The detective frowned at her and cut her off. “We had a call about a victim named Everhardt earlier tonight. A suicide. How could you possibly know about that?”
“That’s exactly what I’m trying to tell you. Everhardt was one of Matt’s handlers. And if you contact the FBI and get them to round up Agent Abernathy, you’ll know this is all a terrible mistake. The Brotherhood is planning to blow up the federal courthouse tomorrow and if you don’t turn the focus of this investigation in that direction, a lot of people will wind up dead.”
Another look of amusement. “The Brotherhood, huh?”
“That’s what they call themselves.”
“Then why haven’t I heard of them before?”
“I don’t know,” Tara said. “Maybe because they like to fly under the radar. Does it really matter? All that counts is that the FBI knows about them and they sent Matt to prison to try to infiltrate the—”
“All right, Ms. Richmond. Enough fairy tales.”
“It’s not a fairy tale. People are in danger.”
“Look,” Wilkins said, “it’s obvious to me that you’ve bought into this ridiculous conspiracy theory because of your feelings for Stanton, sexual or otherwise. And when I think about it, you work at a news station, you could easily have learned about Everhardt’s suicide from them. It’s fairly big news.” Tara started to protest, but he held a hand up. “Let me finish.”
She closed her mouth. It didn’t really matter what she told him, this jerk would never believe her anyway.
I’m right, you’re wrong, end of story.
Wilkins opened the manila folder in front of him and slid it across the table to Tara. “This is the man you’ve invested yourself in.” He gestured. “Take a look.”
It was a typical police file, the kind Tara had seen a hundred different times. But this one featured a mug shot of Matt, his eyes hard and cold as he stared into the camera.
It was a look that made her shiver.
If she didn’t know Matt was playing a part, she might be frightened by it.
“The guy’s an arms dealer and a stone-cold killer,” Wilkins said. “Shot two police officers and a federal agent when his warehouse was raided. So don’t give me any more nonsense about undercover missions and militant organizations. This guy’s a bad guy no matter how you slice it.”
Tara stared at the report, then closed the folder and looked up at Wilkins.
“All right,” she said. “No more BS—I can tell you where to find the other two. Zane and Maddox.”
Wilkins smiled. “I knew you had some sense in you. You being a cop’s daughter and all.”
“I’m glad you brought that up,” Tara said, “because there’s a condition to my cooperation.”
“Which is?”
“I don’t want to deal with you anymore. From here on out, the only one I’ll talk to is my father’s widow. Detective Lila Sinclair.”
Twenty
Tara had no idea what time it was when Lila walked into the room.
Before she and the detective arrived at the station house, all Tara could think about was how quickly the minutes were passing, each one more crucial than the last.
She didn’t know what was going on with Matt, either. She assumed that he was in one of the other interrogation rooms, telling them the same story she’d told Wilkins. But she had a feeling they’d be listening to him even less than they’d listened to her.
When it came down to it, she really couldn’t blame them. On paper it all seemed so obvious. Nick Stanton was a hardened criminal who had escaped from prison, and until they had evidence to the contrary, they’d go with what they knew.
Police organizations were territorial by nature, and they’d see no point in bringing in the FBI unless they could be convinced that it was absolutely necessary. And it would undoubtedly take a lot to convince them of that.
Unless Tara managed to use her trump card.
Lila was an attractive woman with a trim figure, wearing jeans, a simple dress shirt and a corduroy jacket. Detective-wear 101.
She closed the door behind her, her voice soft, well modulated. “Hello, Tara.”
Tara stiffened slightly. As she watched Lila pull out a chair and sit down, she found herself caught up in yet another time warp, remembering that Thanksgiving dinner so long ago, and how Lila had barely put anything on her plate.
Who comes to Thanksgiving dinner, Tara had wondered, and doesn’t eat?
Now that she thought about it, however, the fact that you’re sleeping with the guy whose wife just cooked the meal might make you lose your appetite.
There was an awkward silence as the two women assessed each other. It was clear that Lila had no idea why she was here, why Tara would choose her, of all people, to confess her sins to.
But Tara had no intension of confessing anything.
She wanted a favor.
She nodded to the camera mounted in the high corner. “Can you have them turn that thing off? I want to talk to you privately for a moment.”
Lila looked surprised, but didn’t hesitate. She gestured with a finger and the camera’s blinking red light went dark.
Then Tara said, “I’m curious.”
“About what?”
“What my father told you about me. What kind of person he thought I was.”
“I don’t see how that’s relevant right now.”
“Oh, it’s relevant,” Tara told her. “Did he say I was a liar? Did he ever tell you that I make up stories? That I can’t be trusted?”
Lila shook her head. “None of those things. Just the opposite, in fact.”
“Good.”
“And on a personal note,” Lila said, “when it comes to me, you’ve never hesitated to express how you feel.”
That was certainly true. Tara was all too happy to share her opinion about Lila, and some of the words she’d used in the past were not kind or ladylike.
“I guess I was pretty rude to you at the funeral, wasn’t I?”
