Set Up With The Agent
Her eyes narrowed briefly as she wondered if she was in fact paranoid.
“You’re a very strong woman, Beth, but you still need to talk to someone.”
She glanced up. “Are you firing me?”
“No. I just want to be sure that the next time we meet, you’re here for the right reasons. I can help you, but only if you let me.”
ONLY MINUTES LATER Beth buttoned the heavy, wool coat over her navy-blue suit and pulled on gloves before pushing open the office building’s exterior door and stepping out into the cold night. As the early-November wind cut through her, Carmichael’s words lingered in the back of her mind.
She’d always considered herself to be tough and competent. During the sixteen weeks at Quantico, she’d physically and mentally outperformed most of her class, even those with military or law enforcement backgrounds.
But in a single night, that had all changed. She’d gone from tough to frightened. And now, nearly four months after she’d escaped the trunk of a burning car, she still felt trapped, as if everything around her was going up in flames. Her career. Her relationship with her father.
She couldn’t afford to look weak, though. Not if she wanted to keep her job. And not when she took the stand at the Rheaume trial. If the prosecution lost there, getting a conviction on the connected attempted-murder charge was going to become even tougher. How was she going to live with herself if the man who had tried to kill her wasn’t made to pay?
She crossed the now-deserted street. Though it was just past seven-thirty, there were few lights on in the surrounding buildings. Which wasn’t surprising since most of them were private medical offices.
Her footsteps rang out sharply. The little bit of snow they’d had earlier had melted, but now with nightfall, the moisture had refrozen, creating an extremely thin shield of ice. Not enough to make driving dangerous, but enough to make walking a little trickier, especially in pumps.
She headed into the parking garage. During normal business hours there was an attendant at the entrance, but the enclosure was now deserted.
As she stepped around the barrier bar, a red Beemer came down the ramp, headed for the exit. Out of habit, she reached inside her jacket to check her weapon, but then remembered she’d locked it in her trunk.
Seeing the woman behind the wheel, Beth relaxed. For the past few months, she’d done a lot of looking over her shoulder, waiting to see if Rheaume would try to stack the deck in his favor. It was just another reason that she was constantly on edge, and why she refused to take the antianxiety medication. And the reason she’d be armed at her next appointment despite Carmichael’s office policy. There was a difference between paranoia and vigilance.
As she passed the elevator doors, she glanced at them but didn’t slow. She’d managed to ride up in the one at the office two days ago, but at the moment she didn’t feel like trying it again.
If the outside temperature had seemed frigid, inside the garage was even worse. She slid her gloved hands into her pockets. A few cars—a green Taurus, a blue Explorer and a white Escalade were clustered near the entrance—but the rest of the lower level had cleared out. Unfortunately, it had been full when she’d arrived, so she’d been forced to leave her car on the second level. She hiked up the ramp.
Several of the fluorescent lights overhead were out. As quickly as she looked up, she diverted her gaze from the reinforced-concrete ceiling. For some reason even in this reasonably wide-open space, she felt as if all that weight was pressing down on her, as if she’d be buried beneath it. Inhaling sharply, she forced her hands a little deeper into her pockets.
She was fine. Absolutely fine. The claustrophobia was getting better. Maybe it was resolving more slowly than she wanted, but she just needed to keep pushing herself.
Reaching the top of the incline, she spotted her red Taurus off to the right, but instead of walking toward it, she stopped in her tracks. A white Chevy van with heavily tinted windows had been backed in next to the Taurus. Her fingers closed around the car keys in her pocket. There had been a maroon Honda in the slot earlier and quite a few empty spaces near the elevator.
She scanned the rest of the second level and, finding it deserted, studied the van again. Something just didn’t feel right. With this level pretty much empty, why would the driver choose to park there? And more important, why go to the trouble of backing in?
The front seats were empty, but that didn’t eliminate the possibility that someone was in the backend, waiting to roll open the side door, waiting to pull her inside when she tried to reach the driver’s door of her car.
Should she bail?
