Chapter Twenty
It wasn’t that late as the cab pulled up outside Tess’s Bethesda home, but night already crept over the sky. She’d spent most of the day stuck in the Denver airport, waiting for a connection that had been delayed due to mechanical failure. She should have taken Mac up on his offer of a ride in a private jet to Quantico, but she’d needed to distance herself from him after their eventful night together.
She was humiliated by what they’d done. Or rather, by what he hadn’t done. It had driven home the divide between them.
At what moment had he switched from being all-in to being only prepared to give her a pity orgasm? When had he gone from being consumed-by-the-moment to clear-headed enough to bring her to climax and let her down gently, as if he was somehow bestowing some gift on her?
Or maybe he’d never been consumed-by-the-moment. Maybe that had been all her.
God, she was furious, and mortified, and goddamned fucking furious.
She’d enjoyed his company way more than was healthy for her heart. She’d had no plans to become involved with a man who pried her deepest, darkest secrets wide open, even though he already knew most of them in excruciating detail.
Then he’d kissed her and she’d reacted like a frantic virgin.
She wasn’t.
She didn’t need a man.
She fished around for her wallet and handed the cabby her credit card. She touched the thumb drive in her purse. Should she throw it away and pretend she’d never seen it? Or give it back to Cole at the same time she told him about their parents?
Why not get all her confessions over in one go? While she was at it she’d ask him about that paper file, too. Maybe someone had planted it in his drawer? Maybe he had a perfectly innocent explanation for having it.
Or maybe she’d imagined it.
The way her brain buzzed right now that was completely possible. She pursed her lips. Nope, that was plain old denial. She retrieved her receipt from the cab driver and climbed out, dragging her carry-on, shouldering her laptop.
She was a wreck. Fitful sleep for the last three nights. Getting involved with a man she couldn’t trust. Worried for one brother, scared of the other. Terrified of her name being released to the press and her reputation shredded.
With the flight delay, she’d had to postpone a meeting with her biggest client and they hadn’t been happy. It would take a miracle to make it through this mess with her business intact.
The idea of a bath and bed was beyond appealing. She needed to get inside her home and close out the world’s ugliness. She’d seen on the news an openly gay congressman had been shot in an incident similar to the attacks on the judge and his wife, the DJ, and the rabbi. The congressman was in critical condition in the hospital. She prayed he survived and told the police who was committing these vicious acts.
Eddie was still at large. She shivered as she glanced around her quiet street.
The only advantage of having to hang out in a coffee shop in Denver airport all day was no one had a clue where to find her. The disadvantage of being home was Eddie’s violent threats reverberated inside her head like a hammer hitting a gong.
Be brave, Tess.
Eddie didn’t know where she lived. She wasn’t listed in the phone book and she hadn’t even registered to vote at her new address yet. She was blessedly anonymous.
McKenzie had found her…but he was FBI.
She went to her front door and unlocked it. The sight of her familiar space sent relief rushing through her. Her home wasn’t fancy but it was hers. She locked the door behind her and threw the deadbolt.
Setting her purse and laptop on the kitchen table, she trudged upstairs with her small suitcase, dumped it on the bed and started filling the tub. She tossed dirty laundry in the hamper and unpacked the few toiletries she’d taken with her in their travel sized bottles. The bookmark Ellie had made her all those years ago sat inside the zippered pocket of her case. The pressed flowers were held in place with brittle tape and the whole thing was so fragile Tess was terrified it was going to disintegrate. She placed it reverently on her bedside table. Tomorrow she’d arrange to have it framed.
She walked around the house, nervous, on edge, and not sure why. She closed the drapes and made sure the back door was locked. The idea of Eddie being free freaked her out. Perhaps that was what was giving her this unshakable sense of unease. Or maybe it was just that achy feeling you got when you met someone you were attracted to, but learned the feeling wasn’t mutual. Sure, he might find her a little bit attractive, but it would never come close to how he felt about his job, which was fine. He shouldn’t have to pick one or the other.
But there lay the obvious conflict. A woman like her would kill a career like his, and she didn’t want that. It was obvious he was born to be a special agent. She applauded him and all his colleagues. They kept people safe. Rescued people.
But…they’d rescued her and she felt as if she’d been tried and convicted at the ripe old age of ten.
She shook off her self-pity. The ache would go away eventually. It always did. Give it a few days, or weeks, and she’d forget everything about ASAC Steve McKenzie, from his dented chin to his elusive dimples.
Which would be way better than picturing those changeable eyes, or remembering the sense of security she’d experienced sleeping beside him last night. Or the fierce desire that had overwhelmed her when he’d put his mouth and hands on her. She sighed tiredly and stripped off her clothes as she walked from the bedroom to the master bath. She pinned up her unruly hair then added cold water and a healthy dose of bubble bath to the tub. She needed to relax.
