Kodiak Sky (Red Cell Trilogy Book 3) (24 page)

“Is that all?” Baxter asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Then leave us. And speak
nothing
of this.”

“I won’t, sir.” A moment later the young man was gone.

“Mr. President, I think we should—”

“How could you let this happen to me, Stewart?” Dorn demanded angrily.

“What are you talking about?” Baxter asked, shocked.

“How could you let me be so vulnerable?”

“Oh.” Jesus. For a second there it had sounded as if Dorn was accusing him of something else. Baxter’s heart had done five somersaults. “I don’t understand.”

“You should have had Secret Service around Shannon.”

“
I didn’t even know about her, sir
. Not until the other night, anyway. Not until she’d already been taken. I don’t see how you can possibly—”

“I don’t care,” Dorn snapped as he stood up and headed for the door. “You are my chief of staff. You should not have let this happen to me. It is your fault, Stewart,
all
your fault,” he called out as he slammed the door.

Baxter stared at the door for a long while. Finally, he broke into a thin smile. “Fuck him.”

T
HE ATTACK
would begin in three days, starting promptly at one p.m. eastern. Sterling had communicated that to everyone an hour ago, just before they’d gone to their rooms for the night. Thankfully, there had been no dissension in the group whatsoever, no complaints or concerns at all. Everyone was ready to go and fully committed to Operation Anarchy.

The date and time certain was less than sixty-three hours away, and everything was coming together. Everyone except the secretary of state would be in Washington. Even she might be back by then, if a few things broke right.

They would stay here in Harpers Ferry through the night before, then “break camp” at six a.m. on the morning of OA, heading to Washington together en masse in a bus he’d rented from an outfit in Charles Town, West Virginia. When they got to DC, they’d split up for good, turning into lone wolves again.

They’d abandon the bus there—which, he mused, would probably go on display at some point at the Smithsonian as a memorial to the terrible tragedy. After authorities had pieced everything together and realized that the vehicle had transported all twenty-five assassins to the city.

Every channel in the world would be reporting this story. It would be the biggest of the century—maybe ever.

Sterling stood at the window of his room at the inn and stared into the darkness toward the Potomac River, which flowed quietly and invisibly past him at the bottom of the steep hill. He’d just dropped that red herring of a bomb on the White House about the swap of political prisoners for Shannon, which, of course, was total bullshit. There would be no swap. The demand about releasing political prisoners was simply a ruse to make President Dorn believe it was a normal situation. Without a quid pro quo on the table, Dorn might become suspicious.

J
ENNIE
P
EREZ
sprinted through the darkness of the Midtown Manhattan parking garage. The mone
y she was supposed to be getting for committing her horrible deeds hadn’t hit her account yet. And maybe it never would, she realized. Maybe she’d been a fool to believe them.

Of course, money had never been her primary motivation in all this. She felt bad for Karen and Little Jack, but Troy had to pay for cheating on her. And for killing Lisa Martinez. Bill Jensen had sworn to her over and over that Troy wasn’t responsible for Lisa’s death. Troy had, too, many times as well. But Jennie didn’t believe them anymore. How could she believe anything that family claimed?

She’d seen the graphic pictures of Troy and a dark-haired woman entwined in each other’s bodies. The man who’d promised to pay her for her treason had shown her so many terrible photos and told her the infidelity had taken place six weeks ago, when Troy was on a mission in Spain. She’d checked her date book, and, sure enough, Troy had gone radio silent during the exact three days the man claimed Troy had been with the woman.

The weird thing for Jennie was that she couldn’t stop looking at the pictures. She kept taking each one the man handed to her and kept staring and staring as her tears flowed. Then she’d taken the next one, which was even more graphic than the last. It had been horrible, but she couldn’t stop. She’d sobbed and sobbed, and her decision was made.

Jennie began to run for her car. She would take the Holland Tunnel out of the city and lose herself somewhere in this big country. She didn’t care anymore if they paid her. Maybe it would be better if they didn’t, now that she really thought about it. She couldn’t stop thinking about what Karen and L.J. were going through. And if the money never came, she could convince herself that it had all been about passion and nothing else.

