Dead Wrong
Page 28
But it wasn’t just the mission’s outcome that had put the chill in Janet’s eyes whenever she looked at him. Something else had come between them on that Bolivian night. Jack wished he didn’t know what that something was, but he’d had plenty of time to review the events leading up to the battle beneath the Tiahuanaco Ruins.
The being that screwed with Jack’s head had almost brought him to his knees in its determination to make him destroy the Incan Sun Staff. And Jack had made things worse through his failure to enforce self-discipline, all in the hope that the artifact could set him free. Not only had he almost gotten himself killed, his loss of self-control had almost killed Janet.
When Janet walked up, she slid onto the chair opposite Jack, and he felt the chill spread from her chair to his. Janet had set up this morning’s meeting at Admiral Riles’s request. She was right about one thing. The admiral was a hard man to say no to. The offer she had forwarded in advance of this meeting was almost the same one Jack had said no to in Crete, but something had been added and something taken away.
Come work for Riles as part of a very special, off-the-grid team, and have access to the intelligence resources only the NSA could provide.
In Crete, Riles had offered Jack the team lead. That part of the offer had now been removed.
But it was the sweetener Riles had added that got Jack’s attention. Jack could keep his role as an independent contractor, and the NSA would pay the same fee he would charge any other client for the same job. He was free to accept or reject any mission without prejudice. But there would be other team members as well as Janet.
Jack watched her watch him as he took another sip, regretting the doubt that he saw reflected in her brown eyes. What he said next was driven more by a desire to remove that doubt than by a change of heart when it came to working for the NSA.
“Riles’s offer sounds acceptable.”
Janet abruptly slid back her chair and stood. “Good. I’ll pass that along to the admiral.”
As she started to turn away, Jack gently placed a hand on her arm. Janet turned to look down at him.
“You don’t seem thrilled,” Jack said.
“You’re not my choice.”
“That’s not what you said in Crete. What changed?”
Janet hesitated but did not take her gaze from his face.
“Inside that passage, when you took the lead, for a while there you lost it, went suicidal.”
Jack laughed, even though he failed to feel true humor.
“I’ve got to be a little crazy to do what I do.”
Janet’s face tightened.
“Is that what that was? A little crazy? Because I think it might be more than that. And Jack, that scares the hell out of me.”
When he failed to respond, she continued.
“Does it scare you, Jack? Do you ever wake up scared?”
Her words knocked the wind out of him. For a handful of seconds, Janet continued staring down at him. Then she turned her back and walked away. Knowing that she’d never hear his whispered response, Jack answered her anyway.
“Every day, babe. Every goddamn day.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Alan Werner for the hours he spent working with me on the story line. Thank you to my editor, Clarence Haynes, for his wonderful work in fine tuning the end product, along with the outstanding editorial and production staff at 47North. I also want to thank my agent, Paul Lucas, for all the work he has done to bring my novels to a broader audience. Finally, my biggest thanks goes to my lovely wife, Carol, for her loving support throughout our many years together.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2008 HeritagePortraits.com
Richard Phillips was born in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1956. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1979 and qualified as an Army Ranger, going on to serve as an officer in the US Army. He earned a master’s degree in physics from the Naval Post Graduate School in 1989, completing his thesis work at Los Alamos National Laboratory. After working as a research associate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, he returned to the army to complete his tour of duty. Today he lives with his wife, Carol, in Phoenix, Arizona, where he writes science fiction thrillers.