Deadly Sight (8 page)

“Sure.” Liar, liar, pants on fire. He wanted to get her out of the room so he could talk to Jeff about her. She strode out of the kitchen but stopped just out of sight in the hall.

Gray said quietly in response to some question by Jeff, “Absolutely. Sam’s been a godsend. But what’s her story? She ran away from home at fifteen? How rough did things get for her?”

The silence that followed was maddening. She’d never talked with Jeff directly about her early years, but she assumed he knew most of the sordid details. He had an entire team of researchers every bit as good as her, and they could dig up just about anything on anyone with the resources they had in Winston’s Operations Center.

“Interesting. Thanks.”

What in the heck had Gray found “interesting?” Damn, she felt at a terrible disadvantage all of a sudden. He apparently knew everything about her, now, and she knew nothing about him, except there was something terrible and painful in Gray’s past that Jeff knew about and had warned her off in the strongest possible terms.

Didn’t Jeff know telling her to leave it alone was practically an invitation to dig? She was a woman, after all, and had the curiosity of a cat. Damn him! And not a computer in sight for her to do a quick search on Gray. Double damn. She would have to come up with some excuse to go out alone for a while. Even if it meant driving to Charleston to get access to the internet, she
was
going to find out what secrets kept putting that horrible haunted look in Gray’s eyes.

It sounded like the two men were winding up. She sprinted on her toes to Gray’s room and snatched up the Zimmer pictures and notes. Being sure to make plenty of noise, she entered the kitchen in time to hear Gray say goodbye.

He served up two big bowls of salad and sat down across the kitchen table from her. “Are you thinking the same thing I am? That Proctor’s bunch killed Luke?”

She nodded. “No doubt. Looks like the sheriff thinks so, too, or he wouldn’t be searching a place rented by Proctor’s guys.”

Gray said quietly, “Are you also thinking that you and I should take over where Luke left off?”

“Yeah, but whatever Luke was poking into got him killed. I’m not sure I want to take up exactly where he left off.” She could do without dying.

Gray frowned. “Two newcomers showing up on the heels of another newcomer’s death is going to raise all kinds of red flags for Proctor if he’s even half as paranoid as Miss Maddie says he is.”

“We’ll have to throw Proctor off the scent, then.”

“How do you propose we do that?”

She turned over several ideas but discarded them all as too obvious. “Logically, we should make a point of meeting some people in the cult. Get to know them. Gradually earn their trust and get them to invite us in.” Gray nodded. She continued, “Which is why that’s the one thing we mustn’t do.”

Gray blinked. “Come again?”

“Best way to throw the enemy off is to do what he doesn’t anticipate, right?”

“Sometimes,” Gray allowed cautiously.

“So what’s the one thing Proctor will least expect? If it’s wild enough, he’ll have to believe it’s true.”

Gray leaned back, staring at her speculatively. He commented offhandedly, “I suppose we could always march up to his front gate and announce that I’m a government agent and want into his cult.”

“Exactly!” she exclaimed enthusiastically.

“I was kidding, Sam. That would be insane.”

“And that’s why he’d believe it.”

“We’d be shot where we stood!”

She leaned forward eagerly. “Not necessarily. What if you said something along the lines of you don’t like what the government’s doing to its own citizens. You’re concerned that Americans’ constitutional rights to privacy are being trampled on.”

“It sounds like the sort of message that would resonate with Proctor. Small problem, though. I’m not a government agent.” He raised a hand as she opened her mouth to protest. “I’m out here purely as a favor to Jeff, and I don’t have any official sanction from my employer, government or otherwise, to be here.”

“So you’re not officially a spy?” she asked in disappointment.

“Sorry. Not officially.”

She perked up. “But you are one in your regular life, yes?”

“Sam,” he warned.

“You have
got
to loosen up. I just think it’s cool, that’s all.”

He made an exasperated sound.

“Can you pull some strings? Get someone credible to vouch that you are a government agent? Jeff can probably arrange that if you can’t.”

“I can arrange that myself, thank you,” he replied wryly.

“There you have it. We convince Wendall Proctor that you’re a spy and you want to help him bring down the government from the inside.”

