A Kiss to Kill (26 page)

TWENTY-SIX

GOD
DAMN
it!

Sarah came awake on the hotel room floor with a splitting head and furious as hell. She peeled her eyes open and scanned the room. Jonesy was still out. Their suspect was long gone.

God
damn
it!

Her own fault. What a complete freaking idiot! She should have anticipated that van Halen would not come easily. He’d already murdered at least one person, probably three. He’d have nothing to lose by killing two more, even cops. The miracle was that he’d left them alive.

Gritting her teeth against the wash of pain that flashed through her skull, she crawled over to Jonesy. On her way, her hand landed on a piece of paper. She paused a moment, letting the rockets’ red glare in her head settle down, then with difficulty focused on the paper. She read over it twice, just to be sure she wasn’t hallucinating.

Her anger ratcheted up. Wow. Un-freaking-believable.

But there was a God.

Dragging the paper by one corner, she continued over to Jonesy. She peered at his battered face, wincing. Ouch. That would get ugly before it got better.

“Detective,” she said to rouse him, sitting on her heels a healthy distance from his fists. She didn’t want to get clocked by friendly fire. “Wakey, wakey.”

He moaned and his eyes gradually fluttered open. “Fuckin’ A. What the—” His hand went to his bloody nose. “Hell.”

“Yeah,” she responded, touching the lump rising on the left side of her head. “I’m really gonna love explaining to Lieutenant Harding how we let a murderer escape.”

Jonesy closed his eyes again on a groan. “There goes my fuckin’ gold watch.”

“Or maybe not.” She tipped her head. “Can you walk?”

“Maybe.” He slitted his eyes and gazed up at her. “Depends on where we’re goin’.”

She held up the paper and smiled. It was not a nice smile.

“Same place he is.”

ALL
hell was breaking loose.

Gina was missing. Wade had vanished. Gregg was a fugitive and AWOL. The Trigger was closing in on a presidential assassination, and the rest of the team was scrambling with the Secret Service to put a plan into motion that was really no plan at all.

Now this.

Rebel pulled her FBI cap over her hair and stepped gingerly around the bloody, lifeless body of Erika Altos. It was lying on the hardwood floor of the victim’s McLean foyer. The congressman’s wife had been stabbed in the back.

The team had been so preoccupied with everything hitting the fan at once, that when Tara reported Mrs. Altos had a visitor and pixed Darcy a photo of the man, it had taken several minutes for her to run the ID. By the time it came back as Bruce Hearn, and Tara had crashed through the front door with weapon drawn, it had been too late. Erika was dead, and Hearn was nowhere to be found.

Rebel had been tasked with helping Tara secure the house until DHS arrived. Alex had dropped her off in McLean and was now on his way to Hearn’s apartment to check for evidence of flight, then meet the rest of the team at the Capitol building.

She already missed him.

Funny how a single kiss could turn one’s entire world upside down, and make things so crystal clear . . .

She smiled inwardly. Not that there had ever been any doubt. She loved him just as he was. Nothing would change that. Nothing.

“So
Hearn
killed Erika Altos,” Kick said, jerking her rudely back to the present. They’d all switched on for a quick strategy meeting.

No time for mushy daydreams.

“When Gregg asked him earlier about the fishbowl,” Quinn said, “Hearn must have known the game was up. He came straight here to McLean to eliminate the most dangerous witness against him before he disappeared for good.”

“You realize what that means,” Darcy said.

“It means we were wrong about the congressman,” Marc said angrily. “We figured it was him or the wife. But Hearn had even better access to classified intel than she did. Dead easy for his chief of staff to set him up to look guilty.
Merde
. We should have seen that one coming.”

“We did,” Alex said. A car horn beeped over his comm. “Well, Gregg did. And the wife was obviously involved, or she wouldn’t be dead.”

“All three could be in it together,” Tara suggested, joining Rebel in the foyer. She’d been examining the kitchen for missing knives. She shook her head. “As equal partners. Illegal conflict diamonds are easy money, tax-free—as long as you don’t have a conscience. There was a million bucks’ worth on that yacht. Not to mention the fishbowls. At least another mil there. Plenty to go around for three partners.”

Rebel gazed at the blood still seeping from the gaping wound in Erika Altos’s back. Hearn had been in a hurry. Hadn’t wanted to take the time to smother her with a pillow like he’d done Asha Mahmood. Or maybe a knife was just more personal. Had they been sexually involved? Probably.

