by Vicki Hinze
Max rested a hand on his knee. “After you talked with Judge Powell, he turned up dead.”
“Yes!” The agony of that had David dragging in a breath that heaved his chest. “I gathered all the gossip about his death at the Silver Spoon, and I found out he had been with the mayor, Judge Abernathy, and Carl Blake when he had contracted the infection. What was I supposed to do then? There was no one left to talk to about this.”
“You could have talked with Jackson Coulter.” Gabby was certain that the sheriff wasn’t in this Consortium. Not because she knew the man so well, but because she knew his wife. Darlene Coulter wouldn’t tolerate her husband being involved in anything like this. She was too much the idealist.
“Jackson would have been fired on the spot and nothing would have changed—except the Consortium would have had those bastard Warriors kill him and me, and I’d be responsible for leaving Darlene without a husband and their daughter without a father.”
“What about Judge Abernathy?” Gabby had been sent here to investigate him, and David seemed to have a wealth of insight on others. Maybe he did on Abernathy, too.
“Before his wife and son were killed, I might have gone to him,” Erickson said bluntly. “But something happened to him after that. It wasn’t just grief. Trust me, I understand grief. He was … different.”
Max stood up. “We’ll work on putting the pieces together. You need to get with Keith at Candace’s and put your heads together. What he did didn’t work. You say what you did didn’t work. But the combination of what both of you did did work. Figure out why so we can stop other people from dying.”
“All right.” David stood up and shrugged out of his lab coat. “I realize my reputation is shot because of this. But I swear to God, I just didn’t know what else to do. I had to continue my research. I had to.”
“For Jeremy,” Gabby said. “I understand. We’ll sort it all out. Just get with Keith and find out what the two of you did right.”
David left the lab.
Gabby and Max stood squared off, facing each other. “It’s plausible, Max.”
“Yeah, it is.” Max moved toward the lab table, pulled out an earpiece and lip mike, and touched base with Commander Conlee. “Did you get all that?”
“Yes, we did,” Conlee said. Obviously, Intel had alerted him to monitor the moment Max and Gabby had entered the lab. “Do you think he’s shooting straight?”
“Absolutely, I do. So does Gabby.”
Mentioning her earned him a grunt, but no surprise and no immediate threats. “Intel is already working on establishing firm connections between the thefts and the incidents.”
“We need a stock analysis of the California vineyards. That could be our connection.”
“Gibson is on that. We’re running cotton, too. That’s a major crop in Texas, and the growers are already reporting unusually high stats on crop failure. Same goes with the orange groves in Florida.”
“My gut’s telling me these incidents are all connected to this Consortium, Commander.”
“I’ve suspected it since February, when William Powell died,” he admitted. “Get me the evidence to prove it.”
Oh, yes. He’d created a sleeper cell in Carnel Cove of subject matter experts, all right. Likely he did intend to move Home Base here, too. Killing multiple birds with one stone was Conlee’s style. “Yes, sir.”
Max removed the earpiece and mike. Gabby stood waiting for him at the door leaving the lab. He walked over.
“Any flak about me not being dead yet?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Well, we’ll take that as a good sign and press on.” She walked out of the lab, and headed down the hallway toward the exit.
“My head’s still spinning, putting everything together.” Max fell into step beside her. Reaching to clasp her hand seemed natural. “Where do we go first?”
“To talk with Judge Abernathy.” With her free hand, Gabby pulled her cell phone out of her handbag, but she waited until they were seated in the Jeep to dial. Seconds later, the call connected. “Miranda, it’s Gabby.”
“Hi. You okay?”
“I can’t remember spit, but Max is watching out for me, so I’m fine.” That earned her hand a gentle squeeze from Max, who clearly appreciated the trust. “Listen, Miranda, I need some information fast. There’s no time to research. What happened to Judge Abernathy’s family? Do you know?”
“Of course. They were killed in a car accident by a drunk driver,” she said. “He rammed them right through the guardrail on the Mid-bay Bridge.”
“Where’s that?”
