All Due Respect (16 page)

Seth rolled to a sitting position, and under his knee saw the damning evidence. Her hammer. “You threw this at me?”

“I don’t think so.” She came toward him. “I don’t know. One minute I was holding it and the next minute it was gone.”

And she had screamed to warn him. Okay. Okay. Seth hauled himself to his feet. She’d also come outside. That didn’t fit. Unless her intent had been to protect him. Whoever had been in the apartment had already come outside. No one had entered since they had arrived. He would stake his Special Forces training on that. The intruder had to have already been inside, hiding upstairs. “Are you sure the apartment is empty now?”

“Yes. He ran out the back door. He knocked me off balance, so I know the angle. Definitely out the back door.”

“He?” She’d said he repeatedly. Seth stood, up, dusted the grass and grit from his palms.

“Whoever.” She looked at Seth’s head, examined the goose egg. “It was dark. I didn’t see. And to tell you the truth, I’m really fuzzy on everything that happened after you went out the patio door.”

He believed her. She had been pretty panicky. “Let’s go call the police.” He guided her back inside.

“I don’t think we should do that.” She sounded calmer, but she still held her left arm.

“Why not?”

“Because we don’t know who it was, Seth.” In control now, she began clearing the table. “It could have been Camden, or it could have been Benedetto-related. If we call the police and it’s Camden, then fine. But if not…” She let her voice trail off, and set their plates in the sink.

“We’d be putting the project at risk.” He didn’t like it, but she was right. “Matthew needs to know.”

“I agree.” She poured the spaghetti sauce into a clear container, snapped on the lid, and then set it in the fridge. “Tomorrow.”

Tomorrow? Here she goes again with the waiting thing.

Doubt about her reared its ugly head. Having committed to trusting her, Seth did his damnedest to squelch it. He checked the front door. No damage. No windows unlocked, no signs of forced entry anywhere. It didn’t make sense. Even if the dead bolt had been undone—and it had—the knob still had been locked.

There were only two explanations in Seth’s opinion. The already upset Julia had creamed him with the hammer, or— “Anyone else have a key?”

“No.”

The fridge door slammed shut. “Not even Karl?” Seth asked.

“No one.” She didn’t look Seth in the eye, and guilt oozed from her.

No forced entry and no one else with a key equated to no one else in the house. Julia had freaked out, hit him with the hammer, and had lied about it. That raised a line of thought he had no choice but to consider. She had full access to the sensor codes, had computer savvy and access to the vault’s secure system, and she had reacted strangely to the sensor-codes theft. Maybe the reason hadn’t been to keep herself on an even keel emotionally to avoid muscle spasms and migraines. Maybe it had been because she knew

exactly what had happened because she had made it happen. Maybe she was Benedetto’s mole.

So much for trust.

Her being the mole was a leap, one he hated, but a feasible one he would be foolish to ignore without proving or disproving. The key lay in her hammer toss. Had it been accidental, or intentional?

ANTHONY rested his head against the back of his desk chair. Jet lag had him weary. He wiped the grit from his eyes, longing for a hot bath and his bed. As soon as the council meeting was over, he would indulge himself with both.

“Mr. Benedetto?”

Anthony’s second in command, Roger Anton, stood at the office door. Sixty-two, spare with words and in form, but hard as nails inside and out. “Your tie is crooked, Roger.” How many times had Anthony heard his father say that very thing? Hundreds if not thousands.

“I’m sorry, sir.” Roger straightened it. “The council members are waiting in the Green Room, sir.”

“Fine.”

“Anthony.” Daisy Benedetto, pert and tiny and dressed in a sunny yellow dress, skirted past Roger. “I need to speak with you, darling.”

“Mama.” Anthony smiled and stood up out of respect. “Can it wait? The council members—”

“Let them wait. This is important.” She twisted the single strand of pearls at her neck. “Actually, it’s disgraceful.”

Anthony frowned. She only twisted her pearls when deeply worried. “What is it?”

“Melissa Branden is here. Her husband works for Nicholas at the glass factory.”

Nicholas Franklin. Bernard `I. Franklin’s grandson. A thorn in Philip’s side, and now in Anthony’s.

“Do you know her husband has asked for welfare, Anthony?”

