Midnight Secrets (21 page)

Could she? “Maybe. But in my nightmare he was a monster. It wouldn’t be of any use to anybody.”

“You never know,” he said, his voice neutral. “If nothing else, it might rob him of his power in your subconscious.”

“Maybe.” Isabel hadn’t thought of it that way. She’d dreamed of the man almost every night, but when she woke up she could never remember what he looked like, only that he was cruel and evil. Brought darkness and violence in his wake. She’d fixed some elements of his face in her memory. She’d perhaps be able to talk Lauren through the drawing, even if the end result would probably look like a comic book villain. Manic and diabolical, like the Joker.

Joe nudged her gently with his shoulder again. “So we can plan that? Come to the office tomorrow morning and talk Lauren through the portrait?”

In the office. Talking about her nightmares in front of everyone. She suppressed a shudder. “I’d rather do it here.” Not let all Joe’s friends know about her craziness.

“I know, honey.” Joe’s voice was regretful. “But Felicity has her stuff there and we’re going to try to get back into contact with the guy—or the person who contacted us about you. Remember?”

God, yes. How could she have forgotten? So much had happened. “How does he know about me? And how does he know I live here?”

“All questions we want answered,” Joe replied, voice grim. “If I had to make a guess, I’d say he’s CIA or ex-CIA. And I’d guess he knows something about the Massacre that doesn’t fit the narrative.”

Isabel felt her eyes grow wide. She turned again to look at him. “Something about the Massacre? Like what?”

“I don’t know. But I think he thinks you have some kind of key or intel about it.”

“
Me
?” Good God. “I don’t have anything, least of all what you call ‘intel’. I don’t even remember it. Plus how did he track me down to Portland? That’s creepy.”

“It wouldn’t be hard to track you down. You weren’t on the run or anything. Did you file to change your name from Delvaux to Lawton?”

Isabel nodded.

“There you go. That would be in the public record. You weren’t in hiding, you just wanted a fresh start. If this guy is CIA and is secretly investigating the Massacre, he’d start with the survivors. How many survivors were there?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if anyone has done an official count. I don’t know how many of the serving staff survived. Presumably some of them weren’t in the part of the building that collapsed. I think about thirty or forty people who were in the ballroom survived. But I’m not positive.”

“So maybe this guy is contacting them all.”

“But how would he know to get in touch with
you
?”

“It wouldn’t be that hard. Your new address is on record. He’d look at the other people on the street and I’d pop up. I’m a former SEAL, that’s on the record and I am on the record as an employee at ASI, which is a well-known company. Very aboveboard. He’d add two and two. Even if I didn’t know you well, it would make sense for him to contact me and ask me to keep you safe. Maybe he’s making his quiet way down the list of survivors. We’ll know soon enough. He’s asked for someone from the FBI to be in the office tomorrow.”

“The
FBI?
” This was getting more and more strange.

Joe slid down in the bed, taking her with him. She was on her side and he was curved around her.

He was also erect, but he wasn’t prodding her with it, or asking for sex. He kissed her shoulder gently. “I think we’ll be getting some answers tomorrow, but I also think you need to rest. It’s 4:00 a.m. and we should get up around 7:00, so that only gives you three hours to sleep. See if you can manage it.”

“I don’t think I can,” Isabel said, then yawned.

“Uh-huh.” Joe kissed her shoulder again. She could see his face above her, smiling down at her. “Just try. Close your eyes for a minute.”

Oh man, he didn’t know just how hard she tried to get back to sleep after a nightmare. It was impossible. She’d just lie awake, tense and frightened, until the sky outside her bedroom window started to lighten, and she’d get up to start another exhausting day.

“It doesn’t work.”

“Try,” he coaxed. “Just for a minute. For me.”

“Make me,” she said, her voice suddenly low, suddenly husky. In a flash, a switch had been thrown. That massive male body surrounding her, that enormous erect penis against her back...All those intense emotions evoked by the nightmare morphed in an instant to desire. There had never been another mechanism for her to deal with the aftermath of the nightmares before. Just silence and the endless hours of the night. But now—now there was the world’s greatest distraction wrapped around her.

