Force of Nature

by Suzanne Brockmann

  He had to get Annie out of there, and Brenda and gang safely into their limo and on their way. As quickly as possible. At which point he would tackle his client to the ground if need be. He’d demand to know why the cloak-and-dagger. Why, really, was she so intent upon finding Brenda Quinn that she would have followed him here?

  That she’d managed to follow him without his being aware of her was pretty remarkable. As distracting as Annie was, she hadn’t had her hands on his ass all afternoon long.

  Ric took his keys from his pocket and held them out to Annie. “Sweetheart, we left the ice cream in the car. Would you mind running back to get it? Hurry, hon, before it melts.”

  She didn’t understand why he was intent upon getting her out of there, but he knew she was remembering his words. I’ll be testing you.

  She took his keys and ran. Thank God.

  Which allowed him to focus more fully on Lillian, whose right hand was now in her pocket.

  Brenda and the armed troglodyte, however, were still glued to the sidewalk, in the middle of a heated discussion.

  “Every other fucking day,” her loving boyfriend accused her, “it’s another fucking package from eBay.”

  “It wasn’t my package,” Brenda implored him.

  “Just get in the fucking car.”

  They were too late, too late…Ric found himself reaching for his sidearm, which of course he wasn’t wearing, because this was supposed to be a simple case, an easy locate-the-whereabouts.

  Brenda and her friends were still about ten steps from the limo when Lillian pulled her hand free from her coat. The moon stayed hidden behind the clouds, and the streetlights didn’t work to Ric’s advantage either, because he could not see what it was that she held in her hand. He could only see that she was holding something.

  Something about the size of a handgun.

  “Get down!” he shouted as she raised her arm, and he charged toward Brenda, taking her to the ground, knocking aside the skinhead duo while he was at it.

  Both of Brenda’s gentlemen friends hit and kicked at him, fighting off what they surely imagined was his sudden unprovoked attack. But almost simultaneous with the elbow slamming the side of his head and the knee crushing the air from his lungs, he heard one gunshot and then another. A bullet smashed into the panel above his head, ripping the metal and shaking the limo.

  He heard the car doors open, heard heavy boots hit the ground—more than just the limo driver’s.

  “We got a shooter,” a male voice shouted through the ringing in his ears. “Kill the lights!”

  “Shooter’s running,” someone else reported as the car lights went out.

  “Let ’em go,” that first voice responded—deep, authoritative. “Just get Gordie Junior—get ’em all inside.”

  Ric felt himself being picked up and tossed into the pitch darkness of the limo. He hit the far door, felt himself wrestled up into a seat and slapped down for weapons.

  Gordie Junior. He’d heard that name before.

  But his head was ringing and damn, his leg hurt like a bitch, and someone was crying—a woman. Not Annie—Brenda. Annie was safe. Thank you, Jesus.

  Ric heard the door slam closed as he felt his wallet yanked from his back pocket, and then the interior lights went back on.

  He was looking down the barrels of two very deadly-looking handguns—one held by the skinhead with the leather jacket, the other in the grip of a professional. A second bodyguard started going through his wallet.

  “Who is he, Foley?” the skinhead—no doubt Gordie Junior—asked.

  “Enrique Alvarado,” that second guard—Foley—reported. “He’s a private dick.” He looked at Ric with eyes that were dead. “Who you working for?”

  They were starting to roll. There was so much about this that was not good. With two skinheads and two bodyguards here in the back, Ric was sorely outnumbered—forget about the driver up front and the still-weeping girl. But all Ric could think was thank God he’d sent Annie to the car. Thank God she’d done as he’d asked.

  Before he could come up with a fabricated answer to who are you working for—God knows telling them the truth, that he’d virtually led the shooter right to them, would get him very dead very fast—the skinnier kid with the 88 on his shirt knocked on the window.

  “That big chick,” he said, from his seat with his arm around Brenda in the back of the limo. “She’s with him.”

  No.

  But, yes, the limo braked to a stop. The door opened and Foley scrambled out. He was back in a flash, dragging Annie into the car.

