The Third Secret

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “What if he asks for specifics?”

  “I know he’s in with Segura. I believe the things Sarge told me about Segura were true. He knows I’d try to verify what he said. Not because I didn’t trust him but because we always had our own backs. Check and double check. He knew me.” Rick was glad he’d had no breakfast. It would’ve come back up on him. “He played me. But he played me with the truth. That’s all that would’ve worked. He just gave his own motivations to some unknown fictional DOD mole.”

  “Unless there really is another player. Someone from inside the government. Have you considered that?”

  “Yeah. Doesn’t really matter. It’s us against the bad guy. Bad guy has government connections—whether it’s just Sarge or Sarge and someone else. Our job is to get him, or them, to implicate themselves so we have the proof we need to take them down.”

  “How are you planning to do that?”

  “This is where you come in.”

  “I rather thought it might be.”

  “I can’t go in with a wire. They’ll look for one first thing.”

  “Agreed.”

  “You go in early, on foot, from some other direction and get close enough for a transmitter feed.”

  “Not much good without a wire.”

  “The node will be in the butt of my gun. They’re going to confiscate the gun the second I get near them, but they’ll keep it close. It’s ammunition. Sarge’s number one rule—ammo is sacred. He’d never expect me to tamper with it. Or be without it. And he’s going to keep it on him because he knows my M.O. will be to try to get it back as quickly as I can. He taught me many methods for doing that. All of which he’ll be watching for. And be prepared for.”

  “And in the meantime I’m sitting in a tree listening.”

  “Right. And if he asks me for specifics, I start spitting stuff about Segura, engage him in conversation—and we’ve got him. At least on that score.”

  “And if he doesn’t ask for specifics about whatever you supposedly turned over to the FBI?”

  “I offer him a deal. He gives me sixty percent of his cut, and I get the info back from the FBI. Breaking and entering, retrieving irretrievable items, was my specialty.”

  “And he’d believe you’d do this?”

  “He knows all I have of any value in my life is Steve, and the only thing Steve needs is money.”

  “What about Erin?”

  Rick glanced away from the road for just a moment, taking in the fatherly expression on the other man’s face.

  “What about her?”

  “I thought I picked up on something in her office the other day,” Johnson said. “And Halloway reported that you were at her place for several hours Sunday night. At her place and out of sight in the back of the house long enough to have…”

  “I didn’t have sex with her. She’s my attorney. And not the kind of woman you take to bed and walk away from.”

  “I’m glad you realize that.”

  “I realize far more than you know, Sheriff.”

  Johnson gazed out the windshield as miles and miles of desolate woodland sped by.

  “So you offer Wyatt a deal. He takes it. You get him to implicate himself. Then what?”

  “Then I tell him the whole thing is contingent on Steve and Erin’s release. As soon as I have confirmation they’re safe, I retrieve the evidence. I’ll let him know if that doesn’t happen, or if anything happens to me, the FBI will have time to move on what I’ve left for them.”

  “And if he balks?”

  “Then you have your man.”

  “And you, Erin and Steve end up dead.”

  Rick’s hands tightened on the wheel. “You got a better plan, Sheriff?”

  “No, I don’t. But that doesn’t make me any fonder of this one.”

  “Then let’s hope someone finds those two before our meeting with Randall Wyatt.” He couldn’t think of the man as Sarge anymore. Rick had loved Sarge like family.

  He should have known better.

  As the sun rose, so did Steve’s irritability and Erin’s panic. She and Steve were about three hundred yards away from the closest shore. But they weren’t in plain view. They were on the back side of an island cove, not likely to be seen by any passing boaters. And if anyone was looking for them and decided to search Lake Huron, their chances of finding the small cabin cruiser were slim to none.

  Whoever had taken them meant business.

  And he wasn’t an amateur.

  She kept reminding herself that Rick wasn’t, either. That he’d had fifteen years of covert ops success. That he knew tricks she wouldn’t even be able to imagine.

  And still, she vacillated between needing to throw up and trying to stay calm.

  “I want to fly a kite.” Steve’s whine was getting harder to take. She wanted so badly to please him. Needed to help him.

  And didn’t have any idea what to do.

  The man-child sat next to her on the deck of the cabin cruiser, his long legs stretched out alongside hers, as they played another game of tic-tac-toe with saltine crackers and water bottle caps. It wasn’t like they were going to be around long enough to finish the two boxes of saltines, or drink the entire case of water.

  They’d been at it for almost an hour. She’d lost track of the number of games, but Steve was certain he’d won twenty and she’d won nineteen.

  As far as Erin could tell, he couldn’t count past twenty.

  And as long as she stayed one game behind, he continued to tell her he’d give her a chance to catch up.

  “We don’t have a kite,” she said as she moved her square cracker next to one of Steve’s round bottle caps.

  “Are we going to die?”

  “No, we are not.”

  “My dad died. When the truck hit the tree.”

  “Well, we’re not going to die.”

  Steve’s face fell. “’Cept Ricky didn’t come save us.”

  “He will, Steve. You know Rick. He goes away but he always comes back.” It was something Steve had said to her the previous night just before he’d gone to sleep.

