Season Of The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 1) (12 page)

In typical fashion, Alexander
trotted to the door, always eager to greet any guests. Jack first
took a careful look at the porch through the living room window,
his hand on his holstered Glock. There were three people on his
doorstep, getting soaked in the rain. All of them wore dark jackets
with “FBI” stenciled on them. Despite his worries about whatever
hot water he might be in, he was relieved. At least they were his
people. He relaxed, taking his hand off the Glock.

Moving to the door, he took a quick
look through the peephole, shooed Alexander out of the way, and
opened the door.

“Special Agent Dawson,” a
stern-looking woman in her early thirties said formally, “I’m
Special Agent Lynnette Sansone, with Special Agents Boardman and
Castro from Internal Affairs. May we come in?”

“Sure,” Dawson said, before ushering
them into the small foyer, “let’s get you out of this stinking
rain.”

The three agents came in, but they
declined Dawson’s offer to take their drenched jackets. Once in the
foyer, they simply stood there, Boardman and Castro looking around
the living room with keen professional interest, while Sansone’s
dark blue eyes never left Jack. The two male agents could have
moonlighted as professional wrestlers, and Jack wondered if
Internal Affairs only recruited the biggest and most intimidating
special agents they could find. Sansone would have been attractive,
if it weren’t for her reptilian focus on Jack and her ice-cold
formality.

Jack gestured toward the living room
furniture and said, “Care to sit down?” He figured that if the sofa
and chairs had survived Alexander, they probably wouldn’t be
bothered by a little water from his colleagues’ wet
jackets.

After an uncomfortable moment when
the three agents glanced at one another in indecision, Sansone
finally said, “Certainly. Thank you.” Once they settled onto the
sofa and chairs she went on, “Dawson, you know about the explosion
at the lab at Quantico tonight, correct?”

“Yes,” Jack told her grimly.
“Special Agent Richards, the SAC out in Nebraska investigating
Special Agent Crane’s death, called and told me just a short while
ago. And yes,” he went on, wanting to just get it off his chest and
out in the open, “I was down there without authorization. Dr. Jerri
Tanaka and I are...” He paused, taking a deep breath before going
on, “...were good friends, and I wanted to help her in the lab. I
wanted to do anything I could to help with Sheldon Crane’s
case.”

“I appreciate your openness,”
Sansone said, as Boardman flipped open a notepad and started taking
notes, “which will make our job a lot easier and hopefully will
minimize the potential unpleasantness for you.” She looked at him
intensely, and Jack felt distinctly uncomfortable, as if he were
being visually dissected. “While the forensics work has barely
begun, we know roughly where the bomb detonated. We think it was in
an electrical closet adjoining the two DNA lab areas.”

“Yeah,” Jack told her, “I know the
one you mean. It was clearly marked, maybe a dozen feet from the
door to Dr. Tanaka’s lab.”

Sansone nodded. “We also have an
eyewitness who saw Dr. Tanaka go into that closet roughly five
minutes before the blast,” she told him, her eyes still fixed on
him. “Do you have any idea why she would have gone in
there?”

“No,” Jack shook his head as he
tried to come to grips with what Sansone was telling him. “No, I
can’t think of any reason why she would go in there. Are you saying
that–”

“Did you know that she also had
several large sums of money transferred into offshore accounts by
three members of the Earth Defense Society?”

“
What?
”
Jack asked, feeling like Sansone had first kicked him in the groin,
followed by an uppercut to his jaw. “That’s not possible,” he told
them, shaking his head. “It’s just not possible.”

“There’s no question about it,”
Sansone told him. “A data recovery team pulled all of her records
and documents. It was a hidden, encrypted file that stood out from
the others because it was obviously not intended to be found. The
information it contained is very...explicit.”

He simply sat
there, staring at the three agents for a moment, overcome with
shock. He didn’t want to believe it, couldn’t believe it.
There’s no fucking way
,
he told himself. “No,” he told Sansone firmly, working hard to keep
the anger out of his voice. “I had no idea. But why would she keep
something like that at work, where anything is subject to search at
any time?”

