A Kiss to Kill

by Nina Bruhns

  “Detective,” she said to rouse him, sitting on her heels a healthy distance from his fists. She didn’t want to get clocked by friendly fire. “Wakey, wakey.”

  He moaned and his eyes gradually fluttered open. “Fuckin’ A. What the—” His hand went to his bloody nose. “Hell.”

  “Yeah,” she responded, touching the lump rising on the left side of her head. “I’m really gonna love explaining to Lieutenant Harding how we let a murderer escape.”

  Jonesy closed his eyes again on a groan. “There goes my fuckin’ gold watch.”

  “Or maybe not.” She tipped her head. “Can you walk?”

  “Maybe.” He slitted his eyes and gazed up at her. “Depends on where we’re goin’.”

  She held up the paper and smiled. It was not a nice smile.

  “Same place he is.”

  ALL hell was breaking loose.

  Gina was missing. Wade had vanished. Gregg was a fugitive and AWOL. The Trigger was closing in on a presidential assassination, and the rest of the team was scrambling with the Secret Service to put a plan into motion that was really no plan at all.

  Now this.

  Rebel pulled her FBI cap over her hair and stepped gingerly around the bloody, lifeless body of Erika Altos. It was lying on the hardwood floor of the victim’s McLean foyer. The congressman’s wife had been stabbed in the back.

  The team had been so preoccupied with everything hitting the fan at once, that when Tara reported Mrs. Altos had a visitor and pixed Darcy a photo of the man, it had taken several minutes for her to run the ID. By the time it came back as Bruce Hearn, and Tara had crashed through the front door with weapon drawn, it had been too late. Erika was dead, and Hearn was nowhere to be found.

  Rebel had been tasked with helping Tara secure the house until DHS arrived. Alex had dropped her off in McLean and was now on his way to Hearn’s apartment to check for evidence of flight, then meet the rest of the team at the Capitol building.

  She already missed him.

  Funny how a single kiss could turn one’s entire world upside down, and make things so crystal clear . . .

  She smiled inwardly. Not that there had ever been any doubt. She loved him just as he was. Nothing would change that. Nothing.

  “So Hearn killed Erika Altos,” Kick said, jerking her rudely back to the present. They’d all switched on for a quick strategy meeting.

  No time for mushy daydreams.

  “When Gregg asked him earlier about the fishbowl,” Quinn said, “Hearn must have known the game was up. He came straight here to McLean to eliminate the most dangerous witness against him before he disappeared for good.”

  “You realize what that means,” Darcy said.

  “It means we were wrong about the congressman,” Marc said angrily. “We figured it was him or the wife. But Hearn had even better access to classified intel than she did. Dead easy for his chief of staff to set him up to look guilty. Merde. We should have seen that one coming.”

  “We did,” Alex said. A car horn beeped over his comm. “Well, Gregg did. And the wife was obviously involved, or she wouldn’t be dead.”

  “All three could be in it together,” Tara suggested, joining Rebel in the foyer. She’d been examining the kitchen for missing knives. She shook her head. “As equal partners. Illegal conflict diamonds are easy money, tax-free—as long as you don’t have a conscience. There was a million bucks’ worth on that yacht. Not to mention the fishbowls. At least another mil there. Plenty to go around for three partners.”

  Rebel gazed at the blood still seeping from the gaping wound in Erika Altos’s back. Hearn had been in a hurry. Hadn’t wanted to take the time to smother her with a pillow like he’d done Asha Mahmood. Or maybe a knife was just more personal. Had they been sexually involved? Probably.

  “I don’t think so,” Rebel said. “Hearn’s your real traitor. This is him cleaning up loose ends. The wife was most likely an accomplice, but I’d be willing to bet the congressman doesn’t have a clue about any of this.”

  “I agree,” Marc said. “Hearn must have arranged the attack on Gina in New York, but when it failed, he killed Asha and Ouda Mahmood to cover his tracks. For both the botched hit and the al Sayika campaign contributions he’d been funneling through them to implicate the congressman. There’ll no doubt be evidence proving that Asha Mahmood was Altos’s mistress and Raul Chavez was hired to set up their illicit meetings. But my money is on the wife being Hearn’s bedmate.”

