Power Term: A Secret Service Romantic Suspense Series (Power Play Book 5)

by Kennedy L. Mitchell

  “That and his call logs and search history, but I doubt this was his only phone. There’s a second charger with no phone attached. This one was probably his personal one based on the pictures and the other government issued. That one seems to have been taken from the scene.” I set the phone back where I found it, plug it back in, and proceed to strip off the gloves. “There’s no sign of a struggle here or anywhere around the room. Based on the brain splatter along the wall behind him, this is where he was killed. So what? He was restrained while whoever put a gun barrel between his eyes and pulled the trigger?” I shake my head and move away from the desk to stare out the windows overlooking the back gardens. “Something doesn’t add up here, Tank. He’s dirty.”

  “No doubt about that, but that’s not why we’re here. Give me my phone so I can call the FBI. They’ll do their digging and find out what this sleaze was up to. I don’t think the evidence in this room will help us find Randi.”

  My heavy shoulders slump in defeat, knowing he’s right.

  “Time’s running out,” I say through grinding teeth. “She’s been gone for hours now. What if…? I have to find her.” Turning from the window, I allow the wide array of emotions to bleed through my eyes. “I have to find her.”

  “We will—”

  I jump with a giggled curse at the tickling sensations against my balls.

  “Um, you seem to be getting a call,” I say with a little bit of remorse. Jamming a hand down the front of my pants, I tug it free. I cringe and wipe the screen off on my pants before extending it between us. “Sorry, it was a little sweaty.”

  “You’re not sorry, you ass,” he snaps. “Thank fuck I still have gloves on.” Swiping a thumb across the screen, he answers the call and switches it to speakerphone. “What?”

  “I have something.” I snap my attention to the illuminated screen. My pulse races with hope at Smith’s words. “Benson asked me months ago, right after the Cairo incident, if I’d help find the leak. Since then I’ve watched, listened, and monitored every agent on the alpha and beta teams. There were ten possible agents on my list of suspects.”

  “Why didn’t you bring this evidence and list to me?” Tank questions, a hint of annoyance in his grumbled tone.

  “It was all circumstantial and a damn Hail Mary. I couldn’t tell you I suspected someone of treason because they littered one day at the park while walking their dog.”

  “Seriously? Litter?” I question, breaking into his speech.

  “It’s a lack of respect and empathy for what their actions will do on the environment.”

  “It’s a stretch,” I muse.

  “Exactly why I didn’t bring this list to you months ago. But now we’re here and need to find the fucker who leaked information regarding the Cairo trip. Something tells me the person behind that attack and the president being kidnapped are one and the same.”

  “Agreed,” Tank and I say in unison.

  “Give us the ten names and we can—” I start, but Smith continues, cutting me off.

  “I called the director—”

  “Your mother,” Tank clarifies.

  Cold silence pours from the phone. I smack Tank’s shoulder and flip him the bird. Idiot. He needs to keep his mouth shut until we get that fucking list of names. If the director was telling the truth about Smith once being in Homeland, I trust his gut, which means one of the men on his list is our guy. The one we have to locate to find Randi.

  And when we do, the fucker dies.

  “We thought you were the one who betrayed us,” I say to clarify why the director let their relationship slip. “It’s why we went there initially, since Tank couldn’t reach you.”

  “Me?” he says, wonder in his voice. “You think I’d betray the team, the president, my country?”

  “Someone did, and your disappearing acts haven’t helped you appear innocent in all this.”

  “Noted.” Smith clears his throat. “I spoke to the director and asked for backgrounds on the ten I suspected. Five are on the alpha team and have reported since the incident this morning. I’m willing to bet the person who took the president won’t leave her alone just to make appearances at work.”

  “Those five are out, then,” Tank says.

  “Agreed. Which leaves us five others, all on the beta team.”

