by Hinze, Vicki
“Oh, boy.” Sara, not Lys responded. “He left a few minutes ago, I suspect, headed to Carl’s Crossing to pick up building supplies for the podium and stage.”
Lys crossed her chest with her arms. “No way he’ll be back in thirty minutes.”
Kelly let out a wounded animal sound. “What am I going to do?”
“Isn’t there anyone else in town who can help?” Gabby asked.
“No.” Kelly grumbled her worry. “No one.”
This was Gabby’s fault. If Kelly hadn’t been shopping for her and preparing the cottage, she’d have gotten her report in. Plumber would not approve, but Gabby had no choice. She frowned. “Calm down and tell me. What’s the computer doing?”
Kelly lifted a hand. “Eating my bloody report.”
“How?” Gabby kept her voice calm. “Walk me through it—and be specific.”
“I open the document and the machine freezes up. It won’t let me do anything but shut down and start over.”
Gabby processed that. “Blue screen?”
“Yes!” Kelly growled. “I hate that blue screen.”
“Maybe I can help,” Gabby said. “I don’t know it all, but I’ve run into the blue-screen monster before.”
“Oh, thank you!” Kelly grabbed Gabby’s arm and hauled her down the street and into the police station. “It’s right back here.”
In a shallow alcove, the computer sat atop a desk that stretched wall-to-wall.
Gabby slid onto the chair’s seat and began running diagnostics that were second nature to her. In a matter of minutes, she had vanquished the blue-screen monster and recovered a copy of Kelly’s report. She copied and pasted a backup copy of it into a second document, added copy to the title, saved it, and then called out. “Kelly.”
Kelly scooted over toward her. “You did it—and got a copy of my report!”
“I’ve already saved the original and a backup copy. So just go where you need to go to upload it, then copy and paste the copy in, submit, and you’ll have it done.”
Relief flooded Kelly’s face. “Wonderful. Thank you, Gabby. You really did save my job.”
“You’re welcome.” Gabby started to stand.
Hearing footfalls from the street door behind her, Kelly turned and stepped out of the alcove. “Good morning. Can I help you gentlemen with something?”
“I hope so,” a man said.
Gabby went board stiff. His voice. Agent Bain. He’d found her!
“I’ll be right with you.” Kelly took one look at Gabby’s face, stepped back into the alcove, then whispered, “What’s wrong?”
Gentlemen. More than one. “There are two of them?” Gabby mumbled, horrified. When Kelly nodded, Gabby said, “Describe the second man.”
“Tall, bald, mid-fifties, short beard.”
“Oh, no.” Gabby shot to her feet. “I’ve got to get out of here. Right now.”
Kelly blocked her. “What is it?”
“They’re trouble for me, Kelly. Please, please don’t tell them I’m here.” She grabbed Kelly’s sleeve. “Please!”
“I won’t. I promise.” Kelly positioned her body to block Bain’s view of Gabby. “Thanks, Mac. Appreciate the assist.” Kelly dropped her voice. “I’ll keep them busy in here. You go out the back.” She shoved Gabby toward the back door.
Gabby ran down the hallway and out the back door, and she kept running all the way to the dock where Lys and Sara were tacking up a stretch of fencing. “Is Plumber back?”
“He just pulled in,” Lys said. “Gabby, wait. You look like you’ve seen a ghost. You okay?”
“Fine.” She took off in a sprint to find Plumber, spotted him at the clearing.
He saw her coming, took one look at her face, and ran to meet her. “What’s wrong?”
“Bain is here. He’s in the police station right now. And the Medros thug—Bain’s partner, who picked up the thumb drives and asked me about Rogan Gregos is with him!”
Plumber’s worry manifested on his face. Drawing his mouth down into a flat line, he scanned the street. “We’ve got to get you out of here.” They rushed to the Jeep. “Get in and stay down.”
Gabby pulled the door open then shut it behind her and wedged herself between the floorboard and seat. She rested her cheek against the cold leather. Her heart thudded in her ears, threatening to pound out of her chest.
