”

  Gavin nodded. “Yes, I do. You have a case to make, act like the professionals you’re supposed to be. Bring me proof, not accusations based on wild speculation.”

  “Did it ever occur to you,” said Esther, “that a bit of wild speculation on the part of Alpha Team might have prevented—”

  “We had no way of knowing that would happen,” said Noreen, glaring across the table.

  “Maybe you should have,” said Virginia.

  Gavin slammed his hand on the table. “Enough!” He stood and walked toward the door. Before leaving the room, he turned back to them. “All of you get back to work. We have a terrorist to stop. If you can’t work together and focus on the job, get the hell out of here.”

  He slammed the door behind him. As soon as Gavin departed, Delta Team rose as one. Avoiding eye contact with Alpha Team and saying not a word, they exited behind Gavin.

  Hanna placed her hand on Cassandra’s forearm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to suggest you had anything to do with this.”

  “They came with an agenda,” added Noreen.

  Cassandra nodded to acknowledge their comments but didn’t say anything. She needed to get away from all of them before she broke down and made a fool of herself. “I need some air,” she finally said and made a beeline for the door.

  “Would you like some company?” Hanna called after her.

  Cassandra shook her head as she closed the door behind her.

  ~*~

  Damn! The last thing Gavin needed was a rift between his teams. He wanted to throttle all three Delta members. They’d obviously orchestrated this attack against Cassandra ahead of time. But why? Because their search to uncover Schuster’s plan had so far failed? What kind of crap was that, trying to plant doubt about Cassandra in his mind? She was no more to blame for their lack of success than he was.

  He swung open the fire door at the end of the corridor and stormed downstairs to the basement gym. Once inside he threw the interior door bolt and disabled the camera feed. At the far end of the gym he stripped off his clothes, tossing them aside. Naked, he attacked a hundred-pound bag with his bare knuckles.

  Right cross. Left hook. Right cross. Over and over Gavin pounded the hell out of the bag. Sweat stung his eyes and poured down his body, spraying across the floor as he continued to assault the bag, swinging left, right, left. Jab. Cross. Hook. Uppercut. Jab. Cross. Hook. Uppercut. He kept at it for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, finally collapsing in a heap on the sweat-slickened floor after thirty minutes.

  Too spent to move, he lay there on his back for several minutes, one arm draped across his forehead, forcing air into his lungs. Still angry.

  After about five minutes he leveraged himself to his feet, grabbed his clothes and headed into the locker room to shower. When he returned to the gym, he found Hawkeye mopping up his sweat. “How the hell did you get in? I bolted the door.”

  Hawkeye nodded toward the office. “Been here the whole time. Haven’t seen you pummel a bag like that in ages. Not since back in our Corps days.”

  Gavin grunted.

  “You need to get yourself laid, man.”

  “You need to mind your own business.”

  Hawkeye shrugged. “Just saying. It ain’t natural.”

  “Neither is veganism. When was the last time you sank your teeth into a good steak?”

  Hawkeye leaned on the mop handle and considered the question. “Around about the last time you sank your—”

  Gavin was out the door before Hawkeye finished his sentence. He didn’t need sex; he needed to bring down terrorists. Besides, he’d tried the no-strings-attached route. It gave him about as much pleasure as his own hand. He’d rather do without. Celibacy wasn’t so bad once you got used to it. Or so he kept telling himself.

  Deciding to let Delta Team stew for a bit, he headed back upstairs to talk to Alpha Team. “Where’s Cassandra?” he asked as he approached Noreen and Hanna.

  “She left,” said Noreen.

  “What do you mean?”

  “She was really upset,” said Hanna. “Said she had to get some air and walked out nearly an hour ago. She hasn’t returned.”

  “This day keeps getting better and better,” muttered Gavin.

  “Anything you want us to do?” asked Noreen.

  “Discover Schuster’s plan.”

  “Working on it.
”

  “Work faster.”

  Gavin headed back to his office to grab his jacket. On the way he consulted the app on his phone that gave him the location of all his team members. The GPS showed Cassandra at home. Had she decided to quit, taking the coward’s way out by not even telling him to his face?

