by Woods, Karen
Ray sighed. “I’d hoped you both could put this behind you. But, it’s obviously not going to be this easy.”
Geri shook her head and sighed. “What about life is ever easy?”
“Not much,” Ray replied. “Well, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, I just want this over with,” Geri said.
“You sure that you still don’t want a deputy escorting you any time you leave the ranch?” Ray asked.
“Ray,” Geri said, “I don’t even want the bodyguards Josh insisted on my having.”
Josh looked at her. “Tough, you’re keeping the bodyguards, and maybe getting more, sweetheart. There’s no ifs ands or buts about that.”
Geri sighed. “We’ll discuss this later, husband.”
“There is nothing to discuss. I made the mistake of letting you get hurt once. It won’t happen again. From now on, you have double the number of bodyguards with you every minute of the day and night.”
“No. I won’t live that way. I won’t! I won’t give him the satisfaction of making me a prisoner in my own home. Ben Franklin once said, ‘Those who trade liberty for security are deserving of neither.’”
“Then you may not live, Geri,” he told her. “It’s just that simple. If you won’t take care of yourself, you will die.”
Geri sighed. “We’ll talk about it in private, Josh.”
Josh looked at Ray. “What else do you need, Ray?”
“I can keep a lid on this for a while, if you don’t want the press getting wind of the death of Albert,” he offered.
Geri shook her head negatively. “No. There’s no sense in it.”
“I agree with my wife on that.”
“There will have to be an inquest, Josh. I’m willing to call it self-defense. But you will likely have to answer to a coroner’s jury for this.”
“I know.”
Ray nodded. “I wish you would carry a gun. You’ve had the permit since concealed carry became legal.”
“Starting today, I won’t be more than six inches from a weapon. It’s time. Things from now on may easily get really dicey.”
“Oh, that’s reassuring,” Geri said.
“It wasn’t meant to be,” Josh answered. “It’s just the truth.”
“Well, you’ve never lied to me. I don’t want you to start now,” Geri said. “I’m going to bed now, Josh. That is, Ray, if you are done with me?”
“Can you take five minutes and give me a statement?” the sheriff asked.
“Sure,” Geri told him. “Where do you want to begin?”
The sheriff took down both their statements. Then he closed his notebook. “Do me a favor. Stay close to home. Lay low, and don’t give him more of a target than he needs.”
“I’ll take it under advisement, Ray,” Geri replied.
The sheriff sighed. “Now, you haven’t been married to that man of yours that long that you should sound like him.”
“Josh and I are cut from the same cloth, I think.”
Ray nodded. “You may be at that.”
Geri’s cell phone rang. She looked at it as if it were a rattlesnake about ready to strike. But, she answered it on the fourth ring.
The same hateful electronically altered voice spoke, “Thank you for ridding me of Albert. He was unstable.”
“And you’re not unstable?” Geri asked in disbelief. “Stable people don’t conspire to commit mass murder by blowing up buildings containing innocent children.”
“It was expedient. It got your attention. Now, if you want to live, you will turn over all the files on every project in development for the military at Sutherland,” the voice said. “I want the files, the passwords, and the encryption keys.”
“I don’t think so,” Geri said. “My honor and my country are more important than my life. I will not commit treason to maintain my life. You won’t get those designs from me, and Jim will no longer have access to anything classified, so that avenue of your acquiring inside information has dried up.”
“Do you want your mother’s body returned?” the voice offered smoothly.
“Mother’s body is just a shell,” Geri replied. “An empty husk. She’s already in heaven. Anything that happens to her body is insignificant.”
“What about Allison Bennet?” the disguised voice asked. “Do you want her returned, alive?”
She disconnected. Then she quickly punched in the number for the nursing home. The phone there rang and rang, with no one answering.
Geri hung up. She looked at the Sheriff. “I just got a ransom demand for the body of my mother and for my cousin, Allie Bennet, whom they said they had.”
“What was the ransom demand?” Ray asked.
“Every one of the classified and top secret files on projects that we are developing for the military, the passwords, and the encryption keys,” Geri replied. “Hell will freeze over before I’ll give those up.”
“Okay. Kidnapping is a federal offense. Especially with this wrinkle. It’s time to call in the FBI,” Ray said.
“There’s no need,” Spider said from the doorway. “The Feds are already on site,” he added as he came into the room and showed Ray an official looking set of identification.
Ray looked them over and then looked at Josh. “You’re swimming in deep water, old buddy.”
“What else is new?” Josh dismissed.
Ray nodded. “How can I be of most help here?”
Spider said, “Just handle the investigation in the way you normally would have handled it. My team is working on this from other angles. Hopefully, we’ll isolate the rest of the group who are trying to take action here, shortly. I’d already installed covert surveillance equipment in the nursing home, figuring that they would strike against Mrs. Bennet—putting pressure on Geri this way. The high definition recording is being printed into stills. I should have a series of photos of the people who took Mrs. Bennet in a matter of moments. Those will be forwarded to the authorities in Houston.”
