Mark Taylor Omnibus (The Mark Taylor Series)

by M. P. McDonald

  Jessie sighed, resting her forehead in her hands. What a mess. She stood and began to put the food away, deciding to let Mark settle down a bit before approaching him again. Refilling her water glass, she took it out to the living room.

  Mark leaned a shoulder against the window frame, his back to Jessie as he stared out the window. Every so often, he tipped the bottle and took a swig.

  “I should hate the guy.” He sounded weary.

  Jessie muted the ball game.

  Mark tilted the bottle, draining it. He absently picked at the label, peeling it back. “The things he did to me...” He sighed, then crossed to the sofa and sat beside her. “I should have felt glad when I saw him in the picture.” He raised one shoulder in a half-shrug as he pulled the label completely off the bottle. “But I didn’t. All I felt was sick.”

  “Sick at what happens to him? Or...” She left unsaid the other option, that he felt sick that he would have to save Sheridan.

  “I’ve been thinking...what if he interrogates someone and they have information. Real information. Not...not like what I had.” His voice dropped and it sounded like he almost swallowed the last words. Mark set the bottle down on the coffee table and smoothed the label flat. He turned to look at her. “What if he learned something that would save other people’s lives?”

  Jessie hadn’t considered that, but now that he mentioned it, it made sense. “And if you don’t save him, then that information remains unknown.” The idea was mind boggling.

  Mark nodded. “Yeah. It would mean that, maybe, there was a purpose for...for everything.”

  “Like that was the reason you were locked up?”

  “Ya know, when I was gone, I thought about the camera a lot.” Mark slouched back against the arm of the couch, his legs splayed at an angle under the coffee table. “There wasn’t much else to do, and I must have gone over every picture that ever came out of it...and every dream I had.” He paused as though organizing his thoughts, his gaze flicking to hers. “I realized that I had a connection with at least one person in every single photo.”

  Jessie pulled her leg up under her and leaned against the other arm, facing him. “What do you mean? What kind of connection?”

  He took in a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. “I didn’t know it at the time, but in hindsight, I found connections in at least eighty percent of them, and I’m sure if I researched it, I could find some for the other twenty percent.” Mark sat up, his pose mirroring hers. “Some were people I’ve passed on the street in the neighborhood, or relatives of people I know...someone from college. Things like that.”

  “And you never realized this before?” She reached for her water and took a sip.

  Mark shook his head. “Nope. I guess I should have, but I didn’t. I mean, I realized some of them were familiar.” He lost the smile. “But most photos weren’t so obvious.”

  “I don’t understand how you could have all those pictures, and dreams, yet not know that you knew the people in them?”

  He stood and ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I sound stupid, but think about it. How many people are you acquainted with? You know, faces you nod to as you pass them in the supermarket, or at the bank. When you see them out of context, you don’t know where you know them from. Hasn’t that ever happened to you?”

  Jessie pursed her lips. How many people did she come into contact with every day whose faces were a blur to her? Too many. “I see your point. You said most of your photos take place right around here, right?”

  Mark nodded and began pacing behind the couch. “So, Sheridan—he came to Chicago, right? If he hadn’t met me, the camera wouldn’t have produced his photo.”

  Jessie stared at the silver label lying crinkled on the table as she thought things through. She still had questions. “So...what about nine-eleven?”

  “What do you mean?” Mark stopped mid-pace, his brows knit in confusion.

  “It took place a thousand miles from here.”

  He nodded and bent his head for a moment. When he raised it, his eyes had a haunted expression. “Yeah. That occurred to me too, but I have a feeling I must’ve had a connection to someone who died that day.”

  “You knew someone who was in one of the Towers?”

  Mark shrugged. “Maybe, or maybe one of the planes. I don’t know for sure. For days afterwards, I avoided all the coverage. I—I couldn’t even look at a newspaper.”

  Jessie imagined that it would have been torture for Mark to watch all of that when he had tried to stop it. It had been hard for her, and she didn’t have the guilt factor. “I’ll bet you did know someone. I think just about everyone in the country knows someone who knows someone who died that day.”

