UntiltheDawn

by Desiree Holt

  “I’ll be quick!”

  “Quick?” he asked as if she had rocks in her head.

  “And dead,” Nikki inserted.

  “No!” Maddie slammed her hand down. “When I last saw Trask, I was telling him how you had disappeared, Dan. If I show up and you’re with me, Trask will pepper you with questions. And none of them will be easy to answer. Soon you’ll find yourself telling him your real profession—and that won’t be pretty for any of us.”

  “Fine. I’ll stay outside. You’ll wear a wire. Nikki, can you get us a wire, pronto?”

  “Absolutely. Anything else?”

  “A camera. Small, hi res.”

  Nikki snorted. “I have a dandy little creature we designed for a woman. A diamond-studded Patek.”

  “That’ll do.” Dan rose from his chair and stalked Maddie.

  “I get the wire, but—”- She didn’t know whether to thank them or laugh first. “What do I need a camera for?”

  “In case you can’t copy or transfer files. Does the camera take pictures of computer screens, Nikki?”

  “Check.”

  “Meanwhile,” Dan murmured as he gathered Maddie up in his arms, “Nikki is putting me at the head of her team that goes with us. Aren’t you, Nick?”

  “Roger that, Foreman,” Nikki replied with laughter in her voice.

  “So, then, Madison Sommers,” Dan crooned, “if you think I am letting you go anywhere alone after what we know about how ruthless the people running this operation are, then you don’t know me at all.”

  “And that,” Nikki said, turning on her heel, “is my exit cue.”

  “I’ll chain you to me before I would let you go alone to find Trask.” Dan bristled with determination as he crushed Maddie closer.

  She pressed her lips to his throat. Pleased he wouldn’t take no for an answer, proud he wanted to protect her that badly, she whispered, “If I said I’d be happy to have you accompany me tomorrow, provided you stayed in the background, would you chain me to you anyway?”

  He snorted, then kissed her heartily on the mouth. “What do you think?”

  “Dunno. Wanna show me?”

  * * * * *

  Maddie had been to Trask’s regional office in the Del Rio area only twice before, but she knew each one on the small staff of three. With a rental car that Dan had told Nikki to acquire from a Houston agency near Bush Intercontinental, Maddie drove into the parking lot of the Federal Building and parked.

  Across the street, she saw a black sedan already in place. There, she knew, Dan waited alone. Nikki’s team of four commandos stood in readiness at four points around the building. Each of them had a feed from her wire. Each was armed. And dangerous.

  Breathing deeply, she climbed out of the car and headed for the building.

  “No need to say anything to us,” Dan had instructed her as he secured the small microphone into her bra. “We’ll see you or we’ll hear you. And we will hear whoever talks to you.” He had patted her wrist where Nikki’s camera watch fit her snuggly.

  Marching into the building, Maddie noted that things seemed quiet. More quiet than they should be if Trask were here. Is he?

  She sailed through the hallway, past the picture of President George Hamill smiling down at her. Hey, George. Get better, will you? He hadn’t. In fact, bulletins this morning said he had slipped into a deeper coma. He had no responses to nerve stimuli now. The vice president, said the news channels, had improved. She didn’t know whether to believe that or not. But she did know one thing and that was that Speaker of the House Paul Trask was still not answering her calls. She told herself he was incognito because the Secret Service would want it that way—but she knew her boss might have used his own private bodyguards to disappear. That was a Houdini act he’d pulled before, employing four full-time men to clear his paths. True, he had always excused his absences by telling her his actions were top secret, but now putting this all together with her new suspicions, she had fewer reasons to trust every word he said.

  “Hello, Flora,” she bade the receptionist as she stepped into the Congressional office. She thrust her hand out to shake Flora’s.

  The middle--aged, dark--haired woman blinked at her. “Miss Sommers? What are you doing here?”

  Sweeping aside the answer to that with a wave of her hand, she announced, “I’ve been trying to reach the Speaker, Flora. I must talk to him. Where is he?”

