Omega Force 01- Storm Force (4 page)

The waning half moon cast a dim light over the scrub-covered land around her. Mori pulled her T-shirt over her head and shimmied out of her track shorts, then her bra and panties, folding them and nestling them beneath the prickly branches of a mesquite bush about ten yards from the car.

She raised her head to pull in a deep lungful of air, felt the ancient blood within her stir, and began to run.

Kell pulled the Terminator out of his apartment parking lot promptly at 7:00 a.m., hoping to get to the Co-Op offices early enough to catch Mori alone, without Taylor Stedman as a nosy chaperone. He had plenty of time to plan his strategy as the traffic crawled along Westheimer toward the city.

Homeland Security would be watching the Co-Op offices and Mori herself, but as far as Kell knew, they hadn’t obtained a warrant to search the building. He had no doubt they were working on it. So Kell’s Plan B was to search every nook, cranny, and pigeonhole of the place before anyone else got to it.

He had devised a Plan A, in case Mori had already arrived. He’d get to know his suspect better, discover her hot buttons (the ones that didn’t involve Louisiana black bears), figure out what drove her, earn her trust. He’d chosen his most nonthreatening, all-American clothes this morning, hoping to look less military and more like a regular guy: his LSU T-shirt, jeans, and running shoes instead of boots.

Mori’s personal life was a mystery, other than the tidbits she’d dropped on the way back from the FBI offices. She struck him as a loner. No one had come to pick her up when she’d been released. Not her parents. Nobody. Something odd was going on with that. She was pretty. Hell, more than pretty, not that he had any business noticing. She seemed to have a good sense of humor, at least from the glimmers he’d seen in the middle of what had to be monumental stress. Why would a woman like that be so alone? Especially yesterday. When he’d gone home and reread her files, he realized it had been her twenty-fifth birthday.

Something was seriously wrong with the surface picture of Mori Chastaine.

The files compiled on her by the colonel had little information other than that she had lived in Texas all her life, was an only child, and had never been married. No known boyfriends. No close friends, period.

He needed to be her friend. Then he could either stop her or save her.

As he turned on Montrose, he saw he’d have no luck with either Plans A or B. When he eased the Terminator into the Co-Op parking lot, Mori’s little hybrid was nowhere to be found, but Taylor’s vintage Ford pickup took up two spaces in front of the entrance. Not only because it was that big, but because he’d done a shit job of parking.

Kell didn’t like Taylor Stedman, thought he was pursuing his own agenda rather than acting as Mori’s second-in-command. The man might not have done anything criminal, but he wasn’t loyal to his employer, and loyalty filled up page one of the Jack Kellison Book of Virtues.

Of course, working undercover to gain a woman’s trust and then betraying her for the greater good fell into a gray area he didn’t want to think about too deeply.

That he was judging Taylor for not being loyal to a suspected terrorist was something Kell didn’t want to ruminate on too long, either, because then he’d have to openly admit he was having a hard time thinking Mori could be guilty. And that he didn’t want her to be guilty. Or
why
he didn’t want her to be guilty.

Horny. That’s all he was. Too long in the sexual trough of deprivation and neglect with nothing but a skinny, birdlike, frequently naked eagle-shifter to look at.

No, Kell didn’t like Taylor Stedman, but he did like Taylor’s ride — a hulking vision of fading black paint with a hint of rust. He stopped for a few seconds to admire it before entering the building. If he were to get rid of the Terminator and replace it, he could totally see himself with something like this, working on it on weekends to fix it up.

The real question wasn’t how a jerk like Tay had ended up with such a cool ride, which probably burned gas and oil like nobody’s business. The real question was, why was he here so early?

Going into a structure quietly was a Ranger-reinforced habit. He’d spent many hours conducting door-to-door searches in unsafe environments, silent for a couple of very practical reasons.

First, never give an enemy advance warning so he has time to get ready to shoot your nuts off as soon as you’re within firing range.

Second, you might stumble across something interesting.

Like the sight of Taylor Stedman sitting at Mori’s desk, using a brass letter opener to pick at the lock in a bottom drawer. The weasel-dick was so deep in concentration he didn’t notice Kell leaning against the doorjamb watching him.

“Need help finding something?” Kell crossed his arms as Taylor gasped and jumped to his feet, his face turning a deep shade of late-summer tomato.