“You could say that, yeah.”
Tara just looked at her. “If you expect me to say I’m sorry, I won’t.”
“I’m not asking you to,” Lila said. “I pretty much deserved it. It was stupid of me to get involved with Ed the way I did. We should have waited until he’d worked out all of his personal problems.”
“Is that some kind of apology?”
Lila shrugged. “If you want to call it that, sure.”
Tara was surprised by this. She had always looked at this woman as the dragon lady, but maybe Lila didn’t deserve that. Maybe she was just another lonely person wanting someone to love her. Was it her fault that Tara’s father had turned out to be that someone?
Maybe he had been her Henry.
One thing Tara had learned as a news producer was that every story had multiple sides, and looking at the world from different perspectives was usually an eye-opening experience. Maybe if she were to walk in Lila’s shoes for a while, she wouldn’t be so quick to judge the woman.
“If you really want to apologize,” she said, “you can do me a favor.”
Lila’s guard went up. Just a subtle shift in her eyes, but Tara saw it. A move from personal to professional. “What kind of favor?”
“I want you to think about how I express my feelings. How I don’t lie. How I can be trusted. But most of all, I want you to think of me as your late husband’s daughter.”
“And?”
“I need you to make a phone call. A simple phone call, that’s all I ask.”
“And who exactly am I calling?”
Tara looked at her, hoping her request wouldn’t immediately be shot down.
“The FBI,” she said.
They found Special Agent Abernathy in bed.
He had spent Friday on an all-day hike and had come home exhausted, fighting what he thought might be the flu, with just enough energy to take a quick shower and slide between the sheets.
He didn’t know about Everhardt. Hadn’t heard abou
t the prison break.
The ringer on his cell phone, it turned out, had been inadvertently switched off. But even if it hadn’t been, he doubted he would have heard it ringing.
After taking Lila Sinclair’s phone call, the FBI had done some checking and found no record of an Agent Matt Hathaway, or any alleged undercover operation. But the mention of Frank Everhardt’s suicide message—with startling accuracy, thanks to Tara—had made them perk up and take notice. Everhardt was a commander of an antiterrorist task force whose activities had been highly secretive in nature.
And after a look at his computer files, they not only discovered a memo mentioning Hathaway, Abernathy and The Brotherhood, but found that Everhardt had somehow secured unauthorized access to the FBI personnel database and case files.
Special Agent Abernathy had no idea that any of this was going on until his bedroom door burst open and two fellow agents rousted him out of bed.
By the time he got to the Whitestone Sheriff’s station and brought everyone up to speed, it was very close to eight o’clock.
An hour before detonation.
When Matt emerged from the interrogation room, bleary-eyed and tired after hours of endless questioning, he saw Abernathy standing there and didn’t think he’d ever been happier to see someone in his entire life, with the possible exception of Tara, who stood just beyond the agent, next to an attractive older woman in a corduroy jacket.
After shaking Abernathy’s hand, Matt went straight to her and pulled her into a hug, feeling as if he’d never let her go.
“This is all because of you, isn’t it?”
“Doesn’t hurt to have enemies in high places,” she said.
Twenty-One
Watching law enforcement mobilize was a sight to see. Men and women in flak jackets and helmets, automatic weapons slung over their shoulders, working with military precision as they checked their gear and pile into dark, unmarked SUVs.
Before his assignment undercover, Matt had been part of many such mobilizations, from DEA drug raids, to surrounding a bank in a hostage situation.
As he watched what looked like the entire Sheriff’s department move into action, planning a simultaneous attack on The Brotherhood’s compound and the federal courthouse, Matt felt the adrenaline starting to pump through his veins. The moment he had worked toward for nearly a year was finally coming to fruition.
But not, it turned out, for him.
“You’re officially off duty,” Abernathy told him as they stood amid the scramble of bodies and vehicles in the Sheriff’s Department parking lot.
“What are you talking about?” Matt said. “If it weren’t for Tara and me, none of this would be happening right now.”
“I know that. But I also know that you’re hurt, you’re exhausted, and the condition you’re in, you’d probably be more of a hindrance than a help.”
“You’ve got to be joking.”
“I wish I were,” Abernathy said. “But I can’t risk you being out in the field. So I’m ordering you to go to the hospital, get some stitches in that arm, then go home and get some rest. There’ll be plenty of mop-up to take care of tomorrow.”
“Mop-up? That’s all I’m good for?”
“This is not a reflection on the work you’ve done, Matt. You can expect more than your share of commendations for this.”
Matt scowled at him. “I couldn’t care less about commendations. I just want to see Zane’s face when we bring him down.”
A black SUV pulled up beside them, and the rear passenger door opened, beckoning to the agent.
“You’ll see enough of Zane’s face when you testify against him,” Abernathy said. “My order stands.”
Then he was inside the SUV and gone, leaving Matt behind.
Cursing under his breath, Matt crossed the lot to the nearest Sheriff’s deputy, who had stowed his weapon and was about to climb into his cruiser.