He shook his head. “It’ll never work.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Yes. We use your eyes to stand off at a distance and watch Wendall and company. See if we can figure out what they’re up to.”

“My way’s better,” she declared.

“My way’s safer.”

They glared at each other, at an impasse.

Gray sighed. “How about this? We try it my way first, and if it doesn’t work, then we do it your way.”

It would cost them a few days, but that might not be a bad thing. A little more separation from Luke’s murder before they showed up on Proctor’s doorstep might reduce the suspicion aimed at them. Or not.

* * *

They spent the rest of the morning tearing up carpet. It was hard enough work that Gray was mostly able to ignore the disturbing parallels of it to his previous life. He and Sam wrestled the heavy rolls of dusty carpet and truly foul padding out to the front curb together.

“Good riddance,” he declared. And he did have to admit the oak flooring beneath the carpet was pretty decent. “I’ll rent a buffer tomorrow and start sanding the floors. It’s going to be a giant mess.”

“Maybe I should run some errands, then, and be out of the house.” She tried to sound casual, but her pulse leaped at the idea of getting her hands on a computer.

“We’ll need a high-quality polyurethane stain and sealer if we’re going to do the floors right.”

She laughed at his seriousness over the job. “Do you like dark oak or light?”

“Dark. It gives more of a feeling of age. Importance. Which do you prefer?”

“Why, Grayson Pierce. Who’d have guessed you think about such things? I had no idea you’re an interior decorator at heart.”

He swatted her playfully on the behind as she walked past him into the house. She squealed and scooted out of his reach. “Hey, while we’re redoing the floors, how do you feel about painting the walls? I can’t stand that shade of beige.”

He grinned. “I didn’t know beige came in shades. Who’s the decorator at heart now?”

“It’s my superior eyesight. I see nuances in color that you normal people don’t.”

He laughed. “I bow to your supersight, madam. Paint the walls whatever color you want.”

“
Any
color?”

“No black. And nothing with the words ‘neon’ or ‘glow-in-the-dark’ in its name.”

“Stick in the mud.”

“Yup. That’s me.”

And there it was again. That awful haunted look at the back of his gaze that shouted of unspeakable suffering. The only place she’d seen such pain before was in old photographs of Holocaust survivors. What in the
hell
had happened to him?

In anticipation of Sam needing to go different directions from him, Gray drove her to the nearest vintage car rental place to lease her a car for the next several months. He sincerely hoped they were done with their investigation long before then, but right now, they were all about the appearance of settling into the area.

No surprise, she squealed with delight at a late-’60s vintage, red Volkswagen Beetle and just had to have it.

“I’m calling it the Ladybug,” she announced as he handed her the keys.

Knowing her, she would be painting black polka dots on it and mounting twin antennas on the windshield before long. “Do you name all your cars?” he asked curiously.

“Absolutely. It makes them feel loved. They run better that way.”

“They’re machines,” he scoffed.

“You watch. If you don’t show your Bronco some love and name it, it’ll turn on you,” she warned.

“Hippie.”

“Pig.”

He blinked, and then laughed. “You’re going to fit in great around here. I bet you eat granola and can make your own yogurt, too.”

“Yes to both,” she answered indignantly.

“I’ll see you back at the house in a few hours?” he asked in good humor.

“Deal. Love ya, babe.”

His entire body went hot and cold. Sick to his stomach, he froze as she stood on tiptoe and laid a kiss on him that surely wasn’t legal in public. The woman practically had carnal knowledge of his lungs. As she sashayed around to the driver’s door of her Bug and swung her mile-long legs into the car, he caught sight of the car salesman gawking. Jealousy flared in his gut.
His
woman—

Not
his woman. He stumbled to his own vehicle and climbed in. He rested his head on the steering wheel and concentrated on slowing his breathing to something resembling human. They were just words. She didn’t mean them. Didn’t know what they meant to him. It wasn’t her fault.

“Oh, God,” he groaned. A tear spilled onto his hands, hot and painful. What was he doing? He was being disloyal. Unfaithful. Traitorous.

He had to get his head in the game. Finish this damned mission as fast as possible and get away from Sammie Jo Jessup before she tore him to pieces. To that end, he guided his Bronco toward the Shady Grove Naval Signals Intelligence facility. Somewhere along the way, he achieved a state of numb emptiness. That was good. He had lots of practice functioning in that particular vacuum.

