Double Vision (28 page)

Moving farther into the room, she located one of the leather wing chairs she had seen when JT had checked out the room with his flashlight, and sat down. Silence closed in on her. The sounds of panicked voices became muffled and distant.

The tick of a grandfather clock in one corner measured time. Minutes only, but sitting in the dark, it felt longer.

A footfall sounded. The door opened. Relief flooded her. For a split second she thought it was JT and she almost spoke, then a shadowy figure glided past her, close enough that she caught a faint whiff of masculine cologne.

Her stomach jolted. She had a glimpse of a peculiarly bisected aura, the murky red dissolving into black as he opened one of the French doors, stepped out into the garden and merged with the night.

She stared into darkness.
Alex.
He
had
been here and she had seen him, but only with her secondary vision.

Backing toward the door that opened onto the hall, she touched the jewel on her brooch and relayed the information. Feverishly, she tried to remember the men she had noticed around Dennison before the shooting had started. A lean man with a cigar, an intellectual with wafer-thin spectacles, any number of black-and-white tuxes, but she couldn't recall anyone who had looked remotely like Alex.

As she stepped out into the hall, the beam of a flashlight pinned her. JT's gaze locked with hers, the faint shake of his head said he couldn't leave her for a second.

“He went out through the French doors.” She jerked her head at the room. A shudder rolled through her. If the house hadn't been plunged into darkness, Alex would have seen her.

JT checked out the room and the garden beyond. She noticed he'd lost the tuxedo jacket, the fake glasses and the mustache.

The lights came back on. Simultaneously, static erupted from a handheld radio. His gaze connected with hers. “A man was seen trying to scale the garden wall on this side of the house. Bayard's got a team tracking him. They've got him cornered.”

Kurt stepped into the library. “One of the house security guards and a guest caught bullets. Other than that we're okay. Dennison's down, and one of Lopez's soldiers is dead. We've rounded up another couple out by the pool. There's no sign of Radcliff or any of our high-level friends.”

“Or Lopez.” A black woman dressed in the feminine version of a tux poked her head through the French doors. “He must have pulled a switch, or he was never here, because the baby-faced guy they picked up is twenty if he's a day.” She turned away, then poked her head back in again. “By the way, a body's just been located in the gazebo. Double-tap to the head. Looks like a professional job.”

“Any ID?”

She raised her hands. “I couldn't get close. All I know is that this one's been dead long enough to go cold. Bayard's already moved on him.”

JT glanced at Kurt. “Get over there. I need an ID and anything else you can dig up.” He already knew who the dead man had to be. After the bombing in Colombia—a clear signal from the cabal that they wanted to cut their connection to the Chavez cartel—Lopez had been here to negotiate terms. Senator Radcliff had been representing the cabal, but the fact that he had been executed before the meeting with Lopez added a new twist.

 

A helicopter with the insignia of a prominent news network decorating its underbelly skimmed overhead. The rhythmic chop of the blades and the spotlight sweeping the cordoned-off areas underlined the fact that they had a mess on their hands.

JT watched as Radcliff's body was loaded into an ambulance. Two murders, in excess of two hundred suspects, more than half of whom had left the scene, and the press were already calling Radcliff's killing an assassination. The homicide, combined with the fact that Radcliff had gone live about the missile strike on the Chavez compound just days ago, and they had enough fuel to stir up every conspiracy theorist in the country. JT wasn't so sure they would be wrong.

He checked out the cops and bureau personnel keeping the press at bay. Rina was sitting in one of the bureau cars, a ball cap Kurt had managed to borrow from one of the house security staff pulled down on her head, shading her face. The press hadn't spotted her, they were too focused on Radcliff, but JT wouldn't relax until he had gotten her out. She had been in the garden when Dennison had found Radcliff in the gazebo. As close calls went, it was too close for him.

Kurt joined him as the ambulance left. “What's the estimated time of death?”

The helicopter moved in for another pass, dipping low.

JT waited out the noise. “Radcliff's been dead for two hours, give or take.”