“You cold, calculating…” Geri replied with heat in her voice. She got herself better under control, then she asked, her voice still full of heat. “You knew that they would go after Allie and you didn’t protect her? How dare you?”
“I’m not going to waste personnel by putting them in the position of guarding a well tended vegetable. Keeping her in the nursing home wasn’t worth the lives of my men,” Spider replied. “Allie Bennet has been dead except for one small technicality for a very long time. If they manage to snuff out whatever residual life she is holding onto, it would be a mercy for her and for the family.”
“Mercy like this, I can live without, thank you very much!” Geri said, her voice sharp. Then she closed her eyes and took two deep breaths. When she felt more in control of herself, she asked, “Did you contact Brad?”
“I did. He should be out here shortly. I also contacted the Houston PD on this,” Spider told her. “We’re working with them.”
“You are simply too efficient. Tell me, since you were anticipating them grabbing Allie, did you bother to tag her with a transmitter, preferably a subdermal one, so that you could locate her, easily?” Geri demanded.
Spider looked at Geri and smiled. “We could use you on the team. If you ever get tired of working for Josh, come see me. I like the way you think.”
Geri’s eyes grew hard. “Go ahead, hold your breath, turn blue and fall down waiting for that to happen. Now, please, tell me that you have a signal from Allie.”
“We’ve got a signal. My team is moving on it soon,” Spider informed them.
Geri rose from the sofa. “I have work to do.”
“You need your rest,” Josh advised.
“There is no rest, Josh,” Geri said, her voice full of pain and exhaustion. “The only way to cope is to keep the mind active. I’ll be in your office. Come and get me when Brad gets here.”
“The only place you are going is upstairs and to sleep,” Josh told her. “You’ve worked your butt off during the last twenty four hours,
doing the amount of work I wouldn’t expect from a team of people in a month. You are going to get some sleep. And you are going to get some sleep now.”
“And how do you expect me to do that?” Geri demanded.
“You are going to take a pill and go to bed. I know that you have a headache,” he said. “I can see it in the gingerly way you are holding your head.”
“There are times you read me entirely too well,” she replied, her voice weary.
“You don’t need to carry everything on your own shoulders, my dear.”
“I don’t know how not to do that, Josh. I’m not used to having anyone to share burdens with.”
“This is the first step. Come along, take your migraine pill, and get the sleep you need to get rid of the headache. You need to take care of yourself. You aren’t going to do anyone— including yourself— any good if you aren’t functioning at one hundred percent.”
* * *
Josh gave Geri her headache pill and the antibiotic the ER doctor had prescribed, then he put her to bed. She was asleep within ten minutes. He posted two men in the hall, two on the balcony, and one in the connecting bedroom to guard her.
Brad arrived just after Josh got back downstairs. Ray had left.
“Where’s Gee?” Brad asked as they settled into Josh’s office.
“In bed asleep. I made her take her headache pill,” Josh told Brad.
“Good. Someone needs to make sure that she takes care of herself.”
Spider got off his satellite phone. “Action is underway to move against the remaining kidnappers. I expect to hear something in a matter of minutes.”
“You are sure they have Allie?” Brad demanded.
Spider handed Brad the stills derived from the video.
Brad looked at those pictures then at Spider, and then at the pictures again. “Since I don’t believe in ghosts, then Delgado obviously didn’t die fifteen years ago. Whose body was identified as Delgado’s?”
“I don’t know,” Spider said. “Some poor slob who was in the wrong place at the right time and happened to resemble Delgado closely enough to pass for him when he was several days dead.”
“Does Gee know?”
“With any luck, she won’t have to know about any of this until it’s over,” Josh replied.
Spider’s phone rang. He picked it up. He listened very carefully. “I understand. Thanks.”
Spider looked at the other two men. “We’ve recovered the body of Geri’s mother. We also recovered Allie Bennet’s body. She’s no longer breathing. There were no marks on her. It’s possible they could have given her a drug, but it looks like she died of natural causes. I’ll have a death certificate issued by morning for her. Then you can bury her. That’s the good news. The bad news is that Delgado wasn’t there. He’s still on the loose. We did get the boy, though. He won’t be causing anyone any further trouble, ever.”
Brad shook his head. “Delgado’s on the loose.”
“He’ll turn up,” Spider said.
“I know,” Josh said. “And there will be more bloodshed.”
“I’ll arrange for Allie’s requiem later today. I don’t know where I’m going to bury her,” Brad said.
“Beside Momma,” Geri said from the doorway. “It was all too convenient, Joshua, when things were going sour quickly for you to want me out of the way. I palmed the headache pill. Don’t you ever do that to me again. I’m not made of porcelain. I will not break.”
“Geri, I…” Josh began to explain.
She came into the room, limping slightly—favoring the leg that was hurting now that the numbing medication had worn off. She stopped beside her husband. “We’ll talk about this later, Josh. We’ve got bigger problems at the moment than this unnecessary protectiveness on your part.”
“Gee,” Brad began.
But, she cut him off. “So, Delgado is alive. Someone should have told me,” she said, her voice fierce, looking at Spider.
He didn’t back down. “It was classified. Strictly need-to-know.”
