Shot in Darkness

by Heather Sunseri

  I stared at Officer Maddox a moment, then down at the phone. I snatched it out of his hand. “Dad?” I said.

  When Officer Maddox’s eyes widened, I rolled mine and turned away from him.

  “Brooke, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. But Declan…” I squeezed my eyes shut.

  “Declan what?”

  I swallowed. “He was shot. Can you assure whoever is in charge here that I will tell them everything I know, if they’ll just get me to the hospital?”

  “Honey, you know that our best chance of catching the second shooter is in the first hour.”

  “I realize that, but I’ve already told them everything that will be useful. Most of what I know is about the shooter that’s already dead. I won’t be much help in catching the other.”

  “Brooke, have you forgotten all your training?”

  “No, dammit.” I squeezed the bridge of my nose. “Can you at least send someone to the hospital?”

  “I will personally see to it. As soon as I know anything about Declan, I’ll call you.”

  “My phone might be broken.” Or the police might have already entered it into evidence.

  “I’m the director of the FBI. I’ll find you.”

  “Oh, and can you call Ty? I was on the phone with him when the shooting started. He has to be going out of his mind.”

  “Consider it done.”

  I hung up, turned, and handed Officer Maddox his phone. “I’ll answer your questions. But can I at least clean the blood off of my face first?”

  Chapter 9

  Brooke

  After I had explained how I knew Bradley Archer—that was his last name, Archer—a rookie agent with the FBI drove me to the hospital. Declan was in surgery. A nurse showed me to a room where I could shower off the blood and change into a pair or hot pink scrubs. Now—a little after two a.m.—I paced in the surgical waiting room.

  When I heard the doors open behind me, I whipped around. But instead of the doctor bringing news, it was Special Agent Mike Donaldson and his partner, Special Agent Carlos Salazar. I walked to Mike, and as I got close, he opened his very strong arms. I walked into them.

  “They won’t tell me anything,” I said into his chest.

  He held me tight. “They will. It’s too soon.”

  I pushed away and forced a weak smile up at him. His sandy blond hair was cut shorter than I remembered, but he still wore a well-groomed beard. I turned to his partner. “Hi, Carlos. I’m glad you’re both here.”

  Mike was Teddy’s first partner when they joined the FBI together. He and Carlos were agents on the bioterrorism case in Kentucky when I first met Declan.

  Carlos put a firm hand on my shoulder and squeezed. He was even larger than Mike.

  “Brooke,” Mike said. He lifted a hand to gesture behind me. “We need to talk.”

  I realized he was gesturing to one of the private consultation rooms where doctors or hospital staff met with family to discuss private medical issues—or really bad news.

  “Is it Declan?” I asked, suddenly panicked. “Do you know something?”

  “No—no, sorry. All we know is that Declan is in surgery. We just want to talk for a minute.”

  The three of us entered the small room. Mike sat with me on the love seat. Carlos pulled one of the folding chairs closer and sat in front of me.

  “Let’s discuss your evening and why you were at Full Court Press tonight,” Carlos said.

  “I told the officers on the scene everything I knew.”

  “Right. You told them you had met a man by the name of Bradley earlier in the day, and that when you ran into him outside of Full Court Press, he was acting strangely. That he was wearing a long coat, which seemed odd given the warm weather.”

  “I should have known. I should have stopped him.” I shook my head while wringing my hands in my lap.

  Mike placed a hand over mine to still them. “You did what you knew to do. You called someone to check him out, and you followed him.”

  “You’re right.” I stood and paced, though there wasn’t much room. Then it dawned on me. I faced the men. “Why are you two here talking to me? You don’t work these types of cases.”

  “We work the cases the director tells us to work,” Mike said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Let’s back up.” Carlos flipped a page on his notepad. “Why were you in DC?”

  “I’m housesitting for Ty and James.”

  “And Declan came because…”

  “Of me.” I crossed my arms. “Why are you questioning me this way?”