Slowly, she eased her body into the steaming liquid and lay back to stare at the ceiling. Hot water seeped into her tense, tired muscles.
Where was Mac now?
Probably investigating this latest shooting.
The congressman was lucky to be alive, but he was in a coma and the doctors had no idea if he’d recover.
She prayed he did. Hopefully the congressman would wake up tomorrow morning with nothing worse than a headache and give them an idea of the shooter’s appearance.
Her gaze caught on the toilet and the vague unease she’d been experiencing exploded into a rush of fear. The seat was up. She never left the seat up. She stood, grabbed her robe and wrapped it around her body, fingers fumbling and making it hard to move quickly. Water sloshed onto the floor as she hurriedly climbed out.
Yesterday morning she’d left in a hurry, but there was no reason to leave the toilet seat up.
She hurried into the bedroom and grabbed the key to her gun safe from her jewelry box and retrieved her Ruger LC9s. Her heart thumped crazily as she checked the chamber and the magazine. Locked and loaded.
Her fingers hovered over the 911 buttons on her cell, but she hesitated.
Had Cole been over and simply used the bathroom? He was the only person who had a key to her house.
She dialed his number. Once again, the call went to voice mail, but this time she was pissed. “Look, Cole, this is getting old. I need to talk to you. Did you come to my house when I wasn’t here? I know it sounds stupid but the toilet seat is up and I didn’t leave it like that. Call me, okay? I’m about to search the house with my gun drawn, so I’m dead serious about you telling me if I’m worrying over nothing.”
She shoved the cell into her pocket. Was it Eddie? Was he working with this killer in DC and had they figured out where she lived? Another horrible thought occurred to her. What if Cole hadn’t been ignoring her calls? What if he’d been hurt or kidnapped?
Her mouth lost every drop of moisture.
Should she call the cops? And say what? That the toilet seat was up? That she’d had a row with her brother and he was ignoring her calls? He was a grown man not a kid. They’d laugh at her. She looked down at her damp robe. And no way did she want another confrontation with law enforcement dressed in nothing but damp cotton, but she wasn’t putting the gun down long enough to get dressed.
She calmed her heart. She could do this. She could search her house for someone hiding. She started by looking carefully under the bed and in the wardrobe, but there wasn’t anyone there.
Her grip tightened. What if Eddie jumped her and overpowered her…the idea made her heart tie a knot in itself. With her martial arts training she could protect herself from most threats but his size and the intensity of his hatred might give him the advantage if she lost the gun.
So don’t lose the gun, girl.
She flinched as her daddy’s voice echoed in her head. But then she remembered she’d always been a better shot than Eddie and she hadn’t spent the last twenty years rotting behind bars. She’d spent those same years learning how to defend herself.
She concentrated hard, trying to sense another human presence over the deafening rush of blood through her veins. Nothing. Maybe her sixth sense was nonexistent. She thought about calling Mac in case this was Eddie, but she didn’t want him to think she was pursuing him, especially after the way he appeared to despise his ex-wife for chasing after him.
Plus, he was investigating a series of murders.
Sure, he’d want to be informed if Eddie turned up here, but if her only clue was a toilet seat she didn’t think he’d have much patience with her. She didn’t want to look any more foolish than she already did in front of ASAC Steve McKenzie. She edged out of the bedroom and opened the door to the spare room which served as the office she rarely used.
At first glance, everything appeared normal. But one of the drawers wasn’t closed properly and Tess wouldn’t have left it like that. She was a little OCD. She moved into the room and opened the top drawer using the edge of her robe. The small supply of cash she kept in the house was still there.
She gritted her teeth and checked the rest of the house, but no one was hiding, nothing else was disturbed and the doors were locked.
Was it possible she was imagining these things? The file? The toilet seat? Was she going mad?
What sort of burglar would leave cash but use the bathroom? The sort who broke in to commit rape and murder. Or, the imaginary kind conjured by nervous women who lived alone.
Deflated and unsure whether or not someone had actually been in her house, or if she was just starting to lose her mind, she went back upstairs. The bath had lost its appeal. The scent of lavender failed to calm her nerves.
She pulled on clean pajamas and turned off all the lights except for the one in the foyer that shone up the stairs. The light gave her a sense of security, however false. She lay down on her bed, welcoming its familiar embrace. She was exhausted and needed a decent night’s sleep.
