Dylan (Bowen Boys) (11 page)

Marc nodded. “You know that’s the…well,
that’s the stupidest story I’ve ever heard. Is any of that true?”

She nodded. “Yes. Every bit of it. The
kids at the orphanage made fun of me all the time. And when I was in college,
it was very difficult to sign up for classes. It’s the reason I ended up
working for Kirby Mann.”

Jack looked at Dylan. He came toward her
as all the pieces fell into place…everything; the house, the pool, and the man
she worked for. She didn’t realize she’d been sat down with her head between
her knees until someone said that she was to stay there. She struggled enough
that she was finally set free.

“I need to talk to Caitlynne. She has to
know what Mann is doing.” She looked over at a man she’d yet to meet yet knew.
“Is that the president?”

“Yes. He was also the tiger. He told me
that you were a pushy thing and he’d like to hire you.” She nodded and looked
up at Dylan. “What?”

“I thought I worked for him.” She nodded
to Caitlynne as she pulled up in front of them in a large SUV. “And her. I knew
who she was, but didn’t make the connection until just now. She’s going to have
me put in prison if what I thought was true isn’t.”

“She won’t. She knows there’s something
going on, and until now, she’s not had anything to get things all lined up.” Dylan
kneeled down in front of her. “I was coming out here to find you and seduce
you. I had this idea that I could make you scream out a climax and a promise. One
that said you wouldn’t be ashamed of your body again.”

She nodded and looked at the president
as he talked and joked with Khan as he put his wife in the vehicle. When he
looked at her, the president nodded, and she nodded back. She wondered what
she’d just agreed to, and asked Dylan.

“He can hear us. Everyone here can. As a
cat, our hearing is very good. We can hear most any whisper. He knows you’re
upset, baby, and he understands that you might have been caught in the middle
of something.”

“I was…I am. Mann is looking for me. I
didn’t know who before, and now that I do, I’m more afraid for your family. He won’t
stop. Not with what I know.” She wondered if Casey was still safe, and hoped
so. “I’ve done so many things in the name of the covert company I worked for.
So many horrible, horrible things. Things I don’t even know if I can forgive
myself for.”

They got into the truck that Reed had
driven over. Khan was so happy that he kept pulling her into his arms and
hugging her. The fourth or fifth time he came toward her, she told him if he
didn’t behave she was going to knock him on his ass. He laughed and hugged her,
anyway. The man was sappy, that’s all there was to it.