  Mike placed a hand over Carlos’s notepad and tossed him a warning look.

  “What’s going on, Mike?”

  “The woman you were supposed to meet,” he started again.

  “Anya Bhatia. Wait a minute… This wasn’t random,” I said. It was a statement rather than a question.

  “We don’t think so.” Mike rubbed his hands together, his elbows propped on his knees. “Anya was NSA.”

  “Yes, I know. We met in college at UVA. I’ve known her for years.”

  “She reported to the director of NSA three days ago, saying she thought she was being watched.”

  “Did she say by whom?”

  “No.”

  “Hell, it was probably one of her own people,” I joked, but we all knew it was no joke.

  Carlos and Mike traded looks.

  “It was one of her own people,” Carlos said.

  “She claimed that a former employee under her—Bradley Archer—had become infatuated with her.”

  “The shooter,” I said.

  Mike nodded. “At first she thought it was sweet. She even met him for drinks after work one day.”

  “Alone? Why would she do that?”

  Carlos shrugged. Mike opened his hands as if to say, No one knows.

  “Those close to her say she started something with him,” Carlos continued, “then tried to call it off when she had second thoughts.”

  “Oh, Anya,” I said. I squeezed the bridge of my nose before focusing on Mike and Carlos again. “Okay, so we think Anya was targeted. A scorned lover out for revenge?” Of course that didn’t make sense, because it didn’t answer who the second shooter could have been.

  “Well, the story gets stranger,” Carlos said. “The director claims that Archer was hired by NSA—by Anya—after Anya received a call from someone insisting that Archer was a computer genius. Archer underwent the standard rounds of background checks and security clearances. The full deal.”

  “Okay…”

  “No one knows who called in that recommendation,” Carlos said.

  “What do you mean, ‘No one knows’?”

  They both remained silent for several beats.

  “It’s not in his file?”

  “Nope.” Mike shook his head. “But Director Waller—your father,” he added as if I’d forgotten, “wonders, as do Carlos and I, why Anya Bhatia seems to have been executed just before you, the daughter of the director of the FBI, were to meet with her.”

  I began going over my conversations with Anya in my head. “Oh. My. God,” I whispered. Romeo. I was about to tell Mike and Carlos just who might be behind it all when a doctor in navy scrubs knocked on the door.

  “He’s out of surgery,” the doctor said. “The bullet entered here.” He pointed to the back of his own torso on the far right. “It traveled straight through, but it punctured his large intestine and hit an artery, causing him to lose a large amount of blood. We were able to repair the damage. He should make a full recovery.”

  I wanted to hug the doctor, but thought it might be inappropriate. “Can I see him?”

  “He’s in recovery. They’ll move him to a room in the next hour or so. Several police officers are stationed near him at all times—as a precaution, I’m told.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” I said.

  When the doctor was gone, Mike hugged me again.

  “He’s going to be fi
ne,” I said, though I knew I was really trying to convince myself that it was true. Tears fell—tears that wouldn’t come before now.

  Mike released me. “You were going say something before the doctor came in.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Was I?” I had been about to tell Mike and Carlos that Anya knew who Romeo was. She hadn’t called him by that name, of course, but she had discovered someone she thought was cyberstalking me. And if it was Romeo—and if Romeo thought for one second that I was about to discover his identity—he would most certainly take out the person about to reveal it.

  “What are you not telling us?” Mike asked.

  “Nothing.” I sighed. “I came to DC to housesit for Ty. I planned to reconnect with an old college roommate. It was purely coincidental that I met Bradley the same day he planned to shoot up a local restaurant. Even if Anya was the target. I haven’t seen Anya in two years.”

  “You and Declan were just unlucky bystanders,” Carlos said.

  “Exactly.”

  “Brooke…” Mike took a deep breath. “If you know something that will help this investigation, you need to tell us.”