“What?” Obviously Joe didn’t operate like she did, emotions flipping from one extreme to the other. He had to keep up.

Isabel turned her head to smile at the dark male face above hers. “I need help getting to sleep. So either you warm up some milk for me or make love to me. Your choice.”

He closed his eyes briefly and when he opened them his gaze was fierce.

“Put like that,” he said. “I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

He turned her gently on her back and mounted her. There was no other word for it. His hands were gentle. She could see the effort that gentleness was costing him in the taut tendons of his neck, but the movements were pure sex, pure animal. His thighs separated hers and he slid into her with an ease that astonished her. She was ready for him, though. Needed him, even, and her body knew that before her mind did.

And oh, God, when he entered her she was infused with heat and strength. Sex was this, too. Elemental, primal. Heat and power entering her as much as his body entering hers.

His mouth covered hers and he started moving and there was nothing but heat and blinding pleasure and the animal comfort of his body in hers.

Chapter Nine

“This doesn’t look like the right part of town for corporate headquarters,” Isabel said as they cruised through the Pearl.

She was right. It was a funky part of town, formerly full of warehouses and railroad yards and now gentrified but artsy. No high-rises, no corporate buildings.

“Just wait,” he said as he turned onto the street where the back entrance to ASI was. He didn’t want to say anything because he wanted to see how she reacted to the business’s premises.

“Okay.”

Joe shot her a glance. She looked rested. Thank God. That nightmare

had shaken him to the core. She’d been mewling and moaning, thrashing in the bed. It had been a monster nightmare. He’d kept calm but what she’d told him could only mean one thing. Her memories were returning in the form of dreams. Nightmares. And if Mystery Man was right, she was remembering something that was worse than a terrorist attack. Mystery Man wanted the FBI because he suspected homegrown terrorists. Worse. Homegrown terrorists who might be connected to the government. At least 9/11 had been carried out by foreigners.

And Isabel was smack in the middle of it. So Joe was not going to let her out of his sight until he had a clearer understanding of what the fuck this was all about.

He circled round a high redbrick wall until he came to a big gate and pressed the accelerator.

Isabel gave a half cry that was strangled as the gates slid open quickly. Every ASI operative had a special transponder installed in his or her vehicle. Joe loved it and loved that he was working for a cool company. Going to be working for a cool company.

“Magic.” He grinned as he drove into a well-ordered compound with parking spaces and a large, attractive brick structure to the side.

It was only faced with brick. It was actually made of steel and concrete and was unbreachable. Inside was the ASI armory and a spectacular thing it was, too. Besides weapons, it also held the very latest in military-grade gear. It was like their very own playground only made of steel, not sand.

But ASI was not the only company in the compound. Midnight’s wife, Suzanne, had a design company, too, so not only was the compound a gearhead’s wet dream, it was also spectacularly beautiful. Joe was sure they were the only aesthetically pleasing security company in the country.

“Wow.” Isabel looked around. “This is where you work?”

“Will work,” Joe grunted as he parked the car. “When they give me the go-ahead. And you haven’t seen anything yet.”

“Well this is already fantastic. There’s more?”

He just smiled as he exited the vehicle and helped her to the ground. He let her look around because it was worth it.

The vehicles and the armory were ASI, but everything else was Suzanne’s. What had once been the loading dock for her grandparents’ shoe factory was a carefully landscaped area neatly divided up by brick-lined sections of planters. There was a series of arches planted with climbing ivy, a small Zen garden, elaborate outdoor lighting, even a couple of stone benches around a little fountain.

Of course what the ordinary admirer wouldn’t see was the motion sensors, the NV and infrared vidcams hid in the greenery, the outer wall that was built in a way that would mitigate debris even in the case of a perimeter breach explosion...

As a matter of fact, Midnight and Suzanne were working together to provide extreme high-tech security solutions that incorporated design elements, too. That business was starting to take off.

Joe touched a small key fob and the door to the building opened too.

He enjoyed Isabel’s pleasure at the sight of the long corridor. Being a chick, she’d probably appreciate it better than he did. All Joe knew was that he loved entering the building, loved the physical premises. If you put a blowtorch to his bare feet, he’d also admit to loving his teammates and his bosses.