An hour later she was sitting in a room
with Marshall, Caitlynne, and the president, who’d asked her to call him
Warren. She declined. And Dylan was there, as well. He was there because he
threatened to simply listen in and tell everyone in the room with him what was
being discussed. She was never so happy to have him near her in her life.

~~~

“I started working for the agency right
out of college. I had a degree in criminal science, but it wasn’t going to do
me much good because I had a record.” She looked at Caitlynne when she asked
her for what. “Grand larceny. I stole a car. I was fifteen and thought that I
could sell it and use the money to eat on for a while. I had no idea that the
car was worthless; and worst yet, it belonged to a cop, Richard Davenport. He
was restoring it.”

“Did he have you arrested?” Marshall
asked. She smiled at him. “Or did he just have you given community service and
put you into some home?”

“Yes, he had me arrested. But he and his
wife also took me in. I spent the next four years living with them and going
straight. They helped me get into college and made me save my money. He also
taught me to trust no one. He saved my life a great many times with that bit of
sage advice.”

Marshall nodded. “You went to work for
Kirby Mann. What was the—?”

“I didn’t work for Mann until later. The
first man I worked for was Conrad Garrett. He got promoted right after I joined
the team. I think he’s dead, though.”

“Yes, he killed himself about a year or
so ago.” Caitlynne looked down at something on the desk. “Tell me who else is
on the team.”

“There are about fifty-three of us. Two
of them are now dead as of the night I ended up at the Clements’s house. I
killed them both when they fired at me. Would you like to see their files?” Caitlynne
looked at the president. “If I’m going to go before a firing squad, I might as
well make it worth my while.”

“You have them on you?” She stood up and
went to the front of the house. Dylan went with her. She went to the first step
and pulled it up. It was still where she’d left it. Going back to the study,
she handed the thumb drive to her. Caitlynne in turn handed it to Reed, who’d
been asked to join them when she said it was on a drive.

“The files are marked, and you should be
able to figure them out.” She went to the computer with Reed and stood behind
him, pointing them out as she explained. “This is the names and complete files
of each member of the group. Mine is there as well, but little of the
information is correct. I didn’t alter it. I just never gave up the right
information.”

Reed closed that one and opened the
next. He stared at if for several seconds before he looked around the room. He
didn’t say anything when she told him to open the first file.

“These are files that were in Garrett’s
office before he left. I had been in the office for…I was there, and the file
was there, so I took it. I did return it later, but all the pictures were gone.
I have the originals.” Warren asked Reed what they were.

“They’re pictures of you, sir. You and
Marshall.” Warren looked at her. “They’re pictures of the two of you in bed. Why
would he want these?”

“Because he thought he could blackmail
him.” Jack pointed to the next folder. “This was his plan. I don’t think it
would have done him a great deal of good without the rest, so I guess he
abandoned the idea.”

“And the tapes? Where are they? With you,
too?” She shook her head. “Do you plan to use them, as well?”

“No. They’re in your private home in the
Hamptons. They’ve been there all along. There’s a swing in the yard. Under the
left leg is a box. Those as well as the letters are stored there.”

She leaned over Reed, hurt more than she
thought she’d be. “This is the records of all our assignments. I updated them
when I could. Also, you’ll find a record of all the chips we had implanted into
us. I had mine—”

“Jack, look at me.” She stretched her
neck but continued going over the things on the computer, ignoring Warren. “I
asked you to look at me. You may not have worked for me before but you do now,
and I want you to respect my requests.”

She stood. “It was no more a request
than when Corrine asked George to take out the trash. I don’t trust people,
that’s a given. But I’d never do anything…knowingly do anything to harm the man
that I assumed I worked for.”

“I know that now. And I wanted to thank
you. You have no idea what those would have done to our families had they
gotten out. No one must know.”

She decided to tell it all. “Everyone
knows, sir. The only people who might not know are the hobos on the street, and
only if they haven’t seen the two of you together. The entire country knows you
and Marshall are lovers. If you guys let it out there, it’s doubtful that
anyone would care.” He started to speak. “I have the floor, thanks, so just
shut up and listen. You mark my words. No one gives two shits who you sleep
with, so long as the economy keeps on the way it is.”

“But Garrett thought they would. Why else
would he have taken those pictures and set us up? He thought that the country
would care.”

“He thought that everyone would care,
because he was stupid. That man might have run a good game for a while, but he
was the stupidest man I ever met.” She pointed to the computer. “Do you know
that there are so many memos on this thing that never got sent because the man couldn’t
string two words together and make it work?”

Marshall laughed. Jack leaned back over
the computer to continue from there when Caitlynne asked her about Snow. Jack
stood there for several seconds before she moved to her chair again.

“She’s safe. I spoke to her a few days
ago. She’s not happy with me, but she’s safe.” Jack turned to the people in the
room. “She had nothing to do with anything but helping me remove the chip from
my head. I’d been overseas on assignment, and when I returned, I’d bumped my
head on an open cabinet door. She was in her office when I asked her to look at
it and to stitch it up if it needed it. She pulled it out, and I knew something
was wrong.”

“You had the chip on you when you came
here. It was broken, but Reed helped us figure it out. How do you think Mann
found out you’d had it removed?”

“He knew right after I came back from
Europe. I was to come in for a physical, and I figured they’d plant another one
in me or had figured out that I knew. Casey said that the x-rays that she took
of me looking for another one probably set the sucker off. She said if they
ever wanted me to come in and have a little operation, I was to get her out of
town. When Mann started harping on me about the yearly physical three months
too early, I sent her away.”

“Where is she?” Marshall asked. Jack shook
her head at the question. “We can bring her here, keep her safe,” Marshall
insisted. “There’s no reason for her to be unhappy when we can help her.”

“Yeah, well, I thought I was safe, too,
until I went to scope out the house I was supposed to target. They’d been there
all day waiting, taking care of everything, so when I got there, all they had
to do was pop a couple in my head and make an anonymous call.” She looked at
Dylan to finish. “I wasn’t doing too bad at first. Once I jumped over the fence,
I went to the doghouse on the neighbor’s property. I’d already stashed my
street clothes there and a set of night ones. Black on black to hide better. I
was bleeding pretty well by then, and my head was pounding. But I knew hanging
around would get me killed.”

“Do you know what time you were hit?”

She nodded. “21:57.”

“That means you were off line for twelve
hours before Dylan found you. Where did you go?”

“I don’t know for sure. I had to
backtrack until I got so lost that I didn’t know how to get back. I had planted
a car as a means to escape, but I couldn’t remember how to get to it. Then
there was the blood. I couldn’t keep walking around leaving a path of
breadcrumbs for them, so I found an empty building and stayed there long enough
to rest. The next thing I knew, I was seeing this house in the clearing and had
to get rid of the drive. I couldn’t go far, I knew, so I put it under the
broken step.”

“And had you not survived, how would you
have been justified for all this work?” Jack didn’t answer, but Marshall knew.
“Casey has a copy, or knows where one is.”

They stared at one another, and she just
knew that he was searching her mind. She had no idea if he could actually do
that, but figured if Dylan could, then it could stand to reason that everyone
could. She felt a small touch, a sort of tickle to her mind, and stilled.

“He can’t read your mind. But you should
know that you and I can speak this way and no one else can hear us.”
She glanced at
him.
“All mates have a link. I would imagine that Warren and Marshall have
one, as well, though I don’t know of any other gay weres, but I’m sure there
are plenty.”

“This thing, this link, is it just weres
or can anyone do it? The reason I ask is because when I found Monica, she said
a wolf was chasing her and she was a little off. Could someone have gone in and
fucked with her mind?”
Dylan stood suddenly and left the room.
“Dylan?”

“I’ll be right back. Help them as much
as you can, but don’t mention the wolf yet. I want to check on something.”
She looked at
the others in the room and smiled.

“Casey doesn’t know what it is, but she
knows where to find it. And I’ve set it up that if anything should happen to
her, anything, the file hits the papers.” Marshall nodded. “I trust her because
she’s trusted me. You? I don’t know.”

“Understandable. But if someone else
were to get the file from her, what then? Do you know what that can do to
National Security?” Marshall got up to pace. “Even if we take out the pictures
of Warren and me, the other stuff in there would destroy all we’ve worked for.”

“I never said it was a file.” Reed
looked at her, and she smiled at him. “I know probably more about computers and
programs than four of him. He’s good, but I’m better. Casey checks in weekly.
She misses one week its fine, two it notifies me. If I don’t respond within a
week, it hits the papers, all of them.”

Marshall sat down next to Warren and
reached for his hand. “You know she hasn’t contacted you. You know she’s still
alive.”

“I spoke with her yesterday. She wants
to come home but knows that if she does she’s dead. She also knows that I’d
been hurt. Hard not to pick up a paper and see my face plastered all over the
place. But what she doesn’t know about is what you people are. She is a great
friend and a better doctor. If you ever needed another doctor, she would be the
person I’d call.”