  She didn’t try to fight him, didn’t protest at all, as the man’s hands swept over her, as he searched her as roughly as he’d searched Ric.

  She just looked over at Ric, concern in her eyes. “Are you all right?” She was worried about him.

  No doubt he looked like shit. He could feel blood from a scrape on the side of his face trickling down past his ear into the collar of his shirt. His torn shirt. And his elbow was trashed. His head still hadn’t cleared, and his leg…He couldn’t remember getting kicked in the calf, but he must’ve been. It still hurt like hell.

  Gordie Junior aimed his weapon at Annie now, damn him. “Shut up, bitch,” he ordered her.

  Ric must’ve sat forward, because Foley’s extra-large partner pushed him back, jamming his own sidearm into Ric’s throat. He looked over at Annie, who was looking back at him. “Do what they say,” he told her.

  “No ID on the girl,” Foley reported. He turned his attention back to Ric. “Who’re you working for?”

  Again, Gordie Junior’s little friend interrupted from the back. “Yo, Frankie man, where the fuck you going? Club’s out on Longboat Key, and …shit, dude. Junior, come on. Don’t let him do this to us. Bren’s jonesing. Bad.”

  “Gotta take you home, Junior,” the limo driver—Frankie—said, an apology in his voice. “You know the drill. If someone’s gunning for you, we take you to your father’s. Straightaway. No exceptions.”

  “Dad’ll take care of her,” Gordie Junior reassured his friend.

  “I don’t suppose you could just let us out at the next red light,” Ric asked Foley, who made a sound that might’ve passed for laughter in some circles.

  Because that was where he’d heard the name Gordie Junior before. Gordie Junior was the eldest son of local crime lord Gordon Burns.

  Alleged local crime lord Gordon Burns. The man’s organization was incredibly tight and ridiculously loyal. As a result, despite all the nasty things Burns had done—from running a prostitution ring to drug smuggling to murder for hire—he’d never gone to trial, let alone been convicted.

  Which didn’t mean he wasn’t guilty as hell. Or any less dangerous than the sharks in the tank at Mote Marine Aquarium.

  This was supposed to have been an easy case. A safe case. A case that Annie could work on without putting herself into danger.

  Ric couldn’t have been more wrong.

  “Who do you work for?” Foley asked for a third time.

  Ric looked at Annie and shook his head. He would have said or done anything to get her out of there, but their best shot lay in getting a chance to speak to the man in charge. “We’ll wait,” he told Foley—told Annie, too, by using that we instead of an I—“to speak directly to Mr. Burns.”

  Peggy Ryan was missing. It was official.

  And there was nothing Jules could do about it. Nothing he could do to help her.

  It was one of the nightmare scenarios every FBI team leader dreaded. An operative deep undercover vanishing at a time when continuing the investigation was vital to national security.

  If Peggy were still alive, she was surely under duress. Held prisoner. Probably being tortured so that she’d divulge details of the case.

  She would be asked which of a variety of illegal activities was being investigated. What evidence had been collected and how damning was it? Who else was she working with?

  Jules sat at his desk, his insides tied in kn
ots, long after most of the others in the office had gone home, reading and rereading the check-in reports Peggy had sent—in particular the last two.

  She’d always been aware of the possibility of interception, and she’d made each report sound like postcards to loved ones. Weather’s been great. Enjoying both Sarasota and the job—same old routine, no news about vacation plans.

  Although, in her last two communications, she had mentioned—almost identically word for word—watching the sunset from the window of her room in the servants’ wing at Burns Point. Mine’s the only room with such a glorious view, she’d written. Although it’s cold in there, colder even than the rest of the house, with the air-conditioning always running. I confess to missing the fresh air.

  Their experts had analyzed her word choices—the message wasn’t in code—and had come up with nothing, aside from the obvious clue as to the location of her room. It was frustrating as hell because that was it. After sending those last two reports, Peggy had disappeared.

  If she were dead, it was because of him.