His killers had transported his body to the scene, set it up in the gazebo, then either left before the stampede of guests or else used it as a convenient cover. JT would check the video-surveillance cameras set around the house and grounds and the FBI surveillance tapes, but the likelihood that he would be able to find anything conclusive was slim. Whoever had shot Radcliff had been slick and professional.

“A catering van's been located abandoned a couple of streets away.”

And when it was processed for prints, JT was willing to bet it would be clean. Another dead end.

The cabal had made a mistake with the missile components, and with Lopez, but the trap they had set had been clinical. Lopez, out on a limb with the base of his South American operation destroyed and with Bayard on his heels, had taken the bait the cabal had dangled. He had been here to deal, but he had been outmaneuvered. The cabal had executed Radcliff. The only thing they had failed to do was kill Lopez and implicate him in Radcliff's killing, thereby neatly tying off the loose end that Radcliff and the missile components had presented.

If they had succeeded, the military and the government would have had their traitor and the bureau would have gotten Lopez and enough evidence to keep it busy for months. The time lag between Radcliff and Lopez's deaths would have been a detail. As damage control for the cabal, it would have been effective—if it had worked.

A burst of static distracted JT. He lifted the radio to his ear. A second later, he put it down, his expression grim: a perfect ending to a perfect night. “Dennison's missing.”

A
jolting movement, and the sickening burst of pain that went with it, brought Dennison to. He was being dragged. The buttoned neckline of his shirt gouged his trachea with every step. His fingers and heels trailed over damp grass as he was pulled along by the bunched fabric of his shirt and jacket.

The forward movement stopped and the pressure on his windpipe eased. The back of his head smacked onto the ground.

He became aware of movement around him and the fact that he was lying beneath a huge phoenix palm tree that blocked out the stars and most of the lights from a string of houses.

When he had passed out from the wound he had thought he was dying. He didn't know why Lopez had bothered to drag him anywhere. Leaving him to bleed to death was more in character, and quite frankly, Dennison would have preferred that. Since Anne had passed away, the thought of his own death had lost the power to scare him.

Distantly, he could hear sirens, which meant they weren't far from the house party.

The soft thud of a spade refocused his attention.

The smell of freshly turned earth overrode the thick scent of his own blood and an irrational panic gripped him. Lopez was going to bury him while he was still alive.

Long seconds passed while Dennison feverishly calculated his chances of escape. Back at the house, he had managed to crawl a few feet and roll into one of the gardens before he had lost consciousness. Now he was past that point. His body felt like lead, his breathing was shallow and too fast and he kept blacking out.

He knew the symptoms; he had read the medical facts often enough. With the loss of blood, he had gone into shock.

A thud as Lopez dropped the spade sent adrenaline twitching through his veins. Dennison was jerked into motion. Automatically, his stomach tensed. The resulting flood of pain sent him back into darkness.

 

Dennison's lids flipped open. His stomach was on fire. He was lying sprawled on the backseat of a moving vehicle. If he had survived this long, he decided, he would probably live…if Lopez got him to a hospital in time.

With an effort of will, he lifted one hand and gingerly felt around the region of his stomach, recoiling when his fingers brushed something wet and glistening. Lopez hadn't bothered to apply a bandage or even attempt to cover the opened area, but the lack of care wasn't surprising. Dennison wouldn't trust the murderous bastard to apply a Band-Aid, let alone attempt first aid for a seeping intestinal wound. Septicemia was a horrible way to die, but he guessed it was marginally better than being buried alive.

The fact that he wasn't rotting in a shallow grave meant that Lopez had either dug up or buried something. Dennison would put money on the second option.

Lopez might have ditched the identity he had been using and his weapons, so he could slide through whatever security cordons the feds had put in place. Judging from the roughness of the potholed road they were driving over, he had succeeded and they were across the border. No mean feat when he had counted at least ten feds at the party—courtesy of the information he had supplied them. And this time Lopez had escaped from two traps, not one.

Radcliff's death had confirmed that Lopez had outlived his usefulness with the cabal, and any doubt about who had launched a missile into the compound at Macaro was gone. The cabal had missed vaporizing Alex and himself by mere seconds. Dennison had actually witnessed the destruction from the air as Alex had skimmed his private helicopter over the hills on the flight in from Bogotá. If they had left the airport on time they would have been killed, but they had been delayed for a few minutes.

