Midnight Secrets (25 page)

Her bedrock bottom line.

“
No
,
he cannot be allowed to get away with this
,” the metallic voice answered. It was really hard to read emotion into the altered voice, created by software, but somehow an underlying determination came through.

“Do you have any hard evidence to bring him to the authorities’ attention?” she asked the computer. She gestured with her thumb to Nick. “I think we can count on Nick to push this through the FBI. It’s the country’s top law enforcement agency. If you’ve got something, they can run with it.”

“Bet your ass,” Nick growled. “If the Massacre was planned and carried out by Americans, they are going down. I won’t rest, none of us in the Bureau will rest, until justice is done.”

“
Blake has covered his tracks well.
”

“If you’ve found something, others can, as well.”

“
Mainly what I have is a money trail.
Which could disappear not overnight
,
but in the course of two minutes.
”

“That’s true,” Felicity said. “I can almost guarantee that there will be another set of anonymous accounts where Blake can drain his money and pour it into them. And he can do it fast. A hint of the fact that someone is on to him, and he’ll be gone and it will take months to find him. As a matter of fact, with the right software and with someone who knows what he’s doing, or someone who can hire someone who knows what they’re doing, he could create a shell game, keep the money moving from account to account so that you might know where the money has been but you never know where the money is going to be. So you’ll never nail him.”

Just the thought of Hector moving his blood money around and getting away with mass murder made her sick. Made her shake with rage, as if every cell in her body were alive with fire. And yet if she knew one thing about Hector, she knew he was smart. If Felicity said that it was possible to keep his money moving, then it was on the move.

“He needs to confess,” she said.

“Riiight.” Jacko’s deep voice chimed in full of sarcasm. “All we have to do is ask him. Nicely. And he’ll spill the beans on everything.”

“
We
won’t ask him,” Isabel said. As she spoke, certainty settled in her bones. She could do this and she was going to do this. “I will.”

“The fuck you will,” Joe said immediately. “You’re staying a continent away from this guy. He killed hundreds of people. He’s not going to stop at killing you. He’s already tried anyway.”

“
Joe is right
,” Mystery Man said. “
Stay out of this
,
Isabel.
”

Isabel’s spine shot up straight as if someone had given her a shot of adrenaline. “Excuse me? Because you all have done such a good job of catching him, exposing him. Look at you, you don’t dare use the CIA and you have to call the FBI in surreptitiously. And Nick is here as a simple citizen, not representing the Bureau. You’re all scared to death that you are going to stumble on a mole or that he will be warned. Has anyone thought that he was going to run for the presidency as my father’s political heir? And he could have won, too. We could have had a mass murderer and traitor as our president! Has anyone thought of that?”

“
Every day
,” the voice said. “
Every fucking day.
”

“We have to stop him. Right now. Because if he is part of a conspiracy, they are planning something else. Or else he’s going to be happy with his billion dollars and is going to disappear to a Thai island.”

“We’re going to stop him,” Nick said. “Guaranteed.”

She whirled on him. “You are one man. You’re here alone without the force of the Bureau behind you. I know Joe and his friends called you because that guy—” she pointed a shaking finger at Felicity’s laptop, “—wanted someone from the FBI and Joe knows youre one of the good guys, like he is. Like everyone here is. But you are part of a huge security machine that involves congressional oversight. Ive been around politicians all my life and they talk. They love to talk. Can you guarantee that a juicy bit of news that the man who was supposed to be the next vice president before the Massacre, a possible presidential contender, was behind the Washington Massacre will stay secret? Can you guarantee that?

“Yes,” Nick said. “Absolutely.”

Isabel got right up into his face. Nick didn’t flinch or back down. “I don’t believe you. People talk and Hector is very plugged into the national security apparatus. How are you going to investigate something this big without tipping him off? He’ll be gone at the first whiff of an investigation. I wish I could just take a gun and kill him. He’s getting away with mass murder and we can’t stop him! What can we do?”

