Fatal Identity

by Marie Force

“I came there,” he said in a tight, furious-sounding tone, “because you were sick and needed me.”

  “And not because Avery was taking care of me?”

  “That had nothing to do with it.”

  Sam remained skeptical but kept her thoughts to herself, as they arrived at home, where they were greeted by Secret Service Barbie, who was working the door. Of course she was.

  “Good morning, Mr. Vice President, Mrs. Cappuano.”

  “Good morning, Melinda,” Nick said with a polite smile.

  Sam swore the woman all but swooned from being on the receiving end of that smile. She was only human, the poor thing. “Maybe I need to have a ‘talk’ with her about the greedy way she looks at my husband’s sexy ass,” she whispered as he hung their coats in the closet. “I could tell her how big your dick really is. Give her something to fantasize about.”

  “Or not.”

  Chuckling at his predictable reply, she headed for the stairs, eager to shower and change and get to the hospital to check on Josh.

  “Um, where do you think you’re going?” Nick asked twenty minutes later when she emerged from her closet dressed and ready to go.

  “To the hospital to see Josh.”

  “You’ve been sick, Samantha. You need to take it easy today, or you’re going to relapse.”

  “I’m fine. I’m only going to the hospital where I’ll also get something to eat.” She patted his face and went up on tiptoes to kiss him. “You can go to work. You’re off duty.”

  He lifted her sweater, which covered the service weapon strapped to her hip. “If you’re just going to the hospital, why’re you bringing the hardware?”

  “Because I never leave home without it, as you well know.” She kissed him again. “I swear I feel fine. Tired and a little achy, but otherwise fine. I need to check in on Josh and get things moving with the Franklin police who are waiting for my okay to tell the Rollingses that he’s their son. I can’t bear to make them wait another day for that news.”

  “Fair enough. Just promise you’ll come home as soon as you can.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  He leaned in to kiss her. “And for the record, I went to Knoxville because I couldn’t bear the thought of you feeling so crappy without me there to take care of you. Not for any other reason.”

  “That’s a pretty good reason. Thanks again for coming. It meant everything to me to have you there.”

  “You mean everything to me.” He kissed her once more. “Be careful out there.”

  “Always am.”

  Sam went outside and was surprised to realize her car was parked in its usual spot, even though she hadn’t left it there. Nick must’ve arranged to get it home from HQ. The keys were in it, which was another benefit of the security afforded by the Secret Service. They did have their uses.

  Feeling light-headed and nauseated, she started the car and headed for the checkpoint, taking it slow. She desperately wished she were still in bed, but with so many threads needing to be pulled in the case, she’d never sleep anyway. She may as well do what she could to help out.

  On the way to the hospital her phone rang with a call from Detective Watson.

  “Good morning,” Sam said.

  “What’s the status?”

  “As far as I know, Josh’s condition is unchanged. I’m on my way to the hospital now to see him.”

  “I want to tell the Rollingses that we’ve found him.”

  “Will you also tell them that he’s gravely injured or who had him all this time?”

  “I’ll tell them everything I know.”

  She could hear the fierce determination in every word he said, and frankly, she didn’t blame him. She would feel the same way in his place. Locating a child who’d been missing for thirty years would be cause for huge celebration in the Franklin police department.

  “Do I have your okay to proceed?” Watson asked.

  “Yes, go ahead.”

  “They’ll want to come there.”

  “We’ll do everything we can to accommodate them.”

  “Um, pardon the question, but it’s my understanding that you’re currently suspended. Is that true?”

  “Heard about that all the way down there in Tennessee, huh?”

  “Everyone has heard about that.”

  “I’m suspended for one more day but still actively engaged in the case. I’ll personally make sure the Rollings family is treated with the dignity and respect they deserve when they come to my city.”

  “Thank you for that. I can’t believe I actually get to go tell them this news. If it gets any better than this in a career, I’m not sure when.”

  “You’ve worked hard for a long time to be able to give them this news. I’m only sorry we were unable to keep him safer. We’re in the midst of a truly baffling case here with his abduction and his father’s murder.”

  “Are there any suspects?”

  “One and you won’t believe who.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “The deputy director of the FBI.”

  “Holy shit. Really?”

  “Yep.”

  “Wow, well... I’ll let you get back to that mess while I go tell Mr. and Mrs. Rollings that their prayers have been answered.”

  “You enjoy that, and let them know that from everything we’re being told, he’s expected to recover from his injuries.”

  “They’ll be glad to hear that. I’ll be in touch.”

  Sam closed her phone and tried to imagine the reaction of the Rollings family to hearing their child had been found. If nothing else came of this nightmare case, at least those poor people would have closure on their son’s disappearance. They’d get to meet him and get to know him and perhaps, over time, build a relationship with him.

