Shattered Legacy (31 page)

Lanton shook his backpack free, tossed it aside, and pushed Merrick ahead. She stumbled, catching herself on a metal support pillar. She spun around as the door clicked shut. She stopped short when she realized that Lanton was holding a pistol. She backed up a half step, her eyes widening in surprise. Then her expression hardened.

“What are you going to do, Lanton? Kill me? Is that your big plan? Are you going to kill everyone who was ever remotely involved in this operation?”

Lanton inclined his head. “That works for me.”

“The operation is
over
, Lanton. Let it go.”

He regarded her carefully. “Have you gone soft on me, girl?”

“Please. Just let it go.”

“I have my interests to protect.”

She took a step forward, her eyes never leaving his face. “I’m going to ask you nicely one time, Lanton. Let me go. Please.”

Lanton gave a crooked smile and shook his head.

With a quick flick, a screwdriver dropped from Merrick’s sleeve to her empty right hand. She flexed her wrist, causing the tool to flash under the lights.

As Lanton shifted his pistol defensively, Merrick stepped forward and batted the weapon aside.

Lanton shuffled back, but Merrick was faster. She jabbed his throat with her fingertips. His pistol clattered away as he fell to his knees, gagging and gasping for breath.

Then she grasped his collar with both hands and shoved him sideways. With a wet crunch, his head smashed against the cement wall. He flipped back from the impact and fell to the floor face up, groaning and wheezing. Blood was already matting his hair.

She crouched over him, her fist raised high, clutching the screwdriver, poised to plunge it into his chest.

She hesitated.

Was this what it was going to take? Would it end with the murder of her closest confidant and friend? She was so tired of the blood and lies. It had to end somewhere. It just had to stop.

She threw the tool aside. It clattered into the corner. Then she stood and backed away, breathing heavily.

Lanton glared up at her, rubbing his throat.

Merrick was tired of living fake lives. She was tired of deceit and fighting and murder. And most of all, she was tired of trying to escape from her past.

But now, as always, there was just one more job to do.

She picked up Lanton’s fallen pistol and slipped the weapon into her pocket. Then her eyes shifted to his fallen knapsack. “What do you have there?”

“Leave it alone,” he croaked as he tried to sit up, but Merrick was already rummaging through the bag.

She held up a pair of plastic flex-cuffs and raised an eyebrow. “And what were you planning to do with
these
?” She pushed him to one side with her foot, bent down and bound his hands behind his back without much effort. Then she continued to rummage through the pack. “What’s this, explosives?” she asked, holding up a large wrapped bundle and a small, remote-controlled detonator. “C-4. Nasty stuff. What were you going to blow up?”

“This building,” he said, grunting as he struggled against his bindings. “Figured I could take everything out in one shot. Maybe take out Samson Tyler, too.”

“Samson Tyler? He’s here?”

Lanton nodded, swallowing hard.

“Impossible. I would have known.”

“Maybe you were too busy keeping tabs on
me
. By the way, your buddy outed you not more than twenty minutes ago. Spilled his guts on national television.”

“That’s not funny.”

“You have to kill him, Merrick.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no? What the hell? Are you growing a conscience or something?”

She continued to rummage through the backpack. She held up the bomb detonator and slipped the device into her pocket. “I wouldn’t want you accidentally blowing yourself up. That’s the easy way out.”

She pulled out Lanton’s pistol.

He grimaced and spat out a wad of blood. “Guess I’m the last victim in your campaign to ‘go legitimate’.”

“I’m not going to kill you, Lanton.”

He frowned. “You’re not?”

“Consider this my parting gift to you.”

She raised her arm and brought the butt of the pistol down across the back of Lanton’s head. He slumped to the floor. Merrick put the weapon back in her pocket, crouched down and cut Lanton's bindings.

Then she stood, straightened her overalls and gave the unconscious man a mock salute. “So long, partner. It was nice knowing you.”

***

Merrick walked the empty corridors of the basement.

Cleanup on this operation had been tough. There had been unexpected complications, but it had all worked out in the end. She didn’t care what happened to Lanton. He would wake up within the hour and slip away. He wouldn't be stupid enough to ever cross her again.

