COLE (Dragon Security Book 1) (13 page)

Cole

I took Amber’s face gently between my hands and forced her to look up at me.

“Your sister thinks I’m some sort of whore.”

“She does not.”

“Sure she does. First I get pregnant by your older brother. Now I’m clearly involved with you. And what that guy was saying—”

“Megan doesn’t think that, babe. I promise.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know Megan. I know all she’s thinking about right now is how to solve this puzzle. She’s always been like that, the logical one, always working one strategy or another out in her head. You don’t even come into the picture—except for the part where you saw Peter as he was following the trail of this mystery.”

“I wish I…”

She stopped and began to chew on her bottom lip in that way she did when she was trying to figure something out. Then she looked up at me, her eyes wider.

“Peter said something to me once. It was a month or two after he started coming into the diner. He said that some puzzles are misleading. He said that with some puzzles, you think you have it figured out, but then you pull the string and it leads to another puzzle and another after that until you realize you’re in much deeper than you ever thought you’d be. He said that sometimes the first puzzle is just a mask to hide the real one.”

I glanced at the car, at Megan sitting in the back seat, thinking about what she said about the CIA investigating Kurt Sanchez.

“Do you think this software thing is just the first thread in a bigger conspiracy?”

Megan shrugged without opening her eyes. “Possible.”

“Do you think Peter suspected that, and that’s why someone killed him?”

She peeked at me. “What do you mean?”

“Peter said something to Amber about a puzzle being a mask for another puzzle. Do you think he knew?”

She sat up a little. “I think he suspected.”

“If Kurt’s a terrorist—”

“And he put Peter on the software to distract from something else…” She shook her head. “I don’t know, Cole. But I think this thing goes so much deeper than we will ever know.”

I was pretty sure she was right. What had Peter gotten involved in? What had he dragged Amber into?

I turned to Amber. She came into my arms most willingly, melting the length of her body against mine. I kissed her, the taste of her lips like honey on the sweetest croissant.

“We’re going to be okay.”

She studied my face. “I want to believe everything you tell me.”

“Then believe me. You are going to be okay.”

We kissed one more time, then I helped her into the car. She was anxious to see PJ; she even called my parents on my cell as we found the interstate and headed back to Houston. We were just outside Huntsville, about to pass into Ada, when a white panel van that had been sitting on the side of the road suddenly veered up behind us and began following too closely behind.

“We have company.”

Megan twisted in her seat. “Looks like the CIA van Dominic infiltrated yesterday.”

“Why are they following us?”

“Maybe we should find out.”

“You want me to pull over.”

“Not yet. Let me call Hayden and Dominic and see where they’re at.”

I heard the code word—my code word for this case—and listened to the low rumble of her voice as she spoke to someone—probably Sam—on the other end. She handled her business as if it was a constant special ops mission. That was something I could appreciate. I’d do well as an employee of a business like hers. But I was beginning to wonder if working for my sister was really the brilliant idea I’d thought it was. Megan and I…we got along most of the time. But there were times when we butted heads, and maybe that wasn’t the greatest thing for a business situation, especially where she was my boss.

“They’re going to meet us in Conroe. Just drive normally and wait until I tell you, then pull over.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

We drove in silence for quite a while. Amber laid her hand on my thigh, squeezing from time to time almost unconsciously. I glanced at her, wishing I hadn’t let Megan talk me into bringing her along. She’d been through enough already. She didn’t need this bullshit.

I spotted Hayden before Megan did. He was in a huge Hummer, pulled over to the side of the road with his flashers on, like he was having car trouble and was waiting for a tow. I thought I saw Dominic in the passenger seat, too. Dominic was…the man was insane. He was in the paper a year ago for dragging some guy through the streets of Katy because he’d been harassing the CEO of some technology company. The only reason he didn’t go to jail for it was because the guy confessed to attempting to rape the woman a month earlier. Dominic was hailed a hero for stopping him from doing it again. How could the prosecutors bring a case against a public hero?

“Pull over here,” Megan said, pointing out a little turn off at the side of the highway.

I pulled the car into the little semi-circle drive and parked in the center. As expected, the white panel van followed, moving up behind us as if we were friends caravanning down the highway together. I grabbed my gun—even though Amber gave me a look that suggested she’d prefer if I didn’t.

“Cautiously,” Megan warned, pulling her own weapon from a tiny holster attached to her ankle.

“This family is completely insane,” Amber whispered.

We got out of the car on the same side and turned to face the van. I wished that I could move in front of Megan, but she’d accuse me of sexism, and it would complicate an already complicated situation. Instead, I moved along side of her, checking down the length of the van for any movement. We could see the driver—he was watching us, sunglasses blocking any visible expression—but there didn’t appear to be anyone else in the front of the van.

I moved around to the driver’s side door, hiding my weapon behind my back, and snatched the door open.

“Out,” I demanded at the same moment Hayden and Dominic yanked open the side and back doors of the van. Sunlight highlighted the inside of the van, and I could now see that there were two more men in the back along with a ton of surveillance equipment.

“Hello, boys!” Dominic called quite loudly. “Fancy meeting up with you again.”

Someone uttered a few curses, but all three men got out of the van and lay on the sidewalk at Hayden’s orders. Or maybe it was simply the barrel of the automatic weapon he had pointed at their heads that inspired them.