And do what, though? Use her cell phone to call a cop? What if she was wrong about the van? What if in this one instance she actually had taken that downhill slide from cautious to paranoid?
If so, calling Baltimore PD would have been a bad idea. Once the cops realized she was a fed, there was very little chance it wouldn’t get back to Monroe. Or that he wouldn’t use it against her, claiming that the incident further demonstrated her inability to do her job.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Think. No one had followed her here. She was certain of that. And for the past few months she’d been careful to avoid any hint of a pattern in her activities—she never took the same route, never scheduled an appointment on the same day. But all three of her sessions with Carmichael had come at the end of the day…
And then she realized if Rheaume had sent someone after her, bailing now wouldn’t stop them. There would be a next time. One she might not see coming until it was too late.
Better to confront it now.
As a blast of frigid air screamed through the garage, she strode purposefully toward her car, a plan already formulated. She wasn’t going to let them win—not the Monroes or the Carmichaels, and definitely not the Rabbit Rheaumes.
Keeping her eyes on the van, her thumb worked the automatic trunk release on the key fob. If anyone was in the van, they obviously were waiting until she walked between the two vehicles. Otherwise they would have already made their move.
The raised trunk would offer some protection while she grabbed her weapon. And if she was wrong, if the van was empty, she’d just get in her car and go home. Soak in a hot bath. Forget she’d nearly made a fool of herself.
She was already leaning into the trunk when she heard the nearly silent footsteps behind her. Her fingers closed around the holstered SIG-Sauer, and she had it free of leather when the sharp pop echoed. White-hot heat streaked just above her right temple.
Diving toward the side of the car, hoping to use it as cover, she brought the SIG-Sauer up, getting her first look at the shooter—a stocky male in dark clothing. She fired two quick rounds. Both slammed into his chest.
He kept coming.
A loud crack sounded. The taillight next to her shattered. Small bits of plastic exploded, some of it hitting her in the face, causing her to blink. Causing her third shot to miss.
As a bullet punctured the fender next to her, she squeezed the trigger again, this time going for a head shot.
Like a tethered pit bull hitting the end of its chain, the guy’s forward momentum vanished, and for the briefest of moments it was as if both time and motion stood still. His expression changed, bloomed from one of aggression to chagrin and then to stunned disbelief.
And then time kicked in again, and he was flying backward.
Chapter Two
Beth got to her feet, her weapon trained on her attacker as she checked out the darkened garage for additional signs of danger.
Nothing.
No hint of movement or sound. But then, she hadn’t heard her attacker until it was nearly too late. Where had he come from? Why hadn’t she seen him sooner?
Her pulse scrambled uncontrollably. No matter how fast her lungs worked, she remained winded, gasping for air.
Keeping her weapon leveled at the body on the ground fifteen feet away, she forced herself to focus.
Part of her training had involved role-playing, learning how to survive a situation like the one she’d just been involved in, one where taking the time to weigh options could get you killed. And it was that same training she fell back on now, her attention flipping between her attacker and her surroundings.
She kicked aside the weapon he’d dropped—a .45 Smith & Wesson automatic—before closing the last few feet and getting the first clear look at his injuries. His right eye was gone.
As she reached down to check for a pulse—something she knew was a wasted action even before she did it—the warm scent of fresh blood reached up and grabbed her. Swallowing the bile that piled in her throat, she straightened.
He was younger than she’d first thought, midtwenties maybe. He wore a black ski cap pulled low over his ears. Seeing no sign of hair, she assumed his head was clean shaven. The rest of his clothing—jeans and sweatshirt—were also black.
When her gaze made it as far as his feet, she realized the reason she hadn’t heard him. He wasn’t wearing shoes. Who goes barefoot in November? In freezing temperatures?
Still facing him, she backed away, fumbling for the cell phone at her waist. She couldn’t stop her hand from shaking, so it took several tries to disengage the phone from the clip.
After placing calls to 911 and to Bill Monroe, she sat on the bumper of her car to wait. It was unlikely that Monroe would show up. When she’d reached him, he’d been at some type of social function.