“Next door, in Okaloosa County. The bridge connects Destin to Niceville. Liz, Judge Abernathy’s wife, had a fondness for charter fishing. She and their son, Douglas, used to go often. That’s where they’d been—on a fishing trip. The accident happened on the way home.”
“Who was the drunk driver?”
“That I don’t know. But I’ll check and call you back. You on your cell?”
“Yeah.” Gabby looked over at Max, driving toward Abernathy’s house.
“Give me a few minutes to find a computer that isn’t tied up with the phone chain evacuation plans, or one I can commandeer.”
“Thanks.” Gabby looked at Max just as he hit his right blinker. “Where are you going?”
“Abernathy’s.”
“He’s rarely at home these days, Max. He spends most of his time at the cabin.” She gave him directions that had him driving north, out of Carnel Cove.
A few minutes later, the cell phone rang. Gabby answered. “Hello.”
“Sebastian Cabot was the driver,” Miranda said. “But if you’re hoping to talk to him, you’re out of luck.”
“Why is that?” Gabby glanced at her watch. Ten forty-five. How long would it take to stop all those trucks?
“Sebastian Cabot is dead, Gabby.”
Gabby relayed that to Max, and then asked Miranda, “What happened to him?” Was his death due to natural causes, or the Consortium’s Warriors?
“He drove off a cliff in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California.”
“Was he drunk?”
“No, he wasn’t. A trucker saw it happen. He said Cabot deliberately drove off the cliff. Never hit his brakes or tried to turn.”
Gabby’s stomach dropped and then filled with acid. An ice-cold warning flooded her. “When did this happen, Miranda?”
“Let me see … July. July fourth.” She paused. “Hell of a way to celebrate Independence Day, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Thoughtful, Gabby agreed. “Thanks, Miranda.”
“Sure thing.”
Gabby put down the phone, looked at Max who anxiously waited. “Sebastian Cabot died by suicide the day of the biological outbreaks in California. Max, it’s a long shot, but I want to follow a hunch. How do I reach Conlee?”
“Are you nuts?” He clasped her hand, squeezed. “Gabby, mentioning you and reminding him that you’re still alive is one thing. Getting into his face with direct contact is another. It’s definitely not in our best interests. Definitely not.”
“If I’m right, it’s in America’s best interests, and that supercedes us.” She shook doubt off her shoulders like a wet dog slings water. “Give me the number.”
Max reeled it off, and Gabby dialed. When Conlee answered the phone, she hoped she wasn’t making the second-biggest mistake of her life. If he asked her anything outside the scope of Max’s briefing, she was screwed. Of course, he wanted her dead anyway, so when you got right down to it, what else did she have to lose? “Commander, it’s Lady Justice.”
“Yes.”
If he was stunned, he didn’t sound it. She licked at her lips; her mouth suddenly had gone dry. “Have Intel run a manual check on the security tapes for both ends of that July fourth Paris flight, and on the customs’ U.S./Mexico and U.S./Canada borders crossing tapes.”
“What are they looking for?”
“Jaris Adahan, other Global Warriors on
the watch list, and Sebastian Cabot.”
“Who is Cabot?”
“The drunk driver who killed Judge Abernathy’s wife and son. He deliberately drove off a cliff in California on July fourth. What he was doing in California is still a mystery, but my instincts are shouting that there’s nothing natural about the grape louse infestation in Napa Valley. He had access.”
“So did millions of other people, Gabby.”
“True, but they didn’t have a direct-link connection to a judge who fixed cases on three suspected Global Warriors.” She spoke with a certainty that came across stronger than her current evidence warranted. “They’re biological attacks, sir. And they’re all connected.”
“You have proof of that?”
Did she? Maybe she did. Somewhere. “In progress, sir.”
“I see,” Conlee said, then paused for a moment. “It’s the economy.”
The Consortium David Erickson had warned them about. “Exactly, sir.”
“Why aren’t you dead?”
