Code Name: Daddy

by Marilyn Tracy

  She heard the report of the gun over the loud blare of the horn and jerked her hand from the center of the steering wheel.

  Alec fired again and she understood his meaning: Get going!

  But she couldn’t. Someday, she hoped he’d understand. Even if she couldn’t do anything to help, she couldn’t leave him.

  Alec started running across the street, followed by Jack King. Was King chasing Alec or supporting him? Cait couldn’t tell.

  “Hold it right there, Fred!” Alec yelled. “It’s over!”

  Suddenly someone wrenched the passenger door open and she felt blinded by the interior lights. Even as she turned her head to see a pair of maddened brown eyes, she felt something hard and cold strike her just above the temple. Lights flashed and flickered and incredibly, everything grew dim and soft. Almost peacefully quiet.

  There was something she needed to tell Alec. Something about the future. She closed her eyes, needing to think, needing to rest for a moment, trying to remember what it was she hadn’t told him.

  “Oh, God,” said a voice in the car with her. “You weren’t supposed to be involved in the first place, lady. Why the hell are you always in the wrong place.”

  Cait focused on the madman’s rambling.

  “I didn’t want to kill you, you know?” he said, making his words a question, as if asking her permission.

  Alec called from outside the car. “Fred! Give it up! You can’t get away with this. Jack and I are both here, Fred. We’ll see you get some help. Let her go.”

  “I can’t,” Fred said.

  “No,” Cait agreed. “It’s really dark in here.” That wasn’t what she’d meant to say. But she couldn’t think what she was supposed to do. Something about putting the car in gear and driving off, leaving Alec behind. If only her head didn’t hurt so much.

  “Please, Fred,” Alec called out. “Don’t hurt her!”

  Cait blinked several times, trying to clear the strangely bobbing lights from her eyes. She reached out and grasped the steering wheel to keep from slumping to the seat.

  “Don’t move,” Fred said.

  “It was you,” Cait said. “You killed those men.”

  “I didn’t kill you,” Fred replied heatedly. “You should have thanked me for that. I’m a federal agent, for Christ’s sake!”

  Cait clung to the steering wheel as if for dear life. She weaved on the seat, hanging her head down but seeing clearly now for the first time in several seconds. The gearshift knob was only inches below her right hand. Her foot was already against the accelerator.

  “I killed the terrorists. That’s my job. Besides, they didn’t deserve to live.”

  She managed to cock her head just enough to see Alec’s rigid form outside the car. His gun looked enormous held in front of him like that, but she felt an immense relief that the barrel was trained on Fred.

  Alec called out again, as desperately as before, but the message far different.

  “Don’t kill her, Fred. Don’t hurt the mother of my child. Please, Fred.”

  Fred jerked beside her as if Alec had shot him with bullets, not words. “Alec’s baby?” He grabbed her chin and wrenched her to face him. “Is this true? Oh, God, is it true?”

  Cait didn’t know what she’d expected to see in Fred Masters’s eyes—madness, or an anger so deep it would border on lunacy?—but what she saw made her feel confused. He looked in pain, more confused than she, as if by looking into her eyes and seeing the truth about Allie, about Alec, he’d learned that his entire life had no meaning, that all he was and had been had proved insignificant and futile.

  “Fred—!”

  Fred jerked again, his fingers tightening on her chin, but this time he didn’t appear chagrined or horrified at the call, but galvanized into manic action. He twisted Cait’s face toward the driver’s window and yelled, “Shut up, Alec! Just shut up! I need to think! I can’t think with you yelling all the time. You were supposed to die in the WHO that day. You aren’t supposed to be here. When I found out you hadn’t died, I decided to let you live—as long as you kept hidden away. But then you had to come looking for her! Damn you!”

  Alec could see that Fred was shaking with the fury of his tirade. His own heart jolted sharply when his former friend viciously pressed Cait’s face against the cold glass of the driver’s window. Her eyes were wide, shocked, and her lips were smashed against the glass in a parody of a kiss.

