Noble Intentions: Season Three (29 page)

“What are you doing here?” Jack
asked Bear.

“Got a call, was told you might be
in trouble. Started getting those feelings, man. You know, that something was
wrong. We got some help and came over.”

“Anyone I know?”

“Of course.”

“Why’d you bring the kid?”

“What else could I do? She’s my
responsibility now, Jack. If she’s not with me, she’s not safe.”

“If she’s around me, she’s not
safe.”

“I balance that out. Don’t forget
that.”

“You always have,” Jack said.

They stopped and Jon dismissed the
agents that had accompanied them. Alex walked toward them.

“Now this guy I remember.” Alex
extended a hand to Bear.

“How you doing, Alex?” Bear said.

“Stressed.”

“You look it.”

“Goes with the territory.”

“So I’ve heard.”

Jon introduced Bear and Mandy to
Sasha, then said, “Let’s get to that shop now so we can talk.”

The woman emerged from the store
again. The bristles of her broom pushed a large pile of debris onto the
sidewalk. She shuffled toward the street, stopped when she noticed the group
approaching. Her gaze traveled from person to person and stopped on Jack.

“What are you doing here?” she
said. “You show up, a day later the damn block explodes, and now you’re back? I
should call those cops over here.”

“The cops answer to me, lady,” Jon
said.

“Ma’am,” Alex said as he placed a
hand on Jon’s shoulder. “We need to use your shop for a meeting.”

“Piss off,” she said as she turned
and headed toward the door.

Jon stepped forward. “Do you know
who you’re telling to piss off?”

She stopped, turned. “Yeah, I know
who he is. But I didn’t vote for him, so he can piss off.”

Jon turned red, started toward the
woman. Alex reached out again and grabbed him.

“Ma’am,” Alex said. “Either you let
us use it or the police will force you to. It’s as simple as that.”

She dropped her broom. A cloud of
dust kicked up when the handle hit the ground. She headed into the store and
said, “Fine, use it.”

They went inside. Bear told Mandy to
stay near the front door and let them know if someone approached. The girl
smiled and accepted the position of lookout.

“She’s come a long way,” Jack said.

Bear nodded and smiled. “Sure has.
Figure with the way her life has gone, might as well teach her everything I
can.”

“What are you going to do after
this?” Jack said.

Jon interrupted. “Jack, you said
you had information for us. Let’s hear it.”

Jack took a deep breath, exhaled,
said, “I came to London for a reason. As you may or may not be aware, after I
left the Marines I went to work for the U.S. agency, SIS. After that I
partnered up with Bear and we became freelance contractors. You up to speed on
that?”

Jon looked at Alex and nodded. Men
in his position were likely to know of Jack and others like him.

Jack continued. “I’d decided to
retire, but a friend called and needed help. I figured one last job and that
was it. It was personal anyway. I’d had a run-in with the guy some time ago. It
resulted in him taking out some frustration on his old lady.”

“I think I know where this is
going,” Jon said. “Jack, you don’t have to say anymore on that.” Jon glanced at
Sasha. “It’s probably better that you don’t.”

Jack nodded. “OK, well, I’ll speed
this up. I had reservations at the hotel.”

“That hotel?” Alex said, pointing
across the street.

“Yes, that hotel.”

“Under what name?”

“Mine.”

Silence for a moment.

“You think you were targeted?”
Sasha said.

Jack shrugged. “That or it was one
hell of a coincidence. The first day I was in town, I went to the hotel. A
sequence of events prevented me from checking in. I went to the restaurant next
door. Saw a car pull up. Some guys got out like they were looking for someone.
Looked like the kind of guys who’d be sent to find someone like me.”

“Sasha, get your team to look into
this,” Jon said.

She nodded, started to leave.

“Don’t go anywhere yet, Sasha,” Jon
said.

She stopped, glanced at Jack.

Jack held her gaze for a moment,
then said, “So then I went to stay with an old friend. Next day I had a run in
with a guy named Mason Sutton. You know him?”

Jon and Alex and Sasha glanced at
one another, nodded at Jack.

“Is there a story there?” Jack
said.

