Hidden (Jacobs Family Series Book 1)

by Vannetta Chapman

  “What are you doing, Ben?”

  He settled his hand at her elbow and guided her around the desk, slowing so she could reach for her crutches. “Red and I would like to take you out for coffee.”

  “But I already explained—”

  “Is there a problem in here?” Clay stood at the door beside Red, looking fully capable of pulling his service weapon and shooting Ben if he forced Dana into a coffee shop.

  Dana seemed to sense it as well. “No problem, Clay. I’m going to step out for a minute with Ben and Red. I’ll have my cell phone if anyone needs me.”

  Clay nodded once but continued staring at them as they exited the building.

  Once they were out in the morning sunshine, Dana attempted to turn on them. Ben could feel her bristling with indignation.

  “Not yet, Dana. Wait until we’re down the road a bit.” He walked on one side of her and Red walked on the other. They moved slowly down the sidewalk in the morning sunshine, just another group of coworkers out for a stroll—except Dana hobbled.

  “You better have a great story to go with this, Ben.”

  “Well, he convinced me,” Red said.

  Fifteen minutes later, she sat twirling her hair and ignoring the coffee and muffin Red had bought her.

  “Tell me it’s impossible,” Ben dared her.

  “I’m saying it doesn’t seem likely. How could someone know what we were doing?”

  “They could have an inside man,” Red said gruffly. Obviously angry at the thought, he devoured half a cranberry muffin in one bite.

  “No.” Dana stirred her coffee again, though it was now quite lukewarm. “I know my people. I know their files by heart, including each of yours.”

  She looked up and met their gaze. “No. It’s not an insider.”

  “All right. So it’s not an insider. They could have bugged the office.”

  “How? When?” Dana began quartering her muffin. “When you lasered the backpack it would have fried any surveillance equipment. It didn’t come in that way.”

  “Are you going to eat your muffin or dissect it?” Ben asked.

  Dana pushed the muffin away. “Stay focused, Marshall.”

  Red picked up Ben’s napkin from the workroom and flipped it over. Drawing a line, he created a crude timeline. “Let’s suppose we have a real sicko on our hands. For the sake of argument.”

  Ben leaned forward, even as he noticed Dana fiddling with the clasp that held back her hair.

  “Say he was watching you pick up the backpack.” Red made a beginning notch on the timeline. “He saw you bring it back to the office. Probably knows our procedures. Certainly saw the increased number of cars at the lot when we had the full staff meeting on Friday.”

  “Could have been what triggered Saturday’s incident,” Ben said, his voice low and angry.

  “Wait.” Dana picked up her knife and poked at the napkin. “You don’t get angry and order a semi with half a ton of explosives. Even if you’re crazy. Walmart doesn’t stock those. Regional boys received the tip Saturday morning at 11:00 a.m. That gave him twenty-six hours. How did he put his people in place, and why would they even do it? This is crazy. I’m not sure I’m buying it at all.”

  She dropped the knife, but when she looked at him again, Ben saw the worry on her face. It was the same anxiety gnawing at the pit of his stomach.

  “He already had the semi and the men. He just didn’t know when he was going to use them.” Ben looked at Red for confirmation, then back at Dana. “We saw this often overseas. Adversaries would have several sets of contingency plans like chess pieces on a board. When the need arose, they’d be ready to move them into place.

  Dana’s hand slapped the table, causing cups and silverware to clatter. “This is not a chess game. This is a town with people who have lives and children.”

  Ben had seen enough of his mother’s temper, not to mention his superior officers’, to know when to keep his mouth shut. He waited while Dana chose the next move, fully realizing it was hers to make.

  When she stood, her pretty eyes had taken on a wolfish tint. Ben looked sideways at Red. The big man’s response was the barest of smiles hidden within the wooly, red beard. They might be up against a formidable enemy, but he would question his game if he could see the commander they were watching.

