by Lisa Harris
“You doing okay?” Jack asked.
“I’m grateful he actually decided to show up, though I keep waiting for something to deviate from the plan.”
“Hopefully we’ve already considered all the variables that could happen.”
“I don’t know. These guys are smart and have their own agendas. If they didn’t want this information so badly, they wouldn’t be here.” Her thoughts shifted to a worst-case scenario. “Or there’s always the chance they’re planning to simply take the information, then eliminate him. He hasn’t exactly made friends in this business.”
As much as her father had hurt her, she didn’t want to see him killed in cold blood. And they still needed him to help them take down the two spy rings.
The sound of a vehicle shifted her attention to the far side of the abandoned building, where a dark sedan drove up.
“Someone’s here.”
She heard Commander Sinclair’s voice in her earpiece. “Hold your positions.”
She felt the familiar rush of adrenaline. Their last encounter with Cheng had ended in losing him. They wouldn’t have another chance if they lost him this time.
“Second vehicle arriving on the property,” the commander said. “Hold your position until I give the signal.”
Three men got out of the first vehicle, including Cheng. The men with him, both armed and one carrying a duffel bag, stayed a few steps behind while Cheng approached her father.
Aubrey forced herself to keep breathing, wishing she could hear the conversation, but they’d decided not to put a wire on him, fearing the consequences if it was discovered.
Another vehicle pulled around the corner of the warehouse, and three men, presumably Russian agents, got out with their own weapons and duffel bag. For a second, all six suspects’ focus was caught on each other, and the two groups pulled their weapons. A second later the commander’s voice blasted over a bullhorn for the six suspects to drop their weapons and get on the ground.
“Move in now.” The commander’s order came through her earpiece. “Go . . . go . . . go.”
Agents and local LEOs hit the ground running, following the plan to converge on the suspects. Clearly taken off guard by the show of force, the six men started to drop their weapons.
An explosion rocked the ground beside Aubrey as she ran toward the suspects, throwing her to the ground. Smoke filled the air as a second explosion went off, followed by a third. Her hand scraped against gravel as she got up and struggled to find her balance. She could hear the commander shouting over their com system, but she couldn’t understand what he was saying over the ringing of her ears.
Debris fluttered to the ground beside her. One of the large doors of the abandoned building had been blown away in a blast. An agent sat on the ground, holding his arm. A second agent looked as if he’d been hit on the side of his head.
And they still had no idea where the attack was coming from.
“Stay down.”
She could hear someone’s voice but couldn’t see anyone because of the smoke. Someone else shouted behind her. Another explosion rang out, or was it gunfire? She couldn’t tell. Her eyes burned as the smoke settled around her. Someone grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the building, where the smoke was dissipating. Agents were swarming the area, but those who had moved in first toward the suspects—like her and Jack—had caught the brunt of the blast.
“Take them down now.” The commander spouted the order again.
She turned back to where agents had managed to handcuff their suspects. Six men lay on the ground in a row, facedown.
Where was her father?
Jack grabbed her arm. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, but he’s not here, Jack. He was standing right over there when the explosion went off.”
Or was he?
She replayed in her mind what had happened. The commander had ordered the suspects to get onto the ground, before he ordered the agents to advance. Six men had been standing there, plus her father.
No.
He hadn’t been there. But if not, then where had he gone? Her lungs burned, still breathing in the smoke, as she ran to where his Jeep was still parked. If he’d known about the explosions—if he was responsible for them—he had an escape plan.
He’d played all of them, never intending to take the Feds’ offer of protection.
Charles Ramsey was gone.
WHILE AGENTS TOOK CHENG and the rest of the suspects into custody, Aubrey stood with Jack, Agent Brewster, and Commander Sinclair fifty feet away from what remained of the side of the warehouse. The Corpus Christi bomb squad had already arrived to start investigating the explosives and to ensure the area around the abandoned building was clear of any more, and an ambulance had taken two of the agents to the closest hospital for non-life-threatening injuries.
But they still had no idea where her father was.
What they did know was that there was no sign of him or the three hundred thousand dollars—times two—in cash that had been brought for the information he’d promised his handlers.
“He never intended to let the FBI protect him,” Aubrey said.
“Then where is he?” Jack asked. “He has to know it’s going to be almost impossible to leave the city. We’ve got the entire state looking for him. Airports, train stations, and bus stations will be impossible to get through.”
“He might have a second passport,” Brewster said.
“Maybe,” Jack said, “but we’ll get his face up on every news station, and every officer will be looking for him. It’s not going to be easy, and he has to know that.”
Aubrey took a step back, still hearing a slight ringing in her ears from the explosion. What would her father do in this situation? He’d clearly planted the explosives as a distraction—not caring if anyone got hurt—so he could escape in the confusion. And that part of his plan had worked. But how did he think he was going to escape?
Unless . . .
“She mentioned they were going by boat,” Aubrey said.
“Who?” Brewster asked.