“God, didn’t your mama teach you not to sneak up on people?” Obviously interpreting Kell’s neutral expression as a sign of approval, Taylor took the chair again and resumed his clumsy use of the letter opener. “I want to save the Co-Op, and the only way to do it might be to see what Emory Chastaine is hiding. If we’re the ones who expose her, it makes us look good. All our disappearing supporters will come back when they see that the rest of us had nothing to do with her crimes.”

Jack nodded, calming his inner urge to shake the man until his teeth rattled out of their sockets. Sure, he’d been planning to do the same thing — but to save people’s lives, not to act out a fit of petty jealousy. And he had no doubt Taylor resented every particle of Mori’s being. “Find anything?”

“Just this bottom drawer. It’s the only one with a lock, so maybe she’s hidden something incriminating. You know, some threatening letters or bomb-making supplies.”

Taylor Stedman had watched way too much television.

“I doubt she’d be that stupid.” More than he could say for Taylor. If Mori had left boxes of wires, explosives, and timers in the drawer of her Office Depot special, locked or not, he’d eat that whole nasty pile of military Meals Ready-to-Eat he’d stashed in his closet five years ago in case of a hurricane.

Taylor shrugged. “Keep an eye out for her while I try to get into this drawer. If you see her car pull in the lot, let me know. Don’t want her slipping up on me like you did.” He looked up, the sharp angles of his face narrowing. “How
did
you get in here without me hearing you?”

Because the idiot was so intent on his own crime a freight train could have roared past without disturbing him. “Force of habit. You know, from my Army training.”

“Right.” Tay cocked his head and raised his eyebrows, which made Kell want to throttle him even more. “Did the Army teach you how to pick locks?”

He’d never met a security system he couldn’t breach or a lock he couldn’t pick, but not for this jerk. That was a solitary activity. “Sorry. I’ll play lookout. You break and enter.”

He stepped back into the hallway, torn. Some big, macho, asshole part of him wanted to protect Mori, from the cops and from her assistant director. Maybe even from himself. But the stakes were too high to play hunches and trust his gut entirely. He didn’t
think
he was so sex starved that he’d ignore evidence against the first woman to attract him in dog years, but then again, it had been a while.

In the end, he didn’t have the moral dilemma of whether or not to let Tay break into Mori’s desk. A few seconds after he’d stepped within sight of the parking lot, her graphite-gray hybrid pulled into the slot next to the Terminator.

“Mama’s home.” Kell grinned at Taylor’s string of curses and the sound of him running down the hall to his own office. Served the toad right if he’d left something behind to let Mori know she was being backstabbed.

He watched as she sat in the car for almost a minute, her hands resting on the steering wheel, eyes straight ahead, lost in thought. Kell hadn’t been able to spend enough time alone with her to get her to open up, but she looked like she needed to talk to someone.

Her body language as she finally exited the car screamed tension. She wore khaki shorts and a loose black tank top, so the slump of her shoulders was visible. Before she pulled the door open, she drew a deep breath and straightened her carriage, as if calling on some inner reserve of strength.

What wasn’t visible until she stepped inside the door and saw Kell perched on the corner of the front receptionist’s desk were the scrapes and scratches along her shoulders and upper arms. Scabs had formed, but the scratches were fresh enough for the skin around them to still be reddened.

“What got hold of you? And who won? You OK?” Kell rose from the chair and walked toward her, stopping when he realized she’d begun backing away. Shit, he hadn’t intended to scare her, and she’d never struck him as skittish. If anything, she’d always seemed too calm for what was going on around her.

He held up his hands. Just an innocent, nonthreatening, good old boy from Louisiana. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

She regrouped, squared her shoulders again, and shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. All this stuff with the bombing has me on edge. I still can’t believe they think the Co-Op had anything to do with it. That
I
had anything to do with it. I’ve never even had a traffic ticket.”

He hated to tell her, but that moved her up on the terrorist list, not down. Domestic terrorists — at least the most dangerous ones — were quiet people with clean records. The ones about which, after some horrific crime had taken place, their neighbors would say
he was always such a quiet man and kept to himself
. Loners. Just like Mori.

“Did someone hurt you?” He watched her face. “How’d your shoulders get scraped up?”

She looked at one shoulder, then the other, and laughed. She had a good laugh. “It looks like I got in a catfight, doesn’t it?” She threw her backpack inside the door of her office. “I went running last night, out in the country near my grandfather’s ranch. Well, my parents’ ranch now. Guess I tangled with some low-hanging mesquite branches. It was really dark out.”

