Omega Force 01- Storm Force (6 page)

Sitting in the outdoor dining area of Niko Niko’s, Kell shoved his chair as close to the building as it would go in hopes of soaking up a little air-conditioning. He swiped his hand across the condensation on his water glass and scrubbed his wet palm across his face. What he wouldn’t give to be at Cote Blanche. The temperature would still be one step shy of meltdown, but at least he wouldn’t be frying from the radiant heat of concrete and steel.

A tropical storm had formed in the lower Gulf, moving at a crawl. Bad thing: slow-moving storms often mushroomed into hurricanes. Good thing: Tropical Storm Geneva had already started sucking a tiny bit of the humidity out of the air. The concrete was still hot enough to bake the soles of his feet through his running shoes, but at least he hadn’t sweated all the way through his shirt. Yet.

Kell had propped his cell phone against a votive holder on the table while he demolished a plate of calamari. Finally, the little screen lit to signal an incoming call. About damned time. He was waiting to hear from Robin, who’d been tailing Mori by air. He was waiting to hear from the colonel, who wanted an update. And he was waiting for Nik to share the results of the past two days spent sniffing around the bomb site, psychically speaking.

He picked up the phone and looked at the screen; Colonel Rick won the jackpot.

Now he had to figure out how to tell the man — who so far hadn’t shown any sign of possessing a sense of humor — that not only did he have no leads, but he also might have the hots for the primary suspect. This assignment was shaping up
not
to be his finest hour. “Kellison.”

“Where are we?” Colonel Rick Thomas’s voice vibrated with the low notes of authority and the high notes of hard-ass.

“We’re following up on some leads, sir.” Technically true. Nik was bringing some drawings, Robin had put in a lot of flight time, and he…Well, he’d invited the potential terrorist to go on a running date.

“In other words, you’ve got jack shit.”

Kell winced and took a sip of his water. “Pretty much.”

An uncomfortable silence swelled over the line. At least Kell found it pretty miserable.

“Here’s the thing, Colonel. My gut’s telling me the Co-Op had nothing to do with that bombing. Emory Chastaine’s got nothing to red-flag her as a terrorist. Obviously, Homeland’s watching her every move and hasn’t come up with anything, either. The Co-Op has no history of violence; in fact, all their public statements denounce extreme forms of activism. And the assistant director’s a dickweed, but he’s not smart enough to have pulled off that bombing. Has it occurred to the higher-ups that the terrorist was the one who called in the tip?”

“Of course it has. But even if the bomber is someone with a grudge against the Co-Op or Ms. Chastaine, she’s our way in.” The colonel paused before continuing. “Have you gotten close enough in the organization — with this Emory Chastaine — to be sure they’re clean and that she’s a random scapegoat? Sure enough to pull your team off the case?”

Damn it. He was sure Mori wasn’t the bomber, but she
was
hiding something and it could involve the bombing. Her response to being wrongly accused was too detached. He might be horny, but he wasn’t blind.

“Jack, your silence says more than your words — which haven’t told me shit.” The colonel’s voice barked through the phone so loudly Kell pulled it away from his ear a couple of inches. “Until you can tell me with a hundred percent certainty that Emory Chastaine is innocent, stay on it. Stay on her. Hell, fuck the woman. I saw the file. She’s not bad looking. Tell me you haven’t been bunking with the Rangers so long you forgot how to sweet-talk a woman between the sheets.”

Kell’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, and his words came out muffled. “Good idea, sir.” He waited to hear a laugh or chuckle —
something
— to indicate the colonel was joking. Right. No sense of humor.

During their months of Ranger School torture and bonding, Robin had called Kell a tight-ass. Actually, “tight-ass puritan” were her exact words, and Kell had blown her off. But she might be right, because the idea of seducing Mori to wheedle secrets out of her offended him to the core.

“Do I need to remind you that it’s nine days until Labor Day and there’s a fucking storm in the Gulf that’s probably going to make landfall somewhere on the central coast?” The colonel was shouting now. Definitely not joking. “We don’t have time to jack around.”

Kell scowled at Nik, who’d slumped into the chair opposite him and tossed a sketch pad on the table. Kell lifted the corner of the pages and played them like a set of flip cards. There were a good two dozen images drawn in Nik’s meticulous pen-and-ink detail. He lifted his eyebrows, and Nik nodded.

