Arctic Fire (22 page)

“I want to know what the deal is. Why did I have to push you out of that window?” she asked again.

“It’s a fear of heights,” he admitted.

“But we weren’t up that high. Thirty feet, maybe a little more. I mean, come on, you’re a big boy.”

“Fifteen feet and I’ve got a problem, Karen. Not even that high sometimes.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

It seemed like she felt sorry for him, like that was a little bit of a pity smile. But that was OK right now. Anything that helped their connection get stronger faster was OK with him. And it wasn’t like he was accepting her pity.

“More specifically, I have a fear of hitting something on the ground that makes my body splatter into a bloody, unrecognizable mass. That’s what really gets to me.”

“It all makes sense now,” she murmured. “No wonder.”

“I was just about to climb back into the office when you finally checked my boarding pass at the Jetway door and put me on the flight.”

The second time he’d yelled at her to push him out, she’d done it with a solid shoulder to his hip as he knelt on the window ledge. Like the one she’d given him when she’d knocked him away from Mick as he was about to pummel the guy. Then she’d followed his scream into the water after somehow managing to pull the window back down so that the people who were chasing them wouldn’t notice it was raised, figure out what had happened, and start scouring the harbor for them.

“How did you find me?” she asked.

Jack had been waiting for her to ask that question again. “An old friend of mine is a hunting and fishing guide in Alaska. He’s been up there awhile, and he’s got a lot of contacts inside law enforcement. I told him my brother was killed on the
Arctic Fire
and that I didn’t believe the captain had come clean with his story about what had happened. He did some checking around and found out about your fiancé.”

Jack didn’t want to dwell on this because it had already been a terrible enough night for Karen. But she’d asked the question, and he wanted her to know he was disclosing everything and being as transparent as possible. He wanted her complete trust as quickly as he could get it because he sensed that, thanks to Ross Turner, he’d found someone who could be of great help with his search for
what had really happened to Troy. He was positive now that he’d been right to stir up all those old memories, positive that Troy and Charlie Banks had suffered the same fate and that he was on the right track. He was sorry about causing Karen so much emotional pain, but he had to see this thing through.

“When I heard about what happened to your fiancé,” he continued, “I was blown away. Like I said before, the captain of the
Arctic Fire
told the cops
exactly
the same story about what happened to my brother, Troy, as he’d told them about what happened to Charlie Banks.” Jack shook his head. “Look, my brother was Superman when it came to the outdoors. I mean the real deal, you know, with the ‘S’ on his chest and the cape and all that. And he had beaucoup experience on the water. He made it around the world in a sailboat by himself twice, for Christ’s sake. Plus he always had this crazy sixth sense in nasty situations about where to be and where not to be. People around him got hurt, even killed. The ones he couldn’t save, anyway. But Troy never got hurt too badly. He got banged up and bruised, but he never took a hit that put him on the sidelines even for a day. He was one tough guy.”

“Charlie was the same way,” Karen said. “He was bulletproof. At least, until he sailed on the
Arctic Fire
.”

Jack could see the memories starting to flood back to her.

“He was an incredible athlete,” she continued, glancing past Jack into the distance, “and he knew everything there was to know about making it in the outdoors and on the ocean. Like you say Troy did. He never would have been the only one washed overboard if a big wave had hit the ship. He would have kept everyone else from going overboard.” Tears filled her eyes. “I tried to make the cops up in Alaska understand that, but they thought I was just being emotional, I could tell. They wouldn’t listen to me.”

“One of them listened.”

“Derek Palmer?”

“Yeah, that’s him. He said you two stayed in touch for a few months after Charlie’s death. He told me who you were, and he sent me a picture of you he’d saved on his phone from when you were up there. He gave me the name and address of where you worked too. That’s how I found you.” Jack hesitated. “I don’t want you to be mad at him. He was just trying to help.”

“I know,” she said softly. “He was the one who called Charlie’s parents to tell them he was dead. He was the first one to respond when the
Arctic Fire
got back to Dutch Harbor. He tried to push the investigation, but his superiors wouldn’t let him.”

“That’s what he said.”

Tears were streaming down Karen’s face. “Sorry,” she murmured, trying to wipe away the moisture. “I’m really sorry, I don’t usually cry. It’s just that I still miss Charlie all the time,” she whispered. “I wanted to marry him. I wanted to have kids with him.” She sobbed loudly as she dropped her face into her hands. “Sorry,” she whispered again.

“Don’t be.” Jack slid down the bench so he was sitting right beside her. He couldn’t imagine how awful she was feeling. “I think you’re amazing,” he said, slipping his arm around her shoulder. “I really do. You’ve already saved my butt a couple of times tonight. It’s like you’re not afraid of anything.” He pulled her closer and gently guided her head to his shoulder. For several minutes they said nothing as she cried.

“So what do we do now?” she asked when the tears finally stopped.

“We go after these people.”

She took a deep breath and wiped the moisture from her face one more time. “How?”

“We find out what really happened to Troy and Charlie. Then we go to the cops with what we have. At the end of the day I think we’re gonna end up in Dutch Harbor.”

She looked up at him. “You really mean it? You really want to do that?”

“Absolutely.”

“You said ‘we.’ You want me to go with you?”