When Plumber got inside, he said, “You’re going to be okay. You hear me? You’re going to be okay.”
Tears she didn’t want to shed soaked her face. “I don’t want to leave here.”
“You won’t have to leave.” He keyed the engine and took off. “I promise.”
“But they’re here, Plumber. I can’t stay.”
“You can. I’ll find a way.” He pressed a number on his phone—someone on speed-dial. “Hunter,” Plumber said, revealing he’d called the troops. “It’s SW. You know that photo Gabby IDed? Yeah, that one. I need info right now. Status is critical. He’s here—with Bain.”
Gabby pulled out her phone. “I should call Justin Wade.”
SW went still. “That’s not necessary.”
Not necessary? “Is Hunter Justin Wade?”
“Not exactly.” Plumber’s attention shifted. “Yeah, Hunter. Go ahead.” He listened and then repeated to Gabby. “Mick Fallon is his name. He really is Rogan Gregos’s cousin.”
“Who is Rogan Gregos?” Gabby asked.
“Holding her gaze, Plumber told Hunter, “Send me a photo of Rogan Gregos ASAP. It looks like it’s total truth time.” He paused to listen, then added, “No, she isn’t going to take it well, which is why I’ve been avoiding telling her. But she needs to know now.” Another pause. Still holding her gaze, Plumber went on. “I know that, okay? I tell her, and I’m fried. Bottomline, better me than her.” Plumber took in a sharp breath. “Just get me the photo, Hunter. Please.”
Total truth. He had been lying to her? Fried? What did that mean? “Plumber?” It was warm in the Jeep, yet Gabby felt freezing cold inside. What truth could he possibly tell her that would fry him?
“There’s something you need to know. Something you should know, and I will tell you. But first, I need to put some space between Bain and Fallon and us.”
Plumber had been lying to her because she wouldn’t take whatever this truth was well. That mysterious something he had to tell her, and not her loving anything like he’d said, had made him force things fall into place. Plumber had manipulated her. Used her. But for what?
Her heart felt bruised, numb, as if it had broken and she hadn’t yet realized it. Had anything between them been real? Anything at all?
Chapter Seventeen
Tuesday, December 15, 12:05 p.m.
Dread lay heavy in Gabby. Plumber drove back to the cottage, his face grimmer than she’d ever seen it. Whatever this truth that would fry him was, it was huge.
“Let’s get inside. It’s safer.” He got out and walked around the front of the Jeep, scanning the woods beyond the lawn, and then onto the porch.
Gabby joined him and he turned his back to her, continuing to hold watch while she unlocked the door and disarmed the alarm system. Her hand shook so hard, it took her two tries. “Okay.”
He came in, closed and locked the door. When he removed his jacket, she saw a weapon in his shoulder holster.
She walked to the bar and sat on the stool, afraid her knees would fold before she got there. How had they found her? How?
Plumber walked around the counter and opened the fridge, poured two glasses of iced tea, then pulled out the makings for turkey and swiss sandwiches. She wanted to demand he explain right now. Wanted to, but couldn’t make herself do it. So instead, she waited patiently for him to gather his thoughts and break whatever this was to her in his own way.
He grabbed two plates and the loaf of bread, then sliced tomato. “This is hard.”
“I can see that.” She twisted her hands on her lap.
“Plumber, it’s Kelly.” Her voice carri
ed into the cottage before her footfalls sounded on the porch. “I’m coming in.”
He frowned.
So did Gabby.
The door sprang open and Kelly charged in. Lys and Sara followed her but hung back.
“The FBI?” Kelly shouted. “Special Agent Bain is all over my back, demanding I produce Gabby Blake—which I assume is you.” She glared from Plumber to Gabby then back to Plumber. “One of you better start explaining. Right now. He’s demanding to know where you are, Gabby. Not asking. Demanding.”
Plumber paused slicing the tomatoes. “Want a sandwich?”
“I want answers!” Kelly fumed.
“And I’ll explain everything,” he said calmly. “But I need a few minutes with Gabby first.”
