by Low, Gennita
“When she turned into the parking lot next to Starbucks,” Bella confessed, tucking her chin in shame.
“Then you never actually saw her get out of her car?”
“No.”
“Have you tried calling her at all? Has she answered her phone for you?”
“All I get is her voice mail. Maybe her battery died.”
“She charged it all night. You were supposed to stay together,” he added on a scolding note.
“Well, she’s got Friend Finder on her phone. Can’t we find her that way?”
“The app doesn’t work when her phone’s turned off. It put her last location at the Wannamaker parking lot.”
At least that made sense. “She’s bound to be here somewhere.”
“Tell me you left your keys for the Escort here at the house,” Vinny demanded.
“They’re on my dresser,” she told him.
“Good. I’m coming to pick you up. Wait right inside the door at Starbucks and keep trying Lia’s number. Let me know if you get through to her.”
“Okay.” She ended the call and met Robert’s worried blue stare. “You’d better disappear,” she warned. “My brother’s on his way and you don’t want to meet him right now.”
Robert looked puzzled. “Does his wife do this often?”
“Um, no, I don’t think so. But I have a bad feeling about this.” For some reason, her thoughts kept circling back to Lia’s interview with Rawlings yesterday. If that man harbored a secret he thought Lia might reveal—a secret that could cost him the vice presidency—wouldn’t he take measures to try and stop her? “You’d better go, Robert.” She slipped off her stool, pecked his cheek, and went to wait by the door.
Out the corner of her eye, she could see Robert studying her in the same protective way that Vinny watched her. She dialed Lia’s number again, to the same result. When her Escort drew alongside the building minutes later, she sent Robert an apologetic wave, dashed outside and slipped into the passenger seat.
The set of Vinny’s jaw warned her not to speak unless spoken to. He wordlessly peeled out, turned left at the next intersection and headed for the Wannamaker parking lot. They circled it twice, keeping a sharp eye out for Lia’s Kia Soul. It wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Vinny braked next to the parking attendant’s little hut. “Excuse me,” he called through his lowered window. “Do you remember an orange Kia Soul entering or leaving this lot in the last couple of hours?”
“Uh, yeah actually.” A young man with a bad case of acne leaned out of his window. “Some guy followed her in here. I figured it had to be her husband cause he drove off with her car and left his here.”
“I’m her husband,” Vinny snarled at the young man. “Show me where this guy’s car is. What did he look like?”
A minute later, Vinny was walking around an ugly, beat up Volvo, memorizing every detail about it, and bending to inspect the plates. Bella hugged herself in her seat trying to quell the tremors that had started radiating from her belly. Vinny was calmer than she thought he would be. Being a SEAL must have taught him to control his Italian temper, but she would almost prefer to see him yelling and pitching a fit than looking gray around the gills, his eyes dark with confusion. What, did he think, even for one moment, that Ophelia had run off with another man?
“He switched the plates,” Vinny volunteered, sliding back behind the wheel and gesturing to the back of the ugly sedan. He pulled out his cell phone.
Bella’s gaze flew back to the plates on the Volvo. I XPOZ U. Now, why hadn’t she noticed that? “Vinny, I have to tell you something,” she volunteered, a shiver running up her spine.
At the verge of placing a call, he cast her a distracted glance. “What?”
“I might know who’s behind this.”
His dark pupils seemed to expand as they focused on her. She had his full attention now. “Talk,” he ordered with so much intensity that she had to swallow to find her voice.
With their car fogging up as it idled in the parking lot, she relayed the story of their interview of Rawlings the day before. The words tumbling out of Bella’s mouth made Vinny more tense than ever. When she mentioned Rawlings’ name, he turned as white as a sheet.
“Oh, Jesus,” he moaned when she told him how they’d hidden in the office building and how they’d overheard Rawlings’ assistant say that they’d taken care of the leak. “I filmed the whole interview. I have it at home on my camera,” she added.
