by Dana Marton
“Lara Jordan’s name is in your file,” his handler said, his voice carefully neutral.
Which set off all kinds of warning bells. Reid stiffened. He was SDDU, Special Designation Defense Unit, a covert commando group that worked mostly abroad. He’d been investigating a terrorist training camp in the mountains of Afghanistan when he’d discovered a U.S. link that had led him back stateside to a domestic cell here. Since the FBI was already investigating them, contact was made with the Bureau. And somehow they’d talked Colonel Wilson, the man who ran the SDDU, into loaning Reid out to them.
He wasn’t used to anyone being able to see his file. Then he realized Adams couldn’t possibly be referring to his SDDU file. The FBI had to have their own file on him. And since he’d worked on the Hopeville case with them—although with another handler—of course, they would have that information.
“I know her from the Hopeville operation,” he said, information they obviously already had.
“Are you the father of those children?” came the next question.
Okay, so they’d done the math. Maybe it would have been smarter to say no, but he found that he couldn’t deny his boys again. “Yes.” And he needed to get them back ASAP. “I want that CD.”
“No can do. This is too important.”
“So are my boys, dammit!”
Adams wasn’t giving him anything. He’d always been a cold bastard, the type to never bend. Reid had always hated that, but never more than now, when something personal was at stake.
“You know the drill. It’s two lives against the lives of hundreds or possibly thousands. I’m not going to make any rash decisions here. If there’s an exchange, we’ll be handling it. As I said, we have professional negotiators for times like this. People who aren’t personally involved in the case.”
The only reason Reid didn’t tell Adams where he could shove his professional negotiators was because he’d expected exactly that answer. Keep cool, come up with another plan.
“I want those bastards,” he said, because it was the truth, and because Adams would get suspicious if he gave up without protest.
“And you can’t have them. You’re too emotionally involved in this. You’re off the case.”
Which wasn’t completely unexpected either. Not that the lack of surprise made accepting the words any easier. But Reid knew the system well enough to know that arguing would be futile. He also knew the system well enough to know how to play it.
“I want to keep guarding Miss Jordan. She already knows me. She’s comfortable with me. It’ll keep me out of the way.” Remaining civil practically killed him, but he got the words out somehow.
Adams hesitated. “In light of all that you’ve done for us, okay. Yes.”
“I appreciate it. I have a place nobody knows about. I’ll take her there once she’s had a chance to settle down a little.” He rolled his shoulders to relax them. “So what’s on the CD?”
“Being worked on as we speak.”
“Bob?” He knew the resident code cracker, Bob Barnaby. They’d worked together on the Hopeville case. “Let me know as soon as you have anything.”
“If you promise to stay put and stay out of trouble.” Silence again. “Look, I know this is hard for you. I have a daughter. I didn’t even know you…”
“Yeah. Me, neither.”
“That’s tough. Must have been a hell of a surprise.”
He wasn’t about to discuss that with Adams. “You just do whatever it takes to get them back.”
“You bet.”
He ended that call then rang Adams from Kenny’s phone so the FBI would have that number and could start investigating. Ben must have gotten started on it, but he had no idea what the man had learned so far.
“Okay, this is it. Whatever you find, let me know,” he told Adams. Then he hung up and took Kenny’s phone apart, found the transmitter, removed it and put it in the ashtray in the middle of the table. He switched to his own phone when he was done with that, and made another call.
“Hey, Carly. I have a favor to ask.” He didn’t have to identify himself—his SDDU code on Carly’s display would do that. She was also a member of the unit. “Shoot.”
“The FBI is working on a CD. I need a copy. The guy whose account you’re looking for once you hack into Quantico’s mainframe is Bob Barnaby.”
“Piece of cake.” Carly chuckled into the phone. “Want me to get the cure for cancer while I’m at it? Have I ever mentioned that I’m kind of attached to the idea of seeing my kids graduate from kindergarten? I mean in person, not from pictures while I sit in federal prison.”
“I wouldn’t ask if there were another way. My boys were kidnapped.”
A moment of silence on the other end. “Are you playing with me? Are you dangling an irresistible challenge in front of my nose as a joke? Because if you are, Reid Graham, I’m coming to get you. And you’re not going to like it when I get there.”
She was a pro at sounding like the queen of mean, one woman he would have hated to count among his enemies.
“You don’t have kids. So what is this about?” she drilled him.
“Fourteen-month-old twins, Zak and Nate. Long story.”
“I bet.” The voice had a smile in it now. “All right, you sly dog. But when this is over, I want to hear all about it. And I do mean details.”
He could hear clicking on the other end. She was on her laptop already.
“I’ll call you when I have anything,” she promised.
He set his phone down, his guts twisting. “I’ll bring them back,” he told Lara, who’d just about gotten free. He pulled her back, onto his lap, against his better judgment, and put his arms around her.
Normally, he wasn’t the snuggling kind. He couldn’t say he’d ever wanted to just hold a woman. And if emotional upheaval was at hand, he usually ran for the nearest exit. But he needed to be holding her now. Ironic because she didn’t seem to be able to get away from him fast enough.
