by Rachel Grant
Uncle Andrew really had traded arms with a war criminal. And, just as Curt had claimed, he’d done it right under her nose.
Her stomach flipped. He’d brought a baby-killing warlord to a JPAC deployment. The man had been fed and cared for by the local villagers in a dinner Mara had arranged.
She felt dirty. Sick. And used. By a man she’d trusted her whole life.
“Your Honor, I have no more questions for this witness,” Aurora said.
“Does the defense wish to cross-examine?” the judge asked.
“No, Your Honor.” No indeed. Sherrod looked like he couldn’t get her off the stand fast enough.
“Ms. Garrett, you may be excused.”
Mara stood and walked out of the now silent courtroom with her head held high. She had no idea what she was walking toward, but she knew exactly what she was walking away from.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
MARA LEFT THE courtroom with the same dignity and grace she’d shown in North Korea, but without the blindfold—both mental and literal—that had hampered her then. She knew without a doubt what sort of man her uncle was, and from the pain Curt had glimpsed in her eyes, she resented the messenger as much as she despised the message.
He’d lost her.
For now. He wasn’t a man to give up, not when he wanted something as much as he wanted her. She’d awoken his heart, making it impossible for him to go back to being the cold, emotionless shark motivated only by ambition.
Outside the courtroom, the two FBI agents would be taking her back to the safe house. She would remain in protective custody for the foreseeable future. Fewer than ten people knew the location of the house, Curt and Lee included. Tonight he would go to her and begin his campaign to win her back.
But first, he had work to do. The next witness was a facial-recognition expert who would rebut Stevens’s statement that Secret Service agents had traveled to Egypt with him. If all went well, closing arguments would be presented tomorrow, and Curt could refine his plan for wooing Mara while the jury deliberated.
He stood and addressed the judge. “Your Honor, at this point the prosecution calls—”
“Your Honor.” Curt turned to see Stevens standing next to his seated lawyer. Ben Sherrod didn’t look pleased. “I request a private meeting with the prosecution.”
The gallery broke out in low murmurs, akin to the buzzing of bees.
Judge Hawthorne glared at the gallery over the top of her glasses while addressing Stevens. “You’re out of order, Mr. Stevens.”
“I know, Your Honor. But before we proceed, I’d like to speak with Mr. Dominick. Alone.”
“What is your purpose?”
“To negotiate a plea bargain.”
Ben Sherrod was on his feet, objecting to his own client’s words.
The buzzing became a strong wind. In seconds, it was a gale.
Hawthorne pounded her gavel with more vigor than Curt had ever seen. “The defendant’s words are to be stricken from the record. The jury is excused and will wait in the jury room.”
The furor died down as the jury filed out, casting glances at Stevens on their way.
Judge Hawthorne glared at the former vice president. “Mr. Stevens, were you hoping for a mistrial with that stunt?”
“No, Your Honor. I want to plead guilty.”
“You had that opportunity before the trial.”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
Judge Hawthorne turned her attention to Curt. “Mr. Dominick, are you willing to entertain a plea bargain?”
“After the next witness, I intend to ask the charges be amended to conform to the evidence presented. I will not settle on the lesser charges of obstruction and influence peddling.”
“I’ll plead to everything—even the arms deal,” Stevens said. “I just want to talk to you.”
The noise from the gallery couldn’t be contained. “Chambers! Now!” The judge stood and marched to the door behind the bench. Stevens followed with his angry lawyer by his side. Aurora and Curt were the last ones through the door.
They crowded into the judge’s chambers; Hawthorne took a seat behind her desk while the rest stood. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Mr. Stevens? You know better than to make statements like that in front of spectators.”
“Your Honor, I don’t care what happens to me. I never have. But I came to the conclusion I’m protecting the wrong people, and I need to do something about it. If that means confessing and going to prison, so be it.”
Sherrod clapped his hand on his client’s shoulder. “Shut up, Andrew.”
Stevens shook off his attorney’s hand. “You’re fired, Ben.”
“You intend to negotiate a plea bargain without your lawyer?” Judge Hawthorne asked.
“Yes. Mr. Dominick and I are going to talk. Alone.”
“Is that acceptable to you, Mr. Dominick?”
“I will not make concessions, but I’d like to hear what he has to say.”
“Court will adjourn for the day, but I won’t release the jury until we have a signed agreement. Settle this tonight, gentlemen. We have a jury sequestered, and I don’t want them held for another day without cause.”
THE DRIVE BACK to the safe house—located on a state-named street north of Embassy Row and her uncle’s former residence at the Naval Observatory—was long thanks to vehicle changes to ensure they weren’t followed. At last they drove down the steep driveway and into the basement garage. It was a nice house, if one liked being a prisoner.
Mara did not.
Inside, she paced the living room and shouted in the direction of the closed front door, “Protective custody, my ass. That bastard just wants to keep me here in case he needs me to testify again.”
But the agent on the other side of the door had stopped responding to her complaints.
She stopped and stared at the gas fireplace, remembering the phone sex with Curt and his attempt to use the fireplace as a visual link between them. To think she’d felt guilty for lying.
