Deep Breath (2 page)

Only Robinson Crusoe had everything done by Friday.

 

—Anonymous

 

January 2, 1988

General Arthur Duggin faced the windows of his second-floor study, which looked out over the pastures where his herd of Black Angus grazed. He held his hands clasped behind his back, his chin up, his head high, wondering if he would ever stand here again, if he would ever again enjoy the peaceful sight, the comforts of home, the fruits of his lifetime of labors.

In two hours, he was bound for Washington, D.C., for months of senate hearings and the endless questions he’d be compelled to answer. He was, after all, a key witness in the government’s investigation, one seeking to expose corruption in the contract for communication satellites his committee had awarded to the firm TotalSky.

He thought of Paul, of Stanley, of Cameron. This was certainly not an ending they had conceived happening throughout the long year of work that had brought the seed of their plan to fruition. They had dotted every
i
, crossed every
t
, covered each and every base they had run. Or so they had erroneously assumed.

He had yet to understand which of the decisions they’d made had been the one to bring it all crashing down—one satellite at a time. The first had landed in the North Sea between Stavanger and Aberdeen eighteen months ago, plunging into thunderous waters that would have rendered the pieces impossible to identify. Or to recover.

At that, he had breathed a sigh of relief. They had not been so fortunate the second time. That one, only a scant six months later, had landed on the side of a mountain deep in the Tanzanian jungles. Parts of the onboard computer, including the motherboard, had been found. The mezzanine board, thankfully, had not.

Two satellites remained in orbit. Convincing the powers in charge to leave them there, to monitor them closely, to ensure their functionality while benefiting—as intended—from the information both procured was not going to be easy, but he was the one elected by the TotalSky alliance to make it happen. And so he would.

The four men had known at the first failure that a choice had to be made, that last year’s discovery would result in this year’s hearings, that one of them, as agreed from the beginning, would be the first and—because of his connections to TotalSky—the most obvious to take the fall.

The other three would see to the future of those their comrade left behind. Monetarily, emotionally. Whatever doing so required. That time had now arrived. General Arthur Duggin took a final look at all he owned, returned to his desk, and prepared to do what he had to do.

Current day—11:00
A.M.

Morganna.

A beautiful name. A beautiful car.

And a beautiful, never-ending stretch of concrete reaching into the distance and inviting SG-5 operative Harry van Zandt to give the fully restored 1958 Buick convertible her head.

Oakleys in place, a wrist draped over the steering wheel, he lifted his face to the bright blue sky and rested his arm along the back of the aqua, tucked-and-rolled leather seat.

It was April in north central Texas. Weather he could get used to. Weather he could love. Especially after the last ten months spent in New Mexico, where he’d experienced both the fire and ice of hell.

He hadn’t minded so much in the end; before leaving, he’d flushed a big chunk of Spectra IT down the tubes, finishing up a mission that had originally been assigned to another of the Smithson Group’s newest recruits.

Due to a rocky ride at the wrong end of a rope held by one of two Spectra thugs, Mick Savin had wound up out of commission, and Harry had landed the job of infiltrating Spectra’s western U.S. command center.

With a little help from an inside and unexpected source—namely one Ezra Moore, Spectra assassin and all-around bad guy—Harry had managed to derail the international crime syndicate’s money train.

Before New Mexico, he’d worked another Spectra scenario in Old Mexico, holding down the proverbial fort for Eli McKenzie, one of the original members of SG-5. He’d spent a grueling four months in a crude, generator-powered barracks, living with men in the business of supplying Spectra’s international prostitution ring with kidnapped and underage girls.

Interestingly enough, Ezra Moore—right hand to Spectra boss Warren Aceveda—had been instrumental in the Smithson Group successfully bringing down the very house in which he lived.

Finally, Harry had a mission of his own. Naturally, it involved Ezra Moore. And the deal the two had made in New Mexico—Ezra’s release of a Spectra hostage in exchange for Harry’s locating a confidential and long-time-missing government dossier—played right into Harry’s plans.

Hank Smithson, Harry’s boss and the principal behind the Smithson Group, wanted to know exactly who Ezra Moore was. Wanted to know how he managed to be in so many right places at so many right times. Wanted to know why he’d stepped up on recent missions for Julian Samms and Kelly John Beach—two other SG-5 operatives—as well as for Harry, Eli, and Mick.

It was Harry’s job to find out. But then finding things had always been Harry’s job, and was exactly the reason Hank had recruited him into the SG-5 ranks. He was the go-to guy, the Rabbit—his nickname—that his fellow agents pulled out of the proverbial hat when they needed something, needed it now, and needed it without strings.