  He was right. She felt it in her gut. “There were a lot of people from the Chicago-area killed.” There had been lists in the Chicago papers and she had recognized a few names. Nobody she knew personally, but she had felt saddened by even the small connection.

  She became lost in her thoughts and barely noticed when Mark wandered to the windows again. A woman she had gone to school with had lost her husband on one of the planes. And a guy from her precinct had lost a brother who had been a New York police officer caught when the towers collapsed.

  “So, I guess I had to meet Jim Sheridan so that I could save him.”

  Twenty-Four

  Jim scrolled through his newest memos. In the last month, intelligence chatter had picked up clues to something big, but details were sketchy. The only intelligence they had said the plan was going to happen soon, and the code name for the operation was 'Cracker Jack'. He skimmed the memos again, jotting down anything that might be of importance.

  On the top of the legal pad, he’d written Cracker Jack, and then listed questions he wanted answered. Timing, location and target. He closed the memos and opened another file with older memos. Maybe there was something in them that didn’t mean anything at the time he’d read them, but might point to something now. He pulled up the notes from current investigations. A gun dealer in the suburbs had reported a couple of men trying to buy ammunition for automatic weapons. When told that wasn’t possible, they’d asked if the owner knew how they could get it. He’d declined to help them. Security tapes had provided pictures of the men, but without names, it didn’t help much.

  “Damn it.” He rolled his chair away from the desk and put his hands behind his head, elbows out as he searched his mind. If he were a terrorist, what would be an inviting target? It would have to be somewhere with lots of people, so that they could instill terror. That’s where the terror in terrorist originated. Blowing up a government warehouse out in the desert didn’t strike fear into the heart of the average person. Terrorists’ goal was to create fear in hopes that citizens of a country would blame their own government for whatever policies that the terrorist groups had issues with.

  Grabbing his pencil, he scooted up to the desk again. It was July but past the fourth, which would have been a likely date. He clicked through his calendar to see if anything stood out. Nothing major until the air show in mid-August. That was still a few weeks away. The Taste of Chicago had already passed. There were always music festivals and concerts. Other likely targets included important buildings, but measures taken in the last few years had made it more difficult to destroy them. Jim hoped that the newer security rules at airports and around likely targets made them less desirable. Trains and subways had been targets in the past, and hard to secure. The possibilities were endless. He glanced at his watch. Almost noon. He’d been in the office since seven, and had worked sixteen hours a day for the two weeks. His team had done the same. To show his gratitude, he’d bought tickets to tonight’s Cub game for all of them. They all needed a little break to clear their heads.

  “Excuse me, Jim?”

  He glanced at the door to his office. “Yes, Beth?”

  His administrative assistant leaned into the room. “There’s a guy on line two who’s called a few times for you while you were at your mee
ting earlier. I offered to transfer him to another analyst, but he insisted on talking to you. He wouldn’t leave a message or a number. Said he was calling from a pay-phone.”

  Curious, Jim nodded. “Okay. Thanks.” He reached for the phone. “Sheridan speaking.”

  He could hear someone breathing rather hard and he almost made a smart comment about how unwise it was to prank phone call the FBI. He decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps the person hadn’t heard him answer, so he tried again. “Hello? Is anyone there?”

  The person on the other end cleared their throat. “Uh, yeah, I’m here.”

  The voice tugged at his memory but he couldn’t place it. “Who am I speaking with?” He put his hand over his other ear to block out the noise from some colleagues trooping past his door.

  “It’s…it’s Mark Taylor.”

  Jim’s grip on the phone slipped as the shock hit him. He recovered quickly. “Taylor. What can I do for you?”

  “I have to talk to you, Sir. It’s urgent.”

  “I’m listening, so talk.”

  “Not on the phone. It’s gotta be in person.”

  Suspicion piqued but so did his curiosity. “Why can’t you tell me now?”