When it came to deceit, she had nothing on him.
Had the “dates” merely been bait?
Curt was a good chess player. Laying the trap for over a week, saying the right things to make her laugh, make her care; it had probably come easily to him. All so he could call her to DC with the snap of his fingers. And it would have worked. He’d just gotten impatient.
Well, he and Lee had saved her from Raptor again. She had to give them credit for that.
What the hell was she going to do?
Raptor still hunted her. A smallpox bomb could go off at any time. Testifying hadn’t decreased her danger, and she wouldn’t be able to come out of hiding until Raptor was charged. She couldn’t do it alone. She needed the FBI. Dammit all to hell. She needed Curt.
In DC, Curt was the law. Raptor’s home office was in DC, and prosecution of the CEO would go through the US Attorney’s Office.
How else to bring them down? She’d once thought she could turn to her uncle, but that road was decidedly closed.
There was only one avenue that didn’t include Curt: the State Department. She had information on a smallpox bomb, and it was time to use it. She marched to the front of the house and pounded on the heavy door.
The door opened, and the agent looked amused. “What can I do for you, Ms. Garrett?”
“I need the secretary of state’s phone number.”
ROBERT BECK ANSWERED the phone on the first ring; he’d been expecting this call.
The caller didn’t bother with pleasantries. “Are you watching the news?”
“Yes. Stevens rolled.”
“If he knows what’s good for the girl, he’ll take all the blame.”
It didn’t matter what was good for the girl. There was nothing Stevens could do to save Mara Garrett now. “The words of a desperate man are hardly proof,” Robert said.
“Your people fucked up. Your son most of all. We’ve managed to put the lid on the smallpox rumors, but if Garrett manages to p
roduce proof, we’re screwed.”
“Without a blood test, they can’t prove a thing. Our intel into the Center for Disease Control hasn’t shown any tests for smallpox. To convince a judge, Dominick would have to go through the CDC.”
“Our only hope to move forward with the plan is to make Mara Garrett and her blood disappear from the face of the earth.”
Robert needed that bill to pass, and the smallpox bomb was the ideal shortcut to getting the votes he needed in congress. “The incinerator at the Virginia lab. We just need to get her there.”
“You need to take care of Dominick as well. He’ll never believe your son acted alone. And if he becomes attorney general, he’ll have enough power to destroy Raptor.”
“We need to find the fucking safe house where he’s stashed her.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CURT FACED THE former vice president across the conference table armed with pen and notepad. The man had refused to allow the conversation to be recorded.
“I didn’t know Raptor was after Mara,” he said.
“I find that hard to believe, sir. You aren’t a stupid man.”
Stevens raked his gray hair with his fingers and sighed. “Wanna bet?” He then sat up straight and focused his clear blue eyes on Curt. “I thought it was Evan, obsessing. I never really liked the little shit.”
“I beg your pardon, sir, but if you didn’t like him, why didn’t it upset you that your business partner paid him to date your niece?”
“He didn’t. He paid him to destroy the pictures she took in Egypt. Evan started to date her to get close to her, but he seemed to really care about her.” The man’s wrinkles seemed to have deepened in the last hour.
“If he was paid to destroy the photos, you really should demand a refund.”
“Mara must have switched the memory card, and he destroyed the wrong one. Scared the hell out of me when the Egyptian photos appeared on the AP wire.”
Curt smiled, figuring that must have caused a panic for him and Robert Beck. “Hadn’t you told Mara to release the photos to the AP?”
“Of course. I didn’t want her to think there was anything odd about the trip, and all my other trips had included a publicity photo shoot. But I didn’t think there would be any photos to release. Evan said he’d erased them.” The man flashed an ironic smile. “Think of the trouble she’d have saved you if she’d released the photo with the warlord.”
“No such luck.”
“JPAC returned to Hawai’i just days after the arms deal was completed. At that point, we realized she’d probably downloaded the photos to her computer. It was necessary for Evan to stay close to her.”
Curt’s hand clenched into a fist. “You paid an amoral sociopath mercenary to date your niece. You’re truly uncle-of-the-year material.”
“I didn’t know that’s what Evan was. He cared for her. I didn’t like him, but she was happy.”
He’d give anything to be able to punch this man. Evan had emotionally denigrated Mara to the point she’d lost sight of her own value, and after she ended the relationship, the man assaulted her. “Your definition of happy is seriously fucked.”
“I didn’t know.” He dropped his head into his hands. “I thought he loved her. When she broke up with him, he went nuts, so when I heard the jet had exploded, I thought he’d truly lost it.”
“You’re full of justification for ignorantly endangering Mara, but how do you excuse bringing a Janjaweed militia leader to a JPAC deployment?”
Stevens lifted his head from his hands and sat up straight. “I was trading arms for hostages.”
Curt set down his pen and stared at the man, incredulous at his audacity. “You’re claiming you pulled an Iran-Contra?”
“Yes.”
Curt didn’t begin to believe him but was curious about the story the man had obviously worked hard to fabricate. “Fine. I’ll bite. How did it start?”