Vinny scrubbed a hand over his face. She thought he might call 9-1-1 as soon as he recovered or drive like a bat out of hell to their mother’s house. Instead, he accessed his contacts on his phone and placed a call. “Sir,” he croaked in a voice that radiated alarm. “Tell me you didn’t give the book to NCIS yet,” he pleaded.
Bella had no idea what book he was talking about.
“She interviewed him yesterday,” he blurted, relaying what she’d just told him to someone she figured he worked with. “And now she’s missing—gone. Some guy grabbed her in a parking lot a couple of hours ago while she was out shopping. He took off with her in her car, but her phone’s turned off, so I can’t find her.”
Vinny couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of his mouth. He had to be dreaming. It wouldn’t be the first time the risks Ophelia took left him bathing in a cold sweat. But if this was a dream, he wasn’t able to rouse from it.
His CO’s voice seemed to be coming at him from a great distance. “Call the police,” Joe Montgomery urged, his calm, implacable voice helping to steady Vinny’s thudding heart. “Tell them Lia’s missing. Have them put out an APB on her vehicle and look for evidence, but don’t tell them your suspicions about Rawlings or he’ll find out that we’re on to him. I was planning to fly up there for Staskiewicz’s funeral tomorrow,” Joe added, “but now I’ll grab the first hop out of here, bringing Senior Chief McGuire and Chief Harlan with me. We’ll come straight to you. In the meantime, I have an idea that should keep Rawlings from hurting Ophelia. I’ll text you his response as soon as I get it.”
“Thank you, sir.” The phone clicked in his ear. In his shock, it took Vinny a second to recollect what to do next. With fingers that shook, he dialed 9-1-1.
Oh, God, Ophelia. Where are you?
To an apathetic operator, he reported Lia’s abduction, said he would wait in the Wannamaker parking lot for the cops to come, and hung up.
Too overwrought to do anything but stare up at the overcast sky, it occurred to him that his whole world was falling apart, and he was helpless to do anything about it. The sound of Bella stifling a sob wrested him from his self-absorption.
“This is all my fault!” his sister wailed, burying her face into her hands.
He palmed the back of her head and pulled it toward his chest to give and receive a much-needed hug. “It’s not your fault,” he assured her while realizing that Bella might have been kidnapped, too, if the women hadn’t gone their separate ways.
Hell, if anyone was to blame, it was Ophelia herself for refusing to recognize when she was out of her league. Exposing corruption was almost every bit as dangerous as killing or capturing terrorists. But whereas Vinny claimed the advantage of training and teammates, Ophelia worked utterly alone. Even when she ought to have told her husband what she was up to, she kept it to herself for fear that he would interfere.
Damn right he would have interfered. What the hell had she been thinking trying to pull Jay Rawlings off the pedestal he’d built for himself? Powerful men did not take lightly to having the skeletons pulled from their closets. Just look at what had happened to Staskiewicz. But then she probably hadn’t made that connection between Rawlings and the former SEAL. He couldn’t begin to wonder what was happening in her head right now. She had to be terrified…
He slammed a lid down on the errant thought that she might not even be alive. Of course she was alive. And if he and his commander had any say so, she was going to stay alive.
And if Rawlings dared to silence the wife
of a Navy SEAL, then he would soon wish that he was dead.
*
“You have a personal call on line three, sir.” The voice of Jay Rawlings secretary and lunchtime playmate purred over the intercom on Jay’s office phone in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Personal call? Working his way through proposed legislative revisions, Jay tore himself from the tome before him. His heart gave a funny flip as he considered whether the call might have anything to do with Ophelia Price’s disappearance—of course not. No one would have connected him to her abduction, and Collum would have called his cell phone, as he’d done earlier to report that only Miss Price had been abducted. She and her intern had split up, forcing their hit man to pursue just Miss Price. He would have to go back for the intern later.
“This is Jay Rawlings,” he said, shaking off his prickle of concern and answering the call.
“Jay, this is a blast from the past. Joe Montgomery here. We worked together in Iraq when I was with SEAL Team Three. You knew me as Monty, remember?”
