by Linda Ladd
Chapter Twenty-six
The excruciating wait went on forever. Novak had always been a rational man, quiet, thoughtful, able to wait patiently and control his anger and his nerves and get the job done, whatever that job might be. Always had been that way, no matter how bad the situation. Not this time. This time it was difficult for him to conquer his nerves and his burgeoning anger. The adrenaline was still rushing through him, all through the night and even now in the hospital waiting room. He wanted to jump up and run out, find whoever had done this to Mariah. He tried to make himself think coherently and figure things out. Use his head. Nothing was adding up. He didn’t get far in that endeavor. Especially after two big guys stopped in the corridor just outside the waiting room windows.
They just stood out there and stared at him through the open window blinds. They were frowning. Both of them. They were armed. Both of them. They were dressed in white dress shirts and black dress pants. Both of them. Black holsters on their belts, both on the right hand side, in plain sight, alongside two very shiny gold badges, also on their belts. Novak got to his feet and stared back at them. Hostile. He was alone in the waiting room. If they had come to arrest him, he wasn’t going to let them do it. He wasn’t leaving that room until he knew if Mariah was alive or dead.
The two guys came in together. One quietly shut the door that led out into the hallway. The other one took his time closing all the blinds on the windows, one set of them at a time. No hurry. It was two against one. The one closing the blinds was Norwegian blond and stocky with hard muscles everywhere that counted, and he looked about as strong as any man could possibly get. He looked as if he could bench press five hundred pounds or a Brahma bull without breaking a sweat. He was clean shaven, hair cropped short, face somber. About six foot, two hundred thirty pounds, maybe. Then the three of them were alone inside that small waiting room, with nobody to see what happened next. Probably a good thing.
The other man was the guy Mariah had picked up at the bar. Tall, also sober in expression and wary and neat as a pin. His hair was brown and slicked straight back off his forehead and his close-set dark eyes watched Novak like he expected him to explode toward him at any minute. And Novak just might. That one was the man who had come to the Triangle Club with Mariah, the one she had said was worried about her, the man who wanted to protect her. Novak got ready. He tried to loosen up his shoulders, get up on the balls of his feet some, flex his fingers, and he did all of that, ready and eager for the coming brawl.
Right now Novak was glad about the adrenaline rush that couldn’t seem to die down. He was getting angrier by the second, could feel the hot red rush of it flushing through his veins. He wanted to take these guys down, hurt them, put them out of commission for good. He was ready to beat the shit out of somebody, anybody. And they would do just fine. They had showed up inside his line of fire first. So, good enough. Get it on.
They stood about three yards away from him, one on either side of him, looking at the blood all over him, watching his eyes and his hands. They’d better be watching him. Then the tall one, the one who was with Mariah at the club, said, “You need to come with us, Mr. Novak. We need to debrief you.” American accent. East Coast. Massachusetts, maybe. Boston, probably. Polite, calm, unafraid, official.
“I’m not leaving here until I know she’s okay. If you try to make me, you will be making a big mistake.”
The two guys exchanged a glance, and then the buff blond guy said, “Is Mariah here with you? Is she hurt?”
Novak just stared at them. He was going to make the first move on the guy she had hung out with. He was going to crush his windpipe with his fist and then he was going to break his kneecap. Quickly and efficiently, before the other guy could get involved. Guy Two would be the icing on the cake.
“Is she okay?” asked the one with blond hair again. He looked concerned. His voice was commanding. He was the boss. His eyes lingered some more on Novak’s bloodstained shirt and pants and hands. Then he looked worried, and it was plain to see. The guy did not mask his emotions.
“Who are you?” Novak asked. His voice sounded angry. He was angry. He was just looking for a way to let it burst free and hurt people. He needed to do that, let it rip before it built up into something he couldn’t control at all. They looked like two guys he could let it out on. Tough guys. Capable guys.
“We need you to come outside with us. We just want to talk to you. That’s all. We aren’t here to make trouble. We’re not here to fight you.” The blond guy stopped right there, remained wary and waited for Novak’s answer. He didn’t get one. “Is she okay?” he asked for the third time. “Tell us. We need to know if she’s okay. We’re worried about her.”
“Hell no, she’s not okay. Some bastard attacked her and stabbed her over and over and then left her on the floor to bleed out. Guess you don’t know anything about any of that, right? Guess you weren’t the ones who did it?”
The two guys exchanged another concerned look and then put all their attention back on him. Then they shook their heads. Now both of them looked more than concerned. They just stood there and stared holes through him. As if they didn’t know what to say.
“Is she expected to live?” asked Mariah’s worried friend. The blond one, still in charge.
“They don’t know. She’s been in surgery for hours. That’s why I’m not leaving here. Not with you. Not with anybody.”
They both just stood there and watched him some more, not saying anything, either, just staring at him like he was a ticking time bomb and they were waiting for him to explode. They were right on. The three of them faced off, silent, but all three were ready to roll. Finally, the one doing most of the talking looked around the deserted waiting room. He sighed audibly. Then he said, “I guess it’s okay if we talk in here.”