  Fright made Flora’s eyes grow darker. “He was here yesterday. The Secret Service, too. It’s scary, isn’t it, to think both the president and vice president could go, just like that?” She snapped her fingers.

  Flora had always been long on empathy, short on logic.

  Maddie threw her a tolerant smile. “Who else is here? John? Lupe?” She mentioned the other two regional legislative aides who took care of Trask’s constituents’ problems with land rights, taxes, appointments to the service academies, passports and a thousand other things.

  “Both out. The Speaker took them with him.”

  That alarmed Maddie. Why would Trask take his aides with him? “He had tasks for them?” She had no idea what that might be, unless…

  “Si. He told them he needed them to help me organize an event.”

  “What event?”

  “A meeting.” The woman shrugged.

  “Where? With whom?”

  “Oh, you know how he does that. Up in Midland or Alpine usually. But this time, I think he said Big Bend.”

  “Big Bend?” Out in the middle of nowhere? Rocks and hills that dinosaurs once roamed. A barren, ugly landscape of craggy mountains, desolate valleys filled with cougars, snakes and scorpions the size of your fist. “Why the hell would they go deeper into the wilderness when we have a crisis in the line of succession?”

  “I know. I know. But I can’t tell you anything more than what they told me!”

  Maddie put a hand to the shoulder of the distressed woman. “It’s okay, Flora. I hear you. Well, then, I just need to do a few things here. Talk to people in the Speaker’s office in the Capitol and send them some things via email. Some of them are sensitive material, Flora. So I’ll just let myself into the Speakers Office.”

  “Sure. I’ll get the key.” Flora pulled open her desk drawer and extracted a ring filled with them.

  “My lord, Flora. What the hell are all those for?”

  She grinned. “Lots of security. The Speaker has increased it over the years to the point where he told me to carry these with me all the time.” She jiggled the metal pieces ’til they rang like chimes.

  “Good thing you are always on the job.” Maddie tried to smile. Good thing you were here to let me in.

  Flora led the way past two more desks piled high with paperwork toward the back of the suite and the Speaker’s private office. “Si, good thing, too, because you could not open his computer without my key.”

  Is that so? Since when did Trask lock up his private computer here? Weren’t the encrypted systems imposed since 9/11 enough to deter criminals and terrorists? Or did Trask have files here he wanted no one to see?

  “Here you go.” Flora swung open the door and marched to the desk and the computer standing there. The screen was dark.

  “Unlock that for me, please, Flora.”

  “Si, no problemo.” In a minute she had turned the key, pushed the boot button to the mainframe and made her way toward the door. “I will close this, si?”

  “Si, muchas gracias, Flora.”

  Then Maddie pulled out Trask’s chair and sat down to delve into the files of a man she had worked for, trusted and on whose integrity she had built her entire professional career.

  The usual files were there. Committee reports. Voting records of all Congresspersons in their party. White Papers from consultants. Including Dan’s latest on transportation issues, rolling stock coming through Trask’s district from Mexico and where it all originated.

  Maddie fell back in the chair and exhaled. She looked up at the clock on the far wall
. She’d been at this for over an hour.

  “Nothing,” she said for the sake of Dan and the team. “Can’t find anything in the regular files.”

  She decided to see who was in the Capitol office this morning and picked up the phone on Trask’s desk. But no sooner was it in her hand than she put it back in the cradle.

  Her gaze came up. Fastened on the far wall. The pictures of Trask with President Hamill. With the previous Speaker. With other Texas Congressmen.

  Her gaze ran over the plaques, too. The awards from the Chambers of Commerce. The Man of the Year Awards from this organization or that. The Cattlemen’s Association Award for Good Citizenship. And then her eyes landed on the one plaque she remembered. The one that had dogged her memory. Kept her guessing what the nagging sensation was at the back of her brain whenever the term Norseman was mentioned.

  She rose and walked toward it.

  Put her hands up and touched it. Traced the words. “The Sons of Norway of Texas honor Congressman Paul Trask for his service to the Chapter.”

