Rachel stepped out of the elevator into the FBI office just after eight the next morning. Traffic moving through Washington DC had been horrendous, but Bradley insisted it was better for blending in. Especially while riding in a government car that looked like every other government car, equipped with GPS tracking and two armed guards.
She gripped the strap of her laptop bag, slung it over her shoulder, and moved down the aisle between cubicles. Bradley walked right behind her, Alexis beside him. Like they had nothing better to do than play bodyguard to her.
Rachel stopped and turned to them. “I’m here now. Thanks for dropping me off.”
They’d gone all the way through security, getting passes to be up here. Surely they could have dropped her at the front door.
Bradley said, “Alexis is going to stay here today as well.” He eyed her like he was trying to figure out what she was hiding. Alexis’s study was a little less blatant, but it was still there. They’d probably worked out that she had been talking to someone out her window. Was she going to tell them who? No way.
Alexis spun around to face her husband. “I’m staying—?”
Rachel cut her off. “The FBI don’t want to babysit us.” They barely tolerated her being there, and only because she’d thrown around some “senator” weight. Mostly the agents treated her like she was about to have a total mental breakdown. She wasn’t sure if she’d prefer they knew she was scared to do much of anything, or go anywhere, until people quit trying to kill her.
Adrian strode over before Bradley could say more. “Ready?” His focus was on her brother.
“Ready for what?” Rachel asked.
Alexis sighed.
Rachel glanced between the three of them. “Someone explain. Right now.”
“It’s nothing,” Bradley said. “Geez.” He shot her a look, payback for what she’d said to him last night. Then he wandered off with Adrian.
Rachel swung around to Alexis. Before she could say anything, Alexis said, “He knows you lied to him last night.”
“And he’s still mad.”
Alexis nodded. “Was it Steve?”
All Rachel could think about were his parting words. She’d been trying to push it out of her mind all morning. But now there was no way to do that. It eclipsed everything.
That the president has been shot…
“What is it?”
Rachel shook her head. “I can’t talk about it.” Because if she did, that would make it more real. She wanted to believe it wasn’t true. That it couldn’t be true. But denial had never been her strong suit. She tended to get snippy instead, to cover the fact there was something she didn’t want to talk about.
Like confronting Bradley. “What is he doing with the FBI?”
Alexis said, “Adrian called this morning. They found another signal in with ours yesterday—someone else listening in.”
Rachel took a step back. “Is it… I…” She didn’t even know what to say.
Alexis’s face softened. “They’re going to take care of it.”
Rachel slipped her arm through her friend’s and basically dragged her to the conference room. She shut the door, then dumped her laptop bag on the table.
Alexis winced.
Rachel said, “What do you mean, ‘take care of it’?”
“Bradley is going with them, and they’re going to trace the source of the signal. They’re zeroing in on a location.”
“Forgetting the issue of how that’s even possible, because I wouldn’t understand all the techno-babble anyway, isn’t anyone concerned with why they are able to do this?”
“What do you mean?”
Rachel leaned against the edge of the table. “The blackmailer has someone in his employ who is a computer genius, right?”
Alexis nodded. “It’s the only way he’d be able to get into Double Down’s system. Not to mention all the other things he’s managed to do and find out.”
“So why do they think he would make a mistake now, at this point?”
“You think its trap?”
“They don’t?”
“I should—” Alexis took a step toward the door.
It opened. Bradley stuck his head in. “We’re heading out.”
“Rachel thinks it’s a trap.”
She nodded. “Also why are they letting you go? You’re not FBI.”
“I made a call. Adrian confirmed with my former commanding officer from the Navy. I’m vouched for.”
“So you get to play operator while we sit here wondering if you’re walking into a trap?”
“I’ll be fine.” He dragged her over, then dragged his wife over and pulled them both against him.
Rachel’s and Alexis’s eyes met, squished in the hug. They shared a look. Alexis said, “You should just tell him.”
Rachel pushed away from both of them and made a face. “Of course. Just put me on the spot, why don’t you?”
“I swear,” Alexis said, “You might be a US senator, but you act like we’re still in junior high sometimes.”
“It’s satisfying.” Rachel folded her arms. “And it keeps people guessing if they don’t know how you’re going to act.”