She toyed with the idea of calling Mac to let him know she was back in DC, but it sounded like a pathetic come on. He already knew she was attracted to him—duh—and she hated that. The desire to hear his voice almost overwhelmed her good sense and told her more than she wanted to know about her feelings for the guy.
He’s only interested in you because of who your relatives are.
Sadness pressed down on her. The camaraderie of last night, before they’d messed it up by messing around, was like a glimpse into how other people lived. Happy people. Normal people. People in loving relationships. Which was crazy as they were virtual strangers trapped in a relationship anchored in murder, hatred and bigotry.
But…
She sighed tiredly and slipped her Ruger onto the bedside table next to Mac’s business card and Ellie’s bookmark.
The idea of having Steve McKenzie in her life was a dream, not a reality. Her reality was fighting for survival and protecting her little brother as best she was able. If Eddie came for her, she’d be ready for him.
She thought of her beautiful sister and what Ellie had endured. She’d shoot the bastard for that alone.
But she couldn’t afford to shoot first and ask questions later. If she made a mistake they’d lock her up and throw away the key. Innocent until proven guilty was not for the likes of David Hines’s only surviving daughter and she had no desire to end up in prison.
She closed her eyes, her heart still pounding in her chest. At this rate, she’d never get any sleep.
Think of something else.
Mac’s dimples flashed through her mind, along with that irreverent grin that made his eyes sparkle devilishly. And the way his voice flowed over her in that slight country drawl he tried so hard to tone down. And the way he’d touched her, relentlessly pushing her to a place no man had ever taken her before.
She smiled at her inner Star Trek nerd.
Gradually her heart rate calmed and her breathing deepened. Seconds later she was fast asleep.
* * *
Mac strode into the crisis action room in SIOC where the task force had set up and felt as if he’d been away for months rather than thirty-eight hours.
Media was going nuts talking about this string of hate killings in the heart of DC. Last time people had been this scared the Beltway Snipers had been picking off innocents going about their daily business. Ten people had died. Three injured. One of the shooters had been seventeen years old. The other one had received the ultimate punishment and Mac hoped this current killer joined him in hell sooner rather than later.
But the media attention wasn’t getting them any leads. Instead it was raising the level of hysteria to white hot, which wasn’t helping anyone.
“Trettorri gonna make it?” Walsh intercepted him on the way to the breakout room Mac had taken as his office.
“He’s alive,” Mac told him.
The brunette he’d met at the firing range caught his eye and sent him a smile. He nodded back and Walsh’s gaze locked on her with interest.
“Friend of yours?” Walsh inquired.
Mac’s love life was already complicated enough. “Knock yourself out.”
Only a few agents were scattered around the place. Mac checked his watch. Dinner time. He’d grabbed a sandwich at the hospital and eaten on the hoof. Then he’d visited the crime scene, driven by his apartment and picked up his old notebooks, some clean clothes and repacked his go-bag before updating the Executive Assistant Director of Criminal Investigations on what had gone down in Idaho. He’d worked with the EAD before during the Minneapolis investigation. The guy was fine as long as you followed the rules. Apparently, Mac was in danger of falling off that particular bandwagon.
Now he was starving again. If he was lucky he might persuade one of the other agents to pick him up a burger and fries. And then hopefully he could ask someone else to go work out at the gym for him afterwards.
He rolled his shoulders.
“Second bullet skimmed his skull but didn’t penetrate. Probably knocked Trettorri out cold,” Mac told Walsh. “Wound bled everywhere. Shooter must have been in a hurry or they might have noticed the guy was still breathing. First bullet did a lot more damage. Straight through the left lung, and a fragment ricocheted inside his body and nicked a vein. Guy lost a lot of blood.” Mac was a universal donor and the nurse had allowed him to donate blood while he was waiting to talk to the doc. “Surgeon is optimistic they’ve fixed the damage from the bullets, but worried about a possible brain injury from the concussion. They are keeping him in intensive care until they think he’s stabilized. We have agents on his door to make sure no one finishes the job.” When he’d gotten to the scene the evidence had already been collected to protect it from the rain that had started to fall. The area had been decimated for trace by first responders doing everything they needed to save the congressman’s life.
“I had an agent drive two .40 caliber casings to the lab,” Walsh told him, “so Harm could get to work straight away.”
“Any other evidence?”
“No witnesses, no camera surveillance. It’s like the shooter knows exactly where all the cameras are and chooses kill locations based on that.”
Mac had been thinking the same thing.
“But looks like Trettorri grappled with someone and their DNA is potentially under his fingernails and on his clothes. An agent helped a nurse collect clothes and nail scrapings while Trettorri was prepped for surgery. It all went to the lab with the casings.”
“Nice work.”
Hernandez brought him a coffee and put the mug on his desk.
