by Vicki Hinze
The traffic light suspended above the road on Main Street swung like a kid on a playground swing. Gabby hung a left, dipped into the empty courthouse’s parking garage, and then parked in a slot next to the judges’ private elevator. Shortly, she passed Judge Powell’s old office, and a lump stuck in her throat. William Powell had been a good man. Stiffening, she walked on to her adjoining courtroom, bent low, and then tapped a button that opened a secret compartment under her bench. She placed the specimen into the cubby only she and the now-deceased Judge Powell knew existed, and then tucked notes of the test results inside the black leather notebook—the “gift from an angel” anonymously delivered to her office—that could prove helpful to Gabby. With luck, it would. But right now, she had no choice but to establish strict priorities, and anything ranking as “could” had to wait.
Beyond weary, she locked up and headed home. She’d grab something to eat on the way, shower and change clothes, and then return to the lab to wait out Dr. Erickson and reconnect with Home Base. She remembered Sybil’s warning—another thought she couldn’t shake.
She should activate Max.
Of course, she wouldn’t do it. Things were heating up too fast. She stared out the windshield at the Silver Spoon Café. The parking lot was full. Sheriff Coulter’s patrol car was parked next to the mayor’s Caddy. Her jaw clenched and she had to make herself stop grinding her teeth. “Maxwell Grayson, you have no idea what I go through for you.”
Max drained the bottle of beer and was about to signal the bartender for another when Brad Gibson circled the pool table and walked over to him, carrying a white envelope. “Agent Kincaid called and said to deliver this to you right away,” he said.
“Thanks.” Max nodded to the bar stool beside him. “Want a beer?”
“No, sir. I’ve got to get back and hit the books. One slip and she’ll cut my throat.”
Gabby. Gibson was talking about the SDU operative’s certification exam. “Or break your balls.”
“Most likely both, sir.” Gibson still felt the sting of his last meeting with her. He turned and left the bar.
Max opened the envelope, pulled out a brightly colored card. Gabby had remembered his birthday. As he read the words, his heart beat faster.
To my gorgeous husband,
I hope this birthday is filled with laughter and joy
and a lot of celebrating. But not too much
celebrating or too much joy—not without me.
Laughter is okay.
At the bottom, she’d handwritten a note:
Envision me there, now, dancing with my favorite
shoe-scum and looking forward to … Use your
imagination, Max, and remember, we’re very
creative.
Long, lush kisses and lots of love,
Gabby
Max stared at the card a long moment, willing his body to let go of the heat he was generating. He smiled to himself and tucked it into his inner jacket pocket. “Creative. Oh, yeah.” On a whim, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed her number.
She answered on the second ring. “Kincaid.”
His throat clutched. “I got your card.”
Gabby smiled and braked for a red light on Highway 98, two blocks east of Main. “Happy birthday, darling.” She glanced out the windshield to the rainy night. Thankfully, she had a little latitude, and the endearment wouldn’t surprise Max. Cell phone conversations were a snap to monitor, so the cover had to be accentuated.
“Thanks. I just had a beer with you.”
She smiled. “Did we dance?”
He dropped his voice, low and husky and hot. “Among other things.”
She turned the corner, drove down the block. The lights were on next door, at Candace’s house. “That sounds very interesting. I’d like to hear more, honey, but I’m in transit—need to stay focused on driving.” Repressed laughter shimmied in her voice. “How about I call you when I get home and we engage in a little phone sex?”
He stared at his reflection in a mirror above the bar. His ears were red and he was grinning like the village idiot. “You’re a walking violation to a man’s discipline. Have you no shame, woman?”
“None.” Three cars were parked in Candace’s driveway—one, a Mercedes belonging to Elizabeth Powell, Judge William Powell’s widow. “Love you.”
“Of course. I’m a loveable guy,” he said, then ended the call.
