Clarity (The Admiral's Elite Book 3) (36 page)

Almohad’s phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and glanced at the face, frowning. “Excuse me.” Putting it to his ear he took several steps away to stand by the window, not trusting any of his audience enough to leave them alone.

Becca’s eyes glued themselves to Michael’s disinterested face.

“Who is this?” Almohad’s rare anger brought all eyes to him. “I’m sure you’re mistaken.” A pause while he listened, anger visibly flaring. “Where?” He growled, bristling at being instructed. “One hour.” Stabbing the screen with a finger, he took a breath, stared out at the midmorning sun, phone still in hand, turned.

“I have things to do, we need to wrap this up.” He looked to the Senator who didn’t have so much as a scratch or burn on him. “You’re dead, no one suspects.” He pointed to Ed. “I’ve brought him, the last living witness. My bank received your payment just an hour ago. The plane you’ve requested is waiting to take you to your new life.”

“What is this?” Ed found his tongue. “Bill, you’re alive? Who was in the car?”

The senator touched his hair. Uncertain, all the boyish charisma he’d shown at their first meeting gone, Becca almost felt sorry for the hollow man before her. The horror movies had it right, they didn’t come back from the dead all in one piece.

“I’m sorry, Ed, I had to do it. There’s been talk of me going to the White House. They were starting to dig, it was a matter of time before they found out. I couldn’t face...” He faded, losing track or energy, who knew?

Ed shook his head. “But it’s all over the papers anyway. Why not just step down after this term? You didn’t have to go through all of this.”

“That’s not how it works, you’ve been around long enough to know that. This town has its own ideas. The party’d already approached me. ‘No’ wasn’t what they wanted to hear.” Bill swiped at his face. “They needed a body, I gave them one. My assistant and a junior staffer about my size were in the car. I made an unscheduled stop a block up, the agent on me never saw his men.” He glanced up at Almohad who had mentally moved on already, he was digging around on his phone for something.

“But why spill the secrets you gave everything to hide?” The betrayal on her father’s face was physically painful to witness. “Your family’s business will be investigated, they’ll lose everything.”

“Not with me gone. I’ve left documents behind, books giving up complicit dock workers and customs agents. It’s enough to call off the dogs, give them the closure they need. And,” his voice broke, “with my reputation ruined no one will look too deep at anyone else. This will die with me, my obligation has been satisfied, my debt to my family paid. I’ll go somewhere and live quietly where no one knows me.”

“I don’t understand why we’re here.” Ed frowned.

“Coincidence,” Almohad looked up from his phone, eyed back to bored.

Bill reached behind him, lifting his suit coat and pulling a sub compact Glock from his waistband.

Realization struck and Ed reared back. “Bill, why? I’ve kept the secret for forty years, why would you think you can’t trust me?”

“It’s not you I can’t trust.” Bill was clearly struggling, his hand shook as it rose to firing position.

“No,” Becca whispered.

The gun came up, finger on the trigger. It shook violently. “I can’t have you used against me. All it would take is another nosy reporter, someone who wants to do a tell all story down the line. It would destroy everything my father and grandfather built. Better to have a black sheep whose sins took him than a family’s golden child gone wrong take them all down with him.”

“Bill, please.” Ed reasoned. “You’re not a killer.”

“Haven’t you heard?
I
a
m
a killer, I’ve done this before.” Hysterical laughter bubbled up his throat. Gun dropping, he wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand.

“You’re not, he is.” Ed didn’t mind pissing off the lunatic in the room anymore.

Almohad glanced up from his phone. “And so, so much more.” His lips curled and Becca swore she could see a hint of fang.

“I have to,” Bill pleaded, needing his victim’s approval.

“No. Michael, please.” Becca looked for something in her lover, some sort of reaction, an emotion. Certainly he wouldn’t let her father be killed. Would he? No human emotion displayed itself on his features, he appeared wooden.

Bill’s hand shook. He wasn’t going to be able to do it. H
e
wasn’
t
a killer.

“I said I have somewhere to be,” Almohad put his phone down. “Let’s move this along. Captain?”

Becca and Michael both looked.

He gave a brief nod toward her father’s captive form and raised an eyebrow.

A nod of the head and Michael reached under his arm to produce a full size Glock.

Almohad waved, dismissing his former client. “Bon voyage, Bill. Don’t send a postcard.” He flicked a hand over the couch where he could just see the lower torso and feet of his captives. “Do it,” he issued the command and strode from the room.

“Look away, Becca,” her father told her. “Don’t watch.”

“Michael, no!” Becca shrieked, all memory of training and negotiation gone
.
Dad!

“If you’re any sort of a man, Rossi, you’ll move her. Don’t let her see.” Ed pleaded, man to man with his executioner.

Becca’s horrified eyes were glued to her father’s face, memorizing every detail as spots flew over his features, distorting and hiding like the sun shining through trees on a summer day. The tiny lines from years in the sun, lighter little lines on one cheek where his scars didn’t tan the same. Where did those scars really come from? Now she would never get to ask, her father’s secrets would die here in this sitting room full of fragile furniture.

She was lifted bodily with one arm under her middle, set back down on her other side, her back to her father.

