13

When Jake and the others arrived at TelTech, the police were still sweeping the building. The buzzing morass of official activity outside didn’t prepare them for the eerie silence inside. No one knew where to turn on lights, so their flashlights joined a dozen other dancing, flickering beams around the dead. Added to this was a sick feeling in the pit of Jake’s stomach at the violence.

Had Phoebe participated in this carnage? It didn’t seem possible that she or Dewey Hyatt could have done this. He hadn’t known Phoebe long, but he’d tracked Dewey off and on for years. Until Ollie’s recent demise, never once had there been any sign of violence. And Phoebe? Did he want her to be guiltless? Was that blinding his judgment?

“This isn’t right.” Bryn slashed her beam back and forth over the scene as if it was a sword that could cut out the sight. “This isn’t their style.” Her lights stopped on the three guys not in uniform. “Who are these guys?”

“That one asked Phoebe for a job in her bar and got himself arrested. Estes PD could probably ID him.”

Bryn looked interested, but he could tell she didn’t know what it meant either.

Before Bryn could respond, Luke joined them. “They took the security tape with them.” He rubbed his face wearily. “I knew one of the guards. He was retired PD. Wife, kids, grandkids.”

Jake shoved his hands through his hair, the sick feeling growing until it started up his throat. Be embarrassing if he had to puke his guts. Hadn’t done that since his first serial killing crime scene—a killer who was into torture. He swallowed hard and took a couple of deep breaths.

“Do we know what exactly they were after?” Bryn asked.

Luke shook his head. “We’re waiting for the owner and,”—he consulted his notebook— “some guy named Barrett Stern who’s in charge of security to get here.”

“Hate to be him,” Jake observed, glad for the change of subject.

“No shit.” Luke shook his head. “What a mess.”

“And yet...” Bryn did another sweep with her light. “...Not.”

“What do you mean?” Luke asked, his frown deepening as he did his own sweep.

“No bullet holes in the walls. Both sides appear to have had remarkably good aim during a pitched gunfight.” She showed them the walls with her light.

Jake looked at Luke. “Downright amazing.”

Luke nodded thoughtfully. “Downright.”

“Phoebe? Come on, girl, snap out of it.”

The voice was Dewey’s, but he seemed to be a long way away. Between her and him was this throbbing pain that seemed greatest, but not limited to her head. There was also a sense of motion, as if they were bouncing forward. A metallic creak and downward lurch vibrated through all her pain zones and narrowed the gap between them. “Don’t make me take you to the hospital, girl.”

A jerked stop, another creak, then she felt her hand taken and patted. Something cold and wet on her face. She crawled up out of the fog and opened her eyes. Dewey loomed over her, two worry lines cutting deep furrows between his eyebrows.

“What happened?”

“I bounced you off the rope.”

“Oh.” Memory returned in painful chunks. She touched her head. “I hit a branch or something.” She took the cool rag he’d used on her brow and applied it to the swelling lump. “What happened to those guys who were after us?”

Dewey grinned. “They had a rough ride. Tried to slide down after us and caught the rope on fire. Last I saw, they were limping off into the night.”

Phoebe grinned. It didn’t hurt, so she decided to sit up. That did hurt. A lot. But it didn’t kill her, so she didn’t stop. “How’s our hornet’s nest?”

“Nicely stirred. Want to take a look?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.” Phoebe tried out her arms and legs. They worked. “I’ll change while you drive.”

Dewey scrambled back into the driver’s seat but looked back to say, “Make sure you clean off the blood.”

Phoebe grabbed a mirror. There was indeed blood, a thin line creeping down her temple toward her jaw. Not to mention a lip getting fatter and a shiner in the making.

“Great.”

Dewey grinned. “There’s an ice pack in the first-aid kit.”

He put the van in gear and turned it toward TelTech and their hornet’s nest.

Hornet’s nest was a serious understatement, Phoebe decided. She’d think they couldn’t get any more officials inside and then some more would come. Then the military. FBI. U.S. Marshals. It was a regular law-enforcement-rich zone. Enough to make a lady thief and her accomplice a little nervous.

“What’s taking him so long?” Dewey had started doing lame magic tricks with a pencil—when he wasn’t using it as a drumstick against the dash. Phoebe was about ready to shove it up his nose, when a murmur of sound and the beginnings of new activity outside the van distracted her.

Light from the rising sun began a slow creep across the scene as Peter Harding’s limousine nosed into the melee. It was immediately surrounded by the moderate mob of press who had been shivering over steaming cups of coffee in the predawn cold.