  “I can make a kite.”

  “But we don’t have the things we’d need.”

  “Yeah, we do. We can use that metal stuff that came off the counter around the sink.”

  Aluminum trim. She could bend it enough to break it in half. And then twist the pieces together to form a base.

  “And the paper bag the food was in.”

  Steve’s eyes were wide-open, shining with excitement.

  “And we’ve got the string that was around our hands. And some from the buoy on the side of the boat, too.”

  If building a kite was all it took to make Steve happy, she’d willingly spend the last hours of her life doing so.

  Because it was becoming more and more clear that these were the last hours of their lives.

  37

  They’d been on the road for a couple of hours. Johnson had taken multiple calls from multiple sources. No one had a single lead on either Erin’s or Steve’s whereabouts. No one even knew for sure when they’d been snatched.

  Erin had been seen Tuesday afternoon, leaving the office around three.

  And Steve…he’d had dinner and then everyone had assumed he was in his room with his guard right there, keeping him safe.

  No one recognized Randall Wyatt from the picture they were passing around.

  Ron Fitzgerald had put in a call to the governor, who’d called someone he knew in Washington. The secretary of defense was aware of the situation. After some checking, he verified Wyatt’s status within the department. Verified that he’d had a covert ops team. But all three men were still alive.

  And still working for the government, though no longer for Randall Wyatt, who’d retired two years before.

  What the hell?

  “All three are still alive? That doesn’t make sense.” He’d been to Brady’s grave. Or rather, Jack’s grave. What the fuck was going on?

  “Did
you say he retired two years ago?”

  Johnson glanced over at him. “Yeah.” And his phone rang again.

  Two years.

  After Rick went to prison. But before Brady was killed. Wyatt had no longer been working when Rick got out. When he’d made all the arrangements for Rick’s retirement…

  “We have zero clues and less than six hours to find them,” Johnson said when he hung up from yet another call. “You said Wyatt trained you. So where would you take them if you had them?”

  “They’re on the water someplace.” He was sure of it now. “Water leaves no trail. No tracks to follow. No physical evidence of someone having been there.”

  Johnson nodded.

  “They have to be on a boat,” he added.

  “You sound sure about that.”

  “I am…” Rick glanced at the man at his side, and had a moment of sheer panic. He’d just discovered he’d been a fool for trusting one man, and here he was, doing it again.

  But he trusted Erin. And she’d trusted him, enough to keep his secret. She was probably trusting him to find her. And she trusted the man sitting beside him.

  “Steve…my friend…he’s lived in institutions for the past fifteen years. At Lakeside for the past ten. Any change, any situation or surroundings that are unfamiliar to him, and he flips out. He can become virtually uncontrollable very quickly. Picture a five-year-old having a tantrum in the body of a grown man.”

  “He’d certainly attract attention.”

  “Right. But Sarge knows that Steve loves to fish. He loves boats. He must’ve told him he was there to pick up Steve for me. And that he was taking him fishing. That I was meeting them there. There’s no other way he could’ve gotten Steve out of there without a very noisy fight. He couldn’t have carried him. Or dragged him out unnoticed. A gun to Steve’s back or any hint of danger would only have intensified any tantrum.”

  “So they’re on a boat somewhere. Or at least they were. I think it’s safe to assume he’s keeping them both in the same place.”

  “Yes. Less effort. Less chance of discovery. Only one place to guard…” And one place to burn down. Or sink.

  “He could dispose of the bodies easily in Lake Michigan,” Rick said aloud.

  “Or Lake Huron,” Johnson suggested. “The area he’s chosen for your meeting isn’t far from Lake Huron.”

  “So he’d have them close enough to monitor them.”

  Or kill them.

  Before they’d gone another mile, Johnson had the coast guard on full search for any kind of boat out on Lake Huron bearing a five-foot-three-inch female and a mentally handicapped six-foot male. By the next mile, private boaters had been added to the mix.

  “I want to color it!” Steve jumped up and down as he watched Erin bend pieces of aluminum counter trim around the brown paper bag.

  “Steve! Don’t jump!” Her voice was sharp with tension as she thought of the bomb. Steve’s lower lip protruded and he started to cry.

  “Hey, buddy, I’m sorry,” she said, immediately reaching for him. He came to her readily, resting his head against her shoulder. “Don’t cry. It’s okay. I’m just… I can’t swim,” she said. “I’m afraid of the water.”

  “You can’t swim?” The man giggled. “Ricky taught me how to swim a gazillion years ago. Why didn’t he teach you?”

  “Because, goofy—” she poked at his nose “—I didn’t tell him I don’t know how. And I don’t want you to tell him, either, ’kay? Let’s keep it our little secret.”

  “’Kay, but don’t be mad at me, Erin. I don’t like it when you’re mad at me.”

  “I wasn’t mad, buddy. I was scared.”

  “Yeah, Ricky says girls get kinda silly about some things.”

  She’d just bet he did.

  “When did he say that?”

  “Oh, one time when I kicked sand in my friend’s face and she didn’t think it was funny. She got all hurt feelings and stuff like I was being mean when I wasn’t. I just wanted to make her laugh. She’s really pretty when she laughs.”

