Married To A Stranger

by Connie Bennett

  “But forty-eight hours, Jenn? And you couldn’t get even one call through to your station?” Adam asked, not because he doubted her, but because he knew that Tony Vernandas would be asking the same question sooner or later.

  “We weren’t flying first-class Air America, Jake,” she replied. “None of the flights were equipped with cellular or satellite-uplink phones, and I was too busy trying to follow him without being detected to worry about telephones during our layover in London. I did learn a very valuable lesson out of the ordeal, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s not possible to follow someone halfway around the world on three different airlines with only one change of clothes and no wigs without being spotted. I don’t know whether he picked me up as we came through customs in New York or if it was on the plane to Charleston, but he definitely became aware of me somewhere along the line. He let me follow him as far as the parking garage, and then I lost him. By the time I realized I’d found him again, he was behind the wheel of a speeding car and I was flying through the air like a Ping-Pong ball.”

  Adam took his eyes off the road long enough to look at her. “So you did have phony ID tucked away, then?”

  Jenn met his gaze. “Of course. It’s one of the first tricks of the trade you taught me. Or have you forgotten that?” she asked softly with just a wisp of a smile, but it was enough to make Adam’s heart leap into his throat.

  “I haven’t forgotten anything, Jenn,” he said, reluctantly dragging his gaze back to the road. “The question is, what do you remember?”

  “A lot.”

  Adam wanted to know what that meant, but there was no time. They’d reached the small parking enclosure closest to the first hole of the golf course. They had an assassin to find now. There would be time later to find out if her wistful smile meant she understood why he’d taken this job and risked his career just to protect her. After the Raven was captured, he’d find out if she was ever going to forgive him.

  As they jumped out of the car, a report came over Adam’s one-way radio, and they paused to listen to Luther telling the leader of Tac One that Karl Olander had been last spotted leaving the hotel. Tac Team Two, a roving patrol, had been dispatched to look for Olander, and Tac One, the largest of the teams, had been advised to maintain their perimeter around the President.

  Jenn and Adam started jogging toward the-golf course. As they neared, they could see the long line of golf carts toddling toward the opposite end of the fairway. Because of the perimeter alert, the Secret Service was keeping the spectators behind a restrictive line near the first tee, not allowing them to follow the action from hole to hole as they had yesterday.

  Adam shoved a handful of Olander photographs at the agent in charge of crowd control. He was the same one who’d been on duty yesterday when Jenn and Adam had circulated among the crowd, so he didn’t challenge their right to be there. He didn’t require an explanation of the photographs, either. Like most of the other Secret Service agents on the island, he was wired with a transmitter and receiver, so he knew exactly what was happening back at the hotel.

  He distributed the photos among his men as Adam and Jenn moved into the crowd and began circulating. They separated briefly, then came back together only two or three minutes later. It was a small crowd.

  “Anything?” Adam asked.

  Jenn shook her head and kept looking around. “Nothing. Where could he be? What’s he up to? How’s he going to kill the President?”

  “Surely he doesn’t think he could get close enough to do it with a rifle,” Adam replied. Like Jenn, he knew they had to analyze every angle. “There are motion sensors and security cameras covering ninety percent of the island—particularly this golf course. He couldn’t possibly escape after the assassination. If he wants to get away cleanly he’ll have to leave before it. So again, why did he even show up for work?”

  “Obviously there was something he had to do this morning to set the assassination in motion,” she said, following Adam’s line of thought. It wasn’t easy, though, because the whispering in her head was growing stronger. The sounds were guttural…Arabic …

  And important. Jenn finally stopped trying to ignore the voice and focused on the memory that was trying to bubble up through another hole in her memory. The voice was Majhid Al’Enaza’s. And his words were the ones he’d been muttering in Jenn’s nightmare for weeks. Only now they were finally becoming clear.

  “Maybe we should st—”

  “Germs.”

  Adam looked at her, wondering if she’d suddenly lost her mind. “What?”

  “He bought germs.” She looked up at Adam, her excitement mounting as everything started to make sense. “That’s what Majhid told me! The Raven bought germs.”

  Adam frowned. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Germ warfare! Get it? The Raven bought a designer virus! Genetics labs all over the world are playing with synthetic viral technology. And it’s something that can be activated by remote control! That’s why he had to go to work this morning. He needed to set his device before he could leave the island!”

  “But set it where?” Adam asked. “In the hotel? That’s the only place he had access to. But he couldn’t have left something in the Presidential Suite—Luther doesn’t let anyone near the place. They even bring their own housekeeping staff from the White House.”

  “Do they bring their own washing machines and dryers and—”

  “No, of course not,” Adam said, then grinned when he realized where Jenn’s thoughts were headed. “And they don’t bring their own linens, either. The Raven could have infected the sheets or towels—”

  Jenn shook her head. “But only if he could guarantee that no one but the President would use the contaminated item,” she argued, shooting down her own theory.

  Adam took a deep breath and exhaled it in a frustrated huff. “You’re right. His whole plan would fall apart if the First Lady took a nap on the infected sheets or used the wrong towel while the President was off sailing.”

  “Right. It has to be something more foolproof than that.”