Geri nodded. “I needed to know.”
Spider shook his head, “There was a good chance this could have been handled without your ever finding out.”
“Well, I know now. What are you going to do about it?” Geri demanded.
“Ask you to consider it confidential and not to disclose it to anyone,” Spider stated.
Geri nodded. “I can do that. Is that as far as you are going to take it?”
“You aren’t in any danger because you know about this,” Spider assured her.
“You will remind me of that, will you not, when I come down with the measles?” Geri said dryly, using a bit of intelligence slang for a murder disguised to look like a death from natural causes.
Spider’s eyes narrowed. “You have my word there will be no repercussions, if you will keep this to yourself.”
“Just why should I trust your word as far as I can throw you?” she demanded, unable to keep disdain from her voice. “I’m willing to keep quiet. But if Josh, Brad, I, or any of Josh and my children, suffer any untimely accidents, incidents, or mysterious fatal illnesses, I will consider this agreement null and void. So, you better hope we all live long and totally uneventful lives from now on. Otherwise, I will come after you, personally. I hope I’m understood.”
“I appreciate that you would have to try,” Spider replied in an equally cold tone.
“I don’t think it would be easy. Just necessary,” she stated in a flat voice. “Necessity is frequently harsh and messy.”
“You’re playing out of your league,” Spider informed her.
“You might be right about that, Spider. Just remember, you’ve never played this game against me, when I have the tactical and strategic advantages.”
Spider nodded. “That goes both ways.”
“Then as long as we understand one another,” Geri answered.
Spider looked at Josh. “You got yourself quite a woman, there, Josh. Do try to keep her alive.”
Josh put his arm around Geri’s shoulder. “I am.”
“Gee,” Bradford asked, changing the subject, “are you sure you want to give up the other plot next to Aunt Gina’s grave? You had planned to be buried next to her.”
“I will be buried next to Josh, a long time from now. Allie should be laid to rest next to Momma. I bought a block of four plots. There’s room for you to be laid there, too, when you pass on. And hopefully, room for whatever lady you eventually share the rest of your life with, Brad, now that Allie is actually gone,” Geri said, her voice gentle.
Brad nodded. “If you want to sell me the rest of the plots, I’ll buy them from you.”
“No. They’re yours, Bradford, a gift from me to you. I don’t want them. And I don’t want your money.”
“Christmas is coming,” her cousin warned.
Chapter Twenty-one
It was Friday morning before she and Josh ventured again from the ranch. When they left, it was simply to go to Church for the funeral service for Allie and the burial services for both Allie and Geri’s mother.
Geri wished that there hadn’t had to have been so many bodyguards in the church. She felt uneasy being armed during a worship service. But there was no help for it. Spider had moved in a team to secure the church. There were three sharpshooters on the surrounding roofs, on constant look out for snipers or other hostile moves in the surrounding area.
The funeral service went all too quickly. The liturgy was familiar to her, too familiar, and she made it through on the liturgical equivalent of autopilot. She’d been doing that entirely too often these days. They left the storefront church without incident. The drive to the cemetery went quickly. The cemetery workers had both graves open and ready for the caskets when they arrived.
They had managed to keep knowledge of this from the press. So, the only reporters around were a few who had been camped out just outside the ranch. The reporters were stopped at some distance from the
graves by several bodyguards.
The final prayers were said before internment. Brad opened each casket just to make sure the proper bodies were inside each. He placed the urn of Charlie’s ashes in the casket with Allie’s body. Seemingly satisfied, he closed the caskets. They watched the caskets being lowered into the ground and the vault covers put in place. They continued to stand there until the caskets were completely covered.
The reporters called out all manner of rude questions as Geri, Josh, and Brad returned to the cars. The three of them simply ignored the questions and the reporters, although that wasn’t easy.
Betty had lunch ready when they returned to the ranch. The three of them and Padre Small and his wife, Jenny, formed the core of mourners. It was a simple lunch Betty had prepared—thick Texas chili, corn bread, a tossed salad, an apple cobbler, and lots of iced tea. But, there wasn’t much conversation. The mood in the house was somber.
Brad sat there across the table Geri. To her eyes, it was as though a great burden had been lifted from his shoulders. “For the last few years, they’d tried to convince me to withdraw even food and water from Allie. But, I couldn’t do that,” he reflected.
The priest said, “You did the best you could do for her. No one can fault you for anything you did to care for her.”
“But, it’s over now. You’re free to live your life, Brad,” Geri added.
“At first, everyone told me Allie wasn’t going to make it. I didn’t bury Charlie’s cremains, thinking I’d probably have Allie cremated as well and bury them together. But her Will specifically said she was not to be cremated, something I didn’t know until after Charlie was cremated. So, I did the best I could. I think she would have liked having him with her,” Brad said.
“They’re probably bugging your guardian angel right now, telling him how to take care of you,” Geri replied.
Brad smiled a tight smile and blinked back tears. “It’s really odd not to have to worry about her. My life has largely centered on earning enough money to keep her in the nursing home. It’s not been cheap.”