  Steve’s expression, as he tried to show Erin how his friend looked, made her laugh. And she felt closer to Rick than ever before as she sat there with his childhood friend.

  He had to find them.

  And he had to do it fast.

  As the afternoon wore on, she knew every minute was critical. Their captor had said they’d die sometime that evening.

  Their time was running out.

  Randall Wyatt was alone. At least as far as he was letting Rick know. Rick’s gun was tucked in the waistband of the older man’s khakis. When he’d first informed his ex-whatever-he’d-been that he’d planted his “evidence in an FBI safe” Rick had thought Wyatt was going to pull that gun and use it on him.

  Out of sheer, uncontrollable anger.

  The one who lost control first lost the game. Sarge’s words from long ago came back to him.

  “Steve and Erin are dead, Thomas.”

  Maybe. He couldn’t think about that right now.

  “A shame, too. She was tight. Sweet. Probably the sweetest bitch I ever fucked.”

  Maybe. He couldn’t think about that right now.

  “Then I guess we’re done here,” Rick said tonelessly.

  They were playing with each other. They both knew it. What they were saying might be true. Could just as easily not be.

  Could be some truth and some fiction.

  The words didn’t matter except as a way to get his opponent to lose control.

  Rick turned to leave, knowing that although he had a chance of feeling one of his own bullets, Sarge had a thing about shooting a man in the back. Saw it as a sign of weakness. “Wait.”

  He didn’t turn around to face him.

  “You didn’t come here just to tell me you’d squealed on me.”

  Rick waited.

  “You said you were going to offer me something.”

  There might be information in an FBI safe. And there might not. Sarge knew Rick would have a backup plan. Rick was counting on the fact that the man wouldn’t be willing to take the risk that he was bluffing.

  “For something in return,” Rick said. “If Erin and Steve are dead, you have nothing I want.”

  “Maybe I do.”

  Rick turned. “Like what? You know me, Wyatt. Other than money for Steve, which isn’t necessary if he’s no longer alive, there’s nothing you could possibly give me that I’d want.”

  “What deal were you going to offer?” Wyatt countered. Why had Rick never noticed how beady his eyes got when he was closing in on his prey?

  Or maybe he had. Maybe he just hadn’t cared because he hadn’t been the target.

  “I’ll retrieve every piece of incriminating information from that safe before morning. But only after I’ve got verification from someone of my choice that Erin and Steve are alive.”

  “Would you settle for one out of two?”

  Taking a chance, Rick said, “No.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Wyatt said, grinning at him as if they were buddies sharing a beer.

  In the past, maybe. Not now. And never again.

  “Because they’re dead,” Rick said. And he thought of Johnson. And the tape. He had a job to do. “Because you killed them.”

  “If you don’t retrieve that information, you’re going to rot in prison right alongside me. So I guess there is something you want.” Wyatt was still grinning and Rick swore that before he died, he was going to wipe that grin off the man’s face with his bare hands.

  “You want your freedom.” His old mentor practically spat the words at him.

  “I have my freedom.”

  “Not if you turn me in you don’t.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Because you aren’t who you think you are, that’s how I figure.”

  Rick knew, without a doubt, that Randall Wyatt spoke the complete truth.

  And he thought of Johnson. And the tape. He had a job to do.

  “
Then why don’t you tell me who you think I am?”

  “You, son, are a murderer. And a thief. You are the underbelly. The best of the best. Which makes you the worst of the worst.”

  Rick turned to go. “I don’t have time for riddles.”

  “You have the time, Richard.” The coldness in Wyatt’s voice stopped him. “I was the head of a special ops team, just like I told you and your buddies,” Wyatt said. “But it wasn’t made up of you three.” Johnson’s words, All three are still alive, repeated themselves calmly in Rick’s mind.

  “What were we, then?”

  “All that evidence you have on me, the corruption, the illegal arms deals, the millions in drug money you now know I pocketed, it all rests on your shoulders, man. Where do you think I got the ammunition? The drugs?”

  Rick didn’t move.

  “You stole them for me.”

  Swinging around, Rick said, “I stole guns to keep them from terrorists. I did it to protect my country.”

  “No, Rick, that was my legitimate ops team. You guys, you stole for me.”

  “The drugs? And the guns? That was all to line your pocket?” He’d been a pawn? A goon man? He was nothing more than a low-life criminal? Worse than any of the dregs he’d been with in prison?

  He’d enriched the fucking bastards he’d been risking his life to put away? He’d put his own country at risk by helping to arm those fiends?

  “Of course. That Arizona deal? I knew from my real special ops team that those drugs were there. We were set to implicate the officials later that day and get the drugs. I sent you in to get ’em before our legitimate operation went down. But then one of my guys, the one assigned to do the real job later that day, heard that the dirty official had changed his plans, was moving the drugs earlier than expected. He didn’t have time to inform anyone. He went into action earlier than planned. He was set to make an arrest—but it wasn’t supposed to be yours.”

  “And that’s what Brady found in Arizona. He came face-to-face with your legitimate team and discovered that we were an illegitimate band of criminals. You sold out your own men, your country, for money.”