He’d procured motherboards while in the middle of the Sea of Cortez. He’d procured antibiotics while in the middle of the Gobi Desert. He’d procured electrical wiring, waterproof socks, and tickets to sold-out theater performances while in the Bering Strait, Siberia, and Sydney.

For this role, the first thing he’d laid his hands on was Morganna. And what a babe she was, he mused, stroking the rich leather seat as he drove. No one made cars like this anymore. She could suck a gas pump dry and empty a man’s wallet without ever coming up for air. Hard to resist a beauty with that combo of skills—especially when she made the man feel so damn good while it happened.

Harry’d been a sucker for a slick set of wheels his entire life. Make it a convertible, he was over the moon. A muscle car, and he was in hog heaven. His mother had driven a classic and fully decked out 1971 Riviera GS, his father a 1969 Camaro. He’d never cared who took him to school. He only cared about not riding the bus.

For his sixteenth birthday, he’d wanted a ’69 Pontiac GTO. His parents had given him a ’71 Cuda ragtop instead. Black and bumblebee yellow. He’d been voted junior class president right then and there.

He who dies with the most toys wins
. Wasn’t that what the bumper sticker said? It was always about the coolest car, the fattest wallet, the hottest honey, the biggest dick. Funny how so little had changed.

The second thing he’d done was to hunt down the one single person most likely to lead him to what he wanted—the dossier he’d promised to find for Ezra Moore. The dossier that would never see Ezra’s hands without first seeing the fine-tooth electronic comb belonging to the analysis team waiting even now at the Smithson Group’s Manhattan ops center.

Inquiries, both discreet and not so—the first made as an SG-5 operative, the second in his role as a collector of modern military memorabilia—resulted in one name popping up repeatedly. A Texas treasure hunter named Georgia McLain. He’d found her in jail in Waco, and he liked her already.

What wasn’t to like? The woman wouldn’t take no for an answer, went after what she wanted with a vengeance, found no lengths too far. That dedication played into Harry’s hands. Especially since sweet Georgia McLain appeared to be after the same thing he was.

The background check he’d run yielded a mother who had died of pneumonia when Georgia was five, and a father who had died in the federal prison where he’d been incarcerated seventeen years before for his role in the TotalSky scandal—a detail Harry knew not to tuck too far away.

She had one living relative—a brother, Finn—and Harry had no trouble tracking down his photo, driving record, vehicle identification number, and license tag as well as the make and model of his truck. Then he’d spent the night in McLennan County and waited for little brother to show.

The thing he found most interesting about his treasure hunter went back to the cool car, fat cash observation of earlier. For someone who hunted treasures for a living, the woman had zero in the way of assets, liquid or otherwise. He’d found no property in her name, no DBA, no Bahamian, Cayman, or Swiss accounts.

It would appear she pocketed the proceeds from one find and lived off those funds while hunting down the next. It would appear that way except for the fact that there were no records of her locating any items of significant worth in the last three years. There had, in fact, been little activity notched on her notoriety belt since her focus had narrowed.

Not such a big market out there for specializing in military papers. Her interest, he reasoned, had become personal at the same time she’d dropped off the map—right after her father’s death. To Harry, that obsession was the best kind of news.

And when combined with the death of General Arthur Duggin, the upcoming auction of the man’s library items, and her arrest for trespassing on the General’s property, well, this beautiful, never-ending stretch of concrete between Waco and Dallas seemed to be exactly the right track.

He glanced beneath the dash at the GPS navigator that doubled as a tracking device. The signal sent out by the transmitter he’d slipped inside the wheel well of Finn McLain’s pickup showed brother and sister a half mile behind. Harry had cut across a couple of county roads to get in front of them, but now it was time to slow down and let them take the lead.

He planned to stay on their tail all the way to Dallas. He wasn’t worried about being seen. He wasn’t worried about Morganna drawing attention. She had, after all, once belonged to one of the highest ranking military officials to serve during the Korean War. And that gave a whole lot of credence to his cover story.

When he ran into sweet Georgia McLain tonight at the auction preview, she’d have no cause to think he was there for any reason other than getting his hands on the General’s 1948 Jaguar XK120 Roadster.

Harry was the only one who would know the truth.

“One question, Georgia. That’s all I have. One question.”

Georgia McLain slumped down as far as the seat belt would let her and stared out the passenger window of her brother’s truck at the flat nothingness whizzing by.

Finn had not been the least bit surprised to get her phone call last night. He was used to bailing her out of this scrape and that. Neither had he been the least bit happy. But he would get over it as he always did.

He had paid her nominal trespassing fine—thank goodness nothing more serious had been filed against her—and driven her from the McLennan County Jail to Waco’s transit center to pick up her duffel and backpack, stored in a locker there.

He’d done everything she’d expected, making her feel even worse for the trouble she’d caused. And so she finally grumbled, “What?”, wondering why she bothered when she knew exactly what he was going to say—and when he knew exactly how she would answer.