Grunting, Gabby stuffed the phone back into her purse. Just once, she wished he’d say he loved her, too. But he never did. Of course, he didn’t love her, but that was beside the point. In their cover, he should love her to distraction.
Turning into her gravel driveway, her lights shone down the length of Elizabeth’s Mercedes, and an unexpected shot of pure jealousy raced up her backbone. Elizabeth and William had been married twenty-five years. They’d had a history together that had spanned their entire lives, two great kids, and a lot of fun. They’d had home, family, marriage—a life.
Gabby had had a lot of lives, none of which had been her own, and she’d never had a relationship with Max or anyone else like Elizabeth and William’s—and feared she never would. Something hardened in her chest, and she avoided looking at her own dark house, reached up to the visor, and punched the button to open the garage door.
It isn’t your house, Gabby. It’s your cover’s house.
Either way, it was dark and empty. Her apartment in Georgetown, her cover house; it didn’t matter. It never mattered. All of her houses were always dark and empty.
Hey, hey, hey. What’s this? You have your work, Gabrielle Kincaid. That’s the way you wanted it, remember? You have exactly what you wanted.
She did. Yet maybe she had been a little shortsighted. She had but didn’t have Max. Had but didn’t have an intimate relationship with any man. Had but didn’t have a real life with a real family—good and bad and indifferent.
Grinding her teeth, she swept her wet hair back from her face, determined to leave this depressing pity party. “I need a vacation.” She watched the garage door glide open.
Her headlights reflected off the freezer and hot water heater onto the concrete floor.
On two sets of wet footprints.
Chapter Seven
The hair on Gabby’s neck stood on end. She couldn’t back out of the garage and go for help; not without a lot of explanations she couldn’t give.
The Special Detail Unit didn’t officially exist and fewer than a hundred people—all with security clearances exceeding Top Secret—ever had heard of it. Military members assigned to SDU were formally assigned to “Personnel” along with most “Intel” and “Black World, Special Operations” folks, where their classified jobs could be easily concealed in the interests of national security, and civilians like Gabby were intentionally buried in the system’s “Human Resources” maze. Good operatives had died to protect SDU’s anonymity. But she wasn’t eager to become one of them.
She tucked her Smith & Wesson into her waistband under the robe, wishing she’d kept on her wet shirt. Weapon access would have been so much easier.
One set of footprints led into the house. The other disappeared behind the water heater.
Fabulous. At first chance, the intruder by the heater would attack her from behind. She’d have to eliminate that threat without alerting the second person inside. The gun was not an option; no silencer. She needed the knife. She could just reach back for it, but it would be wiser to control the timing of the attack rather than to let the intruder choose it.
You’re going to wake up dead, woman.
Max’s warning replayed in her mind. She shut it out, took in three slow and steady, deep breaths. “Hold it together, Gabby. Focus. Focus. Focus …”
Feeling the familiar flood of calm that comes only with years of intense training and experience, she turned off the engine, got out, and then opened the back door and bent to the backseat. Her fingers closed around the knife.
A shoe squeaked on the flo
or behind her.
She spun around, saw his gun, and stopped. He stood too far away to disarm; she’d reacted too quickly. Her heart rate doubled. Adrenaline shot through her veins.
Dressed in black, ski mask to shoes, he motioned. “Drop whatever is in your hand.”
Gabby stashed the knife through a slit in her robe, let her car keys fall to the concrete floor. The tinny clang surprised him; he startled. “Now your weapon,” he said.
She forced herself to whisper brokenly, not wanting to alert the owner of that second set of prints. “I—I don’t have a weapon.”
He studied her for a long moment, dark eyes glaring, judging her, through two holes in the mask. She stretched her eyes wide, let her chin tremble, and hunched back against the car.
He believed her feigned fear, but not that she was weaponless. “Where’s your purse?”
“In—in the front seat.”
“Get it.”