  A flash of movement caught Jenn’s eye and she glanced to her right. It was just a woman in a bright red straw hat fanning herself with this morning’s newspaper. The newspaper that had all the pictures of the President Jenn had studied this morning. The pictures depicting him teeing off, lining up a shot on the green, driving a golf cart, chipping out of a sand trap…

  …and wiping his brow with his lucky towel.

  “Oh, my God,” Jenn muttered as all the pieces fell into place. “It’s the towel, Jake! The lucky towel! That’s why the Raven got a job in the laundry—so he could.have access to the President’s famous lucky towel, which has to be washed every day! The Raven bought some kind of virus and infected the towel with it. It’s probably activated by water, and either becomes airborne or is absorbed through the pores! When the President—”

  “When he wipes the sweat off his face, it’ll infect him and God knows how many other people. If it’s a virulent plague virus, everyone on this island could be dead in a matter of hours!” Adam concluded, whirling around to look down the fairway. The golf carts were parked in the rough just off the green. Secret Service agents were so thick that Adam could barely make out the President lining up a shot on the green.

  “Go!” Jenn said, slapping him on the back. “The Secret Service will never let me near him. You have to get down there and warn him!”

  Adam clearly didn’t want to leave her unprotected. “But the Raven—”

  “He’s beating a hasty retreat!” Jenn countered. “I’m the least of his worries. Now go!”

  Adam hesitated a second longer, then yanked the automatic from his ankle holster and shoved it into the purse Jenn had slung over her shoulder. “And they’ll never let me near him as long as I’m carrying this,” he said, though Jenn knew that the real reason he was giving up his weapon was that he didn’t want to leave her with a flimsy nail fil
e as her only protection.

  “Thanks. Now go!” She slapped him on the back again and he darted off. When he reached the crowdcontrol line and ducked under, one of the agents grabbed for him and Jenn saw them talking, both incredibly animated as Adam explained the situation. Then they both took off at a dead run for the green.

  Jenn felt a little weak in the knees.

  A towel laced with poison. Absolutely brilliant. It required no detonation, and on a scorching day like this one at the end of June it was only a matter of time until the President mopped his brow with the lucky towel he’d sent down to the laundry yesterday after his afternoon golf game. The moisture would activate the poison immediately.

  It wasn’t sane, but it was brilliant, and he would’ve gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for a photo album.

  Of course, he might still get away, Jenn realized, whether Adam saved the President or not. In fact, he was probably making his escape right now!

  He obviously had a getaway planned, but what was it? How could he get off the island? The marina? Jenn speculated, turning to look across the bay, but it was too far. The marina didn’t make sense, anyway. It was one of the most security-saturated points on the island, and it lay to the west of the hotel, not north, where the Raven had last been seen.

  No, he wouldn’t use the marina or any kind of public transportation—that would draw attention to himself. He had some quiet way of leaving the island.

  A speedboat hidden in the marsh perhaps? The Coast Guard’s constant patrols of the island made that sort of thing tricky but not impossible. Or scuba gear?

  Much better! Jenn decided. That would have been her choice if she was planning an escape. She would have a boat waiting well away from the island and scuba gear hidden in some out-of-the-way location along the coastline.

  When the image of the lighthouse on Sandy Point sprang into Jenn’s head, she was sure she knew exactly where the Raven had been headed when he left the hotel. It was so remote that no full-time Secret Service contingent was stationed there, and the vacant keeper’s cottage would be the perfect place to hide his scuba equipment.

  The Raven had been on foot when spotted on his way to the staff quarters, which meant he was probably trying to reach the riding trails, which led to the lighthouse, through the woods. That meant several miles over rough terrain, and he had at least a fiftyminute head start on her.

  But the Raven had done it the hard way. Jenn was going to do it the easy way.

  She dashed for the Land Rover and drove like a bat out of hell toward the heliport.

  “A BIRDIE! ONE UNDER PAR!” the President shouted, raising his putter over his head triumphantly.

  “Congratulations, dear,” the First Lady said, coming forward to line up her shot.

  “This is a big improvement over yesterday, don’t you agree?” he gloated, adjusting his soft leather gloves.

  His wife smiled at him fondly. “You’re three strokes ahead of your score at this point yesterday and it’s only the first hole. I’d say that’s a major improvement.”

  A trickle of sweat ran in a crooked little rivulet down the President’s cheek, and he shrugged his jaw against his shoulder to wipe the droplet away as he moved toward the golf cart. His caddie was waiting to take the putter, but the President waved him off, sliding the club into the bag himself.

  He bent to unzip the attached accessory pouch. His emerald green terry-cloth towel, which had arrived freshly laundered courtesy of housekeeping this morning, was right at the top of the pouch. As an extra little nicety, it had even been wrapped in a thin, parchmentlike paper that bore the words Sanitized for your Protection.

  The embroidered appliqu6 of a colorful leprechaun in the middle of his back swing peeked out from beneath the wrapper, and the President smiled fondly at it. It was the leprechaun that made the towel so lucky, after all.