“I don’t think so,” Rebel said. “Hearn’s your real traitor. This is him cleaning up loose ends. The wife was most likely an accomplice, but I’d be willing to bet the congressman doesn’t have a clue about any of this.”

“I agree,” Marc said. “Hearn must have arranged the attack on Gina in New York, but when it failed, he killed Asha and Ouda Mahmood to cover his tracks. For both the botched hit and the al Sayika campaign contributions he’d been funneling through them to implicate the congressman. There’ll no doubt be evidence proving that Asha Mahmood was Altos’s mistress and Raul Chavez was hired to set up their illicit meetings. But my money is on the wife being Hearn’s bedmate.”

“Which would explain how he planted the diamonds in the fishbowl at the Altos home,” Rebel said.

“All of which set up Congressman Altos to take the fall for today’s assassination, and for being al Sayika’s inside man on the Hill,” Quinn agreed. “Hearn’s one clever bastard.”

“But one thing doesn’t add up,” Darcy said thoughtfully. “Why take Gina with him today? Why not just kill her like he did all the others?”

“We don’t know that he
hasn’t
killed her,” Kick reminded them tersely. “Just taken her somewhere more secluded to do it.”

There were several beats of tense silence.

“She could still be alive,” Tara said hopefully.

“Are we thinking that Hearn is the Trigger?” Alex asked. Another car horn blared over his comm. He must be driving like a lunatic.

“He doesn’t strike me as a professional assassin,” Kick said.

“He’s not,” Darcy said. “I’m looking at Hearn’s online credit card statements right now. He has several charges every day for the past two weeks in D.C., so he wasn’t ever in Norfolk, or on the
Allah’s Paradise
. If Rebel saw the Trigger jumping off that yacht, the Trigger’s not Hearn.”

“So we may be looking at a nuclear trigger, after all,” Quinn said with a curse. “Not an assassin.”

“The bomb dogs are already there at the Capitol. If there’s a bomb, they’ll find it,” Darcy said.

“Don’t forget Gibran Allawi Bakreen’s murder at the hospital,” Rebel reminded them. “That murder is definitely part of this. And Hearn was in a meeting at the time of death. Bakreen’s killer must be someone else, which means the Trigger has to be a person.”

“I agree,” Alex said.

“Gregg’s fingerprint was found at the scene,” Tara reluctantly pointed out. “And he’s disappeared now.”

“That print was planted,” Marc said. “It’s easy to do. It fits with the continuing frame job on van Halen, not
Allah’s Paradise
, or the e-mail.
Non
, Van Halen’s not the Trigger.”

“But it is someone with access to his prints.”

“Which could be just about anyone. He may have obtained them as far back as Gregg’s assignment to distract Gina, when the decision was first made to frame him.”

“Okay. So at the very least, we’re dealing with two people,” Tara said, summing up. “For sure the traitor is Hearn, who is killing witnesses to cover his tracks so he can disappear, and the Trigger, who presumably has been paid to assassinate the President.”

“But the question stands,” Darcy said. “Why would either one of them take Gina hostage?”

“Because van Halen was right,” Kick said. “She must be able to identify the Trigger.”

“Which means if she isn’t already dead, she will be soon,” Kick said grimly. “Unless van Halen finds her.”

“I think the assassin is using her as bait,” Quinn said. “To lure van Halen out in the open. They’ve framed him as tight as they’ve sewn up Altos. They need him there at the press conference to take the fall for the assassination, and it’s pretty obvious how he feels about Gina.”

“Shit,” Alex said. “One more unknown variable to throw a monkey wrench in the plan. Oh, wait. There
is
no plan,” he said sardonically.

Basically their plan was to show up armored in Kevlar and let Hearn continue with
his
plan, and hopefully expose the Trigger for them. Preferably before any shooting started. STORM’s ace in the hole was that by now every Secret Service agent on the Capitol Building detail had memorized the whole team’s photos, including Gregg’s and Gina’s, so no one was going to think
they
were bad guys and shoot
them
. Which was no doubt what Hearn and the Trigger were going for, at the very least for Gregg and Gina.

“Thank goodness Secret Service has convinced POTUS to stay away from that press conference,” Rebel said gratefully.

“We just have to keep our eyes peeled when they announce he won’t be speaking,” Quinn said.