The Templar job had been very lucrative. She doubted that she could ever again set up such a sophisticated operation. Ending all this had meant severing valuable connections within both Templar and the DOD - some of them literally. It would take months, perhaps years, to build another insider network of such depth.

She was glad that she would never have to try.

As she passed an open lounge, she stopped short when she heard a familiar voice. She turned and saw Samson Tyler on the wall-mounted television. Tyler was standing behind a podium, addressing an audience. The news crawl on the bottom of the screen indicated that he had just made a public announcement regarding Templar’s legal problems.

She frowned. So Lanton had told the truth. But none of this made sense. Samson Tyler could not have been in a position to speak for the company, and she would have certainly been told if the situation had changed.

Slowly she approached the set. She watched and listened carefully. Her eyes widened as Samson Tyler told his story.

Her jaw dropped steadily as he revealed her operation, her cover name, and even her photograph for the world to see.

“Son of a
bitch
,” she spat through clenched teeth. He had just blown her identity on national television!

Samson Tyler was supposed to be frightened, disoriented and cut off from support. The noose was tightening around him. He was supposed to be boxed in with the knowledge that he had a hand in this mess. Hell, he should have been in Federal custody already!

Instead, the man had ruined everything. She shook her head. Her Templar personnel record was supposed to have been deleted ages ago. Now that one identity was compromised, she had to assume that they were all compromised. She would have to dump everything. All her property would have to be abandoned or liquidated. Her safe houses, her vehicles, everything. Money would have to be switched to new accounts. It would take months to straighten it all out.

The farm in Vermont? That dream was over. Leaving the country was the only option now.

As she stared at the screen, she thumbed the detonator in her pocket.

At that moment, she decided that she was going to finally bury her past, once and for all.

And damn the collateral damage.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

“Get Jacob Jackson.”

“Are you sure about this?” Dustin O’Dell asked as he exited his office and started down the hallway with his cell phone pressed to his ear.

“Did you see the press conference?” Tyler's voice was coming through the phone slightly garbled.

“Yeah, I saw it,” Dusty replied as he turned the corner and rushed past the cubicles of the accounting department. “All I know is that you better not get caught out there in New Mexico.”

“I’m on my way back right now.”

“Are you sure it’s Jacob? I don’t like accusing a senior member of management -”

“You don’t need to accuse him of anything. Just make sure he doesn’t leave the building.”

“Will do,” Dusty said.

“And give my regards to Agent Lowell.”

“You got it.”

Dusty disconnected and slipped his phone back onto his belt. He was glad that Samson Tyler was taking charge again, because they were about to face one hell of a mess.

He turned left and stopped before the last office. The door was open. Someone was still inside. Hands draped behind his back, Dusty stood in the doorway, watching Jacob Jackson crouched behind his desk, frantically rummaging through his desk drawers. Stacks of files and papers were scattered all over his desk. Dusty had never seen the place in such a mess. He shook his head slowly; Jackson was cleaning house, a sure sign of his guilt.

Dusty cleared his throat. “Hello, Jacob,” he said, stepping inside the large corner office and closing the door.

Jackson’s head snapped up. He blinked once and swallowed thickly. Dropping the file he was holding back into the drawer, he eased back into his leather chair and calmly faced his visitor from across the desk.

“Dusty,” the older man said with a forced smile. “What can I do for you?”

“I think you know why I’m here.” Dusty glanced over at the television on the bookshelf. Though the sound was muted, he could see that it was playing a news report on Samson Tyler’s press conference.

Jackson stared the television for a moment, and then looked back at Dusty. Slowly he reached out for the cigar box on his desk, lifted the lid, and picked up a cigar. Dusty watched as Jackson calmly bit off the end of the cigar and produced a silver lighter. Then Jackson lit the cigar and reclined back, puffing a few times. He snapped the lighter closed and tossed it back on the desk.

The older man sucked on the cigar and blew a thick mass of smoke toward the ceiling. “You know,” he said slowly, “after everything I've done for this company, you'd think they'd have let me smoke in my own office. Do you think I'll set off the fire alarm?”