Perfect. Better than she dared to hope. Gabby snagged her purse, turned, and feigned a slip. When he automatically charged forward to keep her from falling, she kneed him in the groin, pulled out the knife, and stabbed the man in the chest.
Stunned, he grabbed his chest, opened his mouth to scream. She had to stop him before he alerted the second intruder. Quickly and efficiently, she slashed at his neck.
The man slumped to the floor, dead.
Gabby turned her attention to the doorway from the garage into the house. She’d never make it to the back or front door undetected. Going in through the garage was risky, but it provided the best shot for catching the second intruder. Hopefully, she wouldn’t have to kill this one before she could question him.
She entered using normal tactics, gun first around the corner. No reaction from inside. Risking it, she peeked around the doorway. The light over the stove cast a sheen on the ceramic tile in the breakfast room. Wet marks. They led away from her, through the breakfast room, into the kitchen.
Her every sense heightened, every instinct alert, she eased inside, sliding her back against the rough, stippled wall. Nothing. Past the table and chairs, the hutch. Nothing. Off her right shoulder, the refrigerator motor clicked on and the icemaker dumped cubes into the bin. She nearly jumped out of her skin.
Focusing, she moved on, her footsteps silent. Near the corner, the sounds of rain outside grew louder. The back door must be open.
Afraid of falling for a deliberate trap, she maintained caution, checked above and below, and then made the last corner to the back door.
It stood wide open and the wet footprints continued outside on the concrete, off the edge of the covered porch to the wet patio.
He was either gone, or he wanted her to be convinced he had gone. From the size of his footprints, this second intruder had to also be a guy—or a woman who wore about a size twelve.
Tightening her grip on the .38, Gabby went back inside and locked the deadbolt on the door. Her fingers trembled on the bolt’s slide. Darkness wasn’t an asset to her anymore, so she flipped on the lights, pulled a methodical, deliberate search of every inch of the house, and then the attic. When convinced she had an all clear, she breathed easier. The second man had cut and run. “So much for the benefits of having a partner.”
Right now she didn’t need a partner. She needed luck. A lot of luck, to figure out who the hell these men were and why they wanted to kill her.
She returned to the closed garage and then searched the dead man. In his jacket’s left inside pocket, he had three sets of identification and two visas that looked totally authentic. But Gabby took a good look at his face and knew all of the identification was bogus.
The man she was looking at was Jaris Adahan, a Global Warrior on the Special Detail Unit’s watch list.
And he’d come to kill her.
Tom Hanks’s “Houston, we have a problem” ran through her mind. Boy, did she. A problem that carried ninety-percent odds of killing her.
Had the Global Warriors attempted to assassinate her because she was a judge looking into cases that might tie them to judicial corruption in Carnel Cove, Florida? Or did they want her dead because they had identified her as an SDU covert operative?
Chilling, but the truth didn’t matter. Either way, she was a compromised operative. Her cover was blown and someone, either a warrior or an SDU operative, would come for her and do the killing. She had to notify Home Base.
Her stomach knotted. Resisting panic—she’d known the risks before getting into SDU and she’d elected to take them—she laid out her options. The secure phone line in the house could have been tampered with or corrupted; that left her one choice: the remote viewer. She got back into the Jeep and drove to the lab.
Dr. Erickson’s silver Volvo was still parked in the lot. Neck-deep in her own problems now, she had little patience for him or his. She pulled out her cell phone and called Candace—the only one with total control of the lab.
“Hello.”
“It’s me,” Gabby said, watching the trees bend under the forceful winds. “Listen, I have an emergency. Get Erickson out of the lab. He’s parked and I need to get in there now.”
“Gabby, are you okay?”
I just killed an enemy of the United States and I’m about to be rewarded for it by being killed myself. Of course, I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be okay? “I’m fine. Just get Erickson out fast, Candace.”
“But he’s securing the lab. Haven’t you heard? Warnings are up all along the Emerald Coast. Hurricane Darla’s going to hit us within twelve hours.”
