Elite Ops: Easy Target Part 18

"Oh my G.o.d," murmured Anna, looking away from the computer. There must have been a window just out of sight of the camera. "Six police cars are in the driveway!"

Leland shook his head, the expression on his face so sad. Running with Anna was not an option for them with Zach there, too. The boy's health was still fragile after his heart transplant in November. Leland kept talking as if the inevitable wasn't coming. "The only person in this scenario that makes any sense to have bugged me is my old boss at the DEA, Ford Johnson."

"The man in charge of the AEGIS investigation?" asked Bryan.

Leland nodded as his eyes hardened. "The man I couldn't reach the day of the Colton bust." All h.e.l.l was about to break loose, but Leland was incredibly calm.

Nick came back into view with Jennifer, and Bryan knew. They were all going to surrender. There was no other way, with their women there and the boy with them. Giving Bryan all the information they could before they were taken was the best option.

"The Colton bust?" asked Sa.s.sy.

"This must have started back then," said Leland, talking faster. "Staring at that phone outside, some things clicked into place for me. Juan Santos was the informant for that Colton bust that went so horribly wrong. The location was wrong, the supposed perp was wrong. I told my immediate boss at the DEA not to believe Santos, but he wouldn't listen. When I tried to reach Ford Johnson to talk with him about the situation, he wasn't available."

"Juan Santos," echoed Sa.s.sy. "Santos was my informant on the trafficking routes in Africa and the Venezuela connection."

Leland nodded unhappily. "Doubtless he was working both sides. Santos has always gone to the highest bidder. It follows that Ford Johnson was working with the cartels. It all makes sense in a way. With his position within the DEA, Johnson had insider access to know when each and every bust was going down. He could easily have played both sides."

In the background, Bryan heard the doorbell ring and someone shouting, "Police! Open up."

"There's more we could piece together, but we're out of time," said Leland. "Be very careful. Ford Johnson's connected in a huge way."

"Get in touch with Gavin if you can." Nick was typing on his phone as he talked, never looking up. "I'm texting him now, but he'll need the details from you. Don't forget what else I told you about at the cafe in Skikda. About my father. There's a link there."

"I remember," said Bryan, reeling to take it all in.

Could this really have had something to do with Reese Donovan's murder ten years before? Suspecting a DEA officer of being dirty wasn't the same thing as proving it. They were a h.e.l.l of a long way from proof.

"You really think it reaches back that far?" Bryan asked.

"I don't know, but if Vega was to be believed, someone else was calling the shots when Reese died. It would make sense if that someone calling the shots was playing both sides."

The pounding on the door became louder. Bryan nodded. "We'll get you guys out of jail as soon as we can."

Nick looked up then and shrugged. "Oh, I think we're about to be there for the duration. Just get word to Gavin and Risa."

"Of course," said Bryan, hating the inevitability of what was to come. "I'm . . . I'm sorry. This is some vacation I set you up for."

Nick shook his head and smiled. "Not your fault, man."

"Bear! Bear!" called Sa.s.sy at the same time. "Can you make this thing record?"

Bear jogged over from the kitchen and leaned over Bryan to hit a couple of keys before straightening. "It's recording now."

Out of sight of the screen, they heard the sound of splintering wood as the door burst open. Nick and Leland didn't move.

"What do you need, Officers?" asked Nick. "We're happy to cooperate."

Bodies filled the screen as multiple officials poured into the room and started barking orders. Bryan counted eight different officers and an alphabet soup of agencies, if the navy-colored windbreakers were any indication-DEA, FBI, even ICE. Several people were shouting, but Nick and Leland remained calm. Bryan could see Nick being handcuffed and heard Anna's protest as Leland's crutches were taken away.

"He needs those," Anna cried. "He recently had surgery and can't put all his weight on that side yet."

"Well, he's s.h.i.t out of luck today," said one of the ICE officers, pushing Leland away from her.

There was a scramble as Leland stumbled against the sofa and fell forward. Without his hands to catch him, he headed down like a felled tree, straight toward the coffee table.

Anna screamed at the officer. "Help him, plea-" The sound was cut short as the computer was knocked from its perch and Bear's monitor went black.

Jesus. Bryan clenched his hands and gritted his teeth as feelings of helplessness and rage swirled inside him.

Sa.s.sy sat watching the screen with tears running down her face. "What's going to happen to them?"

Bryan shook his head. G.o.d only knew what would happen to his friends. They'd been arrested because they'd been trying to help him. He and Sa.s.sy were wanted for murder, and the man they suspected of framing the entire AEGIS team was in charge of the investigation.

