Only A Whisper

by Gayle Wilson

“Dead,” Paul answered, and she clenched her eyes against the rush of tears.

  “And the other man?” she asked, not even having a name to call him.

  “He’s all right. In custody.”

  She nodded and wished for the oblivion of unconsciousness again. Finally Paul took her hand, and she wasn’t aware she had been crying until he gently wiped her face. All she’d seemed able to do lately was cry. Paul didn’t talk, but he stayed until they gave her another shot that let her drift back into the whiteness where she didn’t have to think about what she had done.

  Chapter Eleven

  She floated through a couple of days, welcoming the cocoon of drugs that smiling nurses periodically provided. Her surgeon assured her that there should be no permanent damage from the bullet that had slammed into her shoulder.

  “You’re either lucky or, more likely, I’m simply very talented,” he told her, smiling. “It’s a good sign that everything works.” She cooperatively wiggled her fingers for him again. “Do your rehab like a good girl, and you can have plastic surgery in a few months that should take care of most of the scarring. It could have been much worse,” he finished, making notations on her chart.

  She thought of Diego’s chest, of the two hits dead center, and knew he was right. She wondered if Kyle had found it difficult to shoot her, or if she had come up before he was ready, had literally gotten the drop on him. And then she couldn’t imagine that it mattered. He was dead and she was alive, and she infinitely preferred it that way.

  Although he hadn’t explained, Paul had reassured her as soon as she was lucid that Kyle had indeed been the seller of information, the killer of Frank and the others. He hadn’t wanted her to spend even one minute worrying about the rightness of her actions.

  “If you hadn’t shot him, he might have taken out any of us coming across the lawn or into the house. We knew we were going to be targets, but we wanted to get to you as quickly as possible.” He wouldn’t give her any details of the operation, telling her there would be plenty of time to sit down and explain all the loose ends. But for now…

  “I know. All I have to do is get well. Did you guys practice that line beforehand? Everybody that’s been to see me has said it. I don’t know what else you think I’m going to do in a hospital but get well.”

  By the second week she was tired of being charming to the staff. She hated the restrictions of her injury, she hurt, and she’d had to call her mother.

  “Get out of this business,” her mother ordered, her anger apparent, and suddenly Rae wanted to be at home in El Paso so badly she could taste the dust storms and the enchiladas. “It killed your dad and now it’s almost killed you. Let somebody else do it. Come home and finish your law degree. We’ll manage somehow.”

  It was tempting. She was burned-out in more ways than one. Paul worried about the effect on her of having shot Kyle, but it was Diego she saw falling again and again, whenever she closed her eyes. Interposed with scenes of him picking the rose for the breakfast tray he’d never gotten a chance to deliver. She had killed Diego with a phone call and had imprisoned the man she still, in spite of everything, knew she loved.

  She cradled her elbow with her left hand and leaned back against the too-hard hospital pillows. She wanted her down ones. She wanted her nightshirt. She wanted to go home. Maybe even home to Mother. And she had never thought she’d say that.

  She began badgering her doctor until finally they rolled her out in a wheelchair, dressed in her own clothes, or almost her own clothes. The nurses had pulled an oversize T-shirt over her head, and she had her left arm through its sleeve with her right arm in its harness underneath. She found in the next few days that was the easiest way to dress. She lived on microwave dinners that Paul had stocked in her tiny freezer and take-out Chinese he brought as a treat about three times the first week she was home.

  It was the Friday night of that week when she knew she was ready to hear the details of what Kyle Peters had done. Not really ready, but she needed to know, needed to have her questions answered. Especially one.

  She and Paul had eaten off the coffee table, which was now littered with take-out containers, and finally Rae stretched out by careful stages on the couch. They both dreaded, she knew, rehashing things they would rather forget, but putting it off wouldn’t make the pain go away.

  “Kyle came to the task force highly recommended,” Paul began, “like the rest, and, believe me, we checked you all out. I think he was still a good cop then. I don’t know whether it was having access to more important information that turned him, or if someone finally made the offer on a level that was at last appealing enough, or if there were personal factors. And I guess we’ll never know.”

  “Stop blaming yourself, Paul. There’s no way you could have known he’d go bad. That danger’s always there. Everybody makes up his own mind. Nobody comes with a guarantee.”

  She thought of the decisions she had made that were not the result of her moral code, but the result of her emotions, her feelings, about a man who was, as she had called him, “the scum of her earth.” She hoped Paul didn’t realize how closely she had walked the line between doing what good cops do and selling out. And in her case it hadn’t even been for money.

  “For whatever reason,” Paul finally continued, “at some point Kyle began collecting information he could sell, could pass on in return for…whatever’s enough to buy a man’s soul. He didn’t realize how important the courier in Virginia would be because, frankly, I didn’t realize it. And that’s another regret I’ll always have to live with. I sent one man, Jeff Reynolds, to meet the guy. Jeff was late, but his unexpected arrival interrupted what had been going on, and he did get the courier out alive, so I had no reason to suspect him. And thankfully he’d had enough training to keep the guy alive until I could get help. The rest of that night’s activities you already know.”

  “Why was Jeff late?”