  “Which would explain how he planted the diamonds in the fishbowl at the Altos home,” Rebel said.

  “All of which set up Congressman Altos to take the fall for today’s assassination, and for being al Sayika’s inside man on the Hill,” Quinn agreed. “Hearn’s one clever bastard.”

  “But one thing doesn’t add up,” Darcy said thoughtfully. “Why take Gina with him today? Why not just kill her like he did all the others?”

  “We don’t know that he hasn’t killed her,” Kick reminded them tersely. “Just taken her somewhere more secluded to do it.”

  There were several beats of tense silence.

  “She could still be alive,” Tara said hopefully.

  “Are we thinking that Hearn is the Trigger?” Alex asked. Another car horn blared over his comm. He must be driving like a lunatic.

  “He doesn’t strike me as a professional assassin,” Kick said.

  “He’s not,” Darcy said. “I’m looking at Hearn’s online credit card statements right now. He has several charges every day for the past two weeks in D.C., so he wasn’t ever in Norfolk, or on the Allah’s Paradise. If Rebel saw the Trigger jumping off that yacht, the Trigger’s not Hearn.”

  “So we may be looking at a nuclear trigger, after all,” Quinn said with a curse. “Not an assassin.”

  “The bomb dogs are already there at the Capitol. If there’s a bomb, they’ll find it,” Darcy said.

  “Don’t forget Gibran Allawi Bakreen’s murder at the hospital,” Rebel reminded them. “That murder is definitely part of this. And Hearn was in a meeting at the time of death. Bakreen’s killer must be someone else, which means the Trigger has to be a person.”

  “I agree,” Alex said.

  “Gregg’s fingerprint was found at the scene,” Tara reluctantly pointed out. “And he’s disappeared now.”

  “That print was planted,” Marc said. “It’s easy to do. It fits with the continuing frame job on van Halen, not Allah’s Paradise, or the e-mail. Non, Van Halen’s not the Trigger.”

  “But it is someone with access to his prints.”

  “Which could be just about anyone. He may have obtained them as far back as Gregg’s assignment to distract Gina, when the decision was first made to frame him.”

  “Okay. So at the very least, we’re dealing with two people,” Tara said, summing up. “For sure the traitor is Hearn, who is killing witnesses to cover his tracks so he can disappear, and the Trigger, who presumably has been paid to assassinate the President.”

  “But the question stands,” Darcy said. “Why would either one of them take Gina hostage?”

  “Because van Halen was right,” Kick said. “She must be able to identify the Trigger.”

  “Which means if she isn’t already dead, she will be soon,” Kick said grimly. “Unless van Halen finds her.”

  “I think the assassin is using her as bait,” Quinn said. “To lure van Halen out in the open. They’ve framed him as tight as they’ve sewn up Altos. They need him there at the press conference to take the fall for the assassination, and it’s pretty obvious how he feels about Gina.”

  “Shit,” Alex said. “One more unknown variable to throw a monkey wrench in the plan. Oh, wait. There is no plan,” he said sardonically.

  Basically their plan was to show up armored in Kevlar and let Hearn continue with his plan, and hopefully expose the Trigger for them. Preferably before any shooting started. STORM’s ace in the hole was that by now every Secret Service agent on the Capitol Building detail ha
d memorized the whole team’s photos, including Gregg’s and Gina’s, so no one was going to think they were bad guys and shoot them. Which was no doubt what Hearn and the Trigger were going for, at the very least for Gregg and Gina.

  “Thank goodness Secret Service has convinced POTUS to stay away from that press conference,” Rebel said gratefully.

  “We just have to keep our eyes peeled when they announce he won’t be speaking,” Quinn said.

  Kick cursed softly. “And pray like hell this crazy non-plan works.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  “PLEASE don’t do this.”

  Gina had never been so terrified in her life. Not when she’d been captured and beaten by terrorists, not when she’d stared down the barrel of her attacker’s gun in New York. Not when Alex had tackled her on the way back from the ice machine. This was a different kind of fear. Not for herself, but for the man she loved.