An armed guard waved him to a stop as he approached a heavily fortified gate and accompanying guard shack. “Can I help you, sir?”

He handed over an ID badge he dug out of his wallet. The guard stepped into the shack and ran it through a magnetic scanner. “Welcome to Shady Grove, Agent Pierce.”

Chapter 6

G
ray nodded grimly at the guard, who he knew to be a marine in civilian clothes. “I need to use a secure phone and a computer.”

“Roger, sir. Here’s your visitor badge. It needs to be in plain sight at all times. Head for the main entrance of that white building straight ahead and park in one of the visitor’s spaces. Check in with the front desk, and they’ll hook you up.”

“Thanks.” Out of long habit, Gray glanced around, looking for the security cameras he knew would be recording his every move. In true NSA fashion they were so cleverly disguised that even he, a seasoned operative, couldn’t spot them. But then, security was particularly high at this facility. Although its existence was no big secret, its function—gathering every single electronic signal in all of North America and most of South America—was incredibly secret.

Another guard, even beefier and more brusque than the gate guard, examined his credentials again just inside the building. After deeming him not a security risk, this guard pointed him to the first door on the left. No surprise, when Gray opened the door yet another guard met him. This one was reasonably friendly, however, and escorted him down two flights of stairs and into a nondescript hallway. The guy stopped in front of a door and opened it for Gray.

He peered inside what turned out to be a small, no doubt electronically shielded room with a gray metal desk in the middle of it. Sitting on its surface were a black rotary telephone with a series of small, plastic lights mounted along its side, and a reasonably new-looking computer with a flat-screen monitor.

“Take your time, Agent Pierce. Get your fill before you have to go back to the Stone Age out there, eh?”

He grinned at the guard and nodded in commiseration. When the door had safely latched behind him, Gray dialed a memorized number on the STU-3 phone. The secure phone system was old, but reliable. And presumably it didn’t give off a whole lot of electronic emissions.

“This is Brighton. Go ahead.”

“Hi, sir. It’s Grayson Pierce.”

“Gray. How are things going in the Black Hole?”

“Interesting.” He filled his boss in quickly on Sammie Jo’s arrival and their discovery of Luke Zimmer’s body. He omitted any reference to Sam’s bizarre eyesight. He doubted his boss would believe him if he mentioned it anyway.

“And Winston? What’s he up to?” Brighton asked.

There it was. The question of the day. Uncomfortable with the whole subject, Gray answered carefully, “He’s worried about Wendall Proctor. I get the impression he thinks there’s more to the Proctor group than a bunch of crazies who want to live off the grid.”

“Really? Why’s that?”

“No idea. Jeff’s playing his cards close to the chest.”

Brighton asked sharply, “Does he suspect you’re investigating him for us?”

“I highly doubt it. We’re old friends. Why would he think I’m spying on him?” The words tasted bitter on Gray’s tongue. Why, indeed? Jeff had never been anything but upfront and loyal with him. Why should he expect any less from one of his oldest friends in return?

“Can’t you weasel what Winston’s worried about out of him, Gray?”

“Not without making him suspicious.”

“What about his employee, this Jessup woman?”

“I don’t think she knows any more than I do.”

“Turn the charm on her. Get her to push Winston for more information.”

Gray winced. He hated the idea of using her that way. It was bad enough having to spy on one of his best friends. Unfortunately, spies didn’t always get to choose who they betrayed. But he’d be damned if he betrayed her, too.

He thought fast. He had to get Brighton to back off the idea of squeezing Sam. He spoke evenly. “It’s not that simple, sir. I think I can develop her as a usable asset beyond just this junket in the NRQZ.”

“A mole inside Winston Enterprises long-term? Well, now. That would be a coup.”

Ahh, the joys of working for the only American intelligence agency with a mandate to spy on its own citizens. For years, he’d been the perfect spy. He had no family beyond his mother with whom he had infrequent contact, no friends to speak of, no close contact with any other human beings. He had no weak spots to exploit.

