Texas Hero

by Merline Lovelace

  She'd have a full assortment of other garments in her case, Jack knew. He and the other males at OMEGA ah harbored a particular partiality for the jumpsuit she slipped into for night operations. The black nylon zipped up to her chin and covered her slender curves like a thin coat of paint.

  Taking a quick glance around the suite, she cocked her head at the sound of running water in the other room. "Did I get you out of the shower?"

  "No."

  One brow lifted. "There must be some other rea­son your clothes are soaked, then."

  There was, but Jack didn't offer it. His black shirt sticking to him like wet saran, he closed the door to the suite. Mackenzie dumped her case on a handy chair and turned to face him.

  "Cyrene is checking in downstairs. I came right up. I've got something for you, Renegade."

  Jack's pulse jumped at the intense satisfaction glimmering in her eyes.

  "We IDed some interesting characters in our screen of Dr. Alazar's digital images. One in partic­ular will catch your attention."

  Punching in a code on the digital lock, she opened her field case and produced a flat silver CD. Her gaze cut to the computer sitting on the desk.

  ‘‘Will Dr. Alazar mind if I use her laptop?''

  Jack shook his head, although at this point he couldn't predict Ellie's reactions to anything. She'd put his back up with her stubborn resistance to his orders and thrown him for a complete loop with that business about not letting him walk away from her again.

  Elena Maria obviously hadn't figured it out yet, but he had no intention of leaving her. Or letting her leave him. Not after last night. And sure as hell not with a killer stalking her.

  His mouth set, he crossed the room to peer over Mackenzie's shoulder. She drummed her fingers im­patiently while the laptop booted up, then sent them flying over the keys. A moment later, a scene was painted across the screen.

  It was the courtyard of the Alamo. Jack recognized the low, flat building Ellie had identified as the Long Barracks in the foreground. In the background was the massive oak that gave welcome shade to the throngs of tourists wandering from exhibit to exhibit.

  "There he is."

  With a click of the mouse, Mackenzie placed an arrow on one particular tourist. He wore a straw Stet­son and dark glasses. A camera was slung over one shoulder. He stood in the shade at the rear of the courtyard next to another man.

  "It took me a while to ED him. The glasses ob­scure his eyes, and the hat conceals his hair color, although I doubt it's still the same color listed on the FBI most-wanted bulletin."

  Well, hell! The FBI's most-wanted bulletin. That's all Jack needed to hear. The tension coiling his mus­cles took another tight twist.

  "I finally got a hit on the scar." Clicking away, Mackenzie zoomed in on the man's profile. "See it? Just below his left ear?''

  He saw it. "Unless I miss my guess, someone once took a knife to this particular tourist's throat."

  "You pegged it. According to FBI reports, he got that little souvenir from a street pimp who strenu­ously objected to being taken out. He's a hit man, Renegade. A real professional. Suspected of killing at least ten people, both in the States and abroad."

  Jack had suspected he was dealing with a pro. Knowing he was right didn't give him so much as a hint of satisfaction.

  "The man's assumed dozens of different identities over the years," Mackenzie reported. "Including, we can lay odds, Mr. Harold Berger of 2224 Riverside Drive, Austin. The FBI was very interested to hear he'd popped up in San Antonio. Particularly when we IDed the man standing next to him."

  She zinged the pointer to a beefy, wide-shouldered man with sandy hair and a bulldog jaw.

  "Meet Mr. Dan Foster. He's local, a very suc­cessful building contractor."

  ‘‘What his connection to our hit man?''

  "Three months ago, Foster's wife was kidnapped from their country club estate. Although there were some indications that both Fosters played around, Danny Boy appeared devastated by the kidnapping and insisted on paying the million-dollar ransom."

  Eyes narrowed, Jack studied the image on the screen. Despite his size, Foster gave off a definite country club air. A designer logo decorated the pocket of his knit shirt. His khaki Dockers showed a knife crease. Gold flashed at one wrist.