“Sir, we do have something to send you. Nik has been able to pull a series of images from around the ruins of the Zemurray Building. Faces, mostly. I’m going to shoot them with my cell and e-mail them to you on your secure account.”

“Good.” The colonel sounded a little less gruff. “Did he get any other info to go with the images? Memories? Visions? Whatever the hell it is he sees?”

Thanks to the colonel’s less-than-subtle voice, Nik had been able to hear him across the table and shook his head.

“No stories. Just faces,” Kell said.

The colonel sighed. “It’s a long shot, but it beats nothing. I’ll run the images through our data bank and see if anything matches. In the meantime, resolve the issue of the Co-Op and Emory Chastaine’s involvement. However you need to.”

“Got it.” Yeah, he had it, all right: a damn headache, plus the muscles in his lower back twitched with spasms, twice worse now than when he’d answered his phone. Kell ended the call and pulled the sketch pad toward him while the waiter delivered his souvlaki and took Nik’s order. As soon as the guy had moved on, Kell handed Nik a stuffed grape leaf. “Talk to me.”

Nik chewed for a few seconds, scanning the restaurant that was still moderately crowded, even for midafternoon. “I got a lot of images I didn’t draw.” He rubbed his eyes. “Damn, man. It sucked. I tried not to touch anything personal, but I couldn’t avoid getting my hands on stuff accidentally — you know, a shoe, a scarf. I kept thinking if I was any kind of man, any kind of human, I’d go in there and use this ability to help the police identify remains. But I…” He trailed off, shutting down.

They’d talked through this shit before. Nik was afraid if he ever opened up his abilities to be used in an official way, let more than just a very few know about his abilities, it would take over his life. He was afraid he’d end up like his father, putting a bullet in his brain to shut up the noise.

Kell shoved his beer across the table. Nik took it with a nod and upended it, belching when he was done.

“Nice.” Kell opened the sketch pad, switched his phone to the camera app, and began taking two shots of each page. “Tell me what’s here.”

“I figured anything personal belonged to victims, so I focused on the rubble itself, especially around the areas where the bombs were placed. I mean, chances are that whoever’s on the top of the terrorist food chain, he didn’t plant the bombs personally. But he — or she — might have visited the building. So anytime I got a visual of a face when I touched a piece of rubble, I drew it.

“Good thinking. Maybe we’ll luck out and find a match.” Kell finished the photos and began the process of e-mailing them to the colonel. “Heard from our feathered friend as to what Mori Chastaine’s up to this afternoon?”

Nik’s food arrived, and he waited until the waiter left before answering. “Just talked to her. Robin followed Mori to Galveston, where she went into the building housing the offices of”—he flipped through the sketch pad until he found a page with a few lines of writing—”Tex-La Shipping. I did an online search of them, and guess where their main headquarters are?”

Kell groaned.
Damn it, Mori.
“I’m guessing New Orleans.”

“You’d be right.”

Kell grabbed his cell again and texted a message for Gadget to research Tex-La Shipping — see who owned it and look for connections to the Co-Op, specifically to Mori.

He turned his attention back to Nik. “OK, so Mori went in the building, and then what?”

Nik talked around a mouthful of hummus. “She was still there when Robin left. Couple of guys exited the building, and Robin thought she should follow them instead of waiting. That’s all she told me before she went feathery on me and left the pay phone.”

Kell looked at the
I’m on it, Boss
text from Gadget and tossed the phone back on the table. “What two guys could be more important than watching our suspect?”

Nik shrugged. “Can’t tell you, man. I’m just the messenger. You know Robin’s a woman of few words.”

She had plenty of words when she wanted to use them. “Damn it, we need to find out what Mori’s doing.” He hadn’t told Nik that he’d undertaken some subtle shift from proving Mori’s guilt to proving her innocence. Robin leaving her post was a poor decision, no matter how interesting these two guys proved to be.

“What did the colonel have to say?” Nik ate another bite and pushed his plate away. The skin around his eyes was tight, and his eyes were bloodshot. The bomb site search had been brutal for him.

Well, this would cheer him up. “The colonel says he wants me to seduce Mori Chastaine and get her to make a post-orgasmic terrorist confession.”

Nik choked on his drink, simultaneously coughing and laughing. “I think the old man’s overestimating your sex appeal, dude.”

