“What!” Jack snarled, having heard his field operative but not believing it, not wanting to believe it. He forced himself to take a deep breath and expel it before asking, “How long ago?” He switched on the light.
“He booked a flight for Atlanta, Georgia, shortly after seven o’clock this evening, or yesterday, rather. We tailed him to the airport and watched him enter the boarding chute. The relief in Atlanta says he never got off.”
“Any connecting flights?”
“No, sir. Straight flight. No stops or layovers.”
Jack realized that some part of him had been expecting and dreading this phone call for almost two years now. “Anything unusual happen today? Yesterday, I mean?”
“Nothing, sir. He doesn’t go out much, just stays inside his cabin. Pals around with a couple of locals sometimes. He didn’t today, though.”
Jack studied the pattern in the floor rug, knowing Alec MacLaine wasn’t “palling around” with anyone. His “locals” were his target in his land-grant investigation. Jack didn’t give them a second thought. Whatever had propelled Alec out of New Mexico wasn’t tied to any small-time scamming setup.
“As far as we know he didn’t talk to anyone today,” the young agent said.
Jack wondered what Alec might have found out that afternoon that would cause him to pack up and leave so abruptly. Had he suspected he was being tailed? If he had, he might be on the way to discovering the whole shebang. Jack felt as if an icy hand had grabbed hold of his ulcer.
“Go on,” Jack said,
“He was out of his cabin long enough two weeks ago that we managed to plant some bugs.”
“And?” Jack asked impatiently. “What have you heard?”
“Nothing much, sir. Earlier, we just heard the usual stuff.”
“Like?”
“We heard him fix his dinner. At about five o’clock. At least, that’s when his microwave dinged.”
Dinged? A new technical word, no doubt. “All right, spare me the nitty-gritty. What else?”
“He worked at his computer for some time, apparently reading, though we occasionally heard some keys typing. He watched the news for a while, then turned it off.”
Jack closed his eyes. “Anything visual?”
“No, sir. He has metal venetian blinds. We couldn’t make out the key sequencing or access his computer. We speculate by the sounds generated later in the evening that he either uploaded new software or downloaded his own files.”
Jack pictured Alec transferring files to disk. It would be like him to leave his computer clean if he was planning something. Shouldn’t be so predictable, pal. Of course, it was Alec’s very predictability that had lulled Jack into a false sense of security. Where the hell had he gone?
“And then he booked the flight for Atlanta.”
Why Atlanta? Nothing Alec was working on should take him there, unless something he had found via the computer superhighway had clicked in his head.
Jack’s eyes flew open. “Wait a minute. He booked this flight... how? Over the phone?”
“Yes, sir.”
Jack shook his head. His boys should have called him at that moment. Alec MacLaine would never have used an open phone line to book a flight he really intended taking. Especially not while in deep cover.
“And you followed him to the airport?”
“Yes, sir, and watched him board the chute.”
“How long did you wait after the flight took off?”
“Sir?”
Rookies, Jack thought.
“Uh, we didn’t wait, sir.”
Had he and Alec ever made such assumptions when they first started? Probably. The cold fist around his ulcer clenched tighter. He popped a cherry-flavored Tums into his mouth and chewed slowly. “You say he watched the news, then turned it off?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Before the newscast was over?”
There was a long pause while Jack’s two tails conferred with each other. “Before it was over, sir.”
They had been intimate with every facet of Alec MacLaine’s false life and yet it apparently hadn’t fazed them that Alec had turned the news off early. Unless bullets were flying, Alec never interrupted a news program; he faithfully, almost obsessively, watched the full report, local to world news, sports, even weather. Was he aware of this from having known Alec almost fifteen years or was this pair of rookies just asleep at the switch?
“Check out his cabin,” Jack said, though he knew with absolute certainty that the young agents wouldn’t find any clues. Alec would never leave anything but false leads behind. Sending the agents back there was an unvoiced reprimand for their failure to notify him immediately.
He hung up without saying anything else. He sat on the edge of the bed, aware of the silence, aware of the late hour, and with a sour-stomach surety that everything was falling apart.
He dragged on a robe and padded barefoot down the hallway of his too-empty house into the den and over to the bank of flashing VCRs. Oddly enough, or perhaps ironically, Alec was the one who had got him into the habit of recording all three primary networks’ news programs. With use of the remote control device, he rewound the tape on the first one, stopping it just as the credits of one of the national news networks scrolled up the screen. He fast-forwarded through much of it, listening to the first line of each story, checking out the guests and speeding ahead.
He did the same thing to the next tape. It wasn’t until he clicked on the third recorder that he saw what had propelled Alec out of his two-year hibernation.
“Damn,” he said aloud, freezing the screen to a blurred version of Cait Wilson’s face. He frowned, staring at her. “Why couldn’t you stay tucked away?”
Loose ends, he thought. They always came back to haunt you.
What was it about this woman? Alec had spent only three days with her, grueling days, granted, but a short time nonetheless. What was it about this particular woman that made a delirious man cry her name out loud, begging her not to die, demanding she come back to him?
