“Everyone’s been calling,” she said, standing in the doorway, watching as he dried himself with his towel. “Everyone. Stan. Jazz. Mark Jenkins.” She counted them off on her fingers. “Izzy, Silverman, Lopez, Muldoon, John Nilsson, Big Mac, the Duke, Kenny … They all called, Tommy. They want to know what they can do. They’re all willing to resign over this.”
“What? No way!” Resign? “Call them back and tell them not to. Tell them that’s a direct order.”
Kelly backed up as he came out into the main room, probably to avoid the steam coming out of his ears.
“This is exactly what al-Qaeda hoped would happen,” he ranted. “They don’t have the ability to drop a bomb here in Coronado, but with only three incompetent guys with machine guns, they’re on the verge of completely destroying the Navy’s top Spec Op team.” It wasn’t big enough in there to pace, but he didn’t let that stop him. “Shit! Shit!”
“I’ll spread the word.” Kelly sat on the bed to stay out of his way. “No resignations. Although Stan and Jazz were both really interested in your plans for the future. I think they’re hoping you’ll give them a job.”
He turned to look at her. “A job doing what?”
“I, uh, may have mentioned something about the security consulting group you’re thinking of forming, you know, specializing in counterterrorism …?”
Tom stopped pacing. He was thinking of forming …?
She actually looked a little embarrassed. “I may have referred to it as the equivalent of a civilian SEAL team.” She lifted her chin and dug in. “It’s a good idea, Tom. You and your team could do things you would never be allowed to do as a part of the U.S. military.”
He laughed his amazement. “I thought you wanted me to join the FBI.”
“I was thinking about it, but why would you want to take orders from Max Bhagat when you’re used to being in charge? This way you can make some serious money, too,” she pointed out.
“Working for corporate assholes who risk their employees’ lives to get more oil—” He caught himself. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. I’m being held under guard, about to be officially charged with treason—”
“Of which you are not guilty. We’re going to beat this, Tom, and then you’re going to flip the bird at Admiral Fucker and get back to business kicking terrorist ass. Paoletti International Security and Personal Protection Agency. PISPPA.”
Tom cracked up. “That’s awful. It sounds like piss pot.”
“Yeah, well, Stan and Jazz didn’t think so.”
“They both already have jobs,” Tom pointed out. “Running my team.” He corrected himself. “Team Sixteen.” It wasn’t his team anymore.
But, God damn. Tom could see from Kelly’s face that there was bad news coming. “What?” he asked.
“Jazz told me he isn’t going to be your replacement,” Kelly said. “They’re bringing in someone else to be the team’s new commanding officer.”
Double damn! “Who?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I asked Jenk to see what he can find out.”
Tom felt sick. He sank down next to her on the bed. “This is my fault. Everyone knows Jazz was my pick. I should’ve just kept my mouth shut.”
“It’s not your fault,” Kelly said, putting her arms around him and holding him tightly. “None of this is your fault.”
Yeah, right.
She lifted her head and looked up at him. “Oh, I meant to tell you—there is some good news. Now that he’s back, I’ve got Kenny Karmody working on those surveillance videos from the library. He’s writing a program so that his computer can search through the tapes, looking for Mary Lou.”
The videos? Of the San Diego library parking lot. It took Tom a moment to figure out what Kelly was talking about. Man, what a long shot that was. And if those videos were their best lead …
He was so totally screwed.
“Do you think they’re trying to dissolve the team?” he asked her, already knowing the answer.
Kelly didn’t try to bullshit him. “Yeah,” she said. “I do. If their intention is to tie you into some kind of assassination conspiracy and publicly charge you with treason …”
The negative publicity from that would be intense. And anything Tom had ever touched would be suspect. Or, at the very least, tainted.
The idea of Team Sixteen being split up was almost worse than the thought of his spending the next thirty years in jail.
