by Cindy Dees
She went back to reading. The letter outlined a schedule of meetings for the past year. She noted that more than a few of the closed sessions were actually scheduled for late in the evening. What senate committee started meetings at ten o’clock at night, for goodness’ sake?
Alarmed, she opened the next file. This one outlined an operation by...somebody...a group called Excelsior...to infiltrate Mexico and kill the governor of a Mexican state. Stunned, she read it again. That was definitely what she’d just read. Someone who worked for this secret committee was killing government officials of another sovereign nation. Last time she checked her civics textbook, that was illegal!
She opened another folder. This one outlined some sort of mission in the Middle East to fund bombings in a country whose regime she recalled hearing the United States didn’t like. But that was terrorism!
U.S.–sponsored terrorism.
Very afraid, she clicked on the third folder. God only knew what the dozens of remaining folders held. She started to read. Assassination. California. Oh. My. God. Whoever this Excelsior bunch was, they were killing Americans on American soil, too.
Folder after folder gave up its secrets, each more horrifying than the last. For nearly two hours she read about the activities of this secret committee. It created mayhem and death wherever it touched.
Finally, she reached the end of the last file. She leaped up from her father’s desk, pacing in agitation. What was she going to do with this information? She couldn’t just do nothing. But then that stack of paperwork the governor’s assistant had shoved in front of her to sign after the press conference came to mind. Some of it had to do with not revealing classified information. Was she seriously required to keep her mouth shut about this secret committee and whatever it was up to?
She couldn’t do it. Wouldn’t do it. Even if she was prosecuted for revealing classified information, there was no way she would stand by and let something like this go on in her country. Not in her government. Being a United States senator stood for something, and even if she had to throw herself on her sword, she would not sully that institution.
She paused by the French doors opening out onto one side of the back patio. The garden was dark, wreathed in shadows that suddenly looked menacing. The room behind her was dark, lit only by the lamp on her father’s desk, and the night seemed to reach right through the window to wrap her in its cold grasp.
Shivering, she rubbed her arms. And that was when she saw it. Flitting through the garden at the edge of her sight. Something ghostly and gray. She swore under her breath. If that was her father coming back to haunt her, she was going to give him a piece of her mind, all right. He’d had no business condoning the shenanigans of that committee. Miscellaneous Activities, indeed.
There it was again. Except this time it wasn’t an it. That was a person out there. Someone was creeping around in the garden and doing a freakishly good job of blending into the shadows. Stories of hit squads and covert ops teams fresh on her mind, panic ripped through her.
She pressed herself back against the wall beside the window in abrupt fear. Who was out there at this time of night? George, the gardener, went to bed at about nine o’clock, and it was after midnight now. Her mother hadn’t even made it downstairs for dinner, and Louise had the night off. Not that the shadow outside looked even remotely female. The intruder was tall and athletically built from what she’d glimpsed.
Willa crept around the margins of the office, hugging the wall, careful to stay out of the line of sight of the windows. She reached the desk and crouched down behind it as she picked up the phone. Quickly, she dialed 9-1-1.
“9-1-1. Please state your emergency.”
“This is Willa Merris. There’s an intruder in our back garden. A man.”
“I’ll send a unit over to have a look, Miss Merris...err, Senator. I need you to stay in the house. Is there a room you can lock yourself in?”
“Yes. My bathroom.”
“Go there and lock yourself in. Wait for an officer to call through the door and tell you it’s all clear.”
She hung up the phone and crawled on her hands and knees for the hallway door, staying out of sight of the garden. When she reached the foyer’s cavernous darkness, she climbed to her feet and ran for her life. She flew up the stairs, through her bedroom and into her bathroom. She leaned against the locked door, panting in relief in the dark.
Who on earth was in the garden? A reporter looking for a scoop? Some kid just messing around? Or was it more sinister? Someone out to silence her, perhaps? Except she’d barely been a senator for a single day. And everyone knew the appointment was purely a formality until the election could take place. Oh, God. What if it was James Ward out there? Memory of the madness in his eyes shuddered through her. Had he come to take revenge on her for pressing charges? Or even to kill her?
She waited in an agony of suspense for the police. She looked around her bathroom for something to defend herself with and came up with a toilet brush and a can of hair spray. Not exactly inspiring weapons. The mansion creaked and groaned around her, but she swore she detected the stealthy sounds of someone moving around downstairs. Probably just the police. She held her breath to listen more closely.
The faintest whisper of sound came from the other side of the door, in her bedroom, as if someone was breathing very lightly and very carefully only inches away. She was separated from whoever it was by no more than a thin, wooden panel. Why didn’t the policeman identify himself? The only possible answer froze Willa in place in sheer, dumb terror. Because that wasn’t a policeman.
On cue, the faint scream of a siren became audible in the distance, and grew quickly in volume. The police hadn’t even arrived yet! Whoever belonged to that thread of breath on the other side of her door was not a cop.
Fear for her life roared through her. This went so far beyond any panic she’d ever experienced before, it deserved its own word to describe it. Death-panic, maybe.