Glad somebody thought it was funny. The colonel sure hadn’t been laughing.

Nik pulled out his wallet and threw some money on the table. “So what are you going to do?”

Kell studied the line of people stretched beyond the pastry counter inside the restaurant and grimaced. “Kellison Seduction Method 101: take the lady some dessert and hope it leads to getting laid and enjoying some pillow talk.”

Kell stood in the open doorway of his bedroom closet and surveyed the piss-poor clothing options for his evening assignment. If he dressed up too much for this game of “seduce the terrorist suspect,” the whole thing would look as staged as a Shakespearean comedy.

If he wore his normal gear — baggy shorts and a T-shirt — she’d think he was a total loser. Which might not be too far from the truth, considering his goal for the evening was to be a predatory asshole.

After five minutes of indecision, he realized he was acting like a fucking high school girl trying to get ready for prom.
Screw your head on straight, Kellison.
He showered and put on what he’d normally wear for an evening out — a pair of jeans and a plain black T-shirt. It was practically a dress shirt, after all. Had no college logos, Army mottos, or beer icons on the front.

He opened the medicine cabinet in the miniscule bathroom and grabbed the ibuprofen bottle, shaking out four. He thought about it a second, then shook out two more. His back had been bad today for some reason. Probably tension, which annoyed him to no end. Before the injury, stress had gotten his juices flowing, made his limbs itch to move, sharpened his thoughts and perceptiveness. Now, it hurt.

As Kell set the bottle back on the narrow glass shelf, he spotted a box of condoms that had been there since the dawn of time. Shit. Another moral dilemma. As long as he was going to be a jackass, he might as well be a jackass with protection. He slid a foil packet out of the box and stared at it a moment. Might as well be optimistic, too. He pulled out a second packet.

Gator had been hanging tight on his heels ever since he’d gotten home, and Kell almost tripped over him getting out of the bathroom. “What’s up with you, big guy? You hungry?” Gator’s tail wagged optimistically.

After dumping some dog food into his stainless-steel dish and replenishing the water bowl, Kell flicked on the TV news to make sure there were no new developments in the Zemurray case. A woman was being interviewed, reminiscing about her twenty-seven-year-old son who’d been killed in the explosion. Then a young girl who couldn’t be more than twelve, talking about how her mother would never see her and her little brother grow up. Then a man who’d lost an arm, who felt blessed to be alive. And they all wondered why this had happened. Who’d done it, and for what reason?

Kell pressed the
off
button on the remote and sat in silence. He’d needed that reminder. This wasn’t about the environment, or business, or politics. It wasn’t about whether or not he had to act in ways that went against his own moral code or how much he liked the person he was investigating. This was about people whose lives had been ripped apart for no reason except that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Hell, when he was in the sandbox, he knew there was a chance he’d get blown to hell, but that was what he’d signed up for. These victims had signed up for nothing except doing their jobs and living their lives.

“I still don’t think she’s guilty,” he told Gator, who cocked his head and speared Kell with a sharp look from both his blue eye and his brown one. “But I have to be sure.”

He picked up the box of loukoumades he’d gotten at Niko Niko’s, gave Gator a parting liver snack, and walked outside into the blast furnace of Houston in August. It was no wonder this place had been considered virtually uninhabitable before some genius came up with the idea of air-conditioning. He set the box of pastries on the passenger seat, but paused on his way around to the driver’s side. Two cats, both a mottled gray-black color, sat atop the brick wall that separated the back of Kell’s apartment complex from the condos behind it.

He knew everything was supposed to be bigger in Texas, but these cats were freaks. Big, long bodies, little heads, funny-looking round ears. He bet they weighed twenty-five or thirty pounds apiece. “You two should give some extra purrs to whoever took you in because — sorry, guys — you are ug-
lee
.”

One of the cats bared its teeth and hissed, which Kell considered his cue to leave. He had enough weirdness in his life, what with teammates who turned into eagles and cougars, without worrying about one of his neighbors having bizarre taste in pets.

Kell had plugged Mori’s address into the GPS in his phone, and it directed him to a small quadplex not far from the Co-Op offices. Her car was parked out front, and as Kell pulled the Terminator into the adjacent space and got out, he automatically scanned the neighborhood. Given enough time, he’d be able to figure out where the DHS guys were basing their surveillance, but it didn’t really matter. They were out there somewhere and probably already knew the name of Jack Kelly. Hopefully, they didn’t know Jack Kellison.