  At GW, she asked for Josh at the reception desk and was directed to the sixth floor. Patrol officers were stationed outside his door, and they seemed surprised to see her in light of the suspension, not that they’d ever ask why she was there.

  Because they were required to ask for identification, even if they knew the visitor, she showed them her badge.

  “How is he?”

  “Doctors are in there now, Lieutenant. As far as we know, there’s no change.”

  “Help you with something?” a man asked. He was in his thirties with dark hair and intense eyes. In him, Sam saw Troy Hamilton.

  “And you are?” she asked even though she already knew.

  “Mark Hamilton. This is my brother’s room.”

  Sam showed him her badge. “Lieutenant Holland, Metro PD.”

  “What do you want?”

  Okay, Sam thought, so that’s how we’re going to play it? “I’ve been involved in your brother’s case for days now. I wanted to check on how he’s doing.”

  “By involved do you mean how you allowed him to be kidnapped at gunpoint and taken hostage?”

  “I understand that you’re upset, Mr. Hamilton—”

  “You don’t understand anything. My father has been murdered, my brother has been viciously assaulted and my mother has been arrested. You don’t have the first clue how I feel!”

  “Could we go somewhere and talk? Please? I have information I think you and your sister would want to know.”

  For a second she thought he was going to say no, but then his shoulders sagged and he turned to walk away.

  Sam grimaced at the Patrol officers and went after him. They ended up in the waiting room where a woman who bore a striking resemblance to him was bent over her phone.

  “Maura, this is Lieutenant Holland from the Metro PD. She says she has info we need to know.”

  Maura looked up from her phone, and Sam could tell that Maura recognized her, but she didn’t mention it. “
What kind of information?”

  “The kind that will be difficult to hear.” Sam closed the door and sat across from them.

  “More difficult than our father being murdered or our brother being abducted or our mother being arrested?” Maura asked.

  Sam had to remember she was dealing with a lawyer in addition to a bereaved daughter. “Yes, possibly.”

  “So what is it?” Mark asked.

  “Thirty years ago this week, a baby was kidnapped from a hospital in Tennessee.”

  “What does that have to do with us?” Maura asked.

  “That baby is your brother Josh.” She watched as two intelligent, accomplished people tried to wrap their brains around what she was telling them.

  They exchanged glances.

  “That can’t be true,” Maura said. “Mother had him when we moved back to Virginia. He wasn’t even born in Tennessee.”

  “Do you remember your mother being pregnant and having a baby?”

  “I remember it vividly,” Mark said. “Her belly was huge. I remember being afraid she was going to break open.”

  “I remember that too! Her skin was so tight and stretched.”

  Sam reeled as she listened to them. So Courtney had been pregnant when she left Knoxville to go home to Virginia? Neither of her friends had mentioned that.

  “So there’s no way the baby that went missing could be our brother,” Mark said.

  “Actually, it is him. We have DNA evidence linking him to the father of the missing baby.”

  “Are you insinuating that our parents had something to do with taking that baby?” Maura asked.

  “I’m insinuating that they raised a kidnapped baby as their own. What they knew and when they knew it is something we’d all like to know.”

  “They couldn’t have possibly known he was kidnapped,” Mark said. “My father devoted his entire life to truth and justice and the law. If you go public with these insinuations, we’ll sue your ass off, and we’ll go after your badge too.”

  “Feel free to do whatever you need to do, but this information will be going public probably today when the Rollings family in Tennessee finds out that their prayers have been answered and their son has been found.”

  “This can’t possibly be true,” Maura said with a whole lot less conviction than she’d had at the beginning of the conversation.

  “I’m sorry. I know how difficult it has to be for you to hear this, but it is true, and we believe that Dustin Jacoby killed your father and abducted your brother because he was afraid of what would happen when the truth came out.”

  They stared at her as if she had two heads.

  “He was my father’s best friend,” Mark said. “He’s like an uncle to us. He would never harm my dad.”

  “Look, I get that this is extremely shocking to you, but everything I’m telling you is true. The West Virginia State Police and the Metro PD have Jacoby surrounded at his cabin in the mountains. We have footage that shows him with your brother at a hotel in Beltsville after your brother was abducted at gunpoint and fed a nearly lethal dose of phenobarbital. We have the gunman who orchestrated the abduction telling us that Jacoby hired him and two of his associates to help him kill your father and abduct your brother, who was kidnapped from a family in Tennessee as an infant.” Sam paused, took a moment to look at both of them. “Now, hearing all that, do you honestly believe that I could make up a story this crazy?”

  “What could our mother possibly have to do with any of it?” Maura asked.

  “We’re not sure, but we’re hoping to find out. The FBI wouldn’t let us near her, so we had no choice but to take her into custody so we can speak to her about some questions we have.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “Things about her marriage and her relationship with Jacoby.”

  “They were friends.”

  “Right.”

  “Are you insinuating they were more than friends?” Mark asked.

  “I’m not insinuating anything other than we want to talk to her again.”