  Trask was a Norse name. Trask was a Norse man.

  “Trask,” she said for the edification and enjoyment of her lover and the team of people with whom she would now work, if she had the good fortune to survive this debacle, “is a Norseman.” And just for the record, just to engrave the knowledge on her mind, just to embed the full rage she felt at Trask’s betrayal of himself and their country, she repeated what she’d just told them all. Then she raised her wrist and pushed the button on her amazing little watch to take a picture of the plaque. “And now I have to find anything else I can that gives me more proof.”

  * * * * *

  Within the next hour, she had talked to Julia in the office in Washington. All hands still in town were on deck in the Speaker’s office, the receptionist reported.

  “Glad you are back from Cancun,” Julia told her.

  “My presence means nothing if I don’t know where Trask is, Julia.” Maddie wondered if the woman knew where Paul was. Over the years, she’d had the intense feeling in odd moments that Julia was more involved in Trask’s life than any of them knew or understood. Now was the time to explore all such instincts. “I need to get to him. If you know where I can find him, you must tell me.”

  “He told me not to say…” the receptionist sounded conflicted.

  “Tell me, Julia. The man is next in line to succeed. He cannot stay bundled away somewhere. Not without me!”

  “Carstairs’ Ranch. Rick Carstairs.”

  “Here? West of Del Rio?” Maddie knew this rancher. He owned the largest spread in Trask’s district. On the edges of Big Bend. He was also a major contributor whom Maddie had met many times when he came to talk with Trask in Washington.

  “Yes, he said he’s having a meeting there of supporters.”

  “When, Julia?”

  “Today. In fact…it starts in twenty minutes.”

  “Great! Thanks! But, wait! How do I get there?”

  “The ranch is off Route 10. I’ll send you directions. Or wait, you are at Paul’s computer?” Paul’s computer. Intriguing. “Yes, I am, Julia.”

  “I always get directions wrong, you know I do. I know Paul—the Speaker, I mean, has directions on his desktop.”

  Maddie searched the screen. “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, try this. Log off. Then do you see a username that says PT?”

  “The Speaker’s initials?” Maddie backed out and saw an icon for PT. “I do.”

  “Open it.”

  Maddie did and got a security screen. Damn, damn. “Do you have the password?”

  “Viking.”

  “Viking as in Norseman?” Maddie frowned, her gaze drifting up to the Sons of Norway plaque, then typed in the password. “It’s opening.”

  “Great!”

  What was greater was the variety of items spread before Maddie on the screen. She fell back in her chair, overwhelmed with the wealth of materials.

  File folders labeled Donors, Scheduling, Network. Opening just the Donors folder was like opening an ant hill with dozens of more folders. She could never copy them all. On gut instinct, she opened Scheduling and found one titled, Norsemen.

  A hundred or more documents stood before her. Invoices. Lists of shipments.

  She opened Network and found a document that was a copy of an email from Trask to someone whose email address was fisherman2. The email was dated yesterday. She skimmed it and she caught her breath. Then she read aloud to Dan the words on the page.

  “Rover and Charger are down. Next stage is a go.”

  Rover, she knew, was the Secret Service’s code name for the president. And Charger belonged to none other than the vice president.

  She snapped a picture of the email and felt her heart hammer against her ribs.

  That was proof Trask had a network that cared about Rover and Charger’s illnesses and had a next stage of some plan he was approving for implementation.

  There were so many more documents to read and copy. God, she would be here for days.

  She had to find a flash drive. Quickly. She began to rummage in Trask’s drawers. Clamping a hand to her mouth, she paused.

  “There’s too much here to copy,” she said to herself and Dan. “I don’t have time! The meeting is in twenty minutes.”

  She closed her eyes. Stop. Think.

  She heard voices in the outer office. She cocked an ear. One of them was a bass, another a baritone and the third?

  She jumped to her feet. Froze. If this was Trask…. It couldn’t be!

  Dan? Help me.