  “I can’t take the chance. I know this call is probably recorded.”

  Taylor didn’t have to say anything more about recorded phone calls. Jim remembered that detail as the lynch-pin of their case against him. “Okay. Fine. I’ll meet you, but it has to be somewhere public.” It wouldn’t be wise to meet the guy in a back alley; that was for sure. Taylor probably wanted nothing more than to stick a blade in him.

  “Yeah, okay. You know where O’Leary’s Pub is. Can you meet me there in an hour?”

  It was on the tip of his tongue to ask how Taylor was sure that he knew where that pub was, but then he recalled seeing Jessie Bishop at the establishment. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together. It might not be a bad idea to request her presence at the meeting. “I’ll talk with you on the condition that Detective Bishop is present. I think she’s someone we both trust.” He hadn’t thought of it before, but he did trust her. She was a straight shooter.

  Taylor didn’t answer for a moment and Jim wondered if the guy even knew that he and Jessie Bishop had met last summer. It had only been a couple of months since he’d seen Bishop at that pub. At that time, she hadn’t seen Taylor yet.

  “I’ll ask her. I can’t promise though. She’s working.”

  “Okay, well, if I walk in and don’t see her, I’ll just turn around.”

  “Listen, I know you hate my guts, and I feel the same about you, but what I have to say has nothing to do with either of us. That’s all I can tell you now.”

  He could picture the other man’s face flushing with anger. Against his better judgment, he gave in. “Okay. One hour.”

  * * *

  Jessie sounded stressed. “I’ll be there. I’ve been going crazy knowing what’s going to happen. I’ve tried to get more security at the game, but without something concrete, the brass won’t go for it.”

  “I know the feeling.” Mark circled the heel of his hand against his forehead, grimacing at the dull ache behind his eyes. He sat in his boss’s office and glanced out to the store when the bell above the door jingled. “Look, I gotta go, a customer just came in. See ya in a little bit.” For the next thirty minutes, he tried to remain patient as he showed the customer several of the digital cameras. Gary had said he’d be back from lunch by one o’clock, but it was already twenty after. O’Leary’s wasn’t far, but he’d have to leave soon to make it on time. He rang up the camera, amazed that the guy bought it in spite of Mark’s distracted sales pitch.

  The bell sounded again and Mark heaved a sigh of relief when Gary entered.

  “Sorry, Mark. I started talking to this hot waitress. I got her number and everything.” He grinned and didn’t look the least bit sorry about being late.

  Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Mark shrugged. “That’s great, but listen, I’m going to have to run, I have an errand I wanted to do on my lunch hour. I just sold a Nikon. I didn’t get a chance to file the paperwork.”

  Gary bounced behind the counter. “No problem. I got it.”

  Before leaving, he retrieved the brown paper bag containing his camera and the prints of the horrific attack from the back room. This time, he had proof.

  Mark jogged the four blocks to the pub and stopped at the entrance to catch his breath. His shirt clung to him and he cursed Gary for being late and forcing him to run. He already felt his stomach knotting at the prospect of seeing Jim. Last thing he wanted to do was look as nervous as he felt, and having sweat dripping didn’t make for a calm appearance.

  The interior was dim after the bright sunshine, and he paused to scan the room. Tugging his shirt away from his chest, he was grateful for the blast of air conditioning from the vent above the entrance. Sheridan and Jessie at a table in the corner. Damn. He’d hoped to get here first and get the upper hand, have some control. Jim sat with his back to the corner and had a view of the whole room. Their eyes met and Mark had to fight the impulse to flee. The door opened behind him as a group of women entered. The flash of sunlight reminded him that he wasn’t trapped anymore. He could leave whenever he wanted. That thought propelled him forward.

  Jim gave a short nod, but Mark ignored it as he wound his way past other tables and customers. He couldn’t help noticing that Jessie didn’t look at all uncomfortable with the guy. She even smiled at something he said. A trace of a smile lurked around Jim’s mouth. Were they talking about him? Jessie turned and the smile slipped from her face when she saw him. Her brows knit as she glanced at the bag in his hand.

