Collateral Damage (31 page)

He reached the threshold to the hall. He could barely see the Sandman rocking with his MP5. Flames were licking up the walls and smoke was too thick to breathe. Jack moved toward Neil then the building shook, throwing Jack off balance as concrete and glass imploded and slammed the Sandman into the wall. The blast wave hit Jack and knocked him to the ground. He struggled to his knees, going for Neil, who lay unmoving on the floor when another explosion, this one from below, blew everything apart. The surrounding walls, wood and concrete became a wild sea of death that buried Jack alive in wave after wave of debris.

Jack woke, his body covered in sweat, his heart pounding hard, his chest frozen with pain. The urgency to save Neil still gripped his every muscle. He had to fight against the panic rising in his throat, fight to hold on to Lauren and realize the nightmare wasn’t happening at that moment even as his mind chased after the details.

Is that how things went down?

Chapter Thirty

0630 hours

Matt? Mitch? Lauren awoke with a start from her dream. She’d been standing in a thick mist, calling to her sons, who were just out of sight. She could hear their laughter, their excited voices as they raced their cars, but somehow couldn’t reach them, nor could they hear her. She shoved the unsettling feeling aside. She’d call them shortly, sure they’d soon be up, jumping on Angie’s bed, demanding to get to Disney World.

The grayish light of a waffling dawn suffused the room and Jack was already gone. But the spot in the bed next to her was still warm and the mark of his lovemaking still lingered on her lips and inside her core.

She rose as her mind turned to last night’s discoveries. The sooner they exposed Bill’s crimes and found the roots of his terroristic activities, the sooner she’d get her sons and her mangled wreck of a life back. She’d have to rebuild. Go somewhere. Start new.

After taking care of essentials and putting herself as together as she was going to get, she found Jack in the kitchen, gripping a cup of coffee. His face grim. His computer sat on the table before him and he wasn’t alone. The man who stood to greet her had her jaw popping open.

It wasn’t because his handsomeness stunned her. It wasn’t that he was cut from the same ruggedly dynamic cloth as Jack was, only taller. It was because were the man to salt his temples, she would have sworn that President Paul Anderson was standing in front of her.

Before he or Jack could speak, she stuck out her hand. “You must be Commander Weston.”

“Roger to you. And you’re Lauren Collins.”

“Just Lauren, for now. The things I’m learning make me want to change my last name.” She glanced toward the computer. “Have you logged back into the email account?”

Jack nodded. After arriving at Weston’s house last night, they’d glanced at the account the attacker had interrupted them from doing. Unfortunately neither she nor Jack had been able to discern anything immediately from the incoming entries and there had been no outgoing mail in the account, so they’d put the puzzle aside until morning.

“We didn’t look at the drafted but unsent emails last night. There are a number of them.”

“What do they say?”

Jack looked toward Weston. “Commander?”

“Go ahead. I’ve got a call into my cousin about the information and the future attacks planned, but we’ve no orders yet about what do to. We’ve got about twenty more minutes before we have to be on post at 0630.” His cell phone vibrated. “Well, speak of the devil.” Weston left the room.

Jack met her gaze and the grave seriousness in his eyes gut punched her. She grabbed the back of a dinette chair. “What is it?”

“The email drafts are a diary of sort. An account of activities planned and executed with cold precision.” He turned the computer her way and clicked on the message. It began:
The first move is the assassination of Imam
Hassan Omar Aziz in Iran…

Her mouth went numb, her body shook, and her brain fogged with pain and disbelief. “You mean Bill was an assassin? He went around killing people?”

Jack flinched, his gaze turning darker, his mouth grimmer. “Of sorts. If you read further, you’ll find he didn’t actually do the dirty work. He was more of an intermediary. He hired the necessary people, made sure the job was done, then paid the men—one way or the other.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that risks to the operations received bullets rather than the promised cash. Both of the men who framed the US and Israeli Military for Aziz’s assassination were executed. No evidence of who really committed the crime was left behind, except for your husband’s account of the event.”

Lauren shook her head, sat down, and buried her face in her hands. “I, oh God, I know this is real, but I just can’t believe all of this. A murderer. A killer. What else? What else is there lurking in the shadows that he lied to me about?”

