Chapter Twenty-Four
Leland
We were sleeping in my cabana, drained from fucking, when my cell rang. I wiggled from beneath Richard’s arm flung across my back and scooched across the four-poster bed to grab my phone from the floor.
The room was dark and the screen was painfully bright in front of my sleepy eyes. No caller ID. Richard rolled into me. Crap, should I answer it?
“Leland Jensen,” I whispered into my phone, trying not to wake him.
“It’s Jena. Can you talk?”
Oh Christ. Not the intrusion I wanted. I turned my head and found Richard staring at me with his eyes half open. “It’s not a good time.”
“Make it a good time,” Jena barked. “It’s important.”
Fuck.
I climbed from the bed and went to the bathroom, closing the door behind me. “What is it? I’m with Richard, damn it. This is my downtime. Can’t I have two weeks off without hearing from you?”
“Don’t act annoyed. I only call when it’s important.”
“You think everything is a crisis,” I groused, using my fingers to brush my hair from my face.
“Stop trying to piss me off so you can go back to getting your rocks off with Richard. You should know I wouldn’t have bothered you if it wasn’t necessary.”
I exhaled a ragged breath. “Fuck. What do you need?”
“You,” she said crisply. “I’m at a federal detention center at the border of California and Mexico. Immigration picked up four men. One of them was on the watch list. That’s why I got called. An associate of yours from Afghanistan. Samir Ahmadi. But the other three are like ghosts. I’ve run them through every database in the world and can’t get a positive match. I need those sharp amber eyes of yours to come here in person and look at a couple of men I’m holding.”
“In person. You’re joking, right? I can’t let anyone see me in a federal facility, not even the feds. Are you trying to get me killed in the field?”
“Short on time here, Lee. They had a suitcase bomb with them. I don’t have time to make them break the smart way. I need to know fast who they’re associated with. There could be more bombs. We don’t know.”
“Just send me photos. I can ID the three from that.”
“Ahmadi is your associate. You’ll have a better read if he’s telling the truth once I get him to talk. I want to know what they planned, then let them go so they can lead me to more of them.”
“Fuck, Jena. And how do you propose I participate in that without risking someone seeing me?”
“By having you observe only. Nothing else. One-way viewing glass and you can wear a fucking ski mask if you want to. In and out of here like a ghost. I’m texting you an address. I expect to see you walking through the door no later than three hours from now.” And without waiting for my response, she hung up.
I decided to jump in the shower to quickly scrub my junk before facing Richard with the news I was cutting out on him, and then wrapped a towel about my hips.
When I left the bathroom, I found Richard sitting in a chair, staring out the window at the action around the pool. He’d pulled on his running shorts and was smoking, but I could tell by the set of his shoulders he was irritated by the Jena interruption.
“Sorry about the interruption,” I said, tossing my phone and leaning in for a kiss.
He shrugged, but, fuck, I could feel he was wound tight again and edgy. “Doesn’t matter, Lee. I’m used to it.”
“It does matter. This was supposed to be our time.” I pouted, knowing what I had to say next was going to go over really well. Then I made a dramatic sigh. “But running a global corporation is a twenty-four-hour job. Which brings me to my next unpleasant disclosure. I’ve gotta hop a plane out of here for a couple of days, baby. I’ll have Lauren send a car to take you back to the house.”
His dark eyes turned angry. “Whatever it is, can’t you put it off? I leave in four days. Who knows how long it will be before I can take vacation time again?”
“I would if I could, but I can’t so there we are. At least it’s a small crisis. One night. Maybe two tops.”
He rose from the chair and grabbed his shirt from the floor. “Maybe I should just head back to DC,” he grumbled as he searched for his shoes.
“No. We’ll still have a little time together when I get back. Don’t leave.”
He whirled to face me. “One day? Maybe two. Doesn’t seem worth staying.”
I continued dressing without looking at him. “Two days. Very worth it. And I’ll have Lauren give you what you need from the safe so I don’t forget. You know how forgetful I am, baby.”
“Oh Christ, I’d forgotten about the loan.” He used his fingers to smooth out his hair.
I stared at the room, shaking my head. Dressed. Wallet. Fuck, why did it feel like I was missing something?
Richard laughed, grabbed my cell, and handed it to me. “I don’t know how you can run anything with how absent-minded you are,” he stated, but at least he was sort of smiling.
I closed my palms on his cheeks and gave him a deep, lusty-tongued kiss. “Not absent-minded to forget to kiss you before I leave.”
I hustled through the door, calling Lauren to collect Richard as I maneuvered through the throng around the pool, and grabbed a cab in front of the resort.
En route to the airport, I phoned my pilot and requested he file a flight plan to San Diego, the nearest landing strip to the address Jena had texted me.
I was in the air in under thirty minutes. And thankfully I didn’t have far to go. Getting back to Richard before he had to return to DC would have been impossible if my destination had been the east coast.
As I read the rapid-fire stream of texts from Jena, I selected an outfit from the clothes I kept onboard for such emergencies. What the fuck did I wear to a federal detention facility that wouldn’t betray in any way who I was? Ah, success. Commonplace jeans, a long-sleeved black t-shirt, and stark black boots. Very not like Leland Edward Jensen the third.