December 28 Africa GAVIN SAT IN the hotel room, staring at the text message from Nick. This was the cherry on the cake of his s.h.i.tty day. He and Risa had found Elizabeth Yarborough . . . or rather, what was left of her.

She'd come d.a.m.n close to making it out of Africa alive. At least he a.s.sumed that was the case, if the location of the ma.s.s cremation gravesite was any indication. Witnesses from an aide organization in Sierra Leone reported that a young white woman matching Elizabeth's description had been in their village before she had succ.u.mbed to Ebola.

But no one could confirm seeing her body after she'd died. That wasn't unexpected. She'd most likely been cremated, along with fifty other villagers who'd died the same week. Forensics testing wasn't going to be possible.

h.e.l.l, at this point travel wasn't even possible, but Gavin was working on it. He wanted to speak with the aide workers face-to-face.

The entire continent of Africa was in a justifiable white-hot panic over the Ebola outbreak. There was no way to get the proof Sa.s.sy Smith needed to save her brother. But even without Yarborough's body, the circ.u.mstantial evidence was compelling. There just weren't that many young white women missing in Africa who would have been wearing a Peace Corps T-shirt along with University of Texas gym shorts.

He needed to let Sa.s.sy and Bryan know what he'd found out, despite the fact that the current evidence was only hearsay and a.s.suredly not proof enough to bring the Yarboroughs closure or to help Trey Smith with anything other than further heartbreak in his court case.

Then there was the message from Nick: Need help from Risa. About to be arrested at your cabin with Leland, Anna, Zach, and Jenny. Bryan wanted for murder.

Jesus. When had it all gone to h.e.l.l?

Before Kat had died or after? The last time Gavin could remember sleeping through the night had been what, three months ago? No, maybe six. He couldn't recall. It was sometime during Kat's last remission, before the long slide into the horror show of her last two months.

G.o.d, he was tired, and he had been for so d.a.m.n long. What was he doing here? How did he think he could possibly help?

He had no f.u.c.king idea. He just knew that he had to do something. If he stopped moving, the grief overwhelmed him. So Gavin made sure he never stopped moving.

And despite his efforts, his life and his livelihood were simultaneously circling the bowl. He was struggling with major depression. There was a warrant out for his arrest in the U.S., and he was on the verge of sleeping with the woman who'd been his lover before he married.

So here he was, at one of those major fork-in-the-road points of life. Was he going to make the hard choice or take the easy way out?

He knew what he should do. And he hated it. He strode to the adjoining room to show the text to Risa.

"Hey. What's up?" She was wrapped in a barely there robe, and her hair hung in dark wet ringlets all around her face and shoulders.

"They've got trouble back home."

"What kind of trouble?" She sc.r.a.ped the hair away from her face and bent over at the waist. They weren't shy around each other, and she treated Gavin more like a brother than a former lover at this point. Their whole setup here felt wrong and simultaneously so right that it scared the c.r.a.p out of him.

"Nick and Leland are being arrested at my lake house as we speak. Bryan and Sa.s.sy are wanted for questioning in the murder of a DEA agent in South Carolina. It's time for you to go home."

Risa stopped in the process of wrapping her hair in the hotel's threadbare towel. "You sure? I thought you were going to try to get to Sierra Leone to investigate the information you just got about the Yarborough girl."

"I'll do it on my own. If you don't leave Algeria now, you may have trouble getting home, depending on what happens with the quarantines."

"What about you?" Risa asked with her husky voice.

He looked at her, really studying her, and felt the slow burn he always did when he looked at Marissa Hudson for more than a few moments. Like staring at the sun, gazing at Risa for too long had always singed him a bit.

Lovers long before Marissa had introduced him to Kat, they'd peeled the paint off the ceilings of quite a few bedrooms together. But once Gavin had met the woman who would become his wife, that was over. He'd taken one look at Kat Deveraux and he'd been a goner, head over heels.

That should have made his current relationship with Marissa awkward and weird as h.e.l.l. But since Risa had made it more than clear she never wanted to marry him, they had been okay. Comfortable to the point that they'd all remained very good friends, with him and Marissa even opening their security consultant business together.

Because even though Marissa had never wanted a permanent s.e.xual relationship with Gavin, business-wise they were a perfect match, and the physical didn't enter into running AEGIS. Thank G.o.d.

Yet slipping back to that old pattern and comfort would be entirely too easy right now, and completely unfair. Because Gavin was hurting like he'd never hurt in his life. And the thought of taking solace in their physical relationship, no matter how brief, was incredibly seductive. But he wasn't that big an a.s.s. At least he hoped he wasn't. Until now, anyway.