  I want to strangle the phone. To slip through the damn device so I can wrap my hands around Smith’s neck and demand he spit it out. Fuck this explaining, I need a name. The name. The name of the man I have every intention of killing with my bare hands. And enjoying it. “Two were pronounced dead this morning. One is on vacation with his family. Two are alive and have checked in but haven’t been seen.”

  “Two,” I say on an easy breath. “We can cover two suspects. One of them—”

  “There’s more. I asked the director to look into their files. To locate how long they’d been on the team, where they came from, test scores, hell, anything. And that’s when she found an anomaly. One of the two is a recent hire. A hire that was personally vouched for by a part of the White House team—Secretary of State Todd Rosen.”

  Tank and I turn in silence to face the dead body. I cringe knowing what Smith is about to ask.

  “We need to talk to the secretary, find out why he referenced this agent and ordered him to be put on the beta team—”

  “That won’t happen,” I say as I massage both temples.

  “Aren’t you both on your way there?”

  “We’re here.”

  “Even better.”

  “He’s dead.”

  Silence. A heavy breath weighs down my lungs as I wait for his response to that bomb.

  “Have some of your contacts look into him,” Tank suggests. “We were sent here by a tip that Rosen wasn’t to be trusted. Based on his estate and finding him shot point-blank between the eyes, he was deep into some shady shit.” I narrow my eyes at Tank and his cursing. He’s really on edge if he keeps using language like that. Foul mouth and consistently irresponsible is my job, not his. “More than your normal politician, from what I can tell.”

  “Who’s the agent, Smith?” I demand, ripping the phone out of Tank’s hand. “Who is the final suspect on your list?”

  “I have a few… associates digging through the application and profile submitted to the agency when he applied. I already found one inconsistency, which I’m on my way to check out now.”

  “Where?” I ask.

  “The address listed on his application and the townhome I’ve followed him to on a few occasions for surveillance are different. I’m headed to the place where I know he lives instead of the one listed.”

  “Good idea.” Tank nods.

  Anger and frustration surge, making me tense and on edge. “Who’s the agent?” I beg to the phone. “Give me anything to go off of.”

  “If I tell you, do not engage with him until we know more. Do not call, do not search him out. If he knows we’re on to him and he has the president, he will kill her.”

  “I understand,” I mumble. “Who is it.”

  “Agent Ponder.”

  The name booms through my brain like a giant gong being struck. I stare at the phone; Smith’s voice is still pouring through, but I don’t hear any of it. I’m too busy flipping through every memory I have with Ponder in it, trying to come up with anything that will help us in our hunt for him.

  “After Saudi Arabia, he was openly angry at me for being in Randi’s room the night of the attack. At the time, I thought it was because he had a thing for her and didn’t want me around because of that. Which was why I told the beta team lead to move him to the shitty shifts and stations. I didn’t want him around her.” I shift my focus to the details surrounding our trip to Cairo. “There were several beta team agents sitting close when Tank and I discussed the new sniper placements outside the embassy. I don’t remember Ponder specifically, but he could’ve been sitting close enough, making him privy to the changes.” My eyes snap to Tank’s. “We’re missing a
big piece to this puzzle. The why? Why in the hell would Rosen go to so much trouble to get him on a Secret Service detail? Why try to abduct the president knowing the risks?”

  “He doesn’t want a female president?” Smith offers as an option.

  “That’s a weak reason to finagle your way onto the Secret Service when you could take her out anytime she was out in public.” Phone cradled in my hand, I pace from one end of the office to the other, carefully missing the shards of broken door still littering the ground. “It has to be more than sexist idealisms.”

  “Revenge.”

  I shake my head at Tank’s suggestion only to stop short. The rug catches beneath the rubber sole of my boots as I twist back the way I came. Eyes wide, I hold a breath to quiet the thundering in my chest at the new thought.

  “What if it’s not his revenge? What if it’s someone else’s revenge that he’s helping enact by taking the president? Someone we know would go to any lengths to see her miserable and taken out of the picture?”

  The corner of Tank’s lips curls in a disgusted sneer. “Whit.”

