“I imagine it’s been as overwhelming for you as it has for Zach and his mom,” Jessie said.
Andrea shook her head. “I should’ve known something was up when Julian insisted that I come out here to counsel Ian in the first place. When I told him I didn’t think it was a good idea because I’d been in a relationship with Ian, Julian already knew all about it. He said the only thing that mattered was getting Ian to open up, and I might be the key to his healing.”
“He might’ve had that part right. Ian didn’t exactly rush across the room and kiss the daylights out of the last couple of psychologists the government sent to look under the hood. My mother-in-law’s still in shock over it. Though you have to understand, the woman practically passes out over the kissing scenes in Eden’s princess movies.”
Andrea made a face at the memory. “I thought I was going to pass out from embarrassment myself that day, considering how hard I was working to convince her I was a professional.”
Jessie laughed. “You convinced her you were Eve offering the serpent’s apple, trying to lure her poor boy from the garden. But she got over it pretty quickly. Nancy really likes you.”
“I like her, too, though I can imagine she’s not the easiest person in the world to live with.”
“You could certainly say that, but then, rumor has it, I’m no pushover myself.”
Andrea’s smile was fleeting. “I was so caught up in my own emotions, I still didn’t understand there was something going on with Julian, at least not until I went back after the shooting and refused to keep working professionally with Ian. We’d been too close, and it was obvious he wasn’t able to keep his feelings for me in the past.”
Jessie glanced over as they turned onto the state highway. “He wasn’t the only one having that problem, was he?”
“He wasn’t.” Andrea recalled riding her bike in one of California’s inland deserts, a desiccated, brown landscape she’d revisited days later only to find it filled with vibrant blossoms in the wake of a spring rain. With her training and her books, she’d thought she understood something of the human psyche, so how was it she hadn’t comprehended that emotions could lie as dormant as those withered plants, that all the love she’d ever felt could burst forth no matter how she fought it? “Or he isn’t, I should say, because I’ve... I’ll always care for Ian. Love him, even when I have no right to.”
“Why would you say a thing like that?”
“For one thing, Ian’s memory’s not right. He’s nowhere near right, not yet. And as a psychologist, I should be able to divorce myself from my feelings, keep everything professional—”
“Professional ethics, rules in general, can’t stand up to fate, Andrea. And anyone with eyes can see that you two belong together.”
“Fate? I’ve heard too many people use it as a handy excuse for caving to their own selfish desires.” Her father, for one, Andrea remembered, thinking of how he’d explained his serial marriage habit as something that was simply meant to be.
“You have a point there. But what you have with Ian, it’s not just fate, it’s love, isn’t it? The kind of love a person’s lucky to find once in a lifetime.”
Andrea sighed. “I thought I loved Julian. I did. Maybe in a different way, but—”
“That must have been one tough conversation when you told him.”
“I would’ve understood if he’d been so jealous he’d wanted to lash out at me. But his reaction was a mix of that and something scarier, something I couldn’t—I kept it secret because I was so scared and ashamed.”
Jessie looked over at her, her voice tightening. “What did he do to you? If he hurt you, I swear we’ll find some way to make him pay.”
“He didn’t hurt me,” Andrea said. “Not physically, at any rate. But he threatened to have me charged with unethical conduct, to ruin my career, if I didn’t—if I wouldn’t keep acting as his spy.”
“His spy?” Jessie shook her head. “I don’t understand, unless—who is this Julian, and what does he really want with Ian?”
It came as a relief when Andrea told her what she knew of Julian’s military background, and how she suspected that the government might have a hand in what appeared to be a plot to acquire intelligence about what had really happened during the months Ian was in captivity. She detailed the threats he had used against her, followed by the visit from the mysterious Dr. Kapur.
“What I can’t understand,” Jessie said, “is why they’d come after you on the road like they did? Killing you wouldn’t have gotten them what you’re saying they were after.”
“I’m a little shaky on that part myself,” Andrea admitted. “Best I can come up with, they were trying to keep me quiet after I refused Julian that afternoon. Either that, or it was meant to scare me into helping them, only the warning got out of hand.”
“Maybe, if they put some hothead on it. Unless—you don’t think it was Julian himself, do you?”
“Before I would have said no way, but now—now I wonder if I ever really knew him. He played me for such a fool. I can’t believe I bought that compassionate, dedicated act he was selling.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. It sounds to me almost like these people went out of their way to find out what made you tick and came up with the kind of man that would be guaranteed to attract you.”
A chill swept over Andrea, and she nodded in agreement. “They caught me at a vulnerable time, too, while I was grieving what everyone thought was Ian’s death.”
“Not everyone, I’m betting. Julian and whoever’s running the show—the army, I’m guessing—must’ve suspected he was alive and headed home months before any of us had any inkling. They knew it and said nothing, while they plotted out this operation when they couldn’t find him.”
Andrea hesitated, uncertain whether she should say more, especially to a reporter, who had both the power and the inclination to spill dangerous secrets. Finally, she said, “Can I tell you something with the understanding that all this is off-the-record?”