He let her go with a sigh after a few unsatisfactory moments.
“Why did you tell those people that you’re the boys’ father?” she demanded. “I thought you didn’t believe me.”
“I was an idiot before. I’m sorry.” He hesitated. He wasn’t the type of guy who discussed his past, as a rule, ever. Partially that came from his job, partially from his personality. But as he looked into her eyes, he felt he owed her an explanation.
“Look, about a million years ago when I was a young pup, I had this older girlfriend. She had a kid already. She wanted another. We gave it a good try. Nothing happened. I figured since she already had a kid—” He shrugged.
“You thought something was wrong with you.”
“Then a couple of years back, I had a wife.” He pushed away those dark memories. He didn’t want to think of Leila’s broken body, the grave on the side of that damned mountain in Afghanistan where he’d buried her. “Anyway, nothing happened there either. So I was pretty sure.
“Plus there was this other thing. I caught some shrapnel to a sensitive area at one point.”
“Ouch.”
“You’re telling me. So the doctor said I might have, you know, trouble from that later.”
Her red-rimmed eyes blinked. “You had a wife?” She stared at him, storm clouds gathering on her face.
“Long story.” He definitely wasn’t going to talk about that. To anyone. Ever.
She took a wobbly step back. “While you were in Hopeville?” Another layer of hurt was added to her voice, her violet eyes widening with the pain.
Okay, so he hadn’t always been truthful with her. Still, it stung that she was so ready to assume the worst about him. “I’m a conscienceless bastard for the most, but not that much of a bastard. A vote of confidence would be nice here.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You’ve been lying to me from the get-go. I’m not going to apologize. What happened to her?”
“She was killed.” Along with two hundred forty-two innocent men, wo
men and children—most of a small Afghan village. Because of him.
REID WAS HER ONLY HOPE, and he was the most terrible last resort a desperate woman could have, Lara thought as the drugs wore off. Hours had passed while the two of them waited for a call, some clue they could follow. He wasn’t just bad luck for her, he was bad luck for all women, it seemed. He’d had a wife. And she’d been killed. He hadn’t said that it’d been his fault, but the look on his face told a grim story. His face had been so hard she thought his cheekbones would crack.
She wondered whether his tragic marriage happened before or after he’d come to Hopeville to mess up her life forever. It didn’t matter. She had little claim on him. And still, when she thought of him walking away from Hopeville, leaving her behind, heartbroken and pregnant, to marry another woman, her heart twisted with pain.
“Will you tell me about her?” She bit her lip. It wasn’t like her to be a masochist. Maybe he wouldn’t answer. God, she needed to get out of here. She moved away from him, walking to the hall closet for her coat.
“No.”
And she nodded, equally disappointed and relieved.
He came around her to block the front door. “And you’re not going anywhere. How are you feeling?” He searched her face.
“Better. My heart is still ripped out, but the drugs are wearing off, so at least I can think. You can’t expect me to sit still here.” It was midafternoon. She couldn’t stand the thought of all those hours her babies had already spent without her.
“So what, you’re planning a statewide house-to-house search? They can be anywhere. Before we act, we need information to act on. I know waiting is pain—”
His cell phone rang.
“Thanks. I owe you one,” he said to whoever was calling. Then he walked over to Ben’s laptop on the coffee table.
She followed, needing to know what information was coming in.
He opened his e-mail. He had a single message in his otherwise empty inbox. She must have had ten thousand in her own. Maybe he never saved anything, as a security measure.
The sender field was blank. The message said, Here is the first file. Still working on the rest.
She watched over his shoulder as he opened the attachment and scrolled through information that meant little to her. “What is it?”
“The ingredient list for some kind of chemical compound.” He scrolled some more. “No, never mind. That’s just the carrying agent.” His finger stopped on the keyboard. “Oh, hell.”
“What?”
“PX12. A virus originally engineered as a bioweapon by our own fine government. Then abandoned when it proved to be too difficult to control.”
“How deadly is it?” she barely dared to ask.
“Enough to take out a couple of thousand people by New Year’s if it’s released at Christmas. And as it’s passed on… By Easter, we’re talking about a hundred thousand deaths.”
She sat suddenly, the strength going out of her knees. She’d suspected that he was involved in something pretty bad, something she didn’t even want to know about. But this was worse than she’d thought. And now her babies were in the middle of it. She couldn’t breathe all of a sudden. “When?” she asked, stunned. “Where?”
“That’s the million-dollar question. Let’s hope there’s information about that in one of the other files. In the meantime, I know someone who might know more about this stuff.” He pulled out his cell phone and dialed.
“Hey. I’m going to read you a list of nasties. Can you tell me who handles this stuff in the New York–Philly area?” He read the list of ingredients for the carrying agent then waited for the answer. “That’s fine. Call me back when you have it.”
He stood to stretch his legs, his expression thoughtful, as if he were searching through a catalog of information in his head, trying to look for something, anything, that would give them a clue, a connection. He was calm, but not relaxed. More like the complete silence of the land before a major earthquake or other natural disaster. There was something foreboding in the way he measured his steps.
