Do You Trust Me? (24 page)

Chapter Fifteen

“Gun!”

“Gun!”

“Gun!”

Multiple voices
screamed the warning word. Standing on the far side of the podium with a
bewildered Sully, McCall heard Rina scream, saw her tackle Laurel and both of
them fall to the ground.

The two security
details hustled both the president and the governor back to Marine One, shoving
them into the helicopter and signaling the pilot to take off at once. As the
rotors split the air with their peculiar whupping sound, Texas Rangers fanned
out to keep the seated dignitaries in place as people scrambled to see what was
happening.

In the same instant,
he saw the women fall, McCall spotted Gage with the gun in his hand. The gun
everyone had spotted. Stupidly, instead of pretending to answer the emergency,
he was trying to shove it into his pocket.

“Get Gage,” McCall
yelled to Addison and Pedrosa, who were standing nearby.

As Gage tried to melt
into the crowd, two sets of hands clamped down on him and dragged him toward
the van.

“Cuff him and check
his pocket,” McCall shouted as he sprinted toward Rina and a screeching Laurel.

As Rina pressed Laurel to the ground, the woman squirmed beneath her and she heard the discharge of the
gun Laurel clutched in her purse. Rina’s ears rang, and the stench of cordite
filled her nostrils. Her side felt as if a burning poker was pressed against it,
and breathing was becoming more difficult.

“Get her off me,” Laurel yelled. “She’s suffocating me.”

Rina clung to her
with desperation, even as the scene around her began to blur. She twisted her
fingers in Laurel’s hair, gripping hard until she felt hands moving her and Laurel being pulled out from beneath her.

“Rina?” McCall turned
Rina over, his hand searching for entry wounds. Blood stained the side and
front of her blouse, blood that was pumping out of her in a steady stream.

“She’s...shooter,”
Rina gasped before her eyes fluttered closed again.

“Get your fucking
hands off me,” Laurel shouted, kicking at her captors.

“Shut the hell up.”
McCall was in no mood for histrionics. “Check her purse,” he snapped at the two
Secret Service agents who held her handcuffed body between them in a firm
grasp.

Despite her
struggles, one of the agents yanked her handbag from her shoulder and dumped the
contents on the ground. Everyone’s eyes widened at the gun that fell out. One
of the men lifted it with his handkerchief, dropped it into a plastic baggie
someone held out, and handed it to a waiting technician.

“Pedrosa, tell the
Service to get her the fuck away from here.”

“My pleasure,”
Pedrosa said. “No wonder that bitch wanted to come along with us. We were her
entry into the secured area. I’ll bet she’s been planning this since the
announcement was made a year ago.”

Laurel
was spitting fire,
screeching curses at them in three languages as they dragged her toward a
waiting vehicle.

McCall tore off his
jacket and wrapped it around Rina, pressing hard against her side to stem the
frightening flow of blood. He felt as if an hour had passed instead of seconds,
and he winced at the blood draining from her body.

“Where the hell are
the EMTs?” he yelled.

Around them, people
were moving in all directions. The Rangers were trying to disperse the
dignitaries in an orderly fashion, and the San Antonio police were backing the
crowd up as far as they could. The slap-slap-slap of leather on pavement
signaled the hurried pace of the Secret Service agents as they rushed to help
contain the scene. But for McCall, the only thing that existed was the woman
lying so pale and still before him.

“M-McCall?” Her voice
was barely a whisper.

“Right here, Dusty.” His
voice held an edge of panic he couldn’t push away.

Tears began to leak
from her eyes.

“D-did you say…Dusty?”

She saw him try to
smile. “That’s what John called you, isn’t it?”

“God...damn it,
McCall
.”
She bit back the pain
.
Arrogant man.
“
Why did you
wait...so long to use...nickname?” She hesitated while another spasm of pain
washed over her. “John knew...trust anyone who used it. But I can give...to you
now.”

Pain struck deep as
she moved her arm. Gritting her teeth, she reached up and yanked the locket
from her neck, chain and all. With waning strength, she pressed it into McCall’s
palm.

“For you,” she
whispered. “From John.”

“I’ll just take that.”
Sully reached over McCall’s shoulder and retrieved the locket, its shiny silver
surface now sticky with blood.

“We’ve got her.” The
EMTs from the ambulance that always stood at the ready for the president were
at McCall’s side, trying to move him away.

“Hold on, Dusty,” he whispered.
“You’ll be all right. I promise.”

Then Sully was
pulling McCall away, leading him to the side. “Let them help her, McCall. They
know what they’re doing.”

“Damn it to hell
anyway.” He gritted his teeth. “That bastard, Gage. Good men dead because of
him, and now maybe Rina.” He tried to wrench free of Sully. “Let me get to him.
Let me just get my hands on him.”

“Pull yourself
together,” Sully snapped, although not unkindly. “You’re a professional. We
need to handle this in the appropriate way.”

“We’re taking her to
St. Luke’s,” one of the EMTs called.

Then the ambulance
doors slammed shut, the siren began its mournful wail, announcing the start of
its urgent journey, and the vehicle moved out into traffic.

McCall stood where he
was, rooted to the spot, staring at the bloody locket. Sully took out a sharp
pen knife, inserted the tip between the two halves of the locket and pried it
open with great care. A tiny microchip fell into his hand.

“Here’s our smoking
gun, if you’ll pardon the bad pun.”

“She was wearing this
that night at John’s place,” McCall told him. “I guess she’d already found it
and put it on. Wearing it was probably the only thing that saved her life. Brechtel’s
man had no idea it wasn’t an ordinary piece of jewelry. And damn it, she’s had
it on ever since.”