“I spent most of the night on the phone with Meg and Savannah and we contacted every other teammate’s wife and girlfriend and ex-wife and former girlfriend we could think of,” Kelly told him as she massaged the muscles in his shoulders and neck. “We did a bunch of conference calls, trying to figure out if any of us had been targeted by someone who was looking for information about the team, or even a way onto the Navy base. We made lists of people—even acquaintances—that we knew who might also know Mary Lou. But that was hard to do without her participation. I wish we could talk to her.”
“A lot of people want to talk to Mary Lou,” Tom pointed out.
“The only person I’m certain that she and I both knew was Ihbraham Rahman,” Kelly said.
“Rahman?” Tom said, turning to look at her.
“Yeah,” she said. “After they kick me out of here, I’m going to call Max Bhagat to tell him. I mean, it feels uncomfortably like racial profiling to me—Ihbraham was clearly from the Middle East—but—”
“Is he a gardener?” Tom asked. “You know, like, a landscaper?”
Kelly blinked at him. “Yeah. Did you … I didn’t think you ever met him.”
God damn. “How about a man with blond hair?” Tom asked. “Someone that this Rahman guy might’ve known. Or maybe not,” he said, thinking aloud. “Maybe it’s just someone that Mary Lou knew, too.”
“A blond man.” Kelly chewed her lip. “God, I don’t know. Ihbraham worked alone, I do know that. Well, at least he was always alone whenever I saw him in our neighborhood. He cut the Jansens’ lawn, you know, next door. He came over a few times, to introduce himself and drop off his business card and his rates. He was very nice. And he did a good job at the Jansens’.”
“Call Max,” Tom told her, “and tell him what you just told me. And call Meg and the others back. Ask them if they remember a man with blond hair. He’d probably be someone they met maybe a month or two before the Coronado attack. Maybe before that, even. He probably disappeared shortly after.”
She nodded, taking his ripe uniform from the closet.
Tom kissed his wife and pushed her out the door. “Go.”
It wasn’t until she was gone that he realized he’d forgotten to tell her that he loved her.
Jules arrived in Gainesville with barely enough time to spare.
Alyssa was on the phone with Max, who was back in Sarasota, thank goodness for small favors. But it meant that she couldn’t bitch at Jules for cutting it down to the wire. She could only grimace at him and gesture for him to follow her, grabbing the gym bag she’d taken from the back of her car.
“Everything ready?” Max asked.
“Yes, sir,” Alyssa said. “Just about. We expect Sam to show up in approximately fifteen minutes.”
“Good,” Max said.
“I’m not entirely sure this rates a good just yet,” she told him as she led Jules into the back of the Dunkin’ Donuts, into the single seat ladies’ room. She set the gym bag down on the floor. “His showing up isn’t the same as my apprehending him. He’s no fool.”
“Yes, I’m well aware of that.”
Alyssa locked the door behind them. “We’re going to be waiting for him, here in the store,” she told him. “When I approach him, I’m going to tell him not to run, that he’s not being taken into custody, that he’s got those forty-eight hours that I promised him before we bring him in.”
“Alyssa, promise him anything.” He sounded exhausted. “Just get him in here.”
“In forty-eight hours,�
�� she repeated, but Max had already hung up. “Take off your clothes,” she ordered Jules.
“Why is it, lately, that only women want me to take off my clothes?”
“Please, Jules,” she begged him as she pulled her second-nicest suit out of her bag. “We have three minutes to do this. I have to get into place before Sam gets here.”
“Sam.” Jules yanked off his jacket and shirt and stripped out of his pants, his eyes sympathetic. “Sweetie, are you sure you want to do this? I mean, no one’s going to blame you if you just get into your car and drive north—all the way back to D.C. Take a few weeks off—”
“And for the rest of my life regret not doing something while I had the chance?”
“Why do you want to help Sam Starrett clean up his mess?” Jules countered. “And you know I love him dearly, Alyssa, but it is his mess.”
“You can’t blame him for terrorists targeting his wife,” she said.
“Actually, I can,” Jules said. “Considering if he hadn’t had the wrong wife, he wouldn’t be in this situation right now.”