His brows quirked at the personal service. “Thanks, Libby.”
“Figured you’d need it. You can’t have gotten much sleep last night,” she said by way of explanation.
He kept his expression blank.
“ASC Gerald wants to be informed when the next team meeting is so he can either go home or attend,” she told him.
Mac booted up his computer. “Tell him ten minutes. I want everyone caught up on the latest. I’m about to email everyone.” Supposedly he had an assistant somewhere, but she was nine-to-five and he hadn’t met her yet.
Hernandez nodded and left. Mac sent out a general email notice for everyone in the vicinity to get there ASAP. This was a rapidly evolving case and he wanted to know if he’d missed anything. He checked his texts. Nothing from Tess about whether or not she’d made it home to DC safely.
He told himself she’d be fine, but he was worried about her.
Friends watched out for each other, right? Except, after crossing the line from friend to lover last night he’d decided to distance himself, remember? And she’d obviously decided the same thing, so calling her to make sure she made it home blurred those edges of their relationship again and confused things. The whole thing was confused enough.
Dammit.
“What you got there?” asked Walsh, nodding toward the heavy, plastic bag.
Mac grinned evilly. “My notes from the Pioneer investigation. I want you and Carter to go through them looking for anything you can find on Hines’s manifesto. He also called it the “Pioneers’ Pathway” and the “Road To Revolution” depending on who he was talking to and how much liquor he’d drunk.” Mac searched his drawer for the tablet he used to take notes on. “From memory, Hines said they’d do a series of symbolic murders allowing their enemies to be marked and their ‘army’ to be put on notice for the upcoming war. After the murders, he called upon his followers to bomb either the White House or Capitol Hill—the target varied depending on whatever stuck in Hines’s craw that day. I’ve urged increased security and vigilance at all potential sites.” The callous disregard for human life, the law and the Constitution this country was based upon had always chilled him. The idea some of his fellow Americans might want to follow this bullshit agenda made him want to hit something, preferably something that was capable of hitting back.
Walsh took the notebooks from him. “Great. Can’t wait to try and decipher your scrawl.” Mac’s handwriting wasn’t pretty. “I’m not going to find a book of love poetry in this lot, am I?”
Mac leaned back in his chair and grinned. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more ugly and—”
“Shut the fuck up.” Walsh snorted.
“I wonder what would have pissed off the Pioneers more,” Mac said wryly. “Me being an undercover cop or the fact I could quote Shakespeare. Pretty sure they’d have shot me either way.”
“I still can’t believe I didn’t know you worked undercover on that case. Did it seriously suck?”
Mac thought back to the year spent at the compound. “That’s the scariest thing, sometimes it didn’t suck. Sometimes it felt good to be part of a close community that seemed to care about each other. And then the hatred would spew out of nowhere, against blacks, Jews, abortionists—basically anyone who didn’t look and act and think like they did. One minute they’d be offering you freshly baked rolls dripping with homemade butter, next they’d be hissing about how ZOG were taking over the world and needed to be stopped.”
Walsh grimaced.
“It was like living in Satan’s version of Little House on the Prairie.”
“You did good work, Mac,” Walsh told him.
“Clearly not good enough.” Mac sighed and leaned back in his chair, wondering what the hell he could have done different. “I need to call the marshals for an update.”
“Still no sign of Eddie?”
“Not that I’ve heard. I’m personally hoping he became a Popsicle somewhere in Idaho. You track down the girlfriend from before he was incarcerated?”
Walsh nodded. “I think so. Woman named Brandy Jordan visited him regularly during the first year he was inside. She visited a few more times over the years but much less frequently. I sent a lead to the resident agency in Coeur d’Alene to check out her last known address pulled from the DMV.”
“I want her brought in for questioning and I want to talk to the agent doing the questioning. She might know where Eddie is or who his friends are.”
“You sure Eddie’s sister isn’t hiding anything?” Walsh was watching him guardedly.
Mac held the man’s stare, understanding what the guy was really asking. “She didn’t help him escape, Dylan. He almost broke her neck when he grabbed her yesterday.”
“That could have been a setup.”
“Maybe if there’d been any love lost between them as kids, but there wasn’t. The two older brothers were sexually assaulting the older girl and I witnessed Tess running out of the barn when Walt tried to do the same to her. Tess hated them both. They were both swine—and that’s an insult to pigs.”
“We a hundred percent certain Walt is dead?” Dylan Walsh asked.
“Unless the guy at the morgue lied.” Mac pulled a face.
Walsh still didn’t look convinced about Tess’s innocence. The worst thing was Mac wouldn’t have been either, but he’d been there. He’d lived it.