“No,” Kelly said. “The Chief is primed to fire me already and now this. You’ll explain now.” She lifted a hand. “Bain is making threats like I’ve never heard in my life, and that jerk with him acts like a bald hitman.”
Plumber looked his sister right in the eye. “That’s because he is.”
Gabby grunted. “There was something familiar about him—the first time I saw him, but—” Finally, that niggling piece of the puzzle escaping her floated up from her memory and slid into place. Fallon was one of the two men with the old stranger on the street—clearly a longtime Medros man—who mistook her for Helena. Not the one who spoke to her—He forgets, he’d said—the other man.
“Oh, for pity’s sake. Look in the mirror, Gabby.” Kelly slung the words at her. “You look enough like him to be related.”
Her jaw fell slack. “No.” Impossible.
“Yes!” All three of the triple threat answered at once.
Gabby frowned. Did she?
“Enough, Kelly.” Plumber gave her a look that said in no uncertain terms to back off. “You have no idea what you’re doing here.”
Kelly jutted her jaw. “Which is why I am not leaving here without answers.”
Sara stepped forward, put a hand on Kelly’s arm. “Stop. We’re all upset. He’ll give you your answers. He already said he would.” Plumber’s level of upset was intense, and it radiated from him. “Let’s go out on the porch for a few minutes.”
“Sara’s right.” Lys stepped forward, snitched the sandwich and glass of tea closest to Plumber. “Make yourself another. I’m starving.”
Sara mumbled something softly to Kelly, who suddenly seemed to see through the haze of her anger to Gabby’s dread and Plumber’s upset. “Okay. We’ll give you a few minutes. But you better tell me the truth when I come back, brother dear, and I mean it.”
The three exited to the porch.
Plumber pulled two more slices of bread from the loaf and set it on his plate. “We don’t have much time.”
Gabby agreed. “Kelly is short on patience.”
He shoved the untouched sandwich toward Gabby and then began making himself one. “This isn’t going to be easy on either of us, but like I told Hunter, you need to know the truth. It’s time.”
“Okay.”
“Bain tracking you here with Mick Fallon makes it imperative you know.”
“How did they find me here?”
“Fallon had to have tracked you. Or Bain did. What do you still have that you had with you at your father’s the day they came for the thumb drives?”
She thought a long second. “I’m not sure. I left everything behind in the Mustang.” She had. Her purse, wallet, keys and phone. She thought back, harder, and the answer hit her. “My coat.”
“Let me see it.”
Plumber examined the jacket and found what he sought. “One of them put this tracking chip in your coat.” He held it for her to see.
“So they knew where I was all along.”
“Maybe. But they likely lost you at some point.”
“Then how?”
“If they suspected you were still alive, one of their golden boy accountants could have tracked the money.” Plumber looked beside himself. “TruthSeeker and I took all kinds of precautions, but the money does end up in Christmas Cove, so . . .”
Thoughtful, Plumber took a bite of his sandwich, chewed and swallowed. “If I could have spared you this, I would have, Gabby. It’s important you know that.”
“Important how?”
“To me.” He went to the pantry and came back with chips. Glanced at her plate. “You aren’t eating.”
If she tried to swallow right now, she’d choke. “I’m fine.”
“Eat.”
She took a bite, washed it down with tea. “Why is it important to you? Because of your job?”
“No. Because you are important to me.”
The second bite went down a little easier. “I’m not going to break, Plumber. I’m not that fragile or I wouldn’t have survived childhood.”
“All right. I’m going to take you at your word.” He nodded. “Your mother did not die in childbirth with you.”
“What?” Of all he could have said, that Gabby least expected.
“She died hours after you were born . . .”
“Convulsions? Stroke? Or what?”
“Lethal injection,” he said. “Given to her under orders from Medros.”