  And wasn’t that the biggest crock of crap? Jules hadn’t forced Peggy to transfer to Florida. She’d left because of her own inflexibility—her own inability to accept diversity in the workplace.

  And yet Jules still felt guilty.

  He reached for the phone. Picked it up. Put it back down.

  His best friends, Alyssa and Sam, were out of the country on an assignment for Troubleshooters Incorporated—a private security team that was currently assisting the CIA. They were helping out in the hunt for a new arms dealer who’d shoved his way to the head of the international “most wanted” list by claiming to have a suitcase nuke for sale.

  It was probably just a distraction—some fiction devised by Osama or some other Big Bad—meant to tie up teams of agents and operatives. Keep ’em from beating the brush in the mountains of Pakistan, where most of al Qaeda was still hiding. Which was kind of overkill, considering that the disaster in Iraq was already getting that job done quite nicely for bin Laden. Still, the threat of a suitcase nuke couldn’t be ignored, despite the improbability of its existence.

  And so Alyssa—Jules’s former partner in the FBI—and her ex-SEAL husband, Sam, were somewhere overseas. Jules could call her on her cell, sure, and leave a message, but it’d probably be days before she’d be able to call back.

  Plus, God knows he’d already filled his yearly quota of whiny messages left on Alyssa’s voicemail.

  About Paolo. About gleaming, shiny, perfect Captain Ben Webster, and his latest freaking e-mail, sent from some computer tent in a Marine encampment on the outskirts of Baghdad.

  About…everything that Jules couldn’t have, but wanted.

  Like someone to talk to, when he was feeling like roadkill.

  As if on cue, there was a soft knock on his door.

  “Yeah,” Jules called. Maybe if he closed his eyes and wished really hard, it would be Ben, looking resplendent in his Marine uniform, echoing some of the words he’d written to Jules in that epic e-mail, just a few days ago. I haven’t been sleeping, and it’s more than just the increased casualties, the kids going home missing arms and legs. I was lying on my cot, staring at the tent above me, and I suddenly thought “What am I doing?”

  “Hey. Mind if I come in?”

  Max?

  The door opened and it was definitely Max poking his head in.

  “What are you still doing here?” Jules asked his boss. “I thought you had some sort of thing tonight.”

  “I did. I stayed with Em while Gina went to a lecture over at the Smithsonian. Some author she likes. It was over early, so…” Max came all the way into the room, and Jules saw that he was dressed down in jeans and a T-shirt, his dark hair casually messed. “When she got home, I told her about Peggy and…She thought I should see if you wanted to go get a beer. Actually, what she said was go get drunk, but…”

  Jules laughed. God, he loved Max’s wife. “Yeah, that’ll help.” He shook his head. “Tell her thanks, but no. I’ve still got a lot to do and…”

  Max sighed and closed Jules’s office door, leaning on it so that it latched with a click. He sat down on the sofa beneath the window and sighed again.

  Jules found himself sighing, too. “You know, you really don’t have to—” he said just as Max said, “I used to think…” But Max repeated himself, loudly enough to be heard over Jules, which kind of forced Jules to stop talking.

  “I used to think I had to stay in the office, too,” Max said, “when an agent went missing. Or was killed. It’s likely that Peggy’s dead.”

  “I know,” Jules said.

  “It’s…hard not to feel responsible,” Max continued, “if not for the loss, then for…I guess I always want it to have some real meaning—when someone like Peggy gives her life—there should be something we get in return. Someone dangerous gets caught, a sleeper cell is eliminated, a bomb doesn’t go off and thousands of lives are saved…There should be some measurable reward for the sacrifice. It’s bad enough when you lose someone toward the end of an investigation, but we’re still at the beginning of this one, so…Right now her death doesn’t seem to have much meaning.”

  “We’ve gained nothing.” Jules told him what they both already damn well knew. Peggy had been undercover for months, and they’d gained no new information. Except for the fact that she’d gotten close to something or someone and, because of that, had disappeared. Unless she’d left a message—somehow, somewhere…“I’ve got to figure out a way to get inside Burns’s compound. I’ve been going through Peggy’s reports—”

  “Reports that will still be here tomorrow,” Max interrupted. “You can sleep here.” He patted the cushions of the sofa on either side of himself. “You can give this case 24/7 attention, but there’s going to come a point when you’re going to have to do that, and if you’re already burned out—”

  “Oh, this is nice,” Jules said. “These words coming out of your mouth?”