  Dana grabbed her crutches from the empty seat, pushing them under her arms with a scowl, and limped out of the coffee shop.

  “We’ve done it now,” Red muttered as he threw ten dollars on the table.

  Ben didn’t even try to temper the grin on his face. “She is so hot when she’s angry.”

  “Easy boy, that woman is your boss.”

  For some reason as they stepped back into the bright, morning sunshine and hurried to catch up with Dana, the reminder only energized Ben more.

  Twenty

  Dana’s mind spun at roughly the same speed the earth orbits around the sun. At least that was what it felt like as she stormed back into their building, Red and Ben close on her heels.

  They had protocols for a breech in security. She would implement them all. The very idea of being spied on made her feel violated. No one would succeed with infiltrating her teams.

  She didn’t speak to anyone before entering her office. She did slam the door shut with her foot and go directly to work. Within the hour, she’d sent encrypted messages to the regional office, notifying them of her intended steps, then to her staff detailing each of their responsibilities for the next twenty-four hours.

  If data was being compromised, they would find out where the leak was.

  She spent the next two hours completing routine paperwork, answering e-mail, and attempting to appear as normal as possible. At exactly twelve noon, she grabbed her purse and headed back out of her office.

  She noted Ben was gone as requested.

  Clay met her at the door to the break room. “Anything you need, Dana?”

  “No. I’m going out for some lunch.”

  He nodded and moved back to his work station.

  Dana was at the rodeo grounds in fifteen minutes. She pulled in next to Ben’s black-and-white truck at the far end of the lot. He leaned against the railing, smiling at her.

  He wore what he’d worn every day since she’d told him to lose the suit—khaki pants and a denim shirt. She could picture five sets lined up in his closet, hangers half an inch apart on the rod. It wasn’t that she thought he had a lack of imagination. It was just so obvious his military training had stuck, would be with him until he had grandchildren on his knees.

  His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and the top button was undone. He looked as if he’d be at home in a boardroom for Microsoft or in the middle of an arena. In fact, she could picture him with a cowboy hat. The image brought a smile to her face.

  “You know you look like a rodeo guy.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “What makes you think I meant that as a compliment?”

  “I prefer to be positive.”

  Halfway to him, she stopped and rested on her crutches, reveling in the warmth of the sun on her back. The morning had brought a whirlwind of emotions, but with it a certain satisfaction. At least they were doing something.

  Ben reached for his firearm as a Jeep turned into the far end of the lot.

  Dana touched his arm. “It’s Clay.”

  Ben nodded and pushed the pistol back into the paddle holster.

  Clay pulled in beside their cars. He was wearing his customary black pants, white dress shirt, and tie. Dana couldn’t help comparing the two men in front of her and thinking how very different they were.

  Before she could follow the train of thought far, Clay was beside them. “Dana, Ben.”

  His voice was stiff with concern. He hadn’t relaxed much around Ben, but neither did he seem hostile toward him since Ben had saved their lives on Saturday.

  “We could still be observed here,” Dana said. “But I doubt it, especially if you took the route
I sent you.”

  Both men nodded.

  “Good. I don’t mean to slip into cloak-and-dagger mode. Neither am I going to take risks with any more lives. I’d rather disprove Ben and Red’s theory so we can all rest easy.”

  Clay cleared his throat.

  “Did you find something, Clay?”

  “Possibly. Two people were left at the office on Saturday morning.”

  “Captain and Nina.” Dana leaned against the metal railing that encircled the rodeo arena.

  “Correct. I ran the tapes as you instructed. Two people came into the office after we left. The first was a guy asking for directions—looked to be mid-twenties. Nina gave the directions and they left.”

  “Plates on the car?” Dana asked.

  “Outside cameras didn’t pick them up.”

  “Why?” Ben asked.

  “Because there weren’t any front plates. When they pulled away, the angle was wrong. We didn’t get a clear shot.”