Novak scoffed. “Yeah. Let’s do that.”
“Don’t worry. We didn’t come here to hurt you.”
“Yeah? Well, good luck with that. I’m in a bad mood. I’d just love to beat the shit out of both of you.”
They looked at each other some more, and then back at him. It was becoming a habit of theirs. The guy with the slicked back brown hair spoke next. “We don’t like her getting hurt any more than you do.”
“And why is that? Who are you guys? Why are you here? How did you find me?”
“Mariah’s GPS. On her phone.”
Novak couldn’t get the GPS on the phone to work. How could they? He sensed the moment the tall guy decided to tell him the truth. He waited, but not patiently.
“Sit down, Mr. Novak, and let us tell you who we are and why we’re here and why we care about what happens to Mariah Murray.”
Novak remained standing right where he was. They both sat down, probably just so he’d relax a little, on the same row of chairs, but three seats apart. They stayed alert. Sat up straight, ready to jump up if need be.
“We’re FBI. I’m Special Agent Jeff Mason, and this is my partner, Special Agent Phil Carson. We’re Mariah’s backup team while she’s here on American soil. We work with her.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? She’s a damn newspaper reporter.”
The same guy answered him. Blond one just watched and listened. Apparently ready to let the other guy get into the act. He was the boss. He could do it anyway he wanted. “We’ve been watching you ever since she pulled her car onto your property down in the bayous.”
Novak frowned, not sure he believed them. Then he remembered the white SUV following them on the Interstate.
“You’re the guys in the white Nissan, right?”
“Yes, you were alert to spot us. We’re pretty good.”
“Why follow me?”
“So she hasn’t told you the truth yet?”
“She has never told me the truth in her entire life.”
The blond guy took a deep breath and jumped back into the conversation. “She told us that you didn’t like her much.”
“What the hell is going on? Quit
beating around the bush and just say it.”
“Okay. Mariah is here investigating Robin and Emma Adamson. She works for the Australian government.” He paused. “For ASIO.”
That really floored Novak. He might as well pick his jaw up off the ground. He knew full well what ASIO stood for. The Australian Security Intelligence Organization. Australia’s counterpart to the FBI. Novak had some minor contact with them a couple of times when he was in the SEALs. He was chosen for that mission because he had grown up in Sydney. Their outfit was as good as it got. They knew what they were doing. But Mariah, one of them? No way.
“So now you’re telling me she’s an agent? An ASIO agent? That’s what you really want me to believe?” Novak was pretty much stunned and not a little skeptical and not getting over it. He had not suspected her of that kind of thing. Would never have suspected her of that kind of thing, not in a million years. Ten million years. She was a hell of a good liar, though. Had proved it again, all the way to north Georgia and beyond.
“She’s in charge of this whole operation. We just backed her up in case she got tangled up with local American authorities. We weren’t supposed to be active in the case. Not unless she was in danger of being hurt or killed.”
“Well, you sure as hell fucked that up.”
The two guys said nothing, but looked abashed.
“So, okay. Say I believe that, which I don’t. So what’s she here for? What kind of investigation? Is Emma Adamson under investigation, too? Not just her husband?”
They began to tell him their tale of woe, probably more at ease now that he had calmed down and wasn’t looking at them and flexing his fingers in an apparent and deadly desire to throttle the life out of them. Novak listened, stunned already, but growing more so as they proceeded with their story. “Okay, because of the international aspects of the case, Mariah worked on it with law enforcement agencies Down Under. They finally got a break when Emma mailed Mariah that matchbook. Mariah always believed Emma might still be alive and taken by force out of Australia, just like she told you. She just couldn’t prove it. They covered their tracks well enough. She didn’t suspect that Emma was involved herself until later on in the case. She didn’t want to believe it.”
“What about the matchbook? Thought that was the key to the whole damn thing.”
“Emma did send it to Mariah at the newspaper. The investigative reporter thing is Mariah’s cover when she’s not out in the field. Emma thought she was a legitimate reporter. She had no idea that she was an agent.”
“And Mariah is sanctioned to be here by the U.S. government?”
“Yes. But we were ordered not to participate more than just watching and reporting and helping her if she needed assistance. Like I just said.” He stopped. “That’s where you came in. She said you were tough, well trained, honest, a good guy, and that you could help her find out if the matchbook really came from Emma Adamson. She said she trusted you implicitly, but she couldn’t tell you much. She wanted to, said you were good to keep your mouth shut. She was ordered by her superiors to keep you in the dark. She felt very badly using you like that. She said so.”
“Yeah, well, I feel badly about it, too. In fact, I just might call a good friend of mine in D.C. and make sure you’re telling me the truth. Doesn’t sound like the truth to me. Sounds like a lot of bullshit.”
“Please feel free. We’re telling the truth. Check us out, if you don’t believe us. I can give you a number.”
“I have a number.”
The blond guy shoved his hands in his pocket, worry now written all over his face. “Look, Novak, we feel terrible that she got hurt like this. We were supposed to have her back.”
“Yeah, you were. Why the hell didn’t you?”