She screamed as a dark figure stepped out from behind an Escalade. She whirled around and sprinted the other way.

Right into the strong arms of another dark figure.

“
W
HERE’S THE
goddamn plane?
I’ve got the handicapped bitch and the little brat in the van with me, and I’m getting nervous.”

“Settle down.”

“Don’t tell me to settle down. I’ve probably got a million cops looking for me at this point. I’ll never see the light of day again if I get caught with them.”

“The cops have no idea yet. We’re monitoring the situation very closely.”

“Well, what’s the deal? I’m tired of sitting here in this parking lot. You never know who’s gonna come along and roust me.”

“The plane had a small problem. They’re replacing a part. It’s a long flight across the Atlantic, and they’ve got to make sure the thing’s in top condition when it takes off.”

“Damn it!”

“Relax. The jet’s at an airport outside Philadelphia. Once it’s fixed it’ll be to you in north Jersey in no time. Do you hear me? In no time.”

CHAPTER 33

“Y
OU CHEATED
on me, you
bastard
 
! I give you everything, I put up with all the shit that comes along with being Troy Jensen’s girlfriend, and then you fuck some Spanish whore. That’s how you thank me? That’s what I get for loving you as much as a woman can possibly love a man?”

“Jennie, I—”

“
That’s
what I get for seeing you a few days a month,
maybe,
and getting half your attention when I do see you. For never knowing where you really are or who you’re really with when you’re away because everything is this
huge
secret with you that I can’t know anything about because I can’t be trusted.”

“It wasn’t about trust. It was about—”

“
That’s
the thanks and the love I get in return for being completely dedicated and totally loyal to you? I hate you, Troy!”

“How did you know where I was?”

“I saw pictures of you
fucking
her in Barcelona,” Jennie sobbed, tears welling in her eyes before spilling down her cheeks in pulsing streams. “Graphic pictures, and don’t even try to deny it. I recognized you in those photos right away. How could I not? And who knows how many other women you’ve been screwing in the last nine months?”

“No, I meant how do you know I was in Spain?” Troy demanded, leaning down so he was face-to-face with her as she sat in the chair of the run-down, fifth-floor apartment. “That’s what I need to know.” The place was vacant, and the chair in the middle of the bare room was the only stick of furniture in the entire apartment. “Who told you?” he demanded. “Who’s your source? Tell me, goddamn it!”

“I’m not going to tell you anything after what you’ve—”

“You’d better, Jennie.”

“Or what?”

“Or I could let your imagination wander for a week and you still wouldn’t come up with half the things I could do to
make
you talk.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me. I want my boy back, and I don’t care what I have to do to get him, especially to the people responsible for taking him from me.”

Troy was going at her hard, and Jack wanted to have compassion for Jennie. But he couldn’t. She’d set up Karen and Little Jack to be kidnapped. She’d admitted that terrible truth a few minutes ago, as soon as Troy had forced her into the chair. It was as if she couldn’t wait to tell him what she’d done.

They’d brought her to this run-down tenement deep in the heart of Brooklyn after grabbing her in the Manhattan parking garage. Without her knowing, Troy had programmed her cell phone at the beginning of their relationship so he could track her movements everywhere. It hadn’t taken them long to catch up with her once they were in the city.

Jack would have thought Troy was paranoid for doing that to Jennie’s phone—before tonight. Now he figured Troy was just being smart and careful—as it seemed his younger brother always was. Troy was an RC7 agent, and he was suspicious of everyone, because he had to be. It made Jack wonder about his own phone.

Red Cell Seven used this Brooklyn tenement as a location to interrogate, Jack assumed, or to hole up. Troy hadn’t said that, but it was obvious he’d been here before. More than once, Jack was guessing from the confident way his brother had driven the SUV to this place without needing GPS or a map.

“A little bird told me you were there with that bitch in Spain,” Jennie shot back in a quivering voice, rising up and taking a step toward the room’s lone door.