Two and a half hours later, with time to spare, I was at the locked front gates of the innocuous compound and my annoyance increased. Immigration holding site? Fuck no. I’d been with the agency long enough to recognize a covert black ops site when I saw one.
The guard came to my window and I held out my fake identification in hand: Howard Holbert. I had an assortment of aliases. It was the name Jena had left on the list.
The sentry studied me then studied it, and I stared straight ahead until the gates opened. Jena was standing in front of a building, smoking, and I rolled into a parking spot.
“What, no ski mask?” she jeered, stomping out her cigarette.
“Fuck you, Jena. I’m here. You better have done your part so I can do my part without your detainees seeing me.”
She used her key to unlock the door. “If I can’t, I won’t release them.”
She moved briskly down the hallway with me behind carefully not making eye contact with anyone. Then she waved her card in front of another door. Three one-way viewing windows. Three different holding cells.
I glanced through the first. Yep, it was Samir. He looked roughed up. Damn Jena.
“I need a positive ID. Samir Ahmadi, right?”
I stared into the room. “Yep, Samir. Youngest of eight sons of an Afghani drug lord. He’s a bit of an outcast among his family. He’s not radical and they’re fanatical. I wouldn’t have suspected him of trying to cross into the US with a bomb. I launder money for his father, Sheikh Ahmadi.”
She nodded, moved to the second viewing spot, and tapped the glass with a long red nail. “Do you know them? Can’t even get a peep out of them to run voice identification to place their nationality.”
Two men. I didn’t recognize either of them. “They’re not Middle Eastern. Hispanic.”
“How do you know?” Jena snapped.
“I just know,” I said, annoyed, and neared the final holding cell. The fourth man I knew at once and my pulse jumped. “Oh fuck.”
Jena’s face shot toward me. “What?”
“His picture should have lit up the database like a Christmas tree. That’s Emilio Santiago. Ex-Cuban military and a body man for Hector Ramos. I met him at a party in Bogotá last month.”
This time it was Jena who said, “Oh fuck,” and we locked eyes. “The Ramos cartel has a mole in our intelligence network. Pretty high up if they have the kind of access to our databases that could turn someone into a ghost.”
“That would seem the case, Jena.” I leaned with my back against the glass. “And if Samir is with a known member of the Ramos cartel, it means we have a new unholy alliance in our global war on terror.”
“The terrorists and the cartels are merging forces,” Jena said intensely.
“And the cartels have got fucking infrastructure and access to every city in the US, and can move back and forth across our borders at will.”
“Then it’s more imperative than before to find out what these tangos are up to.”
Her shoulders went straight and turned to iron before she strode out of the room. I sank in the chair to watch the interrogation.
For forty-eight hours nonstop she went at them with her team from the agency. It sickened my stomach to watch. I was a pacifist, but I remained eyes locked forward in my seat.
Jena got Samir to talk first, and once he started he didn’t stop for hours. I was pretty sure Jena would have worked him over another day if he hadn’t collapsed and gone unconscious on her. I was half dead from exhaustion merely watching.
The door to my observation room opened, and my eyes, tired from fatigue, shifted to Jena looking fresh as a morning daisy as she popped a cigarette in her mouth and lit it.
“Do you think Samir was telling the truth?”
I rubbed my lids, half because they hurt and half to block out the vision of Jena staring at me as if she hadn’t just seen every second of torture I’d just witnessed. “Yes. I do. Samir doesn’t have the mettle not to break. It was a test run. One bomb, Jena. There’s nothing else out there that needs to be hunted down. You don’t have to waterboard or electrocute the boy again.”
“But we’ve got a whole new ball game, Lee, if the terrorists have joined forces with the cartels. Fuck.”
I opened my eyes and nodded. I was too tired to verbally confirm what we both knew.
“Put on your travel calendar Mexico City, Lee. And start planning to open a branch of the charity there. That is where Hector Ramos is based, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Time to make a new business associate, Lee. If the jihadists can get men and bombs through our border as easily as the cartels do drugs, we’re all in the fuck pit.”
I stood up and stretched. Christ, I’d been in this fucking room nearly three days, with only bathroom breaks. And no doubt it was a trivial worry with what we’d discovered, but Richard was going to be pissed I’d gotten held up three days here. Fuck, I’d be lucky with his ego if he was still at my house when I got back.
Jena made a shooing motion with her hands. “Go, Lee. I’ve cockblocked you long enough.” She kissed my cheek. “I’ve got to brief Langley. Expect to see me soon and be viva la fiesta—or whatever it is you do—south of the border before spring.”
“Wonderful,” I groused and headed for the door.
“Hey, cheer up. The good guys won today.”
Somehow I didn’t think this good guy would be feeling like he was winning when I got home. “I don’t care what it is. Don’t call me for the next twenty-four hours, Jena, or I’m fucking quitting the agency.”
“Say hi to Richard for me.”
I tossed her a glare.
It was after 3:00 a.m. when I climbed from a cab in front of my house. Lights out, even those that lined the driveway. Not a good sign. Richard must’ve gotten tired of waiting on me, packed up and gone back to DC.
