Troubleshooters 04 Out of Control

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Ken sat there in the darkness, letting her voice flow over him, kind of like the warm rain.

  “I always told him that he should just invite himself to her apartment, go into her living room, and just say it. ‘Hello, Mother. I’m gay.’ Did he really think she would stop loving him? Her own son?”

  “I don’t know,” Ken said. “This isn’t a problem I’ve ever had to deal with, so . . .”

  “What’s your family like?” she asked.

  Oh, no. No, he so didn’t want to go there.

  “You said your father died a while ago, right? But your mother’s still alive?”

  Shit, she had a good memory. “Yeah,” he said. “She’s still living in New Haven. You know, there’s a question I’ve been wanting to ask you.”

  “About the money, right?” she asked.

  “Not exactly. But now that you mention it . . .”

  “My father owns seventeen different companies. No, eighteen now. Everything from manufacturing plumbing supplies to high tech. I own stock in practically all of them.”

  “So you’re like . . .”

  “Obscenely rich?” Savannah laughed, but it wasn’t because she thought it was funny. That little disparaging laugh was, interestingly enough, the closest he’d ever heard her come to complaining. “An heiress? You bet. Like me any better now?”

  “No.”

  She laughed again, more genuinely this time, as she squeezed his hand. “I actually believe you.”

  “Money’s just not that important to me,” Ken told her. “I mean, it’s nice to be able to pay your bills on time, but . . . if you’re not doing what you love to do, what good is it, you know?”

  Savannah was silent—he could practically hear the wheels turning in her head. “But . . . this is what you love to do, right? What we’re doing right now? Sitting in the mud, getting rained on. Eating bugs? Crashing around in the jungle?” She started to laugh.

  “I don’t crash,” he said, wounded. “I slink.”

  She laughed even harder—just on the verge of hysterical. “Either way, you are one seriously sick man.”

  Jules turned to look at her as he pulled their rental car up in front of Sam Starrett’s house.

  “No,” Alyssa said. “I am not waiting in the car.”

  This sucked. She had no excuse not to be here. WildCard Karmody’s friend John Nilsson was out of town on a training op, and his CO, Lt. Comdr. Tom Paoletti, was in a meeting until late this afternoon. Tom could see her at 1630, maybe a few minutes earlier, if she didn’t mind showing up and waiting. In between now and then, there was nothing to do except find and talk to Sam Starrett.

  Sam and Nils and WildCard were like the Three Musketeers or maybe the Three Stooges of Team Sixteen—she wasn’t sure which exactly, although she suspected it was the latter. If anyone knew what WildCard Karmody was up to, it would be Sam. Or Nils. But Nils wasn’t around to interview. Just her luck.

  Jules sighed. “Look, sweetie—”

  “Don’t fucking sweetie me, Cassidy,” she snapped, then closed her eyes. “God, I’m sorry. I’m just . . .”

  Jules put the car into park and turned it off. “A little tense, huh?”

  “Yeah.” She looked out the window. Sam’s truck wasn’t in the drive. Instead, there was a white minivan. No way on earth would Texas-born and -raised Sam Starrett drive a minivan, let alone one that was white. “I don’t think he’s home.”

  Jules nodded, opening the car door. “Let me go find out.”

  Alyssa opened her door, too. “We’ll go find out.”

  “Have you met her before?” Jules asked as they went up the neatly kept path. The house was tiny, but it—and the postage-stamp-sized yard—were immaculately kept.

  “No,” Alyssa said, knowing he was speaking of Mary Lou, the woman who had popped back into Sam’s life—four months pregnant—literally hours after he’d told Alyssa that he loved her.

  Jules stopped walking. “You know, there’s a shopping mall about a half a mile away. How about I drive you over there, drop you off, let you buy some new hiking boots so you can kick Max Bhagat’s ass for even suggesting you come here—”

  Alyssa went up the steps to the front door and rang the bell.

  “Shit.” Jules scrambled to be standing next to her as the door began to open. “Let me talk, okay?”

  What did he think she was going to say? “Hi, you don’t know me, but I used to have incredible sex with your husband back before he was your husband . . . ? And if he weren’t so damned honorable, I’d be messing around with him still, because as disgusting and hurtful as that would be to both you and me, I am and have always been completely unable to resist the man.”

  The woman standing on the other side of the screen was short and dumpy and exhausted-looking. And wearing . . . maternity clothes? Dear Lord, was she pregnant again?

  “Mrs. Starrett?” Alyssa asked.

  “Yes?” At one time, Mary Lou had probably been rather pretty. But right now she looked as if life had drop-kicked her. She hadn’t showered yet today—or maybe not this week—instead she’d just scraped her brown hair back into a ratty looking pony tail. Her eyes were blue, with big gray bags beneath them. Her mouth was tight, as if she didn’t spend much time smiling or laughing.

  She did have boobs that rivaled Dolly Parton’s, although right now she wasn’t blessed with the rest of Dolly’s figure. Her blouse was stained with food—probably from the baby, but come on. After it gets that bad, change it, for God’s sake.