“I told Grayson he could kill me later. There’s too much work for him to do alone right now, and bringing in someone to replace me wouldn’t be an efficient use of manpower for interacting with the locals. They’re good people, but they close ranks against outsiders.”
“I see.”
She didn’t know what to make of that, but brazened it out. “If you intend to send Housekeeping for me and Max, give us forty-eight hours first. Otherwise, we don’t stand a chance of putting this all together for you, and I guarantee that you won’t be able to do it yourself. There are too many threads, Commander, and America will get screwed.”
He didn’t respond. Just disconnected the phone.
“Well?” Max asked. “Did he agree to wait?”
“No, but he didn’t refuse.”
“So we don’t know if he’s sending a second team in to wipe us out or not?”
“Unfortunately, we don’t,” she said, gently patting his hand to soften the blow. “Max?”
“Yeah?” He looked from the road to her.
“Either way, I’m glad you’re with me.” Her expression crumbled. “I don’t mean that I want you dead, I don’t. It’s just that something this awful, well, it’s—it’s … well, you know. It’s nice to have someone special with me.”
“Special?” He looked pleased and as dopey as Jonathan Westford when he looked at Sybil sometimes. Absolutely awed.
Which was really kind of wonderful when that look was coming in your direction. “Very special.”
He brought her hand to his mouth and brushed a kiss to her knuckles. “Yeah, I know what you mean. I don’t want you dead, either. But, well, me, too.”
“Yeah?” She felt herself smile and bit down on her lips.
“Oh, yeah.”
Dopey was looking better all the time. She could get used to it. Hell, she could probably get addicted to it.
And to him.
Chapter Thirty-three
Three miles north of the gulf, Sheriff Coulter intercepted Max and Gabby in his patrol car. Lights flashing, sirens wailing, he pulled them over.
Max veered over onto the shoulder of the road, and Jackson stopped alongside. Both men lowered windows, and Jackson shouted across the car. “Half hour ago, Darlene radioed that Doc Erickson warned us the low-income housing unit just north of here was high-risk. Bobby and some volunteers got right on it, and one of Blake’s truck drivers said he was ordered to go directly there and spray, even though it wasn’t on his list.”
“Who issued the order?”
“We don’t know. A garden-variety-looking guy in a FEMA jacket,” Jackson said. “But it wasn’t Stan Mullin, Max. I’ve been looking, but he seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. Bobby and crew are nearly through evacuating.”
“We’ll keep an eye out.” Max tapped the gearshift back into drive.
“That second Warrior,” Gabby said, gritting her teeth.
Pulling back onto the road behind Jackson, Max stomped the gas. “That’d be my guess.”
At a fork in the road, Jackson veered left; Max, right. When he drove over a crest, a white truck that had been parked alongside the road pulled in behind him. Max watched the rearview and quickly got agitated. “The idiot is trying to crawl up my butt.” He tapped his brakes, but the jerk didn’t back off.
The road leveled, and the truck whipped into the left lane to pass him. Max saw a gun barrel aimed his way through the passenger’s window. “Get down!” He shoved Gabby into a crouch and swerved onto the grassy shoulder.
The masked shooter changed his aim and rapidly fired, shooting out the left rear and then front tire. The Jeep pitched wildly, and Max fought to keep it on the road. The bandage on his arm stained bright red.
Gabby raised her gun and put two bullets through the truck’s rear window. Unfortunately it was an extended cab with tinted windows, and she’d not gotten a clear shot at the driver; he gunned the truck. His tires screeched and he pulled away, out of range.
“Get going, Max. We’re not going to catch that Warrior jerk sitting here parked in the grass.” She braced on the dashboard, steadying her aim. “I’m tired of this ass trying to kill me.”
“Honey, we’re in a Jeep. He’s in a V-eight. We’re not going to catch him.”
She looked over at Max, then at the blood soaking his arm, and her face paled. “Are you okay?”
“I just opened the wound. It’s all right.”
“Let me fix it. There’s a first-aid kit in the back.”
Max agreed, more to reassure Gabby he was fine than because the bandage was in dire need of changing. She looked genuinely worried about him, and there was a part of him that was awed by that. Awed and humbled.