  She didn’t strike him as a quitter. However, he’d been surprised that she hadn’t stood up for herself more against Delta Team’s accusations. Instead she’d tucked tail and slinked off to lick her wounds. But she’d taken her MAC phone with her instead of leaving it at the office. This gave him hope that maybe she did just need a bit of space and time to regroup.

  He needed her. Cassandra Davenport was their best hope at stopping her lunatic ex-husband from whatever attack he was planning. Gavin didn’t want to lose her—for that reason and if he were being honest with himself, another he tried to block from his mind. She’d awakened feelings he’d thought long dead.

  TEN

  Cassandra looked through the front door peephole to find Gavin standing on her porch. He might not be the last man on the planet she wanted to see right now, but he ran a close second. Reluctantly, she swung open the door. They stared at each other for a long moment. Finally, Gavin said, “I don’t remember giving you the rest of the day off.”

  “I don’t stay where I’m not wanted.”

  “Who said you’re not wanted?”

  “You didn’t exactly stand up for me earlier.”

  “You didn’t exactly stand up for yourself.”

  “I tried.”

  “Hardly.”

  “So that makes me guilty?”

  “No, it makes you a coward.”

  “Good to know.”

  She started to close the door on him, but he grabbed it out of her hand. “Are you going to invite me in, or should we stand here and let all the heat escape from your house? If you’re quitting, you need to think about saving money, not wasting it.”

  She exhaled a huff of annoyance. “Fine. Come inside if that’s what you want.” She turned and walked toward the living room. Behind her she heard him close the front door and follow her.

  Cassandra positioned herself in front of the fireplace, her hands on her hips. She watched as Gavin scoped out the room, his gaze moving from the Oriental rug covering a portion of the hardwood floor, to the seating area flanking the fireplace, to the dining room beyond. Without being invited, he took a seat on one of the two facing sofas separated by a matching upholstered ottoman.

  “Why are you here?” she asked.

  “I think that’s obvious.”

  She didn’t want to play games, not with him or anyone else. She walked over to the sofa opposite him and sat. “You led me to believe everyone at MAC worked together. Delta blindsided me. All of a sudden I was back in junior high, the new kid surrounded by bullies on the playground.”

  “Why didn’t you stand your ground?”

  “Why didn’t you defend me?”

  “I did.”

  “No, you told them to bring you proof instead of hurling accusations. There’s a big difference.”

  Gavin ran his hands through his hair and blew out a breath. “I knew they wouldn’t find any proof.”

  “I didn’t know that. From where I sat you acknowledged the possibility that I could be a mole. I can’t work for someone who doesn’t trust me.”

  “I trust you.”

  “You should have told them.”

  Gavin leaned forward and rested his forearms on his thighs. “Look, everyone is hyper-tense and frustrated. We thought once we had switched the phones, we’d discover a goldmine of information that would enable us to take Schuster down immediately.”

  “But it hasn’t worked out that way, and for some reason I’m being blamed for your lack of progress,” she said.

  “You’re not being blamed.”

  “Could’ve fooled me. I felt like a sacrificial lamb at that meeting. Delta Team isn’t gathering any useful intel from their eavesdropping, so it must be the new kid’s fault.”

  “They were wrong to jump to that conclusion.”

  “And you were wrong not to defend me.”

  “You’re right. I should have silenced them immediately. I’m sorry.”

  She leaned back and folded her arms across her chest. “I don’t know that I can work with people who suspect me of some ulterior motive, especially in something as nefarious as terrorism.”

  “I understand, but I need you.”

  “No, you don’t. I made the switch. I’m really not of any further use to you.”

  “That’s not true. You know Schuster better than any of us. We still have no idea what he’s up to. We don’t even know if he’s built the bomb yet, much less where he plans to set it off or when. Are the materials stored in his house? Elsewhere? Was he only a pawn who was used to purchase the materials for someone else? Is that person calling the shots?”

  “You’ve been following him. You should know something by now.”

  “Following him has gotten us nowhere. We’ve come up empty from every angle—the surveillance, his texts and emails, his calendar, even the bug in his phone. That bomb could already be in position, and we’re no closer to finding out a damn thing about it. We don’t know if he’s targeting a shopping mall, a movie theater, a police station, or a school. He could have his sights set on something even bigger. Innocent lives are at stake, and right now we’re impotent to protect them.”