Jessie thought about it for a minute before nodding. “You’ve got it. But only because I care a lot more about my family than any story.”
“Your family,” Andrea echoed.
“Yeah, mine,” Jessie said, comprehension dawning in her face as she nodded. “They’re my family now, too, and as important as my career is to me, they’re what really matters in the end.”
Hearing the sincerity in her voice, Andrea told her, “Ian isn’t army. He never really has been.”
After Andrea explained it, Jessie gave a low whistle. “Wow. Talk about a bombshell, especially with the military participating in my whole heroic soldier story. But it explains a lot, too. This long-range plot has spy secrets written all over it.”
“What scares me to death,” said Andrea, “is worrying over whether spy secrets might become deadly secrets if Ian shows up and starts demanding answers out of Julian.”
* * *
Engulfed in the darkness of Julian’s office, Ian flicked the fading yellow beam of his flashlight over photo after photo hanging on the ivory walls. Most showed a fit-looking man in his midforties with dark eyes and a military bearing. In some of the shots, Julian Ross wore tailored, dark suits as he glad-handed the presenters of oversize checks. In others, he was more casually dressed as he cheered on a group of young men participating in what looked like an outdoor team-building exercise.
Show photos, Ian figured, meant to convince the world he was a real-life humanitarian rather than the kind of man who would force a woman he had claimed to love into an impossible situation. Determined to find out what Ross was really after, Ian pulled papers from the file cabinet, scanning before scattering them as he proceeded.
His cursory sweep turned up nothing of interest, only the logs, files and handwritten notes he would expect to find. After sitting in the wheeled,
leather desk chair and switching on a small lamp, Ian methodically pulled out the contents from one drawer after another, caring only about finding whatever leverage he need to get answers—and shut this SOB down.
Hidden beneath the false bottom of the top, left-side drawer, he found not the evidence he’d been looking for, but a different form of leverage. Carefully, he lifted the .38 automatic he recognized as an antique collector’s model.
Before he had the chance to see if it was loaded and operational, he heard swift-approaching footsteps in the hallways. Rather than getting up and hiding, Ian opted to stay seated, concealing both hands and the gun beneath the level of the desk.
As the door opened, the same man from the photos stood there staring at him, another pistol in his right hand...
But unlike the century-old Colt he’d found, Ian would bet his bottom dollar that the gleaming new SIG Sauer Julian Ross was holding was in perfect working order, with a bullet in the chamber.
Chapter 14
“Captain Rayford,” Julian said as he casually approached his desk. Except there was nothing casual about the way he held the pistol, not pointing it at Ian but slanting it slightly downward, where he could raise it in a hurry. “What a pleasure it is to finally meet you.”
“Wish I could say the same,” Ian told him, not moving from behind the desk or showing his hands, either. “But I’m hardly ever pleased when I encounter a man holding a gun.”
“Just as I’m rarely pleased when I run across someone going through my desk drawers,” Julian countered, his Southern accent as smooth and deep as well-aged whiskey. “Would you mind showing me your hands? Then perhaps we can dispense with all this hardware and talk this through like gentlemen.”
I doubt that very much, thought Ian, trying to figure out what Andrea might have seen in this old man. Sure, he appeared to be in good shape, with intense brown eyes and a full head of hair, as far as Ian could tell in the dim light beyond the desktop lamp’s range, but there was something that rang false about him, something that had unease churning in Ian’s stomach.
Allowing that a man in his midforties wasn’t exactly geriatric and he would probably hate any man who had ever touched Andrea, Ian laid both hands on the desktop. But he left the antique gun pinned against the seat by his own thigh, where he could quickly grab and fire it if need be—provided the old pistol was operational. “There you go. Now how about yours?”
Ross went one step further than Ian had dared to hope, clearing his gun’s chamber and ejecting the magazine before laying it on top of the clutter of strewn papers. Raising his palms, he said, “There you go. So tell me, Captain, what brings you here to see me?”
“Are you sure you’re not a shrink, too, Colonel? Because you’ve got the moves down pat.”
Ross laughed. “I’m not, I assure you. But I’ve spent enough years administering mental health services that I suppose I’ve picked up a few of their tricks.”
“I don’t want to be soothed. I want to understand this. What do you want out of me? And why did you feel the need to threaten Andrea to get it?”
“Threaten Andrea?” Julian’s jaw unhinged, his gray-brown brows rising in an almost theatrical display of shock. His accent growing even more pronounced, he asked, “Why on earth— What are you talking about, Captain?”
“Your fiancée told me all about it, how you threatened to destroy her career if she didn’t do your bidding.”
Ross moved forward to the edge of his seat and slapped a hand down on the desktop. “Destroy her career? She’s all but done that herself with these outrageous lies.”
“You’d better damn well watch who you’re accusing.”
“Who I’m accusing? I don’t know what that woman’s playing at. For one thing, she’s no fiancée of mine. I’d never get involved with a subordinate. It’s completely unbecoming.”