  A light breeze had picked up, stirring the dust. Dana tucked some stray hair back into place. “And the second person?”

  “That’s where it gets a little odd. The second person came in when Nina was in the bathroom.”

  Ben began pacing. “Was this guy lost too?”

  “Wasn’t a guy. She claimed to be looking for a job. Captain tells her we’re not hiring, gives her the standard line, etc. She starts asking what kind of business it is, and he reaches under the counter to hand her the city brochure we had printed up. Only there weren’t any up front, so he had to walk over to Nina’s area to get one.”

  “This woman was left alone at the counter?” Dana felt the small bit of coffee and muffin she’d eaten threaten to rise up.

  “Yeah. I wanted to run a sweep for bugs, but if our perp hears us—”

  “No. You were right to wait.” Dana looked out over the rodeo grounds and wondered what kind of evil they were dealing with. She could almost sense it brushing against her like the small particles of dust in the air stirred up by the breeze.

  “The lost motorist was a feeler,” Ben said. “He was sent in to confirm how many people were in the room.”

  “And the woman?” Clay looked skeptical. “We have a perfect shot of her. We can run her against all the federal databases.”

  “She won’t be on those databases,” Dana guessed. “Probably someone he paid a hundred bucks to come in and drop a bug. All right. Clay, don’t write this up. I’ll send it to regional in my report. Good work.”

  Clay nodded, stood there waiting for more instructions.

  “Don’t mention it to anyone else either. Is there any way to confirm whether any surveillance units are in the office without him knowing what we’re doing?”

  “I can run a silent sweep from my terminal, but if he’s hacked past our firewall—which he shouldn’t have been able to do—he’ll see what I’ve found.”

  “What about if you purchase a clean laptop?” Ben stopped in his pacing. “I have software at my place I can load on it. You can bring it into the office in your bag, maybe during the night shift, and never tie into the main system.”

  “Could work.” Clay looked at Dana for approval.

  “Do it. Take the rest of the day off, buy the laptop after lunch, and I’ll schedule you into tonight’s shift. If he’s watching our database, he’ll see you requested the afternoon off for personal reasons.”

  Clay nodded and turned toward his car.

  “Hang on a minute.” Ben pulled out his wallet, found an old receipt, and wrote his address on the back. “Meet me there in two hours. We’ll get the software loaded.”

  Clay took the paper without looking at it, stuffed it in his shirt pocket, and drove away.

  Twenty-one

  Ben watched Dana watch Clay drive away. She hobbled into the afternoon sun. It played on the chestnut color of her hair, reminding him of the fall fields of hay in Montana. The thought made him a little homesick, which surprised him. It wasn’t often he wished to be somewhere he wasn’t.

  He expected her to give him a brisk nod and leave as well, but then Dana didn’t always do what he thought she would. At times she was very predictable—operating by the book and to the letter. Other times, she surprised him. It was one of the many things he found fascinating about her.

  As if sensing his thoughts, she turned and pierced him with a look.

  Ben held up his hands. “Whatever you think I did, it’ll be quicker for both of us if I just cop a plea bargain early.”

  Dana tilted her head and leaned forward onto the crutches. The gesture made Ben want to pull her into his arms, protect her from the meanness lurking in their midst.

  “Marshall, I haven’t decided what you’ve done yet, so how can we reach a plea bargain?”

  “Huh. You’ve got me there, boss.” He pulled at a weed, growing through the corral bars, and stuck it in his mouth.

  Dana moved next to him and peered up into his face. “That’s disgusting. You don’t know where that grass has been.”

  His laugh rang across the rodeo grounds. “I think it’s been right here. Grass never hurt anyone. Want me to get you some? You must be hungry.”

  “I’ll pass. Thank you though.” She turned, leaned back against the railing, and set the crutches aside. Then she shocked him completely when she removed the clasp that held her hair and ran her fingers through it, massaging her scalp.