  He’d be damned if this was how he’d have to remember her.

  “And it’s against the rules to fraternize with the hostages, Alec! You aren’t a rookie anymore. I can’t keep going around after you cleaning up your messes!” Fred called out.

  Cait had been right; there was probably another name for whatever disorder Fred suffered, a name other than Münchhausen syndrome by proxy, but if the name signified stark raving crazy, then it fitted Fred to a T.

  Alec tried not to think what Cait might be feeling, tried only to think how he might extricate her from Fred’s terrible grip. He didn’t dare look around to see what Jack was up to; he only knew his longtime partner had disappeared from even peripheral view.

  “You young punks come spilling into the bureau fresh out of law school thinking you know everything about the criminal mind. You don’t know anything!” Fred yelled.

  It wasn’t Fred’s words that made Alec’s guts turn to jelly, it was the sight of Cait’s slender hand inching for the gearshift knob.

  “I know enough not to orchestrate murder!” Alec called out, forcing Fred’s attention.

  Fred all but screamed at him that he was only doing what had been necessary. “No one was giving us any credit for anything!” he yelled. “Somebody had to do something to call attention to the bureau. To let them know we’re there. That they need us, damn it!”

  Cait’s fingers reached the gearshift and Fred half turned to see what caused her movement. As he yelled something, Alec fired his gun just inches above the car.

  Before the echo of the shot faded, Fred whirled to face him, screaming something, and smacked Cait’s face against the window as he fired through it at Alec.

  “No!” he heard Cait scream as he heard the shot, heard the shattering of glass and felt Fred’s bullet slam into his shoulder.

  Despite his wide-legged stance, the slam spun Alec around and knocked him flat on his back. His arm hurt like hell and he felt winded both by the extreme tension and his fear for Cait. He rolled to his side, struggling to regain his stance.

  Just as he managed to get semierect, he saw the passenger door suddenly flung open, and the interior of the car was flooded with light. Jack’s body blocked exit.

  Cait screamed again as Alec called out “No, Jack!” even as Fred turned and fired point-blank at Jack’s broad chest.

  Still screaming, Cait nevertheless seized the opportunity to crank the gearshift to the right. The car jolted backward then shot forward with a squeal of tires.

  Alec yelled her name and lunged after the car. He heard her scream something, his name perhaps, and then heard a shot ring out inside the car.

  “Oh, God, no!” he cried, staggering after the car. When it came to a dead halt right in front of him, he literally ran into it, sliding up over the trunk and off the back window. He rolled to the pavement and was on his feet again, unaware of the pain, unaware of anything except Cait.

  He’d heard her die once, screaming his name only to stop after the first execution-style shot. It hadn’t been true then. Please, God, don’t let it be true now. Please, please...

  He was unaware he was murmuring the words aloud as he reached the driver’s door, a supplication from his heart, from his very soul.

  “Oh, please, be all right, Cait, please be all right....”

  Uncaring if Fred waited for him inside, he dragged open the door of the battered, stolen car and sank to his knees at the sight of Cait’s slender form slumped over the steering wheel.

  Fred Masters was half in, half out of the car, blood streaming down h
is face. Alec couldn’t tell whether he was dead or alive and didn’t give a damn.

  “Cait...?” Alec whispered, his fear choking his voice. When she didn’t move, he loosed a yell of unvarnished agony.

  And she jumped as if he’d shot her.

  She turned disbelieving eyes on him.

  “I s-saw you s-shot,” she stammered, choking back a sob.

  “Nothing to worry about,” he said. “Just a scratch.”

  He didn’t know why that made her laugh then suddenly burst into tears.

  Alec wanted to draw her into his arms then and there but he had to check on Fred. And on Jack.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked, pushing awkwardly to his feet.

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Stay there,” he ordered, rounding the car, keeping his eyes and his gun trained on Fred’s sprawled form. It didn’t take long to know the truth: Fred Masters wouldn’t be playing God with agents’ lives any longer.