He was one lucky son of a bitch.

Joe held out his arm and Isabel took it with a smile. It was like she was made to walk these halls, her natural habitat. She was as classy as the decor.

When they walked into ASI’s offices, Felicity and Lauren rose, smiling, and proceeded to make an enormous fuss over Isabel. The sounds of the women’s voices filled the room as Metal gave an ironic one-fingered salute with his index finger and Jacko refrained from giving his usual one-fingered salute, only with a different finger.

Suzanne had two big Thermoses of coffee and pretty mugs with roses waiting for them. The mugs were from her business, not Midnight’s. ASI had
Game of Thrones
and “Assassin’s Creed” and “Call of Duty” mugs.

Lauren and Isabel put their heads together. Isabel nodded and Lauren pulled out a big block of sketch pads. They sat in a corner talking quietly as Lauren started sketching.

Joe brought out his laptop and was setting it up when Nick Mancino walked in. He looked tired but alert, having flown across the country on the red-eye.

“Hey.” They fist-bumped and Mancino slapped the backs of Metal and Jacko and shook Midnight’s hand.

“Senior.” He shook the Senior’s hand. Joe and Mancino had gone through Hell Week together and the Senior had been the worst thing about it. He’d screamed in their faces constantly, seemed to live for giving them extra laps, had begged them to ring the bell signifying defeat, had been like Satan’s spawn himself...and then had bought them all beers after they slept thirty-six hours straight upon completing Hell Week.

From being a living, walking, fire-breathing king of the sons of bitches, Kowalski turned out to be a pretty cool boss. Maybe he’d mellowed with marriage. To everyone’s enormous surprise, he was a gigantic pussycat when his wife was around.

Go figure.

“Saw Kay Hudson the other day,” the Senior said casually and Nick looked like someone had stuck a prod up his ass.

“Yeah?” He was trying for cool and it was a massive fail. A few beads of sweat sprouted along his dark hairline.

This was amazing. Nick was a former SEAL, just like Joe. Now he was on the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team and though they weren’t the badasses SEALs were, they came pretty close. Nick’s specialty was sniping. He was cool and calm, always. He’d even been cool and calm during Hell Week. Had even joked.

And a woman made him sweat?

Joe would give up one poker session’s winnings to see that woman. She must be something.

“Yeah.” The Senior had his own poker face on. Senior’s poker face wasn’t good enough to win against Joe in their sessions but for outsiders it served well enough. But Joe could easily see that Senior was hiding a huge grin. “She stopped by Portland on her way out, to say hello to Felicity and Metal.”

Nick’s eyes were wide, the whites showing like a pony’s. “She say—she say where she was going?”

“Nope,” Senior said cheerfully. “Not a fucking clue.”

Nick made a strangled sound in his throat.

Enough of this. Ordinarily, the entertainment value of seeing Nick squirm in his boots would have been enough to stretch this stuff out, but he had Isabel to think of and it was time to get down to business.

“Nick,” Joe said, voice hard and Nick shook himself and morphed back into the cold operator Joe knew.

“Yeah.” Nick had himself under control now and looked at all of them, plus Felicity who was sitting at the keyboard of her Magical Mystery Computer. No one was allowed to touch it, no one was allowed to even breathe on it. It was a prototype—illegally smuggled out from some secret super computer lab somewhere in the world—and it reputedly cost fifty thousand dollars.

At that keyboard, Felicity became God.

“Gentlemen,” Nick said. He nodded at Felicity. “Felicity.” He turned to the guys. “So. I’m here. Flew all fucking night. What the fuck is this about?”

Joe switched on his computer and nodded at Isabel and Lauren. “The lady talking to Lauren is Isabel Lawton, who used to be Isabel Delvaux.”

Nick’s face changed. “Delvaux? Of
the
Delvauxes?”

Joe nodded. “Alex Delvaux’s daughter.”

“So she’s one of the ones who survived the Massacre.”

“Yeah. Barely. She has amnesia. She was badly concussed in the explosion and doesn’t remember anything beyond the day before the Massacre.”

