All Jacked Up (30 page)

“Doesn’t sound typical to me,” Jack said.

“And yet you didn’t trust her enough to tell her about the tracking device.”

“She’s not exactly a master at hiding her emotions.”

“That’s not it, Jack,” Aubrey said. “You just like to hold all the cards. You’ve been working alone so long—”

“When I worked alone I didn’t get shot in the head.”

Aubrey had a touchy few seconds where she recalled that moment, not knowing if she’d killed him. It was so overwhelming she was tempted to do something crazy, something she couldn’t take back. Something like apologize. Tears might have been involved, too, but she managed to control herself—mostly by recalling that the whole thing was Jack’s fault to begin with.

“Well, if you’d trusted me,” she said, “I wouldn’t have been wondering if I could trust you. And if you didn’t constantly underestimate me, you wouldn’t have left your gun lying around.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to pick it up and point it at me.”

“You had information you weren’t sharing with me, Jack, and I started to wonder if there was a good reason you were keeping it to yourself. Like maybe I wouldn’t be too happy to hear it. Which meant I needed to hear it, and since you’re twice as big as I am what other choice did you leave me?”

“Right, like you would have shot me if Danny and Carlo hadn’t busted in and scared the sh—”

“Enough of this,” Corona said. “Eat, Mr. Mitchell.”

Jack scowled one last time, then let it go. “I could use some food.”

“And I could use some information.”

Both of them looked at Aubrey.

She rolled her eyes. “No, Jack, don’t get up. Let me.”

She went to the buffet and began to load a plate for Jack, wondering if she’d somehow fallen down a rabbit hole. They’d been running from Corona for more than a week, and now here they were, having breakfast with him like it was no big deal. Aubrey didn’t know whether to put Jack’s plate on the table or hit him over the head with it. Or maybe she’d kiss him instead. The possibility that they were going to come out of this alive was practically nil, but she was ecstatic to see him.

Jack dug into his food, recounting the sad story of their journey from D.C.—carefully edited—in between bites. It didn’t take all that long to tell, or to clean his plate, but when he looked expectantly at her, she wasn’t having any of it.

“You can exaggerate your strength right over to the buffet,” she said to him, “because I’m not waiting on you again.”

“The woman waits on her man,” Corona said.

She’d had enough of him and his icy stares, too. He was going to kill her regardless of how she acted, so she might as well let herself go. “He’s not my man.”

“You shared a bed.”

She heaved a sigh, but she didn’t deny it.

“He protects you.”

“The jury’s still out on that,” she said.

“He steps between you and danger,” Corona said, “even now when he is at the end of his strength.”

“Like you’re doing with your family,” Jack said.

“Ah.” Corona sat back, his eyes fixed on Jack’s face. “So you admit to knowing about them.”

“For about ten minutes,” Jack said, “since I heard you tell Aubrey.”

“It matters not, Mr. Mitchell. You know of them now, and that means you have to die.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Jack said, “and I’m going to tell you why.”

“Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

“Um . . . not completely, no.”

“Then if you shut up for five minutes, I think I have this under control.”

“No need to be rude about it, Jack.” She still didn’t look convinced, but she cooperated.

“I had a meet set up with Doris Landowski.” Jack was talking to Corona, but he was watching Aubrey wander to the buffet. She ran her hand around the edge of a silver tray piled with sweet rolls, then gave the back of Corona’s head a sideways look.

Jack caught her eye and shook his head.

Corona caught it, too, and turned around. The look he sent Aubrey was enough to have her grabbing a croissant like that had been her intention all along and scuttling back to her chair.

Corona turned his attention back to Jack, but Jack held Aubrey’s eyes another few seconds, hoping like hell she could read his mind. If ever there was a time for her to let him deal with a situation, this was it. Any normal woman would have understood that. Any normal woman would have been scared out of her mind. But Aubrey wasn’t normal. Aubrey was subnormal in the fear department. She had absolutely no appreciation for the instability of their position.

