Suzanne Brockmann - Team Ten 08 - Identity Unknown

by Suzanne Brockmann

  "But it did happen," he interrupted her. "Bee, I know you think otherwise, but I'm not a priest. The collar was just a disguise. I'm...good at disguises. I know how to change the way I look so completely and...I wish I were a priest. Because then at least I'd have more options right now. I'd have the hope of someday having you in my life. I could make a career change." He tried to smile. "Take you up on your offer to teach me how to care for horses."

  Was he saying...? "You'd want that?"

  "I want you" he said simply.

  Becca's heart nearly stopped. She'd said those exact words to him, and she'd meant...

  "But it won't be easy to walk away from who and what I think I am," he told her. "It might be flat-out impossible. And I won't put you in danger. I don't really know who the hell I am, but there are people looking for me, Bee. Dangerous people. And I want to be far away from you when they finally catch up with me."

  She didn't know what to say, didn't know what to do. He'd spoken of "someday," implied they could have a future.

  Becca turned away, suddenly wanting that future so desperately, her stomach hurt. Oh, that was bad. That was very bad. She couldn't have this man. And even if she could, she'd never wanted her happiness to depend on any one person. And yet here he was, saying that he would give up everything, if only he could, just to be with her.

  "I know what's inside this case," Mish told her quietly. "I haven't opened it, but I still somehow know. I knew when I first saw it. It's got a combination lock, but that's not a problem because I know the combination, too."

  He swung it up between them on the bench seat.

  "There's a change of clothes inside," he continued. "Jeans and a T-shirt. Two clean pairs of socks. A pair of boots and extra laces." He spun and set the combination, and the lock popped open. "My H&K MP- assault weapon."

  Mish opened the lid. Sure enough, the leather covered some kind of metal. This was no lightweight suitcase. This was heavy-duty. As Becca watched, he reached inside and took out something that was wrapped in dark fabric.

  "And an overcoat so I can carry it concealed."

  The dark fabric was, indeed, some kind of lightweight raincoat. And inside it was...

  An extremely deadly-looking submachine gun.

  'Oh, my God," Becca breathed.

  "I'm not a priest," he said. "I wore that collar as part of a disguise. Are we clear about that?"

  She nodded.

  "Good." He smiled tightly. "No way am I going to have you spend the rest of your life thinking what we shared was any less than perfect."

  Mish set the weapon down on the floor at his feet. He pulled a tightly rolled pair of jeans out of the case, along with another, smaller gun in a leather shoulder holster. Clips of ammunition—enough to outfit a small army. Boots, as he'd said. Rolled-up socks. A vest of some sort. A medical kit. A passport.

  No, not one passport—seven. Mish had seven passports. As Becca silently watched, he flipped through them. His picture was on them all, but each of the seven names was decidedly different.

  Becca had to ask. "Do any of those names—"

  "No. They don't sound familiar. Not even the one with the Albuquerque address." Mish loaded everything back into the case. "I knew," he said quietly, "but I was hoping I was wrong."

  Becca shook her head. ' 'The guns don't prove anything. I mean, maybe you're a...a..."

  "A thief instead of a killer?" he suggested.

  "A gun collector."

  Mish laughed, examining the machine gun before wrapping it in the raincoat again. "This weapon's sanitized— all serial numbers and other identifying marks have been filed clean. Same goes for the handgun. And I bet if we look at the . I left back at the ranch, we'll find the same

  thing." He closed the case, spun the combination lock. "Apparently I collect illegal weapons, which is, of course, illegal in itself." He set the case back down on the floor. "I want you to drop me at the next town and go back to the ranch."

  Woodenly, Becca put the truck into gear. First he was a ranch hand who didn't know a damn thing about horses, then he was a hero who saved a young boy's life. Then he was a man without a past, without the faintest clue who he'd been and where he'd come from. Then he'd been a priest. She'd been so positive he was a priest. But no. He was, in truth, some kind of master of disguises, someone who needed seven passports and seven names and three deadly guns.

  And two extra pairs of clean socks.

  The socks gave him away.

  Mish wanted her to believe he was some kind of a monster, and maybe he had, in fact, done some terrible things in his past, but he was, first and foremost, a man. A man she had only ever seen act gently and kindly.

  She held tightly to the steering wheel. "You're going to Albuquerque to check out the address on that passport." She knew him well enough by now to know he couldn't let that go, even though it was probably just another false lead.

  "Yeah. And no, I don't want you to drive me there." He knew her pretty well by now, too. "You can drop me at Clines Corners, but that's as far as I'll let you take me."

  Clines Corners was on Route , right where cut up toward Santa Fe. He'd be able to get a ride to Albuquerque from there, no problem.

  Becca glanced at the clock on the dash. They were at least three hours from Clines Corners. She had a solid

  three hours to convince herself that the best thing she could do for both of them would be to say goodbye and let him go.

  She knew it was the right thing to do.

  So why did it feel so wrong?

  Chapter

  he door opened, and the American leapt.

  The assault weapon skittered across the floor, and Mish didn't think. He just picked it up and fired.

  A spray of bullets, a spray of blood.

