To the Brink (36 page)

"Why don't you start with Amanda Stover?" he suggested with a little nudge to help break the ice. "Something tells me her death is at the heart of all of this. You knew her, right?"

From the corner of his eye he saw a single tear trickle down Darcy's cheek. He clenched his jaw against the ache her pain caused in his chest.

"Yes. I knew her." She lifted her hand, wiped the tear away with her index finger. "She was just a kid. Nineteen. Manila was her first PCS."

"What did she do at the embassy?" he prodded when Darcy lapsed into silence again.

"She was clerical staff that exclusively served the ambassador's office."

"Ambassador Gatlin," he stated, figuring he was finally getting somewhere. "He's got something to do with this, doesn't he?"

Another protracted silence. Then a bitter, "He has everything to do with it."

"Amanda came to me the day before she died," Darcy went on after a moment in which Ethan could see a new resolve straighten the set of her shoulders.

Atta girl,
he thought. She was pissed now. And she wanted justice for Amanda. Resolution for herself.

"She told me she had a tape she wanted me to listen to. Insisted that it was important."

"What kind of tape?"

"One she'd gotten by mistake. It was supposed to be a tape of a staff meeting Gatlin had given her to transcribe. The problem was, there was no staff meeting on the tape."

"What
was
on it?"

Darcy expelled a deep breath. "I don't know exactly. Amanda never finished telling me. She got all spooky. Shoved an envelope into my hand, told me the tape was in there along with a note of explanation."

She shook her head. Her eyes filled with tears again. "Amanda was ... she was kind of a cliché, you know? Blond. Built. Oh, she was sweet, but she ... she had a flair for drama and she always seemed a little thickheaded."

Darcy plucked at the hem of her white linen shorts. "We never could figure out why she was assigned directly to the ambassador's office. For that matter, I never figured out why she latched onto me. Maybe because we were both from Ohio. God, I don't know. We sure didn't have anything in common. But she was a little homesick, so I mothered her when she needed it. And she needed it a lot. She was always crying over a relationship, certain someone was trying to get her fired."

Darcy touched her fingers to her forehead. "Anyway, when she gave me the tape, I just considered the source. Took it to placate her. Basically, I blew her off... told her I'd listen to it right away and get back to her."

"But you didn't."

She shook her head, guilt evident on her face. "No. I didn't. I was swamped that day. Had to catch a plane right after lunch. If I'd have taken her seriously, taken the time to listen to the tape right away—or at least read the note—I might have been able to help her."

"You're not the bad guy in this."

"Tell that to Amanda's parents."

"Tell me what you know about the tape," Ethan said gently, knowing she had to work through her guilt in her own way, in her own time.

"I threw it in my briefcase and took it with me to Zamboanga thinking I'd have an opportunity to listen to it then. I never got the chance. Before I was able to round up a tape player, someone called and told me about Amanda's death."

"The hit-and-run."

She nodded. "I knew right away something was off with that story. That's when I finally opened the envelope. Along with the tape was a note she'd written, begging me to listen to it. The note said the tape was of Gatlin talking to some guy with a heavy Middle Eastern accent. Said she had a hard time understanding it, but she was certain that Ambassador Gatlin was up to something ... something bad with this guy."

"Evidently, she was right." Darcy stopped, sighed. "Dead right."

"How did he make the connection that you had the tape?"

She looked out the window, shook her head as if she couldn't believe what she was about to say. "I got to feeling guilty, even a little concerned, that I hadn't listened to it before I left for Zamboanga. So I called Amanda that night. She wasn't home."

Because she was probably already dead,
Ethan thought, and figured Darcy was thinking the same thing.

"And you left a message," he concluded. Gatlin's goons had trashed Amanda's apartment, according to Nolan's sources. No doubt they listened to the message and it led them straight to Darcy.

"And since back-to-back hit-and-run deaths of U.S. Embassy employees might prompt more than a little suspicion," he went on aloud, "you got door number two and Gatlin gave orders to have you abducted."

"So it would seem. As soon as I heard about Amanda, I read her note. Then I called you and got rid of the tape."

He whipped his head her way. "You destroyed it?"

"Mailed it to a post office box I keep near D.C."

He couldn't help it. He grinned. "Smart girl."

She leaned her head back against the seat rest, closed her eyes. Lights from oncoming cars and trucks flashed across her face. "Yeah, I'm so smart I managed to get abducted right after I dropped it at the post office."

Which explained something that had been eating at Ethan since this all started. He'd never understood what she'd been doing out on the city streets by herself at night.

He flipped open his cell phone and dialed.

"This better be good," Nolan grumbled, his voice gravelly with sleep when he finally picked up on the sixth ring.