Pablo Corona had killed his own brother, not to mention he’d been raised in a culture where women weren’t actually considered people. Jack hoped she figured that out, because if she kept challenging his superiority Corona would expect him to put her in her place. And he’d do it.

“You were saying, Mr. Mitchell. Doris? The meeting?”

“Right. By the time I got to the parking structure where Doris wanted to meet, she was dead.”

This elicited no response from Corona, unless Jack counted the slight, satisfied smile.

“Who was Doris to you?” he asked.

“She was my wife’s maid.”

Aubrey’s head whipped around when Corona used the word “wife,” but she didn’t say anything.

“She and Carlo were sleeping together,” Corona continued. “Neither of them knew the truth, but they eventually put it together. The two stupidest people in the western hemisphere discovered what the entire world has been dying to know. I have a family.”

“And a family makes you vulnerable.”

Corona inclined his head in agreement. “The safety of my children is very important to me, Mr. Mitchell. They have been kept away from this business. They are innocent. I will not have them threatened or harmed, so I keep their existence a secret and cultivate this persona the world knows as Pablo Corona.”

It wasn’t all a persona, Jack thought. He didn’t mention his wife’s safety, for one thing, which meant that at least the philandering was true. And he had people killed.

“The woman, Doris, decided she could make more money selling this information than she could working for an honest living,” Corona continued. “Of course she had no way to contact my enemies in the drug trade.”

“So she went to the FBI,” Jack said. “She called the tip line and they put her in touch with me because I was assigned to your case. She told me where and when to meet her and you know how that turned out. Except it was set up to look like I killed her. I didn’t, and I’m betting you didn’t, either.”

Silence.

“You’re holding all the cards,” Jack said. “It doesn’t matter what you tell us at this point, but I won’t talk unless you do.”

Corona looked over at Aubrey, considering.

“Do you really think hurting her would make a difference to me?” Jack asked.

“Yes. I believe you would sacrifice yourself to save her.”

And he was right. Even now that her usefulness was at an end. “Either way you don’t get your questions answered.”

“True,” Corona said. “Very well, I had a contract out on Doris, but no one has come to collect on it.”

“And no one will. She wasn’t killed by one of your men, and she wasn’t killed by a freelancer.”

“Then who did it?” Aubrey asked. Both men turned to stare at her, and she sat back in her chair, both hands up. “Is it okay for me to talk now?”

“I’m surprised you kept quiet this long,” Jack said. “Must be some kind of record.”

“Just answer the question. Who killed Doris?”

“I’m getting to that,” Jack said. “By the time I got back to the bureau, the cops were looking for me. I figured all I had to do was explain what happened, but the rumor was already circulating about me changing sides. We found out about the contract on you at almost the same time, so we figured it was a good bet that you knew what Doris knew.

“It seemed like the best course of action was to get to you before the hit men did. My superiors wanted me to bring you in and work within the system, but I didn’t think they could protect you, and I wasn’t too sure I’d survive it.”

“My men had instructions not to kill her.”

“So Danny was telling me the truth in Atlanta?” Aubrey asked Corona. “Why didn’t you want me killed? I mean, thank you, but why?”

“I needed to discover who else knew about my family.”

“Then what about the guys at the Library of Congress? They were shooting at me, right? I mean, if not for the atlas . . . And the guy in the pickup—”

“Horace George,” Jack supplied.

“Who is this man, Horace George?”

“Washed out as an FBI agent about ten years ago,” Jack said, “and when I found out he was involved it got me to thinking. The car that chased us in D.C. had government plates, and the shooters got through security at the Library of Congress with no problem.”

“So did you,” Aubrey said.

“Exactly. Every building has a back door, a way through security. You just have to know where to look.”

“And the FBI has files, right, Jack? Horace used to work for them—”

“Used to.”

“He probably still has contacts,” Corona observed. “And since he does not work for me—”

“Which I figured out when Danny and Carlo told us they got rid of him,” Jack said. “They might want to keep the glory for themselves, but I didn’t think they’d take out one of your men without your say-so.”

“Quite right,” Corona said. “Perhaps you can tell me who Mr. George does work for?”