  "Before Foster could get the funds together," Mackenzie continued, "his wife's body turned up in a Dumpster. From the rope burns on her wrists and ankles, shredded nylons and gravel embedded in her knees, the FBI thinks she tried to escape and was shot in the process. Now, you'd expect the supposed kidnapper to bury the body or otherwise keep it hid­den until after he'd collected the ransom."

  "Unless he wanted it found," Jack said slowly.

  ‘‘Right. Again, our friend Foster appeared devas­tated. But the Feds took note of the fact that he was sole beneficiary on his wife's two-million-dollar life insurance policy. And that he was falling behind on repayment of several major business loans he'd floated."

  The pieces fell together with startling clarity. The trashing of Ellie's hotel room, her stolen computer, the attempts on her life. None of those had anything to do with the controversy she's stirred up in town, but with the fact she caught a killer and the man who could well have hired him on camera.

  "Foster must have sweated blood when he read the stories about Ellie in the papers," Jack guessed. "Particularly those that went into detail about her digital scans of the Alamo and its weaponry. It wouldn't have taken more than a few calls for Foster to find out if Dr. Alazar was at the Alamo the same day he arranged to meet Scarface there."

  "What I don't understand," Mackenzie said, tap­ping a finger on the keyboard, "is why the heck they'd risk meeting in such a public place."

  "Maybe he didn't feel safe meeting with a killer anywhere else. Maybe Scarface insisted on it, in­tending to blackmail Foster later by threatening to reveal his shady connections."

  "Then why would he care if Dr. Alazar caught the meeting on camera?"

  "Scarface might not care, but Foster sure as hell would. My guess is he hired the guy to trash Ellie's hotel room and destroy her digital images. When word got out she'd backed them up, Foster would have no choice but to take out a contract on Ellie, too, hoping her death would scuttle her project—and the pictures she'd taken—before they ever saw light of day."

  It was all speculation. Mere guesswork. But Jack knew in his gut they'd stumbled onto something.

  ‘‘Did the Feds run a ballistics analysis of the bullet that killed Foster's wife?"

  "I'm sure they did. I can e-mail my contact at the Bureau and find out. Why?"

  "Because I'll bet you another dozen pizzas that the rifling marks on the bullet retrieved from her body will match those on the one fired at Ellie last night."

  "Which makes it even more imperative we re­trieve it from the river," a cool voice said behind them.

  Jack grunted in disgust. Hell of a field agent he made! He hadn't heard the shower cut off. His only excuse was that Mackenzie's startling information had riveted his attention.

  The new arrival seemed to rivet Mackenzie's. Her fascinated glance took in every detail of Ellie's fresh scrubbed face and damp hair before shifting to Jack's still wet shirt. OMEGA's chief of communications didn't say a word. She didn't have to. The deliber­ately bland expression she assumed said it all.

  Unfortunately Lightning hadn't exercised the same restraint. When Jack reported that matters between him and Ellie had taken an unexpected and very per­sonal turn, Nick had ripped a foot-wide strip off his agent's hide.

  Jack had expected nothing less. He'd also expected Lightning to yank him off the mission and was fully prepared to tell OMEGA's director to go to hell. No way Jack was leaving Ellie. He intended to stick so close to her she couldn't tell her shadow from his until he brought her stalker down.

  After that...

  His stomach clenched. He couldn't allow himself to think past right here, right now. Ellie's safety de­manded his total focus.
After would have to take care of itself. Silently, he watched her cross the room and hold out a hand to Mackenzie.

  "I'm Elena Alazar. I assume you're one of Jack's colleagues."

  "That's right."

  Effortlessly, Mac slipped into the cover identity designed to shield her OMEGA connection. Since her extensive network of friends and acquaintances from her Navy days all knew about her background in and fascination with electronic gadgetry, she'd set up a fictitious company. Blair Consulting was listed in the Yellow Pages. It maintained a fancy home Page on the Web. Only a handful of Washington in­siders knew the company's proprietor and sole em­ployee worked exclusively for OMEGA.

