Classified Baby

by Jessica Andersen

  But Ethan figured he had one slim advantage over his compatriots—lack of emotional involvement with Fuentes.

  He was involved with Nic, true—involved right up to his eyeballs—but Fuentes had meant nothing to him until he’d messed with Nicole.

  Logic, he told himself. Use your brain, damn it.

  Something had always bugged him about the progression of attacks against PPS. Now, he sat across from the man who was supposed to have masterminded everything, including Robert’s crash two years earlier, the murders of Nick Warner and the others, and the attacks on the Denver office building and the Vault. And sitting there, he knew deep down inside that it didn’t play. It wasn’t rational.

  It made sense that Fuentes had tried to kill Robert to protect the illicit deals he’d been running through PPS years earlier, but that had been a business decision.

  Now, fighting the urge to throttle the man who held Nicole’s safety in his hands, Ethan said, “You don’t hate Robert.”

  Fuentes didn’t react except to narrow his eyes. “Am I supposed to agree, or are you going to tell me the answers to your questions even before you ask them? That’s an interesting interrogation technique, Mr. Moore. One they taught you in the military, perhaps? Along with those advanced lifesaving skills that stood you in such good stead with your wife?”

  Ethan told himself to ignore the cruel barb. After a moment, he continued. “The plane crash was a necessity because Robert had gotten too close to your business and you needed him out of the way. Nick Warner died because he was going to squeal on your investment scheme. Maybe the murder of the other investors was your idea, too. They were loose ends to be tied up, leaving more of the profit for you.”

  Ethan paused, gauging the other man’s reactions, which were hidden too well behind a professional’s mask. He continued, “But the other attacks—Lenny’s death, the office building bombing, the man who went after Nicole—those weren’t business. They were terrorism, and I don’t think you’re a terrorist.”

  The prisoner lifted his chin almost imperceptibly, but Ethan caught the motion. Clive was a businessman, logical and unemotional, whereas these latest attacks had been almost pure emotion, driven by hatred of PPS or its founders.

  At the thought, a connection chimed in his brain. Clive had said the attacks were all because of Robert. All because someone hated Robert enough to kill. But who?

  He stood, opened the door partway and stuck his head out into the hallway, which was jammed with PPS staff. “I need Robert in here.”

  When Evangeline followed her husband, Ethan didn’t say anything. He knew better than to argue with his boss when she had that look in her eye.

  Once the door was closed again, Ethan looked from Robert to Clive and back again. Behind well-trained facades, he saw rage and regret, guilt and hubris, but he didn’t see hatred.

  He turned to Robert. “Who hates you?”

  The fact that the other man didn’t react to the question suggested that Ethan wasn’t the only one trying to think this through logically.

  After a moment’s pause, Robert answered, “My enemy list includes any number of people whose lives changed because of my actions back in MI6, along with a handful of governments and several large corporations.” He shook his head. “But none of those possibilities feel right.”

  In addition, none of them had garnered the slightest reaction from Fuentes, Ethan noticed, though he wasn’t sure if that was a clue or a result of the other man’s training.

  “It feels more personal,” Robert continued. “But I can’t think of anyone who’d hate me that way. Not enough to kill over, anyway.”

  “Which is the sticking point,” Evangeline agreed. “We’re not just looking for someone who hates Robert, we’re looking for someone vicious and ruthless enough not to care about collateral damage.”

  “Or someone self-centered—or angry—enough to think that the end justifies the means,” Ethan said. He rose and began to pace the length of the small, crowded bedroom, needing an outlet for the restless energy that buzzed beneath his skin at the knowledge that each passing minute increased Nic’s danger. “Someone even a little bit unbalanced, a little bit—” He broke off as the door opened and Angel stuck her head through, then handed Robert a note.

  Ethan crowded close to Evangeline so they could watch him unfold the single-page computer printout, which appeared to be a record of company ownership. It took him a moment to backtrack the legalese, but when he did, he cursed under his breath.