Jack flinched again, as if she’d attacked him personally, but answered her, his voice stark. “The attacks on the oil refineries and reserves worldwide. The kidnapping of Ambassador James’s and Prime Minister Shalev’s daughters.”

Lauren snapped her head up. “In Lebanon? That’s where you were hurt. That’s where you saw Bill.”

“Yes. My Delta team went in to rescue the women.” A muscle in his jaw ticked. His expression was haggard. He was clearly struggling with something. Then he met her gaze head on. “Bill was there and…I killed him. Shot him to death with a spray of bullets from my machine gun. He died at my feet.”

Lauren reared back at the harsh ugly reality of the situation and Jack’s hard voice. She’d understood Jack had a job to do. Bill had been involved in something bad. But…Jesus…couldn’t Jack have told her this before now? Her entire world spun in turmoil, one of horror and pain over the reality of what Bill had done and just how he had died.

Jack had come to her asking about Bill. He hadn’t necessarily deceived her, but… “You killed Bill. You didn’t tell me.”

“Guilty. There’s no excuse for what I let happen between us. I did try and tell you. I am no better of a man than Bill was. I’m sorry. I suck at relationships anyway.” He stood. “We’ve got to go to the post. The CIA and NCS will be there shortly. They are going to have more questions than you can answer and they are going to turn you and your sons’ lives inside out. They will leave nothing unexposed until they’ve reached the bottom of the cesspool Bill was in. I’m going to do what I can, but it’s going be rough.”

Pain slashed through Lauren even as her mind spun from the revelations about Bill. Jack’s knife went deeper than Bill’s betrayals. That was it? That was all Jack was going to say about them together. That he sucked at relationships anyway? Lauren met Jack’s gaze disappointed for the first time since he knocked on her door. “You’re boiling everything we shared down to, ‘I’m sorry and I suck anyway’?” Anger bubbled inside of her. She wanted to yell, but clenched her teeth instead. “What was it, Jack? Pity fucks for a deceived widow?”

He looked as if she’d punched him, which only made her feel worse. “Yeah. It was what it was.” He collected the computer and left the room, his back and manner as hard and cold as steel.

Lauren fisted her hand against her aching heart and fought the burn in her eyes and her gut. She didn’t need Jack. She didn’t need anything but her sons back in her arms to protect them and someplace to disappear. She had a life to rebuild for them and come hell or high water nothing and no one was going to stop her from doing that. It occurred to her as she left the kitchen that she hadn’t asked who Bill had worked for. If her husband had been the intermediary then someone had to be calling the shots and that someone just might be the SOB after her.

Jack and Weston were waiting at the door. Lauren grabbed her purse and waited until they were in the car to ask some of the questions starting to perk in her shocked brain. Weston and Jack were in the front, she sat in the back.

“Who exactly did Bill work for?” she asked. “Is BioLogics behind all of this?”

“BioLogics was nothing but a cardboard front for a bigger entity,” Jack said.

“What entity?”

“We’re still trying to piece that together,” Roger Weston said. “In the diary of information, Bill called the man he worked for as The Man with the Yellow Hat.”

Lauren frowned. “You’re kidding. As in Curious George?”

“Yes.” Jack shifted quickly her way. “Do you have any Curious George books in your house?”

“Yeah. One or two I think. The boys are into Thomas the Tank Engine, so we rarely read Curious George.” Eyes wide, her voice rose as her vision literally turned red. “You think Bill put evidence in his sons’ books that people would kill for?” Rage curled deep into her gut.

Jack and Roger shared a look.

“You need to tell her,” Jack said.

“What?”

Weston continued, “Considering the scope and ramifications of the terrorists acts detailed by your husband—”

“No,” Lauren interjected. “Just call him Bill. Makes my stomach turn just a little less acid.”

“The President is ordering a joint agency task force to investigate this.”

Jack spoke up. “Which means they could be raiding your house now, looking for evidence, looking for clues. Looking for the identity of his employer.”

Before they reached Bragg, Roger Weston received a call asking for him to bring her and Jack to a different place.

“I don’t like this,” Jack said as they drove up to the private residence just outside Fayetteville. Two men dressed in black and carrying guns guarded the gated entrance.