  About ten yards behind the car Jack King lay on his side well into someone’s frost-covered front lawn. Lights were going on all up and down the street and a couple of men were hovering on their porches, well within reach of their doors.

  “What’s going on?” one of them called.

  Alec ignored them as he knelt beside his longtime friend.

  “Jack?”

  “Yeah,” Jack breathed.

  “Somebody call an ambulance,” Alec called out. “Officer down!”

  He heard at least two doors screech open and slam shut. “Hang on, Jack,” he said, shrugging out of his jacket to make a pillow for the other man.

  “I’m sorry, Alec. I should have told you a long time ago.”

  “Don’t worry about it now.”

  “No. I was only trying to keep you safe.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine,” Alec said, and truly realized it at that moment. His knees shook so badly he dropped to sit beside Jack. He felt for Jack’s chest wound.

  “Here.” Some cloth was pressed into his hands. He looked up to see Cait holding out a clean disposable diaper. “Maybe this’ll help.”

  A chuckle rippled through him as he made a bandage of the thick, padded diaper. He pressed it against Jack’s wound. “Maybe guns and diapers can mix,” he said, then was afraid to look up at her.

  “I love you, Alec,” she said and sat down beside him and leaned her head on his good shoulder. “Bullet holes and all.”

  Chapter 16

  Tuesday, November 20, 11:15 a.m. EST

  “What I want to know is why you started laughing when I told you it was just a scratch?” Alec asked Cait, pulling her against his chest.

  “There’s not enough room on this bed,” she said. “Especially when you have it at this angle.”

  “I like it this way. All the better to—”

  “Visiting hours are over in fifteen minutes,” a nurse’s aide said from the doorway.

  “Thank you,” Cait said, slipping out of his reach and back onto the floor. She straightened her blouse and assumed a prim air. “You’re supposed to be convalescing.”

  “I told you there wasn’t anything wrong with me but a— Why does that make you smile every single time?”

  Her face grew serious. “Before... when I thought you were dead... I used to imagine that someone would tell me you weren’t dead, that it was nothing. What? Alec? Heavens, no. Just a scratch.”

  Alec didn’t know what to say, so said the obvious. “Well, this time it was.”

  “It wasn’t, either,” she said with some heat. “Fred Masters managed to shoot you right where you were shot last time. Time before last, I mean.”

  Alec grinned. He liked the game way she was attempting to deal with the idea that bullets really did fly in his business.

  “Have you ever been to New Mexico, Cait?”

  “No, why?”

  “Well, I have a cabin out there, you see? And I just left my assignment hanging—”

  “Another assignment? Already?”

  Alec couldn’t help grinning at the look of horror on her face. “It’s all right, Cait. I’ve retired my second badge.”

  Her features flattened a little and he didn’t know what that meant. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Are you doing this because of what I said about guns and Allie?”

  She wasn’t the kind of woman a man lied to. “Not entirely,” he said, then grinned again. “It was what you said about loving me, bullet holes and all. Being in the hospital too often would make me lose too much time with you.”

  The look on her face reminded him of her aunt Margaret’s scrutiny. And Allie’s. “Are you serious?” she asked.

  “I am.”

  “You’ll miss it,” she warned.

  “I won’t.”

  “You’ll get bored and crabby and you’ll want to go out every night and shoot pool.”

  He chuckled. “I love you, Cait.” He held on to her gaze for several seconds, letting her see he was deadly serious.

  “But, Alec, you love the bureau,” she protested.

  “You’re right, Cait. I do. And I know it would work out so I could still be with the bureau and with you and Allie. But I don’t want that.”

  “It is because of what I said.”

  “It’s because I want to get to know you, Cait. Everything about you. The way you look in the morning, the expression on your face when you watch a movie, the mood swings you get when you’re pregnant. All of it. The whole picture. And I can’t do that gallivanting around the country on field assignments.”