  "I'm Mackenzie Blair, Dr. Alazar. I own Blair Consulting. We specialize in electronic surveillance and computerized data searches. It's a pleasure to meet the woman who designed and developed the prototype for Discoverer Two."

  "You know about metal detectors?"

  "I'm former Navy," she answered with a grin. "We squids all harbor a secret fascination with sunken treasure. I've done my share of beachcomb­ing."

  "Then you might be interested in watching the Discoverer Two in action," Ellie said with a smile that did not include Jack. "I'm going to take it down to the river to help locate the shell casing you're both so interested in."

  "Great!" Mackenzie enthused before Jack could counter Ellie's flat statement. "I'd love to see that sucker in operation. I understand you've loaded twenty gigabytes of metallurgical and ballistics data into its core operating system."

  "Twenty-four, actually."

  "Good Lord! How did you cram all that data in a portable device?"

  ‘‘By compressing the reference files and—''

  "Ladies," Jack interrupted. "Do you mind if we get back to the small matter of a stalker?''

  Both women turned at his heavy-handed attempt to head off what had all the earmarks of an animated and lengthy discussion of bits and bytes.

  ‘‘How much did you hear of what Mac had to say about the men in this image?" he asked Ellie.

  Her glance flicked to the screen. It lingered on Scarface for long moments before shifting to Foster.

  "Enough to make me want to hurt those bas­tards," she said fiercely. "Really bad. Let's get to work, shall we?"

  Chapter 9

  While Ellie and the young grad student on her team assembled the equipment she wanted to divert from the archeological site to the river, Jack met with the back-up agent OMEGA had sent in. Normally, Jack worked alone. The fact that he'd requested backup hadn't surprised Lightning, coming as it did on the heels of Renegade's admission that he'd crossed the line with Ellie.

  After he'd finished tearing into Jack, Nick had sent one of the best. Claire Cantwell code name Cyrene, had lost her husband to a bungled attempt to free a group of oil executives being held in Malaysia by radical separatists. Burying her grief behind a serene facade, she'd schooled herself to become one of the world's foremost experts on hostage negotiation. A noted psychologist, she was also OMEGA's most skilled agent when it came to screening crowds and identifying potential troublemakers.

  Mackenzie respected and admired Renegade and Cyrene and looked forward to providing their on-scene electronics support. She'd just checked out a super-cool lie-detecting camera being developed by the Homeland Defense folks for airport use. The handy-dandy little device spotted deceivers by re­cording mild facial warming when under stress. She couldn't wait to have Cyrene test it out in her crowd surveillance. But when she checked into her room and made her initial on-site report, Lightning laid another task on her.

  Nick Jensen's face was displayed with crystal clar­ity on the small screen of her communications unit. Thoughtful. A bit grim. And so damned handsome Mackenzie was tempted to drag her thumb over the trackball to blur the image a bit. She couldn't quite handle the combined impact of his navy blazer, Windsor-knotted red silk tie and deep tan this early in the morning!

  "I want Foster on an electronic leash," Nick said. "He'd going to contact his hired gun sooner or later. He'll demand a progress report, or at least an expla­nation of why the hit's taking so long. Renegade will want to hear it when he does."

  "No problem." Her mind was already sorting through various technical options. "I'll look through my bag of tricks and see what we've got to play with."

  "Good."

  "Is that it?"

  "For now."

  "Roger."

  Signing off, Mackenzie considered the best ap­proach to Foster. Normally, field agents tagged tar­gets. In fact, the unwritten rule of thumb was that only field agents made direct contact with targets. But Renegade needed Cyrene for backup on the river. There was no reason Mackenzie couldn't ac­complish this little task herself.

  The background dossier she'd compiled on Daniel Foster indicated he was something of a playboy who went in for the coy, kittenish type. She didn't have a kittenish bone in her body, and she wasn't sure how well she could do coy, but she'd give both her best shot.

  Her first step was to trade her jeans and Nikes for strappy sandals and a sleeveless, V-neck dress with a matching short-sleeved jacket. The slinky black matte jersey defied wrinkles. It also clung to her slen­der curves.