“You’re headed to the courthouse, right?”
“That’s right,” the deputy told him.
“You think I could hitch a ride with you?”
The deputy was about to respond when a large KWEST news van pulled up next to Matt and the side door slid open.
It was Tara, surrounded by shelves full of electronic gear, the cross-chatter of a police radio rising behind her. “What happened? Where’s Abernathy?”
“He cut me loose. Says I’m in no condition for duty.”
She frowned, then gestured. “Get in.”
Matt didn’t have to be told twice. He climbed in and she closed the door after him, signaling for the driver to get them out of there.
A bombshell redhead rode shotgun, while a newscaster that Matt recognized from TV—Ron Something-or-other—crouched next to her. Tara quickly introduced them. “This is your lucky day,” she said. “You get to see me doing what I do best.”
Matt smiled. “And here I thought you hit your pinnacle in the shower.”
Tara’s face lit up with embarrassment and she shook her head. “You’ve just proven that you’re definitely all male.”
“I didn’t prove it before?”
Tara patted his chest. “Let’s stick to the matter at hand, tough guy. We’ll talk about the other stuff later.”
Then she pecked him on the nose and told the driver to hurry it up.
The federal courthouse was a good twenty minutes from the Sheriff’s station, and the clock on the van’s dash told Tara that they didn’t have much more time than that.
Assuming, of course, Zane hadn’t abandoned his plan.
But Tara didn’t think so. Even though Zane knew that she and Matt were on the loose, the guy had seemed just arrogant enough to go forward with the detonation anyway. His way of showing the federal government a giant middle finger.
But when Tara thought it through, there was something about that idea that didn’t sit quite right.
Something off.
A notion that had been gnawing at her ever since they’d been perp-walked to the Sheriff’s patrol cars.
“Did you happen to ask any of the deputies how they found us?”
“A couple of times, yeah.”
“And?”
“They mostly ignored me,” Matt said, “but one of them did mention an anonymous phone call. I never got any details.”
Tara nodded. “I think it may have been Imogene.”
“Imogene? Why?”
“I thought I saw her car when we were arrested.”
“I’m sure you’re mistaken.”
“No,” Tara said. “I’m pretty sure I’m right. And you were asleep when she said this, but when she was bringing us back into the city, she had some pretty harsh words about the police that reminded me of Carl and the Zanes.”
Matt squinted at her. “Where are you headed with this?”
“The only direction that makes any sense.”
“Which is?”
The scenario tumbled through Tara’s mind, thoughts piling on top of one another so quickly that she could barely find a way to organize them.
She tried anyway.
“I keep looking for a reason why Imogene would go to all the trouble to help us, only to wind up turning us in.”
“Assuming she did,” Matt said. “And you have no proof of that.”
“Who else is there? The security man at my building never saw you, and the only person who even knew you were in the city was Imogene. She probably called the police at Everhardt’s house, but when that didn’t work, she figured out where we’d go next and tried again.”
“Even if you’re right, it still doesn’t tell me why.”
“Think about it,” Tara said. “What if we were set up? What if our escape, the romp in the woods, Imogene taking us through the mine—what if all of that was planned somehow?”
“That’s crazy. It would be impossible to coordinate something like that.”
“Would it? Maybe not to the letter, there’d be a whole lot of variables to deal with, but if Zane wanted us to ge
t to the city, it wouldn’t be all that tough to engineer. For all we know, he put some kind of tracking device on us. Which would explain how Imogene found us in that shack, and at my condo.”
Matt said nothing. Seemed to be running the idea through his head, weighing its value. Then he began patting his jeans, his face changing expression as he found something and reached into his right back pocket.
“I don’t believe it,” he said, looking stunned, then held up a tiny black nodule, about half the size of a pencil eraser. He studied it closely. “This looks military grade.”
“Still think I’m crazy?”
“No, but I’m still wondering why. Why would Zane go to all this trouble?”
“It’s Saturday, right?”
“That’s the rumor, yeah.”
“So tell me, who goes to the federal courthouse on Saturdays?”
“No one. It’s closed.”
“So why bomb a building that’s unoccupied?”
Matt shook his head, shrugged. “To minimize the casualties.”
Tara raised an eyebrow. “Does Jimmy Zane strike you as the kind of guy who cares about casualties? ‘Collateral damage,’ remember? ‘We hold the power.’ The more people you kill, the more power you hold.” She paused. “And one other thing.”
“What?”
“Zane said the bombs were structural. That they’d been planted inside the building. Do you know how hard it would be to set that up in a working federal courthouse?”
“Practically impossible,” Matt said.
“Exactly.”
Tara could see that he was with her now. His mind seemed to be racing.
“So the courthouse isn’t Zane’s target,” he said. “He knew he was being infiltrated, so he decided to use us to his advantage. We divert the forces while he’s across town, taking down another building and making us all look like fools.”
“A building with tons of collateral damage,” Tara said. And the moment the words passed her lips, she realized what Zane’s real target was, her chest seizing up with panic.
Deep Cover Page 12