Silence. Utter, complete silence.

“
There might be a way
,” the robot voice said finally.

* * *

“I don’t like it,” Joe said, crossing his arms. He put a lot of emphasis in his voice, making it deep, using his command voice. The one that had young recruits flinching. Because no way was Isabel doing this.

“I like it,” Isabel said. “Let’s do it.”

Joe heart beat painfully in his chest. He wanted to put his foot down, hard. He wanted to stop this craziness. Isabel was straining at the bit and that was dangerous for Navy SEALs who trained day in day out for years for missions, let alone a beautiful young woman whose most dangerous assignment was wielding sharp knives in the kitchen.

But there was no stopping her.

That was another reason his heart was hammering. This was an Isabel he’d never seen before. Not the gentle, wounded, grieving woman who made him want to wrap himself around her and never let go.

No, this woman was electric, sparks flying off her. Eyes wide, shiny, a flush under that ivory skin. Even her hair crackled. She walked up and down as CIA guy and the ASI team discussed the outrageous plan as if it was in any way feasible.

Which it wasn’t.

She would do this over his dead body.

The only thing was—it looked like she was willing to do just that. Step right over his stroked-out body as if he was invisible and carry out the plan to get Hector Blake, because there was no stopping her.

“Let’s go through this again,” the Senior said. He was good at strategizing, which was fortunate because though Joe was good at strategizing, too, right now his brain was MIA. Whatever electricity had fired Isabel up had been leeched from him because it felt like his very bones were weak. Like someone had zapped him.

It was terror like he’d never felt before. Because they were planning on using Isabel as fucking
bait.
Bait for the man responsible for the Massacre. And she was up for it, oh yeah. No stopping her, in fact. Joe had tried, he really had, but Isabel wasn’t even listening to him.

The plan was fairly simple so Joe absorbed it through his skin because his head wasn’t working right. It was filled with images of Isabel shot, Isabel knifed, Isabel dead. Fucking Blake finishing off the job he’d started in Washington.

And then someone said something that was like a cattle prod. “Fuck no,” he said. “I’m going to be right beside her.”

Because someone had talked about the ASI guys—and that included him—being in the back and hidden behind bushes and there was no way. Just—no way.

Isabel looked at him impatiently, as if he was a few bricks shy of a load. “The only way this is going to work is if he thinks I’m alone. I mean cosmically alone. I know him down to the ground and if there’s one thing he is, it’s vain. I can get him to talk but he would only talk to me. To Isabel Delvaux, victim. The only survivor of a family he slaughtered. If I play it right—and I will—he’s going to want to brag. How clever he was, how he deceived us all. How no one will ever believe me.”

“No one will believe you because you’ll be dead.” Joe looked everyone in the eye, cool and calm, though his back was covered in sweat. “This is not gonna happen.”

It was as if he hadn’t spoken.

“Okay,” Senior said. “Let’s go through this again. From the top.” He pointed a long finger at Isabel.

She nodded briskly, made an imaginary phone out of her hand. “I call him. I call Uncle Hector. The man my father grew up with, who has been a family friend forever. I’ve called him Uncle Hector since I learned to speak. All of that will be in my voice and my demeanor. Utter trust and faith in a man I’ve known all my life. So I call him and I’m puzzled. I’m turning to him because I don’t have a father or a mother anymore and my big brother is dead.”

Her eyes narrowed and her lips tightened and something fierce passed over her face. She made a hand phone again. “So who else would I turn to but the man who had been like a father to me all my life? My dear Uncle Hector. So, Uncle Hector—you know what? I’ve been having dreams, terrible dreams. Of that night. Yes, I’d lost my memory, isn’t that sad. But what if—what if my memory is coming back, Uncle Hector? Because I see flashes of things and somehow—isn’t this crazy?—somehow you are always in my dreams. What do you think that means? What do I do?”