  “Mike, if I thought I could help, I would.” I wanted to help law enforcement catch Romeo, especially if he was responsible for this shooting. But I also needed information from him in order to solve Teddy’s murder. If I told the FBI anything that led to Romeo’s death, I would never get the information I needed. This meant I needed to find Romeo before the FBI did. I put a hand on Mike’s arm. “If I think of anything else, I’ll be sure to call you.”

  He fixed me with a stare for a couple of beats. Finally, his face lifted. “Oh, that reminds me.” He reached his hand into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a Ziploc bag. “Your phone. The screen is shattered.”

  I took the bag from him. Frowned. “Thanks.”

  Mike leaned in and kissed my cheek. “Do you need anything?”

  That’s when I remembered the dogs. “Yes.”

  “Name it.”

  “Can you and Carlos go by Ty’s and let his dogs out?”

  Mike looked at me like I’d just sprouted horns.

  “Please. There’s a key under a garden gnome in the front landscaping.”

  He looked back at Carlos, who shrugged. “Yes, for you.” He gave my arms one more squeeze. “You call us if you remember anything. Tell Declan we’re pulling for him.”

  “I will.”

  After they’d walked out, I decided to go to the cafeteria for some coffee. But as I was making my way down the hallway, I heard Mike and Carlos talking at the elevators. When I overheard my name, I stopped and hid behind a crash cart to listen.

  “Call and get a couple of agents on her,” Mike was saying. “She’s hiding something. For her own good, we need to find out what it is.”

  Chapter 10

  Brooke

  It was four a.m., and Declan had yet to awaken from surgery. Doctors assured me that this was normal, and that I should try to get some sleep. But that wasn’t happening, so I made some phone calls.

  “Hello?” David, Declan’s personal assistant, answered on the third ring. I could tell I had woken him.

  “It’s Brooke.”

  “Brooke? What’s wrong? Why are you calling so late… or early?”

  “There’s been an… incident.”

  I heard some rustling around. “What’s happened? Is it Declan?”

  “Yes. Have you watched the news? There was a shooting in Georgetown.”

  “Please tell me you and Declan weren’t anywhere close to that.”

  “Declan was shot,” I said in answer. My voice cracked slightly. “The doctors say he’ll make a full recovery,” I quickly added.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, surprising me. David was more than just Declan’s assistant. I wasn’t sure what title he should have, but I knew Declan trusted him with almost anything. And he and I had developed a mutual trust ever since the cottage fire in Midland.

  “I’m fine. I need your help, though. I would ask Declan, but he hasn’t woken yet, and I’m afraid I might not have much time. I need Dimitri’s contact information.”

  “Oh.” There was silence on the other end of the phone. “You’ll have to give me some time. I might not be able to give you a phone number, but I can get him a message and ask him to contact you. It depends on where he is and what he’s working on.”

  “That will be fine. You have my phone number. I’ll text you Ty and James’s home address.”

  “No need. Declan left it with me.”

  “Oh. Okay, good. I’ll call you when I know more about Declan’s condition.”

  “Please do. I’ll inform those who need to know at O’Roark Industries, but otherwise I’ll do my best to keep it quiet for now.”

  “Good idea.” I hadn’t even considered what this would mean for his various businesses. “I’ll call you soon. Thank you.”

  Next, I called Ty.

  “Thank God, Brooke. I’ve seriously been losing my shit,” he said when he answered.

  “Dad called you, right?”

  “Yes, but I needed to hear your voice, just to be sure.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “How’s Declan?”

  “He’s alive. They think he’ll be okay.”

  “How are you holding up?”

  “I…” I sat in the chair beside Declan’s hospital bed and dropped my face into my free hand. I couldn’t swallow past the lump in my throat. Tears fell as I let out a sob. Ty was the one person I would let see me, or in this case hear me, like this. I couldn’t hide my true feelings from him.