Nick glanced behind him, where Isabel and Lauren were engrossed in the drawing flowing from Lauren’s hand.

“So what’s she doing here, way across the country, under another name? She on the run from someone?”

“No. Not on the run.” Joe shook his head. “But the other day I got an anonymous message sent to my computer. We couldn’t trace it. Not even Felicity could.”

“That’s true.” Felicity shook her head. “Not for lack of trying. But he—and we’re assuming it’s a he because he’s sneaky and manipulative—used an anonymizer and I think it was washed through three points. Totally untraceable without bringing monster crunching power to bear for a long time. Plus,” she shrugged, looking at Joe. “I get the feeling he’s—well, he’s a good guy. Could be wrong but if he doesn’t want to be identified, there’s probably a reason.”

“I think he’s CIA,” Joe said bluntly. “Which doesn’t necessarily make him a good guy in my book. But he’s stepping outside the CIA. Asked specifically for someone good, someone incorruptible from the FBI. So we called you.”

Nick nodded.

“And we have a ten o’clock computer appointment.” Joe checked his watch. It’s ten now—”

Hello, Joe

appeared on his monitor.

Joe sat down at his laptop. Felicity scooted over in her office chair, pulling her laptop along. They were sitting side by side.

Hello
, Joe typed.

Let’s talk.

Joe looked around. Felicity was calm. The guys all leaned in.

Okay
, he answered.

“
Hello
,
Joe
.” A metallic affectless synthesized voice came from his speakers. Joe was familiar with the software. It washed out all identifying traits, including gender.

“Hi.” He kept his voice neutral.

“
So
,
introduce me to your friends.
”

Joe could feel his eyebrows climbing up. Felicity leaned forward. “If you’ve got eyes on us, we should have eyes on you. Switch on your camera.”

A metallic laugh. “
Nice try.
Maybe later.
Not quite yet.
”

“You have us at a disadvantage,” Joe said evenly. “But I’ll introduce everyone anyway. Felicity Ward is our computer expert. The guy to your left is Douglas Kowalski, then Sean O’Brien and Morton Jackman.”

Jacko grimaced at hearing his real name.

“And the man on the right is Special Agent Nick Mancino, FBI. HRT. You asked to have him here and here he is.”

“
Special Agent Mancino.
Nice to meet you.
You any good with a computer?
”

“I’m okay,” Nick said evenly. He pointed to Felicity. “But we’ve got a genius here.”

Felicity’s face didn’t change. She was a genius with a computer and she knew it.

“Mind letting us know what this is about?” Joe was getting impatient. “This is about the Massacre, isn’t it?”

“
What do you know about the Massacre?
”

“I was in a coma when it happened. Battle injury, got on the wrong side of an IED. So I’ll let Nick answer that. FBI were among the first responders.”

“
So
,
Special Agent.
What do you know about the Massacre?
”

Nick wasn’t fazed. “Alex Delvaux was expected to announce his run for the presidency at around 7:30 p.m. at the Burrard Hotel. They were running a little late. There were about seven hundred people in the room and behind the scenes. The Delvaux family itself, the extended family. Friends of the Delvauxes. A lot of the party higher-ups because Delvaux was the party’s leading light. And party activists. There were about a hundred and fifty members of the press who had received accreditation, but estimates are that there were also about fifty unaccredited bloggers who were allowed in. And then general supporters of the Delvaux campaign.

“The room was fifteen thousand square feet and it was packed. There was going to be a buffet reception later and there were a hundred and seventy people who were either part of the kitchen staff or waitstaff. A deejay who was on a podium at the end of the room. And ten armed guards. There were no Secret Service special agents since Delvaux hadn’t actually declared his run yet. As of the next day, Secret Service protection would have begun.”

“
So if something were to happen it had to happen that night.
”

Nick met Joe’s eyes then turned to the monitor as if it was a face. “Yeah. I guess you could say that. I mean the security that night was good but not Secret Service level.”

“
No.
What next?
”

“At 7:20 the lights went. At 7:21 cell phone coverage stopped. All cell phone coverage died. Everyone taking pictures, everyone Instagramming, uploading videos to YouTube—it all stopped at 7:27. All internet coverage stopped too.”