“Sutton is kind of a,” Sasha
paused, looked toward the ceiling. “I guess you could say he’s a loose cannon.
He does things his own way. Doesn’t always take things up the chain of command
like he should.”

“Why’s he still around?” Jack said.

“Because he’s that effective,”
Sasha said.

“Maybe there’s a reason for that,”
Alex said.

Jack said, “Yeah, well, I don’t
know whether to trust him or not. So far he seems to be on my side. He could
have hurt me more than once and he didn’t.”

“He could be setting you up for
something,” Jon said.

Jack shrugged. “He already had me
in position for that. If he were going to do it, it would have been then.”

“The warehouse?” Sasha said.

“How’d you know?”

Sasha said nothing.

Alex’s cell phone rang. He pulled
it out. “Personal line. Give me a moment.” He walked toward the rear of the
store.

Jon said, “Jack, can you think of
any reason why these guys would want you dead?”

“I can think of plenty of reasons,
but none of them make sense. It doesn’t mesh. If I was the target, and these
guys carried this out, then someone else put them up to it. I never checked in
here. So someone used them, tricked them into believing there was something
else behind this.”

“What if they didn’t know that you
hadn’t checked in though?” Jon said.

“I don’t buy that. If anything,
someone was trying to get my attention. Why? I don’t know.”

Jon nodded, said nothing.

“Who’s come forward to claim
responsibility?” Jack said.

“No one credible,” Sasha said.

“It’s gotta be payback for
something,” Bear said.

“Yeah, but what?” Jack said.

No one had an answer.

Alex returned. His face looked
pale, drained. Sweat covered his brow.

“What is it?” Jon said.

“They just told me that I’m next in
line.”

“Who? For what?”

“Them.” Alex licked his lips,
coughed. “They told me they’re going to assassinate me.”

The weight of the words hovered
over the group, drew the air from their lungs.

“Who was it, Alex?” Jon said.

Alex stared ahead, his gaze fixed
on the crumbled remains of the hotel. His lips were parted a half-inch. He
didn’t speak.

“Alex?” Jon said. “Who was on the
phone?”

Alex shook his head. “A man.”

“What did he sound like?”

“A man.”

“Alex.”

“Jon.”

The men faced off, anger in their
eyes. Perhaps not for each other, but anger nonetheless.

“Listen, Jon, he sounded like a
man. A normal every day English man. It could have been any one of fifty
million people.”

Sasha stepped between Jon and Alex.
She faced the Prime Minister. “Sir, what number did the call come from?”

Alex reached into his pocket,
pulled out his phone. He tapped at the screen. He and Sasha both shook their
heads.

“No number,” Sasha said.

“Maybe they can trace it?” Alex
said.

“Doesn’t work that way,” Bear said.
“If no number was displayed, that means the receiving switch didn’t get any
information.”

No one spoke for a minute.

The woman who owned the store came
back inside. “Are you folks going to be taking up my store much longer? I have
to get this place cleaned up, you know.”

“Oh, shut the bloody hell up,” Alex
said.

The woman stopped dead. “Well, that
certainly won’t win my vote in the next election.” She turned and exited
through the open doorway.

Silence, then laughter.

After a moment, Sasha said, “We
have to treat this seriously. The men that did this are more than capable of
pulling off another attack. They might not come directly for you, sir. Instead,
they might choose to attack a place where you’ll be. Maybe even where you might
be. Or multiple places at once. It’s not just your life at risk. It could be
hundreds, maybe thousands of innocent people that die. You signed up for this
full well knowing the possibilities. They didn’t.”

Alex nodded. “We’ll get everyone—”

A cell phone rang. All eyes turned
to Alex. He reached in his pocket, pulled out his phone. It was silent.

“That’s me,” Jack said as he pulled
his phone out. He stepped a few feet away and answered. “Dottie, we’ve got a
crazy situation over here.”

“So do we, Jack,” she said.

“What’s going on there?”

“That man you sent to protect Erin
and Mia.”

“Yeah?”

“He’s dead.”

“Dead? How?”

“Murdered.”

“Oh, Christ. What about the girls?”

“Erin was shot in the leg.”

“Is she all right?”

“She’s going to be fine.”

