Operation Proof of Life (10 page)

“Nothing.”

Which struck Conrad as odd. Everyone in the SIS or the CIA had something damning in their past. It’s what molded their character, seasoned their personality, motivated them. His secret army was proof.

“Off topic,” Smitty said. “Where’s Tango? She disappeared about three days ago after leaving me a cryptic message about freedom fighters.”

Tango was the nickname Conrad had given Zara after she’d danced with a nasty terrorist named Alexandrov Dmitri and managed to survive. “She’s here. I’ll be sending her back to you soon.”

“Don’t you have someone else in your army you could send me?”

“There’s always Ace.”

Smitty made an exaggerated choking sound on his end. “No thanks. Say hi to Julia.”

Conrad disconnected and found the woman in question heading his way. “We need to talk,” she said.

“Not now. I’ve gotta find St—”

“Now.” She steered him into an empty hallway. “It’s about Zara.”

Zara was not high on his priority list at the moment, but the look on Julia’s face made him press pause on the other stuff. She took two steps away and then paced back to him. “When the doctor releases her tomorrow, she’s coming home with us.”

“Why? She’s got a place.”

“We need to keep an eye on her. Her sister’s in Europe again and I don’t want Zara home alone.”

Something about her tone made his skin crawl. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Julia cut her eyes to the left and then to the right and Conrad’s stomach dropped an inch. He knew he was about to learn something he didn’t want to know. “She’s pregnant.”

“She’s
what
?”

Julia jerked a finger to her lips and lowered her voice as she repeated, “She’s pregnant.”

Conrad pressed his fingers to his temples. First Julia and now Zara? “What is this, an epidemic?”

Julia’s brows drew together. “What?”

Dropping his hand, he shook his head. He couldn’t deal with this now. “Look, I’ll deal with the Zara issue later. Right now, I’ve got to talk to Stone. Where is he?”

“For God’s sake, being pregnant is not an
issue,
Con.”

It is for me
. His secret army had just decreased by one. A very valuable one. “Where is Stone? Is he still with Kent?”

Julia looked at him as if he’d just turned into an alien. “He left ten minutes ago.”

Shit. He didn’t have anything truly damning on Brigit Kent, but the warning bells in his head were ringing loud and clear. Her being SIS, consultant or otherwise, and being a member of DHS, was a big no-no. He needed to tell Stone what Smitty had learned about her and figure out how Dr. Psych could work both sides of the Atlantic.

Julia’s gaze was scalding through his skin to his very bones. First he had to keep his wife happy and make sure Zara was getting the best possible medical care available. “Smitty just called to find out how Zara’s doing. I’ll go check on her for him.”

“You’ll go check on her for yourself and tell her she’s coming home with us.”

“Isn’t that her call?”

“I’m worried about her, okay?”

Just like he was worried about his wife. “Okay, sure. I’ll see what I can talk her into, but no guarantees.”

Julia’s tense face relaxed. “Room 314 on the O.B. ward.” She leaned forward and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Michael requested I do security at Dr. Kent’s door for the afternoon. I’ll see you at home tonight, okay?”

Conrad caught movement in the hallway behind her. A tall, lanky suit with heavy-rimmed glasses was typing on a BlackBerry. “Isn’t that Dr. Kent’s assistant?” he said under his breath.

Julia turned to look and nodded. “Truman Gunn.”

An idea flashed in his brain and he patted Julia’s arm. “See you at home.”

Walking with long strides to the bank of elevators, he watched Truman enter the main area to his right, heading for the exit. The elevator dinged and the doors opened. Stepping inside, Conrad punched a speed dial button on his cell phone. When Smitty answered on the other end, Conrad said, “The key to this puzzle is Truman Gunn.”

Chapter Sixteen

Ashford
Heights

It was just after three in the afternoon when Michael walked down the front steps of Thad and Ruth’s house and slid into the backseat of the Navigator.

Conrad Flynn was waiting for him. “How they doing?” he asked.

Michael slouched down in the seat, leaned his head back against the leather and closed his eyes. It had been a long fucking day. “They’re hopeful, which may be worse if Ella turns up hurt or dead.”

“Nah, you did the right thing. Hope is always better than the alternative.”

Michael rubbed his eyes and prayed Flynn was right. “So why are you waiting for me in the back of my car?”

“I’ve got something on our gal.”

Pushing himself up, he fought the spurt of hope, like the one he’d just given Thad and Ruth, running under his skin. “What?”

Flynn relayed his discussion with Ryan Smith and the spurt of hope died. If anything, Brigit Kent seemed even more of a puzzle. “She’s consulting for SIS
and
DHS, but she’s not an agent or an operative for either intelligence service?”

“Smell the conspiracy yet?”