  “There’s just one more thing I have to do,” Bruce Hearn told her with a fatherly smile as he drove toward Capitol Hill. “Then you can go.”

  Hearn’s expression was completely normal. Like they were just going out for a leisurely stroll on the Mall.

  Except he’d put her in handcuffs. And Wade was locked in the trunk.

  Oh my God. Hearn was lying through his teeth. He had no intention of letting either of them go.

  She wondered how Wade was doing back there. Rohypnol was not usually fatal by itself, but who knew how big a dose Hearn had given him. He must be unconscious by now. They’d been driving a circuit from K Street down to Constitution and back for half an hour now.

  She wanted so badly to give in to the trembling. Sink down into the front seat of the car and weep. But she had ruthlessly stopped her body’s instinctive panicked reaction this long, and she wasn’t about to surrender to it now. She had to be strong. Figure this out. For Wade. For Gregg. For herself and the future she wanted.

  Think!

  “What do you have to do?” she asked Hearn, battling to keep the tremor from mincing her voice to bits.

  “I have to save the President. They’re going to kill him, you know.”

  She whipped her head around, unsure if she’d heard him correctly. He kept mumbling.

  Alarm slammed through her. “The President?” She regarded him with growing horror. So the team was right. Good lord, did they know? She had to stall him. Figure out a way to tell them. “Someone’s going to kill the President? Who?”

  “You know who.” He gave her a look of pity. “Your lover, van Halen. Did no one tell you he’s a traitor to his country?”

  She scuttled backward, stunned. Ohgodohgod. “No! He’s not!”

  Hearn laughed. “You don’t have to worry about that ruthless bastard anymore. I’ve informed the FBI of his plot. They’re ready for him. Snipers on every roof. SWAT waiting to shoot him down at the first sign. Trust me. The President will be fine.”

  Oh, sweet Jesus. Oh, holy Mother of God.

  The cops were going to kill Gregg on sight, and ask questions later.

  Please say this wasn’t happening . . .

  But it was.

  She had to warn him!

  Hearn pulled into a parking spot off Capitol Circle reserved for staffers and slid his pass onto the dashboard. He pointed up to the Capitol steps, where a cluster of microphones awaited, along with a growing crowd of reporters and tourists drawn by the hubbub. The place was crawling with Secret Service.

  “Here?” she asked in surprise. It was rare that the President gave such a public press brief and photo op. So rare, in fact, she asked, “How do you know the President will be here?”

  He sent her an indulgent look as he got out of the car. “I have access to every secret this country has, sweetheart. I know everything about everyone.”

  A shiver traveled down her spine and up again. Getting away with his crimes for so long had obviously distorted his self-importance. The man was insane.

  He came around to her door and opened it. Before he let her out, he said, “Gina, don’t forget your boyfriend in the trunk. If you shout a warning, if you try to attract any attention, if you so much as open your mouth and say a single word to anyone about . . . well, anything . . . I’m serious”—he looked almost apologetic—“I will kill you. Then I’ll suffocate your friend in the trunk and throw him in the Potomac on my way out of town.”

  Somehow she already knew that.

  “I won’t,” she promised. Right. In a parallel universe.

  He extended his hand and helped her out of the car like a gentleman, and checked that her handcuffs were still secure behind her back. Then he took off his suit jacket and draped it over her shoulders to hide the cuffs. It left him in shirtsleeves and tie, but it was a bright, sunny April day and in the sea of casual tourists and workers from the surrounding government buildings, he wouldn’t even make a blip on the radar of any law enforcement official who looked at them.

  Like, for instance, the female cop hurrying past right now. He actually waved at her. Whistling, he clipped his Capitol staffer ID to his breast pocket.

  “What are you planning?” Gina asked nervously as the slimy bastard put his arm carelessly around her shoulder. He steered her toward the crowd on the Capitol steps.

  “Me? Nothing at all.” When they reached the broad expanse of terraced marble, he breathed in a lungful of fresh air and gazed around like a delighted tourist taking in the sights of his capital city. He turned and gave her a smile. “I’m just here to watch Gregg van Halen die.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  REBEL leapt out of the SUV and hurried toward the crush of people that had gathered on the grand staircase rising up the eastern side of the Capitol Building. Two seconds later, Tara was striding along next to her.