  “Because he’d had a message telling him the location had been changed. He waited there awhile before he had sense enough to go to the original location.”

  “Who left the message?”

  “I did.” At the shocked widening of Rae’s aquamarine eyes, he smiled. “At least, it was my voice. The bits and pieces of the message had been put together electronically, using our own equipment.”

  “Kyle,” she said.

  “Apparently during all those extra hours he put in after work that impressed the hell out of me,” Paul admitted.

  “But if Kyle wasn’t to be in on the pickup, how could he have known about the courier in the first place? You’re not that careless.”

  She could tell by the dull flush that Paul was embarrassed, and she wished she hadn’t asked. He obviously had enough regrets about all that had gone wrong with the operation. How Kyle had gotten the information wasn’t important. She started to let him off the hook, when he took something out of his pocket and laid it down among the leaking white containers on the table between them.

  “What in the world?” she asked, and then she knew. “A hearing aid? That’s a hearing aid.”

  “I have some nerve deafness from flying choppers in Nam. Kyle noticed it and suggested a friend of his could help. The friend was legit. I checked him out later. Kyle was nice enough to offer to pick the thing up when it was ready. Apparently, he added a very sophisticated bug.”

  “That’s fiendish,” she said, “and so damn good. We have millions of dollars’ worth of scramblers, high-tech debuggers, and he sticks it right in your ear.” She glanced at Paul’s face and laughed. “Sorry, but you have to admit it was ingenious.”

  “Just stupid on my part. I had no reason to doubt Kyle at that time, and I didn’t want to admit I needed this damn thing. I probably didn’t wear it a week. It didn’t seem to help, and I just left it on the bathroom shelf. It must have driven him crazy. He even asked me how it was doing a couple of times, and I lied. I didn’t want to offend him because he’d recommended the audiologist.”

  F
inally Paul joined in her laughter. “A real comedy of errors, until you think of everyone who suffered as a result of it.”

  “Why did he kill Holcomb? Frank was thinking about retiring. He said that night in Virginia he was getting too old for all this. He was going to leave it to us young ones.” She shook her head. “I’ll never make it like you guys. Like my dad. I don’t have whatever it takes to stick it out. Not thirty years.”

  “Things have changed since your dad’s days. It’s all dirtier and the stakes are higher. The temptations are so damn great.” He touched the hearing aid on the table with one finger. “Get out, Rae. Run home to Mama. Get your law degree. Get away from this filth.”

  She didn’t respond to his advice, and finally he went on with the story he had been putting together for her.

  “When the rumors started floating around about Escobar’s lost billions, Kyle apparently remembered our conversation about the courier’s having had access to the cartel’s financial records. He reasoned that the man would know where Escobar’s private fortune had been hidden. Or maybe…somebody suggested it to him. If that man could be found, he could be forced to tell—”

  “You told me the courier died. That night. Are you trying to tell me—”

  “Kyle couldn’t know that. He didn’t know the outcome of his original sellout. All he knew was that the cartel had been interrupted and that we’d gotten the information.”

  “How could Kyle know about Frank’s involvement? You told us not to talk about Virginia.”

  “Frank liked to tell war stories. Maybe he’d let slip he’d been involved that night. Kyle would have been a very interested listener. And maybe later, when he believed the courier was the way to Escobar’s money, he thought back to Frank’s story.”

  She remembered their dinner together and the almost-irresistible urge she’d had to share her knowledge about the man in Virginia.

  “Kyle and I discussed Frank’s death. And Jeff’s. We thought you had something to do with them. At least Jeff’s. Kyle suggested you’d used Holcomb’s death to cover up your assassination of Reynolds because he’d sold out the courier.”

  “My assassination? What the hell were you thinking, Rae? If I’d thought Jeff Reynolds had sold out, he’d have been sweated for every piece of information he might have had tucked away in brain cells he didn’t know existed. I don’t have hit squads. That’s the other side. The guys in the black hats.”

  “I sat in that room and listened to a man die,” she said softly. “Slowly and painfully. If Jeff was responsible, I could probably have killed him, and that scares me. You think I regret shooting Kyle, but the really scary thing is I have never had one moment’s regret about pulling that trigger. I have lots of regrets, but none about that.”

  “I don’t suppose—”

  “My regrets are my own business,” she interrupted. “I have nothing I need to confess to you. I didn’t compromise us.”

  “I know that, Rae. I know you too well for that. I never doubted you.”

  She laughed at that misplaced vote of confidence and then, realizing she shouldn’t have, asked the next question.

  “Did Frank give Kyle my name?” Given what she supposed Frank had been subjected to, she couldn’t blame him if he had. It would at least explain why she’d been kidnapped.

  “I don’t think so, or you’d have been next on Kyle’s list. I think, somehow, Frank protected you, didn’t reveal that you were with him in Virginia that night.”

  She shook her head, thinking how grateful she was for that protection, given under circumstances and at a cost she could only imagine.

  “When Frank couldn’t provide any information about the courier,” Paul continued, “Kyle went on to someone else he had always known had been involved that night. He’d heard me instruct Reynolds on the pickup during the time I wore the bug. When Jeff was finally dead, Kyle hid the body. It was sheer luck it was found.”