  So much blood.

  "Good job," the American told him through the blood that bubbled on his own lips.

  Mish stared at the bodies, stared at what he'd done.

  And on the floor, his father's hands started to twitch. Mish backed away, but he couldn't get far enough. He would never get far enough away. Thou shall not kill.

  The American's voice was tight with pain. "Way to send them straight to hell, Mitch."

  Mitch.

  He awoke with a start, drenched with sweat despite the truck's powerful air conditioner.

  The sun had set, their headlights the only light for what

  had to be miles around. Becca's face looked ghostly in the dim glow from the dash. "You okay?"

  He was still breathing hard, his hands shaking as he took his can of soda from the cup holder and took a sip. "Mitch," he managed to get out. "My name. I had a dream..."

  "Oh, my God! Mitch," she tried saying it aloud. Laughed. "Mitch. Of course. No wonder Mish sounded so familiar to you." She turned toward him eagerly. "What else do you remember?"

  Did he remember more than that one awful day? He tried to think back to the alleyway, to the man with the beard. But there was nothing there. No connection. He couldn't even grab hold of his last name. It was out there, but just beyond his grasp.

  He shook his head. "I dreamed about... About my...father. He was shot. Killed."

  "Oh, God," Becca breathed. "Are you sure it wasn't just a dream? Sometimes—"

  "I don't know, Bee, it seems so real. I've dreamed about it a lot, although I didn't realize until now that he was my father. And it always happens the same way, as if it's a memory. I mean, yeah, some of it gets weird, like I know my father's dead, but then he stands up and it's pretty grisly..." He took another sip of his soda, trying to banish that image from his head. "I think it's more than a dream. I think some of it happened."

  Becca glanced at him again. "Were you... Did you actually see him—his body—after he died?"

  "I think I was there when he was killed."

  "God, Mitch."

  "I was fifteen." Mitch watched the lines on the road, brightly illuminated by the headlights but quickly fading into nothing as the truck moved forward
into the night.

  How old was he now? Thirty-five was the number that came to him first. It seemed to fit. Twenty years since he'd first picked up a weapon and pulled the trigger and...

  "Can you...tell me about it?" Becca's voice was so soft, so uncertain.

  And ended a human life.

  Mitch looked at her sitting there behind the steering wheel. She tried so hard to be tough and strong, when in truth the past few weeks had been devastatingly difficult for her. But her resilience shone through. She looked tired, yes, but gloriously undefeated, and Mitch knew without a doubt that she wasn't going to take Route to Santa Fe and to the Lazy Eight when they hit Clines Corners.

  No, she was going to stick with him. She was going to take him all the way, wherever he needed to go, and maybe even then some.

  But it was only a matter of time before the gang in the surveillance van outside the Wyatt City bus station discovered that locker had been emptied out beneath their noses. And it was only a matter of time before the search for him intensified.

  And while Mitch still didn't know what he'd done to spark a manhunt, he did know one thing without a doubt.

  He was not going to put Becca into any danger.

  Even if that meant disappearing into thin air the next time they stopped for gasoline. Even if it meant leaving her without an explanation, without even saying goodbye.

  He didn't want to do that. He didn't want to leave her wondering. He'd given her so little as it was.

  Can you tell me about it, she'd asked. And he knew that this was really all he had to give her. This small piece of his past that he remembered, this awfulness, this terrible thing that—he suspected—had helped shape him into the person he was today.

  "Yeah," he said. "I'd like to tell you. But it's pretty intense, so if you want me to stop..."

  "I'll let you know," she told him, and he knew that was the last he'd ever hear of that.

  "I was fifteen," he said again. "I don't remember exactly where we were, but we were overseas, I think somewhere in the Middle East. My father was a minister and he'd recently won this position as part of a multidenom-inational peacekeeping group. It was a really big deal— he was so proud."

  It was strange. Telling her about it was helping him to remember. He could recall the open airport where he and his parents had first arrived. He could remember the scent of exotic foods cooking, the swirl of colors and people. He remembered his disappointment when the hotel they were brought to was a tall, modern building rather than something ancient and mysterious.

  "We'd been there for about two weeks, when my father took me to lunch at the downtown McDonald's. We were both dying for a Big Mac. I remember we'd ordered burgers from the hotel room service, but they were strange. My dad thought maybe they were cut with horse meat. And I remember my mother rolling her eyes, taking a bite and telling us it was just the local spices. But my father had the afternoon off, so the two of us took a bus from the hotel down to the market. He was...very charismatic. I remember he had everyone on the bus singing the McDonald's theme song. And most of the busload of people followed us into the restaurant, too. Some American businessmen. A group of tourists—mothers and teenaged girls from France, I think."

  He could remember the menu hanging above the counter, the words both in English and something undecipherable.

  "I didn't see them come in," he continued. ''There was this loud noise—that was the first I knew of any trouble. The sound of weapons being fired. My father pulled me down, but it was over before it even began. Terrorists killed the security guards at the doors. They'd taken control of the McDonald's—the symbol for all things American. And we were their hostages."