Believing she was dead had saved Alec’s life, because Alec hadn’t given a damn about anything once he woke up. He appeared a whipped man and didn’t question his changed circumstances. Seeing the bleak look in his old friend’s eyes had nearly made Jack go ahead and tell him the truth. But he hadn’t. He couldn’t have. Any more than he could have shot Alec himself.
And Jack knew that a man like Alec MacLaine wouldn’t stay down for long. A man with Alec’s strengths might give in for a while, but he’d never surrender. Alec had spent two years healing, becoming stronger in many ways than he’d been before, because in the days before the shooting, he’d had a whole heart.
In addition to Alec’s physical strength and newly acquired cold nature, Jack knew Alec had knowledge he’d lacked before. He knew this because he was fully aware of Alec’s little raids on the FBI files. He smiled grimly. He’d even deliberately planted a thing or two for Alec to filch.
The tight smile faded from Jack’s lips. Alec would know something else, something not available in his lifting of classified information. He’d know by now that Jack had irretrievably violated the one rule that provided the glue for their relationship: no lies.
Without conscious thought Jack hurled the remote device at the wall with enough force to shatter it. The tape in the recorder sputtered and the screen went to snow.
He punched in a telephone number and lifted the receiver to his ear. He was answered on the second ring. Softly, quietly and with a sense of impending disaster, Jack gave orders to watch for Alec at both National and Dulles airports.
Then, very clearly, he recited an address in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He didn’t have to look it up; he’d kept it in the forefront of his mind for the past two years. A man always knew the number of his doom.
“Got it, sir.”
“If he shows up there, get him. Use any means you have to. It shouldn’t be too difficult. He’s not expecting anyone to know where he is.”
>
“Sir?”
Jack turned his gaze from the shattered bits of black plastic on the den floor; the devastated remote reminded him too much of his now-shattered friendship with Alec MacLaine. He rubbed his sore eyes. He was too old for this and so damned tired.
“Oh, just get him.”
Chapter 4
Saturday, November 10, 3:30 a.m. EST
Some noise, or perhaps an edgy, neck-tingling awareness that things were not as they should be, woke Cait from an uneasy sleep. She lay perfectly still, straining to hear unfamiliar sounds outside, inside, upstairs and down. She heard nothing, but couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right.
Several seconds passed without a single rattle to underscore her illusive anxiety and yet her heart continued to beat too rapidly. She let her mouth fall open to breathe even more quietly.
Her eyes raked the dark bedroom and she studied each piece of furniture for movement, for some sign that intruders were present. The bulk against the wall wasn’t two men, only her mother’s old dresser. The hulking shadow in the corner was simply one of her two easy chairs, this one with a stack of folded laundry resting on its seat. The clothes hanging in the closet were just suits and dresses, not felons filled with murderous intent.
Still the uncomfortable sensation of “not right” persisted. She sat up, hugging the covers to her chest, listening with sharp tension. She’d felt no transition from her rough sleep to full alarm. She didn’t hear a repeat of whatever sound had jarred her from her dreams, but she remained wide-eyed with unaccustomed fear.
Two years ago Cait had learned in three short days to trust her instincts about many, many things. She trusted them still. Without knowing exactly why, but relying on those hard-to-define natural gifts, she swung her legs from the bed. She pulled an emerald green satin robe from the bedpost. The house was plenty warm, but she’d read enough on fear to understand that, crazy as it sounded, a feeling of vulnerability could be alleviated by nothing more than a see-through scarf.
She carefully checked the hallway and listened outside one of the other two bedroom doors before pushing it open slightly. In the glow from the night-light, Cait could see that her daughter had rolled to her side. She softly crossed the room and repositioned Allie’s blanket over her, though her fuzzy pajama suit was probably sufficient.
“It was that interview,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have done it. See what a little fame will bring you? A grand case of the heebie-jeebies.”
As she cautiously stepped into the hallway she worked to convince herself that if she hadn’t agreed to appear on television that evening she would still be safely and soundly sleeping in her wonderfully comfortable bed.
“They promised they wouldn’t ask any questions about that time,” she muttered. She sneered at her own naiveté. Why else would they have wanted her on the program? Sure, they showed a clip or two of her rescue software, but in the half-hour wait before airtime, the producers of the show had made it perfectly obvious they didn’t see any possible need for such a tool.
She didn’t blame them. They weren’t police, fire fighters, or rescue workers. What would the average person care about door accesses, tensor strengths of arches or doorways? But trap that same Joe beneath a pile of rubble and that person would be praying somebody knew the building’s strength ratios.
Her little scenarios, as the producer had referred to her program data, helped rescue people. Helped train people on what to expect in an emergency situation. She could have given them a perfect example: two people, two utter strangers, different backgrounds and sexes, throw them into a hostile, dangerous situation. Mix well. In her program they would either work together to find a way out or they would fight until neither spoke to the other. In reality... they’d talked about dream houses.
She hesitated as she left her daughter’s room, torn between a desire to close the bedroom door and an equally strong urge to leave it open so she could hear Allie. She left it open the tiniest crack and proceeded in her search for whatever had her nerves a-jangle.