Ethan grunted. "Little brother, you don't know the half of it. Call me back on a secure line."

He disconnected. And waited for his cell to ring. When it did, he filled Nolan in on everything he knew at this point, including where they were headed.

"Holy shit," his brother said.

"That pretty well sums it up, yeah. Now here's what I need you to do."

"No," Darcy said simply as they traveled north, still on 1-95 and two hundred miles closer to D.C. than they'd been three hours ago. "I'm not telling you."

So Ethan was mad.
Too bad,
Darcy thought as he sat in a surly slump beside her in the passenger seat while she took a turn at driving.

"I want the post office address, your box number, and the combination to the lock."

"So you can tuck me away somewhere safe while you take all the risk retrieving the tape? I don't think so."

He heaved a breath heavy with impatience. "So if something happens to you, someone else will know how to get to it."

"Sorry," she said. "No sale. When we get there, we'll go together."

Let him brood. He could get as mad as he wanted. She wasn't telling him. She was going with him when they went after the tape.

"Are they following us, do you think?" she asked, trading one sour subject for another.

"They'll do their damnedest. It'll be a little harder for them, since the GPS transceiver I found attached to the undercarriage of the SUV is now in a trash can outside that motel near Daytona."

"That's why we stopped there?" She'd thought he'd been taking a restroom break.

"It'll take 'em a while to figure out we're not bunked down there for the night. It won't stop them, but it'll throw them off for a while. Gatlin must have a helluva network if he found you this fast. And he must have a helluva secret if he doesn't blink an eye at murder.

"Whatever is on that tape has to be huge," Ethan added, his face stone sober. "I figure we can cross skimming and bribes off the list of possibilities. That's small potatoes in the real world. He'd have attempted to cut Amanda in on the action first if that was the case instead of going right for the kill."

"Espionage of some kind?" she suggested.

He lifted a shoulder. "We'll know soon enough. In the meantime, tell me what you know about Gatlin."

"Not that much. Like I said, he isn't Al Hayden. Gatlin's an industrialist with interests all over the globe. Steel, I think. He was appointed around fifteen years ago under President Clark. Word was he always had a lot of heavy-duty lobbyists camped out on Capitol Hill, was a major contributor to Clark's political campaign."

"Which explains how he bought his appointment."

"Sadly, yes."

"Who can you trust?" he asked after a lengthy silence. "Who were you planning on going to with the tape? And what was going to happen to it if you hadn't made it out of Jolo alive?"

The last question was easier to answer than the others. "I have a friend who lives in Richmond. If... well, if I'd ended up dead, she knows about the PO box. She has the combination and drives up and cleans out the junk mail for me every six months or so."

"Does this friend have a name?"

"None that I'm willing to give you. You'd just call your brothers and have them coax the info out of her."

"It was worth a try."

"Do you think my family is being watched?" she asked, dreading his answer.

"Let's just say you were wise not to let them know you're stateside. If this is as big as it's starting to look, even my family's phones are probably bugged."

Darcy felt another stab of guilt for placing them all in this danger. "I hate it that your family got dragged into the thick of this."

"My brothers can take care of themselves. So can Eve and the folks. Now, who can you trust?" he repeated.

"I don't know," she said honestly. "And I've thought about it a lot. Aside from Gatlin's hookup with the terrorist network, he obviously has connections with the Philippine military—probably with the government, too. Otherwise, why wouldn't my rescue be news by now? He may even have the media in his pocket."

She flipped on her turn signal to pass a pickup. "As far as someone in the State Department... who knows how many layers up this runs—whatever
this
is?"

"Well," he said, slumping farther down in the seat and closing his eyes, "until we get that tape in our hot little fists and take a listen, I guess we're still stuck with more questions than answers."

He was tired. Darcy could hear it in his voice. Just the fact that he'd let her take over driving was telling. So she was relieved when he let his head fall back against the seat and he closed his eyes.

"Wake me up in a couple of hours. And keep your eye on the rearview."

"What am I looking for?" she asked, glancing into the glare of headlights shining in the mirror.

"The bad guys, babe. The bad guys."

"They'll be carrying signs, right?"

One corner of his mouth tilted up in a weary grin when she glanced his way. And then he was asleep.

MANILA,
 
PHILIPPINES

Next to her discretion, what Charles liked best about Magda was her amazing mouth. He moaned with pleasure and decided he'd pay her double for tonight.

My God!
The woman was a magician when it came to working him.

He lay back on a lush pile of thick red pillows, watched in the gaudy gilt-edged mirror that hung over the bed as she knelt over him, her head bobbing up and down on his lap.

He'd needed this, he thought as he watched her fall of ink black hair drift across his thighs, her round, pale ass tilted skyward, as she sucked him like a Hoover.