She walked out to the kitchen for a glass of water, her mouth dry as baby powder. Side effect of the drugs she’d been given, no doubt. Now that they’d worn off, panic was gripping her muscles again, nothing dulling the pain that seared through her chest. She felt hollow without her babies, empty. She took a long drink. It didn’t help. Her hands began to shake. She was losing it.
“I can’t stand the waiting.” She slammed the plastic cup on the counter. She couldn’t stand thinking how scared Zak and Nate must be without her.
“We won’t be sitting around much longer. The second we have something to go on, we’re out of here.” He looked at the e-mail on his laptop again, then back at her. “So here are the ground rules. When I say duck, you duck. When I say stay back, you stay back. And whether I say it or not, you’ll stay quiet and stay out of the way.” His warm cinnamon gaze turned to cold quartz crystal and held hers. “If there’s trouble, you run. I’ll worry about Zak and Nate.”
“Who will worry about you?”
“Nobody needs to worry about me.”
The way he looked just then, a rock of determination and strength, she could almost believe him.
“So take whatever last chance we have here to rest. We’ll both need all our focus and strength,” he told her, his voice softening with patience.
She took off her coat. He ordered food. They ate. She didn’t taste any of it. Five minutes later, she couldn’t have said for a million dollars what the toppings on the pizza had been. The air was filled with tension. Her accusations of him, her blaming him for what had happened were part of that. She knew she wasn’t being entirely reasonable, but she was too petrified for her babies, too emotionally wrung out to take the words back.
All she could do was stare out the window at the cops who were milling around the house. Were they still hoping to find some clues out there, or were they here for protection? She asked Reid.
He shrugged. “Both, I’m guessing.”
He kept checking his e-mail. Nothing was coming in. He paced the room for hours on end. When darkness fell, he ordered food again. The cops left, but an unmarked police car with two plainclothes officers was now parked in front of the house.
Every time Reid’s phone rang, she jumped. But it was never a call that brought any answers.
“The kidnappers didn’t say when they were calling back?” she asked for at least the third time.
He shook his head. “Go to bed. Get some rest.”
“I can’t.” She kept staring out the window at a row of streetlights, hoping that somehow, by some miracle, she would see her babies being brought back.
She chewed every nail she had down to bloody stumps, and she’d never chewed her nails in her life. She was ready to start pulling her hair out by the time midnight rolled around and Reid’s phone rang again.
He picked up and listened for ten or fifteen minutes with only the occasional, brief question. “Okay. Thanks.” He hung up, then looked at a picture of a man on the phone’s display. “They might have found the virus.”
She’d been hoping for, we have the babies, but this was something. At least they were heading in the right direction. “Where?”
“At a fertility clinic not far from here. A friend of a friend knows a guy, Jason Wurst, who’s sold something like this abroad before to supplement his research grant. Couldn’t pin it on him at the time, but the man who investigated the case swears by it.”
She stared. “An ob-gyn?” What did that have to do with deadly viruses?
“Not exactly. A hard of his luck scientist who helps out at the clinic so he has access to the cryogenic freezer. His ex-wife worked on the original project for the government. She died of unknown causes a few months after the project was closed. I’m guessing our Jason here blames the government, whether or not her death was related.”
“You think the wife told him about the project? Wouldn’t that be confidential?�
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“She might have found talking about it irresistible. They were both top scientists at one time. Or she, too, might have blamed the government for falling sick and told her husband in some last, desperate act before her death.”
“So he figured out how to make the virus and whipped up a batch. Do you think he still has it with him?”
“Unless our bad guys have a cryogenic freezer at home next to their beer coolers, they wouldn’t pick the virus up until the last second, when they’re ready to distribute it.”
She was on her way to the door. Reid cut in front of her, made sure it was safe to leave before they went to the car, nodding to the cops who were still outside.
“It’d be better if you stayed here with them.” He made a last-ditch effort, not looking too surprised when she took the passenger seat without bothering to answer.
One of the cops ran over.
“I’m taking her to another, more secure location,” Reid told him. “Looks like you’re done here. Thanks, guys.”
For a while, he drove in silence. And she worked herself into a frenzy of worry. Because so many things could go wrong here.
She wished the kidnappers would call back already. She couldn’t stand not knowing what was happening with the boys. She was gripping the laptop hard enough to make the plastic creak, so she peeled her fingers off and wrapped her arms around herself.
“Why me?” Reid asked out of the blue.
A few seconds passed before she could pull her thoughts away from her worries and focus on him. “You what?”
“You obviously don’t sleep around. So, two years ago in Hopeville, why did you choose me?”
Chapter Six
Not a question Lara wanted to address in any great detail. Or at all. For, say, the next hundred years. “I’m fine. You don’t need to distract me.”
“You’re not fine. And I want an answer.”
Great. How was she supposed to explain?
“You were my first flight lesson,” she said at last, after she’d managed to pull her thoughts together. “Your what?”
She drew a slow, deep breath. “My grandmother, Granny Jordan,” she clarified, “was a member of the Ninety-nines. Not a founding member. I mean later.”