She peeked in the second bedroom as well, flicking on the light for a second, taking the empty room in at a glance. Then as she doused the light, she stared deeply into every dark corner, a prescient sense of danger keeping her utterly silent, moving without so much as a rustle.
Nothing was amiss and yet everything seemed wrong.
She turned for the stairs, hesitating at the top, groping for the railing and the light switch simultaneously. She stood there for a moment, cocking her head, straining to hear whatever it was that held her poised for trouble. When she flipped the switch and soft, muted light gave a peach-tinged glow to the stairwell, she should have sighed in relief, but instead tensed even more, as if the light itself represented the danger she anticipated.
Still hearing nothing unusual, she nonetheless proceeded down the first step with extreme caution, bending slightly to peek through the decorative rail supports, seeing nothing in the darkened living room, but half certain something waited for her there anyway.
“This is ridiculous,” she muttered finally, but still jumping at the sound of her own low voice. She pictured headlines in the Sunday papers—Woman Scares Self To Death By Talking Aloud. She marched down the carpeted stairs making as much racket as the plush material would allow.
She flicked on the switch for the living room lamps and whirled around, prepared for someone to leap out at her. She was only marginally less nervous as she did the same thing in the dining room. Only the kitchen and garage left.
Thunk.
She froze, hand halfway to the kitchen light switch. For half a minute she was paralyzed by another series of thunderous sounds before realizing it was her own furiously beating heart. She thrust the light switch downward with enough force to hurt her hand. She needed the light, as if the fluorescents in her kitchen would have the power to roust any marauding intruder.
And then she heard something else. Unfamiliar yet recognizable. A noise like something she might have heard in a dream or even read about in a book. It was a high-pitched whine, not like the grind of a saw, but higher, the piercing buzz a hummingbird makes when diving at a feeder. But unnatural, metallic. Different.
Whatever it was, whatever atavistic chord it struck in her, she froze, staring wild-eyed at the front door. The sound had come from outside, and some part of her half expected the source to come whirring into her house at any moment.
Instead, shattering the ghastly silence, tires squealed a furious protest outside her house and she heard a car zoom away. Someone had been outside. Had been there and left. She felt such a wave of relief wash over her that she had to put her hand out to the countertop to hold herself upright.
It was probably someone from next door. The neighbors, Sean and Delia Dimwits, the undynamic duo, were probably fighting again. They did it on a far too regular basis.
Something had been wrong, all right, but not with her home, not directed at her. Half laughing at herself, she poured a glass of chilled water and drank it down, willing her hands to stop shaking. She clicked off the kitchen light, walked through the dining room and darkened it, as well.
In the shadows and in the act of pulling her hand away from the living room switch, she jumped a full three inches when the front windows suddenly turned bright. The outside floodlight, activated by a motion detector, had turned on, lighting the porch, the outside and her windows.
The abrupt change from night to day right outside her house, reanimated her and she stumbled on rubbery legs to the front door. She was shaking so hard she had to lay both palms against the door in order to lean close enough to see through the peephole.
She saw her slender porch, the two short cement steps leading down to the sidewalk that stretched to the street.
Her eye pressed to the peephole, her hands flat on the door, she felt the wood shudder. Her heart missed a full beat and she jerked away from the door as if it were on fire.
“Cait...?”
Strangely disembodied, the voice that called her name seemed to come from behind her and she pivoted to stare through her darkened dining room at her night black kitchen.
“Cait...?”
No. Whoever called her had to be the cause of the floodlights coming on, was responsible for the shudder of her door.
And whoever it was knew her name.
The doorknob didn’t move. The door didn’t rattle. And nothing whined outside. But she knew someone waited outside her door, waited for her to invite danger inside.
She crept back to the door, lightly resting her fingers against the flat surface. She had to force herself to press her eye to the peephole. She couldn’t see a thing and realized with a jagged flash of terror that something— someone—was blocking the tiny lens. Someone was leaning against her door. She was separated from whoever was out there by an inch of wood and metal. Nothing more.
Just then the person against her door stepped back a pace, allowing her a glimpse of his face. Cait felt the blood leaving hers. Her legs, liquid before, turned cold and leaden.
“No,” she whispered. What she was seeing was impossible. She’d always believed in ghosts. She’d just never expected to see one.
This ghost turned full face to the door then, as if he knew she was on the other side of the viewing hole.
Alec MacLaine.
Dead, buried. Mourned by an entire country.
Alec...dark, curling hair, thick black eyebrows, eyes the color of liquid cobalt. Lips that could incite a riot. Back from the grave and standing on her doorstep.
Where her heart had pounded too furiously before, it now seemed to give a pitiful, tiny jerk and then stop altogether. She couldn’t breathe. The only sign of life within her came from her suddenly wildly shaking hands. She wished she could simply faint. Or wake up from this new twist in an otherwise familiar nightmare.
Alec.
A low moan escaped her lips. It seemed to come from her very soul.
She wondered if the noise she’d heard, the odd and unrepeated vibration that woke her, had been a gun in the hands of robbers. That was it. She’d been shot. And died. And Alec’s ghost had come for her.
Code Name: Daddy Page 4