Bradley adopted the same posture. “I have one minute before I leave. Start talking.”
And tell him that Steve was supposed to assassinate the president? No way. At least, she was pretty sure that was what Steve had been insinuating. He hadn’t spelled it out in so many words, but what else could that mean?
“It was Steve last night?”
She nodded in answer to his question.
“We’ll talk more about this later.”
“Okay, Dad.” Their father had literally said that exact phrase to her years ago.
“Considering who he was, I take that as the highest compliment.” Bradley strode out, shutting the door behind them.
Alexis had tears in her eyes. She shook her head. “Can you guys even go an hour without bickering?”
“He started it.”
Alexis gave her a pointed look.
Rachel slumped into a chair. “I have work to do.”
Alexis said, “Need some help?”
Rachel eyed her former assistant. “Of course.”
Alexis smiled, and sat beside her. “It’s only a favor, naturally. You can’t afford my going rate these days.”
Rachel chuckled and entered the pin for her computer. “Married to my brother, I’m surprised he doesn’t have you stay in the kitchen all day making him those huge meals he eats. I’m surprised you’re not pregnant yet.”
Alexis choked on the sip of water she’d been drinking from that water bottle she kept in her huge purse.
Rachel’s eyebrows rose.
Alexis pressed the cap back on the bottle. “Um…how long do you have to wait before you can take the test?”
“Seriously?”
Alexis bit her lip. “Let’s get the work done first, and then we can find out.”
“Chicken.”
Alexis shoved her shoulder.
They got some work done, but they were also seriously distracted. Conversations Rachel might’ve had with Ellayna today were nonexistent, so evidently she didn’t have to worry about things being awkward. When she called in to her office she discovered the intern hadn’t even shown up to work today.
Rachel found an agent she recognized and mentioned it. He told her he would make sure the young woman was safe. The last thing she wanted was for Ellayna to have been hurt because of everything swirling around Rachel.
A couple of hours later, the office erupted in noise. Six men strode out of the elevator, including Bradley and Adrian. In the middle of the huddle was a man. Maybe in his fifties, he wore dark clothes and handcuffs. Adrian and the other agents escorted him past the conference room windows and down the hall.
Bradley opened the door to them.
Rachel said, “Is that the hacker?”
He nodded. “We got him. But he’s refusing to speak to anyone but you.”
Across town in a hotel lobby, Steve leaned on a cane. His hair was liberally sprinkled with gray, and he wore slacks with the belt far higher than it had any reason to be. The blue shirt was buttoned all the way to his throat which was covered with a film to make it look like he had wrinkles. His whole face itched from the stuff. His bushy eyebrows felt far too large and heavy.
He blinked, which shifted the colored contacts. He ignored that annoying sensation and hobbled forward on the cane and scuffed brown shoes.
“Sir, this is a restricted area.”
Steve looked up from his slightly hunched position and blinked at the Secret Service agent. Then he looked back, down the hall. He let out a, “huh” noise and then turned around, muttering. Not low enough the agent would be unable to hear.
He circled the ground floor of the hotel like he was totally lost. Clocked each of the Secret Service agents, and the plain-clothes local cops. The vice president was in a lunch meeting with someone whose name had been left off his calendar. He didn’t figure the man was stupid enough to meet with anyone who could directly tie him to the blackmail. But whoever it was, Steve wanted to know.
Just enough time to look him in the eye. Tell him he wasn’t going to shoot the president. Tell him not to touch anyone Steve cared about.
He wouldn’t mind a minute alone with the man, but didn’t figure that was going to happen. He couldn’t deny he hadn’t at least considered bringing the rifle the blackmailer had left at the house for him here. So he could shoot the vice president instead. The reasons for not following through with that idea were myriad, and he didn’t need to go over them all in his mind again. He hadn’t brought it, or any other weapon. That wasn’t part of who this identity was, so it wasn’t even a consideration.
But chief of the reasons he hadn’t gone through with the idea, was the look on Rachel’s face last night. The idea she would even think of him and the word “assassin” in the same context. Ever.
Even though he’d told her simply for the shock factor, he hadn’t realized what affect her reaction would have on him.
Twelve minutes of wandering around, plus another sixteen reading a newspaper in the lobby to cover the fact he was watching the Secret Service movement, and then two agents shifted. One lifted his hand, sleeve close to his mouth. Said something low. A couple of others moved to a new position.