When are you going to give up this ridiculous quest? When are you going to let the past go and deal with the present? When are you going to grow up?

She knew those would be the questions he asked her because they were the ones she constantly asked of herself. And the answers always came in one form or another of “you know when.”

Finn reached across the truck’s cab and poked her in the shoulder, jouncing her out of her pity party. “When are you going to take the break you’ve been promising me for weeks and pack up the stuff you have at my house? I’m moving in less than a month. In case you’ve forgotten?”

Hmm. Not what she’d expected. And she hadn’t forgotten. Uh, not really. She’d just been putting it off because she’d been busy. Wasn’t she always busy? And because she had no idea where she was going to keep her stuff now that Finn was giving up his investigator’s business in Houston and moving to the Florida Keys.

She sat up a little straighter, rubbed at the spot on her arm. “I have a couple of things I need to do first once we get to Dallas. I should be finished by Monday, and I’ll head down then, okay?”

Duggin’s auction would be history by then, and the rest of his assets ready to be sold. She’d damn well better have the dossier in her hands. If she didn’t, well…

“What if you go ahead and rent storage space for me? In case I get hung up?”

“You’re not going to get hung up.” Finn glanced in his rearview before looking over. “We’re both going to be back in Houston on Monday. I’ll help you pack up your things. And then instead of a storage space, we’ll rent you an apartment. How’s that?”

An apartment. Utility bills. Neighbors. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be ready for that responsibility again. She’d have to get a car…“We’ll see. Let me get through the weekend first.”

“Sure. But I’m sticking around until then.”

“Finn, no—”

“Look Georgia. You don’t have wheels—”

“I have feet. I know how to rent. I can even call a cab.” Her brother, her keeper, was the last person she needed hanging around. She scrunched down again, propped her boots on the dash. “That’s all I need.”

“Maybe so.” He paused, the ground whirring by beneath the wheels of the truck, the road’s center stripe a blurry and hypnotizing
thwap, thwap, thwap
. “But none of those will do you any good in a getaway.”

He made it sound like she was Bonnie, sans Clyde. “I’m not going to need to be making a getaway.”

Finn snorted. “How many times have I heard that?”

He was right, of course, but such was the nature of even small-scale treasure hunting and wanting the same thing dozens of others would dismember to get their hands on.

Finn had come to her rescue near Fredericksburg when she’d walked out of an auction with a photograph of General George Armstrong Custer and his wife, Libbie, to find that a competitor had backed into her rental and left her on foot.

He’d intervened at a flea market in the valley when she’d found an 1852 Treasury Certificate issued to an officer in the Navy of the Republic of Texas and a collector had broken her pinky trying to snatch it out of her hand.

He’d swooped in when a dealer in Baton Rouge had given her a black eye and bloody nose while shoving her away from an 1835 Letter of Passage signed by Stephen F. Austin, commander in chief of the Texas volunteer army.

So, yeah. Sooner or later a getaway car would come in handy. Especially with her reputation for having a nose for sniffing out things no one else could, and everyone wanted, preceding her everywhere she went.

The only reason she’d been so successful was because she didn’t have an apartment, a car, and a cat. And because she refused to believe having any of those was as important as clearing her father’s name.

Finn didn’t disagree with the latter. He just wasn’t keen on her approach. Or on the fact that what had once been a quest was now a fixation. And that she refused to move on from her vagabond ways until she’d accomplished the task.

She really was too old not to be more settled. Then again, settling, when she’d done it, had gotten her nothing but a broken heart and a lot of useless community property.

Her ex of eight years now had wanted to start a family. Problem was, he hadn’t thought dawn-to-dusk road trips and constant exposure to mold, mildew, dust, and spider webs was any kind of life for a kid.

She couldn’t have disagreed more, but hey, he’d insisted he was the boss. It had been her life for a very long time, and she’d loved it, going from garage sale to estate sale, from auction barn to antique shop to flea market.

And doing it all with Caroline Sorter. Caroline, who’d been her and Finn’s nanny since she was five and their mother had died of pneumonia. Caroline, who’d been appointed by the court as their guardian when their father had gone to prison only weeks before Georgia had turned eighteen.

Wondering if she would’ve had it in her to be half as good a mother as Nanny Caro, Georgia glanced over at Finn, whose eyes were back on the road. “Why do you put up with me?”

His crow’s feet crinkled, and his grin scooped a deep dimple into his cheek. “Because that’s what baby brothers do,” he said as they passed a wooden billboard, faded, beat all to hell, yet still professing:
Nobody Knows A Grill Like Phil—Waco Phil’s—5 Miles.

Her stomach growled, and she huffed. “You need a haircut.”