“My grandmother,” Aubrey said. “She said that my father promised to take her on a boat to Australia. But she gets confused. What if what he really told her was that he was leaving on a boat?”
That had to be it. It was the only thing that made sense.
“What kind of boat?” Jack asked.
Her mind ran through the options. “It would be easier to slip out of the country on a freighter as opposed to anything commercial.”
“On a cargo boat?” Brewster asked.
She nodded. “Many take on a handful of passengers all the time.”
“Is there any way to check the ships’ manifests?” Jack asked.
The commander pulled out his phone. “There has to be. I’ll find out.”
“It’s already been close to an hour,” she said. “There’s a good chance that if he’s on one of those ships, he’s timed it to where they’d be leaving soon, so check ships that are leaving port now.”
Fifteen minutes later, Aubrey, Jack, and Agent Brewster were speeding over the water in a helicopter, waves crashing below them. Her hunch had paid off, and it hadn’t taken long to learn that a Charles Ramsey had booked passage on a cargo ship heading for Ecuador.
Aubrey closed her eyes for a moment, giving herself permission to simply breathe and not think for the first time all day. But her mind wouldn’t stop, and instead shifted to the man sitting across from her.
Jack.
She glanced at his familiar profile, trying to ignore the crazy thoughts swimming through her head as the helo sped over the water. She’d purposely not let her mind go back to their conversation yesterday. To thoughts of the two of them, and the possibility of something romantic developing between them. How was it even possible she’d missed what he was feeling all those years ago?
But today? How would that work? They both had busy schedules and jobs, making a relationship difficult. Her mother had always told her tha
t if you love someone, it was worth making any sacrifice to make it work. That a relationship should always come first.
And did she even want to open the closed-up sections of her heart and figure out what she really felt about the man sitting across from her?
The cargo ship came into view beneath them, while a storm hovered on the horizon. She stuffed her feelings away again as Jack leaned toward her.
“You ready for this?” he asked.
She nodded, focused once again solely on the task at hand as the helicopter landed on a freighter with hundreds of shipping containers and beyond that the blue sea. They filed out of the chopper and onto the ship’s helo pad, leaving the pilot to wait for their return. The captain was already waiting for them. This was going to be her final confrontation with her father. And as much as she hated being a part of it, this was the only way to put an end to all the madness.
“How big is the ship?” Jack asked, after introductions had been made.
“Three hundred yards long. We’re carrying over forty-five hundred shipping containers.”
Aubrey frowned. There was no way off, but there were thousands of places for him to hide.
“How many people do you have on board?” she asked, shouting above the noise.
“Twenty crew members and twelve passengers.”
Brewster looked out over the bow of the ship. “And the quickest way to find him?”
“I could sound a general alarm. Passengers are required to go immediately to their assigned muster station.”
Jack nodded. “Do it.”
They headed inside behind the captain, then down a narrow flight of stairs and a narrow corridor. “Watch your step. The ship has no stabilizers, so the pitch and roll can be strong.”
The captain relayed his orders, and the loud horn bellowed across the ship, seven long and seven short blasts, sounding a general alarm. Aubrey stood behind Jack and Agent Brewster at the passengers’ assigned muster station, waiting for her father to show up.
Six of the passengers had already gathered by the time her father stepped onto the deck. It only took him a fraction of a second to realize his mistake.
“He’s running,” Aubrey shouted.
Jack scrambled to the stairs. “Where does he think he’s going?”
She held onto the white railing as she ran after him up the narrow staircase toward the upper deck. Engines roared in her ears as she watched him disappear around a corner. A second later, he was gone.
“Where is he?” she yelled.
Jack shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Aubrey frowned. They could only play cat and mouse for so long. Eventually this would end, one way or another.
“We need to split up,” Brewster said. “Keep your com lines open.”
She walked down a narrow corridor, past a small dining room. Suddenly she spotted him, starting up the stairs to another deck.
She unholstered her gun and pointed it at him. “Drop any weapons and put your hands in the air.”
He paused, then turned around. “Aubrey . . . what are you doing here? Why couldn’t you just let this go? It doesn’t have to end this way.”
“I’m not going to let you do this.”
“Do you really think you can stop me?”
“There’s nowhere left to run.”
How had it come to this? The final unraveling of a flawed relationship. She always had hope for some kind of redemption for the relationship, but now here they were in some kind of final showdown.
“Put your weapon down,” she repeated.
“And then what?”
“You’ll pay the price for betraying your country. It was you all along, wasn’t it? Rachel was telling the truth. But you thought you could use me and the FBI to get the Russians and Chinese off your back so you could disappear with their money. A clever plan, but it didn’t work.”
“You’re wrong—”
“Am I wrong about your involvement in Sean Christiansen’s death?”
“I didn’t kill him. I told you, he was alive when I left.”
“Still, you might as well have pulled the trigger. You tried to blackmail him. But you never think about the fallout, do you?”