Her bedroom floor creaked once as if someone had stepped on a loose board, but then silence reigned. So frightened her legs would no longer bear her weight, she slid down the door to sit on the cold tile floor, huddled in a tight little ball as she squeezed her knees to her chest.
Who’d been out there? What had he wanted? Had she nearly died...or worse?
The police were noisy as they stomped around the back of the house and eventually came inside, calling back and forth to each other and clearing rooms as they went.
Finally, an eternity later, a knock on the door at her back made Willa jump a foot in the air. “Miss Merris? This is Deputy Green. You can come out now.”
Shakily, she pulled herself to her feet and opened the door. She’d never been so glad to see an armed man in her life. “Thank God you’re here. Did you find him?”
“Ma’am, we didn’t see any sign of an intruder in the garden. It’s as quiet as a sleeping baby out there. Little windy, though. Are you sure you weren’t just seeing tree branches swaying?”
“Of course I’m sure. In fact, I heard the intruder just on the other side of this door a few seconds before you got here.”
“Miss Merris, the house alarms were turned on and undisturbed when we came in. Nobody’s come inside this house tonight but us.”
“But I heard him breathing—”
The policeman cut her off politely, but firmly. “Folks’ imaginations run wild when they’re scared. We see it all the time. But you’re safe now. No one was in the house, and frankly, no one looked to have been in the garden. If there was someone back there, it was probably just some kid taking a shortcut home. Why don’t you go on to bed, miss. We’ll reset the alarm on the way out and make sure the place is all buttoned up.”
“Do you know where James Ward is right now? What if it was him? The Ward Ranch backs right up on the other side of the woods behind our property. You need to have someone check on him. See if he’s home or not.”
“It’s the middle of the night. I’m not going to
disturb the Ward family at this hour just to satisfy your curiosity—”
Desperate to sound reasonable and calm, she enunciated carefully, “The man raped me. Asking where he is immediately after an intruder came into my home does not constitute idle curiosity, Officer.”
“Ma’am, the house is locked up tight and there’s no sign of anyone having been in the house who doesn’t belong here.”
The Wards and Merrises had been like family forever. Heck, she knew the code for the Ward home’s security system. James Ward undoubtedly knew the security code for this house. But she didn’t waste her breath trying to change the officer’s mind. He’d decided she was imagining things and nothing she said was going to change his opinion.
“...go on to bed, and everything will be fine in the morning,” he was saying soothingly.
God, she hated it when people patted her on the hand like this, with a metaphorical “there, there,” as if that would make everything better. She wasn’t an idiot, and she knew what she’d seen and heard.
The cop wasn’t taking no for an answer to the whole go-to-bed thing, and waited expectantly in the hall while she changed into pajamas and a robe. She called out that she was in bed, and the jerk opened the door to poke his head in and see for himself.
“Good night, miss. You just stay in bed and get some sleep. And don’t let your imagination run away with you again,” he said sternly before closing her bedroom door and heading downstairs. She mumbled a foul name at the closed panel of her door. She was a United States Senator, for goodness’ sake, not a naughty five-year-old.
Surely the intruder had nothing to do with those secret files she’d stumbled across. No way could anyone have reacted to her discovery that fast, right? It was just a coincidence.
She’d deal with those tomorrow. But tonight, she was going to try to take Deputy Green’s advice and get some sleep.
Huddled under her comforter, she listened to the sounds of the cops finishing up and leaving. Silence fell over the house. She wasn’t crazy, darn it. There had been someone in the garden, and there’d been someone right outside her bathroom door. But no matter how hard she listened for movement, all she heard were the normal sounds of the house itself and an occasional branch banging into her window on a gust of wind.
* * *
Damned police. Chased a person off just when things were getting interesting. Willa Merris thought she could hide? Hah. She’d never be safe. If she was so secure in her ivory-tower mansion, then why was her silk blouse right here, right now?
Face buried in her shirt, the intruder drew in a deep whiff of the eggplant-colored silk. That rich floral scent of Willa’s swirled up. Intoxicating. Infuriating.
Ride the rage. Ahh, God, it felt good. Down, down, into the abyss, self lost in the fury. Ohh, yes. Come to me, sweet Willa. We’ll go down in flames, together....
* * *
If she slept at all, it was in short spurts and fitful at best. She’d never been so grateful to see the sun creep through her bedroom window as she was the next morning. She finally slept, then, waking only when Louise knocked on her door to say that the phone was ringing off the hook and Mrs. Merris was worn out dealing with it all.
After saying a short prayer for nothing important to happen on her short watch in the job, Willa dressed and went downstairs to face her first full day as a United States senator.
She stepped into her father’s office and frowned. His computer had still been running last night when she’d fled the room. Who’d turned it off? Her mother rarely came in here, and surely the police wouldn’t have messed with it. Louise wouldn’t dream of touching Mr. Merris’s computer, even if the man had been dead for weeks. She was superstitious about such things.
Willa turned it on and, while it booted up, wandered into the kitchen to pour herself a cup of coffee. Her mother was eating lunch with Louise at the kitchen table.
Willa kissed her mother’s cheek and asked the housekeeper, “Louise, would it be possible for Marcus to come spend a few days with us?” Louise’s son was recently returned from an overseas tour with the marines.