Michael’s frustration grew. “And you’re telling me she’s well paid for consulting about Irish nationalism?”

Flynn shrugged. “It explains her in-depth knowledge about Donovan better than the story about her thesis.”

“What’s DHS doing with her? Irish terrorists are hardly on America’s top-ten watch list.”

“You were right all along. There’s more going on than we’re privilege to.”

Michael tapped a thumb against his leg and looked out the passenger window. “She met with the president this morning.”

The leather squeaked quietly as Flynn shifted in his seat. “
Our
president?”

“The one and only.”

Flynn whistled softly. “I followed her to a construction site after I left you at home. She drew a weapon on a car ready to leave the site. A gal jumped out, confronted her and then freakin’ hugged her. I wasn’t close enough to hear the exchange, but it was weird.”

Michael’s brain was spinning in circles but for all his logic, he couldn’t pull one definitive answer about Brigit from it. “I saw what happened. Julia brought me a tape of the meeting.”

“That’s why she was in your office.” It was a statement, not a question. “That the only reason?”

Michael met Flynn’s eyes, saw the hardness in them. “Yes. She was trying to protect Zara. You might want to get a better handle on your counterintelligence operative.”

“I already talked to her. She won’t be doing anything stupid for awhile.”

“That’s what you told me when she went AWOL in Paris on the hunt for a mad scientist and the Italian Mob.”

Flynn waved him off. “Julia told me Dr. Kent believes Ella will turn up at one of the local parks in the next few hours. What do you think?”

“I think I need help with surveillance.”

“Consider it done.” He reached for the door handle. “You take the one a block from here. I’ll cover the park on Grant Avenue, and I’ve got Ace lined up to keep an eye on the third one over on Tremont Fairway.”

“Which park has the best odds?”

Silence hung as Flynn considered the question. “Grant.”

“You and I will take that one. I’ll encourage the FBI to take the one up the block.”

“Okay.” He pushed the heavy, bulletproof door open and slid out.

“Flynn,” Michael called to him.

He ducked back into the open space. “Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“Yeah.”

The car door slammed shut.

Truman didn’t return with her clothes until after four o’clock. Brigit was pissed. When he dropped her off at her loft and offered to hang out with her, she gave him a scorching look and slammed the car door in his too-handsome face.

Before she entered the building, she spotted an unmarked car down the block. Two men sat inside watching her. Police probably. She’d sent the FBI packing, but knowing Michael Stone, she was still under security watch.

The press would have been hanging around too, if Truman hadn’t buried her personal information deep. She’d ducked the reporters at the front entrance of the hospital by using a delivery entrance at the back.

Inside, she heated water and dumped a packet of instant hot cocoa mix into a mug. While a beer appealed to her more, she didn’t want the alcohol to slow her reflexes. Besides, her refrigerator was bare.

As the water boiled, Brigit’s stomach growled. She hadn’t eaten all day. Picking up her BlackBerry, she shuffled through the take-out menus in her head. Thai sounded good. Pressing the three on her phone, she speed dialed the local Thai restaurant and placed an order.

While she waited for her early dinner to arrive, she booted up her computer and went to work on tracking down Moira Raphael.

Three hours later, it was dark outside. Brigit had eaten, and succumbing to the exhaustion racking her body, fallen asleep on her futon.

When her BlackBerry dinged she bolted upright, scattering papers on the floor and making her shoulder throb. Biting back a curse, she grabbed up the BlackBerry and saw Truman’s personal number ID’d.

“What?” she answered, pushing hair out of her face and glancing at the papers now lying on the floor.

“How’s the shoulder?”

“Hurts like a son of a bitch, but it’s better than being dead.”

“Agreed. Someone’s snooping into your past.”

Her heart did a flip. “Who?”

“Pick a name. You got a lot of people excited today, which was stupid. You should never have alerted Deputy Director Stone to Donovan’s possible involvement in the kidnapping.”

“Has Ella turned up?”

“Forget about Ella. Your beautiful backside is FUBARed. Do you get what I’m saying? If Stone or Jeffries or Director Halden start digging into your job history and connect you—us—with our current employer, we’ll both hang.”

Truman was far from innocent, but he still cared about his job. “Just keep your mouth shut and go about your business as usual. I’ll handle Stone and the president, and I’ll take the blame if it all goes to hell.”

After ending the conversation, Brigit picked up the papers and looked at what she had on Moira. Nothing new. The ex-Palestinian army sniper, and best friend of Tory’s, had been underground for the past three years.

Knowing she wouldn’t be able to sleep, Brigit decided there wasn’t any way to save herself after all of this, so she dug out her running clothes and went to help save Ella Pennington.