Boom

A masculine grunt, unmistakably her father’s. She knew it in the same way she would know his sneeze, cough, or yawn. The metallic clang of a gun hitting the rug and she tuned out the rest.

Becca’s life was gone. Her father, the man she’d lived to please, that need defining her entire life, was gone. Killed because someone might some day come looking. Murdered by the man she’d given her heart and soul to. No, not given, he’d torn it from her chest, killing so much more than her parent with that round.

Her ears were ringing as she was hoisted like a baby, cradled against a silent chest that once brought her peace. Now it merely felt empty, like hers.

He carried her from the house, through the back door and into the carriage house turned garage.

“Put her in the back,” Almohad commanded.

As he lay her gently on the hard carpet, Michael’s blue eyes met hers and Becca felt nothing.

He opened his mouth as if to speak and she beat him to it. To hear his voice might shatter what was left of her.

“Nothing you do will ever change who you are, Michael. You will never be anything but a killer.”

His head reared back as if she’d struck him. She’d scored a hit, cut him deeply. She knew where to aim as only a lover, someone privy to another’s deepest fears and hidden dreams can. Who cared? Her life was a lie, she’d fallen in love with a killer and he’d stolen a good man’s life. No verbal jab could undo that.

The shut and for the second time that day Becca was in a car, in the dark.

Chapter 34

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Ryan touched Gabrielle’s arm as she paced by him on the herringbone paver of Georgetown’s riverfront. 

She paused and turned, back to the water splishing happily against the small boulders holding the shoreline back. “More than ready.”

“You seem a little tense,” Kenneth taunted from his perch atop a block half wall separating sidewalk from the dumpsters behind the commercial buildings closed for the weekend. “Is it because it’s the full moon tomorrow or because you really really want to kill this guy?”

No shock he’d picked up on that. Crazy but observant, Kenneth was one who should scare everyone. He was dangerous in so many ways.

“I’m fine,” she assured them both, trying not to see the love and concern on Ryan’s face. Both would only distract her now. This was about vengeance, about stopping a monster who took pleasure in the misery of others. “I just want to get this guy.”

“Well, thank you Captain Obvious,” Kenneth swatted at a bug looking to burrow into those thick, tempting locks. “Question is, can you do it or are you too emotionally invested?”

“Emotionally invested?” Gabrielle and Ryan both turned, staring at the puzzle that was Kenneth.

“You know what I’m saying. Are you too deep to do this? What if Senor Nasty has info we decide we need so we scrap the killing and go straight to hostage taking, can you do it?”

Gabrielle felt the needles of fear prick her skin in a thousand places
.
Almohad can’t walk away. He can’t
.
She snorted, forcing half a smile. “Let’s look at his current situation. He’s actively trying to destroy Black’s unit, he’s taken out a senator in a public attack, he’s been behind more death and destruction than even we know about, and that’s a lot. Now he’s trying to blow up Admiral Black with a fucking drone, Kenneth. What possible intel do you think he could pull out of his ass that might buy him a pass at this point?” She crossed her arms. “Hmm? Elvis’s true whereabouts? The entrance to heaven? It would have to be pretty fucking good to save his hide at this point.”

Feigning nonchalance, or maybe he’d flipped the switch and really didn’t care, he shrugged and hopped down. “Well, better figure out who gets the golden ticket, cause I think this is him.” He wiped his hands together and stepped around them, turning to face the approaching black SUV.

Car doors slammed, soft shoe soles scuffed on paver and two faced three. Years of missions within missions had taught that sometimes when an enemy’s door opened a surprise came out. So no one spoke when Michael stepped out of the driver’s side. This was his show, they let him lead. Gabrielle’s only concern was that someone else would take her shot and steal her kill
.
This one is mine.

Her eyes took him in, devoured every detail. This was the man who’d stolen her life. Who’d taken so much from so many, changed her very nature. Killed indiscriminately, butchered her friends and scores more in the years since. He looked so disappointingly ordinary after all this time. Smaller maybe? Or had she made him bigger in her memories? “Where is this witness?” Almohad gestured to the corners.

“Do you doubt with all of the damage you’ve done down here you wouldn’t leave a witness?” Ryan answered.

“I know full well there are witnesses.” Almohad chuckled, looking frustratingly smug. “How many of those do you think will come forward? What if I send out a little reminder?” He waved a hand dismissively.

“If you’re not worried, even a little,” Ryan cocked his head, “Then why did you come?”

“Your plan to get me here was good enough, if I were a man who had something to fear. But what do I have to fear from meat?” He grinned, the cat with the proverbial canary. “Look what I’ve done just today. I killed the indomitable Admiral Black before lunch. I’ve been using his trusted Captain Rossi for my own means for months and when you called we were wrapping up with his little pet. You tell me why I should fear you or your filthy prostitute witness. I own this town and everyone in it, because with the right leverage, a man can own anyone.”

His lack of concern, the way he wielded his power like a cloak of invincibility; all of it fascinated Gabrielle. Like a teeny bopper meeting her favorite heart throb, numbed to a state near shock, she could only watch the object of her life’s pursuit in a deafening fog. Not that she was much for pithy commentary but if she’d planned some sort of great revenge speech it would have been a disappointing moment. What she could do was move her arm.