She glanced up as a woman came down the staircase behind him.
“Get back!” Aubrey shouted.
But it was too late. Her father grabbed the woman and held his gun to her head.
“That helo you came in,” her father said, taking a step backward. “You’re both going to help me get on it.”
“They’ll never let you off this ship.”
“Then I’ll kill her.”
The woman whimpered, her eyes wide with terror.
“No,” Aubrey said, keeping her gun level. “This time, it’s over.”
She heard the clang of footsteps on the stairs behind her father. He turned, momentarily distracted.
She shouted at the woman. “Get down, now!”
As soon as the woman hit the ground, Aubrey fired, hitting her target. Her father dropped to the ground.
She tried to keep standing, but her legs were shaking as she realized what she’d just done. She’d shot her own father. She dropped to her knees, trying to stuff down the nausea.
“I shot him,” she said when Jack ran up beside her.
“You did what you had to do, and you saved more than one person’s life.”
She let him hold her on the corridor floor, thankful when he didn’t say anything else. Because there was nothing he could say that could fix this.
She might have saved lives, but at what cost? A daughter wasn’t supposed to stop her father with lethal force. It never should have come to this.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
AUBREY STARED OUT the window of the hospital waiting room at the parking lot below, unsure why she was even here. Why it mattered what the doctor was going to tell her.
But Charles Ramsey was her father, and no matter what he did or how he treated her, a part of her still somehow longed to have him show up in her life, tell her he was sorry and that she was important to him.
Which made absolutely no sense.
He never truly cared for anyone but himself. He’d walked out on her and her mother and betrayed his country. Things like that could never be erased or forgotten. And yet here she was, drinking bad coffee, pacing the floor, and praying he made it through surgery.
One of the doctors, still wearing scrubs, stepped into the room. “Aubrey . . . I’m Dr. Gregory Mantel. I want to give you an update on your father.”
She tried to read his expression as she walked up to him. “Yes.”
“We were able to remove the bullet and patch up the damage. He’s still not out of the woods, but at this point, unless he develops a secondary infection, I believe he should make a full recovery.”
After which he’d be taken into FBI custody. Aubrey frowned at the thought, wondering how she could still feel sorry for him despite everything he’d done.
And everything he hadn’t done.
“Thank you. I appreciate it.”
“There’s one more thing,” the doctor said. “He’s still a bit groggy, but he would like to see you.”
“I . . .” The request hit her squarely like a punch in the gut. “I’m not sure I can do that. The last time I saw him didn’t go so well, and besides that, I’m not sure I have anything to say to him. I was just . . . just waiting to make sure he got out of surgery okay.”
She took a step back, unsure of why she was explaining to the doctor her reasons for not wanting to see her own father.
“It’s your decision. I just wanted to give you an update and pass on his request.”
“Of course. Thank you.”
She moved back to the window as the doctor left the room, trying to untangle her emotions. No matter how hard she tried to let him go, Charles Ramsey still had a hold on her.
“I’m sorry I took so long.” Jack stepped into the room with two cups of coffee. “Any news yet?”
“Yes.” She pushed back the looming wall of emotion. “The doctor just stopped by. My father’s out of surgery and, given time, should recover.”
“Good. I know my boss will be glad to hear that. We need his testimony.” He handed her one of the coffees. “I’m sorry . . . that didn’t come out the way I meant it to.”
She shook her head. “You’re fine. Even I’m not sure if I should feel sad or relieved or mad . . .”
“Whatever you feel is okay. I don’t think there’s a precedent for something like this.”
“I guess they don’t make sympathy cards for finding out your father was a spy and a traitor?”
Jack chuckled. “You’ve still got your sense of humor. I’m guessing that’s a good sign.”
“I suppose. But there is something else.” Her smile faded. “He wants to see me.”
“And I’m guessing you don’t want to.”
“I don’t know.” She took a sip of her coffee, wishing this wasn’t so hard. “Do you think I should?”
“I can’t make that decision for you, but I do know that sometimes forgiveness is more for the person who needs to forgive than the person who needs to receive it. Even if that’s all that’s left to be said.”
She knew he was right, but how was she supposed to forgive the one person who’d hurt her more than anyone else?
I just don’t know how to do this, Jesus.
She sat down in one of the cushioned chairs, thankful the small waiting room was empty. “I know we’re supposed to forgive, seventy times seven, and yet this time . . . I don’t know if I can. When I think about what he’s done—the lying, the betrayal of both my mom and me, and on top of that of his country. How am I supposed to forgive that? How am I supposed to act like nothing happened?”
“Forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting everything that happened. It doesn’t mean that everything will suddenly be okay again, and it certainly doesn’t automatically wipe away the hurt. It probably won’t even mean your relationship is repaired. But it might bring you the freedom you’ve never found.”
She heard the emotion in his voice and knew he was thinking about what she needed, but forgiveness wasn’t something she could simply dole out like a vending machine.