  He was about to tell her what it contained when Jim jumped to his feet and shot around the table. “Hold on. What’s in the bag, Taylor?”

  Mark halted. As much as he wanted to push past Jim without answering, he couldn’t. A year of conditioning to obey the man’s orders had left their mark. He dropped his gaze. “It’s just a camera.” It took everything in him, but he raised his head and said, “The one I told you about. Over and over.”

  Jim’s eyes narrowed and he held out his hand. Mark gripped the rolled top of the bag tighter for a second, the muscles in his arm rigid. The tension grew with Jim’s eyes never leaving Mark’s, his hand still waiting expectantly. Finally, Mark shoved the bag at Jim, but couldn’t keep from balling his hands into fists as rage boiled inside of him.

  Jessie stood and took Mark’s elbow with one hand, the other going to his back. The reassurance she offered with her touch and smile helped. “Come on and have a seat. We ordered a pizza already.”

  Mark acquiesced, but looked at her blankly, his mind still on the camera in the bag. Pizza? Did she think that they were actually going to sit and eat like they were old friends? He pulled his arm from her grasp and ground out, “I’m not hungry.”

  It had been his plan to simply divulge the pictures, relate the details that he recalled from his dream, and get the hell out of there. Socializing hadn’t played a part in it. The crinkle of the bag drew his attention back to Jim. The man had returned to his seat and without asking, opened the bag and withdrew the contents.

  Jim gave the camera a cursory look, but when he shuffled through the photos, his mouth set in a hard line, the only sign that the pictures registered. He went through them twice before he glared at Mark and slapped the prints down on the table. “What did you do this time?”

  The accusation in the words hit Mark like a punch and his jaw clenched so hard he thought he’d crack a molar. The bastard!

  Jessie pushed a glass of water towards him. “Here. You look hot from your walk here.” Her eyes flashed a warning to him. While he gulped the cool liquid, she slid the pictures in front of her and flipped through them. “Mark didn’t do anything. He got these pictures the same place I got those ones last year. You were there, Jim. Don’t act surprised.” She raised an eyebrow at him.

  Jim shot a loo
k at Jessie. “Come on. That was a set-up and you know it. I still haven’t figured out how you pulled it off, or who the leak was, but I’m not going to fall for it a second time.”

  Mark set the glass down, sloshing water over the side and swiped the back of his hand over his mouth. Well, that was that. He reached out, grabbed the bag on the table and swept the camera into it then snatched up the prints. “Don’t say I didn’t try to warn you.” He pushed his chair back and stood.

  Jessie grabbed his hand and gave a tug. “Mark—”

  “You’re not leaving until I find out where the hell you got these photos.” Jim rose, cutting off Jessie’s plea. Eyes hard, he held Mark immobile with his look.

  Mark refused to back down as he and Jim glared at each other like two alpha dogs. He was determined to win this time. Jessie had come to stand beside him and said something, but he heard only his own blood pounding in his ears. Without warning, images from last night’s dream shot through his mind, overwhelming him with their intensity. Like a flashback, he was there again, just as vividly as he’d been in his dream. He locked his knees to keep them from buckling, and grit his teeth as he tried to maintain his rage. It was no use. Screams of the children ricocheted through his head. A shudder swept over his body.

  His anger died when he realized the truth. This meeting wasn’t about him. It was about saving people-regular folks just out enjoying a game. About saving them from crazed gunmen who thought killing innocents earned them a place of honor in the afterlife. What he had been through in prison paled in comparison to the fate that awaited hundreds of people leaving the ballgame tonight.

  Mark had to convince Jim that the pictures were real. Or would be real. It was the only chance anyone in the photos had. If he couldn’t control his anger, he’d fail. Again. It might not have been his fault on September 11th, but it would be today.

  To stop this, he needed help and Jim had the resources to get the bad guys. He took a deep breath and forced his shoulders to relax. “Can we start over?”