  * * * * *

  Dan ran a hand through his hair. Christ! They’d caught a few breaks and they were still behind the eight ball! Too many files to copy. Not enough proof to convict. But at least now they knew that Trask was behind the Norseman holding company along with his pals. Terrific. Now, we have no idea who’s in this meeting.

  Dan had left the car and now kneeled down behind a berm near a cluster of yuccas and palms across from the building where Trask’s office was. “Did you get all that, Caleb?” he asked the team leader.

  “I did. What’s more I’ve got the directions to Carstairs’ ranch,” Caleb’s bass voice came at him through the wireless. He read the directions to Dan who repeated them back to him. “I’ll take the team of over there and set up posts. I think that’s our best bet—to get ahead of them. You follow her, Dan, when she comes out.”

  “Roger, that, Caleb.” And to Maddie whom he knew could not hear him, he whispered, “Come on, baby. Snap a few pics and get the hell out of there.” He heard a rustling in the trees to the left. “Whoa. Caleb? You there? I think we have company.”

  He began to crawl on his belly toward the cover of the largest yucca. He saw a camo boot, heard a scurry and felt the thump of impact in the fleshy part of his triceps.

  “Who the hell?”

  Chapter Ten

  “Maddie, you just can’t keep your nose out of everyone’s business, can you?” Trask’s voice was edgy with anger as he dragged Maddie out the back entrance of his office, into the elevator. “Good thing my office is semi-soundproofed. We won’t disturb any of the nice folks out in front.” He punched the button for the parking garage. His hand over her mouth muffled her cries while his other arm banded her arms to her sides.

  Dan! Where the hell are you? You promised you’d be here for me. Did you run out again? Are you going to turn out, in the end, to be someone I can’t count on?

  She heard Trask speaking in a low tone, as if into a lapel mic, and then the elevator door opened and Goliath was standing there—a tall, heavily muscled man in camo pants and t-shirt with a holster strapped to his shoulder.

  “Here.” Trask shoved Maddie at him. “Get rid of her. I’ve got to see what damage she did and then get to the Carstairs Ranch. And let Starling know what happened here. Damn it, anyway.” He turned his head toward his collar. “Mike, come on back here. I’ll need you.”

  If Maddie had thought Trask
was strong, the man he handed her over to was off the charts. His arm around her was so tight she could hardly breathe and his thick fingers dug into her face as they clamped over her lips.

  “I’ll take care of it,” he assured Trask. “Here’s Mike. But he looks disturbed about something.”

  Dan! Oh, Dan. Now would be a good time for you to restore my faith in you.

  Why hadn’t Dan or any of Nikki’s men picked up Trask’s arrival?

  They probably did but thought he was alone because the windows in his car were darkened. Or he and his pals had been in the building already.

  Maddie’s mind was working furiously as she tried to figure out where everyone might be, what had happened to Dan and where Nikki’s men had gotten to. Taking the ride down to the parking level of the building was a descent to hell with this creep crushing her ribs and killing her hopes.

  She heard Trask raise his voice to the man jogging toward them but the man holding her dragged her toward a black SUV and threw her roughly into the front seat, then down on the floor. She tried to scramble up and opened her mouth to scream but Goliath just clipped her on the jaw.

  “Shut up.”

  Her head jerked, her mind spun and she realized what people meant when they said they saw stars. She cupped her jaw, forehead to the seat. Then she heard the engine start up and they were moving, heading up, around and out of the garage. She swallowed back the rising nausea and tried to hitch herself up on the seat. The windows were darkened but she saw daylight as they headed out of the garage toward the street.

  Suddenly the vehicle skewed wildly and Goliath swore creatively as he wrestled with the wheel. The car jolted again and they fishtailed more.

  “Son of a bitch.” He looked down at Maddie. “You open your mouth and you’re dead meat.”

  He opened the door and climbed out. Maddie clawed her way up to watch him as he walked around to the front of the vehicle to see what was wrong.

  “Damn it,” Goliath shouted, just before a tall dark shadow clipped him behind his ear and he folded neatly to the concrete.