Bombshell - Men of Sanctuary Series, Book Three (23 page)

For you, not the door.”

He attempted a smile, but it got caught halfway. “We should probably salvage the damn door. Make a coffee table from the wood.”

She withheld comment.

He moved his chair closer to the bed, gently caressed the lacerated fingertips that weren’t covered by the cast.

“Baby, why didn’t you tell me about the chain?”

She shrugged without thinking. That hurt. She winced.

“No time. If you didn’t leave, you were dead.”

MacBride lifted her fingers to his mouth, kissed them gently.

“There wasn’t a back-up timer, was there?”

Surprised, she cocked her head ever so slightly.

She spoke slowly, used as few words as possible. “Who discovered flaws?”

“Kamaka. The boy is a genius. He knew you’d catch on. What we didn’t know was what you would do, or could do, about it.” He looked away for a moment, couldn’t meet her gaze. He finally turned back to her, attempted a smile.

The smile didn’t work well, but she declined to mention it.

MacBride cleared his voice. “Apparently you chose the path of suicide bomber, which was not one of the options we considered. Silly us. An ER technician found the trigger device taped under your knickers when he took you to X-ray. Clever plan, that.

Kamikaze, but clever. Insane, but clever.”

Ignoring his observation, she hit the morphine button. It took a few minutes before she could continue. “Two bombs, coordinated the timers to blow at the same time. Might have been overkill. How did you find us?”

MacBride actually chuckled. “Heaven protect small town busybodies. We owe everyone a huge pizza party in the town square when this is all over. The short version: a group of us canvassed the entire town, then we compared notes. The only place that fit the ‘anything unusual’ criteria was ol’ buggy Chet Adderson’s dilapidated hunting camp.”

“Brilliant lads.” Keko coughed, winced. “You, Lucian, Adam … quite the team.

Y’know, you … awesome … SEAL. Navy dudes, fools to let you go … .”

The world suddenly became all warm and fuzzy as the pain receded. She slowly sank into a soft, fluffy, drug-induced cloud.

“Never let you go … .”

* * * * *

Will Chandler strolled into the hospital room, two fancy cardboard containers of coffee in hand.

At least, Keko was awake and coherent, which she felt was a definite improvement over her earlier, somewhat fuzzy, meeting with MacBride.

“Gee whiz, FBI Special Agent Will, what a surprise to see you. Who woulda thunk?” Her voice still croaked, but was somewhat improved.

He looked rumpled, as if he’d slept in his clothes. “Hey, kiddo. How are ya doin’?”

“Better than you look. At least I have excellent drugs. Haven’t you heard?

Morphine is my friend.”

She tried to grin, but it didn’t work well. “Damn, my face still hurts. Sorry.”

Chandler pulled up a chair, set the coffee on the bed tray, settled with a deep sigh.

“Don’t apologize to me. You’re the hero of the day. Well, heroine. A faceless, nameless heroine, never to be identified. To be honest, I don’t even know how or where to begin this crazy-assed report. Are you up to telling me what the hell happened? The short version, and please use small words.”

“First things first. Is that hazelnut coffee I smell?”

“Yeah. I thought a bribe might help.”

“I gotta know—how did you guys explain the explosion?”

“That part was actually easier than we thought. Mac reported to the little local newspaper that a person or persons unknown shot up a partially filled propane tank out at Buggy’s place, and the subsequent explosion took out everything. A substantial reward was offered, which will, of course, never be collected. Our guys set up a perimeter to keep out the locals, took whatever samples we needed. Got a bulldozer out there as soon as possible, pushed everything into the crater so the vehicles were covered, and the hole didn’t look so huge.

“Everyone is speculating about the perpetrators being a bunch of kids, or a wannabe hunter from the city. One helpful visitor even suggested the crater could have been left by an alien spaceship’s thrusters. We should take samples, examine them for traces of non-terrestrial fuel meant for interstellar travel. However, across the board, the general consensus is how lucky no one was injured or killed.”

“Clever.”

Keko had devised a simple method for holding a cup in her currently immobilized hands. Like a robotic device, she interlocked her fingertips and captured the container between the casts.

”
Mmm
. Boy oh boy, that tastes great. Thanks. So, you want the simple version, or the technical version?”

“The simple one, please. It’s about all I can deal with at the moment.”