“I don’t know. Why do you ask?”
“I’d like to hire him as a security guard. It would be a temporary gig, but I’d feel better if we had a man in the house at night.”
Louise grinned. “You mean a big, strong, ex-marine who can chase away the boogeyman?”
Not her, too. Willa sighed in exasperation. Would no one believe her? “I swear, Louise. I saw someone in the garden.” She didn’t bother trying to convince the woman that the intruder had made it all the way to her bathroom door.
“Honey,” her mother murmured, “you’re distraught. Maybe you should go away for a few days. Get some rest.”
“I don’t want to leave you alone, Mom.”
Minnie waved a bony hand. “I’ll be fine. No one bothers anyone around here. And the police take care of everyone.”
Had Minnie forgotten her husband had been murdered less than three weeks ago? Willa made eye contact with Louise across the table, and the two women shared a private eye roll. It must be nice to own so much real estate in la-la-land and never have to deal with reality.
“I’ll call Marcus,” Louise offered.
Willa smiled her thanks and retreated to the office. She set down her mug of coffee and entered the password for the classified files from last night. She moved the mouse to click on—
Where did it go? The file labeled Senate CMA wasn’t in the list. Frowning, she checked the file directory. Not there. She tried a search of the hard disk. Nothing. What the heck?
She did a computer-wide file search. Still nothing. The file was gone.
Chapter 6
Okay, she was not losing her mind. She hadn’t imagined those files last night any more than she’d imagined that breathing outside the bathroom door. She tried every search parameter she could think of, but nothing turned up. All traces of the sinister committee had disappeared.
She picked up the phone and started to dial Larry Shore, but thought better of it partway through dialing. He’d been a complete jerk yesterday at the press conference, and he hadn’t been any better here at the house. Instead, she looked in her father’s address book and found the number for his Congressional office in Washington, D.C.
“Good afternoon, Senator Merris’s office. This is Amber. How may I help you?”
“Hi, Amber. This is, uhh, Senator Merris.”
The young aide spluttered, flustered.
“Amber, is there anyone in the office who can tell me about the Senate Committee on Miscellaneous Affairs?”
“Umm, one moment, ma’am.”
Willa waited. And waited. Finally, after nearly five minutes, a male voice came on the line. “Hi, Senator Merris. This is Larry Shore’s assistant. Committee on Miscellaneous Affairs, you say?”
“That’s correct.”
“I’m sorry. No such committee exists.”
“Would you do me a favor? Crank up my father’s computer in his office and go to his private file directory. I’m assuming you have access to it?” At his affirmative noise, she continued, “I’ll stay on the line.”
In about a minute, Larry’s aide said, “Okay, I’m looking at it.”
“Start reading the names at Defense Construction Oversight Committee and read down from there.” Willa read along on her own computer screen as the aide recited exactly the same list of file names she was looking at. Neither list contained the CMA file.
If a duplicate copy of the missing file had ever existed on her father’s Washington, D.C., computer, it had been erased, as well. “Thanks,” she said thoughtfully. “That was helpful.”
“If there’s anything more we can do for you, ma’am, just let us know.”
“I will. Thanks again.”
On the one hand, she was relieved. The intruder last night probably hadn’t been James Ward, after all. However, the man who’d broken into the house had apparently done so with the express purpose of er
asing that file. Wow, that had been fast. It spoke of power and reach that boggled her mind.
Furthermore, the intruder probably had a partner in Washington. Which meant there was some larger conspiracy at work here. And based on what she’d read in the missing files, she hesitated to think about how dangerous the owner of that breath on the other side of her door had been.
What were the odds that an intruder had shown up within two hours of her first opening the Committee on Miscellaneous Affairs file and not been connected to the file? And then the file was mysteriously erased overnight? No coincidence was that far-fetched. She stared at the antique reproduction telephone on her father’s desk in sudden apprehension. Was it tapped? Was she being watched?
Maybe she was as paranoid as that cop last night thought she was. Maybe she was overwrought after James’s attack and her father’s murder. Maybe Minnie was right. Maybe she needed to get away for a while...
...or maybe she wasn’t crazy at all.
On impulse, she unscrewed the cover of the phone’s mouthpiece. She had no idea what she was looking at, but she pulled out her cell phone and took several pictures of the guts of the thing from different angles. She screwed the receiver back together and headed for the garage, grabbing her purse on the way out.
“Will you be back for supper, Willy?” Louise called after her.
“Probably not.”
“Marcus can come up to Vengeance, but he said you better pay him good if he’s gonna have to beat up ghosts.”
“I’ll pay him a fortune!” she called over her shoulder as she slipped into her little car.
She was relieved to see the mob of reporters had found other prey today, and wasn’t camped in front of the mansion. She wasn’t in the mood to deal with their aggression. Following the instructions her onboard navigation system gave her, she headed for a spy shop in a strip mall in north Dallas. It was mostly a gimmick store, but she hoped someone there could help her.
Thankfully, she was the only customer when she walked in to a dizzying display of cameras, microphones, binoculars and unrecognizable electronic gadgets.