  “Maybe it’s time to call in the FBI or Homeland Security.”

  “We can’t. We have nothing to give them. They’d be just as powerless to stop him.”

  She knew all of this, and she was just as worried as Gavin and the rest of MAC. All that really mattered was preventing another terrorist attack. She owed that to her father, her brother, and all the other victims of terrorism. By running off and sulking she had acted as immature as the Mean Girls of Delta Team. She needed to swallow her pride and go back to work. “You’ve made your point. What more do you need me to do?”

  “Get inside his house.”

  And she thought his last idea was loony tunes! Then again, thanks to Gavin’s last plan, she had switched out Michael’s phone without him suspecting anything.

  “Assuming we can pull this off, then what?”

  “We search for the information we need to stop him. Details have to exist somewhere, either on paper or stored on a computer.”

  Cassandra frowned. “I’m no lawyer, but I have seen enough cop dramas to know evidence found during an illegal search is inadmissible in court.”

  “True. If we find a bomb, we’ll call in an anonymous tip from a burner phone, but I’m hoping we don’t find one.”

  “Why? I thought we wanted to stop him from carrying out his plan.”

  “Finding a bomb in that house will only net us Schuster. The Internet makes it very easy for any fool to build incendiary devices. I want the mastermind who tasked that fool. Your ex has all the markings of a lone wolf. However, all lone wolves are really nothing more than puppets. Someone else pulls the strings, setting them on their path to destruction, whether by incendiary videos and social media postings or face-to-face contact.

  “In your ex-husband’s case, I don’t believe his conversion occurred merely through Internet videos and Twitter feeds. We need to take down the puppet master. If not, he’ll just recruit more puppets.”

  “You think this puppet master is here in the States, not someone in the Middle East or elsewhere?”

  “I do. The more I think about it, the more sense it makes, especially if you’re right about Schuster’s involvement being purely for money.”

  “It has to be. I can’t see Michael unfurling a prayer rug and prostrating himself to pray to Allah several times a day. In the time he’s been under surveillance, have you ever found him anywhere near a mosque?”

  “Not once.”

  Cassandra stood. It was time to get back to work. “I suppose you have a plan for getting us into Michael
’s McMansion?”

  He grinned. “Naturally.”

  ~*~

  Cassandra had to admit Gavin’s plan was pure genius. Of course, it helped to have friends in high places, friends who could stage a fake gas leak—no questions asked—that necessitated the evacuation of several square blocks of homes.

  Carla Jordan had called in favors of her own, securing the help of some of her former team members to pose as gas company emergency crews and outfitting vehicles to masquerade as those from the utility company. Any calls from the residents in the area to 911 or the gas company were immediately intercepted and rerouted to Noreen and Hanna, posing as operators.

  No one had mentioned anything to her, but Cassandra suspected Delta Team knew nothing about tonight’s operation. She hadn’t seen any of the three women since they walked out of the conference room after accusing her of being a mole. For all she knew, Gavin had canned the lot of them, but she decided not to raise the subject, not with him nor with Noreen or Hanna. She figured she’d find out eventually. Right now, Delta Team was the least of her worries.

  To play up the urgency of the situation, the fake workers first secretly released gas canisters throughout the upscale Millburn neighborhood to saturate the air with a heavy gas odor. Two work crews had cordoned off the area surrounding the manholes at either end of Michael’s street, pretending to be working on the problem.

  Michael and his new wife lived on a street of ten newly built homes, one more ostentatious than the next and all at least three times the size of Cassandra’s Craftsman bungalow. From a location several blocks away she and Gavin sat in the Johnson Brothers Plumbing & Supply Co. commercial van, monitoring the crews’ progress on a video feed.

  Dressed as other gas workers, Carla’s people raced from house to house, banging on doors to evacuate residents, giving them no time to grab any belongings. Few residents argued once they heard the entire neighborhood could blow at any moment. People were herded down the block where gas company buses waited to transport them to a safe location until the source of the leak had been identified and contained.