“Okay. I was chloroformed at The Woodlands’ parking lot in beautiful downtown Catamount Lake by a fake history teacher, Professor Simms, a.k.a. Captain Perfect. He whisked me away to some moldy, disintegrating camp, forced me to assemble two of Smitty’s bombs at gunpoint. If I didn’t do it, my asshole captor planned to shoot me, then snatch up Kamaka.”

“Okay, so far that jives with MacBride’s account. Let’s get to the explosion part of the tale, if you would be so kind. Did you say two bombs?”

She nodded, then gave him a curious look. “Aren’t you gonna take notes or something?”

“Nope. Nothing gets recorded. Not until I hear the full story. Then, and only then, can I decide how best to handle the sheriff’s activities and his complete disregard for proper protocol, as well as explain the able assist from our lads at Sanctuary. I trust you’re okay with that?”

The small shrug that followed hurt, but she managed.

“I stalled as long as I could, until Captain Perfect pointed his weapon at my gut.

He said he’d shoot me if I didn’t cooperate, then haul in my second-in-command to take up the slack. I told him my partner never saw the original device, but he didn’t care. I couldn’t let that happen.”

She tried to get comfortable, but it was a lost cause. “We began to chat. I found out who our bad guys were. Then I learned what they intended to do with Thing One and Thing Two.”

“You began to chat? Just like that? Why do I believe there’s more to the story?

Okay, I’ll bite. Who were they?”

“Businessmen.”

“What?”

“Hey, you asked. A consortium of businessmen. Short and simple. A syndicate of manipulating financiers. Men in high places with boatloads of money, who didn’t want their fortunes to dry up if the conflicts around the world ended.”

“I don’t fucking believe it.” Chandler rubbed his forehead, as if he was working on the granddaddy of all migraines. “I just don’t fucking a-well believe it.”

She felt deflated. “Sorry, that’s all I have for you. I didn’t get names and addresses, but I did get the plan. No proof, other than what the wannabe blabbed to me—since the egotistical idiot assumed I’d be dead shortly. The upshot? No jihad, just greed.”

“Keko, I
do
believe you. That’s the problem.” He stared toward the window for a few moments. Took a gulp of coffee. Arranged the cardboard cup just so, on the tray.

Rearranged it twice more. “Damn, I could lose my job—but you deserve the truth. If this gets out … .”

She crossed her heart. “To the grave, Will. Nothing will ever pass these lips. Not ever. I swear.”

“I’d like to say it’s over, but that would be foolish. Your explosion apparently put a definite cramp in a really bizarre scheme to take this country down—which our security experts said actually could have worked. Could still work, I guess. Maybe not this time, or the next time, but eventually. NCS Special Agent Randall nearly lost her life a few months back, trying to deliver a flash drive containing details of the plan. She wasn’t aware of the data encoded on the flash drive. She’d be dead at the bottom of a gulley if it wasn’t for Adam Stone and Lucian Duquesne. Your Sanctuary hosts.”

“Lorelei?”

“Yes.”

“So, Captain Perfect actually told the truth? About taking out the Pres and Vice Pres, leaving the country in the middle of a total cluster-fuck?” Keko pressed the lever on the bed to raise herself. “The war in the Middle East, the conflicts around the world—you expect me to believe it’s all just business?”

“No. And yes. Take the real conflicts around the world, over territory and religion, that have been ongoing for millennia, then add instigators. We identified your Captain Perfect as George Ritter, a deposed financier, who had a reputation for spending much more than he ever earned. Guys like him are easy to turn—flash large wads of money, they’ll sit up and beg like a trained poodle. As much as I hate to admit it, our intel backs up his story.”

She began to tremble. “Damn.”

“Yeah, I know. We were
that
close to worldwide chaos—then you managed to blow up old Buggy Adderson’s camp, a dozen loyal jihadists, and one money-hungry turncoat.”

“I couldn’t have gotten all of them. Even I could tell they were just drones, grunts.”

“Correct. The devices were the linchpins to the plan, not the men. The guys you took out appeared to have been the delivery crews. The vehicles were mostly burned, but in the glove boxes, we found lightly toasted tour maps for D.C., and city maps for San Francisco, where the Vice President was scheduled to speak. The maps were marked with times and routes.