But in a few days, Sammie Jo Jessup had somehow managed to ignite his long-dormant protective instincts. Here he was, lying to his boss to cover for her, and he barely knew her. Brighton would ask if she was good enough in the sack to be worth ruining his career over. Funny thing was, he hadn’t even slept with her. And she’d still gotten under his skin.

Brighton distracted him by saying, “I’m glad you called in. We’ve been having more signal interruptions.”

“Same as before?” he asked. One of the reasons the NSA had been willing to send him on this particular off-the-record assignment was because for some months, periodic short bursts of...something...had been disrupting the supersensitive antennas they relied on for collection of wireless data. The experts in radio interference had been banging their heads against walls trying to find the source, but to no avail. The hope was that a fresh set of eyes on the ground could solve the problem.

“Yup, same as before,” Brighton said. “Under a minute in duration, originating from a different location each time. And each time the coordinates of the interference are investigated, nothing’s there. Some spot in the woods with absolutely no electronic source to cause the interference.”

“Have you guys considered using satellites to look down passively and spot the interference that way?”

“The request is sitting on the desk of the director of the William Byrd Observatory,” Brighton answered.

“Keep me apprised.”

“Will do. Speaking of keeping you apprised, my people did a little research on the Jessup woman. I’ve sent their report to your email account. It’s an interesting read.”

Gray mumbled an acknowledgement, but his gut squirmed in dismay at invading her privacy like this. He would like to know more details about her early life, though. It might give him a better insight as to what made her the complex creature she was. It would give him more ammunition to keep her off balance, if nothing else. And Lord knew he needed all the help he could get in staying one up on her.

He disconnected the call with his boss and stared at the computer in distaste. He really shouldn’t look at the report. But sharp desire to know more about her goaded him. Finally, his better self lost the fight with his curiosity. He signed on to his email account quickly and popped up the most recent email from Brighton.

...Joanne Jessup of Hollywood, Florida, has a 98% likelihood of being the mother of subject, Sammie Jo Jessup...

He swore colorfully and closed the email. Now that he knew where her mother was, he couldn’t un-know it. How was he supposed to keep that information to himself and not use it against her down the road in a moment of weakness? It was one thing to keep secrets when he surrounded himself with strangers and people who didn’t touch him emotionally. But Sam? She had the darnedest way of slipping past his guard and getting him to open up in ways he’d never dreamed possible. Hell, she had him kissing again, and they’d barely known each other three days. He’d sworn off women for good years ago, and to date it hadn’t been a problem to stick by that vow.

He scanned through the list of his other email messages quickly. There was a second email from Brighton with an attached file. Presumably that was the background report on Sam. In a belated fit of nobility, he deleted the post and its attachment without ever opening the thing.

Hollywood, Florida. Joanne Jessup
. The words rolled through his head over and over, a damning litany of knowledge that was not supposed to be his. If he wasn’t careful, he’d wake up tonight shouting the information in his sleep. Brighton was a bastard, and that was all there was to it.

Why was the guy so interested in Jeff Winston, anyway? Winston Enterprises had been nothing but a good friend to the U.S. government. Supposedly, operatives from Winston had taken care of several sticky situations that the government couldn’t afford to be directly involved in. Jeff himself had nearly died a year ago on one such operation. And the way Gray heard it, an entire team of Winston operatives had died.

Did Brighton’s fascination with Jeff have something to do with the Code X project? Had the NSA gotten a whiff of Jeff’s secret research? It would be just like Brighton to want a piece of the action for his agency. The guy was a political climber who played the bureaucratic game exceedingly well.

An urge to warn Sam and Jeff swept over him. But to do so would ruin his career. It wasn’t like he needed the money. The insurance payout had been substantial and he could live off it comfortably for the rest of his life. But he needed the work. The purpose. The sad truth was he didn’t have anything else to live for.

Predictably, a wave of pain washed over him. It was gentler in its coming than most, but burned like acid as it passed over him.
Twenty-eight days
. He just had to hang on that long. If the pain wasn’t better by then, he could release himself from this agonizing grief.

Grateful that no one was coming through that soundproof door any time soon to disturb him, he gave in to the wave for a change, laid his head down on the desk, and lost himself in the fire of searing memory.