When it was done and she had gotten some of her color back, he said, “Now what do we do about the flats? We’ve only got one spare.”
“One spare and a case of tire inflators. That’ll get us to Abernathy’s camp.”
“You’re a hell of a woman, Gabby Kincaid.” Max smiled.
“Of course.” She smiled back, her heart full. “About time you noticed.”
At just after six P.M., Max spotted the dirt road that led to Abernathy’s cabin on Clearwater Lake and turned. It was narrow, and reedy weeds spiked up beside shallow drainage ditches that ran alongside the road. Hurricane Darla’s remnants were still being felt. The ditches were full and the water gushed through them at a good clip, keeping the muddy roadway passable, provided you were in four-wheel drive.
“That’s it.” Gabby pointed to a black mailbox on a post that stood beside a five-foot break in the thick trees that passed for a trail up to the cabin itself.
Max turned then drove to the cabin. It was wooden, freshly stained a cool beige, with a front porch that ran the length of the house. Gabby knocked on the front door.
No one answered.
She rapped again, and they waited.
Still no one answered.
“Let’s try around back.”
They stepped off the porch and made their way around the side of the cabin to the rear. Beyond a stretch of cleared lawn was a deep area that had been left natural and led to the lake. At the shoreline, a long wooden dock led out over the water. Birds chirped in the oaks and pines, squirrels jumped tree to tree overhead, and the sounds of the water lapping against the wooden dock carried back to where they stood. Under ordinary circumstances, it would have been a welcome retreat and a soothing place to be.
Today, it was not.
Gabby tried the back door. It wasn’t locked. She peeked inside. “Judge Abernathy?”
No answer.
Max headed toward the water. There was no boat at the dock. Scanning the lake, he saw several little bends, and in one, he glimpsed a boat’s stern. “He’s on the water, Gabby.”
Gabby cupped her hand over her eyes and squinted against the glare of the low-slung sun. Judge Abernathy was in the boat and slumped halfway over its side. “He’s in trouble.”
&nbs
p; They ran full out across the wet grass and down the wooden dock; in midair, just before they plunged into the water, Gabby screamed, “Max, can I swim?”
“Yes!”
She hit the water, sank beneath it. It should have been warm—it was August, for pity’s sake—but the storm had dumped so much rain and stirred up the lake, the water felt frigid. Don’t panic, you can swim. Just do it. She broke the surface and took a stroke. When she didn’t sink, she took another.
Max reached the boat first. He pulled himself up and over its side. When Gabby grabbed hold of the hull, Max had his fingers in place on Abernathy’s throat, checking for a pulse at his carotid. “Well?” she asked, breathless and swiping water from her face.
Sober, Max looked down at her. Whatever Abernathy had known was lost. “He’s dead.”
Gabby’s insides turned to ice. Treading water at the side of the boat, she looked at Abernathy’s neck. “Oh, Max.”
“What?”
“Mosquito bites. Three of them.” She looked up at him, hunched over Abernathy’s back to see his neck. “Just like Judge Powell.”
Max did a quick check of Abernathy’s nails, eyes, and joint movements. “Maybe not the guy in the truck. The judge has been dead since early morning, I’d guess.”
Gabby caught a glimpse of Abernathy’s hiking boot. It was brown with thick, heavy-tread soles that cut deep. Treads that were caked with red clay.
She shot a glance back at the shore, looking for breaks in the weedy grass that lined the lake edge. “Max, there’s red clay here. His shoes are covered with red clay.”
“Yeah?” Max looked at her over the side of the boat, obviously not following.
“At the cove, the dirt is sandy, not red clay.”
He tugged his clinging shirt away from his body. “What’s your point, Gabby?”
“Mayor Faulkner and Carl and Sissy Blake were at Cove Park, when we were organizing the evacuation. Their shoes were all covered with red clay.”
“Honey, the dirt in half this county is red clay. So Faulkner and the Blakes were somewhere in it, but that doesn’t mean they were here.”