“After the blast, we immediately leaked a careful trickle of false data: the bombs were too sensitive, too unstable, the special timers failed,
blah blah blah
. With the device designer dead—the killing of whom the members of the consortium are probably kicking themselves in the butts over—the only other person with hands-on experience was unfortunately critically wounded in the blast and is not likely to survive.”

Keko gave him a wide-eyed look. “I’m critical? At death’s door?”

He nodded. “For the moment. Until we come up with a plausible cover story to keep you safe, to prevent some other jack-hole from trying to snatch you off the street again. Or take you out. Like they took out John, then Smith.”

Keko sucked down another swallow of coffee. “You
do
know the other side has their own explosives experts, right?”

He made a face at her. “Of course. We have quite the international list, built up over too many years of doing this stuff.”

“So, what’s to prevent them from building their own version of Smitty’s Doomsday Device, then trying it again?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. Except now we know the plan, but the bad guys don’t know that we know.”

Keko shook her head. Carefully. “Okay, this is beginning to sound like a really bad Inspector Jacques Clouseau spy plot.”

Chandler chuckled. “Yeah, I guess it does. Glennon Garrett is our go-to surveillance and intel guy, former Marine Recon, now a freelancer. He decoded the data on the flash drive after it was spirited safely out of the country, thanks to an assist—

albeit an unwilling assist—from Sheriff MacBride. Mac was conscripted against his will by Stone, Duquesne, and Special Agent Randall. Garrett, aided by Duquesne, has been working non-stop to direct subtle streams of misinformation to the right places, working with our government intel sources to heighten believability.

“You’ve given our boys enough ammunition, if you’ll pardon the expression, to have the bad guys chasing their tails for months, at the very least. If not longer.”

“MacBride? Our MacBride?”

“The very same. Mac handled the transfer of the flash drive. Stone, backed up by Duquesne, took out Agent Stanford, the NCS wannabe who attempted to kill Lorelei.

Stanford tried to take her out, twice. He ended up very dead. Harry Robson, a minor NCS supervisor and also Stanford’s handler, managed to get himself assassinated by the consortium within hours of Stanford’s death—or so we now assume—for failing to grab the damned flash drive.

“The intelligence community couldn’t understand why no one, at least none of the usual suspects, took credit for the hit. What Garrett ferreted out in the last week or so meshes with what you were told by your abductor.”

Stunned by the news, Keko hit the morphine button again, then lowered her bed.

“So, as Captain Perfect said, it wasn’t personal—just business.”

Will Chandler rose to leave, patted her hand as she drifted off. “Yup. Nothing personal, just business.”

* * * * *

“Kailani. Kailani, can you hear me?”

Boy oh boy, that stuff is stronger than I thought. Now my mother is appearing to me, in
full surround sound
.

Someone patted her scraped cheek.
Ouch
.

“Kailani?”

Keko tried to respond, but her voice wasn’t working much better than her vision.

“Mother? Really?”
Is that me? I still sound like a crow
.

“Oh, Kailani, thank goodness.” Her mother’s voice broke into a sob.

Keko tried to clear her voice, but the effort hurt. “Chandler? MacBride? I drifted off. Rude of me.”

A new voice entered her room, accompanied by the faintest scent of wintergreen.

Mmm. I could get accustomed to that
.

“Baby, not to worry, you needed your sleep. Sleep helps the body heal.”

MacBride leaned carefully over the bed, placed a gentle kiss on Keko’s forehead. He put a straw to her parched lips so she could sip iced water, but the skin around her mouth cracked and bled.

“Keep still. Your mouth and lips are all dry.” He rubbed lip balm soothingly over her mouth. “Effects of the chloroform. They must have hit you a bunch of times.”

He offered her the straw again, with slightly more success.

When the cold water eased her parched throat, she sighed.
I may live after all
.

“And who are you, young man, to take such liberties with my daughter?”

Keko saw her mother’s indignation rise as much as heard it in her tone of voice.

Damn, here we go, and I am so not in the mood for this
.

“Mother, may I introduce MacBride, sheriff of Catamount Lake, Maine.” The words barely clawed their way out of her throat. “MacBride, this is my mother, artist Aolina Hualami from Honolulu. She paints and sculpts primitive Hawaiian tribal art.