* * *

Sammie Jo bounced in her seat as she drove, singing at the top of her lungs to the oldies on the lone AM radio station the Ladybug was receiving. It was a beautiful day, crisp and cool, with achingly blue skies and autumn painting the hillsides around her.

Charleston, West Virginia, came into view sprawling across the valley in front of her. Hallelujah. Modern civilization! As fun as a junket in the NRQZ might be, she was unashamedly addicted to her electronic gadgets. She turned on her cell phone, delighted to have a dozen voice mails waiting for her. She hit the play button.

“Where the hell are you, Sam? We gotta talk.”

Ricki the Rocket. She’d made it crystal clear to him the last time they’d talked that she never wanted to see his sorry face again. Why was he calling her?

“Sam? WTF? Are you avoiding me? I ain’t done nothin’ to you. C’mon, baby. Gimme a call. I gotta see you.”

More like he was horny and wanted to bed her. Jerk. At least she’d never consented to sleep with him. Not for lack of him trying, however. But there’d always been something a little bit off about him. She’d never been able to quite shake the feeling that he was capable of being more crazy, and maybe more violent, than he let on.

“All right, you smart-mouthed little slut. Are you hiding from me? If you’re giving some other guy what you refused to give me, I swear I’ll find you. And when I do—”

Sam deleted the message without hearing the end of it. Ricki could go jump off a bridge for all she cared. Irritated, she listened to his next several messages, which got increasingly angry and threatening. The guy was
such
a loser. What had she
ever
seen in him?

Compared to a man like Gray...well, there was no comparison. It was hard to believe both men came from the same half of the same species.

The last, slurred voice mail from Ricki ran in her ear. “I’m gonna find you, Sam, and I’m comin’ after you. You’re gonna regret leaving me. You hear me? When I find you, I’m gonna hurt you, bitch. Bad.”

A chill shuddered down her spine. Ricki had a vicious temper that had already landed him in jail for three-to-five on assault and battery charges. Only his father’s legal connections had gotten the time served reduced to under a year. And when Ricki was drinking, everyone and everything in his path had better beware.

Thankfully, the odds of the jerk finding her in the NRQZ were nil. She had to admit, sometimes it was good to live off the grid. Missing her techno toys a lot less all of a sudden, she tucked away her phone and pulled into the parking lot of a strip mall that boasted its very own internet café.

She gave the clerk a credit card and sat down at a terminal in the back of the joint.

“C’mon, baby. Let’s make some magic,” she crooned to the unit. She started typing, quickly moving into a deep web search of one Grayson Pierce.

She wasn’t shocked that his employer’s name was nowhere to be found. Her guess was he worked for the NSA. If he’d been a CIA field agent, he’d be operating under aliases, and the name Grayson Pierce would completely cease to exist. But she did find the occasional hit on him. He was mentioned as a guest at a charity ball a few years back. That article even had a picture attached. He was dashing in a tuxedo, but looked acutely uncomfortable as a well-preserved and artificially enhanced brunette clung to his arm.

“Don’t know who you are, lady, but you’re coming on too strong to Gray. He likes his women classy. Reserved. And besides, you’re too old for him,” Sam announced in disgust to the monitor.

“Okay, Gray. Time to get serious. What didn’t Jeff want me to find out about you?”

She dug deeper, accessing private investigation sites and various restricted databases. Well, at least she now knew the guy had superb credit and no debt. She went back further in time, and even broke into a database of police records.

And that was when she got the hit. Or rather hundreds of hits, scrolling down her screen faster than she could read them. She went back to the top of the list and clicked on the Boulder, Colorado, police file that was listed first.

Words leaped off the scanned documents at her: Quadruple homicide. Young mother and three small children murdered in their home. Boy, aged six. Twin girls, aged four. Throats slit. Woman tortured. Sexually assaulted. The list of horrific violations against the woman’s body went on to a second page. Emily Pierce was the adult victim’s name. Christian, Paige and Payton Pierce were the children. Bodies discovered by their father when he came home from a night shift at work—

Oh. My. God.

Sammie Jo surged up out of her chair and ran for the restroom. She stumbled to her knees and retched into the toilet, emptying the remains of her breakfast violently into the bowl. How long she knelt there, sobbing, she had no idea.