  “Agents Jules Cassidy and Alyssa Locke from the FBI, ma’am,” Jules said, no doubt when it became apparent to him that Alyssa was going to do nothing but stand there and stare at Sam’s wife. “We have official business to discuss with Lieutenant Starrett. Is he at home?”

  “I’m sorry,” Mary Lou said with an accent that hailed from way south of the Mason-Dixon line. “Who did you say you were? Jules Cassidy and . . . ?” She turned to look at Alyssa.

  “Special Agent Alyssa Locke,” Alyssa told her, and now Mary Lou was staring at her. Oh, shit. Sam wouldn’t have been so stupid as to tell his wife about her, would he?

  No, that was ridiculous. Sam had been definite when he’d ended their relationship. He had absolutely no reason to say anything at all about her to Mary Lou or to anyone. He wasn’t cruel—and he’d insisted he was going to try to make his marriage to Mary Lou work.

  “Is Sam home, ma’am?” Jules asked again.

  From somewhere in the house, a baby began to cry.

  “He is,” Mary Lou said, looking over her shoulder, distracted by the baby. “I’ll get him.”

  But she didn’t have to, because there was Sam, coming out of one of the rooms in the back of the house. Blue jeans, T-shirt, cowboy boots, and baseball cap. Tall, golden brown, and handsome, fluid and graceful even just in walking down the hall of a little suburban house.

  “Baby’s awake again,” he said to Mary Lou in his familiar cowboy drawl, annoyance in his voice.

  “Yeah, I hear her,” Mary Lou said shortly.

  He squinted at the door. Apparently, he couldn’t see clearly through the screen. “Who’s here?” His hair was down to his shoulders, his face clean shaven. His lack of mustache and goatee meant he’d been doing a lot of diving lately with the teams. He’d told her once that the seal on his mask didn’t work so well with facial hair.

  “FBI,” Mary Lou said shortly, heading back toward the crying baby. “For you.”

  “Well, don’t even invite ’em in, for chrissake.” He shook his head in exasperation as he came toward them. “Sorry, she’s—”

  Then he saw them. Saw her. He stopped short, but then made himself keep going. He pushed open the screen.

  “We’re here on an official visit,” Jules said.

  Sam shook his hand, giving him a ghost of his usual megawatt grin. “How the fuck are you, you little faggot?”

  “I’m great, you giant rednecked homophobe,” Jules said, grinning back at him.

&nb
sp; “I love the hair,” Sam said.

  “Yeah. I figured it was about time to go back to my natural color.”

  “Looks good.” Sam turned to look at Alyssa. He held out his hand, his blue eyes carefully neutral. “Alyssa.”

  She put her hand in his, bracing for the contact. His hand was warm, and—one of his fingers had a Band-Aid on it—dinged up as usual.

  “Roger,” she greeted him. Sam was just a nickname. His given name was Roger, but not even his mother called him that anymore. Only Alyssa ever did.

  He smiled, and she saw it in his eyes. He was just pretending that the sight of her standing on his front step wasn’t making his heart beat like crazy—the way hers was going, too. He wasn’t any more over her than she was over him. She wanted to cry. And here he’d gone and made Mary Lou pregnant again.

  He dropped her hand and stepped back, still holding the screen open. “What’s up? Come on in. Want some coffee or lemonade, or . . . Shit, I don’t even know what all we have in the house.”

  Jules looked at Alyssa and she shook her head, just the teeniest of movements. Please don’t make her go into that house and sit in Mary Lou’s living room or kitchen. Please.

  “We’re all set. How about we talk out here?” Jules suggested as if it were his preference.

  “Okay.” Sam stepped outside, and they moved away from the front of the house, over to their car at the curb. “What’s this about?”

  “Do you know where WildCard Karmody is?” Alyssa asked him.

  Sam laughed. “ ‘It’s ten o’clock, do you know where your children are?’ No, I can’t say that I do. What’d the Card get himself into this time?”

  “We were kind of hoping you could tell us,” Jules said.

  Sam leaned back against their car, folding his arms across his broad chest. “He met a girl.” He glanced at Alyssa. “Woman. Sorry. Took two weeks leave. It seemed to be completely out of the blue. He didn’t tell me where he met her or even what her name was. Just that . . .” He laughed again. “Apparently, it was lust at first sight. I’m . . . not comfortable saying anything more.”

  “Did he tell you where he was going?” Alyssa asked.

  “Nope.”

  Jules sighed. “He didn’t mention Indonesia?”

  Sam straightened up and stared at Jules and then Alyssa. “You’re telling me WildCard’s in fucking Indonesia?”

  Alyssa looked at Jules. He nodded. “We’re not sure, but we think he was approached by a woman named Savannah von Hopf and possibly hired to accompany her to a ransom drop for her uncle who’s been missing from Jakarta since last Monday.”

  Sam was shaking his head. He pushed himself off the car and started to pace. “No. No way. Whoever she was, this woman he took leave to be with—she was not paying him. Jesus, at least not in cash. He didn’t mention Indonesia to me, didn’t mention anything except . . .” He shook his head again.