“Welfare?” She had to be mistaken. No loyalist ever had to ask any outsider for financial assistance.

“It’s true.” His mother’s worry changed to anger, and then to outrage. “Mrs. Branden says she’s asked to see you twice, but someone”—she gave Roger an accusatory glance—“has refused to let her. Both times.”

“I do not refuse to see my people, Mama.” Anthony looked at Roger, asking for an explanation. “Are you aware of this situation?”

“You were in Europe, sir,” Roger said. “I asked Mrs. Branden the nature of her problem, but she insisted she would rather discuss it privately with you.”

Europe. The working vacation with his wife and daughter, where he had successfully negotiated for delivery of the Rogue.

“I knew there had to be a reasonable explanation,” his mother said. “But the fact remains that Mr. and Mrs. Branden and their two children are in need. Since when do we allow loyalists to live in need?”

“We don’t allow it.” Hating to see his mother distressed, Anthony gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “Tell Mrs. Branden the matter will be resolved by tomorrow.”

“She needs a thousand dollars today.”

Anthony nodded to Roger, who left the room to get the money. When he returned, he gave the money to Anthony. “There,” Anthony said, passing it to his mother. “Problem solved.”

She gazed up at him, the look in her eyes softening. “Thank you, darling.”

“For you, anything.” He meant it.

She patted his arm and then stepped away. At his office door, she did a double take beside Roger. “Your tie is crooked.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Benedetto.” He straightened it again.

She looked back at Anthony, pensive. “You won’t mention Mrs. Branden’s visit to her husband. A man needs his pride.”

“Not a word, Mama.”

She smiled, blew him a kiss, and then breezed out of the room.

Anthony’s smile faded. He looked at Roger. “Nicholas has been called down on this before.”

“Yes, sir,” Roger said. “Twice under your father.”

“Good God, Roger. Welfare?” Anthony expelled his disgust in a string of curses. “I will not tolerate this kind of treatment from any loyalist in authority.”

“No, sir.”

“What were his penalties?”

“Your father fined him.”

“And the second time?”

“A heavier fine and tight supervision for six months.”

“Lenient,” Anthony said. And now, with the change of command the bastard Nicholas thought he could revert to his old ways and get away with it. Anthony needed to set an example. To establish his rules with authority and conviction.

He walked across the office. As he passed Roger, he issued the order. “Kill him.”

“Yes, sir.” Roger fell into step behind him.

Anthony turned left, crossed the stone-floored solarium, and then turned right, moving toward the Green Room where the council members waited. “Nicholas is married, I presume.”

“Yes, sir. Three children.”

“Provide well for them,” Anthony said. “And make it an accident away from the factory. I won’t have my mother or Mrs. Branden upset by this.”

“Yes, sir. Of course not, sir,” Roger said. “Who should replace him at the factory?”

“Mr. Branden, of course.” Anthony paused outside the Green Room’s door. “Who better to eliminate oppression than a man who has suffered it?”

Seth met with Matthew at ten and explained the events that had occurred at Julia’s the previous night, which also necessitated his explaining Jeff’s situation and about Camden and the “mean” man.

Matthew leaned back in his creaky office chair and rubbed at his neck. “You didn’t see anyone else?”

“No.” Seth hated admitting that, felt like a traitor to Julia for admitting it. But what else could he do? This could be related to Home Base and not to Jeff.

“In cases such as hers, it isn’t unheard of for the victim to have blackouts, Seth.” Matthew leaned forward over his desk, braced the flat of his arms on his desk blotter. “She might not know she attacked you.”

She knew. Seth had seen guilt in her eyes, had sensed it in the way she’d refused to look at him afterward. But maybe that guilt stemmed from her kissing him and not from the hammer. “I guess it’s possible.”

“The only problem with pinning the attack on her is, in your words, she was terrified.” Matthew refilled his coffee cup from the silver carafe on the edge of his desk.

“She was,” Seth reasserted with conviction. No one could fake that kind of fear.

Matthew lifted his hand. “Then who turned off the lights?”

SETH hadn’t been able to answer Matthew’s question then, and he couldn’t answer it later that night, when he returned to the vault to put in some time on his personal sensor project. A terrified woman wouldn’t douse the lights.