“Maybe in the military it would be a problem, but out in the civilian world—”
“And I’ve never threatened anyone.” Ross’s face grew redder with each word. “My reputation—the people here—mean everything to me.”
As angry as the man’s words were making Ian, Ross’s Southern accent was burrowing even deeper under his skin. Or maybe it wasn’t the accent, exactly, but the timbre of his voice, the way he strung his words together. “You brought her flowers at the hospital, tried to go and see her.”
“Of course I did. I felt bad that we’d parted on bad terms. I was hoping we could smooth things over...for her clients’ sakes, not mine.”
Ian shook his head. “A man doesn’t bring three-dozen long-stem roses to an employee—”
“We really need her back here.” Ross shook his head. “But if she honestly believes the things she’s saying, then she’s even more unstable than I feared.”
“What the hell? You two—you were getting married. She told me.”
“Have you ever seen any evidence of this? A ring, perhaps, or another individual who mentioned this engagement?”
Ian turned it over in his mind and shook his head. “I don’t need proof. I have her word.”
“The word of a woman who’s been terminated from her position here for increasingly erratic behavior?”
“That’s insane. If she was so erratic, why would you send her to see me?”
Ross winced and sighed. “Because I was asked to do what I could for you by a former superior—and because she truly is an excellent psychologist when she’s taking her own medications.”
“And here I expected you’d try to make out like I’m the crazy one.” A wild energy crackled through Ian, making him feel like leaping across the desk and putting this liar in a chokehold.
The older man shook his head, his expression filling with what looked like real regret. “You should know that people with psychiatric issues aren’t crazy. When correctly treated, they can lead fulfilling, useful lives, have productive careers, be loving family members.”
Beads of perspiration broke out on Ian’s forehead. The accent threw him off, but that voice, those words...or was it something in the man’s face that seemed so familiar. Had he met the army officer through the agency during his days working in D.C.? Or had it been somewhere abroad? “Andrea’s not crazy. But you sure as hell are if you expect me to believe—”
“A tendency toward delusional behavior under extreme stress is often passed down through families, you know. Did she ever mention her mother’s suicide?”
“Yeah, after her father was exposed and the family publicly—”
“Psychotic depression, triggered by the unfounded belief that the father had taken on shadow families. None of it was real, of course. There’s no evidence at all he was some sort of bigamist. No archived stories in the hometown paper. Look it up yourself. It’s all—”
Ian snatched up the antique gun, rising from his seat to glower down at Ross. A trickle of hot sweat rolled down the channel formed by his spine. “Your technique’s giving you away, the way you’re weaving a complicated web of lies to sell your story. Anything to confuse the target enough that he’ll dismiss his own perceptions and grasp on to your version.”
Ross remained seated, looking into Ian’s face instead of at the gun. “What are you suggesting?”
“That you’re not working for the army. For all I know, you never were. You’ve been forcing Andrea to feed you information about what happened to me so you can pass it on to—”
“You do want these people punished, don’t you, not only for your suffering but for the bombing of our listening post in—”
“You’re part of the intelligence community, aren’t you? CIA, NSA or maybe FBI.”
“Take a step back from this—this paranoia. Have a seat, and put the gun down. It isn’t loaded anyway. Check it for yourself.”
Ian pointed it at Ross’s head, his hand steady but hi
s anger and confusion growing. Because his theory did sound crazy, even to his own ears, and Ross’s calm demeanor was so damned reassuring, his smooth Southern voice both calming and disturbingly familiar.
Another drop of sweat broke free from just beneath the hairline, but as the stinging moisture ran into his eyes, Ian didn’t make a move to wipe it away. He couldn’t, with the kindness on Ross’s face morphing into the remembered cruelty of Ian’s father. With the memories jumbling his senses, raising the reek of rotting meat and old blood, the shadows of silhouetted figures...the sounds of clinking chain and desperate pleas.
Let me go! I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you anything you want! Just don’t—I can’t take another minute!
Desperate words, spoken by a desperate American, a captive stripped of all defenses, of his accent—one of many learned with the assistance of a dialect coach the agency had contracted—to the expert disguises he so often employed.
Ian’s mind was swirling, churning, the cone of light from the desktop lamp burning into his brain. The gun in his hand rose, seemingly of its own volition, his finger squeezing the Colt’s trigger.
* * *
As they stood in the center’s parking lot, Andrea turned to Jessie. “If I’m not back within ten minutes, I want you to call 911.”
“To report what?”
“Anything, as long as it’ll bring a lot of lights and sirens in a hurry.”
“Just what’re you expecting to find?”
Andrea shook her head. “I don’t know for certain, but the last time I was here, Julian surprised me. He’d loaned his Explorer to one of the counselors, so who knows if he’s really here?”
“If you think this guy is dangerous, maybe I should come in with you.”
“What I’m really scared of is Ian confronting him, so I’ll be safer if you wait here and try to hold him off if he shows up. But if it comes down to it, Jessie,” Andrea warned, “don’t stand in Ian’s way.”
“You aren’t thinking he’d be dangerous? To me, I mean?”
Lone Star Survivor Page 20