Alyssa shook her head. “I didn’t want to marry him. I wouldn’t have married him.”
“Yeah, you can pretend that if you want, but I know you. You were so ready to get his name tattooed on your ass.”
“Just hurry up,” she told him.
Jules sighed. “This is going to be catastrophically bad, isn’t it? But what I can’t figure out is, which will be worse? If you fail or if you succeed?”
Sam’s phone rang just as he saw the blue Ford Focus, with South Carolina plates, coming down the highway exit ramp.
“Don’t say a word,” he warned the kid—Kyle—sitting slouched beside him. “Don’t even breathe loudly.”
He opened his cell phone.
It was Alyssa, of course.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Got some information for me?” he asked. “You know, in the spirit of convincing me to meet you somewhere and take advantage of that fifty-three hours of amnesty?”
“It’s forty-eight hours and fifty-two minutes now,” she told him. “The clock started when I first made the offer.”
“That’s fair,” Sam said, pulling out into traffic, about twelve cars behind Beth Weiss’s Focus. He could let her get that far ahead, because the nearest traffic light was way down the road. If someone was following her, watching for him, he wanted to be far enough back.
“Sam.” Alyssa’s voice was husky with urgency. “Meet me. Right now. You name the place, I’ll be there. We can set it up so that you feel safe. I’m willing to do whatever you want me to do. Your rules. Max isn’t a part of this. This is just between you and me. He gave you forty-eight hours—but he didn’t say I had to tell him where we are. We’ll call in for information. You know that we’ll find Mary Lou and Haley much faster if we work together—”
“You remember that motel we stayed in?” he said, cutting her off. “Go there and get room two-fourteen.”
“Why not just meet in the parking lot?”
“Leave your side arm on your left front tire,” he told her. “And your keys locked in the car, on the passenger’s side floor.”
Up ahead, Beth’s blue Focus was signaling to make a left into the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot. Way to go, Beth.
“When you get in the room, take off your clothes and cuff yourself to a chair. They had those chairs with the arms that were attached, remember?”
“Sam—”
“You said my rules.”
Alyssa was silent. He drove past the Dunkin’ Donuts, signaling to make a left into the parking lot for a paint store that was two blocks down. He’d drop Kyle here, ditch the car, then head into the parking lot for the twenty-four-hour Wal-Mart that was across the street. He would stand just inside the door of the department store and still have a clear view of the Dunkin’ Donuts, while he waited for a cab.
From that vantage point, he could see all the way into the little doughnut shop. With its big windows, it was like looking into a fish bowl. Last night he’d been able to take an inventory and had noticed that they were running low on glazed doughnuts. He’d be able to see anything that went on in there.
“Yes to the keys, no to the weapon on the wheel,” Alyssa told him. “You know I can’t leave it somewhere where it might fall into the wrong hands. I’ll leave the curtains open in the room and my side arm on the bed, where you can see it through the window—and where you can see me, too, in the chair. Clothes on.”
“If you leave your clothes on, I’ll have to search you,” he pointed out.
“Yeah,” she said, with what sounded like genuine amusement in her voice. “That’s why you wanted me to take off my clothes. So you wouldn’t have to search me.”
“Hey, I figured it was worth a try.”
“It’ll take me about fifteen minutes to get there,” she told him.
“You’re serious,” he said.
“Yes. Please be there.” She hung up.
No way was she serious. Although, damn, she sounded sincere.
Fifteen minutes …
First things first. If Kyle, here, walked into the doughnut shop and back out again without getting arrested, he’d think about taking a spin past that motel.
Sam turned to the kid. “Show time. Keep the hat pulled down over your face and your hands out of the pockets of your jacket. That’s important. Hands in view at all times, all right? Just walk in there and stand in the line at the counter.”
“Is someone going to shoot me?” Kyle asked. “Thinking that I’m you?”
“No,” Sam said. “Not if you keep your hands out of the jacket.”