Jack moved in front of it so she couldn’t get out, hoping he wouldn’t have to get physical with her.

He didn’t have to worry. Troy pushed her back down into the chair before she got far.

“Don’t do that again,” Troy warned as she shook his hand violently from her arm. “You’ll be sorry if you do.”

“Sorrier than I am now?”

“Much.”

“How would that be possible?”

“Like I said, try me.”

“Easy, brother,” Jack called. He couldn’t imagine Troy using the same tactics on Jennie that he would on terrorists. But then, she’d set his one-year-old son up to be kidnapped, and emotions in this room were running hot. There would be no guarantees, he realized uncomfortably, thinking about what he’d wanted to do when Jennie had admitted to also being part of Karen’s disappearance. “Easy,” he murmured again, more to himself than Troy this time.

“No, I won’t. L.J. and Karen have been taken because of her, and we don’t have any way of—” Troy stopped short when his phone buzzed. He pulled it out of his pocket. “Jesus,” he muttered as he scanned the tiny screen.

Jack’s phone went off a moment later. “They want a hundred grand for Karen,” he said as he read the message. “Is that what you just got, a ransom demand for L.J.?”

“No,” Troy answered sharply, shoving the phone back into his pocket. “No, it wasn’t.” He turned his attention on Jennie again. “Tell me who your contact is. Tell me who has L.J. and Karen. Tell me where they are. I want names, phone numbers, and addresses right now!”

“I hate you, Troy. You cheated on me.”

“You have no—”

“And you murdered my cousin Lisa.”

Jack’s eyes raced to Jennie’s, then to Troy’s. She definitely had that one wrong. Jack was pretty sure the whole cheating thing was a sham, too, but he knew for a fact that the murder accusation was way off.

“How could you kill Lisa?” Jennie cried as she beat Troy about the arms and chest over and over with her small fists as he knelt in front of her. “He was Little Jack’s mother.”

“How could
you
set L.J. up to be kidnapped? He’s your family.”

“Because he’s
your
son, Troy. Because him being gone causes you the same pain you caused me. It tears a hole in your heart, just like the one you’ve torn in mine.” She let her face fall into her hands.
“Murderer!”

“Wait a minute.” Jack hustled over to the chair. Until now, he hadn’t said a word. But he couldn’t let this go any longer. “I know for a fact Troy didn’t—”

“Stay out of this, Jack, or she’ll—”

“I’m not gonna let her say that, Troy.”

“The same people who showed me pictures of you screwing that bitch told me what really happened to Lisa.” Jennie kept going, ignoring Jack. “They told me you killed her, Troy. They showed me you cheating. Why shouldn’t I believe them? They have proof. You have lies.”

“He didn’t kill Lisa.”

“Shut up, Jack! You’re just covering for him because he’s your brother.”

“I was there, Jennie. I could have been killed, too.”

“Troy was in Alaska,” Jack continued. “I was with Lisa that day, right before she died. Troy was four thousand miles away.”

“I don’t believe you. You’re just lying to—”

“I’m not lying.”

“Then maybe you killed her.”

Jack took a step back, as if Jennie had physically hit him. He’d known her for nine months. Not that well, of course, but she’d always been nice to him, and Troy seemed to adore her. This wasn’t the woman he’d come to know since last December. It was as if he didn’t know her at all anymore. Thinking Troy had cheated on her had completely changed her.

“It’s not as if you’re a saint, either, Jennie.”

Jennie gazed up at Troy. “What?” she whispered.

“You cheated, too.” The room went tomb-still as Troy took his turn to prosecute. “I have pictures, too, of every inch of your body with someone else.”

“You’re lying again,” Jennie snapped after a few seconds. “It’s pathetic.”

She was trying to seem defiant and unaffected, but that missile Troy launched had shocked her. It was all over her expression and inside her voice. Jack’s gaze dropped to the floor. Troy had just admitted to what she’d accused him of. He’d heard that “too.” It was hard to believe.