  “Then…”

  “What’s the question?”

  “Kyle said Jeff’s body had probably been mutilated after he was killed to suggest the cartel.”

  “Jeff was tortured for information, cartel-style. Bullets carefully and deliberately placed to cause the most pain and the most damage: first the ankles, then the kneecaps—”

  “I know the drill,” Rae interrupted, sickened. “I just can’t see Kyle doing that. He must have been insane.”

  “I told you. Get out. They’re all insane,” Paul said, and she nodded her agreement.

  “After Jeff’s body was discovered,” he went on, “I put Drew Gates on the two murders. I gave him all the facts and turned him loose. He had informants in Miami from his days with DEA who were very reliable. He’s the one who told me that someone was putting out feelers about what had happened that night, trying to find the courier’s identity.”

  “Cali. The uptown boys. Trying to find Escobar’s money,” she said softly, remembering. “Kyle must have heard those rumors and decided if he couldn’t find the courier and the money, he might still make a profit out of this. If he led Cali to believe he could supply them with the courier’s name—” She stopped, suddenly aware of Paul’s focused intensity on her face.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “It’s not just Cali, Rae. There are a lot of sharks circling in that water.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that even with Kyle dead and with…” She paused because she didn’t want to say it. “Just what are you trying to tell me, Paul?” she asked.

  “That you can’t forget the possibility that someone else, someone just as determined and just as ruthless, will be interested in finding out about the courier.”

  Paul was trying to scare her, she realized. Into quitting? she wondered. Trying to protect her because he’d been a friend of her father’s and because she’d been hurt. Or maybe because, somewhere deep inside, he didn’t believe this was a job for a woman.

  “Gates was good,” Paul said, picking up the thread of his explanation, and she brought her attention back to the narrative. “And he was starting to get some nibbles, whispers that suggested a leak in the task force itself, and then he was gone. I don’t know what he did that tipped Kyle off, but I’d lost three of my people in a matter of weeks. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as helpless as I did when Gates disappeared.”

  “Who did you assign next?”

  “I decided that since it was my force, my people, I was responsible for finding out what was going on. I went to Dell Stewart for help, and he’s the one who suggested that whoever had originally sold out the courier to the cartel could be traced through the financial transactions—through the money the traitor had been paid. Every transaction leaves its footprint, no matter how carefully it’s hidden. If you’re smart enough to read the footprints, you can follow the trail back to the person who took those steps. So we…called someone out of retirement. Someone very good at untangling records, at seeing implications in things that look perfectly normal to the rest of us. Someone who can remember all the other little bytes of information scattered in all the other computers working all over the world.”

  “A hacker? You called in a hacker?”

  “Everybody uses hackers.”

  “Nineteen Eighty-Four. Big Brother of the peripherals.”

  “And then you disappeared. I didn’t know how I was going to tell your mother.”

  She smiled at the idea that Paul’s biggest worry in the middle of all those deaths seemed to have been a ninety-fivepound Texas redhead.

  “And while I was missing,” Rae said, “your expert figured out it was Kyle from some electronic footprints and you followed him to his meeting with the cartel.”

  “Kyle was under suspicion. You all were. And all calls in and out of the office were taped, but by the time we listened to yours that night, Kyle was gone. We followed, and you were there for the rest.”

  “But they were waiting for you. I swear they knew you were coming.”

  “Not us. They were
waiting for their own people. We got there first. They were expecting Kyle. Your phone call just put him there ahead of schedule.”

  “Why did he come? He knew I was still alive, which should suggest they hadn’t bought his story about my involvement.”

  “Kyle’s ego made him believe he could carry it off. He planned to collect his money, and then kill all of you, get rid of anyone who could connect him to what was going on.”

  “His money. His payment for giving them your name, Paul. That’s what I heard that night. Kyle giving them your name.” She stopped because she didn’t want to explain to Hardesty the circumstances under which she’d heard part of that conversation.

  “The call that made you think I was the one working with your captor?”

  Your captor. She had tried not to think about him at all. She didn’t want to remember what she had felt, what she had done.

  Paul apparently didn’t pick up on her distress. He was still explaining the events of that morning.

  “They hoped Kyle could eventually tell them who the courier was, but all Kyle really knew was about the warehouse meeting. He was smart enough to know they would never have let him get away with it because he had just been stringing them along. Selling them bits and pieces that didn’t add up to anything. He didn’t know anything. No one knew the name of the courier.”

  “That’s twice you’ve lied to me about that, Paul. I even understand. But don’t tell me again that you don’t know who he was. I don’t believe you. I’m sure I told the cartel that. They used drugs to pick my brain. I’ve always believed you knew who he was. Why didn’t Kyle come after you? He must have known you were the logical one to have real information.”

  “I think he tried, but I’ve been in this business a long time, Rae. After Frank’s death, after what you suggested about the cartel, I took precautions. I didn’t give anyone an opportunity. Kyle couldn’t take me at the office, and I made it real hard to find me anywhere else.”

  “All those tricks of the trade,” she observed, thinking of the weeks they had worked for her.