The former vice president sighed. “I first got to know Raptor and Robert Beck during my downsizing government initiative—continuing the work Al Gore started when he was vice president. Beck’s organization interested me because they didn’t have to go through sixteen layers of bureaucracy to buy a ream of paper. They were more efficient, cheaper, and got results. Robert Beck began talks with me toward the end of my term about joining the organization as chief of operations. I liked the idea.
“Just before my term ended, those six reporters were taken hostage in Darfur. I worked with the State Department, trying to negotiate their release, and it became clear it wouldn’t happen through diplomatic channels. I also happened to be sick to death of diplomatic channels.”
The man glanced down at his hands, which curled into fists. “The president couldn’t do anything. The military couldn’t get close to the Janjaweed. The CIA was having their own problems. We benefited from their intel, but Raptor operates on different rules and could do more. I approached Robert Beck, and he and I worked out an arrangement.
“It took us months to pull it off—yes, after my Secret Service detail was gone. Two of Raptor’s top operatives posed as my detail so Mara and her JPAC team wouldn’t get suspicious.”
“Why go to all that trouble?” Curt asked.
“We wanted as many Raptor operatives to provide security as possible. The Janjaweed bastard wasn’t the most trustworthy.”
“Yet you gave him advanced weaponry.”
“It was the only way to save the hostages. Mara’s work provided the perfect cover. I had a reason to be there; the militia leader would go unnoticed by the JPAC team. While we were there, handing over arms, the hostages were being released in Sudan. And US government officials were, for the most part, unaware their lives were bought with guns. Not even the president knew.”
“Protecting him from scandal or yourself from prison?”
“Myself. We hoped if we operated outside government channels, no one would find out.”
“But I started investigating the influence peddling and picked up the trail.”
“We managed to destroy the paper trail, but it was too late. Then you had me on obstruction.” He paused and stared at Curt. “I’m not ashamed of what I did. If the hostages had been killed, the US would have become embroiled in another Middle East/North Africa conflict, and frankly, our military is stretched thin as it is.”
“So noble. But you still armed a known war criminal.”
Stevens shrugged. “In politics you have to make deals with the devil if you want results.”
Curt leaned forward and glared at the man whose covert deals had caused the woman he loved to face a firing squad. “Tell me about North Korea. I want to know about the smallpox bombs.”
THE PROSECUTOR’S WORDS gave Andrew a jolt. “How do you know about the bomb?”
“Bombs. Plural. I know about them because your niece got sick while in a North Korean jail cell.”
That knocked the wind out of him. “Mara had smallpox?”
“Fortunately, she’d been vaccinated and only had a mild case.”
Blood left his face and gathered with acid in his stomach. “The North Koreans didn’t… They could have assumed she’d been sent to infect them. They would have killed her…”
“I believe that was their plan, but they didn’t know about her illness. She was able to keep it hidden.”
“She must have been terrified.”
The Shark nodded. “She wouldn’t have been there, wouldn’t have been terrified, if Raptor operatives hadn’t used her.”
Guilt swamped him. He’d failed Mara yet again. “I didn’t know about that until she said it on the stand. I’d only heard the official version—she’d fought with Evan and stormed off. Mara is…temperamental… It made sense.”
The younger man’s face reddened and his eyes narrowed. “Do you know your niece at all, sir?”
“Of course I do! She’s like a daughter to me.”
“I am so fucking sick of that line. From both of you. Obviously, neither one of you ha
s taken a solid look at the other since she was in braces. Mara is not ‘temperamental,’ and you are not a goddamned saint.”
Andrew was taken aback. “She thinks I’m a saint?”
“Don’t take it to heart. She tends toward delusion at times and thought I was a superhero.”
Andrew smiled. For a moment—just one small instant—the stress that was his constant companion faded. “Is there something between you two?” He had to admit the prosecutor would be worlds better for Mara than the mercenary.
“Not anymore. Bringing her in to testify killed any heroic thoughts she had about me.”
“I’d offer to talk to her on your behalf, but I have a feeling she won’t listen to me after today.” He paused. “But I’m glad you put her on the stand, because I was about to go down silently to protect an ideal that doesn’t exist.”
“Explain.”
“You were right about everything. The arms deal, and the cover-up to hide it. Iran-Contra taught us even though the intention is good, the American people are not fond of arming enemies.”
“But you did it anyway.” Dominick remained impassive. The only flicker of emotion he’d shown was when Mara was mentioned.
“I did. Then your office began to investigate some of my previous political dealings. One thing led to another, and the next thing I knew we were shredding files and doing our best to make the arms deal disappear. It became clear my only hope was the cover-up would be enough to beat the charges.” Andrew looked at the man who’d put him through the wringer over the past year. “It wasn’t. My own lawyer thought I was guilty.”
“Because you are.”
“True.”
“Get to the smallpox, Mr. Stevens.”
“My initial plan for the Raptor/JPAC joint venture came about because JPAC had access to places where even the CIA can’t operate. I knew about the smallpox bomb—I made a point of learning whatever I could when I had access to state secrets in my capacity as vice president. My plan was for Raptor to locate the smallpox bomb and destroy it.”