  “I get twice as much done these days,” Max told him. “Because I’m actually getting some rest at night, instead of pacing the halls.”

  “How many times did you go home between 9/11 and the summer of 2005?” Jules asked. “Was it five times or six?”

  “Back then…I didn’t have anyone to go home to,” Max said.

  “Well, ditto,” Jules said. “Ben’s in Iraq, and even if he weren’t…” He exhaled hard. Even though his boss had met Ben a time or two, talking about Jules’s love life—or lack thereof—was surely not something Max had signed on for when his wife had urged him to come check up on Jules. “Just…thank you for the advice. I appreciate your concern, but—”

  “Sam Starrett called me just a few days ago—before he and Alyssa went overseas,” Max said. “He, uh, told me about the e-mail you got from Ben. He just…thought I should know about it.”

  Jules couldn’t believe this. He could understand Alyssa telling Sam, but…“As my boss or—”

  “As your friend,” Max corrected him. “I just wanted to make sure that you understood, despite what the President said in our meeting—”

  “Grooming me as your replacement,” Jules remembered. With everything going on in the search for Peggy Ryan, he’d actually forgotten that giant anvil that had dropped on his head from out of the blue. Max actually thought that when he moved onward and upward, Jules would be able to fill his gigantic shoes. It was almost too much to assimilate, not without bursting into tears—which could well make Max change his mind.

  “You’re not going to disappoint me if you decide to take a different path,” Max told him quietly. “If you and Ben—”

  “Whoa,” Jules said. “Whoa. Yikes. The man sent me an e-mail. I haven’t seen him in months. It’s crazy to think…I mean, God, even when we were together, it was only for a week. It was just an extended one-night stand. It was sex, all right?”

  Ben was incredibly good-looking, and even though as a Marine he had to be in the closet, they had hooked up for a
while because, well…Because Jules was human. But it wasn’t worth it—it drove him nuts to have to hide, to sneak around…They’d broken up, and Ben went to Iraq. End of story.

  Except they’d started exchanging e-mail a few months ago. As friends. Just friends—Jules had made that very clear.

  The idea that Ben was suddenly talking long-term commitment was absurd.

  Wasn’t it?

  Although, with Ben in Iraq, their relationship had been whittled down to words, thoughts, feelings—in the form of those near-daily e-mails. Jules had found it oddly enjoyable. Ben was a good writer—a skill that Jules appreciated and even shared. They’d gotten to know each quite well over the past four months—something that was much easier to do without Ben constantly pressuring him to make their friendship physical again.

  But this latest e-mail had caught Jules by surprise.

  “He’s willing to give up his career. You won’t have to hide anymore. Isn’t that what you wanted?” Max asked Jules now.

  Jules nodded. First yes, then no. “I don’t know what I want,” he admitted. “I honestly don’t.”

  No way was he torturing Max by telling him this, but the sex hadn’t been all that great, shadowed as it was by the knowledge that Jules was getting intimate with someone who would never even dare to hold his hand at a Pride parade. Not that Ben wasn’t plenty affectionate in private. Jules just found it hard to invest a hundred percent in a relationship that could never be permanent—not without Ben giving up his career.

  God, the thought of Ben throwing everything away for Jules—for something that had never been real—made him feel claustrophobic. As if his tie were tightening around his neck as water closed around his head.

  Which was probably close to the way Max was feeling right about now, too.

  “You sure you don’t want a beer?” Max asked.

  Jules stood up. Because Max was right—it would all be here tomorrow. Peggy’s reports. Ben’s e-mail. His future trying to fill Max’s shoes as the leader of the most elite counterterrorist team in the entire FBI.

  “Yeah,” Jules told his friend. “Let’s go get a beer.”