The blue cloud drifted before Dusty. “I think that would be the least of your problems, Jacob.”

The older man shrugged. “I suppose it would.” Then he shook his head slowly and sighed. With one hand he pushed aside a stack of papers and set the cigar down on the edge of his crystal ashtray. “Tell me something, Dusty.” He closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat. “Do you think I'm a crook?”

“Jacob, I don't know what to think. Apparently someone has been running an inside trading scheme using this company’s purchasing and distribution systems. I have it on good authority that you, Jacob, are somehow mixed up in this situation.”

“If I fill you in on the details, can you help me?”

Dusty shook his head. “I work for the company, not for the employees.”

“Fair enough. It doesn't matter now, anyway.” Jackson laughed; it was a rough, harsh sound.

“Call your attorney,” Dusty said. “You’re going to need one.”

Jackson was staring ahead, his eyes slightly out of focus. “You know, Samson was supposed to be a pawn - a patsy, if we needed one. That’s why we created evidence to implicate him. I just didn’t think Merrick would release it all so quickly...”

Dusty took a step forward. “I’m serious, Jacob. Whatever you tell me will
not
be kept confidential.”

Jackson’s focus returned and he grinned wolfishly, his voice dropping to a conspirator level. “I helped Sinclair Dorian get this company on its feet. The man may have been a dreamer, but we both knew damn well the reality of getting our project off the ground. We knew we could never raise enough money for the venture if people knew just how expensive it would be. Our most optimistic projections didn't project us to break even for at least a decade. So when we went public, we -”

“Jacob -”

“- cooked the numbers like a day-old pot roast. But this was never about the money; in the beginning it was about raising public awareness and support.” Jackson shrugged. “By all rights, the SEC should have nailed us, but thanks to some clever bookkeeping, nobody was able to quite put things together. I think some of our legal team was suspicious, though.”

Dusty nodded slowly. The pieces were coming together. “But Samson Tyler stayed, and you rewarded him with a promotion to general counsel? Did Samson known about the fraud?”

“Nah,” Jackson replied with a shake of his head. He picked up his cigar and gestured with it. “Samson Tyler was an associate back then. He did a lot of the grunt work. We told him we were innocent, and at the time he had no reason to think otherwise. Anyway, after the SEC trouble, Sinclair and I both agreed to play things straight.”

Dusty pursed his lips.

“And we did play it straight, for a while,” Jackson said in response to Dusty’s unasked question. “Over the long haul, though, we didn't have enough cash or credit to pull us through the first orbiter launch.” Then he looked away, and his expression softened. “Merrick approached me about a year ago. She just sort of ... appeared in my life. She was very charming, very straightforward, and very attractive. We struck up a friendship. Soon it became something more. She used me, and I let her.” His expression suddenly sobered. “How did Samson connect her with me?”

“I don't know,” Dusty replied. “Maybe she told him.”

“I doubt it. She was a secrecy nut. She blackmailed me, you know. She knew everything that the company had done, everything we had done to cover our tracks. She said that she had proof in her possession. She told me that if I didn’t give her access our purchasing systems, she would tip off the authorities.”

“So what did you do?”

“I told her to go to hell,” Jackson said, glancing up. “So then she told me that she would sweeten the deal by guaranteeing cash into Templar's coffers - and I mean a
lot
of cash. At the time, Templar was going over the edge financially. The money she provided was easily laundered through our accounting systems. How could I refuse? It was like the perfect present, all gift-wrapped with a pretty bow.” He frowned and shook his head. “Don't look at me like that, son. The money wasn't for me. It was for the company. No one was getting hurt. Only when the government watchdogs started to sniff around did Merrick panic and decide to shut everything down.”

“And that's when she approached Samson Tyler,” Dusty said.

“Samson was the only person who could figure out what was really going on.” Jackson gave the attorney a grim look. “We tried to keep him off-balance by suggesting that the investigation was politically-motivated. He didn’t bite, so Merrick decided to throw some obstacles in his way. That’s why she set fire to his apartment and sent the fake death threats. Even then, he kept putting things together. In the end, the leaked documents implicating Samson were just an act of desperation.”