  This was it. After the President had bowed out, Congressman Altos had been briefed on the threat, and had insisted on holding the press conference as scheduled. He’d been stricken by the news of his wife’s death and of his chief of staff’s plans to frame him for treason, and wanted to nail both the traitor and his hired henchman. It was incredibly risky, but this could be their one and only chance to identify and catch the al Sayika assassin known as the Trigger. Everything had to look completely normal to lure him out of hiding.

  Forcing herself not to run, Rebel kept her FBI badge and face visible at all times so she’d be recognized by the myriad Secret Service and other law enforcement officers spaced every two inches on the newly seeded lawn and watching passersby like hawks. Tara did the same with her DHS creds. The rest of the team had been issued Homeland Security IDs for the op, and all of them had dressed in dark suits over their Kevlar. When in Rome . . .

  Rebel tapped her comm. “STORM Hotel and Juliet arriving on scene.” For some obscure reason Tara, who didn’t have a single J in any of her names, went by Juliet, the call sign for J. Rebel sensed a story there, but hadn’t had time to ask. “STORM Dog Six, do you read?”

  “STORM Zulu, here. Hotel and Juliet, please switch to channel 8. We have about a thousand bears onboard, over,” said Darcy.

  Rebel would have chuckled if she weren’t so worried about reaching her assigned position in time. The press conference was set to start any minute. She and Tara dialed to the other channel.

  “Anyone get hold of Victor, over?” she asked.

  Gregg van Halen was a real concern. She’d been trying to get him to answer his phone since he’d gone off-grid at the Watergate nearly two hours ago, bound and determined to track down his vanished Gina.

  “He’s still going to voice mail,” Darcy came back. “Report any sightings and read him in if at all possible. That goes for everyone, over.”

  They’d left messages outlining the loose plan they’d hammered out with Secret Service and DHS, but who knew if he’d checked them. Unless he had already found Gina—very doubtful—Gregg would show up at the press conference looking for blood. The man was definitely a wild card in all this. She prayed no one got hurt because of it. She’d pleaded with him to cal
l her, and worn her Bluetooth just in case.

  Above her, the Capitol steps rose up in three steep tiers, separated by landings and flanked by square, flat buttresses bearing lampposts, statues, and Secret Service agents. Tara slipped into the throng to the right and started up the first flight. Rebel was supposed to find Alex and help cover the left.

  There was a stir at the very top landing and the excited crowd, having heard the rumor of a presidential appearance, surged upward, pulling her along past the chain barrier that had been lowered for the occasion.

  Rebel’s pulse doubled. This was it. But where was Alex?

  A group of dignitaries appeared between the two columns at the center of the portico at the very top, and approached the phalanx of microphones that had been set up. The subcommittee had arrived to make their announcement of the new and improved budget on the fight against terrorism. A cacophony of shouts raised up, a score of questions instantly thrown at them. Someone spoke loudly over the mic, trying to quiet down the reporters.

  Rebel craned her neck, still looking for Alex. Her cell phone rang.

  She tapped the earpiece. “Alex, where are you?”

  “Sugar, if you don’t know where the man is, I surely don’t,” came the honeyed drawl of the last person on earth Rebel wanted to talk to at the moment. Luckily, she had an excellent excuse not to.

  “Right above you by the lamppost.” This from Alex over the comm. She’d forgotten everyone could still hear her.

  Rebel muted her comm mic as she looked up, searching for him. “Helena. I can’t talk now. I’m in—”

  “Yes, yes. I know. You’re in the middle of something. You always are, sugar.”

  “Seriously. I have to—”

  “Positions, people,” came Quinn’s command over the comm. “It’s showtime.”

  She spotted Darcy several steps below the portico, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the solid line of ultra-alert black-suited Secret Service agents who stood guard, preventing the public from reaching the landing. Other than being the only tall, willowy blonde, she blended in perfectly, earpiece and all. But no Alex. What had he said about a lamppost?