  I nod instead of answering out loud. Smith’s gruff voice blasts through the speaker, demanding to know who we’re talking about.

  “This asshat who’s had it out for Randi since she started campaigning with Birmingham. Shawn Whit was Kyle Birmingham’s original VP choice until Randi came into the picture. He’s resented her ever since and has done everything possible to destroy her, even going as far as poisoning her a while back hoping she’d be too sick to continue serving in the VP role. If he’s the one behind this, then Ponder isn’t doing this for himself.” I shake my head as all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. “He was hired.”

  “Shit,” Smith grunts. “I’m pulling up to the town house now. Doesn’t seem to be anyone home.”

  “Break in,” Tank commands.

  “Really?” The sarcasm in that one word makes a stiff chuckle erupt from my chest. “I was just going to knock and hope someone would let me in.”

  “Smith,” I say with surprise, blinking at the phone. “Was that a joke?” Maybe hell has frozen over.

  “I’ll let you know what I find. You do your digging on this Whit fucker. Maybe we can find something that will tell us where they took her. It can’t be far. That’s one thing we have going for us.”

  “Why do you say that? That they didn’t take her far?” Optimism surges at his claim. If she’s close, then we’ll get there in time. I can save her.

  “Just a hunch. If it were me, I’d want to spend what little time I had with her—knowing an army is out there looking for her—on fulfilling my objective.” And just like that, my rising optimism plummets, deflating me to the core once again. “No, he’ll want to torture—”

  “Call us when you have something.” Tank snatches the phone from my hand and hits the Off button while Smith continues describing all the ways he’d use his time with her, making her pay. “Don’t listen to him. Look, this guy here hasn’t been dead long. The larger puddles of blood aren’t even tacky yet. Which means if Ponder is our guy, he came here recently to tie up loose ends. We’ll get to her in time, Trey. I swear we will get to your girl before it’s too late.”

  I clear my throat. “Our girl.”

  After removing the black latex gloves, he slaps a hand on my shoulder and squeezes.

  “Your girl. Now let’s go somewhere we can do some digging on Whit while Smith checks out Ponder’s place. Your place or mine?”

  “Yours,” I say as I follow him out of the office. “Don’t forget to call the FBI. Maybe they can pull something from Rosen’s laptop or get a warrant for his phone records.”

  “Already sent the text,” Tank says, looking up from his phone with his thumbs still flying across the screen. “Come on, let’s go find that fucker Whit.”

  A slow sinister smile pulls up my lips, bunching my cheeks. “And then kill him.”

  Anticipation races through my veins as the vivid images of him bloody and beaten from my pounding fists flash through my thoughts. For too long that asshat has tormented Randi. For too long he’s gone unchecked.

  No longer.

  Today I execute justice for what he’s done to her and many others.

  Death.

  A nice slow, tormenting, grueling death.

  I should be terrified at the excitement and joy that brings me. But I’d sell my soul to the devil himself if it means getting Randi back unharmed.

  With Whit in the picture, that’s exactly what I might have to do to save her.

  Who needs a soul anyway?

  Chapter Nine

  Randi

  My ass slams to the unforgiving seat of the chair I’m to be secured to again. Ligaments and tendons stretch awkwardly, screaming in protest as both arms are wrenched behind me. Panic surges and kicks up my fight-or-flight instinct, supplying enough to fight against his hold. Not that it does much; his grip doesn’t even falter. A hard yank draws my hands farther back than my fatigued muscles can handle. I scream through clenched teeth as the discomfort turns unbearable.

  “Did you send the picture?” Shawn asks, like I’m not sitting here being manhandled to the equivalent of drawn and quartered. Well, hopefully not the quartered part. That would really suck. There’s no coming back from that.

  “Have to have your guts to live.” My head falls forward, rolling from side to side with each tug to my arms as the one wearing the head scarf secures the zip ties. Each breath hisses through my teeth as I breathe through the pain, not wanting to give them the satisfaction of hearing my cries again.