“You want to see for yourself?” Troy pulled his phone from his pocket again. “You want to see yourself wrapped around that guy you work with at—”

“Shut up!”
she screamed. “Shut up, Troy,” she murmured a second time as gut-wrenching sobs wracked her body again. “You were gone so much. I was just . . . lonely. I . . . I . . .” Jennie leaned down and buried her face in her hands again. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

B
ILL AWOKE
with a start. In his nightmare Rita Hayes had been making love to him passionately, until Maddux had appeared like a ghost in the bedroom he and Rita were using—which, he realized now that things were coming into focus, he’d never been in or even seen before.

In the dream Maddux had shot Rita as she lay on the bed beside Bill, and then turned the gun on him. Bill had awakened just as Maddux was squeezing the trigger.

He shook his head and glanced down at the .44 Magnum lying on the table. Though he’d fought exhaustion hard, he’d nodded off a few minutes ago here in the cabin’s main room, in the chair he’d been sitting in when Maddux had left. And now an eerie feeling was rolling through his body.

Though it wasn’t that typical post-nightmare weirdness and then relief he usually experienced, as he came to consciousness and realized he wasn’t actually going through anything terrible. It was something else he was feeling now—like he was being watched.

He stretched his aching body for a moment and then reached for the gun. He was just on edge from everything that was going on. That’s all this was.

“Stop right there,” a voice ordered from behind him. “Pick up that gun and you’re a dead man.”

“Okay,” Bill agreed, trying to calm his suddenly wildly beating heart, pulling his fingers back deliberately, and holding up his arms as cold steel pressed to the nape of his neck. “Let’s not do anything rash.”

“I never do.”

“Who am I speaking to?” Bill asked as the steel withdrew from his neck and a slender figure moved past him in the moonlight streaming through the window beside the table. He lowered his arms as the woman picked up the .44 off the table. “What’s going on?”

“I’m here on direct orders from President Dorn,” Skylar answered as she slipped the big gun into her belt at the small of her back, even as she kept her pistol trained on Bill. “The president has informed me that you’re part of a conspiracy that is trying to assassinate him. That, in fact, you’re one of the conspiracy’s leaders.” She paused. “I’m here to kill you, Mr. Jensen, before you can kill the president.”

“Commander McCoy.” Despite knowing for sure he’d surprised her all to hell by knowing her name, Bill had to give her credit. She wasn’t showing it. “It’s an honor to meet you.”

“How do you know who I am?” she asked.

It was as if he’d just ratcheted her burning distrust of him to an even higher level by knowing her name. “I’m assuming that if David Dorn explained his paranoid delusions about us trying to assassinate him, he explained who we are.”

“Red Cell Seven.”

“That’s right,” Bill confirmed, “and that’s how I know who you are.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve never had a woman inside RC7, not in over forty years. But we’ve been seriously considering you for a while. So I’m quite familiar with who you are. In fact, I’ve seen your photograph several times, recently, too. And let me tell you, your reputation precedes you. When you allow yourself to be preceded, that is,” Bill added with a soft chuckle. “It doesn’t surprise me that President Dorn chose you for this. You have a kind of supernatural aura about you, I’d been told. I was skeptical, of course. Not now,” he admitted, shaking his head. “How you found me here, I have no idea.”

“If you’ve been considering me for a while, why haven’t you asked me to join the cell yet?”

Bill glanced at the silencer affixed to the end of Commander McCoy’s pistol. “Because some of the men inside RC7 are afraid of that aura I mentioned. It intimidates them.”

“Is that a polite way of telling me you don’t think a woman can do what a man can?”

“No, Commander McCoy. It’s a polite way of telling you that some of my men are insecure.” It was tight-lipped, but Bill saw a look of satisfaction flash briefly across Skylar’s pretty face. “How’d you find me?”

“I killed a man named John Ward,” she answered directly.

Bill’s posture stiffened at the admission.

“Apparently,” Skylar continued, “Ward had met with you recently, and he was careless about it. There was collateral in his pocket about that meeting that led me here.”