For the first time, she allowed herself to really think about what had just taken place. She’d taken a life. And no matter how prepared she’d thought she was to do it, how certain she’d been that she could live with it, she suddenly realized she might have been wrong.
Inhaling sharply, she tried to dislodge the growing tightness in her chest. She couldn’t fall apart now. Deep breaths. Cleansing breaths. She’d killed a man, and there was no going back.
An hour later Beth was still sitting on the bumper of her car, but she was no longer alone. Minutes after she’d placed the 911 call, the first responding officer—a street cop—had secured the area and taken down an initial report.
Two Baltimore detectives and the crime-scene unit were the next to arrive. And less than two minutes ago, three FBI special agents from the Baltimore office had shown up. At one time she’d considered them office allies. But ever since Monroe had tagged her for termination, they’d distanced themselves from her.
It was always the office relationships that were the first to go. Next would come the stripping of security clearances. So far she’d dodged that bullet, for the same reason she still had a job—because they needed her testimony. Testimony that would carry more weight coming from a special agent whose security clearance hadn’t been downgraded or revoked.
She lowered the wad of fast-food napkins she’d found in her glove box and had been pressing to the side of her head. The gash just above her right temple was a minor one, but like most head wounds, it had bled pretty profusely at first. She glanced down at her shoulder. The white silk scarf was probably a lost cause, but because the coat she wore was navy-blue wool, the bloodstain wasn’t particularly noticeable and would probably clean up okay.
Her gaze returned to the three special agents and two detectives who were still conversing near the ramp. What were they discussing now? Just the shooting? Or were her coworkers eagerly explaining to the detectives that her appointment tonight had been with a shrink and not some other type of doctor?
Beth shifted her attention away from them and onto the dead man. His body remained uncovered. At least the shooter had a name now. Leon Tyber. The shoeless hit man. But even if he’d forgotten footwear, he’d remembered to wear body armor, the reason the first two shots to his chest hadn’t stopped him.
He’d come prepared to take me down swiftly and efficiently. But instead, I killed him.
As another sharp breeze blew through the structure, she shivered. She wasn’t really dressed to hang out in a cold garage. Like everyone else at the scene, she was waiting for the medical examiner to show up and release the body for transport to the morgue. Until he did, she couldn’t move her car without destroying evidence. Of course, if she’d been really eager to go home, she could have called a cab and come back tomorrow to pick up her car.
Hearing footsteps, she glanced up. Special Agent Tom Weston, a seventeen-year FBI veteran, walked over and propped his backside next to hers. He was tall, well built. In her early days in Baltimore, he’d been somewhat of a mentor to her. Up until a year ago, she’d considered him a friend.
Hands clasped in front of him, he looked over at her and then motioned at her injured head. “Maybe you should consider a trip to the emergency room to get that checked out.”
“It’s just a crease. I’m fine.”
“What you are,” Tom said, “is lucky.”
Frowning, she refolded the napkins and rested them against her scalp again, trying to ignore the now throbbing headache. Tom’s comment didn’t surprise her. It did however sting more than she would have expected. “What I am is good at my job.”
“I didn’t mean to suggest—”
Her eyes narrowed. “Of course you didn’t.” But they both knew better. Recently her accomplishments and skills had increasingly been downplayed. “And the fact that I’m not included in the Friday-night get-togethers doesn’t mean a damn thing, either.”
Beth knew she was venturing into areas that would only serve to further damage her relationship with Weston, a man she had once held in great respect.
“You’re shutting me out,” she said, and glanced down, not wanting to meet his eyes, not wanting him to see how much his actions had hurt her. “I didn’t expect that.” She looked over at him. “I actually thought you would be the only one in the office willing to back me up.”
“Damn it, Beth.” Tom grimaced. “I have two kids already in college and another one starting next year. I’m not about to put my job in jeopardy.”
“There’s a name for that, Tom. Careerism. The practice of protecting one’s career. At the cost of one’s integrity.”