“She told us to keep an eye on you. Told us to follow you and make sure everything went down all right. We didn’t expect trouble at the safe house, and she didn’t, either. She left us a message that you were headed straight back to the compound and might need backup with Wilson’s men. She said she was fine and just taking care of Emma while you went to get the boy. She said she was going to wait awhile and then question her about the case.”
“What the hell is going on up at that compound? It’s got to be more than what you’re telling me. Why do you or ASIO care about Emma disappearing with her husband?”
“We think Emma’s disappearance was a cover for their art fraud ring. International-level art forgeries. It’s a worldwide operation now. Very lucrative and widespread. ASIO went after Robin Adamson hard while they were still in Sydney. Emma’s parents were accused of art fraud when she was young, but her father shot down her mother and killed himself right before they were slated to go to prison. We think that’s when Robin Adamson picked up the reins of the business, and eventually disappeared and moved the whole forgery operation right here in Georgia. Mariah estimates that thirty percent of all the artwork in Australian art galleries now is composed of forged copies of works done by famous artists. She also thinks that Emma is the forger and is maybe being forced to do the work.” He stopped and let all that sink in. Then he went on, “Thinking is, is that Emma does the painting and her husband had the contacts to distribute them. Usually, they do their fakes based on lesser known Australian artists but work that is in demand down there. Black market stuff. Mariah says that Emma’s very good. She showed us some of her work.”
Okay, now everything was beginning to make sense to Novak. He had been inside that barn and watched her work. Seen the different kinds of paintings stacked around. Seen the Monet. He was no expert, but he would have thought it to be genuine.
“They were part of an art forgery ring that raked in millions of dollars, all over the world. They’ve got a global network that unloads them periodically on the black market. But now we think that Emma herself might have been the major player. At least, that’s what Mariah was beginning to think, and she’s usually right. Robin Adamson might have been in charge in the beginning, but not anymore. We think he might even be dead now.”
“Then who the hell is Barrett Wilson?”
“We think he was her bodyguard when she lived in Sydney. Robin Adamson apparently didn’t trust her and hired Wilson to watch her. Mariah thinks now that Emma probably seduced Wilson, and killed her husband or had Wilson do it. Then they disappeared with the money. Set up new operations here in the U.S. and kept the business going.”
“Emma came to me last night. Beaten and bleeding. Said her husband did it to her. They both told me that Barrett Wilson is her husband. I’ve seen the way that guy treats her. He kept her locked up most of the time. He said she was his wife.”
The FBI guys didn’t have an answer. The one named Mason shrugged. “He could be paranoid. Thinks she’ll do the same thing to him. I’d sleep with one eye open, if I were in his shoes. That woman is dangerous, trust me.”
Carson spoke up. “Mariah was the one who found the painting at the Sikeston art museum. She found it online in one of her initial searches. Thought maybe the curator down there was involved. Part of the ring. She thought that might be where they take orders for their forgeries. They’re slick. They have all the bases covered. He’s being watched, too.”
Mason said, “Once we got enough evidence against them, Mariah was going to hand them over to us. Then she was going to extradite them Down Under. All this is a covert operation. You know how these kinds of things operate. We’ve read your file at DOD.”
When he was in the service, that’s exactly how Novak had operated in similar situations. Still did, at times. He stared at the two men, trying to make sense of everything.
“Do you have any idea where Emma Adamson is now?” Carson asked him.
“Are you telling me that you think she’s the one who stabbed Mariah?”
“We think she’s fully capable of it. We’re beginning to think she killed her husband, too, probably with Wilson’s help. Not sure about that yet. He might have done it for her. But Adamson’s never turned up anywhere else, not
for the last two years. And nobody’s found his body.”
“But that guy, Wilson? He abused her. I saw him do it. Humiliated her in every way and at every chance he got.”
“That’s probably why she tried to contact Mariah in the first place. She didn’t have a clue that Mariah was a covert agent. And they were best friends when they were children. That’s why ASIO picked Mariah to run this case. And Barrett Wilson’s grandparents were from around here, before they emigrated to Australia. So we think he persuaded Emma to come here and base her work up there in that compound because the Australian authorities had no jurisdiction here. We think Emma got here and then Wilson took all her power away from her. She was trapped up there in that cliff house and didn’t have anybody to help her, not after Wilson hired men who were loyal to him. Wilson was probably afraid she’d kill him, too. Some of their colleagues arrested in the Australian sting said that he was so much in love with her when he was her bodyguard that he would do anything for her. Emma had told them so. So he wanted her here, where he could keep her under his thumb.”
Mariah’s FBI friends kept talking, telling Novak one long, convoluted tale. But they had a lot of evidence that he couldn’t ignore. He was still in disbelief that Mariah could actually be working undercover; more surprised that she’d managed to pull the wool over his eyes. But it also stood to reason the way Carson and Mason had laid it out for him. Novak couldn’t stand Mariah, and she knew it. He would never expect her to be on the up-and-up about anything. He was the perfect foil for her purposes. Damn it. How could he have not seen through her?
“I got Mariah to the emergency room, so the local cops up there are probably out looking for me. Think you guys could square it with them? Get them off my back?”