“Now you’ve hit on the important part of the is whole mess.”

Aubrey huffed out a breath. “As far as I’m concerned the really important part of this whole mess is that I don’t know anything.”

“Yes, you do,” Jack said, “but not about Corona’s family.” Aubrey didn’t have anything to say about that. Neither did Corona, both of them waiting for Jack to elaborate.

“Okay,” Jack said, “let’s suppose you know something about a member of congress, Aubrey, something that would probably destroy his political career and land him in jail?”

“Okay,” she said doubtfully. “I’m listening.”

“Suppose he decided to get rid of you, but he had to make sure his tracks were covered?”

“Are you saying somebody is using Corona to have me killed?”

“How would he do this?” Corona demanded.

“Pretty easily, as it turns out. Suppose this member of Congress has contacts at the FBI. He went to college with somebody who’s made it to the higher ranks, or he knows something about an FBI official that would be harmful if it was made public.”

Aubrey drew in a breath. Jack shook his head, wanting her to keep her suppositions, right or wrong, to herself. But Corona was watching her, clearly expecting her to say something.

So she did. “Um . . . Not only would he have access to FBI intelligence, if he knows there’s a double agent, it would make it pretty easy for him to feed you information, Mr. Corona, real or bogus.” Her gaze darted to Jack, he gave her a go-ahead sign. “I mean, we know you have somebody working inside. That’s how Danny and Carlo kept finding us right? The FBI was tracking us and you were listening in.”

“And once it’s been leaked to you that Aubrey is a threat,” Jack said, taking up the rest of the explanation, “he makes me out to be a mole so I can’t interfere. And he hedges his bets by setting his own dogs on Aubrey. No matter who kills her it’ll be chalked up to your organization.”

“Not only have I been used as a weapon,” Corona said, “but I have been insulted as well? My organization is too incompetent to carry out a contract hit on a librarian?”

That’s the way it had turned out, but Jack wasn’t about to say as much.

“Do you have proof of any of this, Mr. Mitchell?”

“No. That’s why you’re going to let me go back to Washington, to get some.”

“No.”

“Then I don’t give you a name.”

“I could make you.”

“You could make her, if she knew who it was. And before you think about keeping Aubrey here as insurance, she’s the key to this. If I show up without her I can threaten all I want but I’ll be holding an empty gun.”

“And what is to keep you from telling your superiors what you have learned about me?”

“I don’t use women and children. And even if I knew where your family was, they won’t be there for long. You’ll move them to another location you’ll keep secret at all costs, and as long as nobody knows what they look like, they’re safe.”

Corona held Jack’s gaze for a moment, nodded his acknowledgment of the warning, then looked at Aubrey. “And what is to keep Miss Sullivan from . . . spilling the beans?”

“Me.”

Corona took no time to consider that. “Fine,” he said, “but my men go along.”

No point in asking who the men were. “Deal,” Jack said, “but if we don’t make it back to D.C.—”

Corona waved that possibility off. “My private jet will take you.”

Jack nodded. “I won’t tell Danny what you want to know as long as the contract on Aubrey stands.”

“I dislike being blackmailed.”

“Do you like being manipulated?”

Corona pulled his stone-face routine.

“You cancel the contract,” Jack said, “it sends a message.”

“I will be sending a message, Mr. Mitchell, never fear.” He stood, tossed his napkin on the table, and left the room.

A minute later Danny appeared and took them to a room. Not the basement; this room had windows and a door that wasn’t locked. Aubrey’s backpack was sitting on the bed.

“It’s a sign of trust,” Jack said when she got done trying the doorknob and turned to him. “And a test. We try to take off, he knows we’re lying. And we’ll never make it out of here alive, which won’t hurt his feelings.”

She sat on the bed, pulling her backpack over to her and hanging onto it like an old friend. “Are you going to warn—”

“No,” Jack said before a name popped out of her mouth. He looked up at the ceiling and tapped his ear.

She nodded. “If you’re right, Corona will kill him.”

Jack shrugged. “You swim with the sharks.”