When Tom shifted his gaze to the group of men near the ramp, Beth sensed he was looking for a reason to leave her, to rejoin the others. And at the same time she realized even if he’d been going about it very cautiously, he had been trying to be somewhat supportive. At least for tonight.
“I’m sorry, Tom. I’m not being completely fair here.”
He rubbed his face, suddenly looking even more exhausted than when he’d sat. “You have nothing to apologize for.” He studied her, a deep furrow between his brows. “But why didn’t you come to me before going over Monroe’s head?”
She balled up the bloody napkins. “Like you said, you have kids in college. I don’t.”
“But you had to know that you were risking your career. That Monroe wouldn’t hesitate to blow you away if you said anything about his screw-up.”
“He didn’t give me a choice.” Even she heard the edge of anger in her voice. “It was a viable lead, and he didn’t assign it. And because he didn’t, terrorism got another payday.” Beth realized the other men were watching them now, and lowered her voice. “I took an oath to protect and defend this country,” she said. “Not keep my mouth shut.”
Tom nudged her shoulder with his. “You always were a damned idealist.”
“So were you,” she offered with a sad smile.
He nodded. “Back when I could afford to be.”
“What did Monroe have to say when he called you tonight?”
“Just that I was to head up the investigation and he’d talk to you in the morning. There’s nothing for you to worry about. It was obviously self-defense.”
He glanced toward where the other men were still talking. This time she didn’t think it was because he was looking to escape her. But then his facial expression suddenly changed, went from one of fatigue to near anger. “What in the hell is Mark Gerritsen doing here?”
Surprised to hear the name, Beth followed Tom’s gaze, certain he must be mistaken. Unfortunately, he wasn’t. At six-three and deadly handsome, Special Agent Gerritsen was easy to recognize even from where she sat. Currently he was talking with the other two FBI special agents and the two detectives.
She frowned. Why would the FBI’s leading counterterrorism specialist have any interest in what had taken place here tonight? In a simple shooting?
Mark suddenly broke away from the other men and walked toward Tom and Beth. When he reached the dead shooter, he stopped to examine the body.
Beneath the beige trench coat, Mark Gerritsen wore a dark suit. The collar of his white oxford-cloth shirt was open, and his hair looked as if he’d plowed his fingers through it more than once.
Not so amazingly, as she watched the FBI’s best-of-the-best straighten and walk toward them, her thoughts had nothing to do with national security, and everything to do with the last time they’d met. A meeting where she had come off as completely foolish and sophomoric. A meeting she was hoping he didn’t recall.
But it probably hadn’t been all that memorable for him. During her sixteen weeks of new recruit training, he’d been her counterterrorism instructor. There hadn’t been a female in the class who hadn’t been in lust with Mark Gerritsen, her included. After all, when it came to aphrodisiacs, power coupled with intellect, looks and honor was damn potent.
Back then he’d been newly divorced and had a couple of kids. Was that still the case?
Tom had stood as soon as he’d seen Gerritsen, but she waited until he reached them to get to her feet.
Tom held out his hand, his expression anything but welcoming. “Gerritsen, let me introduce—”
Mark’s gaze connected with Tom’s briefly before immediately shifting to Beth. “We’ve actually met.”
It was only when he extended his hand to her that she realized she still held the bloody napkins. After quickly shoving the wad into her pocket, she shook his hand, lifting her gaze to his face at the same time.
His eyes were brown, and at the moment the brows were drawn down tight over them. There was a rawness to his features—eyes that were deep set, a nose that wasn’t quite straight, a mouth that rarely smiled. But when it did, there was a dimple just to the left of it. She’d seen it on only one occasion—the one she was hoping he’d forgotten.
“I hear you had a rough night,” Mark said.
“Oh, I don’t know.” She tried for a confident tone. “All in all, I’d say mine was better than Leon Tyber’s.”
Mark’s lips shifted toward a smile, but it never actually appeared. He now glanced over his shoulder at the body, too. “At what point did you discover he was wearing body armor?”
“When my first two shots didn’t stop him.” If he was impressed, it didn’t show.