  “Aww, honey. It’s going to be okay. But you cry, girl. Get it out.” He knew me well. And he knew that once I’d had my little cry, I would wipe my face clear of the emotion and get to work. “James and I are already on our way back. We’re boarding a flight any minute.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said when I was able.

  “Why? You didn’t decide to shoot up my favorite neighborhood in the whole world.”

  I smiled at his attempt to make a very dark situation a little bit lighter.

  “When you’re ready, I want to know what you know,” he said.

  I took a deep breath. “I think Romeo is behind this.”

  “Romeo? How would Romeo be involved in some sort of active shooter situation?”

  “I think he found out that Anya Bhatia, my friend from NSA, discovered his identity. I don’t know Romeo’s ties to Bradley Archer, but Bradley was once NSA too. I think Romeo had Bradley take Anya out—and Bradley shot Declan and another person in an attempt to make the shooting look like a random act of terrorism.”

  “You think Romeo is NSA?”

  “That I don’t know. But if my theory is correct, I think Romeo was in the area to make sure that Bradley killed Anya before I could meet with her. And when he saw that Bradley was about to shoot me for witnessing him shooting up the restaurant, Romeo took him out.”

  “That is one crazy theory.”

  “Yes. But it’s the only theory that makes sense. Given the way Bradley and I were standing, Romeo—or whoever shot Bradley—had to line up the perfect angle to make sure the bullet wouldn’t travel through Bradley and into me. It won’t take FBI and ballistics long to figure that out. Who would go to so much trouble to make sure I wasn’t shot as well?”

  “Romeo,” Ty said softly.

  “Exactly. The FBI will figure out pretty quickly that I’m the key to this.” If they haven’t already. Mike, at least, was pretty sure I was hiding something.

  “Let them,” Ty said. “Let them find Romeo and take him out.” There was anger in his voice.

  I shook my head. “I can’t, Ty. If I do, I’ll never find out what happened to my husband. I think Romeo knows who killed Teddy.”

  A voice came over the airport loudspeaker, announcing the first boarding call for travelers flying to DC. “We’re getting ready to board,” Ty said. “Don’t do anything reckless. We’ll be there in a few hou
rs.”

  “Call me when you land. Oh, and don’t worry about your sweet puppies. I made Mike and Carlos look in on them.”

  “You didn’t. Poor Thurston and Lovey.”

  I was sorry I had to pull Ty and James back from their vacation—but even if I hadn’t, the FBI most likely would have. The FBI would want to question both of them, but mostly Ty. How had Ty, an intelligence expert, lived a few doors down from an NSA employee—and a would-be terrorist—and not know anything about him?

  “Brooke.”

  My face snapped up as Declan’s eyes fluttered open. The fingers on his right hand gripped the sheet.

  I sprang to my feet and slipped my hand into his. “Hey,” I said softly. My eyes welled up. “Are you in pain? Should I get the nurses or a doctor?” Did he remember what had happened?

  He squeezed my hand. His eyes peered up at mine, holding my gaze. “Come closer,” he said with much effort.

  I leaned closer so that he could whisper in my ear, and my heart constricted at the thought that the shooting had weakened him. But of course it had. And I would do everything I could to make sure he recovered quickly. The same way he had helped me after Dimitri pulled me from the fire.

  “Please tell me…” he started, then stopped. His breath was hot against the side of my face. After swallowing, he continued. “… that I didn’t just hear you tell Ty… that you think Romeo is mixed up in this… and that you kept that information from law enforcement working the case.”

  I pulled back to look in his eyes. Though they looked tired, they had ignited in a fiery anger.

  “Declan…” I didn’t know what to say. He knew I’d never stopped investigating Teddy’s murder—and that I thought Romeo held the information that would finally tell me what had happened that night.

  He squeezed his eyes closed. Swallowed. “While you think about that, do you mind getting me some water?”

  “Of course.” There was an empty pitcher and a cup on top of the moveable tray. I grabbed the pitcher and practically jogged from the room. “I’ll be right back.”