Jack Be Quick (Strike Force: An Iniquus Romantic Suspense Mystery Thriller Book 2)

by Fiona Quinn

  “Gillian Suzanne Molloy,” Lisa piped in. “But she goes by Suz.”

  “Right, so tonight we find out that the FBI is looking for two children Ari and Caleb Levinski who are students at St. Basil’s school. The children vanished–poof–into thin air.” Berry snapped his fingers and flailed his arms about his head like a magician. “We know for a fact that the three Levinski children visited their pediatrician’s office early this morning. We know for a fact that the older sister Rebecca was sent home sick with her nanny, but the boys were sent on to school.”

  Lisa raised her eyebrows then dropped them emphatically as she said, “They haven’t been heard from since.”

  “One of the deceased adults was unknown, and wore an empty shoulder holster. His picture was identified by the Levinski family’s nanny as the family’s driver and bodyguard. He would have left his fire arm in the glove compartment since he was on school property. Imagine if this trained guard had been allowed to have his gun with him. He might be alive. He might have protected the school staff. Taken down the bad guys. Saved the children — but for these senseless gun prohibition laws, keeping guns out of the hands of the good guys. . .” Berry shook his head mournfully.

  “A driver/bodyguard and a nanny? This Levinski family is very wealthy.”

  “Multi-millionaires. As are many of the families’ of the students at St. Basil’s Prep which is one of the preeminent private schools in our area. Were Ari and Caleb Levinksi taken by the terrorists? And why?” He paused dramatically. “This Suz Molloy person was apparently Ari’s teacher. Now, we don’t know for sure if these boys were targeted or if they happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. But we do know that Suz Molloy was the only teacher who was able to get her entire class out of the building and hide them in the woods.” Berry cocked his head to show his skepticism about this scenario.

  “The only one with door barricades. The only one with an escape ladder from a second-floor window.” Lisa’s eyes danced as she got into the swing of their back and forth.

  “The only one with a trail that she could follow through the woods and MREs and hot sacks ready in a back pack.” Berry paused and spoke again directly to the American viewers. “Does this smell bad to anyone else?”

  “Here’s the other thing that strikes me as really odd,” Lisa pushed forward, not to be outdone. “The first responders were an FBI SWAT team in full battle uniforms with explosive sniffing dogs, and a bomb team. They showed up before a single call went out.”

  “But Lisa, they said they had actionable intelligence.”

  “Sure they did,” she nodded. “From inside the school – from their operative this Miss Molloy woman. That’s what I think happened.”

  “You’re right. The FBI had to have known all along something bad was happening and had planted Suz Molloy as a first-grade teacher in that targeted child’s class.”

  “Was she even really a teacher?”

  “Perhaps. . .” Berry strung the word out with a “where are you going with this?” tip of the head.

  “I’d bet she wasn’t really a teacher but held a fake teachers’ license provided by the FBI when they were putting together her cover story.”

  “Fake credentials are easy enough for the Bureau to fabricate, aren’t they?” Berry yanked at the knot to loosen his tie as he got excited. “She was probably posted there to keep an eye on things. Otherwise, how did the FBI SWAT team show up in such a timely manner? – No one could call out for help. The phone lines had been cut and the cell phones had been jammed. The janitor had sprinted to a nearby subdivision to get help.”

  “So you feel sure, Berry, that she was an FBI Special Agent?”

  “Let’s say she was CIA, operating in the US illegally. She could have been a part of an ongoing sting to take down a Muslim terrorist cell and got word to the FBI to come in and stop things before they got out of control.”

  “That makes a lot of sense. The terrorists could be Muslim. Has the CIA denied that Molloy’s their operative?”

  Berry shook his head with pure disdain. “The CIA has been tight lipped about Miss Molloy’s association. They aren’t admitting to anything. They’re certainly not claiming her as one of their own.”