“How many rounds total?” He seemed to be studying her a little too intently, and she again wondered what his interest could be in the shooting. She couldn’t imagine Tyber having any connection to terrorism.
“He got off three, I fired four.” She was aware that Tom still stood beside her and that there was some animosity between the two men. She wondered about its origin.
“And you think Rheaume hired him?” Mark asked.
She paused. How would he have known that? Then she realized the other agents had undoubtedly filled him in. What else had they said? “It went down like a hit.” She took half a step backward. Somehow it suddenly felt as if he’d invaded her space. “Not to mention the fact that street punks don’t usually carry twelve-hundred-dollar weapons and wear body armor.”
“What makes you so certain it isn’t linked to another case?”
“Because the Rheaume case is the only one I’m involved with.” She wasn’t about to elaborate on the reason that it was her only one. If he didn’t already know about her current employment problems—something she figured was fairly unlikely since that kind of thing tended to get around the Bureau pretty quickly—she saw no reason to enlighten him. To make herself look worse in his eyes.
“What brings you here?” Tom asked.
Mark’s mouth tightened. “Perhaps you could excuse us, Tom. I need to speak with Beth.”
Those words took her by surprise. Especially since she’d assumed he was there to see one of the other agents or even Tom. What would Mark Gerritsen need to discuss with her that he wouldn’t want to talk about in front of Tom Weston?
Tom glanced at her. “Are you okay here?”
What was he asking? Why did he seem so hesitant to leave her with Mark? Was it concern for her? Or was he simply worried she’d do something to make their boss look bad? And that as the senior special agent at the scene, he would somehow be held responsible?
“I’m fine.” Those two words were quickly becoming her new mantra.
Mark waited to speak until after Tom walked off. “Fine might be an overstatement. If you haven’t already had someone look at your head, maybe you should.”
“Thanks for the concern, but I’m okay. And I’m curious about what would bring you here tonight.”
Mark turned his back to the breeze. “I just came from trying to see a friend of yours.”
Hands shoved deep into the pockets of her coat, she leaned against the car fender, even more perplexed. “What friend?”
“Rabbit Rheaume.”
The name took her by surprise. “Really?” Glancing down, noticing the ripped-out knee on her pantyhose, she immediately lifted her gaze again. She wanted to look more confident, more together than she felt. “I plan to pay him a visit tomorrow. To give him the good news about Leon Tyber.”
Mark stared at her. “You’ll find him at the morgue.”
Chapter Three
Mark followed Beth into her small bungalow. It hadn’t taken much to convince her to let him bring her home. Or to control the conversation during the drive. They’d covered the recent weather and a number of other unmemorable topics. And the only time she’d brought up Rheaume’s death, he’d suggested they wait until they reached her place. Her agreement had come in the form of silence.
Just inside the door, she stopped to disarm the security system and to turn on the foyer and living room lights, but then kept moving. “Make yourself comfortable. I’m going to put on some coffee.”
“Sure.”
As she walked on through to what he assumed was the kitchen, he didn’t follow. He wanted to give her some space. Even if she wasn’t displaying any of the obvious signs of distress, she was still coping with it internally. He recalled the first time he’d used lethal force, the way his hands had shaken for hours afterward. How, for nearly a week following the incident, even when he hadn’t been thinking about the shooting, his hands would suddenly start to tremble again.
Turning, he checked out the living room. Though the house and neighborhood dated before the 1940s, the inside of the home had been decorated with an almost loftlike starkness. Lots of metal and wood and bright colors.
He glanced at the red chair and hassock in front of the unlit fireplace and found himself wishing he could afford the luxury of just sitting, of sharing a cup of coffee with a woman without having to interrogate her.
Unfortunately he couldn’t do either of those things. He had a meeting in Boston in the morning, and in the meantime he had a job to do.
The kitchen light went on and then there was an extended stretch of silence where he was left to wonder what she was doing.
After several minutes, he finally took half a step toward the kitchen. “Can I help?”
“No,” she answered in a voice that was an octave higher than usual. “That’s okay. I’ve got it.”
“How long have you lived here?”