Without Warning (29 page)

“Fortunately, I wasn’t in Afghanistan with you, but I was there yesterday,” she said. “And I don’t care who fired the shot, you are a hero. Without you, this would be a different world today. Which reminds me, how did you figure out it was Dempsey?”

“I didn’t.”

“You didn’t?”

“Not really. A few things struck me, the main one being money. This entire operation cost a lot of money to pull off. I mean, they bought that cabin, just so they could put it in my name, and keep you there. I knew Dempsey’s family had won a lot of money in the lawsuit against the government. And then there was his wife, who hopefully by now is under arrest.”

“He has a wife who was in on it?”

I nodded. “A woman who said her name was Gail Hendricks contacted me, said she was Drazen’s fiancée, and that she had seen him. She was the one who gave me the information that led me to the cabin. They were using Drazen’s name to draw me in. She is Dempsey’s wife.”

“When did you realize for sure Jimmy Osborne was Dempsey?”

“When I matched his picture. But the point is that it didn’t matter whether it was him or not.”

“Why didn’t it matter?” she asked.

“Because someone was bringing me to the cabin, and that’s where I wanted to go. That’s where you were. It didn’t matter who was waiting for me; I’d deal with whoever I found.”

She smiled. “And you don’t think you’re a hero?”

I looked at my watch, hoping to change the subject. “Boy the time flies. It’s almost time for more sexual frolicking.”

“We’ve got all the time in the world for that,” she said. “How did you figure out that Matt was involved?”

“Again, I wasn’t sure that he was. I knew Dempsey had a son that was around the right age for Matt. Plus Matt was around the station a lot; he could possibly have taken the gun from the evidence room. But the thing that convinced me was the story Matt ran about you calling me and leaving that phone message. The only person I told that to was Bennett, and he swore they didn’t leak it. Therefore, the only people that could have known about it were the ones who forced you to call.”

“Why did they go to all this trouble? Why didn’t they just try to kill you?”

“Because this served a triple purpose. Not only would it have left me dead, but it would have destroyed everything I supposedly stood for. I would have gone from hero to the greatest villain ever. And in the process, it would have made Matt a superstar journalist. At least that’s what I think; maybe we’ll learn more if they get Matt to talk.”

We stopped our own talking for a while, turned off the TV, and did other stuff. Other, really good stuff. When that was over, we went back to the talking, which was my least favorite part.

“You said that it cost a lot of money,” Katie said, and then her voice got a little softer. “Did they pay to have Roger killed in prison?”

“I believe so. You had said Roger was going over HR employee files and backgrounds. I think he may have stumbled on to something about either Jimmy or Matt, but probably didn’t realize how important it was. Maybe he never would have, but it was a loose end they didn’t want hanging out there.”

I immediately regretted referring to her murdered husband as a “loose end,” but she didn’t seem to take offense. Instead, she simply said, “And would all this have happened if we didn’t open the capsule early?”

“The capsule was always going to be opened early,” I said. I wouldn’t be surprised if they blew up the dam to flood the area. But either way, they would have come up with a reason to open it.”

She nodded and snuggled closer to me. “Now what, Jake?”

“Well, my preference would be we stay in bed for another sixteen, eighteen months, and then figure out if we want to face the world.”

She thought about it for a few seconds, and then snuggled even closer. “Works for me,” she said.

ALSO BY DAVID ROSENFELT

ANDY CARPENTER NOVELS

Unleashed

Leader of the Pack

One Dog Night

Dog Tags

New Tricks

Play Dead

Dead Center

Sudden Death

Bury the Lead

First Degree

Open and Shut

THRILLERS

Airtight

Heart of a Killer

On Borrowed Time

Down to the Wire

Don’t Tell a Soul

NONFICTION

Dogtripping: 25 Rescues, 11 Volunteers, and 3 RVs on Our Canine Cross-Country Adventure

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Rosenfelt is the Edgar and Shamus Award–nominated author of five previous stand-alones and eleven Andy Carpenter novels, most recently
Unleashed
. After years of living in California, he and his wife have moved to Maine with twenty-five golden retrievers that they’ve rescued. Rosenfelt’s hilarious account of this cross-country move,
Dogtripping,
is published by St. Martin’s Press.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

WITHOUT WARNING.
Copyright © 2014 by Tara Productions, Inc. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

Cover design by Olga Grlic

Cover photographs: night landscape © Don Spiro/Getty Images; woman © plainpicture/Harald Braun

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0-312-02479-4 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-250-02478-7 (e-book)

e-ISBN 9781250024787

First Edition: March 2014