  The Rocky Mountain Sky helicopter tour company was owned by an O. Turner. The same O. Turner who had authorized the sale of the decommissioned MI-8 to Rocky Mountain Sky in an effort to get the chopper off the TCM books and hide its ownership.

  “Olivia.” Ethan spoke the name on a hiss of in-drawn breath.

  Even before he saw the confirmation spark in Clive’s eyes, he knew they had their name. It made a twisted sort of sense once he knew to look for the connections: she was the wife of TCM’s owner, Stephen Turner, and the mother of Peter Turner, who was one of the major conspirators already uncovered during the PPS investigation. More importantly in terms of the recent attacks, she was Robert’s ex-wife, which, depending on a history that Ethan knew nothing about, might give her reason—at least in her mind—to hate him.

  “But she’s nuts,” Evangeline protested. “That’s why we crossed her off the suspect list. Remember how Kyle said she acted at Stephen’s birthday party? She’s seriously unbalanced. There’s no way she could’ve set up the shell corporation that hid the investment scheme, or even pulled off those murders.”

  “But Peter could have,” Ethan responded. He watched Clive out of the corner of his eye, wishing he knew more about body language. “And after Peter was injured and went into a coma, she could have turned to Clive.” Now he faced the shackled man. “What I don’t get is why he hooked up with a woman like that. Was it sex? Power? A little bit of both?”

  Clive turned his head away and didn’t answer.

  Ethan felt the minutes ticking away beneath his skin. He wanted to be out of there, chasing Olivia, but what was the use? Until they had a starting point for their search, his time was better spent here.

  “Olivia. Damn.” Robert had gone a strange shade of gray. “I knew she hadn’t take the divorce well, but she seemed okay with Stephen.” He glared at Fuentes. “You pushed her, didn’t you? She was never as strong as us, and you knew it. You just kept at her until she broke. Until—” He snapped his teeth shut on the words, which were no help to them now, only hissing under his breath, “Bastard.”

  Come on, Ethan thought, paying only half his attention to Robert. Come on, think! Clive wasn’t giving anything away, so it was up to them to figure out the connections.

  What had brought Olivia and Clive together in the first place? Power, Ethan figured. Money. Oil rights. If Olivia—

  He froze mid-pace, his mind locking on the word. Oil. Olivia had used her current husband’s company to hide behind when she, Peter and Clive had concocted the shell companies to buy up all the oil rights near the Ward ranch by fair means or foul. She was focused—obsessed, even—by the money, power and prestige she believed the oil money would bring her.

  Which was why the attacks had seemed personal, not just on Robert, but on Nicole, as well.

  “I think I know where they are,” Ethan announced, and took off at a dead run, hoping to hell he wouldn’t be too late to save her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Bruised and battered and sick to her stomach, Nic moaned when the vehicle rolled to a halt and the engine stopped with a shuddering cough that let in the sound of raindrops on the trunk lid.

  She tightened her arms across her stomach, praying the nausea was simple car sickness and not something far worse. Please, let the baby be safe, she thought fervently. Please let us get out of this alive.

  Then she heard footsteps on wet pavement, and panic blotted out even those prayers. Panic and the drumming need to live, to figh
t, to do something other than lie still and wait. That was the old Nicole’s way of life. She was the new Nicole now. She was a mother. A fighter.

  Telling herself it was now or never, Nic rolled onto her queasy stomach and braced her arms and legs on the scratchy carpeting that covered the floor of the trunk. The footsteps stopped very near her and the trunk lid popped open.

  Now! She erupted, screaming as she launched herself up and off to one side, lashing one numb leg in a roundhouse kick.

  Her foot connected, and the guy from the hospital staggered back two steps, clutching his gut. Behind him, she saw a parking lot and trees. Freedom!

  Breath sobbing in her lungs, she scrambled to her feet and ran, weaving drunkenly on numb legs and sock-clad feet, pushing her body as hard and as fast as she possibly could. She was screaming aloud, screaming in her head, her only goal to get away. Moments later, dull shock rattled through her when she recognized her surroundings. They were at a school—at her school, in the back parking lot of Donner High, near the soccer field and the little greenhouse and lab she’d used grant money to build.