“Are these the same guys?” Megan asked.

“One in the same,” Dominic confirmed.

She shook her head, studying them as she walked along the sidewalk in front of them.

“Were you following us?”

None of them even acknowledge her.

“Come on, boys,” Dominic called out. “Don’t make me look bad in front of the boss lady here.”

“Were you following us? Or were you checking out Mr. Fuller?”

Again there was silence. So Dominic moved up and shoved his automatic rifle into the back of the man lying in the center.

“Don’t ignore the lady.”

“You can’t do this. We’re federal agents,” the driver announced.

“You’re CIA,” Megan pointed out. “You can only investigate American citizens if they’re accused of plotting a terrorist attack with foreign allies or on foreign lands. As far as I know, I’m not doing either, so I want to know why you were following me.”

“You were seen speaking to a known terrorist,” the man on the end said.

Megan walked over to him, her curiosity peeked.

“Would that be Kurt Sanchez?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Or was it John Fuller?”

Silence.

“Come on, guys. Those are the only two men I’ve spoken to in the last two days besides these fellows here. So which is it?”

Nothing. We were seriously getting nowhere really fast. Dominic and Hayden were looking to Megan for guidance, but I didn’t work for her. I didn’t have to do what she said.

I leaned over each man and snatched their wallets from their back pockets. To the untrained eye, they appeared to be just normal guys out for a drive in a van that just happened to have more electronics in it than a tornado chase van. They had Texas driver’s licenses, credit cards, all probably under false names. Nothing to indicate they were federal agents. If a cop came along and wanted to know what the hell was going on, they probably had a very plausible story ready that would put the rest of us in jail.

But I did find something interesting behind a photograph in one guy’s wallet that I handed over to Megan.

“Where’d you get this?” she asked, kneeling in front of the guy in the center, holding the folded piece of paper in front of his face.

The guy’s eyes narrowed, but he refused to answer.

Megan straightened and gestured to Dominic. He lifted the guy to his feet and pulled him onto the grass toward a picnic table in the distance. He shoved him down onto a bench and pointed the assault rifle at his head so that he’d be clear about Dominic’s intentions.

We were fifty yards from a busy interstate. But this was Texas. No one seemed to notice.

“Start talking,” Dominic demanded.

The guy glanced back at his friends, but then focused on Megan.

“Look, I can’t tell you everything, but what I can say is that we have reason to believe that a terrorist cell in Afghanistan has connections in this area. They’ve been getting cell phones with altered software code sent to them. At first, we thought it was just a glitch in the software. But then we had a specialist check it out, and he realized that someone was using the actual software code to send messages to the terrorist. Locations. Names. Times.”

“Messages? How?”

The guy shook his head. “I’m not good with that sort of thing. But we’ve been tracing it back to several companies working in tandem out here in the Houston area.”

“Like Kurt Sanchez at TxTel? And this John Fuller up here at Fuller Technology?”

“Yes.”

“Then why were you following us?”

“We wanted to know why you were suddenly showing up everywhere we were.”

“Because of this.”

Megan waved the paper in front of him. It was some sort of computer code—a series of zeros and ones—written on a small piece of paper with Bradford Telecommunication’s logo at the top. And I was pretty sure the handwriting was Peter’s.

“What do you know about Peter Bradford?”

The man’s eyes fell to the top of the table for a long moment. Dominic was about to raise his gun, nudge him along, when he finally looked up.

“Peter was the one who cracked the code, who told us about the messages being sent to the terrorists.”

“What?”

The man tilted his head slightly. “I guess he was investigating someone in his company for selling software illegally. He stumbled on the pieces of code—I’m not sure how. He only talked to a former agent, and that man bent over double to protect him as much as possible. He’d only tell us what we needed to know.”

Luke. I could see it on Megan’s face. She knew it, too.

“What did you people do?” Megan suddenly demanded. “What’d you do to Peter?”

“Nothing. We were just trying to put it all together when he died.”

“Did you kill him?”

The man’s face drained of color. “Of course not! He was our strongest lead! We needed him to keep working on this, to tell us everything he knew. We couldn’t kill him! His death set us back months.”

“Then you didn’t protect him. And what about the agent he went to initially? Where is he?”

The man just shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t believe you.” Megan leaned close to him. “I think you know what happened to my brother. And I think you know where Luke is. I think you know so much more than you’re telling us.”

“Yes, well, it’s a matter of national security. I could go to jail for what I have told you.”

Megan stared at him, a look of such hatred on her face that it almost hurt me to see it. She suddenly turned to Dominic and grabbed his gun, shoving it up against the man’s forehead.

“Tell me where Luke is!”

“Megan!”

I grabbed her from behind and pulled her back as Dominic—gentler than I’d ever seen him—snatched the gun from her hands. She simply dissolved, falling apart in my arms. I picked her up like she weighed no more than a feather and carried her back to the car.

“He knows where Luke is,” she said.

“I know.”

“I need to know.”

I set her on her feet next to the car and brushed my hands over her cheeks. “If Luke wanted you to know, he would have been in contact already.”

“But—”

“Megan. You knew what it would be like when Luke joined the CIA. He warned you.”

“I know. But that’s why he left. He was done with the lies and the secrets and the distance. He wanted us to be together. He was ready to commit to our future.”