“Where are we?” The queasiness in Lauren’s stomach intensified.

“A National Clandestine Service hideaway.”

“Like that helps.” Lauren looked at Jack, incredulous. “I’m going into the lion’s den. One out for blood.”

“I’m right here with you.” Jack looked back and met her gaze as they drove through the tall gate and up the wooded drive. Emotionally he was as distant as when he marched out of the kitchen, but he was holding to his promise to protect her. “Just tell them the truth about everything and you’ll be okay.”

“You obviously don’t read the news,” she said.

“I do. Maybe I should have said I’ll make it okay.”

“Don’t promise.” Weston’s voice was thick with something dark and painful. “Sometimes making things okay isn’t possible. All you can do is the best you can.”

The trees broke to reveal a plantation-style Southern mansion with armed guards out front. Queasy turned into a sour knot of nausea as Lauren exited the car and a hard-nosed, bald man with the personality of a hundred-pound bowling ball barreled out of the house and began shouting orders.

Her goal was to get to the truth as quickly as possible so she declined their offer of an attorney, but soon regretted that she didn’t take them up on the delay. She had no idea how hard it would be. Her rage at Bill grew and became a solid ball of something close to hate as she underwent grueling hour after hour of questioning. The NCS bowling ball with the official title of SOO and insisted on being called “director” was relentless, repeating questions, discounting her answers, and prying into every second of every minute of her life from the moment she met Bill until today. Her and Jack’s investigation into Bill’s activities had been taken over by heavy-handed men with little care for or interest in her as a person. She was a means to an end to them.

She had to give Jack credit. He didn’t leave her side and he put his face into the NCS man’s face every time the man stepped out of line. Jack had almost come to blows with the man several times. Once had been at the onset, when they’d been determined to interrogate her alone, and Jack informed that wasn’t going to happen. She’d either be with him or she’d postpone until she found an attorney.

Six hours? Seven? Eight? She’d lost count. They supplied caffeine and food and water, but her throat was still raw from the strain and her mind punch drunk.

Finally they slid a piece of paper in front of her and Jack and asked her if she knew what it meant. Her eyes were blurry by this point and she had to blink it into focus. Then she read the words on the page and dread gripped her by the throat.

…the real prize will be won when green world burns and Earnhardt, Jrs win the race with the super formula in their tanks.

“OH MY GOD.” Lauren grabbed Jack’s arm, reeling, her heart slamming wildly in her chest. Even her vision blurred. “The boys’ birthday presents! Bill sent them Dale Earnhardt, Jr. race cars. Surely he didn’t put something inside them. Please. God. No.”

Jack pulled her into his arms, but she could barely feel him against her.

“We’re done here,” Jack told the man. “The boys are in Disney World with a Delta teammate and their godmother. The cars are with them.”

Lauren practically bit through her lip; her fear for her sons was all consuming. Jack pulled out his phone.

“Shit, I have a missed call from Rico. Do you all have a cell jammer set up?” He hit voice mail. The men only shrugged.

“
I have Collins’s sons. I’ll call back. Maybe.
”

The bottom fell out of Lauren’s entire world, pain and terror ripped her apart.

Chapter Thirty-One

1600 hours

Jack grasped Lauren’s shoulders as she reeled. His gut clenched, sickened with dread. If someone had Lauren’s sons, odds were Rico was dead.

“Matt. Mitch.” Every breaking crack in her heart wrenched painfully in her whispered cry. She grabbed the front of his shirt, looking into his eyes. God she’d been through so much, how could she take more?

The depth of terror in her gaze matched that in his heart.

“Who, Jack? Who has my sons?”

“I don’t know.” Having to say those words killed him. He’d failed to keep them safe.

Lauren pushed back from him and faced the hard-nosed NCS SOO who asked everyone to call him Director as if he were the only official in existence. The ass probably didn’t want people knowing his name.

Lauren’s devastation erupted into rage. “While I’ve been telling you every damn detail of crap that doesn’t matter, my children were kidnapped!”

She balled her fist and slammed it down on the paper. “Where did this come from? Why didn’t you show it to me earlier?”