  Her steps faltered. Why had they brought her here? What possible reason—

  A man’s weight hit her from behind, sending her to her knees on the tarmac. She cried out in shock and pain as the pavement ground through her clothes and scraped at her knees and elbows. Her captor’s heavy weight pressed her into the hard surface, cutting off her breath and trapping the screams in her lungs.

  “Nice try, Miss Benedict.” The taller, leaner man’s voice was disturbingly polite, his hands almost gentle as he shifted his weight, slapped a strip of adhesive across her mouth, and then bound her wrists behind her back with the quick, efficient “snick” of a zip tie. “Unfortunately for you, you’re not that fast. Which is fortunate for me, because my employer doesn’t take kindly to failure and Leo and I—” he indicated the guy from the hospital with a jerk of his head “—have already had a few problems bringing you in. This was, so to speak, our last chance.”

  He climbed to his feet and dragged her upright. Nic twisted and fought, shouting behind her gag, but he had the advantage of leverage and size, and barely seemed to notice her struggles as he started walking the way she’d come—away from the school and the main road, back toward the soccer field and her greenhouse.

  Nic’s mind nearly blanked with panic, with despair, but she forced herself to fight through the layers of weakness and hold it together. Ethan would come for her. She had to believe that, even though it might not be logical.

  Screw logic—she believed in him. He didn’t love her, but he’d vowed to protect her. Once he found out they’d hurt Blake and taken her, he’d never rest until he found her.

  The possibility that he might be too late weighed on her, bringing tears to her eyes as her captor, now joined by the man he’d called Leo, shoved her through the greenhouse door into the warm, humid interior.

  She’d closed the greenhouse and lab at the end of the school year and had done regular drive-bys. Two weeks earlier, the place had been locked up tight. Now the locks were broken, and one of the tarps she’d used to cover the planting area was gone. A fire pit had been dug in the soil and garbage lay piled nearby, a mishmash of potato chip bags and empties, with a pair of folding chairs abandoned off to one side.

  The sight brought a prickle of tears. Even more than her apartment, the greenhouse was Nic’s sanctuary, the one thing she could point to and say that’s mine. She’d conceived the project, organized the start-up funding and persuaded the Donner High administrative board to let her use a piece of their prized soccer field. It was hers.

  Though the damage was fixable, it was an invasion. The final insult in a week full of them, which brought a spurt of anger to chase away the tears.

  Nic began to struggle anew, and cursed the men from behind her gag as Leo grabbed her by the hair and shoved her through an open door at the back of the greenhouse, and into the lab itself. She cried out and stumbled forward, and with her hands bound behind her back, she couldn’t stop herself from slamming into the converter, an oversized still she and her students used to ferment corn and other plants into ethanol-based fuel.

  Gasping with pain, she leaned back against the converter and looked around the lab.

  She’d packed away most of the equipment for the summer, leaving eight stone-topped lab benches, the converter and a row of locked cabinets, making the space look like the modern update of an ancient sacrificial chamber, a skewed perception that was only reinforced when a woman appeared in the doorway.

  She was shorter than Nic, her dark, curly hair styled with pricey elegance, and though her skin was unlined, her conservative clothes put her in her fifties. She was the very picture of a country club wife until Nic got to her eyes, which were emerald-green and devoid of emotion.

  And, Nic realized with sharp panic, she was also a complete stranger.

  “Why?” she said, forgetting the gag, which made the word come out as a muffled syllable.

  The woman seemed to understand, though. She bared her teeth. “Because you’re out to get me. You’re all out to get me. Robert left me and married that FBI bitch, and now they’re both after my land. And you.” Her expression twisted to something cruel and anticipatory. “You with your biofuel. You think I don’t know what you’re planning? Well, it won’t work. Oil will always equal money and power.”

  Nic stared in disbelief. The converter was a scaled-up and slightly modified version of a basic design that’d been in use for decades. “You’re insane,” she mumbled behind the gag. “This is nothing more than an overgrown science project.”