“Who are you?” For the first time all morning there was actually a flicker of life in his eyes.
“One of the good guys,” Sam told him.
The kid snorted. “Yeah, right.” He pulled the hat down and got out of the car. “Something tells me it would’ve been easier just to suck your dick.”
“Maybe for you, but not for me,” Sam said.
Alyssa was in place.
She’d seen Beth Weiss’s car pull into the lot. And now her radio headset crackled.
“Still no sign that Starrett is following.”
Yeah, like they’d be able to spot him. Did they really think finding him was going to be that easy?
Sam Starrett was beyond good. He’d told her once that one of the keys to remaining invisible while following someone was to detach emotionally. Emotional energy gave the people being followed that sixth sense tingle at the back of their neck, that feeling that someone was watching them.
She tried to do the same now as she watched for him. No emotional attachment. No emotion at all …
Alyssa knew Sam well enough to know he wouldn’t look the way she’d expect him to look, and he wouldn’t be where she’d expect him to be.
It was a complicated game they were playing. He knew she was looking for him. But she knew he knew she was looking for him, and likewise, he knew she knew he knew, etc. etc. etc., ad nauseam.
It came down to both of them trying to second-guess each other. Would he do the obvious, simply because she’d expect him not to do the obvious? Or …?
Please God, don’t let him show up here at all. Please let him already be back at that Motel Six they’d stayed at their first night here in Gainesville. Please let him be ready to trust her.
Surely he’d figured out that both the desk clerk he’d talked to at the Sunset Motel and the roommate had given up information about Beth Weiss far too easily.
Surely he knew that the FBI had found and questioned Beth in Orlando, that they were using her as bait to reel him in.
“When he shows,” Alyssa said into her radio, “if he shows, I’m the one who approaches him, is that clear? No one so much as moves an inch.”
“We’ve got him,” one of the Gainesville agents said, excitement in his voice. “Heading across the parking lot.”
Alyssa looked. The height was right and so was the h
air, but … That wasn’t Sam. She opened her mouth to tell them to hold off, to keep out of sight, that this was somebody wearing Sam’s baseball cap, someone he’d sent in to test the waters, or maybe even to be a decoy.
He’d pulled that particular hat trick on her before.
He was watching to see what would happen. And what he needed to see was Hat Guy go up to the counter, order a doughnut, and walk back out—unapproached.
Alyssa, after all, was supposed to be over at that motel, cuffing herself to a chair.
After Hat Guy walked away, Sam would wait a few more minutes, and then come out of wherever he was hiding. He’d be far less careful, and she’d finally be able to spot him and—
“Hold off,” she said. “We don’t know that’s him. Let’s make sure we have a positive ID. And remember, I approach him.”
“He’s getting closer!”
“Jules, stay out of sight,” Alyssa ordered into her microphone. “Everyone stay in place. That’s not—”
Max’s voice cut her off. “Take him down.”
“What?” she said. “What are you doing?”
“I’m sorry, Alyssa. The deal was only good if Starrett took it right away.”
“I’m still negotiating the deal! Max, you’re not even here! Shit!” How could he give that order from hundreds of miles away? As Alyssa watched, twenty agents stormed Sam’s decoy, taking him down, pressing his face against the asphalt. “Oh, shit!”
“Sorry,” Max said again, sounding anything but.
Alyssa took off the radio headset, flinging it down as she turned and spotted …
Sam’s hiding place.
Had to be.
She knew where he was and where he was going to go—out the back door. Now all she had to do was get there first. She ran for her car.
Sam sighed as about twenty agents in FBI windbreakers damn near sat on poor Kyle.
He could see Alyssa over in the Dunkin’ Donuts, a scarf over her head and sunglasses on as she tried to be invisible in one of her designer suits. Tried, and failed. It was the curse of being an incredibly beautiful woman. In order to hide herself, she had to go to extremes like the scarf and glasses. Which made her extremely easy to pick out of a crowd.
Gone Too Far Page 31