I went first downstairs to Lauren’s room to verify she’d given Richard the money he needed. I didn’t need one more thing to smooth over with him. Pissed-off Richard was enough to manage without him departing here wounded and stressed over how he’d take care of his mom.
While I hated to rouse her in the middle of the night, I rapped the door with my knuckles and waited. No sound. I knocked louder.
Then I opened the door. Lights out. Room empty. Frowning, I headed upstairs. Living room empty. Family room empty. Kitchen empty.
I stared out through the back windows. Not in the yard. Where the hell was Lauren? I shot her a text and she replied that Richard had given her time off. As I stared at my screen, my senses prickled at something felt yet unheard and unseen.
The house seemed vacant, but it wasn’t. I wasn’t sure how I knew that; only that I did. And I wasn’t even totally aware why I was hurrying toward the west wing. Every indication since arriving said Richard had cut out on me, even him telling Lauren not to stick around to tote and fetch for him.
For no reason my heart started to race when I spotted light pouring out from the sunroom overlooking the back lawn. I hustled inside, then my body sprang back against the wall, my gaze shooting around the room and my thoughts careening in my head.
A lean body, naked on the floor, motionless as though dead. My gaze halted on that blond hair, and cold shot through my veins. The twink from the beach and the club.
The smell in the air; men having sex. Jesus Christ—on the table, white powder cut into lines on a mirror with bottles of booze and half-finished drinks.
Oh fuck.
My lover had found amusement in my absence.
A hot body and enough drugs for a nice-sized party.
But Richard didn’t do drugs.
This couldn’t be right.
He was a fucking fed.
I forced my vision to accept for the first time what I was seeing in totality. Richard, naked, straddling the guy and pumping on his chest like he was doing CPR. But it was too late. The trick was dead.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I had to shut down my whirling emotions, the disbelief and the revulsion shuddering through my body. A dead body in my house was no different than a bomb detonating on me. My role with the CIA terminated. Fuck, my life terminated because of this.
This kind of scandal was a one-way trip onto the agency’s burn list and a wooden box six feet under. And it would destroy Richard’s life, too.
Though why I cared about his cheating manwhore ass with the horror he’d brought into my world, there in front of me…
I commanded myself to stay calm. I had to think and act fast if I—we—had a hope of surviving what Richard had done.
I shot across the room and grabbed his arm. “Stop it. He’s dead. Richard, he’s fucking dead. How long has he been dead?”
His face whipped toward me, his eyes wild, and the terror I felt was on his face. He was out of his mind. He sank back on the guy’s thighs, shoulders slumped, staring into space.
I grabbed his jaw and forced his face toward mine. “What happened to him?”
“OD. He snorted the heroin from my pants. He must have thought it was coke. I tried to revive him, Lee.”
That’s when I noticed the blood from the twink’s nose, how his wide-open eyes looked in their sockets, and the foam on his lips.
My mind was snapping.
Heroin?
From Richard’s jeans?
Every confusing thought in my memory came into focus. Richard asking me for money. His jumpiness. What I could see like a glaring stop sign on his face. Richard had become an addict.
How could I have not seen, suspected?
The clues had all been there, right in front of me, since he’d walked through my door. But as ever, I had a blind spot where Richard was concerned. I could see everything and not see simultaneously with him. It was why he was dangerous to me and how I could keep on loving him.
Only now I could see everything too clearly.
Fat tears rolled down his cheeks. “I’m sorry, Lee.”
“You’re a piece of shit, Richard.” I shoved his face downward so he had to stare at the guy. “You’re a fed and my lover. You don’t deserve the FBI or me. You’re a disgrace to us both.”
He was shaking and it was the first time I’d ever noticed how weak a man he was. “I need to phone this in.”
I stopped him before his hand reached the cell lying on the floor beside us. “No. That won’t work. Not for me. You get dressed. You get the fuck out of my house. I’ll clean this up so there’s nothing that can lead back to either of us. You never speak a word about this. Not to anyone, not ever, Richard. Or I’ll put a bullet through your head myself.”
His ravished eyes searched my face. “Clean it up? What the fuck do you know about getting rid of a dead body? Are you crazy? You wouldn’t shoot me and I can’t let you try to fix this. I don’t care what happens to me. I have to take responsibility for what happened here or it’s going to come down on you. I’m calling the authorities.”
“If you care at all about me you’ll get the fuck out of here and never return.” My words sickened me, but even after this some small area of my heart had feeling left to hurt for Richard. “As for what I know about getting rid of a body, I have money. That’s what people with money do. We make things disappear. Now, Richard, make yourself disappear or I’ll get my gun and pump a round in your skull. It doesn’t cost more to dispose of two bodies.”
I sat next to the corpse on the floor, cell in hand, eyes locked on Richard like a laser as he scrambled to dress and walked out my life.
Then I called Jena. When she answered, I didn’t wait for her to say hello. “I need you at my house now. Bring a cleaning crew. Guys off the books. Not from the agency. Otherwise you’re going to lose your NOC and I’m going to end up on the CIA burn list.”