  “They’ve always called visionaries crazy, haven’t they?” The woman yanked the adhesive off Nic’s mouth and her face split in a wide, predatory grin. “They’ll see in the end. They’ll see that I was right, that I was powerful—more powerful than Robert and his little tramp wife, more powerful than Stephen, who loves the company more than he loves me. More powerful even than Clive, who thought he was using me when all along I was the one using him.”

  Through the insanity, the woman had started to sound all too sane, Nic realized as her captor’s eyes cooled from manic to icy logic, which was far more dangerous. She nodded to Leo, who’d taken up a position at the doorway. “Is everything set?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The woman nodded. “Then strap her down and let’s get the hell out of here.”

  The taller man dragged Nic toward the converter and around to the far side of the squat unit. There, she saw something that shouldn’t have been there—a flat, square box with wires sprouting from the top and winding to a second, smaller square. A short antenna protruded from the top of the second box, and the whole thing was fixed to the side of the biofuel converter by a pair of nylon cargo straps. A bomb!

  Nic didn’t realize she’d screamed until the woman stepped very close to her, leaned in and smiled. “Just between us girls, it’s so much more elegant than a rocket launcher, don’t you think?”

  As if a light switch had been thrown, illuminating a dim room, Nic remembered everything. She could see the dark helicopter in her mind’s eye, could pick out all of the details she’d been unable to remember before. She saw how the pilot had looked away right before impact. She saw how the figure on the helicopter skids had pumped his fist once the rocket took flight. And she saw, quite clearly, the passenger sitting beside the pilot. It hadn’t been an indistinct figure after all. It had been a woman. This woman.

  “You’re Olivia Turner,” she said, making the connection.

  The woman preened. “You’ve heard of me.”

  “Don’t do this,” Nic said. “Please. I’ve never done anything to you. And…” She faltered. “I’m pregnant.”

  Olivia stared at her for a long moment with those cold, dead eyes, before gesturing for the men to proceed. “Do it.”

  “Hold her,” Leo ordered. Sweating lightly in the warmth that spilled in from the greenhouse, he brought out a second
set of cargo straps. While the leaner guy held Nic, bracing against her furious struggles, Leo fastened one of the straps to her right ankle, then looped the binding around one of the solid steel struts of the reactor.

  Nic whimpered, knowing that those struts were bolted into an equally thick steel plate, attaching the converter to the floor of the prefab laboratory building.

  “A fitting end, don’t you think?” the woman asked conversationally. “If you’d just left well enough alone, it never would have come to this.”

  How? Nic thought desperately. She hadn’t done anything to this woman, hadn’t done anything except try to make a life for herself, a family for herself. She hadn’t done anything!

  Exactly, that little voice whispered inside. You never do anything.

  Olivia glanced at her watch and smiled slightly.

  “No doubt Clive has squealed by now, so your lover-boy should be on his way. Feel free to scream for him. Knowing those too-loyal idiots who work for Robert, most of PPS will be on his heels. With any luck, you’ll take the whole lot of them with you when this place goes up.” Her smile widened. “And just to make it more interesting…” She beckoned to Leo, who handed her a small, snub-nosed revolver.

  She lifted the weapon, aimed it at Nic, and fired.

  Nic screamed as her world went red. Shock and pain dropped her to her knees and she thrashed as the zip ties prevented her from grabbing her right shoulder. Agony erupted in her opposite shoulder, suggesting that the bullet had ricocheted off the converter to strike her a second time.

  Hot red wetness seeped through Nic’s shirt. The first wash of pain faded slightly, leaving her numb and cold and so weak she could barely hold herself in a sitting position, with her back braced against the converter.

  Emerald eyes glittering with satisfaction, Olivia returned the weapon to Leo. “You hid the truck in the forest, on that access road, right?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Seeming satisfied, she waved them out. “Let’s go.” Before the door swung shut at her back, she turned back to Nic once more. “Sorry there’s no countdown display on the device, so you’ll have to do the math in your head.” She lifted a small transmitter. “You’ll hear a click when I hit the remote. After the click you’ve got three minutes to live. Enjoy them.”