  After unclipping her hair, Mac dragged a brush through the shoulder-length dark mass and applied more makeup than she usually wore. A quick survey in the bathroom mirror convinced her to take a page from her mentor's book.

  Maggie Sinclair, code name Chameleon, could as­sume a completely different personality with a few strategic accessories. At various times, Maggie had gone into the field disguised as a nun, a nuclear sci­entist and a high-priced call girl. On one memorable mission, she'd lifted a black lace garter belt and fish­net stockings from a shop, left a note for the owner to send the bill to the American consulate and waltzed into a smoke-filled waterfront dive that ca­tered to gunrunners and drug lords.

  What she needed, Mackenzie decided, was the equivalent of a black lace garter.

  She found just what she was looking for at the department store located in the massive River Center complex adjacent to the Menger. The underwire demi-bra transformed even her modest curves into plump, seductive mounds. Additional pads pushed her breasts up so high they almost spilled out of the V-neck. More than satisfied with the result, Macken­zie charged the miracle bra to her OMEGA expense account.

  She returned to the Menger and waited for the sporty little Mustang she'd arranged to have waiting at the south-side airport where Nick's private plane had landed this morning. The same valet who'd parked it in the Menger's garage less than an hour ago gawked at her dramatic cleavage when he deliv­ered the vehicle curbside.

  After she slid behind the wheel, Mackenzie placed her field case on the passenger seat and nipped down its side to access the keyboard. Dan Foster would be at work by now. According to the information she'd gleaned from her FBI contact, the two million Foster had collected from the insurance company after his wife's murder got him current on his construction company's outstanding loans but hadn't paid them off by any means. The man still had to work for a living.

  She accessed the address and phone number of his office, then put in a quick call. The helpful recep­tionist informed her Mr. Foster was on-site at a job on San Antonio's north side. Twenty minutes later, Mackenzie pulled up at the fenced construction site.

  Massive steel girders shot twenty-four stories into the cloudless blue sky. Super cranes hoisted beams to workers who appeared ant-like from the ground. Trucks raised clouds of dust as they rumbled in and out of the gate in the chain-link security fence.

  Once again Mackenzie reached into her case. She peeled off the adhesive backing on a tiny, transparent disc, then stack the disk to the back of her business card. Once attached, it became invisible. No one could tell it was there without a microscope.

  She had just climbed out of the Mustang when two men exited the trailer parked beside the gate. One carried a clipboard and wore a badge identifying him as some kind of inspector.

/>   The other was her quarry.

  Her stomach did a little flip. Foster's size didn't intimidate her. Nor did his rugged good looks im­press her. At all. It was just that the newspaper clip­pings and shots of Dan Foster the FBI had compiled did not do him justice.

  Those grainy black-and-whites had depicted the man in a tux, his wife at his side, attending some fancy do at the country club. Or in a dark suit, his face contorted in grief as he exited a limo after her funeral.

  This morning he was in boots, jeans and a hard hat. His rolled-up sleeves displayed trunk like arms that could only have been acquired by manhandling the dozers and cranes he now hired others to operate. Muscle had never particularly turned Mackenzie on, but she had to admit this guy's were impressive.

  "Mr. Foster?"

  He squinted through the dust. She started toward him, remembered her role and altered her stride to a hip-swinging glide.

  "I'm Mackenzie Blair, president of Blair Consult­ing-

  Foster accepted the business card she held out, but his glance made a detour to her chest and lingered for several seconds before dropping to examine the engraved lettering.

  "I called your office for an appointment, but your secretary said you'd be on-site all day and suggested I catch you here."

  "What can I do for you, Ms. Blair?"

  ‘‘My consulting firm that specializes in electronic communications. I'm looking to expand my opera­tions in this part of the country and would like to talk to you about the communications support you plan to put in this building."

  "I've already accepted a bid from a subcontractor to wire it."

  He was going with hard wire. Good. That gave her just opening she needed.

  "I think you should consider fiber optics instead of wire."

  "Well, I..."