Catch a Shadow (17 page)

And she had to know. She had to know everything. By God, someone was trying to kill her. Trying to kill Sam and Merlin and even Spade.

Fear crawled up her spine and constricted her throat. No. This couldn't be happening.

She darted a look toward Jake. He didn't try to reassure Sam.

“Go,” she said again. “If it will make you feel better, I'll call Robin and tell her where I am.”

Sam had met Robin several times. She'd attended several parties before her marriage, and Sam had liked her immediately. “Call now,” Sam said.

She started for the hotel room phone.

“Use the cell,” Jake ordered.

Kirke punched in Robin's number. She wasn't available, but Kirke left a message. “I need to talk to you. Call me at this number.” She gave the number of Sam's cell. She glanced at Sam's glowering face and added that she was staying at a motel, mentioned its name but no telephone number.

After finishing, she turned back to Sam. “Now go, or you'll be late. Later,” she corrected herself with a look at her watch.

“I'll call when I get there,” Sam said. “I'll call during every break. If you don't answer, I'll call the cops.” He grabbed his sax.

“Bye, Sam,” Merlin said cheerily.

The door slammed behind Sam.

“He's right,” Jake said slowly. “You should go to the police.”

“Can they protect me?”

“Maybe,” he said. “It might scare him back to whatever hole he left.”

“But you don't think so.”

“I think the fact that he left that hole to come after the man you knew as Mark Cable says he's desperate about keeping his past a secret. He saw you take something from the man he'd come after. He saw that same man whisper something to you. He must know you haven't passed it on to the police.

“How could he know that?”

Jake didn't answer immediately. Instead, he walked over to the window. For the first time she saw his shoulders slump. His fingers balled into a fist.

Tension radiated from him. Until now he'd seemed so sure of himself.

“How could he know that?” she repeated.

“I expect he has a friend, or friends, in high places. He could certainly afford it.”

She thought about telling him about the visit from the FBI agent earlier that day. She'd almost forgotten it during the confusion after the shooting. Something stopped her. Money and diamonds, the agent said. She wanted to hear Jake's version before saying anything.

“Is that why Mark Cable said not to go to the police?” she asked.

“Did he?”

She remembered then she hadn't told him that. She nodded.

“And he didn't say why?”

“He couldn't say much. He was dying.”

“What else?” Jake asked in a voice that had lost all softness.

She had come this far. She was in a room alone with a man that could possibly be a murderer. But she really didn't think so. His eyes could be like ice. His face hard. Yet he had been patient with Sam, with her. For God's sake, he had brought a parrot to her, and a cat and litter box.

She didn't think a killer would do that, even to disarm a victim.

But still, she wanted to know more. “Tell me what happened,” she said. “Tell me everything.”

He didn't answer. Instead, he studied her.

She definitely was not at her best. She felt like hell and probably looked even worse. Her arm hurt. Her eye was swollen and sore. She'd been running on adrenaline and hadn't had much sleep. Then there had been the fear for her partner, half explanations to the police, sitting with Ben's wife, and a painkiller for her own minor injury.

She went to the bed that dominated the room and sat down. Spade jumped up beside her, making small, uncertain noises. The cat, like her, was out of his comfort zone. She brushed her hand against Spade's fur.

Jake sat down beside her. She fought the strong awareness that radiated between them, the heat that suddenly raced through her body.

“I'm damned sorry you got mixed up in this,” he said. The defeat in his voice went straight to her heart. She didn't think he was a person who was sorry often. About anything.

But neither was she. She had been really sorry about one thing, and that was her marriage.

“Don't be,” she said. “I made the decision to take the letter, not you. I'm the one who decided to keep it.”

“But you might have surrendered it after the burglary.”

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not.”

She waited for him to ask for the letter. Instead, he touched her face with featherlike gentleness. “You need some rest.”

“No. You won't get away with that. You owe me more of an explanation.” She tried to ignore the waves of heat spreading outward from where he touched her. She wanted to lean into him, to feel his arms around her. She wanted to feel safe again.

He tensed. She felt it in the way his fingers stopped moving against her face. Slowly, he lowered his hand.

She wanted it back. In fact, she wanted more. Much more. Her stomach was fluttering inside. More than fluttering. Aching.

But she also had to know what was going on. She waited for him to continue.

“Some of this stuff is classified, but to hell with it,” he finally said. “Most of it was in the court-martial record, but it's probably buried so deep it'll never be found.

“I've told you some of it,” he continued. “Seven years ago, I was sent on a joint mission with two CIA operatives. We had word that a South American drug lord had branched out by selling arms to anyone but Americans. The weapons were American-made ground-to-air missiles. The most sophisticated we had.”

She was silent, listening intently. His hand had, during the last few seconds, touched hers, and somehow their fingers had become entwined. She tried to ignore the warmth of his hand.

“Don't stop,” she said.

He hesitated, then shrugged. “We were posing as terrorists wanting to buy them.”

“Why?”

“The dealer had done some discreet advertising. We contacted him and made a bid. It was accepted, but he wanted the payment by hand. He didn't trust banks, not even offshore ones. I think he also wanted an ongoing relationship and wanted a look at us.”

“And what was the price?”

“Altogether, five million dollars. A million in cash and the rest in uncut diamonds.”

Her eyes widened. “You were carrying that much?”

“It was the price for bringing home those missiles and hopefully finding the supplier,” he said. “We were supposed to have been handpicked very carefully.

“My job was to get them back even if we had to pay for them. Adams's job was to find out where the drug lord got them.”

“What happened?”

“Cox was a pilot. He flew us onto a landing strip supposedly ten miles from the seller's camp. One man was waiting with a jeep. He drove maybe a mile, and Cox said he thought he saw something in the road. The driver stopped, and we all got out of the jeep. That's all I remembered until I woke several hours later.”

