Authors: R. E. Bradshaw
RAINEY DAYS (19 page)
Katie began to move under her, sending shock waves through her body. Then a single thought flashed through her mind. Rainey stopped. She pulled away from Katie and stood up. She crossed to the window, peering outside.
Katie sat up in the bed. “Rainey?”
Rainey did not look away from the window. Instead, she stared out into the sunlit backyard and spoke softly, “Katie, I can’t do this.”
“Why? I thought it was what you…what we wanted,” Katie said. She seemed confused by Rainey’s reaction.
Rainey stared straight ahead, trying to get control back. Her eyes burned as she fought back tears.
“Rainey, turn around,” Katie said, softly.
Katie got off the bed and walked to Rainey. Rainey slowly turned to her. Katie saw the tears welling in Rainey’s eyes. She reached out to Rainey.
“Talk to me, Rainey. I need to understand.”
The damn broke and the tears flowed from Rainey’s eyes, not in torrents, but in slow falling raindrops from her lower lids.
Rainey spoke softly, because if she tried to speak normally, she would lose more control, “He just keeps taking things from me,” she paused, “and... and because of that, I can’t let this happen between us.”
“Why, what does he have to do with us?” Katie asked.
“I can’t be distracted, it could wind up killing us both,” Rainey answered her.
Katie was undeterred, “Don’t let him do this to you.”
“Katie, he’s already done it. I can’t put your life at risk. Don’t you understand that?”
Katie put her hands on her hips and said, “How would I be in any more danger than I am already?”
Rainey had to tell her, “Danny and I think he’s now switched targets, to me solely. I have to distance myself from you and JW, to keep you safe.”
“What about you? Where are you going?” Katie looked frightened.
“I’m going back to the cottage.”
“When?” Katie asked.
“Tomorrow afternoon.”
“You’re going to leave me alone? I thought we were in this together,” Katie said, her hands back on her hips.
“Katie, I’m not leaving you alone. The agents will still be here with you. They’re going to stay with you until this is over.”
“Rainey Bell, you are not going out to that house alone,” Katie was adamant.
“I won’t be alone, either. I’ll be protected,” Rainey tried to explain.
“You are setting yourself up as bait.” Katie was aghast and then incensed, “That is insane. Haven’t you given enough to the investigation?”
Rainey felt herself flush with anger, it was not aimed at Katie, but at him, “I will give every last breath of my being to send this son of a bitch straight to hell, if that’s what it takes.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Katie said.
The color from Katie’s face drained. She took several shaky steps back and dropped into the armchair. The implications of what Rainey had just said were written in Katie’s expression. Rainey felt her chest tighten. She had hurt Katie without meaning to, unable to see past her own rage, at the affect her actions had on the emotions of others. Rainey moved to Katie and knelt down on the floor, in front of the chair. She looked into Katie’s face and listened, as her mind raced with thoughts, so many, she couldn’t stop one long enough to reflect on it.
Rainey did not think about what she said next, she just let the words stream from her mouth, in a steady calm voice, “Katie, I’m not going to risk my life unnecessarily. I truly believe that the best chance we have of ending this safely, for all of us, is to separate myself from you, to draw his focus and allow Danny and the other agents to catch him. I’m not going out alone to hunt him.”
Katie started to speak, but Rainey raised her hand to stop her.
Rainey leaned in closer to Katie. She continued, “My mind is telling me, that what is happening, between the two of us, is merely the product of two very wounded women, who find themselves in a life and death struggle. Our subconscious recognition, in each other, of the depth of want and longing, is driving us together.”
Once again, Katie started to speak, but this time quieted on her own. She listened intently to Rainey’s soft voice.
“On the other hand, my heart is saying, fall, fall hard into her arms and don’t look back. Find out if it’s just the circumstances we find ourselves in. It’s so overwhelming and confusing, and wonderful…”
Katie interrupted, “I hear a ‘but’ coming.”
Rainey nodded, “But, when I’m thinking about you, I lose focus. I can’t be objective. I can’t keep us safe, if I’m distracted by your very presence in the room.”
Katie smiled at Rainey. “May I say something?”
Rainey nodded her head yes.
“Rainey, I have never done anything like what just happened, in my entire life. I am as confused as you are. I have no explanation for the attraction between us and I’ll admit it has been a distraction, because I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Rainey said.
Katie had been thinking while Rainey was talking and had evidently formulated a debate in her mind. “What makes you think that separating us will keep you from thinking about me? What if you’re more distracted worrying about where I am and who’s watching me? I know that’s what I’ll be doing, worrying about you.”
Rainey had not thought about that. She pondered for a moment and then added another element to her side of the argument. As it turned out, it was a very poor choice.
Rainey stood up and looked down at Katie. “That maybe true, but besides the inappropriateness of having a personal relationship with someone you are supposed to be guarding, there is the small matter of your being married to the man, who hired me to protect you.”
“He hired you to protect his career,” Katie spat.
“He loves you, Katie. He was genuinely worried about you,” Rainey argued.
Katie got up and stomped toward the bathroom door. Rainey followed her.
Katie said, over her shoulder, “Oh, please. Don’t tell me you’ve fallen for his act, too?”
“I’ve known JW longer than you. I think I know when he’s playing one of his characters,” Rainey said, defensively.
Katie turned at the door to the bathroom, her expression fierce, “You have no idea who he really is.” She slammed the bathroom door in Rainey’s face.
Wow, Rainey thought. Katie had gone from zero to pissed, in no time, when JW’s name was mentioned. Whatever he had done, Katie was not about to forgive him. Rainey had made the mistake of defending him, one she would not make again. She listened outside the door for a few minutes. No sounds other than Katie mumbling under her breath could be heard. Rainey decided Katie was not coming out, so she went to the armchair and sat down heavily. The range of emotions she had experienced since coming into this room was exhausting.