“How often do you think that really
happens, Dawson?” Castro asked him testily. “It was probably a lot
safer there than in her home, where someone could just snag her
computer.”

“Dawson,” Boardman interjected,
“let’s go back to what you were saying about Special Agent Crane’s
death and your helping Dr. Tanaka at the lab. Right now, we have
good reason to believe that his death and what happened at the lab,
regardless of who committed the crime, are closely linked, and the
only common thread we have so far is you. We need to know your
account of what happened.”

Jack didn’t like the sound of that,
although Boardman’s tone and body language didn’t come across to
Jack as being accusatory.

“We’re particularly interested,”
Sansone said, leaning forward toward Jack, “in anything odd or
unusual that might have been found in the evidence that was sent
back from Crane’s murder scene in Nebraska. Our working hypothesis
right now is that he discovered something that the EDS didn’t want
us to find, and they were desperate enough to try and destroy the
lab to keep us from learning what it was.”

“We also suspect that Crane may have
had a secret cache of computer data somewhere,” Boardman said.
“We’re sure he didn’t...wouldn’t have kept it at his home.” Jack
caught Sansone glancing at the big agent, making an almost
imperceptible shake of her head.

I’d bet the last
bottle of beer in the world that these fuckers are the ones who
trashed his place
, he thought with a
sudden chill.
Jesus
.

Boardman either didn’t see her or
ignored her warning, as he demanded, “Did he have any special place
he might have stored something unusual? Even something he might
have given to you for safekeeping?”

The hair on the back of Jack’s neck
sprang to attention as internal alarm bells started going off, and
he fought for control of his expression as a mental image of the
photo frame Sheldon had given him suddenly popped into his mind.
“It’s got a smart card that can store thousands of pics, bro,”
Sheldon had told him while demonstrating it. “And I’ve even got it
connected to your home network so I can send you updates on my
latest adventures remotely...”

That’s where
Sheldon hid whatever data he was trying to
protect
, Jack realized. Suddenly, he
wasn’t so sure it would be a good idea to tell Sansone and the
others everything he had seen and done that night. Thinking about
the photo frame and the mysterious corn, still wrapped in the latex
glove in his jacket pocket, he forced himself to look down at his
hands, rather than glance back toward the
kitchen.

“Look, guys,” he said, stifling a
faked yawn. “Let me just start at the beginning, from when I
arrived at the lab until I got back home a while ago. I’m beat, and
I don’t want to miss any details that might be useful to
you.”

“I think that’s an excellent idea,
Jack,” Sansone, suddenly all warmth and smiles, said. She was
giving him the creeps, but he forced a tired smile.

“First,” he said, “do you mind if I
get some coffee? I’ve been running on adrenaline for hours, and I
need a serious caffeine injection.” He glanced around at the
others. “Would any of you like some?”

“No thank you,” Sansone answered for
all of them. “But please feel free.”

As Jack stood up, Castro, who was
sitting closest to him, quickly got to his feet and said, “Dawson,
would you mind handing over your weapons first? You can keep your
badge, but we were told to collect the guns until the investigation
is over.” He shrugged apologetically. “No offense, but that’s what
we were told to do.”

Yeah,
right
, Jack thought, hesitating as he
looked from Castro to Sansone, then to Boardman. He could tell that
all three were suddenly extremely tense.

Knowing that his shotgun was just
around the corner in the kitchen, Jack decided to play it cool for
now. “Sure,” he told Castro, “no problem.” Moving slowly, he
unholstered his Glock 22 and held it by the barrel toward Castro,
who took it. Then Jack leaned down and unstrapped his backup
weapon, a compact Glock 27, from his leg and handed that over.
“That’s it,” he told them, pulling up his other pant leg so they
could see there weren’t any other weapons. He had already taken off
his jacket, and his shirt and pants wouldn’t hide anything other
than a small knife.