  “He’s gone missing,” Alyssa told him, hoping that would make him tell them whatever it was he was leaving out. “He and Savannah vanished almost immediately upon reaching Jakarta. They were carrying a quarter of a million dollars. That’s missing, too.”

  “Holy fuck! What’d the idiot do, rob a bank before getting on the plane?”

  “Savannah von Hopf’s father is worth eight hundred million,” Jules told him. “The money’s hers. She probably pulled it from her ‘What to do on a rainy day if your uncle is kidnapped’ account.”

  “Shit,” Sam said. “But why didn’t he tell me he was going to Jakarta? It doesn’t make any sense. Best I can come up with is that he didn’t know he was going out of the country when he talked to me and Nils—which was . . . Saturday, late morning.” He turned to look at Alyssa. “What’s she like? This Savannah?”

  “I’ve never met her,” Alyssa told him. “She’s a lawyer, lives outside of New York City, in her late twenties. Blond, blue eyes, short. Everything I know about her is superficial. She’s rich, she’s got a terrific grandmother, but they aren’t close.” She shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “Is she the kind of woman who’d use sex to make a man do what she wanted?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” Alyssa said.

  Sam closed his eyes. “Ah, Jesus, if she’s just some insincere bitch doing a number on Ken, I swear to God, I will find her and make her wish she’d never laid eyes—or anything else—on him. He does not need this.”

  “You’re certain he slept with her.”

  Jules hadn’t asked it as a question, but Sam answered as if it were one. “I’m positive.” He closed his eyes and exhaled. “Look, don’t write this in some fucking report, all right? But apparently this Savannah is like some kind of multiple orgasm queen.”

  “Excuse me?” Alyssa said.

  “Jesus, Alyssa, make me say it to you twice.”

  “I heard you. I’m just . . . horrified that he actually told you about it.” She couldn’t believe that this was the first conversation she was having with Sam since he walked out of her life. And it was about sex. It had to be about sex, didn’t it?

  She wondered if he ever thought about her. About them . . .

  He wouldn’t look at her. “It wasn’t locker room talk, I swear. He didn’t even tell us her name, he wasn’t bragging, he didn’t give any details. He just wanted information, like, what do you do when she just keeps coming, three, four times in a row. Stuff like that.”

  “Oh, God,” Alyssa said. “That’s something I didn’t particularly want to know about Savannah von Hopf.”

  “Yeah, well, you know WildCard.” Sam glanced up at her. “He was just . . . being WildCard. Collecting all the data he could. To do the best possible job he could.” He laughed. “So to speak.”

  “What did you tell him?” Jules asked. Alyssa smacked him. “Ouch. Hey, I’m just curious.”

  “We’ve got all the information we need,” she said. “At least about this particular aspect of Karmody’s relationship with Savannah von Hopf.”

  “Please don’t put what I said into a report.”

  Alyssa met and held Sam’s gaze. “I won’t write it down,” she told him. “But I am going to mention it to Max.”

  “Max.” Something shifted in Sam’s blue eyes. “How is Max?”

  “Fine.” She turned away, knowing just from looking into his eyes that he’d heard the rumors that were circulating about her and her boss. Despite her efforts to quell them, or maybe because of her efforts, those rumors just wouldn’t die.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have a key to Ken Karmody’s apartment, would you, Sam?” Jules asked.

  Sam went back into leaning mode. “You’ve told me everything you know, right? There’s nothing lurking back there that you’ve forgotten to mention, like impending charges against him for . . . God knows what . . . ?”

  “We think he’s in trouble,” Alyssa said, “but trust me, it’s not with us. We want to find him so that we can help.”

  He gave her a long look, then nodded. “I do trust you.” He pushed himself back off the car. “I’ve got about an hour before I have to get to the base,” Sam told them. “If WildCard went to Indonesia, he’d have set up his tracking program, made sure he took along an MTD—miniature tracking device. Let’s go to his house, see if we can’t find him. That is, if you don’t mind dropping me in Coronado after . . . ?”

  “No problem,” Jules said. “We’re heading over there ourselves.”

  Sam went toward the house. “Just let me grab Ken’s key and my gear and tell, you know, the wife that I’m leaving.”

  He went into the house, but was back out the door in a matter of seconds. “I’m outta here,” he shouted as the screen door slammed behind him.

  Mary Lou came to the door, baby in her arms. “When will you be back?” she called.

  “Late. Don’t wait up.” Sam threw his gear into the back seat of their car and climbed in after it.

  He directed Jules across town, and they drove in a silence that was slowly driving Alyssa mad. She could sm
ell him—his scent was so familiar.

  She shot Jules a look, begging him to say something. To make some kind of noise. Small talk. Anything. Break this blasted silence.

  He gave her his what? face. Great. Perfect time for him to lose his telepathic powers.

  So she turned slightly in her seat to face Sam. “I guess congratulations are in order.”

  He looked at her blankly and responded with his trademark directness. “For what?”

  “Isn’t . . .” Mary Lou’s name caught in her throat. “. . . your wife pregnant again?”