Mori’s door was at the end of the quadplex, on the left. He took a deep breath and knocked. Kell had put the moves on his share of women over the years, but never under orders or with the intent to deceive. Or while Homeland Security agents were somewhere nearby, wires and cameras at the ready. It was fucking creepy.

When Mori didn’t answer, he looked back at her car. Everything seemed normal, so he knocked again, harder. “Mori, it’s Kell. I brought you a surprise.”

A shuffling sounded near the door, then her muffled voice. “Sorry, not tonight, Kell. I’m not feeling well.”

Well, shit. That was a scenario he hadn’t planned on. He’d imagined her slapping the crap out of him when he put the moves on her. He’d imagined finding her with another guy. He’d imagined her not being at home. He hadn’t imagined her refusing to open the door.

“At least open up and take these honey balls from Niko’s. I have a Greek friend who insists they’re the best.” Not that Nik had ever set foot in his father’s homeland, but he’d grown up on the cuisine.

“Please, Kell. You need to go home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Something wasn’t right; Mori’s voice was off somehow. Kell’s internal trouble meter sprang to attention, and he heeded it, walking over to Mori’s car and peering inside. The interior seats, covered in a dark-gray fabric, held none of the usual assortment of junk he always dumped in the Terminator. All neat and orderly.

He stepped back and looked for any sign of an accident, but no dings or dents marred the metallic surface of the vehicle. He’d have to take her at her word and try again tomorrow night. Gator could eat his weight in honey balls.

The streetlights flickered on, and as Kell turned to go back to the Terminator, he saw a dark smudge on the driver’s side door handle of Mori’s car. He could either kneel and take a closer look — and possibly rouse the suspicion of the surveillance team — or he could do the smart thing and go home.

To hell with the surveillance team. His instincts told him that smudge was not mud. Kneeling beside the driver’s door, he looked closer at the handle, then used the flashlight app on his cell phone to illuminate it. He didn’t need to touch it to know it was blood. And it was fresh.

Damn it, she was going to let him in, or he was going to break in. He didn’t want DHS guys coming in behind him and looking at the door, though, so he stood up and leaned against it, swiping his ass across the handle. When he stepped away, the smudge was gone.

He’d just wiped away possible physical evidence in a federal terrorism case using only his ass. What a warrior.

He returned to Mori’s door and pounded, not willing to give in this time. “Mori, let me in. I saw the blood on your car door and I’m worried. Show me you’re OK, or I’ll have to break in.”

He waited a few seconds, fingers thrumming impatiently on his thighs, but finally, the deadbolt turned from inside and the door opened an inch or two. One brown eye peered through the crack, the metal door chain stretching across the opening. “I’m fine, Kell. Just not up for company tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow at the office.”

The door inched closed, but Kell wasn’t having it. Something was wrong. He shoved at the door just before she got it closed, hard enough to pop the chain latch and propel Mori back a couple of steps.

“Sorry I broke the chain but something’s—” Kell stopped and stared. Mori’s jaw was swollen and discolored, all turquoise, red, and black. Already one hell of a bruise, and it was just starting to form. He’d seen bruises like that before. Hell, he’d had a few.

“Who hit you?” It was a blow from a fist, not an openhanded slap. A big fist, too. A man’s fist. He could practically see the damned knuckle marks. “Who is he? Because I’ll make damned sure he never does it again.”

“You shouldn’t be here.” Mori turned and walked into the small living room while Kell closed the door and threw the dead bolt. He’d have to buy her another chain latch and put it in. Obviously, she was in danger from somebody — maybe somebody at Tex-La Shipping, but he couldn’t admit he knew she’d been there.

Mori sat on the sofa, shoulders slumped, eyes on the floor. Damn it, what was going on with her?

Kell walked into the little kitchen to the right of the front door and opened the freezer. Bingo. Every serious runner kept cold packs on hand for sprains and strains, and Mori had four of them. He pulled out two, turned on the faucet to wet a kitchen towel, and went back into the living room.

“Let me look at your face.” He sat next to her on the sofa, reached over, and gently grasped her chin, turning her injured jaw toward him. It might be sexist and about as politically correct as a book of Polish jokes, but it pissed off Kell to see a woman hurt by a man. And that fist had to belong to a man.

