Betrayals (Black Cipher Files series Book 2) (34 page)

“What were your orders?”

“If I got the call, I had a limited amount of time to make the hit.”

Katerina flinched.

“Why those people? And if they were hits, why did they go to so much trouble to cover them up and make them look like accidents?”

I ran through the ‘accidents’, climbing accident, mugging, car bomb--although that made sense it was the preferred hit of the times--, car accident, drowning.

“Every sleeper tailored the hit to the individual people,” Jordan posited.

I winced, disconcerted to discuss the most devastating moment of my life so casually even if it was necessary. “Required advanced planning and knowledge of your targets.”

“Yes.” The old man didn’t elaborate.

“Why?”

“I was given this job as a way to fulfill a...debt to the U.S. government.”

“But you didn’t do it?” I commented.

“I couldn’t.” The old man clasped Katerina’s fingers with his. “The Wolfes were...are my friends. And I’d known them long enough to know that whatever they’d done, they had clearly been model citizens since that time.”

“So what did you do?” I was fascinated, even though I was pretty sure their non-death was irrelevant to my investigation.

“I told them what my orders were, helped them scuttle their boat. They’d had contingencies, bank accounts, identifications, escape plans, in place for years,” he paused. “The hardest part for them was leaving Rina and her brother.”

“Have you ever talked to them?”

“Defeats the purpose of letting them go,” he said sadly.

I blew out a breath. Dead end. Unless....

“Do you know where they are?”

“We know nothing.” Katerina said wearily. “I have no idea where they are.”

“I’ve given you information of staggering value. Now it’s your turn.” The old man's voice was hard. Old didn’t mean harmless. I should have remembered that.

“What do you want?”

“Leave Rina alone.”

I waited, knowing I needed to say this right or I’d get nothing from them.

“I’m not trying to bother her,” I said carefully. “I just need to understand why Major Vandenburg and the DIA released my name to the media. What do they think they have on me? If I have some context, maybe I can figure out who is behind this.”

The old man continued to speak for Katerina. “She doesn’t have anything to do with your problems.”

“You have to give up something of equal value,” she demanded, her pulse fluttering visibly against her throat.

If I was going to get any answers, I needed to fill them in. And frankly, I knew Katerina wasn’t going to reveal whatever I told her. She was rabidly trying to protect her son.

However, after an adulthood of sharing nothing, and working in a culture of absolute secrecy, starting to trust was difficult.

Jordan squeezed my fingers lightly with his hard callused hand, strong and resolute beside me.

 “I was...investigating 5491, a department of the NSA, and then I was in prison.” I said roughly, “I believe my imprisonment and subsequent ‘Armed and Dangerous’ status has something to do with my research. Except as far as I know I didn’t uncover much.”

“I’ve never heard of 5491,” she said. Her face and posture conveyed her earnestness. She really hadn’t.

“Me either.” The old man appeared to be telling the truth. His body had stayed relaxed, his demeanor alert and watchful.

“Katerina’s name is in the Department 5491 file. You get money from the NSA every month since your grandparents disappeared.” I hesitated. “Somewhere in there is a connection that we’re missing.”

“So?” Her tone said, why do I care?

“All the people receiving money are related or connected in some way. Brad Johnson is dead. Someone set me up to be killed. Just like my grandparents. For all we know someone is targeting the recipients of that money for assassination.”

“You’re assuming someone is systematically eliminating the 5491 recipients,” Katerina dismissed.

Brad Johnson was dead. I’d been captured in Afghanistan. If I hadn’t escaped I’d be dead now.

“I can’t afford not to assume that.”

“Okay. I’ll give you this much--I receive money.” She rubbed her hands over her arms, trying to warm herself or sweep away the dirt that seemed to be following the 5491 people around. “But Brad Johnson isn’t dead because of 5491. He’s dead because he took stupid chances.”

The fact remained he was dead. I’d been targeted. All the recipients of money who were also in espionage had been given a drug and then an antidote. “We have to figure out how it all relates.”

The old man said, “Why did you follow Rina?”