Another complication. Terrific. “That’s in twelve hours. I need lab access now.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Candace said, picking up on the urgency in Gabby’s tone. “Do you need help? Elizabeth and I—”
“Not at the moment.” Gabby hesitated, then went on. “I think Max is coming home.”
“You’re kidding.” Candace’s voice sounded deadpan flat.
Gabby clenched her teeth. She should have had him come to the Cove sooner. So his visiting wouldn’t seem so strange. Honest to God, she never had intended to activate him, but now she had no choice. “I’m serious,” she said, falling into his cover of helping Third World countries develop water purification systems. Currently, he was supposed to be in Africa. “He’s finally at a point on the project where he can take a break.”
“I’ll be damned. I thought he was a figment of your imagination,” Candace said. “Hey, Elizabeth. Max is coming home.” A pause and then, “I swear, Gabby just told me herself.”
They sounded delighted. Elated, even. But then they had no idea what his “coming home” really meant. Gabby’s stomach hollowed. She gritted her teeth, disconnected, and then forced her mind to the immediate challenge and away from her personal crisis. Tapping the butt of the phone against the steering wheel, she waited for Erickson to leave the building.
Her thoughts raced and dragged her into despair. Not one scenario left her alive.
Erickson walked out of the building, ducking under a folded newspaper. The wind caught it, ripped it from his hands, and it tumbled across the parking lot. He ran for his Volvo, parked under an amber street lamp. When he cranked the engine and hit the lights, Gabby whispered, “Bless you, Candace.”
Erickson finally pulled out of the lot, passed the neon Logan Industries sign, and hooked a left on to Highway 98, the main thoroughfare in Carnel Cove. His tires kicked up a spray of water; then, seconds later, his taillights disappeared from sight. Gabby waited another flash and then put on her headgear, adjusted the lip mike, and made for the lab door.
Minutes later, for the second time that night, she stood at the steel lab table staring up at the ceiling to communicate with Home Base through the remote viewer. “I need a direct feed to Commander Conlee.”
“He isn’t available, Lady Justice,” the Intel monitor said, clearly recognizing her voice from her earlier transmission.
Isn’t available? He was always available. “Is he dead?”
“No,
ma’am. He’s in conference with the President.”
Great. Just great. “Okay, fine. I want you to record what I’m telling you and get it to Lieutenant Gibson. Tell him that I don’t care how he does it, but I want this message in the commander’s hands within the next ten minutes. Tell him he’s got an SCO in a Code Red.”
Hearing Senior Covert Operative and Code Red in a single statement conjured an immediate reaction in the man. “I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am.” The timbre of his voice proved he genuinely meant it. “Are you coding the operative or the mission?”
She, not the mission, had become the high-risk liability. Though sorry, too—they were discussing her life—she refused to so much as blink. “The operative.” She swiped at her forehead, unsure whether she was mopping at sweat or raindrops. “The mission remains at Level Three.” Mid-level. Important, but not a situation currently threatening widespread destruction of life or assets. Those challenges were deemed Level Five missions.
The operative. They both knew what that meant. Her death was inevitable. The only question was would hostile or friendly forces kill her?
“Are you ready to record, ma’am?”
She cleared her throat, debating. If she disclosed Judge Powell’s test results, she would be dead before daybreak, and she needed time to find a way to survive, if one existed. She needed help. She needed Max. She hadn’t wanted him involved in any of her missions. The risks were too great. But this wasn’t just about what she wanted for him anymore. Her back was against the wall and her ass was on the line.
Probably far more than just her life was on the line. They weren’t here just to kill her. They were here to kill others. Lots of others. They’re Global Warriors. No one hired Global Warriors for a single hit—not even for a senior SDU operative. They would kill others unless stopped, and she couldn’t stop them alone. Max was her only logical course of action. She blew out a silent breath and looked up at the remove viewer. “I’m ready whenever you are.”