  A nurse came into the waiting room. “Your brother is awake. He’s asking for you.”

  Mark and Maura took off toward Josh’s room. Sam followed, hoping she’d be allowed in to see him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “DO WE KNOW why he was taken?” one of the patrolmen working Josh’s door asked.

  “We do,” she said.

  “Did we get them?”

  “Most of them. We’re working on bringing in the ringleader now.”

  Half an hour after they went into the room, Mark and Maura emerged. She was tearful. He was pissed.

  “Josh wants to see you,” Mark said. “You’ve got five minutes.”

  Though Josh had described his family as not particularly close, Sam was glad that his siblings seemed to care so much about him. He was going to need their support in the days and weeks to come as his new reality set in.

  Sam went into the room, wincing at the sight of his bruised and battered face. His upper lip was grossly swollen and one eye completely closed. He had a bandage on his forehead and another on his chin, through both of which she could see sutures.

  “How’re you feeling?” she asked.

  “Great...”

  “I’m so sorry this happened, Josh.”

  “How’s Freddie?”

  “Better than you. Banged up but back to work today.”

  “That’s a relief. He was super cool. He told me to do whatever I was told and stay alive. Just stay alive, he said.”

  “That was good advice.”

  “It was Dustin. I couldn’t believe it when I saw him there—at the house where they took us.”

  “Did he say anything to you?”

  “Just that he was sorry. He was really sorry, but he had to do it.” Josh tried to sit up and groaned, his hands covering his head. “God, my head is killing me, and they said he drugged me.”

  “He gave you phenobarbital, enough to almost kill you.”

  “How could he try to kill me? He’s known me all my life.”

  “We think he also killed your father.”

  “Why? Why would he do that?”

  “The DNA results are back, and you’re a match to Mr. Rollings.” Sam said it quickly but succinctly. “Detective Watson from the Franklin police department in Tennessee is notifying the Rollings family as we speak. He said they’re going to want to see you. How do you feel about that?”

  “I... I suppose it’s fine. They’ve waited a long time.”

  “Yes, they have.”

  “So what does that have to do with Dustin and my father’s murder?”

  “We think something went down thirty years ago in Knoxville when your family and Dustin lived there.”

  “They never talked about living in Tennessee. I didn’t even know they did. Is that weird?”

  “It is, but it was also a difficult time in your parents’ marriage. Did you know they separated for about six months?”

  “No, I’ve never heard that either, and it surprises me. They were always so solid, or at least they seemed that way to me.”

  “And your siblings never talked about Tennessee or your parents living apart?”

  “No.”

  “Your mother came right out and admitted to us the other night that you’re adopted. They never told you that?”

  “Nope,” he says with a bitter laugh. “I guess I was living totally in the dark in that family.”

  “The odd thing is, Mark and Maura remember your mother being pregnant around that time, when they left Knoxville to move back to Virginia.”

  “So what happened to that baby?”

  “That’s a very good question.”

  * * *<
br />
  THE WAITING FOR something to happen was utter torture. Freddie was freezing, starving and exhausted. This totally sucked, especially because they had no control whatsoever over any part of this mission. It was being run by the West Virginia State Police, who were operating with an overabundance of caution in light of the fact that their person of interest was the FBI deputy director.

  And as if there weren’t enough law enforcement officers here already, the Feds had shown up half an hour ago, demanding to know why their deputy director’s vacation home was surrounded by armed officers.

  Thus, the standoff continued unabated in the fifth hour.

  “How long are we going to stay here, Cap?” Gonzo asked, giving voice to Freddie’s most pressing question.

  “I don’t know,” Malone said with a sigh. “It’s turned into a three-ring circus.”

  Another half hour passed in eerie, tension-filled silence before the incident commander from the West Virginia State Police left his post to come talk to them. He was halfway across the snow-covered yard when a shot rang out, striking the officer and knocking him off his feet.

  All hell broke loose, with people shouting and return fire shattering the silence.

  The officer who’d been hit crawled across the snow to where Freddie and the others from the MPD dragged him to safety.

  “Hit my vest,” the man said through gritted teeth. “I’m okay.”

  They propped him up against their SUV. He reached for his shoulder mic to check in with his team.

  “Tell them we want Jacoby alive,” Malone said.

  The officer conveyed the message. His radio crackled to life.

  “Do we have the green light to go in, Cap? We’ve got a clear line on the back of the cabin, and the shot came from the front.”

  He looked up at Malone who nodded. “We’re not getting anywhere waiting him out,” Malone said.

  “Go,” the captain said into the shoulder mic, grimacing with pain.

  From their position, they couldn’t see the action, but they could hear it. Shattering glass, wood splintering, shouts, gunshots. The whole thing seemed to happen in slow motion, but it only took about thirty seconds from the order to the report they’d been waiting for:

  “We’ve got him.”