Exhilaration at having achieved their first objective filtered a fine clarity over the scene for Phoebe. It was as if all her senses had been heightened and expanded until she could see not only what was apparent but also what was hidden.

Because of her messy landing, Dewey suggested she play cameraman and hide her bruises behind a camcorder. She climbed out and did a slow camera sweep of the crowd as Harding emerged from his car and was immediately mobbed. Stern came around and tried to clear him a path with something less than courtesy. Phoebe hung back, going for the long view, while Dewey, as “reporter,” joined the pack. As Harding topped the steps, his face loomed in her tiny horizon. She used her zoom to frame his face and record the moment of her triumph. His mouth moved, but she couldn’t pick up his answers over the questions bombarding him from every side. She tightened her focus to just his eyes and felt a jolt, a sudden panic she couldn’t explain.

He looked exactly as he should, exactly like any man would who’d just been burgled. So why was a cold dread spreading out from her midsection? She stayed with him until he disappeared inside, then slowly lowered the camera and slipped into the rear of their van to wait for Dewey.

What was wrong with the picture?

She stowed the camera and scrambled forward, about the climb into the passenger seat when she saw Jake come out TelTech’s door, flanked by his brothers. She shrank back, but not so far she couldn’t see him. He looked sad, tired—worried. About her? She tried to hope not, but she wasn’t that noble. She wanted him to be worried about her. She wasn’t quite ready to cut that tie, to forget this past. Maybe she knew she never would. It went deep, she realized, as deep as her sister’s loss. He...mattered.

She leaned her cheek against the cool plastic of the seat. “Oh, Jake.” His name came out on a soul-deep sigh. As if he heard her, or felt her presence, she saw him stop. His gaze swept the crowd. She shrank back into the shadows, her heart pounding with bitter regret. He was never hers. She couldn’t lose what she didn’t have, could she?

“Something wrong?” Matt asked.

Jake rubbed his face to avoid answering the question. How could he explain the feeling that Phoebe was out there somewhere, watching the chaos she’d wrought? How to explain it when he didn’t believe she’d been responsible for the carnage inside? He felt like Jekyll and Hyde. Convinced that she and Hyatt were responsible for the run on TelTech but not the deaths. It was crazy. Insane. Madness.

Now he knew how Alice had felt falling down that rabbit’s hole. He needed quiet and a big pot of coffee while he sorted through the chaos, but all he was going to get was the coffee.

Maybe—he had a sudden chilling thought—he’d never feel peace again. What if the huge rip in his heart never healed? What if the marshal never got over the lady outlaw?

It would be dang ironic, he decided, trying to lighten his mental mood. It didn’t help much, but any improvement was welcome. As was any interruption. With a sense of reprieve, he met the approaching crime-scene tech halfway.

“What you got?” Jake asked.

“Their egress point.”

Must have started his life as a lawyer, Jake decided as he followed the guy around the building. With the sun peeking over the mountains, there was enough light to see the rope hanging limply from the roof. The tech held up the burned end for Jake to see. “Rough landing. I’ll bet that wasn’t part of the plan.”

Jake frowned. Another wrong note. Phagan and Hyatt’s ops were meticulously planned, right down to any surprises. “Where’s the other end?”

The tech led Jake to a stand of trees where the other end of the rope trailed from a rather battered tree. Jake picked up this burned end, but he was studying the broken branches. “Looks like someone made it down before the rope burned through. Any footprints?”

“We got two sets heading toward the road. Tire tracks toward the highway. And at least one set, maybe two, heading off into the hills. No sign of transportation that direction yet.”

Jake frowned. “We got a stolen cleaning van in the parking lot out front. I wonder why they split up and...” Why two cars? If they were planning to come out this direction, which the get-away vehicle seemed to indicate, then why the messy landing? Surely they’d have prepared for it?

Jake straightened. It was almost as if they were dealing with two separate events. But that was crazy. Or wishful thinking. If he peopled TelTech with two sets of thieves, that let Phoebe and her cohorts off the hook for murder.

He saw Luke crossing the lawn with Bryn and knew it would take more than gut feelings for him to let Phoebe off the hook for this. He’d need hard proof. Facts, not fancies. When the pair got close enough for him to read their eyes, he could see neither looked particular happy, and an air of tension clogged the air around them.

“What?” Jake asked, giving them both a wary glance before looking to Bryn for enlightenment.

“This just doesn’t add up,” Bryn said, her voice tight and tense.

“To?” Jake prompted, ignoring a frustrated sigh from his brother.

“A Phagan op.” She massaged her temples, either because they hurt or to clear her thoughts.

