by Gayle Wilson
He didn’t, not for one minute, but there wasn’t much point in arguing the theory with the chief. That was something the fire marshal could sort out when he arrived.
By the time he had, he and Elizabeth would be long gone.
Chapter Four
“I told you,” she said.
She still looked like warmed-over death, but according to the emergency room attending, the CT had revealed nothing troublesome. They’d been given the general precautions, but thank God, precautions were all they were.
“You never could resist saying ‘I told you so,’” he said, taking her elbow.
He didn’t even have to think about the wisdom of doing that now. It was strange, but a hospital, despite the time he’d spent in a couple of them after the bombing, had never been a trigger for the flashbacks.
“I didn’t get the opportunity nearly as often as I’d have liked,” she said.
“So no chance to develop any willpower.”
“This isn’t the way—” she began, pulling against his direction.
He put his hand against the small of her back, applying pressure. “It’s the way we’re going.”
“But the front is that way.”
“Exactly,” he said, steering her in the opposite direction.
He knew the scan had been a necessity, but it had also increased the risk that the terrorist would have time to zero in on their location and to make other plans. Of course, if he were typical, he would have been watching them from the first. Especially staying around to watch the fireworks. They could never resist that. Not even the best of them.
“You really think someone set off that explosion?” she asked, finally giving in and allowing him to guide her.
“Let’s just say the timing seems coincidental.”
“Between Steiner’s warning and this?”
He nodded, not bothering to articulate the obvious.
“But you didn’t know he was here when you came.”
“How could I?”
He opened the door to a corridor marked Authorized Personnel Only, directing her down it as if he knew where he was going. He did have a fairly good idea, having studied the fire exit chart in the emergency room while they’d waited.
“I thought that’s why you were here.”
“I was here to deliver Griff’s message.”
“And it took you a week to decide to do that.”
He was trying to figure out which way to go since the corridor they’d been following had come to an abrupt dead end. What she had just said didn’t register for a moment.
“I told you. I knew Jorgensen was dead.”
Actually, it hadn’t taken him an entire week to finish the dueling pistol. The whole time he’d worked, the chilling words of that security alert haunted him, warring with his certainty that whoever had blown up the barracks in Greenland and the ambassador’s residence in Madrid, it hadn’t been Jorgensen. In the end, despite his surety, he had come to deliver the warning. He had known he’d never be able to forgive himself if there was anything to Griff’s concern. Apparently there had been.
“So you hung around here just watching me?”
“I didn’t get into town until yesterday,” he said, confused by her questions.
He’d driven all night and most of the day yesterday, but he liked to drive. He especially liked it at night, when there was little traffic and long stretches of darkness and silence.
She stopped, pulling against his hold. He turned his head and found that although her gaze was on his face, it seemed unfocused. She was obviously thinking about something other than his features.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Someone’s been following me. I could feel them. All week. When you showed up last night, I naturally assumed it had been you.”
“You saw somebody?”
She shook her head, her gaze still contemplative.
“Nothing. Not a sign of anyone. I put it down to paranoia because I never saw them. When you came to the house—” She broke off the explanation, her eyes lifting to his, seeing him this time. “I thought I hadn’t seen anyone because it was you.”
If someone had been following her all week, then he hadn’t led them to her, which was a consolation. He had taken every precaution he could think of, and as she had intimated, he was very good at what he did. Still, there had been a niggling guilt in the back of his mind that he might have been responsible for giving away her location.
“Is it possible this is Jorgensen?” she asked.
“No,” he said, urging her forward again.
He had told Griff the truth. He had watched the bastard die. He was willing to concede this might be a protégé or a colleague, someone Jorgensen had trained, but it couldn’t be the man himself. He was sure of that.
The fact that whoever it was had been watching Elizabeth all week was significant, however, because nothing had happened until he’d shown up. Whoever this was had been waiting for him to arrive.
The explosion had been for his benefit. Arranged so that when Rafe heard the noise and smelled the smoke, he would believe exactly what he had believed—that this time Elizabeth had been the victim.
“Then who set off that explosion?” she asked.
“Someone who wanted me to think you were inside that building. If this had been Jorgensen, believe me, he would have made sure.”
There was a small hesitation, and then she said, “I should have been.”
“What?” He had been only half listening, wondering if the bomber could possibly know why his ruse had been so successful.
“I should have been in the office this morning. He knew that because he’d been watching me all week. He knew what time I get there every day. And then…this morning I was late.”
A coldness settled in Rafe’s stomach as he began to understand the implications of what she was saying.
“It should have been deliberate,” she went on. “Being late, I mean. I thought yesterday that I’d fallen into a routine. They always told us that was dangerous.”
It was. If you had any reason to believe you might be a target for someone. After all these years Elizabeth shouldn’t have had reason to believe that. He hadn’t.