The vice president stepped out of the restaurant at the center of the hotel. Secret Service agents moved into formation around him, and they trailed through the lobby to a hallway. They would exit out a side door where the motorcade waited.
Steve watched the restaurant door.
A couple of minutes later, a man wandered out. Steve left the cane propped against the chair and tossed the newspaper on a nearby table. He followed the man out the front doors and stayed ten feet behind him for two blocks before the man turned a corner.
Steve turned the corner as well, but stopped almost short of completing the turn. The man he’d followed had his gun out.
“What are—” He started at the sight of an old man. “Why are you following me?”
“A better question is, why are you meeting with the VP in broad daylight?”
The man blanched. “Steve?”
“Hey, David. How are you?”
David Sanders blew out a breath. He ran one hand through his hair. “Dude.” Like that was enough of an exclamation to cover everything.
Steve said, “I’m public enemy number one, and you’re his lunch date?” He paused. “Petey and Jerome are both dead.” He’d killed one, and Rachel the other.
David’s face fell. “I know…” He shifted his weight from foot to foot. At least the gun stayed by his side and didn’t come back up. It still concerned Steve. If this turned ugly, he had no way to defend himself. Dying would also solve a whole lot of problems, and not just for him.
It wouldn’t get Rachel completely out of danger, but it would help.
He said, “He’s using the house in West Virginia to pass weapons back and forth. We’re dying, David. What’s going on?”
“It’s complicated.”
“What was lunch about?”
“He just… I was supposed to, you know…”
“Assume I don’t know.”
David said, “I’m passing information back and forth. Making sure he knows what the situation is, and when he should be ready.”
Back and forth between who?
Steve said, “You sold out. Those aren’t the actions of someone whose whole family is being threatened.” Less leverage meant the target was given a smaller job. More leverage—like Steve with his business and all the people he cared about—meant he was asked to kill the president. “He got to you, though. Like he got to Petey. And Jerome.”
“And you?”
“I won’t do what he wants.”
David sniffed. “Then you’ll lose everything.” He made an explosion motion with his mouth and hands. “Gone.”
“I’m not going to let that happen. I’m figuring out a way to bring him down, that’s why I followed you. Because I need your help.”
David took a step back.
“You wanna be his errand boy? We’re the only ones left. Am I supposed to stand up to him alone?”
“I’m not interested in dying.”
“So you’ll make a deal and be his lap dog?”
David scrunched up his face. “I could kill you right now. Split, get out of town. Disappear. No opposition, no problems.”
“Until he needs someone else to get the president in their crosshairs and pull the trigger, and you’re the only one left alive.”
He paled. “The pres—” His voice died.
“You see why I won’t do it?”
“I guess some people wouldn’t mind if he was dead. I can see why you’d think twice, but why d’you have to be so moral about it?”
Steve said, “You want me to explain the intricacies of why we have different tasks? Because I don’t exactly understand it. Except that I’m a better sniper than you.”
“And a more well-known scapegoat,” David added. “Plus he gets to publicize the evils of private security contractors who think their skills mean they’re above the law.”
“Got the rhetoric down already?” Steve asked. “Then why did he try to kill my reporter friend? He could have fed her the line that he wanted out.”
“Nicola would never have gone along with it.”
“So all dissenters get dead?”
David shrugged. “Play your part, I’ll play mine.”
“I’m not going to shoot the president.”
“Then he stops playing with your girl, and it’s game over for her.”
Rachel would be dead?
None of this had been even remotely a game. At every step the blackmailer had enacted his plan. This was no different, not when he wanted the president of the United States dead. Because the moment that happened, the vice president would become the commander in chief himself.
Steve didn’t believe the vice president had been playing with Rachel. The blackmailer wanted her dead, and he’d hired trained operatives to do it. Members of Steve’s own team.
Steve had figured the fact there was nothing obvious between him and Rachel meant she would be safe from his enemies. That the things he’d done in his life wouldn’t make her a target.
“He knows everything.” Fear shone in David’s eyes. “Even what you never told anyone. So if you care even one bit about this woman, then do what he said. Because otherwise, she’s dead. And he’ll still get what he wants.”