“She lives here in D.C. and my other sources are unavailable.” I thought about how phrase this next question. “Were your grandparents born here in the U.S.?”

Katerina stared at me, the parking lot light streaming through the passenger window, bisecting her features diagonally, illuminating the flat, even line of her mouth. “Ask me something else.”

“How is Major Vandenburg is connected to this?”

“He isn’t,” she insisted. “Look, word in the office is he’s gone a little around the bend.”

“Why?”

“His son was killed in an IED attack in Iraq.” Katerina hesitated. “He hasn’t been the same since.”

“Can you find out who in the DIA is gunning for me?” Please. Jesus, couldn’t I catch just one freaking break?

A car turned down our row, instinctively we all froze.

“I’ve got to protect my son,” she shot back.

Instinctively my fingers brushed my belly. And I had to protect the life growing inside of me. Even if I wasn’t sure I wanted a baby, I felt compelled to nurture the nascent life.

“My life is on the line unless I figure out why I’m being targeted.” I pushed. “Yours could be too.”

“Every second I spend with you puts me in more danger.” She vibrated with nerves, her breath coming in shorter and shorter intervals, the acrid scent of fear sharp in the car.

“Yeah. You can’t protect your son if you’re dead.”

“I’m giving you this information and then AMF,” she said.

“What?”

Adios Mother Fucker, Jordan mouthed.

“Those are my conditions. Agree or get out.”

“Fine.” Wow. Hard ass Katerina was back.

Reluctantly, she said, “Major Vandenburg had a meeting with Senator Jordan right before the press conference.”

In my peripheral vision, Jordan slowly turned to granite. His body tensing, muscle by muscle, until his face resembled a Greek statue, the sharp planes of his cheekbones, and the rock hard curve of his jaw, cast into shadow and light. I had to find out what connected him and the senator. Preferably yesterday.

Katerina said, “The press conference was literally scheduled within an hour.”

“We have to find out what they talked about.” But how?

Jordan sighed heavily. “I have a way to get to the Senator.”

“How?”

Finally, I’d find out what made Jordan tense up every time the man’s name popped up.

Shit. Suddenly I put it together. And I wondered why I didn’t see it before.

“He’s my father.”

THIRTY-NINE

Fuck. He knew how to drop a bomb.

He’d never spoken those words aloud. Of course it was possible he was in cardiac arrest as his heart slammed against his ribs.

As he’d sat in this car, Jordan realized withholding information from the team had put everyone at risk.

“Holy....” Staci trailed off, her eyes wide in the gloom of the backseat.

“Yeah.” He clenched his teeth, knowing his expression did not encourage questions.

“Not your buddy.”

“No.”

She processed rapidly, understanding and some other emotion dawning in her gaze. He’d thought about all the things he’d told her about his father. Now Staci knew where he came from.

“We need to talk to him,” Staci said reluctantly.

Denial reverberated through him, but Jordan had already concluded a face-to-face was necessary.

“I know.” Whatever the senator and Vandenburg discussed led to the press conference that changed Staci's status. They needed to know what happened during that meeting.

“How?” Staci tapped a long finger against her mouth. Her face had started to regaining color. She’d kept down the cinnamon roll and the food
Tía Lupe
had given them.

Silence smothered the interior as all three waited. “Blackmail.”

The old man jerked.

“Only four people in the world know he’s my father. Possibly five,” Jordan amended, “if his wife knows.”

He glanced around the interior of the nondescript sedan. An innocuous setting for proposing an action guaranteed to have long lasting repercussions. “Seven now.”

He had to tell the old man and Katerina. He and Staci needed someone else to know and understand what was really going on, but damn, talking about his parentage was difficult. Sweat beaded on his face, and rolled down his temple to glide behind his ear. Adrenaline shifted his focus to higher alert, blocking unimportant sounds yet still filtering in possible threats. Physiological reactions he’d trained long and hard to ignore overwhelmed him.

“I'll threaten to go to the media unless he talks to me,” he stressed.

As a set-up it was near perfect. Unless the bastard said no. Acid gurgled in his stomach.