  “I thought the CIA and FBI were adversarial even though they’re supposed to be working together through Homeland Security. That might actually explain why Molloy got angry when she was talking to Special Agent in Charge Damion Prescott. He’s kind of a big deal.”

  Berry considered that for a moment. “What choice did the CIA have other than to bring the FBI in? It’s illegal for them to operate in the US.”

  “That’s not entirely true,” Lisa uncrossed her legs and crossed them in the other direction. The camera panned down to capture the move and was reluctant to find her face again after resting the focus on her legs. “The CIA is permitted to act within the US to address the specific areas of foreign intelligence, counter-intelligence, and terrorism. But they do intelligence not law enforcement.”

  “So ostensibly the CIA thought their intelligence gathering was more important than those four victims lives? More important than the potential threat to hundreds of our countries precious children?”

  Lisa’s shoulders drooped. “Apparently so.”

  “Let me get this straight. A CIA operative, using the fake name Suz Molloy, sat on international Muslim terror plot information and in the last minute decided to do the right thing and call in the FBI? Called in the nick of time to save most of the students but not in time to save the adults? Seems to me that she’ll be facing second degree murder charges. I would say the St. Basil deaths fit the definition: ‘a killing caused by dangerous conduct and the offender's obvious lack of concern for human life.’ Is there a warrant already out for her arrest?”

  “They don’t need one,” Lisa replied. “Molloy knows too much. Having all of the information she has about the Muslim’s future attacks on our nations’ children, means she’s a liability to the United States. Her spilling the beans on what she knows would alert the Muslim’s that they should stop their plans and make new ones. The government can’t allow her to publicly disclose the information, they’re trying to protect other schools where like plots are probably being hatched as we speak. More attacks could come any day now. Tomorrow even.”

  “The Patriots Act says they can scoop her up and imprison her without counsel or due process and hold her as long as they like.”

  Now Lisa’s angry face glowered into the camera lens. “Serves her right for putting our American children in the hands of Muslim terrorists the way she did.”

  “What do you bet we never hear anything about her again?”

  “That would be par for the course. Yet another CIA plot to try to protect the president from being impeached for crimes against American citizens. For being soft — protecting Muslims whose only goal is to take over our great nation and make it a country governed by Sharia law.”

  Berry shook his head. “Horrible. What kind of woman hands American children over to Muslim terrorists just because the President ordered her to? Hasn’t she ever heard of the Nuremburg Trials? She’s going to jail for life. Being ordered to commit atrocities by your leader is not a defense.”

  Lisa pat her hands onto the tight fabric stretching over her thighs. “There you have I folks–Apparently, our president ordered Suz Molloy to endanger America’s most precious treasure, our children.” She paused then a smile lit up her face. “Stay right there, we’re going to take a quick break to pay the bills, and we’ll be right back to discuss the newest science quackery that’s being put out there to convince you that there is actually change happening to our climate.”

  As the newscasters laughed, Petr knocked back a shot of vodka. How did the American’s know about their plan with enough time to plant the CIA operative as a teacher? He quick dialed his cell phone. “Jones, are you still following the teacher?”

  “I am. She’s at a townhouse just over the New Jersey state line
. There are no journalists here. It’s quiet.”

  “Sit tight. I need to make a plan.”

  8

  Suz

  11:30 a.m. Tuesday, February 15th

  The House the Jack Built, Bethesda, Maryland

  Suz leaned back against the headrest in her car and stared at the back wall of her garage. Loneliness was the thick grey that cloaked her, making her feel cold and damp and incapable of not chattering her teeth. Alone. Now that she was going to break it off with Jack, even the friends she had made at Iniquus and the Iniquus support system would be gone from her life.

  Yup, alone.

  Suz realized she still had her car in gear and shifted to park. Her hand reached out for the keys; her mind was back in sunny California.