“And Mia? Hannah?”

“Scared, but OK.”

“What happened?”

“We don’t have all the details yet,
but what I know is this. They took up outside of Brussels. Your man had a woman
with him. She went out early in the morning. The house was attacked shortly
after she left. When she returned, found one of the men outside. She crept up
on him, knocked him unconscious. Inside the house, she found your guy dead. She
killed the second attacker. Erin took a bullet in the shootout.”

“Who’s the woman?”

“I don’t know her name, Jack.
Supposedly we’ll meet her shortly.”

“Where are they now?”

Dottie said nothing.

“Dottie?”

“I don’t know if this line is being
monitored, Jack. Best I don’t say. Anyway, what is the problem there?”

“I’m with the Prime Minister now.
We’re at the site of the attack.”

“How’s he taking everything? We go
back a ways, you know.”

“He was OK.”

“Was?”

“He just got a call.”

“What kind of call?”

“One where someone threatened to
kill him.”

Silence for a beat. “Jack, put me
on speaker.”

“Why?”

“Because, I want to talk to both of
you.”

Jack held the phone out and
switched it to speaker. He walked back to the group. “Alex, I’ve got Dottie
Carlisle on the phone. She wants to talk to both of us.”

“Hello, Prime Minister.”

“Dottie, you know you can call me
Alex.”

“Yes, well, Alex. Jack told me that
you just received a rather disturbing call.”

“Correct.”

“Listen to me, Alex. If I was
heading things up, I would see to it that Jack Noble does not leave your side.”

“We’ve got things in place,” Jon
said.

“Who’s that?”

“That was Jon Hayes, my—”

“I know who he is. Jon, this is not
meant to be an insult to you. Frankly, you can’t have too many good men around
in a situation like this. You know that. You have to believe me. I trust Jack.
Leon trusts Jack. You two have to trust him. He provides a different kind of
perspective. He sees things differently. He understands how this works on both
ends. He will be valuable both in protecting you and in strategizing when it
comes to finding these terrorists. If you don’t keep him around, you’ll only
have yourselves to blame when one or both of you ends up dead.”

No one spoke for a minute.

Jack said, “What if I decline? I’ve
got things to figure out here too.”

“Jack, we’re tied together on
this,” Alex said. “They came after you. They’re after me now.”

“And if we’re together we make
their life that much easier,” Jack said.

“They’ll never know,” Dottie said.

“Fifty reporters follow this guy
around all day long,” Jack said.

“We can move around in secret if
need be,” Jon said.

“If you can manage to get through
the front door undetected,” Jack said.

“Are we in agreement, gentlemen?”
Dottie said.

Jack and Alex stared at each other.
Everyone else stared at them.

Alex extended his hand toward Jack.
“Yes.”

Jack shifted the phone from his
right to his left and took the Prime Minister’s hand in his own. “OK. But Bear
stays with us, too.”

“Excellent. Jack, I’ll call you
with details on that other thing in a few hours. Keep your cell switched on.”

She hung up. Jack stuffed the phone
in his pocket.

“She would have made one fine Prime
Minister,” Alex said.

“No argument there,” Jon said.

“What now?” Jack said.

“I want to look at the damage some
more,” Alex said.

“The reporters got their shots,”
Jon said.

“You bloody well know this goes
beyond public relations.”

Before they could leave the shop,
the woman appeared at the door again. She breathed heavily and struggled to
talk.

“What is it, you old hen?” Alex
said.

“Gas… leak,” she said.

The group looked at each other with
confused expressions.

The woman took a deep breath,
yelled, “Did you hear me?”

An agent shoved her aside and said,
“Get out now! We just discovered a gas leak a half block away. The hotel is
still smoldering. It’s only a matter of minutes before there’s an explosion.”

The calm sea split in two. The
large ferry cut through the channel like a giant lumbering blue whale. Salt
water spray rode the wind. It fell upon Clarissa’s face in sheets of a thousand
particles. She let the water dry on her skin. The smell reminded her of summers
spent on North Carolina’s outer banks where her family had a beach house. The
area had been spared the megaliths built by investors in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Peaceful times. Calmer times.