Isabel stopped for a moment, looked around. Everyone but Joe was nodding. Were they all fucking
nuts?

“He’s not going to go for that! He’s—”

Isabel’s voice overrode him. “So I suggest that maybe we should meet, talk it over. I mean I know you’re a busy man, Uncle Hector, but I really need to talk to you. What? Come to Washington? I don’t know...I’m not feeling well these days. It’s a long trip. Do you think you could...you could? Oh great. Whenever you can make it. Yes—thanks so much, Uncle Hector. You’ve always been there for me.”

“After which—” Senior began.

“After which I call him about an hour before our appointment. There’s been a leak in the water mains, the house is a mess. Can we meet downtown in a nice place called Three Windows? And I go in all wired up.”

“With me,” Joe said. “You go in with me.”

She didn’t even look at him. “You’re going to be with the others, Joe. All of you guys will be within a minute’s reach.”

Joe’s body hairs still hadn’t settled. Jacko knew the owner of Three Windows. They belonged to a biker club together. Which was weird because Three Windows was definitely upscale and trendy. Whatever. The owner was a former marine and was going to give them whatever they needed. Jacko was on the phone with him for half an hour, not telling exactly what the op was, but his marine buddy didn’t need to know. He’d offered his entire restaurant to them without asking questions.

“And we’re gonna be armed.”

“Well, of course.” Isabel deigned to look at him for a split second. “Because I’m secretly hoping that you’ll all shoot him full of holes. But I do understand that might create legal problems for you all, killing a man who could have been president. So we won’t kill him, we’ll just ruin him.”

“That’s my job,” Nick said grimly. “With any luck, he’ll never see the light of day again after tomorrow.”

“I would love it if he never saw the light of day again because he was in a box in the ground, but I’ll take what I can get.” Isabel consulted a notepad. She’d been listening very carefully as the plan took shape. “So, I’m wired up, the flowers on the table will be bugged, my earrings will be bugged, when they bring the Brie hamburger the French fries will be bugged. The entire place will have a billion hidden video cameras. The door will be surreptitiously turned into an invisible metal detector that gives a silent signal to—” The phone became a gun that Isabel pointed at Felicity. “You. You’ll be in a back room coordinating all the electronics.”

Felicity nodded. “Count on it. Every image will be crisp and all the sound will be crystal clear. Every word the man says will feature large in court. The jurors won’t have any trouble understanding every word that is spoken.”

“You guys.” Isabel looked at them all, then took his hand. “And you, Joe. You’ll be absolutely invisible until dear Uncle Hector confesses. That’s my job. To goad him until he spills his guts.”

Joe felt his own guts roil. “There, you see? That’s not a good idea. To goad a guy who’s responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people. Can’t you all see that?” He turned to people he’d considered his friends, people who had turned insane.

“We can,” Metal said gently. “But we can’t let this guy get away with murder.”

“So let Nick take care of this! That’s what he does, goddamn it! Nick—” He rounded on his FBI buddy. “You tell them.”

Nick rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, that’s the thing. There isn’t any hard evidence to prove his guilt. Our friend from the CIA has said as much. Blake has covered his tracks and is still covering his tracks beautifully. The instant evidence forms, the money disappears again. And I tell you, there’s no love lost for the CIA in the Bureau but we’re part of the game, as well. We can’t go tossing around accusations about moles in the CIA and the man who might have been president. If we’re wrong we’ll lose face, lose power.”

Nick held up a big hand as Isabel opened her mouth. “I’m sorry, Isabel, but that’s just the way power rolls. The big guys have an almost automatic get-out-of-jail-free card. You have to have some powerful proof to get at them. And though Sanders—” the current head of the FBI, “—hates Blake, hell stand by him. Because power at the top stays at the top and thats one of the ways it does that. They dont attack each other. And before you say anything, Im not protecting my career. To put the man responsible for the Washington Massacre behind bars, Id trash my career in a heartbeat.