However friendly-sounding, the baritone voice of the golden haired lieutenant who’d followed his orders in Operation Lights Out doused Jay in an icy shock. “Monty,” he stammered, finding with difficulty his usual glib tongue. “How the hell are you?”
“Well, I’ve been better, Jay. Don’t know if you heard about it, but one of the guys in our old squad was murdered just down the road from you, in Philly—John Staskiewicz. Remember him?”
“Sure, I remember John. I hadn’t heard that news. How awful. What happened?”
“Some thugs broke into his house and caught him off guard.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Yeah, I’m on my way to his funeral. It’s up in your neck of the woods. Now that you know, maybe I’ll run into you there.”
“Oh, well, I’ll have to think about it. Awfully nice of you to pay your respects, though. I take it you and John have stayed in touch?” Christ, had all the SEALs collaborated against him and not just John? Was that how Ophelia Price had come to hear the rumors she’d mentioned? The phone went slippery in his sweating hand.
“No, not really,” Monty said, leaving Jay weak with relief. “But, you know, we’re a tight-knit community, which is probably why John left me this book that he’d written. I’m not sure what to do with it.”
The blood in Jay’s veins turned to ice as his greatest fears took fearsome form. That exposé that John Staskiewicz had threatened to write if Jay became the lieutenant governor must have made it farther than his computer, stolen and destroyed the night he’d been killed. Jay hadn’t taken precautions soon enough. “Oh?” he said, his voice cracking.
“It’s all about that op that went bad, Operation Lights Out,” Joe added, confirming Jay’s guess. “He described you as a cold-blooded killer, Jay. You know we SEALs take the code of silence fairly seriously, but John didn’t care much for your politics. It’s pretty clear he intended for his book to halt your ascent up the political ladder.”
Jay swallowed against his dry throat. “What are you going to do with it?” he croaked.
“Well, that depends.” Monty’s answer made his heart thud uncertainly. “As it turns out, you’ve got something I need. Maybe we can come to an agreement.”
“What have I got?” Jay swam in a cold sweat. The smooth talking SOB dared to blackmail him?
“The journalist, Ophelia Price. I’ll give you the manuscript in exchange for her safe return.”
“I’ve never heard of her.” Jay pretended bafflement, even as the walls of his office seemed to shimmer like sand in the desert. How the hell had Monty put two and two together so quickly? Obviously the four-man firing squad he’d directed in Iraq had kept in touch all these years. What’s more, they’d planned to expose him all along, involving the journalist to help them publicize their allegations.
“You know exactly who I’m talking about,” Monty insisted. “Unfortunately, what you didn’t know when you arranged to make her disappear, is that Ophelia Price is my sister-in-law.”
“What?” Jay clapped a hand to his damp forehead.
“And as much as I’d like to honor John’s memory by seeing his book published and your career go up in smoke, my wife would throw me out if I didn’t get her sister back safe and sound. So here’s the deal, Jay…”
With the phone clasped to his ear, Jay stared dazedly out the window praying for an acceptable ultimatum.
“You show up at John’s funeral with Ophelia Price safely ensconced in your car; I’ll show up with the manuscript, and we’ll do a trade. How’s that? You get to salvage your career, and I get to salvage my marriage. Fair enough?”
Jay gave one more stab at protesting his innocence. “I don’t know what in hell you’re talking about,” he growled.
“Well, in that case, you leave me no choice. I’ll make copies of the manuscript right now and mail them to The New York Times and The Washington Post. You’ll be dead in the water by this time tomorrow. When Ophelia’s body is found, you’ll be faced with the death penalty, which I understand you supported in your bid for lieutenant governor. Good talking to you, Jay.”
“Wait!” Jay blurted the word before he’d made a decision as to what to say, what to do. “How do I know you haven’t made a copy of the book already, or that you won’t expose me later?”
“Gee, I hadn’t thought of that,” Monty said with a heavy dose of sarcasm. “I guess you don’t know. Either your career goes up in flames today or sometime further down the road. I’d guess the timeline’s up to you. You have my number,” the man noted. “Call me if you change your mind.”