That left Camden or Benedetto’s loyalists. But which one?

The lab seemed empty. Only three cars had been in the staff parking lot, one of which belonged to Julia. The other, a blue truck half-hidden under evergreen limbs in Security’s section, Seth assumed belonged to one of the guards on duty, though the night shift typically parked in the north lot.

He walked down the maze of corridors to the transporter, inserted his badge into the slot, and then stepped into the cylinder. The clear door slid closed. The airflow stopped.

Damn, but he hated having doubts about Julia as much as he hated her having doubts about him—as much as he hated the transporter. The doubts felt alien and wrong, but only a fool would dismiss them without proof that they should be dismissed. He wouldn’t suffer the consequences of being wrong alone.

The door didn’t open.

Fighting a stab of panic, Seth waited.

Still, the door didn’t open.

Memories flashed through his mind. Memories of him at six, being locked in, unable to find that damn dead-bolt key. The curses, the screams, his slamming a cast-iron skillet against the window above the sink. The glass shattering, peppering his face, chest, and arms and his crawling through the hole, being scraped and stabbed by jagged shards.

In a cold sweat, he turned his mind away from that time; actively worked at shutting out the old sounds, the old smells of fear and blood, the old taste of tears, but the memories refused to be buried. Clammy, tense, fighting them, Seth stiffened and fisted his hands at his sides. Yelling for someone to open the damn door would be futile. The cylinder was bullet-and soundproof.

Where the hell was the guard?

He looked back at the guard’s station. Empty. What was going on here? That station was never empty.

Seth turned in a circle. No one in sight. Anywhere.

The air grew dank, stagnant. Logically, he knew that, for the moment, he had enough air to breathe and yet his chest heaved. He sucked in useless air. Sweating more profusely, hot and clammy, he tore his tie loose, unbuttoned his shirt at the neck, and stripped off his jacket. Futile. No fresh air was being filtered into the system: a necessary protective measure against the introduction of biological or chemical properties.

His eyes blurred, his lungs burned, sweat poured down in rivulets all over his body. Why wouldn’t the damn door open ?

He glanced down, and saw why.

On the cylinder’s floor lay a small black flashlight.

A flashlight… just like Julia’s.

JULIA’S arches screamed.

Accustomed to teaching in flats and sneakers, she had gotten out of practice at wearing pumps, and her feet were letting her know they had noticed” the difference and objected to it. Coming out of the inner lab, she paused, leaned against the corridor wall and removed her pumps, then walked on in stocking feet.

It had been a day full of frustrations. Professionally, she hadn’t gained any new information on Benedetto’s mole. Neither Intel, the OSI, nor Julia and Seth, were a bit closer to finding out who was responsible for the sensor-codes theft than they had been when it had occurred. And no one had yet identified possible motives for either Marcus or Dempsey Morse. A concerted effort was being made, but sifting through infinite possibilities took a huge amount of time and manpower resources.

Personally, her frustration level ranked even worse. Had she thrown the hammer at Seth? She didn’t think so. Just the thought of committing physical violence against some

one else made her sick. How could it not make her sick? She knew the hell of being attacked, the agony of being a victim. But, God help her, she might have thrown the hammer. She didn’t know for a fact. She had nearly worked herself into a migraine trying to remember, but once Seth had stepped out that slider door and onto the patio, she got fuzzy. She recalled clutching the hammer. Someone large had whizzed by and knocked her off balance. From that point on, she was blank. Her next memory was of her standing on the patio, raising hell like an idiot at Seth for not locking the door. Had whoever knocked her off balance taken the hammer? Or had she thrown it at him? Only him turned out to be Seth?

She had no idea. And having no idea frightened her in ways she’d never before been frightened. Even during the worst of the challenges after the attack, she hadn’t suffered lapses in memory. Why now?

She turned down the corridor to the transporter—and saw someone slumped on the floor inside it. What in heaven was happening?

No alert. No security alarms. No lockdown. Her heart thumping, she ran toward the cylinder.

“Seth?” She stopped in front of it. “What are you doing?”

He looked up at her, pulled himself to his feet. Sweat poured down his face, soaked his hair, his shirt. “Locked in. Get… bomb squad.”