Chapter Seventeen

The park on Grant Avenue was a kid’s paradise à la Steven Spielberg. A wooden castle complete with turret dominated one end. Giant insects, whose interiors were hollowed out for tunnels, appeared to roam the grounds. A mini merry-go-round with elaborately painted animals anchored the opposite end, and next to a long row of slides and swings lay a sandpit big enough for a T-Rex.

Light from decorative lamps straight from the Victorian era illuminated a curving sidewalk under large oaks surrounding the park. Since Michael had been concealed in the castle with his binoculars, several joggers had used the sidewalk, but other than those people, the insects, animals and Conrad Flynn next to him, the park was deserted.

Covert surveillance was not his specialty. It wasn’t Flynn’s either. Although both of them had the patience required for the act, sitting in freezing temps in cramped turrets overlooking a playground served to make them both slightly neurotic. Michael’s mind was filled with thoughts of Julia, Zara, Ella and Brigit. All were worrying him.

All were worrying Flynn.

While they waited, the two of them talked in starts and stops, the darkness covering them in a blanket of familiarity if not exactly friendship.

How did you help a child you couldn’t find? What did you tell a counterintelligence spy about her job options when returning to the field was too dangerous for a pregnant woman, no matter how tough and invincible she imagined herself to be? How did you convince someone to play by the rules when you never played by them yourself?

Michael dropped the binoculars from his eyes and ran a hand over his face. He liked women, respected how determined they could be and how soft and vulnerable they usually were underneath the tough exterior. He liked the way they banded together and looked out for each other. What he didn’t like was their ability to outthink and outmaneuver him at almost every turn.

Movement on the path caught his attention. He didn’t need the binoculars to see it was another jogger. Solitary, female, dressed for exercise in cold weather.

The cold was the least of her worries. Jogging alone after dark was asking for trouble, even in this upscale neighborhood. Maybe the woman considered herself safe here or enjoyed the feeling of taking a risk where she knew the odds were in her favor. While he admired guts in anyone, male or female, he admired common sense even more. Now he had another woman to look out for, at least as long as she was in his range of vision.

He scanned the park again while the woman stopped on the path and looked down at her feet. One of her shoestrings had come untied. As she stepped off the path and walked over to a large caterpillar, he raised the binoculars to get a better look. She must have been wearing six layers of shirts and jackets by the thickness of her shoulders. Either that or she had a stocky upper body. Bracing her foot against one the caterpillar’s stomach segments, she removed her gloves and went to work on the shoelace. Her movements were awkward, though, as if her fingers were too cold to function. She lost her balance and had to put her foot down before bringing it back up for a second try.

Something about her stance tapped a warning in his brain. He watched her a moment longer, but nothing out of the ordinary happened.

A vibration in his pocket disrupted his thoughts. Shifting his hip, he fished out his cell phone and glanced at the readout. Ace was texting him.

All clear. You?

He hated trying to type on a keyboard smaller than his palm. Setting the binoculars down, he glanced around at the quiet park, noting the jogger had finished tying her shoe and was now stretching. His fingers fought to find the right keys to text back.
Mouth shut. Eyes open.

A few seconds passed and then from Ace,
Balls froze
.

Michael showed the message to Flynn. Flynn smirked and typed back,
Ours too
.

Returning the cell phone to his pocket, he scanned the park. Emptiness and shadows stared back at him.

Jamming the binoculars to his eyes, he followed the path from one end to the other. The jogger had disappeared.

Brigit’s shoulder was on fire. The simple task of raising her arm enough to tie her shoe had set off fireworks in her muscles. She’d downed two over-the-counter pain relievers before leaving her loft, but they were no match for the jarring of her body disguised as a jogger or the cold weather seeping under her Under Armor.
This is why I’m a consultant. I suck at fieldwork.

While sitting in her car would have certainly been warmer, it also would have been a dead giveaway. The park sat back far enough from any of the connecting streets to be a bitch to surveil anyway. All the trees and the various pieces of high-rise playground equipment would have blocked her view.

Being on the ground, in the park, was her best bet. The inside of the caterpillar was cold but roomy. Along its abdomen, there were small holes to let in air and light during the day when kids squirmed through it. Tonight, she could use those holes to watch the perimeter of the park while remaining camouflaged.

Getting Ella back was her top priority and she’d picked the most obvious park for Peter to deliver her to. Not so close to the child’s home he might be spotted and yet not so far away she would be spotted almost immediately. He wouldn’t bring her until just before dawn, knowing she’d freeze overnight and not be found until morning anyway. No, he’d use the last remains of the night to do his covert drop with sunlight minutes away so the child would be found quickly.

That didn’t mean Peter wouldn’t be scoping the area long before then though. Precaution was second nature to him. Since the hit on O’Bern had failed, Peter would be extra cautious, which meant she had to be in place long before he showed up. She just hoped he wouldn’t be so cautious he’d deviate from his normal pattern before disappearing and throw Ella to the wolves in his hurry.