  “Yes, sent the picture,” says the still unknown traitor at my back before moving on to my ankles. With the last tie secured, he stands. With a minuscule nod at his work, he turns to Shawn. “Destroyed and ditched the phone a second after hitting Send. I’m not a damn amateur.”

  “Do you have another?” Shawn questions, a snap in his tone.

  What if I can get them to fight? That way they’d ignore me for a while, giving Trey more time to find and save me. Which I know they will. Trey, T, and the rest of my loyal agents will find me. I know it deep in my gut.

  The mystery man mumbles something I can’t make out with the cloth still secured around his face.

  “Take that shit off your face,” Shawn barks. “She dies in the end anyway. Doesn’t matter if she sees your face.”

  “Maybe it’s not me he’s worried about.” It’s a shot in the dark, thinking these two haven’t met before.

  “Shut the fuck—” Shawn bellows, his loud voice echoing in the small, now even more cramped room, only to be cut off.

  “She’s right.”

  “Boom.” Out of instinct, I attempt to raise a hand to high-five my captor only to remember it’s tied to the chair. “Imaginary high five, then.”

  “Shut up,” both men shout in my direction.

  At the taut tension and palpable anger filling the room, I seal my lips shut. I dart my somewhat blurry gaze from one man to the other, trying to judge how this will turn out.

  “You paid me to bring her to you and keep her compliant until the others come. That is what I’ve done and will do, but there is nothing in our agreement that states you get to know who I am.”

  “Wait,” I say more to myself than them, forgetting their demand for my silence. “If Shawn isn’t the one who helped you secure a position on the Secret Service team, then who did? This isn’t making a whole lot of sense. I feel like we need to back this—”

  His eyes narrow on me, almost like a silent command to shut the hell up. Which I do.

  Shawn adjusts in his more comfortable-looking chair a few feet from where I sit tied up. His gaze rakes the mystery man up and down before zeroing in on his face. “You were on her security team.” Shawn slides his hollow gaze to me. “That’s how you pulled the abduction off. Seems an elaborate ruse for taking one woman.”

  “The most protected woman on the planet,” he adds.

  “Who helped you?” Shawn
demands more than asks.

  “Doesn’t matter,” the masked man grumbles as he leans a shoulder against the far wall. The stance makes him appear to be calm, but the tension radiating off him, the tightness in his shoulders and crossed arms, tells a different story.

  “It does if it leads them back to you, to here.” Shawn stands, sliding both hands into the pockets of his dark-wash jeans. Guess he wasn’t joking earlier about having to change out of his puke-spattered slacks.

  “It won’t. I tied up those loose ends earlier.”

  “Except me,” Shawn bites out. “Am I a loose end after this?”

  “That’s the reason for the face wrap. This is how I’ve always done contracts that request the client to be on-site during the interrogation. It stays on so you can’t identify me even though others can if they put two and two together. Do not tell me what to do or how to do it. This is my domain. This is where I excel and why you paid me. Command me again and I’ll kill you, then her.”

  I shiver at the promise in his bored tone. There’s no doubt this man would withdraw the nine millimeter secured in his waistband and pop a bullet between Shawn’s brows without thinking twice.

  “Does he know about the other client who wanted me dead? The one who paid you for intel and helped you finagle your way onto the Secret Service?”

  If it’s possible, the man’s eyes harden more than before, that hatred zeroed in on me. Shoving off the wall, the mercenary strides to stand directly in front of my chair, the hard rubber of his boots grazing the bare tips of my toes. He pulls his fist back, readying a killing blow. I shy away, my eyes closing on instinct at the hit I know has the potential to loosen a few teeth. But instead he aims lower. That heavy fist sinks into my relaxed stomach, shoving every minuscule amount of air out of my lungs in a forceful heave.

  I can’t breathe.

  Eyes wide with panic, I try to suck in oxygen but can’t get anything down past the constriction in my throat. I gasp, cough, and squirm until my body responds to my desperate demands and eases the tight hold, allowing slivers of air to finally slip through.