Kick cursed softly. “And pray like hell this crazy non-plan works.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

“PLEASE
don’t do this.”

Gina had never been so terrified in her life. Not when she’d been captured and beaten by terrorists, not when she’d stared down the barrel of her attacker’s gun in New York. Not when Alex had tackled her on the way back from the ice machine. This was a different kind of fear. Not for herself, but for the man she loved.

“There’s just one more thing I have to do,” Bruce Hearn told her with a fatherly smile as he drove toward Capitol Hill. “Then you can go.”

Hearn’s expression was completely normal. Like they were just going out for a leisurely stroll on the Mall.

Except he’d put her in handcuffs. And Wade was locked in the trunk.

Oh my God
. Hearn was lying through his teeth. He had no intention of letting either of them go.

She wondered how Wade was doing back there. Rohypnol was not usually fatal by itself, but who knew how big a dose Hearn had given him. He must be unconscious by now. They’d been driving a circuit from K Street down to Constitution and back for half an hour now.

She wanted so badly to give in to the trembling. Sink down into the front seat of the car and weep. But she had ruthlessly stopped her body’s instinctive panicked reaction this long, and she wasn’t about to surrender to it now. She
had
to be strong. Figure this out. For Wade. For Gregg. For herself and the future she wanted.

Think!

“What do you have to do?” she asked Hearn, battling to keep the tremor from mincing her voice to bits.

“I have to save the President. They’re going to kill him, you know.”

She whipped her head around, unsure if she’d heard him correctly. He kept mumbling.

Alarm slammed through her. “The
President
?” She regarded him with growing horror. So the team was right. Good lord, did they know? She had to stall him. Figure out a way to tell them. “Someone’s going to kill the President? Who?”

“You know who.” He gave her a look of pity. “Your lover, van Halen. Did no one tell you he’s a traitor to his country?”

She scuttled backward, stunned.
Ohgodohgod
. “No! He’s not!”

Hearn laughed. “You don’t have to worry about that ruthless bastard anymore. I’ve informed the FBI of his plot. They’re ready for him. Snipers on every roof. SWAT waiting to shoot him down at the first sign. Trust me. The President will be fine.”

Oh, sweet
Je
sus. Oh, holy Mother of God.

The cops were going to kill Gregg on sight, and ask questions later.

Please
say this wasn’t happening . . .

But it was.

She had to warn him!

Hearn pulled into a parking spot off Capitol Circle reserved for staffers and slid his pass onto the dashboard. He pointed up to the Capitol steps, where a cluster of microphones awaited, along with a growing crowd of reporters and tourists drawn by the hubbub. The place was crawling with Secret Service.

“Here?” she asked in surprise. It was rare that the President gave such a public press brief and photo op. So rare, in fact, she asked, “How do you know the President will be here?”

He sent her an indulgent look as he got out of the car. “I have access to every secret this country has, sweetheart. I know everything about everyone.”

A shiver traveled down her spine and up again. Getting away with his crimes for so long had obviously distorted his self-importance. The man was insane.

He came around to her door and opened it. Before he let her out, he said, “Gina, don’t forget your boyfriend in the trunk. If you shout a warning, if you try to attract any attention, if you so much as open your mouth and say a single word to anyone about . . . well, anything . . . I’m serious”—he looked almost apologetic—“I
will
kill you. Then I’ll suffocate your friend in the trunk and throw him in the Potomac on my way out of town.”

Somehow she already knew that.

“I won’t,” she promised. Right.
In a parallel universe
.

He extended his hand and helped her out of the car like a gentleman, and checked that her handcuffs were still secure behind her back. Then he took off his suit jacket and draped it over her shoulders to hide the cuffs. It left him in shirtsleeves and tie, but it was a bright, sunny April day and in the sea of casual tourists and workers from the surrounding government buildings, he wouldn’t even make a blip on the radar of any law enforcement official who looked at them.

Like, for instance, the female cop hurrying past right now. He actually waved at her. Whistling, he clipped his Capitol staffer ID to his breast pocket.

“What are you planning?” Gina asked nervously as the slimy bastard put his arm carelessly around her shoulder. He steered her toward the crowd on the Capitol steps.

“Me? Nothing at all.” When they reached the broad expanse of terraced marble, he breathed in a lungful of fresh air and gazed around like a delighted tourist taking in the sights of his capital city. He turned and gave her a smile. “I’m just here to watch Gregg van Halen die.”