If the senator refused, Jordan would have to make good on the blackmail threat and take the secret of his parentage to the press. The publicity for Jordan and for his mother would be horrible. His entire life would be under scrutiny.

But it was past time Jordan stood up to the man who had fathered him. All these years he’d protected his mother’s secret. Now protecting Staci and their baby was imperative.

“You’d do that for...me?” Surprise, horror filled her slate blue eyes.

“And the baby.”

The baby they wouldn’t have, unless they figured out who was after Staci and why. There were so many complications and problems with his scenario, details he couldn’t control, emotions and reactions he couldn’t predict. Dammit.

“You’re pregnant?” Katerina gasped.

“Yeah.” Staci’s tone made it clear she didn’t want any comments.

He just had to hope the senator was too rattled by the threat to take evasive measures.

“Every time we turn around, his name comes up.” Jordan ignored the people in the front seat, speaking directly to Staci. “Every time.”

“Are you sure?”

“Too many secrets are what brought us to this point,” Jordan said tightly. “We need someone else to know what is really going on.”

“This is between you two,” Katerina protested. “I can’t be anywhere near this mess.”

Staci held up her cell phone and took a picture of Katerina.

“What was that for?”

“When they get me, they’ll find your picture on my cell phone.”

“You bitch!” Katerina lurched toward the back seat, grabbing for the cell phone even as the old man tried to restrain her.

Staci flipped the phone closed and tucked it in Jordan’s back pocket.

“We need you to document this,” Staci reprimanded sharply. “And now we know you have no motive for wanting us captured.”

They were desperate. And finally, finally Katerina got it.

Jordan was quiet, calm, resolved. “He has the resources and the power to have me followed.”

He thought back to the surveillance team in New York City. They had never approached him or Staci. Followed, yes. Reported, probably. But they didn’t apprehend him. Same with the sedan earlier tonight. They followed but never made contact.

“Could it be while I thought they were after me, all this time they were after you? The surveillance we’d assumed on my townhouse. The ransacking of my house in the Bahamas.”

“Not all of it. The Senator had information about a situation,” he responded. He hadn’t picked up a tail until after the senator grilled him about the shooting in the Presidential Suites. Jordan fisted his hand, ignoring the strong urge to punch something, someone, in particular. “He wanted to know what I knew.”

Why? Could the senator be connected to the events at the Presidential Suites? Connected to whoever authorized Susan Chen and her accomplice's experiment? And if he was–did that mean he’d had something to do with scientists who had administered a DNA drug to unsuspecting agents?

From the moment of conception his father had been fucking up his life and he was tired of it.

“He is connected to me and you.” Staci rubbed her stomach, drawing him back to their more immediate problems.

“We need to get this resolved,” he said fiercely.

Staci turned away from the people in the front seat, to face him, her gaze earnest and intense. “I don’t want you compromised.”

He placed a hand over her stomach, feeling the pulse of blood through her body.

“Let’s use Carson to get to the Senator.” Staci shot Katerina a look. “I know you know him so don’t try to con me.”

Katerina pressed her lips together.

“We’ll keep a record.” The old man negotiated, “With the understanding that you leave Rina alone after it’s done.”

“Agreed,” Staci said.

Staci didn’t like it, he could tell. Then she looked at him and understood he wouldn’t change his mind. He wasn’t going to back down.

He was trying to prevent her death. Trying to prevent the mess of her life from spiraling any more out of control. Trying to protect her.

“I hate the idea of you confronting him,” Staci said softly.

“I’m not real crazy about it myself.”

FORTY

October 19
th

10:00 pm

Rural Virginia

Carson Black’s house was an access nightmare.

No way were they ascending that driveway. The house, the final stop, was a good, wide open, half mile from the security gate.

If Carson called in a retrieval team while they were in the house, Jordan and Staci would be effectively trapped. The ranch style house had no cover. Bushes were trimmed. Trees were cut back, making access from the upper branches impossible. Much care had been expended to give the house a normal appearance when in reality the structure was a defensible and almost unbreachable fortress.

Jordan carefully examined potential access points. Finally he decided the best approach was from the neighbor’s yard.