  The truck moved onward through the night. A sign appeared out of the blackness. Clines Corners, twenty miles.

  Becca was silent, just letting him tell the story at his own speed.

  "They took us into the back, out a doorway into the main part of the building. The guards there were dead, too. It was obvious this had been planned, that this attack hadn't been just a spur-of-the-moment event. They led us into a storage room that had been cleared out. There were no windows and only that one door—like I said, they planned it well. Some of the women and children were crying, and the terrorists seemed on the edge, too, shouting for everyone to be silent, and my father stepped forward.

  "He tried to calm everyone down, started talking about the women and kids, trying to convince the terrorists' leader that they should let them go. And I remember..."

  Is that your dad, kid?

  "There was a man standing behind me. A black man. An American. He must've been in the McDonald's when we arrived—I didn't remember seeing him on the bus."

  Tell your dad to back off. The American's eyes and voice had held an urgency.

  "He told me to tell my father that these terrorists wouldn't negotiate, that they didn't respect his cross or his collar, that the fact that he was American put him in extra danger."

  Tell him. Now.

  Dad. "So I stepped toward my father, tried to take his arm and pull him back into the crowd."

  His father had turned just a little, the sweat glistening on his brow. Stay back with the others, Mitch.

  "He wouldn't listen to me." Mitch could remember his own fear. His sense of panic as he saw the intense concern in the American's face, saw the horror in his dark brown eyes. And he knew even before he turned back that his father was as good as dead.

  "It happened so fast. The terrorist lifted his side arm and fired. Two bullets. Right into my father's head. One second he was standing there, and the next..."

  He'd crumpled to the ground, lifeless.

  "It was so unreal," Mitch said, his voice tight with anguish. "It didn't seem possible that he was really dead. I mean, how could he be dead? He was so alive. But there was blood. I didn't know it at the time, but we'd been sprayed with it. All I could see was this pool of red on the floor, beneath him. I wanted to go to him, to help him, to stop the bleeding, but the American pulled me back, into the crowd. He put his hand over my mouth."

  God, kid, I'm sorry. The American's voice had been nearly as rough as his hands.

  Let me help him! Mitch had struggled.

  "And he told me my father was dead."

  Don't do this, the American had hissed.

  "He told me if I made too much noise, they'd kill me, too."

  / don't care! Mitch hadn't gotten the words out from behind the man's huge hand, but he knew the message had been understood.

  "He told me to think about my mother, think about

  how she was going to feel losing both her husband and her son on the same day."

  Stop being so damned selfish, boy, and you calm yourself down.

  "He told me I couldn't help my father now."

  "Oh, Mitch, I can't believe you had to live through that." Becca's eyes glimmered with sympathy.

  "They locked us into that room," he told her, "and I sat on the floor, trying not to cry, trying not to look at my father. They just left his body there. One of the women had draped her scarf over his head and face, but..."

  But that pool of blood had remained.

  "The American was making a circuit of the room, trying to convince the others that we had to fight back, and that the moment to strike was as soon as the terrorists returned, as soon as they unlocked the door. He told us he knew about this group of zealots. He knew of their leader, knew that they weren't going to let any of us go free."

  The American told them that when the terrorists returned, the killing would start.

  "He said that he was going to fight. But no one else seemed up to it. Everyone was afraid. I was afraid, too."

  But Mitch had looked at his father, at this man who had been so good, so strong, so caring. He'd been killed as if he were little more than a bug to be stepped on. And Mitch had looked up at the American.

  I'll fight, he'd said. I'll help.

  "Thou shalt not kill," Mitch told Becca. "If there was one thing m
y father believed more than anything, it was in nonviolence. Guns and weapons and war had no place in his world. But I wasn't in his world anymore. And I wanted to kill the men who had taken him from me."

  The American sat down next to him. Okay. Let's kill

  them, Mitch. You channel that rage, kid. Make it work for you.

  "The American man asked me if I'd ever fired an automatic weapon." Mitch laughed. "In my house? I hadn't even seen one up close, let alone held one."

  The force of the discharge pulls the muzzle up, the American had told him. You've got to work to keep it down. And aim for the center of the body. Don't go for the head. It's amazing how often the enemy pops back onto their feet after a shot to the head with something as lightweight as a nine millimeter. And we don't want that, you copy?

  "He gave me a crash course in handling an assault weapon, and I pointed out that a lot of good it was going to do us to talk about firing one, since we didn't have one to fire." Mitch shook his head. "But he told me he had a plan."

  "He told me about something called PV—point of vulnerability, and AV—area of vulnerability. He explained that there was always a point in which an attacking force was temporarily at their weakest. He told me when the terrorists came back, their PV would be when they first came into the room. And that's when we were going to hit them—when they were close together, coming through the door, when it was hardest for them to maneuver."

  Mitch had looked at the American through the haze of anger and grief that seemed to rise like a mist from his father's prone body. "It seemed absurd. Out of a roomful of people, virtually sentenced to death, the only ones willing to fight back were this one older man and me. A kid who planned to major in philosophy and religion in college. I didn't know for sure, but up to that point, I had been pretty certain I would follow in my father's foot-