He cleared his throat. "They need you back home. To get their b.u.t.ts out of jail if nothing else."

She flipped her head up and twisted the towel, tucking the edges under in a move that puzzled and fascinated him at the same time. He never could quite figure out how women managed to do that thing with the towel.

"What makes you think my b.u.t.t won't end up in jail as well?" she asked.

"You're too quick and your connections are too good. Whoever's behind this would have to have an awful lot of clout to put Senator Hudson's daughter in the pokey." He grinned to soften the message that he wanted her to leave.

She gave an indelicate snort. "I wouldn't count on that. What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to Sierra Leone and try to confirm the information on Yarborough."

"You really think that's possible . . . or even necessary? She's dead, Gavin."

He stood. "Maybe."

She stared at him without speaking, and G.o.d help him, he felt like squirming.

He swallowed. "Okay, probably. She's probably dead. I don't have much else to do right now, since going back to the U.S. is off the table."

She studied him a moment longer but never moved close enough for him to feel she was being the least bit inappropriate or suggestive.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

He gave a half smile. "Define okay."

"Hmm . . . That's what I thought."

He shook his head. "Risa, this is hard as h.e.l.l. I miss Kat every minute of every day. My only remedy is staying busy. Getting arrested would be disastrous for me because I wouldn't be able to move around and do something to keep my mind off how bad I f.u.c.king hurt. I'd be stuck, unable to think about anything but the pain. I can't handle that yet. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to handle that. So yeah, I'm going to try and find out what happened to Yarborough. Was she really trafficked here from Mexico? And if so, how did she end up in a ma.s.s grave of Ebola victims?"

Risa was listening, and not disagreeing. "Where will you start?"

"I've still got contacts here from my DEA days. I'll get into Sierra Leone somehow. For now, I need you to go home. They need you."

And that was true. The AEGIS team needed her to work her magic and get them out of jail. He knew she wasn't happy about leaving him, but it was time.

They didn't need to be together. They didn't belong together. An intimate relationship at this point in both their lives would be disastrous. They had just enough history together to screw each other up but good.

So she had to leave. Now. Before he did something they'd both regret, something that would make it impossible for them to work together anymore.

She tilted her head and studied him a moment longer. "I've known you a long time, Gavin. I never figured you for a coward."

He shouldn't have been surprised that she'd figured out what he was thinking. But she had. Stunned and a little embarra.s.sed, he didn't know how to respond. Then the opportunity was lost when she turned and headed for the bathroom in that slow saunter that had him wondering why in G.o.d's name he was sending her away.

She paused in the doorway and glanced back over her shoulder with a sad smile. "Don't worry, your virtue would have been safe with me."

His laugh was wistful, rueful. "Perhaps. But yours wouldn't have been with me."

He didn't wait for her reply as he headed back to his own room to make arrangements for her flight home. He simply shut the adjoining door with a firm snap.

Chapter Twenty.

December 28 Evening Bear's cabin Sa.s.sY SAT IN stunned silence, unable to believe what had just unfolded on the screen in front of her. What was happening to Nick, Jennifer, Leland, Anna, and Zach right now? Would they be all right? Were they safe?

What were she and Bryan going to do? She knew what she could do. A story. And not just any story but one that an editor would take and run with.

"Bear, are you sure you got this recorded?" she asked. "How far back did it start?"

He was looking straight at her when she asked, so she caught the hesitation in his eyes. She suspected that under the beard there was a flush in his cheeks.

"I recorded the whole thing," he said.

"But . . . What?" He'd only come over at the end of their video conference and hit record.

Bear put his hands in his pocket and shrugged. The blush was undeniably there. She could see it on his cheekbones and forehead. Despite his size, the man looked like a little boy who'd gotten his hand caught in the cookie jar.

"You never know when you'll need something. This conversation seemed really important, so I recorded it. If Bryan hadn't needed it, I would have erased it afterward."

Bear leaned over the computer screen and hit a couple of b.u.t.tons, and the last few moments of the chat replayed: Leland and her discussing Juan Santos and the mention of Ford Johnson, Nick telling them to call Gavin to get help figuring this out, the sound of the authorities beating on the door.

After that the audio was garbled because there were so many people talking at once, but it was clear what was happening. As Leland fell, she could see the look of horror on Anna's face. The screen froze there.

Sa.s.sy fought to detach herself from the nightmare of this happening to people she knew. She had to see it strictly as a news story. It took a few moments to unhook her emotions, but years of practice got her there.

Yes, Howard, her editor, would love the story.