“Of course. Don’t you want to go?”

“I do.” She grimaced. “But I don’t have much money, Jack.”

“Don’t worry.” The envelope Cheryl had given him had ten thousand dollars in it. And there was a note along with the cash that said to call her before he needed more. “I’ve got you covered.”

“You sure?”

“Yup.” Jack slipped a finger beneath her chin and tilted her face up. “So, you in?”

She nodded. “Oh yeah.”

“Good. I’m glad we got that settled.”

She gazed back at him for several moments with a distant expression. Then her eyes narrowed. “Let me see your driver’s license.”

“Huh?”

“Your driver’s license,” she repeated. “Let me see it.”

Jack dug into a pocket of his jeans, pulled out his wet wallet, and handed the license to her.

She scanned it carefully in the dim light. “OK,” she said, handing it back to him. “I guess you really are Jack Jensen.”

“I guess I am.”

“That license better be real.”

“Of course it is. What’s the problem?”

“There’s a place we should go on the way to Alaska,” she explained after a few moments. “It’s a cabin in northern Minnesota. It’s Charlie’s parents’ summer place.”

“Why there?”

Karen pursed her lips. “Can I trust you?”

“Of course you can. Haven’t I already—”

“No, I mean
really
trust you.”

“Yeah, damn it. I can’t believe you’d even—”

“OK,
OK
, here’s the deal. Before he died, Charlie told me he was part of some crazy government intelligence group called Red Cell Seven.”

Jack’s pulse jumped.

“He said it was a super-secret outfit buried in some black ops area of the defense department or the CIA or something.”

“
What?
Are you—”

“Listen to me,” she interrupted. “Let me finish.”

So maybe Troy hadn’t been joyriding around the world for the last six and a half years after all. Maybe he and Hunter had been right to wonder what Troy was really up to.

“Anyway,” she continued, “Charlie told me that he and a bunch of other guys were responsible for digging up very secret information, and for delivering and bringing back classified information to and from American spies all over the world. Apparently they do crazy things in the countries where the spies are, like climb mountains and hunt wild animals, but they do those things just for cover. They’re really in the country to make contact with our agents, and they do that when no one’s looking. They’re called Falcons, and they’re one division of this Red Cell Seven group.”

A chill raced up Jack’s spine. Everything his brother had been doing since graduating from Dartmouth suddenly made so much sense. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered. “Troy.”

“Obviously, Charlie wasn’t supposed to tell me that,” Karen continued. “The reason he did was because he was convinced his superior had gone insane, that the guy had turned into a certified nut job. I think he was about to go to people in the government outside Red Cell Seven to tell them what was going on, but he never got the chance. I think Charlie’s superior had him thrown off the
Arctic Fire
before he could tell anybody.”

“Like Troy,” Jack whispered.

Karen nodded. “Then a month ago I got this letter, and it told me about a box up in Minnesota I needed to get. Obviously Charlie wasn’t the one who told me about it. He wasn’t the one who sent the letter. He never said anything about a box in the cabin.

“The letter said there was a lot of valuable information in the box, and that I should get to it as soon as possible, read it, and give it to people who mattered, to people who could do something with the information in it.” She grimaced. “But I haven’t yet.” She glanced around, searching the shadows near them. “The letter said one more thing.”

Jack heard serious fear creeping into her voice. “What?”

“That guy I told you about. You know, Charlie’s leader.”

“The nut job? Yeah, what about him?”

“The letter said the guy was going to kill the president.”

“Of the
United States
?” Jack asked in disbelief. “President Dorn?”

“Yes. It said that the guy was already taking steps to assassinate him.”

“That’s ridiculous. Why would someone in Red Cell Seven want to kill the president of the United States? They should be in business to
protect
the president.”

“The letter didn’t say.”

“Well if that’s true, then we know why Charlie thought the guy was insane. Why didn’t you get the box?” he asked after a few moments. “Why didn’t you at least show the letter to someone?”

“I didn’t want to get involved. I’m not proud of it, but I had my reasons.”

“Which were?”

“Some pretty scary people showed up at my door a few weeks before I got the letter and made it real clear I was being watched.” She nodded across the harbor in the direction of the warehouse they’d jumped out of twenty minutes ago. “People like those men
who chased us tonight.” She shrugged. “And really, who was I going to show the letter to? People would have thought I was crazy if I’d handed them that thing. They probably would have thought I’d written it myself to get attention or something. Then I would have been arrested and thrown in jail for being a nut job. And I never would have been heard from again.”

Jack shook his head. “I don’t know.” He glanced over at her. This was probably a dead-end question, but he figured he’d ask it anyway. “Did the person who wrote the letter identify himself?”

Karen nodded. “Yeah, and that’s the other reason I didn’t go to the authorities. I didn’t want to get him in trouble.”

“Well, who was it?”

She stared intently into Jack’s eyes for several moments before answering.

“Troy Jensen.”

C
ARLSON NODDED
solemnly to the other three men sitting around the table. They were about to make an incredibly important decision. And they were doing it in the unfinished basement of his Georgetown home over ham sandwiches and potato salad Nancy had fixed before going to bed to cry about his cancer. He felt bad for leaving her alone right after he told her, but this meeting had to happen immediately. The country still had to come first. They’d cry together later.