  Another rivulet of sweat appeared on his cheek, and the President plucked the towel out of the pouch and tore off the paper.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “I WANT YOU to get this bird in the air right now! Fly, damn it!”

  “Are you crazy?” Duke Masterson asked the woman who’d jumped into the front passenger seat of his chopper. He’d just returned from delivering a load of departing guests to the mainland, and the rotors hadn’t even had time to stop when Madeline Hopewell had come running up and ordered him to take off.

  “I’m not crazy,” Jenn replied, pulling Adam’s automatic from her purse. “Just very determined. Now fly.”

  Duke stared at her. “A hijacking? Where is it you want to go?”

  “Down the island to Sandy Point.”

  Duke shook his head. “There’s a no-fly zone for three miles around this island,” he told her. “They’ve given me one flight path from here to the mainland straight over the bay and that’s it. I deviate from that course, and I’ll have three Hueys on my tail ready to blow me out of the sky.”

  “Yeah, but by that time, you’ll be at Sandy Point. Now fly!”

  “Give me one good reason,” he said stubbornly. “Other than the gun.”

  “I think that the man who just tried to assassinate the President may be using the lighthouse as his point of escape, but so far I haven’t had much luck in getting the Secret Service to listen to anything I’ve said. By the time they get around to checking it out, the Raven may have escaped.” She didn’t add that she had a personal stake in capturing the killer. It would have taken too long to explain to Duke that if the Raven escaped she might never be able to prove she hadn’t conspired with him to kill the President.

  Duke looked doubtful, but when Jenn reminded him of her gun, he revved up the engine of his chopper. Jenn reached for a headset and put it on, then hit a switch on the control panel that altered the radio frequency to the one the Secret Service was using. Unfortunately the chatter was so heavy on the channel that it was impossible for her to tell what was going on. Jenn thumbed the button of the microphone of her headset and tried to break in, but nothing happened.

  “How the hell do I break through this chatter to let them know what’s going on?” she shouted to the pilot as he put the chopper into the air.

  “You can’t. They’ve got that frequency locked out to all but their own communications,” he shouted back over the roar of the engine. The chopper was going straight up, and Duke intended to keep it that way. His only chance of not being shot down was to cross the island at his optimum altitude. By the time the Coast Guard and the Air Force figured out that he wasn’t going to be following his proscribed flight path and reacted to his defiance, he would be landing on the other side of the island.

  “Then how can I let Luther know—”

  “Call the resort.” Keeping one hand on the stick, Duke slipped into his own headset and flipped the radio channel to another frequency. “Chopper One to Desk. Come in, Desk. I have an emergency situation.”

  “Duke? What’s wrong?” The voice that came back over the headset was that of Liz Jermain.

  “You’re not going to believe this, Liz, but I’ve been hijacked, and I fully expect to be shot down in flames any second now.”

  “Don’t get cute, Duke,” she scolded him, her voice filled with panic. “Things have gone crazy here. What do you mean you’ve been hijacked?”

  “Just what I said. I’ve got a guest with a gun and a crazy story about someone trying to assassinate the President.”

  “Someone did!” Liz told him. “Duke, what’s going on out there? Are you all right?”

  “He’s fine,” Jenn answered for him. “Ms. Jermain, this is Maddy Hopewell,” she said. “Is the President all right?”

  “I don’t know. The Secret Service is crazy here! Something’s happened but no one will tell us what!”

  “I need to get a message through to Agent Luther immediately!” Jenn said. “Tell him I think the Raven is trying to leave the island from the lighthouse. Have him mobilize Tac Two and get them there immediately!” she demanded, then shut off th
e channel.

  “The President is dead,” Duke muttered.

  “That’s not what she said!” Jenn snapped, thinking of Jake trying to reach the President and remembering every horror story she’d ever heard about airborne viral contagions and how quickly they could spread—and how many they could kill.

  Had Jake reached the President in time, or had he only gotten close enough to be caught by the deadly virus?

  Jenn couldn’t bear the thought. She shifted her mind away from the image just as Duke finally decided he was high enough and said, “Here goes nothin’.” He veered sharply to the south, and within a matter of seconds was descending toward the light-house.

  “Set down around the point!” Jenn instructed. “If he’s really there, I’d rather he didn’t see us coming.”

  “Bride’s Bay Chopper One, this is Air Force Tactical! You are violating the no-fly zone. Halt your descent and immediately veer due east. Repeat, veer due east, away from the island. You will be intercepted and escorted back to your base.”

  “Look, Mrs. Hopewell—”

  “My name’s Jennifer Lambert, and I’m not letting you off the hook!” Jenn told him harshly. “Set us down, fast!”

  “All right.” He let the chopper fall straight down as fast as was aerodynamically possible, sending Jenn’s stomach lurching and making her heart pound with a new infusion of adrenaline. The radio came to life again with more threats, but it no longer mattered to Jenn. The helicopter had landed near the road just around the bend from the lighthouse.

  “Stay here!” Jenn commanded him as she flung off her headset and scrambled out the door.

  “You can count on it!” Duke shouted after her, then flipped on his microphone so that he could start explaining his illegal actions to the irate air force officer who was ordering his missile-loaded Hueys into the air.