Her fingers tightened around his. She knew something bad was coming. A muscle in his throat worked, and his lips had tightened.

“Ramos and Chet Michaels, my two guys, were both dead. Gene Adams and Del Cox had disappeared. So had the guide.

“The diamonds and money were also gone. I figured then that the South American dealer had ambushed us and probably taken Adams and Cox to find out exactly who they were and why they were there. I thought they were probably dead.

“I managed to crawl to a road where some farmers found me. One of them took me to his home and cared for me. I finally got to a consulate and recuperated a few more days.

“When I reached the States, the military police were waiting for me. Someone had found an account in my name in an offshore bank. Half a million dollars.”

“No one looked for the others?”

“They were dead. So said the military, and I supposedly killed them. They would have a hard time proving it, and I would have a hard time disproving it. They were missing—I had reported two dead myself—and I had at least part of the money. A neat trap.”

“Surely they wondered what happened to the rest of the money.”

“According to their theory, I had the money distributed in different places. It was all very nice and tidy. I had a choice. Plead no contest or they would pursue a life sentence. They were willing to deal because they wanted to keep the thing quiet. Our SAMs in the hands of drug dealers and terrorists? The U.S. willing to pay a drug dealer five million?”

“You didn't fight it?”

“With what? Half the information was classified. It can be in a court-martial. I fought it up to the moment I knew I wasn't going to win. Then my JAG attorney made the best deal he could get. It was a good one because they didn't want the information to get out. Bad publicity to lose five million dollars and lose our own highly classified weapons.”

“But who stole the money?”

Jake shrugged. “I thought it was the drug dealer. It was worth half a million to keep the United States from going after him. You just didn't kill our military without consequences. But then several days after I left prison, I received a phone call. No name. The caller just said if I wanted to know what really happened in South America I should be at a bar in Atlanta. That's where I was headed when I saw Gene Adams at the accident site. He'd had plastic surgery, but you can't fake certain mannerisms. I'm sure it's him.”

“And Mark Cable?”

“Del Cox.”

Kirke tried to digest it all. SAM missiles, CIA, Special Forces, drug dealers, diamonds, secret missions.

It sounded more like an action adventure movie than real life. But now the sniper made more sense. So did the plastic explosives.

If
she chose to believe him.

What was that movie?
Conspiracy Theory
with Mel Gibson. Everyone thought he was crazy, and he was, but he was also right. There had been a conspiracy of massive proportions.

Her mind, already dulled by the day's events and the painkiller, whirled.

She knew he wanted to know what Cable had told her, and now for better or worse was the time to tell him. It might give him the piece of information that could stop this escalation of violence.

“The letter,” she said, “is in Merlin's cage, under the newspapers.”

His gaze met hers, thanking her. His fingers tightened around hers, then he stood and went over to Merlin's cage and opened it. Merlin flew over to the bed, where he perched next to Spade. “Goddamn bird,” he boasted.

A new expression and one she didn't like. Probably harked back to the time he was with the drug dealers. She turned her attention back to Jake.

He reached inside, and his hand stilled for a moment. Then very carefully, he took out the top sheet of newsprint and placed it on the table. Then he continued to look for the letter.

Kirke saw his growing frustration as he took out one layer after another and looked into every sheet.

He turned back to her. “There's nothing here.”

CHAPTER 15

Disappointment swept through him.

No, more than disappointment. Defeat. He'd placed far too much hope in Cox's call, then in the letter.

“It's not there,” he added.

She stood and went over to him. She double-checked the pages. Nothing.

“Whoever planted the plastique found the letter,” he said.

She looked at him for a long, searching moment, then said, “It doesn't matter. I know what was in it.”

He stiffened. Waited. He'd realized that pushing her would be a mistake.

“Numbers. Only numbers,” she said. “I opened it yesterday to try to decide …” She shrugged slightly. “There was no name on the envelope, no words inside. Just a few numbers.”

He tried to hide his disappointment. He was good at doing exactly that. He remembered the day when the sentence came down … his father hadn't been as stoic. Jake would never forget the silent tears that rolled down the cheeks of Retired Lieutenant Colonel Donal Kelly. He'd died a few days later of a heart attack. He'd believed his son. The fact that his beloved army had not, killed him.

Gene Adams hadn't killed just two men that day. He'd killed three.

“Jake?” Her voice was soft. It was the first time she had used it, and his name sounded different when she said it. Softer.

“What were the numbers?” he asked.

She told him.

They meant nothing to him. If only he could have seen the envelope, the letter itself, then maybe he might make some sense of it.

“Were they separated by dashes or spaces?”

She shook her head.

“And nothing else?” he asked.

“No name on the envelope, no words inside,” she said. “Just the numbers.”

“Did Del Cox … Cable say anything?”

“He said, ‘Envelope. Take it.' Then ‘Give to Mitch Edwards.'”

“What else?”

“Something like Mili … and Virginia.”

Her brows furrowed together as she thought. He hated to even ask. For someone usually so energetic, she looked exhausted and wounded. And ever so vulnerable.

Military? Virginia? He had hoped for more.

He went back to Merlin's cage, looking through it once more. Then he picked up a news sheet.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Blood. Your Merlin must have bitten him. That must be why he's been parroting ‘Goddamn bird.'” He paused, then added, “That new tune he's been whistling? Adams used to whistle it all the time.”

She looked stricken. “He could have killed Merlin.”

He shook his head. “If anything had happened to Merlin, that would have been a pretty big clue that someone had broken into your house. That might have led us to the plastique.”

Kirke ran a hand gently over Merlin's feathers as he preened. “Brave bird,” she said.