Mori remained silent and still wouldn’t look at him, but she didn’t pull away as he gently washed off the wound. A bloody cut gashed across the jawline nearest her mouth, and he eased the wet towel across it and then pressed on it until the bleeding stopped.

When he turned back with the cold pack, she held out her hand. “I’ll do that.” She shifted to face him, wincing as her right arm touched the back of the sofa. Another injury. “Kell, I appreciate you being here, but you really need to leave. It’s not…” She bit off whatever words she’d planned to say. “You really need to go.”

Kell sat back and studied her. “Mori, talk to me. Something big’s going down with you, and I don’t think it’s the boys from Homeland Security. Who hit you?”

“Nobody, I just fell and—”

“Uh-uh. Don’t give me that shit.” Kell knew better. “I’ve been around injuries, so let me tell you what I see before you waste time spinning a lie about tripping or falling or running under a killer mesquite branch.”

Mori looked at her hands clutched tightly in her lap and didn’t answer.

“You were hit with a fist by a right-handed man. I’d say a big man with a lot of physical strength, taller than you by several inches judging by the point of impact. He was wearing some kind of ring on his right hand.”

His gaze slid to her neck. “He tried to choke you, bare-handed, I’d say. Maybe knocked you into something or you fell on something that injured your right arm.”

As he talked, Mori had lifted her gaze and now stared at him, wide-eyed. “How do you know that?”

Kell had hit it on the money; he could see it in her face. “I’m trained in this kind of stuff, don’t forget. Rangers don’t just go in and shoot people. And I’ve had my share of being punched in the face. I know what it looks like. Who was it?”

Mori shook her head. “It’s safer for you not to know. I’m serious about this, Kell. You need to leave before…before anyone sees you here.”

“A boyfriend?” Their intel hadn’t mentioned one, but was she the type to stay in an abusive relationship? As much as he felt he’d connected with her, they were still strangers. And even the smartest women sometimes got sucked into a vortex of abuse.

“No. It’s…a family issue.” Mori leaned against the sofa back and stared at the ceiling.

Maybe her father had hit her, then, which somehow was even worse. Kell settled back on the sofa next to her, their shoulders almost touching. Close enough to be aware of her beside him, to feel her body heat, smell the mixture of blood with her clean, woodsy scent, aware of the shape of the long, toned legs stretched out beside his.

He needed her to talk to him, and not for any official reasons. The seduction game was off the table. She was in trouble, and he wanted to protect her. It was as primal as that. He’d worry about the rest later.

“Family can suck you in until there’s nothing left.” He knew all about that.

“That’s the God’s truth.” Mori relaxed a fraction, so Kell kept talking.

“I was an only child, and my parents transferred all their hopes and wishes on to me, every damn thing they ever wanted but didn’t get. You know, to become the scholarship football player that my dad wasn’t quite good enough to be. To get into the college my mom couldn’t afford. To settle down in Jeanerette after school, maybe start a business, meet a nice local girl, produce the grandkids my mom wanted.”

Mori’s voice was barely more than a whisper. “And if you became what they wanted, everything that made you into
you
would wither and die.”

“I couldn’t do it.” His mind conjured visions of his mom’s tear-streaked face, his dad’s struggle between pride and disappointment, when he’d sat at the dining table and told them he’d enlisted. “I couldn’t be what they wanted.”

“How did you escape? You ran away from home and joined the Army?” Mori’s voice had grown stronger. Maybe if he kept spilling his guts on the living room floor, she’d follow suit eventually.

“That’s exactly what I did. Went through combat training at Fort Polk in Louisiana, then Ranger School at Fort Benning in Georgia. I couldn’t get shipped out fast enough.” His mom’s face came to him again. She’d been convinced he’d be killed. And was so disappointed every time he finished a tour and went right back in at the first opportunity. “I hoped eventually they’d be proud that I took my own path, but I don’t think they ever were.”

They loved him. They feared for his safety. But they never understood why their vision for his life wasn’t enough for him. Maybe if they’d lived longer. Maybe.

“Some family stuff you can’t run away from,” Mori said. “I’ve never pleased my parents, and it’s come to the point where I have to take a stand or give in to what they want for me.” She closed her eyes. “I’m so tired of fighting.”