“Thank you, Jack,” Sansone said,
nodding as Castro pocketed the weapons and all three agents visibly
relaxed. “Now, why don’t you get your coffee, then we can get to
work.”

“Sure thing,” Jack said casually as
he turned and walked into the kitchen. Fortunately, he was blocked
from their view by the short wall on the side of the breakfast bar
as he entered the kitchen and spotted Alexander.

Jack came to an
abrupt halt, his spine tingling as Naomi Perrault’s words echoed in
his brain:
They hate cats. Watch
Alexander. Trust his instincts.
Jack
hadn’t thought about it earlier, but the big cat always mingled
with guests, begging for attention and a good scratch behind the
ears or under the chin. But he had disappeared after Jack had
shooed him away from the door before opening it to let in Sansone
and the others, and he hadn’t returned.

Now, Alexander was standing under
the kitchen table, his back arched and the hair of his long black
coat sticking out, making him look twice his already impressive
size. Jack could see the gleam of his extended claws, and Alexander
was quivering with what Jack assumed to be fear. The cat’s eyes
darted once to meet Jack’s shocked gaze before again fixing on the
entrance to the kitchen and the suspicious guests in the living
room beyond. His ears were laid back, and Jack could hear a low
growl that he had never heard Alexander make before. It was a sound
that Jack would have expected from a vicious dog, and a big one at
that. He was surprised that he hadn’t heard the cat all the way out
in the living room.

“Is there a problem?” Sansone’s
smooth voice called from behind him, and Jack snapped his head
around to see her leaning over the counter, peering in at him
through the opening from the living room. Boardman and Castro were
behind her, and had their hands poised to draw their
weapons.

“No,” Jack said calmly as he moved
toward the far end of the counter where the shotgun was propped
against the bottom cabinets. “No problem.” He decided to see if
Perrault’s information was legit. “I was just wondering about my
cat,” he told her, glancing away from the table and toward the
pantry, trying to lead her with his gaze, but away from where
Alexander really was.

Sansone’s eyes opened wide as she
fell for it, looking at the pantry on the far side of the kitchen.
“What cat?” she hissed, missing the dark feline form in the shadows
under the kitchen table. Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw
Boardman and Castro reach under their jackets for their weapons,
compact 9-millimeter Uzi submachine guns.

Shit
, was all he had time to think
before everything went to hell.

With a feral snarl of rage and fear,
Alexander bolted from under the table and leaped straight at
Sansone’s face, his claws spread wide and his mouth opened to
expose his canines. Caught completely by surprise, she tumbled
backward into the living room, making an inhuman screech that
turned Jack’s blood to ice as she went down under Alexander’s
slashing claws and snapping teeth.

Taking advantage of the distraction,
Jack dove the last few feet to where his shotgun was hidden just as
Boardman and Castro opened fire, peppering the kitchen with bullets
from their Uzis.

“Jesus!” Jack
cried as he caught several wood splinters in his shoulder from a
near miss before he grabbed the Saiga-12 and rolled to his knees,
using the refrigerator for cover. Even partially deafened by the
chatter of the Uzis, he could hear Alexander’s ferocious snarls and
Sansone’s screeching out in the living room.
Fucking cat
, he almost
sobbed.
Don’t get your hairy ass
killed!

Castro suddenly poked his head
around the corner from the living room, and the house was filled
with the booming roar of the 12-gauge shotgun as Jack pulled the
trigger. His first shot missed, the nineteen flechettes in the
shotgun round tearing a fist-sized hole in the far wall. Castro,
cringing, pulled back out of sight.

Hiding behind
drywall’s not going to save you, fucker
,
Jack thought viciously as he fired again, right through the wall
where he knew Castro was standing. The agent’s body was sent
flying, half a dozen flechettes having penetrated his right
shoulder, neck, and head. Having learned the painful lesson in
Afghanistan that you kept shooting until you were absolutely sure
your target was dead, Jack fired again, the shotgun’s flechettes
tearing Castro’s head apart.