“Scared to give it to
the wrong person is my guess,” Sully mused. “But at least we have it now.”

“Too late,” McCall
said in a dull voice.

“No. In plenty of
time.” He signaled to Noel Stennis who was waiting off to the side and handed him
the locket. “Get this to Washington pronto. Have the Rangers take you to the
airport and use my plane. Call the pilot while you’re en route. Let me know as
soon as you’re in the tech lab.”

“You’re not leaving?”
Noel asked.

Sully shook his head.
“Not yet. Too many loose ends here.”

Noel took off at a
run.

“I have to get to the
hospital,” McCall said, his voice filled with pain. If Rina died...shit. He
didn’t even want to think about that. If only he’d been smarter. Taken a harder
look at everyone around her. Damn, damn, damn.

“I know. Come on, I’ll
take you. Just give me a minute to wrap up the scene here.”

McCall stood numb and
unseeing as Sully spoke to the men in charge of Gage and Laurel, giving orders
and leaving instructions. After that, he had a short conversation with Ron
Giddings. Then he was back, leading McCall to a vehicle behind the Alamo. A DPS highway patrolman stood beside the open doors.

“St. Luke’s,” Sully
told him,

He nodded. “I’ll hit
the siren.”

Then they were off.

****

McCall had always
hated hospitals. This one was no exception. The smell of antiseptic mingled
with the odor of death, making his stomach heave and his nerves dance. He was
in the surgical waiting room, watching Sully speak to two gowned doctors, then
nod and move back to him.

“She’s stable,” he
told McCall. “They had to give her a lot of blood in the trauma center, but
they stabilized her enough to take her to surgery.”

“Damn it. I never
should have left her. But Gage was so insistent...”

“Stop beating
yourself up over it.” Sully ran his hand through his thick gray hair. “All of
us were fooled. Gage, for God’s sake. Of all people. Good old Mr. Rock Solid.
None of us could have foreseen this.”

“She’ll die and it’s
my fault,” McCall said in a dull voice. “Just like before.”

He couldn’t get away
from the picture of her body lying on the concrete, blood pumping from her
wounds, her face whiter than snow. Nausea clawed at his throat, and his heart
felt as if a dull knife had pierced it.
He
should be the one lying in
the operating room, not her.
He
was the one who deserved to die.

“No, nothing like
before,” the older man insisted. “Rina wasn’t out to betray you.”

“But she didn’t trust
me.” McCall could hardly stand the misery that gripped him. His ego had made
him play a game that might cost Rina her life. No wonder she didn’t trust him. He
should have just given her the damn clue to begin with, and all this could have
been avoided.

“Why should she?”
Sully asked.

“When John called
Rina that night you can bet he told her where to find the locket. I was the
only one who knew the key word to use in an emergency. I was the one he trusted,
and I betrayed that trust.”

Sully frowned. “I don’t
understand.”

“I’m such an arrogant
ass I had to do it my way. I wanted to make her feel safe enough with me, trust
me, so she’d tell me without any screwy code words or shit like that. Tell me
because it was
me
. Don’t you see?”

Sully’s face was
emotionless. “I’d say that’s a breach of protocol, and it certainly would have
made a big difference to have that chip a lot sooner. But it still wouldn’t
have told us which member of the team was the mole, would it? The one responsible
for John’s death?”

“But-”

“But nothing.
I
might
even have been the mole. I don’t know what was going on between the two of you,
but I’d say Rina’s a smart cookie. She managed to separate her emotions from
reality, which as you know is damned hard to do. And which, I might suggest, is
something you used to be able to do.”

“But-”

“But nothing. You can’t
take her lack of trust personally, no matter how involved you are. This is a
different ball game. She didn’t want to make a mistake and hand over the
evidence to her brother’s killer.”

“But if I used the
code name earlier...”

“You can’t do that to
yourself. Besides, we might have moved prematurely and not caught them all. You
need to keep that in mind.”

“They planned to use
Rina from the minute the Alamo event was announced, didn’t they?” McCall felt
sick to his stomach at the thought.

Sully nodded. “That
was supposed to be their failsafe if they couldn’t find another way to get at
President Brandon.”

McCall scrubbed his
hands over his face. “But if we’d known ahead of time, I never would have let Laurel go to the Alamo with her. Be that close to her.”

“And we never would
have caught Brechtel’s pet assassin. Who would have suspected someone like Laurel? She might still be out there waiting for her next assignment. That alone is worth its
weight in gold.”

“Don’t soft soap me.”
McCall ground his teeth. “I did everything wrong here. If she dies it’s my
fault. You should kick my ass from here to Washington.”

He didn’t care what
Sully said. He’d put the entire mission in jeopardy because he couldn’t be
straight with Rina. Couldn’t let her know he was John’s contact. If the
President of the United States had been assassinated, if Gage and Laurel had
not been exposed, it would have been through his own stupid pigheadedness.

Images of him and
Rina together kept assaulting his mind. Somehow she’d reached into his soul,
into the frozen place where he kept his heart, and melted the wall around it. Knowing
what was at stake, if he’d really wanted her to trust him he should have spent
more time telling her what was really in his heart instead of drawing lines in
the sand and telling her it was nothing but sex. Who the hell would trust a man
like that? No wonder women said men thought with their dicks.

Now he might never
have the chance to tell her how he felt. Let her know that somehow, some way,
he wanted to make a life with her. Not that she’d be willing at this point. He’d
promised to take care of her and what a joke that turned out to be. If she died,
it would be no one’s fault but his.

All he could do now
was pray.

“Drink this.” He
looked up at the sound of a voice. Pedrosa stood beside him with a cup of
vending machine coffee. “It’s hot and you need to get it into your system. Come
on.”