  “But—”

  “I’ve already missed two years, Cait. I missed my daughter’s whole life. I want us to make up that time we lost. And I want to get to know Allie. Be a family. And I don’t think I could go into a dangerous situation again without worrying about what would happen to you two.”

  She didn’t have to say her thoughts; they were clear. “You won’t be unhappy?”

  “Only if you and Allie aren’t with me.” He crooked his finger at her and she stepped closer. He pulled her to him and kissed her fully, soundly and with all the promise of a future.

  “What about Jack?” she said a little breathlessly when she finally broke free.

  “What about him?” Alec asked, the grin wiped from his face.

  “I wish you’d talk to him,” she said. “He did save our lives.”

  Cait had been hectoring him to visit Jack every day of the week he’d spent in the hospital. He trusted his old friend, had even placed all their lives in his hands. They had worked with the precision of long-standing partners to try taking Fred Masters down peacefully. But Alec couldn’t seem to forgive Jack for the time he’d stolen from them. For the fourteen months he’d missed of Allie’s life.

  “He’s better,” she said. “He’s still got a long way to go, but he’ll pull through.”

  Alec could have told Cait that much. Jack was a scrapper. “It’ll give him time to do something about that ulcer. What about Aunt Margaret? Did she finally go back home?” Alec asked, thinking he truly liked Cait’s aunt, though he found he felt a bit exhausted by her.

  A strange look crossed Cait’s face. “Not yet.”

  “Something wrong?”

  “No.”

  “But something’s up.”

  “I don’t know yet,” she said. She climbed back up on the bed and faced him squarely. “But if what I think is true, you’re going to have to patch things up with Jack.”

  Alec narrowed his eyes at her. Light dawned. “Aunt Margaret?”

  “She’s ‘Margaret’ to Jack.”

  “You’re kidding me,” he said. Cait shook her head. Alec couldn’t help smiling. Really, genuinely smiling. “Aunt Margaret and Jack?”

  “Margaret and Jack.” Cait was smiling now, too. “So, you’ll talk to him?”

  “Oh, I guess so.”

  She hopped down, only to propel the wheelchair to the side
of the bed.

  “Hey! I didn’t mean now!”

  She held out her hand. “Like you said, the sooner the better.”

  “Well, I’m not going to go see him in that thing.”

  A few minutes and what seemed like twelve hospital corridor miles later, he stepped around the bulky doorway of Jack’s room. Margaret, who was sitting in an easy chair beside Jack’s bed, raised her eyebrows when she saw Alec, and released Jack’s hand to push to her feet.

  “I think I’ll go fetch a cup of tea,” she said, beaming at Alec.

  He moved aside to let her pass.

  “Go easy on him,” she murmured before leaving the room.

  It irritated him that everyone seemed to assume he would tear Jack’s head off. Not that he wouldn’t if his old friend were standing, but as it was...

  “Alec.”

  “Jack.”

  “How’s the shoulder?”

  “Fine. How’s the chest?”

  “Still ticking.”

  “And the ulcer?”

  “Better.”

  “So,” Alec began. He was uncomfortable with the sheer intensity of emotion he felt for this short, grayhaired, lying former partner of his.

  Jack said, “So, Cait said she thought you’d eventually talk to me.”

  “I’m in the room.”

  Jack looked around him as if surprised to find that was true. “Good thing you’re not armed.”

  “You got that right,” Alec agreed, but he found he was fighting back a smile.

  “Cait said I should just shoot straight. Tell you like it its.”

  “That would be different,” Alec retorted, not feeling quite as friendly now that they were nearing the source of their problem.

  “On the last assignment I went on in Nevada—the one right before your deal at the WHO—I got to talking with some of the guys who’d worked the operation in Michigan. Remember that one?”

  “Sure,” Alec said, knowing Jack referred to an incident with a right-wing separatist group that had resulted in one agent down, two cultists dead and six more in prison.

  “One of the guys on my team mentioned that a cultist member said they’d been paid by the FBI to create a ruckus. My man swore those were the guy’s exact words.”