Tonight had been the cabal's second attempt but, like the first, this one had backfired.

The car hit a pothole and jumped sideways. Pain washed through him as he braced himself against another bone-shaking series of jolts.

Lopez was silent as he drove. There was no one else in the car, so Dennison knew Lopez had been the one who had manhandled him into the backseat. He had to be close to one hundred and eighty pounds. Unconscious, he would have been a dead weight. The fact that Lopez had gone to so much trouble to keep him alive wasn't comforting. It meant he must need him for something.

The burning pain in his stomach increased.

If Lopez still needed him, that meant it wasn't over yet.

Mexico, six months later

D
ust swirled around the truck as JT pulled up at a sprawling farmhouse set on a plain that stretched to a range of blue hills in the distance. The house was nestled close to the only source of water Rina had seen for miles, a river that snaked across the dry land like a jewel-bright ribbon of green.

The second she opened her door, Baby surged out and, nose to the ground, began following scent trails. JT stepped out of the truck, a quiet settled expression on his face that told her that he had made his choice.

When JT had entered the Witness Security Program with her, he'd decided to sell the ranch he'd owned for several years. In the interim they had lived in rental accommodation until they could find exactly what they wanted. For the past few weeks they had looked at real estate on the Internet, and for the past month JT had been viewing properties.

She could see why he liked it. The place had a desolate, windblown aspect. It was exactly the kind of ranch she had pictured him owning, but that wasn't what captured Rina.

Climbing out of the truck, she breathed in the dry air. She felt an instant affinity for the bronzed, wild landscape. Down here, even the air tasted different. Esther had been half-Mexican, and maybe that was what made the difference: the place was in her blood.

JT's arms came around her, pulling her back against his chest in a loose hold.

Their relationship had settled into a pattern that was more comfortable than she had ever imagined. They were planning on a wedding, eventually. They were even considering starting a family, although it would take a while for either of them to relax into that final commitment. JT had walked away from his job with the CIA, but he hadn't given up searching for Alex and the cabal. Rina could understand the obsession, even if she wasn't comfortable with it. She wanted Alex and the cabal out of her life, but more than that, she wanted JT, so she was prepared to wait it out.

His hold tightened, as if he'd picked up on the thought. “Do you like it?”

She stared at the intense blue sky, the contrasting ochre of the earth and the hot, wheaten glow of seed heads rippling in the wind and felt something unfold in herself—a sense of expansion, of…contentment. JT fitted here, and so did she. “I love it.”

An hour later, after looking through the house and a collection of outbuildings, which included a huge barn and stables, she hooked her fingers through JT's and dragged him down to the river. Here the landscape was different, more lush, softer and very green, with shady trees arching over the water. Just below the house the river broadened out nicely and looked deep enough for swimming.

JT picked up a stick and threw it out over the water. Baby ploughed into the river and began to paddle.

Rina watched as the current caught the stick, sending it spinning lazily downstream. A memory of another river flickered, this one shrouded in mist…something white—a piece of paper, floating, the ink dissolving.

Not a piece of paper. A notepad with numbers written on it.

Emotion almost buckled her knees.

JT caught her. “What's wrong?”

“My mother…”

The car tumbling through the air. Blood everywhere. A gun. The notepad. Numbers.

Esther's gaze: fierce, urgent. “The first set is for the police, no one else. The second set is for you, only you. Do you understand?”

Tears squeezed from between her lids, her chest burned.

“Yes.”

Esther's hand closed on hers and gripped hard. “Good girl. I love you, baby.”

Emotion—loss and the tearing, dispossessed grief of a child—poured through her and this time she didn't attempt to block it. Esther had been murdered. She had been there. It was past time to feel it, time to let go.

The breeze picked up, rustling through the trees. JT continued to hold her, silent and steady, until she had finished crying and her breathing evened out. Exhausted, she turned her head on his shoulder, stared out over the smooth flowing water and let her eyes drift closed.

The first set is for the police, no one else. The second set is for you, only for you.

And the numbers floated up out of the darkness….