“He could have set his damn watch by me,” she said bitterly. “I turn the key in that lock every morning at precisely nine o’clock. Except this morning—”
“You were late,” he finished for her, beginning to accept the idea that the explosion might not have been for show. Perhaps the bomber had been waiting for him to arrive, but maybe what he had prepared for Rafe to see wasn’t what had occurred.
Elizabeth’s mouth tightened. “I couldn’t sleep. I forgot to set the alarm. And then a logging truck pulled out onto the highway ahead of me. Normally there would have been plenty of time despite that, but this morning…” Again her voice faded. “I should have been there,” she said softly. “In the office. I would have been if it hadn’t been for that truck.”
And if it hadn’t been for him showing up at her house yesterday. She wouldn’t admit that, but the truth of it had been revealed by her admission that she hadn’t slept and by her failure to set the alarm. He didn’t really need to hear her confess the reason those two things had happened.
It would be a step back to the personal. Back to things he didn’t want to talk about any more than she did. Back to the need for some explanation of why he’d left.
He could make one. He could tell her all the things that he’d never been willing to share before. He had thought about doing that a thousand times.
Even if she knew, even if she understood, it wouldn’t change a thing. Nothing could.
He had always known that one night, as he took her into his arms, feeling the sensual slide of sweat-moistened skin against his, she would suddenly become the woman from the embassy. The woman with the silent scream. The woman who had died in his arms.
And when that happened, she would know everything he had come to know about himself
. That was the one thing he had known he couldn’t live with—what would be in her eyes when she looked at him then.
THE CAB he’d called before they left the emergency room had been waiting at the back entrance when they finally made their way through the maze of hospital corridors. The driver, an elderly black man, had been eager to talk about the explosion in Magnolia Grove.
According to him, everyone was buying into the fire chief’s explanation that it had been caused by a gas leak. From their perspective, that was probably a good thing, Rafe decided.
It wouldn’t stand up to an arson investigation, of course. And he’d be willing to bet that the methodology used in this bombing, the so-called signature of the bomber, would be identical to that used in those that had precipitated the CIA security alert Griff had shown him.
By the time that had all been determined, he’d have Elizabeth away. With the care the CIA had taken in destroying any link between the people on Griff’s team and the agency itself, no one would ever connect Magnolia Grove, Mississippi, or Beth Anderson to those acts of terrorism.
Rafe had every confidence that he could keep her safe. The most dangerous aspect would be getting her out of town, simply because that’s where the terrorist was. Or maybe he was wrong about that. Maybe this guy wasn’t one of those who waited around to glory in the results. And maybe pigs can fly.
“Drive around the block,” he instructed the cabbie as they approached the motel.
Despite the ongoing excitement a couple of streets away, the parking lot looked reassuringly empty in the early-afternoon heat. Most of the cars that had been there when he’d pulled aside the drapes this morning had since disappeared, moving on to their next destination.
His own sat fairly isolated among the remaining vehicles. It looked the same as it had when he’d parked it there last night. Of course, looking the same and being the same were vastly different.
All kinds of things might have been done to it in that time frame. Something could have been attached to it, for example. A device set to explode when he turned the key in the ignition. Or when he unlocked the door.
“Want me to drive around again, boss?” the cabbie asked after he’d made the slow circuit of the block.
Not much point, Rafe decided. There was only one way to tell if the room or his car had been tampered with. “That’s okay,” he said. “Pull up near Room 18.”
“You got it.”
The cabbie maneuvered his ancient sedan into one of the parking spaces that had opened up in front of the room since Rafe had left it on foot this morning. Rafe added a generous tip to the fare and handed it to the driver across the bench-type front seat. “Thanks for coming all the way out to the hospital.”
“Glad to do it. Ain’t nothing else happening around here. Not with all that commotion going on. Least the air-conditioning in the car works. Cooler here than at home,” the old man said, carefully folding the bills and putting them in the breast pocket of his cotton sports shirt.
Rafe didn’t argue the point, although the air inside the cab wasn’t appreciably cooler than that he stepped out into. He had thought it was hot this morning, but the afternoon’s heat was a physical assault.
He glanced at Elizabeth’s face as she slid across the cracked vinyl seat and climbed out, using his hand for support. The nearer they had gotten to town, the quieter she had become. Now her expression was closed, her face still colorless, the features pinched with the strain of the last few hours.
She waited until the cab had driven away before she revealed what she’d been thinking during the ride back. “I need to call Darrell. If this is what you think it is, then I’m responsible for what happened to the office.”
“Your partner?”
She nodded. “Semiretired. I handle most of the cases now. It’s what he intended when he took me into partnership. He’s been very good to me, Rafe. At the very least I owe him some explanation—”
“You don’t owe him anything,” he said harshly, taking her elbow and urging her toward the room.