  “You can help me though.”

  “Anything,” he muttered.

  “Tell me how you knew.” Her words were muffled as she leaned forward, head upside down, apparently trying to work away the beginnings of a headache.

  “Knew?” Sweat rolled between his shoulder blades. He was too aware his discomfort wasn’t caused by the mild Taos afternoon.

  She parted the soft curtain of her hair and peered up at him. “How did you know, Ben? That the two incidents were connected? That our office had been compromised? That this, this man—and it’s safe to assume it is the man on the video—predicted our every move so well? How did you get into his head?”

  Ben forced himself to hold her gaze, tried to concentrate on her words and not the nearness of her. “A few years ago, I stopped believing in coincidences.”

  She blinked, then stood up straight. “I’m not following you.”

  “All the time we walk through life and ignore things, write them off as coincidences, refuse to see destiny, or fate, or the hand of God.” Noting Dana’s frown, he paused. “Call it whatever you want, we’d rather not accept things are pre-planned. It bothers us, makes us feel uncomfortable. So instead we say something like isn’t that a strange coincidence.”

  Dana shook her head and then smoothed her hair down with her hand. He watched her consider and reject what he was saying.

  He pushed on. “For instance, is it a coincidence that you’ve requested a bomb expert for how many years?”

  “Four, but—”

  “Four years, and the week you get one, the week you get me, this perpetrator pops up with apparently some expertise in explosives?”

  Dana’s frown split into a smile. “So you’re my destiny?”

  “I know. You probably expected something different. But would you write it off to coincidence?” Ben studied her for a moment, then shrugged. “I’m not overrating myself as much as I’m saying I see the bigger picture more than I used to.”

  “And when you saw the semi?”

  “I didn’t think of it then, but later it started nagging at me.”

  Ben walked out of the shadow of the arena overhang and into the sunshine. The warmth focused his thoughts. It didn’t make them more pleasant, any more than they had been a dozen times before. After a moment, he walked back to Dana, his boots crunching in the dirt.

  “In Iraq, you wanted to believe every suicide mission was another nut, acting on his own. It was too much to think it could be a coordinated attack, working away at your defenses, but, of course, that’s what it was. As soon as you accepted that truth, as so
on as you stepped back and looked at the bigger picture, you could sleep at night again. At least I could.”

  “This isn’t Iraq, Ben.” Dana’s words were soft as a gentle rain on his skin.

  “I know, but an attack is the same thing, whether it’s domestic or foreign. We had two hits within the span of a few days, and you want to believe they can’t be related.”

  Dana’s hands came up on her hips, once again prepared to argue. He stopped her with a hand on her arm.

  “I don’t mean you. I mean it’s human nature to push the unpleasant truths away. I think that’s why hostiles get a foothold early on. By the time we catch up, by the time we realize we’re under attack, they’ve already done quite a bit of damage.”

  Dana sank back against the railing. “I should have seen it.” She stared out across the fairgrounds as she pulled her hair back into the clasp.

  “No. You did your job exactly as you were supposed to, which is what he expected.”

  Dana picked up the crutches and moved briskly to her car. Before she ducked into it, she smiled at him. “Glad he didn’t expect you, Marshall. Whether your being here is destiny, or a coincidence, you’re doing nice work. I owe you one.”

  “Really?”

  Dana shook her head. Muttered, “Why did I say that?”

  He moved to his truck and grinned at her over the top.

  “I gather you have something in mind,” she said as she opened the door to the Honda.

  “Actually, I do.”

  “I’m afraid to ask.”

  “Dinner and a movie?”

  “I’m your boss, Marshall. We talked about this.”

  “I didn’t mean we’d eat at work in front of the guys.”

  Dana’s laughter surprised them both. “Taos is a small town in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “We’ll go to Red River.”

  Dana shook her head, got in her car, and started the engine. She did power down the window as she backed out though, which meant the conversation wasn’t over.