Settling into her perfect hideout, Brigit adjusted her weight to ease the tension on her shoulder. It was going to be another long night.

Dawn came and Michael thought he’d crawl out of his skin if he didn’t get moving. Not from the cold, but from the despair seeping into his bones. After the last jogger had disappeared, nothing had moved in the park all night except for a threesome of raccoons.

Ace had reported a similar night, and since Michael hadn’t heard from the Feds, he knew they’d been screwed too.

Still, he stayed inside the castle’s walls with Flynn, willing Peter Donovan to show up with Ella, even as the bright light of morning pushed through the trees and forced the shadows to disappear.

While he knew it was nearly impossible to predict what any criminal would do, he was pissed Brigit had been so wrong about Donovan. Whatever else she was, whoever she worked for, she was supposed to be the expert on this guy. So much for being an expert. She hadn’t called one thing right yet.

Maybe Donovan wasn’t involved at all. Julia had called to tell Flynn the ERT team had turned up nothing linking Donovan to the shooting. The rifle revealed no fingerprints. The room, not a scrap of trace evidence. All the same, the FBI had issued a be-on-the-look-out for Donovan. Nothing had materialized from the BOLO. Only Michael’s refusal had kept Donovan’s photo and statement saying he was wanted on suspicion from being issued to the press. Michael wanted to give him at least twenty-four hours to return Ella, and he was taking a beating for it from Jeffries on down.

Flynn was still waiting to hear from Smitty about Truman Gunn, but one way or another, they would figure out who and what Brigit Kent was and deal with her. While painfully aware of how badly he wanted to see her again, he had to shove his emotions aside. She’d made him look like a fool, and now her advice was keeping the state police and Feds from issuing an all-out manhunt for Donovan. Time was of the essence, and if Michael didn’t know better, he’d think Brigit was in on the kidnapping.

Actually, he didn’t know better. Maybe even the sniper taking a shot at her was all part of some bigger picture he couldn’t see. He hated to believe it of her, but the facts were staring him in the face.

Using a kid as leverage was the lowest of the low. Yet, he couldn’t take a chance. He had to grasp at any straw available.

The path through the park began to see some business again. More women, some walking, some jogging, cruised by. A single male, black from what Michael could tell from the small amount of the man’s face showing between a knit cap and a scarf wrapped around his neck, sprinted through.

He’d just decided to wait another twenty minutes when he caught sight of a figure slipping out of the caterpillar.
Well, I’ll be goddamned
. The shoe-tying jogger hadn’t left the park, she’d been inside the insect all night.

Her head and face were covered by a knit face mask, but as she stretched her right arm before tentatively rubbing her left shoulder, a light bulb went off in his brain. The bulk under her outer coat was only under the left side.

Taking several stiff steps, she held her left arm with her right hand until she fell into step behind a woman pushing a stroller with big tires. As he watched her follow the path out of the park, he stretched his own stiff limbs and motioned to Flynn that he was going to tail her. Then he took the castle’s fire pole down to the ground and did just that.

A block past the park’s main gate, she folded herself into a green Ford.

Flynn, who had been hanging back, whistled at him. They ran through an alley and hopped into Flynn’s Jeep parked in the lot of a convenience store. Making several right turns, he caught the Ford half a mile from the park.

They only followed her for another mile, hanging back in the early morning traffic, until Michael was sure she was on her way home. Then he told Flynn to take an alternative route.

She had parked and was crossing the street to her loft when they came around the corner. The knit mask was gone, and her face showed confusion as she stopped in the middle of the street and looked up. He followed her gaze and saw the cause of her surprise.

He’d been so intent on making her, he’d missed the smoke rolling out of a broken front window on the second floor. Flames shot out the window as well. Before Conrad could dial 9-1-1, Michael heard sirens.

It was still early enough there were few people out, but a small crowd was forming on the sidewalk. Brigit stood alone in the street, watching the smoke and flames with one hand on her forehead in disbelief as a car rushed by her and honked its horn.

Flynn pulled to the curb and Michael jumped out before the Jeep stopped rolling. Without warning, Brigit’s face went from dismay to terror as she continued to gaze up at the burning apartment.

She dropped her hand from her forehead, yelled “No!”, and took off running. A collective gasp and then shouts from the people on the sidewalk rose as they pointed up at the upstairs windows.

As she disappeared around the side of the building, Michael took off after her, taking a second to glance upward to try and see what had spurred her into action.

Framed in a window stood a small girl, her hands pressed against the pane of glass, her face dissolved in tears. His heart jumped as her lips drew back in a cry.
Uncle Michael
.
Help me
.