“He owned that building. It was an investment. And if what you believe is true—”
“He’ll have insurance. If he doesn’t, he’s an idiot. And if he’s really ready to retire, the explosion was probably a blessing. He won’t have to fool with selling the place.”
“I’m not sure he’ll think that,” Elizabeth said.
He could tell she wasn’t pleased with his lack of sympathy for her partner’s loss. He was still having trouble dealing with the realization that she was supposed to have been inside that building when it blew. Somehow, in light of that information, he couldn’t be too concerned about the fate of bricks and mortar.
This wasn’t Jorgensen, but whoever it was had already proved that he valued human life no more than his role model. And proved that he was out to make a personal rather than a political statement.
“Stay back,” he ordered when they reached the walkway in front of the motel.
“You think he’s rigged something up in your room?”
“I think we don’t know who or what we’re dealing with,” he said, “and until we do…”
He flattened his hand to fish the key out of the front pocket of his jeans. It was the old-fashioned metal kind, which was rare these days. Of course, there was probably little cause to worry about theft in this setting.
As little as there had been to worry about an act of terrorism. Until today.
“You’re just going to stick that key in the lock and turn it in an effort to find out?”
Her sarcasm was born of anxiety. He understood that. She would be feeling the same sickness in the bottom of her stomach that he’d experienced rounding the corner this morning and verifying that the fire was in her office.
Something about her words nagged at him, however. You’re just going to stick that key in the lock…
“Is that what you did?” he asked, turning to look at her.
“What?”
“Is that what triggered the bomb? When you turned the key in the office door?”
She didn’t answer at once, her eyes again losing their focus as she thought about the sequence. “I never made it that far,” she said finally. “I didn’t get close enough to the building to put the key in the door. Not before it blew.”
That news wouldn’t make him any less cautious. Someone like Jorgensen—someone using his methods—didn’t employ the same trick again. That was the genius of how he managed to do what he did, despite the strictest security precautions. He always came at you from a different direction.
Reminded of that, Rafe bent to examine the lock. There was nothing to hint it had been tampered with. No scratches on the surface. And it was a standard metal door, which would provide some protection from an explosion.
“Rafe,” Elizabeth said softly.
He couldn’t quite read the tone, but it seemed strange. Not caution. Not anxiety. He glanced at her over his shoulder and knew immediately from her expression that she had just thought of something she knew was important.
“I hit the autolock, and it blew,” she said. “It was keyed to my remote. They never meant for me to be inside.”
They. The one word that was the most revealing in what she’d said. The most riveting. They.
“Steiner.” The name sounded like an obscenity.
“You can’t know that for sure.”
“The hell I can’t. Damn it, I knew there was more to this. The CIA doesn’t give a rat’s ass if somebody blows you or me to kingdom come. They wouldn’t bother warning us. Not unless they thought they could get something out of it.”
“They want you to go after whoever this is,” she said, her thinking paralleling his. Maybe because she knew them as well as he did. “That’s what this is all about. That’s what it’s been about from the beginning. Somebody is doing what Jorgensen did, and they can’t get to him. They think you can. You were the expert on Jorgensen. You got him. They want you to get this guy.”
�
�I guess I’m supposed to be flattered at their confidence,” he said savagely.
“You’re supposed to take care of him. Like you took care of Jorgensen.”
Under strict congressional sanctions against political assassinations, the CIA had refused to allow Rafe to go after the German-born terrorist. He had been forced to do it strictly on his own, without any of the resources the agency could have provided.
It had taken him more than a year to hunt down and execute Jorgensen. A year in which more innocent people had died. Now that the CIA was once more back in the game of tracking down terrorists, they were attempting to use Rafe to do the dirty work they had once professed to have no interest in.
The only remaining question was whether or not Griff had known what was going on. Or was Cabot simply another discarded weapon the agency had decided to pick up and point at a target they hadn’t been able to get by any other means?
“Then this should be safe as a church,” he said.
An impulsive rage was another by-product of the day at the embassy. Another thing he was constantly forced to try to control. He didn’t succeed this time.
He inserted the key and turned it, throwing open the motel room door. As he’d expected, absolutely nothing happened.
After all, they couldn’t afford to let something happen to him. He was a tool they needed. Elizabeth had been as well, only she had been used to lure him into the game.
If the trigger of the bomb this morning had been keyed to the frequency of her car remote, there was no possibility she would be hurt. Those sons of bitches had probably calibrated exactly how much C-4—or whatever the hell they were using these days—it would take to blow that building spectacularly without risking damage to someone standing where Elizabeth did every morning when she got out of her car.
She might have been hit by falling debris. Steiner would probably have been genuinely sorry if that had happened, but it wouldn’t have mattered in the grand scheme of things.
Elizabeth’s death would still have had the effect they were hoping for. They wanted Rafe to react just as he had reacted to the embassy bombing. They wanted him to go after the bastard who had done it. To hunt him down and kill him as he had killed Gunther Jorgensen.