  She and Jack had been dating for a year—which really worked out to about four months of physically being together because of Jack’s deployments–when Jack had proposed. And she had said no. He was a SEAL of which she was immensely proud. But because he was a SEAL she had to say no.

  Suz had watched the SEALs with their families, and the warriors were excellent fathers—when they were around. Which wasn’t much. The women who married those men were strong and independent and could carry the family on their own two shoulders. Suz didn’t feel like she was that caliber of woman. She didn’t meet the SEAL-wife qualifications for endurance and bravery.

  And too, Suz’s dad had weighed heavily on her heart when she thought about picking the man who would father her children. The relationship she had had with her dad was very special to her. They had been close, two peas in a pod. One day, he had a heart attack at work, fell down the stairs, and that’s what killed him instantly, blunt force trauma to the head. He was gone from her life without a moment’s notice. No time to say good bye. No time to tell him once again how precious he was to her and how deeply she loved him. Just gone and never coming back. Suz couldn’t do that to her future children. They deserved a father who was home.

  She turned off the ignition and reached for her purse, wondering who had found it in her classroom after she fled, and how it had made its way back to her. She was going to have to throw it out; it smelled heavily of smoke.

  Get out of the car Suz, go inside.

  She pulled up on the handle and pushed her shoulder into the door.

  Suz needed her dad in that moment. She wanted to put her head on his shoulder and for him to tell her that everything was okay. That her heart would someday mend from loving Jack, and she could love again.

  “Oh!” Suz gasped aloud. That thought froze her in place. A stabbing brightness of pain shot through her. That any man could fill her heart like Jack did–how could that be? It seemed absolutely impossible. Yet, she knew, had known since she had first said no to Jack’s proposal, that a life as Jack’s wife while he was a SEAL was not a life she could live. Being an Iniquus operative was almost the same thing. As devastating as it was to admit, Jack would be better off in someone else’s arms. Someone who had the fortitude to send her husband off–each time knowing that might well be their final good-bye.

  She couldn’t live with this level of pain. She was afraid she’d start anesthetizing her anxiety with alcohol or pharmaceuticals. She’d considered it. Yoga and meditation just weren’t strong enough antidotes for this amount of angst over this long a time. Yup, that last fear-filled drive to Suburban Hospital, to find out how badly injured Jack really was, ended it for her. Of that she was sure.

  If she wasn’t going to be in a relationship with Jack, she had to learn to stand on her own two feet. She couldn’t hide out in a safe house under Iniquus protection. Their protection was part and parcel to being involved with Jack.

  Suz’s eye caught on a bird flying outside the garage door. She was so glad to be home. What would her father say to her if he knew that four people had been shot dead not a hundred steps from her classroom door, and that someone had wanted to hurt one of her kids so badly that they would use C-4 to bypass the spikes that she had pushed into the flooring? Suz slammed her car door shut.

  Suz wondered again which of her students had been the target. She stopped, her hand on the Volvo’s roof, her mind brought up pictures of each little face. She considered her kids and their backgrounds and none of them made much sense. . .

  Moving zombie-like out of the open bay, Suz was on auto-pilot when she fobbed the doors locked. Zombie-like. She let that word roll around in her consciousness as she moved down the sidewalk. It felt like Dementors had sucked her soul right out of her mouth; her body was animated but she was absent.

  Suz was so relieved that the TV crews that had been spotted here by the ISO were now gone. She guessed they figured she wouldn’t be going back to this house after Hound News outed her as a CIA operative and her cover had been blown. That was the most absurd part of this whole experience. Jack would be laughing so hard at the idea. Obviously, Lisa and Berry had never seen her at the gun range, leaning over a toilet, vomiting up her anxiety about the sound and the smell and the lethality of the weapons. CIA. Ridiculous.

  Suz pushed the key into the lock and let herself in. Her house was oddly still without her pups. Someone from Iniquus would bring them back sometime before lunch. She glanced down at her watch as she moved to the couch. Soon, she thought and flopped down. She wished her sisters were with her. Suz was so far from her family and friends. They were all in California, which seemed like the ends of the Earth right now.