Rainey had felt the soaring thrill of Katie in her arms, only to crash against the thought of being the cause of Katie losing her life to a sadistic killer, because Rainey was not paying attention. How could she make Katie understand the responsibility she felt for having left him free to wander amongst them, the guilt that loomed over her for being distracted the first time she had a chance to catch him? It was more powerful than the physical and emotional damage he had done to Rainey.
No matter how Katie felt, Rainey also felt guilty about what she was doing with JW’s wife. Having an affair with a married man or woman was just not something with which Rainey felt comfortable. Rainey was not a cheater. She did not like people who were. The thought that Katie might be just using her, to get back at JW, crossed her mind. It loomed there and then took on a life of its own. Before long Rainey had convinced herself to get up and leave, untangle her life from this dysfunctional chaos.
Katie remained behind the closed bathroom door. Rainey went to the bed, retrieving her Glock and over shirt, which she put on quickly and let herself quietly out of the room. She crossed the hall to the guest room, where she grabbed her overnight bag and took it with her down the stairs. She located her laptop and charger, in the den, and then called Mackie from her cell.
He answered quickly, “What’cha need?”
“Where are you?” she asked.
His bass voice growled out, “Down the block.”
Rainey said, “Were going home.”
“When?” rumbled through her receiver.
With no hesitation, Rainey said, “Now.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Rainey talked with the agents still at Katie’s house. She explained that she was leaving and their only priority was the safety of Mrs. Wilson.
“If anything happens to her, I will personally see to it that you won’t even be able to get a job as a security guard in an empty parking lot, got it?,” she said to the wide-eyed agents.
Rainey left through the French doors. She slid into the Charger and was down the driveway and out on the street in seconds, with Mackie falling in tightly behind her. Rainey could see Junior in the passenger seat of the Escalade. Rainey glanced back at the house once more and saw Katie standing, unmoving, on the front landing, bookended by two agents. Rainey slowed down. She almost stopped. Her heart ached and tightened her chest. Rainey thought for a second she was making a mistake, but then she pushed her foot down on the accelerator and sped away.
Rainey called Danny from the car. His Irish temper exploded over the phone, one explicative after another. She could not explain to him why she had to leave the Wilson’s house. She promised to keep Mackie and Junior with her and to stay inside the cottage with the alarm on no matter what happened. Danny said he would send Roger and his team to her cottage, as soon as they had gotten some rest. He reluctantly calmed down and agreed it would be good to have her at the cottage, while the surveillance was being set up.
Rainey had a little surveillance equipment of her own, strategically placed around the office and her cottage. In the large, wood paneled main room of the cottage, on the long wall, her father had built a bookcase that housed some of his memorabilia and books. There was a space in the middle for the old television Rainey had replaced with a new flat screen. From her remote, she could pull up eight, day and night vision, camera images, at the click of a button. Those images showed the front and back decks with views of the exterior doors of Rainey’s cottage, two wide angle views of the yard around the cottage, both outer doors of the office, the docks and the area under the cottage. She could call them up individually or stack them across the screen. The cameras were equipped with motion detectors and alerted her with a message on the TV screen, if she was watching some other program. The Bureau guys would probably hack her feed from the cameras and add a few more.
A special weapons and tactics team would be put in place around the cottage. If anything moved those guys would be on it, before it ever knew what hit it. This dead end road was the perfect place to lay a trap. Danny would release a statement saying Rainey had refused FBI protection. Rainey would comment, through a protected source, on how she did not want anything to do with the agency that allowed her to be attacked in the first place. Danny would add that the Bureau’s main concern was the safety of the future senator and his wife.
The illusion would be that law enforcement believed the Wilson’s were the Y-Man’s real targets and former Special Agent Bell had simply stumbled upon him. The Bureau’s stance was that this type of offender would not knowingly go after an FBI agent, former or not. It had merely been a crime of impulse, the first time. They believed emphatically that the Y-Man would not make another attempt on Rainey’s life. The snare laid, all they had to do was wait.
Rainey arrived at the cottage, went in and turned the TV on. She clicked a few buttons and the eight images from the cameras spread across the screen. Mackie made himself at home in the big Lazy Boy her father had bought, just for Mackie. He special ordered it extra large and presented it to the big man one Christmas. It was decided to leave it in the cottage, because the two men spent so much time there together. They used up hours talking and watching old John Wayne movies. They never watched Vietnam War movies, because they did not have to. They witnessed it up close and personal.
A routine patrol had become a nightmare ambush in seconds. Deep in the jungle, away from any hope of reinforcements, the patrol stumbled across a series of tunnels in the hills above them. Pinned down, they fought through the night, together. In the morning, they discovered they were the only two left alive, of an eighteen-man patrol. Mackie had been wounded several times and Billy could not walk, having had shrapnel rip through his flesh, splintering bones in both his legs. They patched each other up, as best they could. Only a few of the enemy had remained behind to finish them off. Mackie carried Billy Bell on his back for five miles through the jungle, all the while, Billy shooting at the Viet Cong, trailing them to the evacuation zone. After that, the two men were inseparable, recovering in the hospital and the next year going back in the dark jungle together.
Mackie now watched over Rainey for the man he had loved so much. Their friendship had been deep and unwavering. He took the responsibility for Rainey’s safety seriously, the weight of it showing on his face. Junior sat on the front deck drinking the sweet tea Rainey fixed for him. Rainey was inspired by her thoughts of Katie to cook steaks, the only thing she knew how to do well. She asked Junior to go to the office and retrieve the fresh vegetables from the back room refrigerator. She would make a salad and grill some squash for her protectors, the activity keeping her from thinking so much about Katie.
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