Pride kept Jay mute. He flinched as the phone clicked in his ear, signaling an end to the call. Numb with shock, he lowered his arm until the receiver clattered into the cradle.
His knees jittered as he stood staring at the gray sky outside. What do I do? There had to be a way to keep the past from haunting him, some way to alter records so that the exposé, if published, would look falsified. Jay still had friends in the CIA. Maybe one of them, with the right inducement, could hack into the mission files and alter the details, making Staskiewicz’s allegations look like big fat lies, even if three other SEALs elected to corroborate them. But until Jay found an ally in the Agency willing to help him out, he had to get his hands on the manuscript before Monty sent it to the press.
With a shaking finger, he stabbed the intercom button. “Michelle,” he rasped. “Get the last caller back on the phone with me, will you?”
“Of course. Just a minute, sir.”
Brutally efficient, she got back to him in half that time. “Sir, I have Commander Montgomery on line one for you.”
Jay snatched up the phone, hit line one, and with a bracing breath stated, “I’ll see you at the funeral.” With that, he hung up and lunged for his cell phone. His hands were shaking too badly for him to text David Collum, so he called him instead.
“Yes, sir?”
“I’ve changed my mind.”
“What?”
“Call Fernando and tell him not to dispose of the package as planned. I need him to bring it to Philly on Saturday and hand it back to you.”
“To me, sir?”
“Shut up and listen. Have him meet you at the usual spot at 8 A.M. Then bring the package to my Philadelphia apartment. I want it back in one piece with no marks on it, understand?”
“I guess.” Collum sounded utterly confounded.
Jay ended the call. He could care less what Collum thought. For several minutes all he could do was to stand in one spot overcome by doubts. The jangling of his cell phone made him jump. “What?” Jay snapped, recognizing his assistant’s number.
“He says his price is the same whether he brings it back or not. I said I would check with you first.”
Jay ground his molars together. The same? Ten thousand dollars was a helluva fee for babysitting. But what choice did he have. He needed that manuscript. “Fine,” he spat. “But only if the package is in pristine con
dition. And he can’t be late.”
“I’ll tell him,” Collum promised.
With a growl of rage, Jay hung up and hurled his cell phone across the room where it landed, by luck, on an armchair, bouncing harmlessly onto the Turkish carpet. Would this nightmare never end?
Air Force bombers dropped bombs on the enemy population and never got in trouble for it. So why should his knee-jerk action prevent him from attaining the vice presidency? It shouldn’t. But silencing Ophelia Price the way he’d silenced Staskiewicz wouldn’t keep the news of his actions out of the public eye, not anymore.
He didn’t know how he’d do it, but he would have to find some other way to protect his reputation.
*
The sound of a rough male voice roused Ophelia from a drug-induced sleep. By sheer force of will, she slit her impossibly heavy eyelids, managing to glimpse the dark head of her abductor in the driver’s seat before her eyelids slammed shut.
The man had been holding a cell phone to his ear. She could hear him talking. “My price is the same,” he insisted, speaking with a Spanish accent.
His price. He was discussing his fee for disposing of her. Oh, God. I’m going to die.
A stifled whimper escaped Ophelia’s unresponsive lips. The car seemed to lurch at the tiny sound she made. Fear gave her the strength to peer through her lashes again. This time she could see the driver angling his rear view mirror to look back at her, ascertaining whether she was surfacing from her sleep. She quickly shut her eyes again, playing possum.
How will he kill me? Quickly and painlessly, she hoped. Or would he torture her first to elicit the names of her sources? Of course, Rawlings already knew who the other SEALs were in Operation Lights Out, but he might wish to know if others knew. What could she say? She’d gotten her information by eavesdropping at her sister’s Halloween party, where Joe and his senior chief had been reminiscing about past operations, not knowing that Ophelia lurked just around the corner, her ears pricked in hopes of hearing a juicy story.