  When Suz had turned down Jack’s marriage proposal, and he had listened to her reasons, Jack, being Jack, had developed a compromise. He would leave the SEALs–something that Suz would never have asked of him—and take a job along with Striker Rheas, a former SEAL and brother in arms, at Iniquus. Iniquus was a private military support group out of Washington DC. She would move to DC with him and wear her engagement ring on her right ring finger until she felt comfortable moving that ring to her left hand and marrying him.

  “Or I decide I still can’t marry you.” The words hurt to say, and she could tell they hurt Jack to hear them.

  Suz had always felt that the phrase was true “happy wife, happy life.” She also thought it was wrongly interpreted. It wasn’t up to the guy to make sure his wife was happy after the marriage. Sure, he should aim to make his spouse happy; they both should. But really, what Suz thought that phrase was all about was that everyone should marry someone who was already happy. Happy with who they were. Happy with how both people fit together, how they worked together. In other words, if they were happy going into a life-time commitment the chances for a happy life had a much better chance of happening. On the other hand, if a girl abided by the Disney princesses’ tropes that they could lead these miserable lives and suddenly some guy was going to swoop in, kiss them, and make things magical and perfect? Whew! That just seemed all kinds of wrong.

  Suz believed herself to be a better person than that. A more modern person than that. She had never wanted Jack to be her knight in shining armor. Though he certainly fit the bill. She pictured Jack in his dress uniform, his shoulder brightly decorated with his ribbons of valor.

  Suz lifted her hand and stared at the diamond in her engagement ring. It was clouded and had dirt packed into the prongs from her time in the woods. She let her hand drop.

  Jack didn’t re-up with his unit; instead, he signed papers with Iniquus. Suz, as her part of this compromise, left all of her life-long friends and her family behind. When they arrived in Washington DC, they were both in pain. It sucked for both of them. But quickly Jack was back to jumping into hot spots and nabbing hostages from the brink of death, doing what he was trained to do. What he loved to do. And she? Read a lot of books. Took a lot of walks and hot baths. She threw herself into being the best teacher she could be for her students. Making friends here was harder than she had thought it would be.

  One night at the extended-stay hotel where she was living until she found some place suitable, Suz had brought up her feelings of isolation. They were discussing some article Ja
ck had read, and were speculating on the real chances of an actual zombie apocalypse. “According to the article,” Jack had said, “there are eight parasites that we know turn animals into zombies. There’s the drug-addicted ant slaves, and the zombie caterpillars that plant themselves, and there’s even a tape worms that ends up inside of stickleback fish that make the fish leave their schools and swim to the warmer water that is preferred by the tape worm.”

  “Ew, Jack. That’s disgusting,” she said, swallowing a bite of her spaghetti with a sudden loss of appetite. “But given that, do you think it’s all that farfetched that an invasive organism would animate the dead and make those creatures want to eat our brains?”

  The conversation turned into a “What would you do? Who would you want on your team?” debate. Where would they go? How would they get there? And that’s when she had started crying.

  Granted, she was at a hormonal peak, with killer cramps, coupled with the knowledge that Jack had packed to go downrange into some new hot spot and was just waiting for the call to head out the door – no idea where he was going, no idea when he’d be back, just gone. And she was out of chocolate. But still. It had been embarrassing.

  Jack waited for the last of her sniffles and then simply said, “You had a thought and there was a whole lot of emotional energy behind it. I bet that surprised the hell out of you.”

  He was right. It had. It was a stupid thought. But then again . . .

  “If there were a zombie apocalypse – enter any real-possibility disaster situation into that blank—you would grab your go-bag and go. I would be here alone. No family. Surface friends – people whom I just met. So really, would they share their last bite of food with me? What would I do? Where would I go? ‘Cause I’m really all alone.”