Or maybe both, Jake thought wryly. Either way, he understood. His head hurt and his brain did, too. Iron bands squeezing inside and out.

“It’s like—” she began.

“—we’re dealing with two different operations?” Jake finished when she didn’t.

She gave him a relieved nod. “That or our perps were a couple of Jekyll and Hydes.”

“Do we know what they got?” Jake asked.

Luke answered this one. “Some kind of super chip and all relevant research files. A total wipeout. Folks were pretty closemouthed but did admit that it was something in development for the military and was due to be turned over in a few days. All very hush-hush and very, very bad it’s missing.”

“Not something you’d want to go missing so close to announcing your candidacy for governor,” Bryn said. “That part of the crime scene, the research lab, is pristine. Clean as a whistle. No indication of how they got into the room, let alone how they able to log on to the computers. From what we can tell, the files were downloaded to someplace offsite, then a virus was introduced. And the one scientist who held all the pieces of the chip puzzle seems to have disappeared.”

Luke looked thoughtful. “That ought to up the street value on the chip.”

“If Phagan did this hit, it probably won’t show up on any market, local or worldwide. He uses the non-cash take for leverage against his target.” Bryn’s frown was puzzled. “I just wish we could connect Harding to Nadine Beauleigh. So far, he’s still squeaky clean. He thinks his scientist is the one who stole it, because he’s gone missing. Said something about the instability of genius.”

“You said they never go in shooting,” Luke said, ‘but we’ve got four dead guards and a missing genius.” He looked at Jake, his shoulders rising in a frustrated shrug. “What put you on to TelTech in the first place?”

“I got a tip,” Bryn said, with obvious reluctance.

“Reliable source?”

“Has been up til now.” Bryn looked at Jake, not at Luke, warning him to keep his mouth shut.

As if Luke sensed the holding back, his face turned grim. He opened his mouth, but before he could ask, they heard Matt’s voice on Luke’s radio. “Get in here. You gotta see this.”

Back inside TelTech, they stood back until the last bagged body was rolled out, then entered the security office. The row of televisions that had been monitoring activity in the various hallways and offices were all playing the same picture, so they didn’t have to crowd around one monitor to see.

The time/date stamp in the upper right-hand corner of the picture showed it was taken at two a.m. The silent alarm had gone off at 2:08 AM, according to the security company. On the monitor, Jake saw the guards watching the Broncos game on the television in the corner, putting the angle it was shot from in the opposite upper corner.

Jake looked up and saw a tech removing the A/C grill from that area and returned his attention to the last few moments of the guards’ lives. When it was over, he inhaled shakily. It had been a particularly nasty little scene.

He looked at Bryn. Maybe it was just the lighting that took all the color from her face. “How does it feel to be right?”

“Not as good as you’d think,” she said, managing a wan smile. “How come I keep thinking this was an inside job?”

“And who captured the feed?” This from Matt. “And how? Why are they sending it to us now?”

“Yeah, and where’s it coming from?” Luke asked.

“Probably some kind of satellite uplink that’s been planted in the computer. We’ll need to open it up,” Bryn said. She stopped, then asked, “Are we capturing this?”

There was a concerted leap to get a tape into the machine before a new loop began. Jake stepped back from the group, his thoughts turning in a new direction. He looked up as the tech pulled the grill away, revealing the camera secreted there.

Without stopping to think about it, Jake stepped around the tech until he was in full view of the camera and stared into it, as certain Phoebe was looking at him as he was that his chest had just gone too tight to breathe.

“Let me help you,” he mouthed.

Phoebe stared at Jake like a deer caught in the headlights. He knew she was there and watching him. Dang. He was good. Too good.

“Let me help you,” he was saying. Willing her with his eyes to listen and respond.

Damn it, she wanted to, more than she wanted to destroy Peter Harding. She stared at him, unable and unwilling to look away until the busy tech cut her connection with the room. She sat back with a sigh, reaching out to cut her uplink. They were bound to look for it next. It wouldn’t be easy, because Ollie did good work, but they would find it and attempt to track it back to them. That would take them on a trip around the world, but they say travel is broadening. She would have grinned but for the feeling Jake was still watching her.

Let me help you.

This was pathetic. She’d now joined Phagan in feeding the Feds leads. This was beyond pathetic. It was dangerous. She hadn’t even planned it, just acted on an impulse she couldn’t explain. Well, maybe she could. It would put more pressure on Harding, even if he hadn’t been the one to send in the thieves. The whole thing screamed inside job, so somebody on the inside was dirty, and it might as well be him.