Plausible. She looked like an athlete, so he could imagine her running, but not scratching herself up that much without realizing it. Plus, the wounds looked older than something done less than twelve hours ago. A day older than that, maybe. Unfortunately, he’d had a lot of his own injuries for comparison.

“I’m a runner myself.” Or he had been before he’d screwed up his back, and he missed the runner’s high and the way it relaxed his mind. “Maybe we could go running together one evening — and stay away from the mesquite. Maybe out along Buffalo Bayou.”

Kell mentally kicked himself. Where the hell had that come from? He was not here to augment his social life. OK.
Develop
his social life.

When he saw a genuine smile light up Mori’s face, though, he was glad he’d suggested it. She was beautiful once all the tension and worry lines lifted from her features, and Kell focused on a light sprinkling of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Sexy as hell.

“I haven’t had a running partner since college at Rice. I’d like that. I warn you, though. I’m fast. You’ll be eating my dust.”

Oh, seriously. Had she challenged him? “You obviously have no idea who you’re talking to, little girl. You’re on.”

Kell struggled to wipe the stupid shit-eating grin off his face. He was acting like a fucking high school boy, not a professional investigating a potential terrorist. He’d gone from looking for an opportunity to search her office to a playdate in the space of a half hour.

Mori cleared her throat. It was a nervous habit, Kell decided. Something she used when she wanted to change the subject, and it was definitely time to change the subject.

“Well, I better get to work since I was late this morning. Has Taylor given you our unlogged receipts to work on?”

No, Tay had been too busy snooping for evidence to use against her. “Nope. But I’m here to give you whatever you need.”

They caught glances in the awkward pause, and he realized how his words could be interpreted — and that she realized it, too. A rush of heat flushed his face. Maybe he needed to call the colonel tonight and have himself taken off this case. He was obviously losing his professional judgment.

“Um, well”—Mori looked around the office—”you can go through these last donations we got and log them. Maybe we can get them in the bank before the donors put a stop-payment order on them. You know how to use spreadsheet software?”

God help him, he hated computers. Gadget had pounded the basics into him, but spreadsheets were a nightmare. “Well, I can enter data.” And literally nothing more.

“That’s all it is. I told our student volunteers to stay home until all this mess is sorted out, so we’re shorthanded. I appreciate your help.” She pointed to the desk where he’d been sitting earlier, and watched as he started the computer. He was way too aware of her leaning over his shoulder as she showed him how to log donations on the spreadsheet and then write the totals on a bank-deposit form.

Yep, his professional judgment had definitely gone on vacation.

“I’ll be in my office if you have questions. If any donors call and say they want to pull their support, send them through to me.” Mori rested a hand on his shoulder for a second before turning, disappearing through her office door, and closing it behind her.

Taylor’s chair squeaked from down the hallway, and he appeared in front of Kell’s desk scant seconds after Mori’s door had snicked shut. “She doesn’t suspect anything, does she?”

Kell shook his head and raised a finger to his lips. Not because he was afraid Mori would overhear her traitorous associate, but because Kell thought he might have to kill the guy if he started yapping again. “Stay in your office and keep it low-key,” he whispered. “I’ll be your eyes and ears, and let you know if anything happens.”

With a conspiratorial nod, Taylor gave him a thumbs-up and went back down the hall.

For the next hour, Kell played secretary and thought about Taylor Stedman. He wished he could lay blame for the bombing at his Earth Shoe–clad feet. But the same instincts that told him Mori was innocent told him Taylor didn’t have the brains or the balls to pull off something like the Zemurray bombing. He was an opportunist who wanted his boss’s job and wasn’t above capitalizing on her bad luck.

Bad luck, yes, but maybe also bad judgment. The more he thought about Emory Chastaine, the more Kell was convinced that while she wasn’t involved in the bombing,
something
didn’t add up. She might have gotten those scratches from a low-hanging mesquite branch, but she didn’t act like a woman wrongly accused of a horrible crime. She hadn’t screamed for an attorney. She hadn’t held a press conference expressing outrage over being unjustly accused. If she’d been privately outraged by it, which she should have been if she were innocent, she sure hadn’t shown it. She’d seemed hurt, confused, and sad — but never angry.