Gabby gasped. And the incidental encounter of the old man on the street flickered through her mind again. He’d claimed she looked like his sister’s husband, Rogan. She’d been so floored by him calling her Helena, Gabby had forgotten that. He’d told the two men rushing him to the SUV something . . . I must see George now. That was it. Had her mother known them? Had the old stranger been talking about George Medros? Fallon, when pretending to be Bain’s partner and asking her about Rogan Gregos been sending her a warning, identifying himself as Rogan Gregos at the Handel security breach. But was this Rogan also the same man as the old stranger’s brother-in-law she supposedly favored? She’d thought it impossible but with the triple threat’s comments and all this, suddenly, it all seemed plausible. “I, um, I think I should call Justin Wade and have him listen in on this.”
Regret seeped into Plumber’s face and settled in the grooves alongside his mouth. “That isn’t necessary.”
“I think it is.”
“It’s not.”
“Why not?”
He forced himself to meet her gaze. “Because I am Justin Wade.”
She absorbed the shock without falling off the barstool. Honestly, after everything else, this revelation seemed like just one more thing. “Is that your real name, or another moniker you’ve adopted? You’re racking up quite a list of them.”
“It’s my real name and this is my real life, when I’m not working undercover—which I have been doing for some time.
A truth gobsmacked her. “Shadow Watcher was a cover.”
“Yes.”
Another truth slammed into her. “I didn’t find Troop Search and Rescue, you found me.”
“Actually, I replaced the original Shadow Watcher early on. When you made first contact with Troop Search and Rescue.”
“Why?”
“Because I was doing my job.”
“What exactly is your job?” she asked, reeling. “Does Justin Wade work for the FBI?”
“Indirectly,” he admitted. “I’m a security specialist, and my firm does contract work for many government entities. The FBI is one of them.”
“What company do you work for?”
“I’ll tell you, Gabby, but I’m only allowed to tell one person in my lifetime, so I’m trusting you not to share it.”
“I won’t.”
“I work for Silencers, Inc. As consultants, we do the jobs that are complicated, and others can’t do for a multitude of reasons.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “But I probably won’t be employed there much longer.”
The fried comment between him and Hunter came to mind, but Gabby didn’t dare to assume anything at this point. “Why not?”
“Because what I’m telling you will get me fired.”
She frowned. “What exactly are you telling
me, Plumber?”
He washed down his tea, then refilled his glass from the pitcher. “It started when your father was a little boy. He had a good life back then. But he was friends with a kid in his neighborhood who wasn’t so lucky. His friend didn’t have the best parents and he had none of the opportunities your dad did. No educational chances—all that goes with rough parenting. That made him vulnerable, and your father knew it. So, he became the guy’s best friend. Your father had a devoted streak a mile wide, Gabby.”
“I had no idea of any of this.”
“I know.”
“Who was the boy he befriended?”
“Rogan Gregos.”
So the old man on the street had been mistaken about her, but he had associated her father and Rogan. Which did nothing to explain why Gabby and Rogan physically favored.
“Rogan Gregos was easy prey for Medros. He’s famous for exploiting vulnerable kids like Rogan. Medros has a daughter named Mia. She fell in love with Rogan. And Rogan saw marriage to Mia as his one shot for a better life. George Medros opposed; he wanted better for his daughter, but Mia insisted. So, Rogan married her, and they had two children.”
Gabby had a bad feeling about this. A terrible feeling. Her hand to her chest, she cringed. “Tell me I’m not one of their children.”
“No, you’re not.”
Plumber’s words should have been reassuring, but for some unspoken and as yet unexplained reason, they weren’t. Gabby intuitively held her breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“That’s where my firm came in. Actually,” he rubbed his chin. “It was a similar firm, owned by the father of the man who owns my firm. The father’s company was tasked with an infiltration operation inside Medros’s organization. The father’s company sent an operative in undercover. A female operative.” Plumber paused to give Gabby time to absorb that. “Rogan Gregos took one look at her and fell in love.”
“His daughter marrying a man he didn’t approve of, now in love with another woman.” Gabby said. “Not promising conditions for Rogan’s prospects of a long and healthy life.” Medros killed people left and right. Dishonoring his daughter? Only a fool would deliberately antagonize Medros like that. But love made fools of people…