That crime scene had to be confusing as hell. She couldn’t resist a slight grin at the thought. Lucky for her she’d accidentally recorded the shooting. She had no desire to be the object of a murder manhunt. Okay, so maybe she also didn’t want Jake to think she was a killer or involved with killers. Of course, he should know that. They all should. How long had Phagan been operating without a whiff of violence?

No one at TelTech would be able to hang the deaths around their shoulders either, since she had RABBIT and the tape recording. If nothing else, that would seriously muddy the waters. She pushed her chair back and paid a visit to the well-stocked mini-bar. Dewey had moved them from dirtiest dive to the honeymoon suite of Denver’s finest hotel, thank goodness. The amusing part? TelTech was picking up the tab. Dewey had found a corporate credit card in the safe with the chip.

She popped the top of a Coke and drank. Wiped her mouth with the back of her hand while her thoughts did lazy circles inside her head, eventually bringing her around to the question of who inside TelTech had been trying to steal RABBIT. Or was that why?

She went around the heart-shaped bed, walking across a carpet of palest pink, and picked up the chip Dewey had removed from the safe. She lifted it to the light. It looked ordinary. Innocuous. Unremarkable.

What exactly was RABBIT? Ollie had died before he could tell them what it was. What precisely was it supposed to do that made it so valuable to Harding?

She tossed it up in the air, caught it neatly. Maybe it was time she found out.

Peter Harding closed his office door with a sigh of relief. Talk about the hounds of hell. The press wasn’t going to go easy on him. Stern went straight for the bar and poured them both scotch, straight up. He handed Peter his and drank deeply from the glass he kept. Then he strolled over to the window and looked out.

Peter knew he would survive it. He had to. No, he was meant to. The storm would pass, and his troubles would be over, because RABBIT was gone. He tossed back half the glass, feeling the warm liquor rush into his bloodstream. “So far so good. When will your guys contact you?” Harding dropped into a chair, put his feet up on the desk, and held the glass up in a silent toast.

“I told them not to contact me for twenty-four hours, unless something went wrong. Just in case.” Stern turned from the window. “We may have a problem.”

“What?” He didn’t want to hear about problems, not when it was almost over.

“My guys weren’t planning to bail off the roof. There are other indications that someone else was here.”

“What indications?” Stern just couldn’t admit Harding’s plan had worked. How like him to try to rain on his parade.

“Who set off the silent alarm?”

“I thought your guys were planning to do that when they were done.”

“The alarm was tripped just after two. The timetable didn’t allow for it until nearly two-thirty. They would have been in the elevator when it tripped. And, no, they weren’t early. They couldn’t have been. I was with them until one forty-five.” He frowned. “That’s why it took me so long to get here.”

Peter got up and joined him at the window. Far below, officials swarmed in and out of his building. Soon he’d have to talk to General Hadley about his lost RABBIT. It wasn’t going to be pleasant, but it would get less so if RABBIT turned up on the foreign market. “If our guys don’t have it, then where is it?”

There was a knock at the door, then that FBI bitch—Bailey or something like that—stuck her head in.

“If you have time, there’s something we’d like you to look at, sir.”

Harding didn’t look at Stern; he just nodded and followed her out and down, down, down to the security office with Stern on his heels. He entered the room and found himself facing three men waiting for him, something oddly similar in the way they all looked at him.

“Gentlemen?” Dealing with low-level functionaries was familiar ground for him. He could feel his balance return as he returned their gazes with a practiced, worried one.

“This is Deputy U.S. Marshal Jake Kirby,” the woman said, pointing to a lanky man sprawled in a chair in front of the row of consoles. Kirby nodded at him. “And this is his brother, also a U.S. Marshal, Matt Kirby.”

Peter shook hands with him, tested his grip and found it as formidable as his hard gaze. “Marshal.”

“And this is their brother, Detective Luke Kirby of the Denver Police Department.”

“Quite the family affair, gentlemen,” Peter said, allowing himself a slight smile. “This is my director of security, Barrett Stern. Have you found who stole my chip?”

“Well”—Jake turned to the console and punched some buttons— “we’ve made a good start.”

Peter turned to the console, watched it flicker, then come alive. Saw the office, saw the guards. Saw them die.

He didn’t have to pretend to be shocked. “I need—”

He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get the words out. Stern pulled a chair forward and shoved him down. “Put your head between your knees.”

Peter didn’t argue. He needed a few moments out of sight of the barrage of eyes. Needed time to think. He didn’t get it. Above him, he heard one of the men ask, “Who do you think put that camera in that vent, sir?”