Body of Evidence (Evidence Series) (45 page)

His cell phone remained in his pocket; he could feel it against his hip. He had no idea if it had been damaged in the blast or even remained connected to Lee. If it was still on, he knew Lee would be locked on to the signal and phoning the GPS coordinates to the FBI. With luck, that stop by the side of the road was enough for agents to catch up.

“I’m shocked to see you risking yourself this way, Beck. This is the sort of dirty job you leave to your operatives.”

“After what you did to Evan, I want to personally watch you both die.”

“Evan had smallpox,” Mara said from behind him. “Did you know that?”

Beck flushed red. “You lie.”

“He did. They ran a cytokine assay on his blood after he died, and found evidence he’d been sick.”

She was blowing smoke. No such tests had been done on Evan’s blood, but he had to admit, her words rattled Beck.

“I had smallpox, and they did the same test on me. We can prove Evan and I were sick with the same strain. You can’t start a smallpox epidemic. No one will believe it was al Qaeda or the North Koreans, or whoever you planned to blame it on. They’ll know it was Raptor.”

“Nice try, but I know the CDC hasn’t done any tests for smallpox.”

“I didn’t go to the CDC. I went to an epidemiologist at a university. He knows everything, and when I disappear, he’s going public.”

Beck laughed. “Ms. Garrett, you’ve disappeared so many times already, everyone will believe you’ve merely gone into hiding again. This time with your lover, who has thrown away his career for you.”

“No one will believe that about Curt.”

“Are you kidding? He’s been acting paranoid since meeting you. I’ve been hearing for weeks how you’ve damaged him. And then there’s what you did to poor Evan. They’ll believe it.”

Sirens sounded behind them. Curt said a silent prayer that Lee had sent the cavalry, but regardless, it was now or never. He had to take down Beck before they entered the compound. The moment Beck’s gaze flicked to the rear window, Curt struck. He smashed Beck’s gun wrist to the side, then pinned him against the bulkhead by the throat. With his free hand, he repeatedly slammed Beck’s wrist into the corner edge of the pass-through until his wrist snapped and the gun dropped.

Beck was a businessman, not a mercenary, and the blows he tried to land with his good hand were ineffective.

The ambulance veered suddenly, then rocked from side to side. George couldn’t stop because of the pursing police cars, so he used the motion of the speeding vehicle to prevent Curt from seizing control. Curt was tossed to the left, forcing him to let go of Beck.

To catch his balance, he grabbed at the bulkhead behind the driver’s seat. Catching a handhold, he pulled himself into the opening between the cab and rear of the ambulance.

George hit the accelerator, knocking him off-balance. Grappling for purchase, his free hand slipped along the driver’s seat base and caught on the seat-belt latch at George’s right hip.

George twisted the steering wheel, again rocking the bulky vehicle side to side. Curt released the handhold and took a swing at his head, but missed as he was bounced like a ping-pong ball in the opening between the front seats.

His grip on the latch slipped, but he caught the attached belt, jerking it tight as he lurched backward. George grunted, and Curt angled forward to see the shoulder belt pressed against the man’s neck.

He gripped the belt tighter and looked over his shoulder to check on Mara. She was right behind him, holding the rail of the locked-down gurney with one hand and Beck’s gun in the other, trained on the CEO.

Curt turned back to George, who hadn’t slowed the vehicle. With the ambulance tilting, swaying, and speeding down the interstate, Curt leveraged himself behind the driver’s seat and braced his foot on the bulkhead.

He yanked on the belt, and George shuddered, but didn’t—couldn’t—make a sound.

George slammed on the brake pedal in what must have been an attempt to dislodge Curt. Mara slammed into his back with a grunt.

Thanks to his firm foot against the partition, neither Curt nor Mara flew between the seats and through the windshield. The ambulance came to a stop as George grappled with the seat belt, silently fighting for air.

Curt twisted the belt in his hands, tightening the pressure until the man passed out.

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY-EIGHT

T
WO HOURS LATER
, an FBI agent insisted Mara don a biohazard suit to enter the lab. A ridiculous precaution, since she’d already
had
smallpox. But she did as instructed, and minutes later she confirmed they had located the bomb she’d found in North Korea.

Task complete, she exited the lab and doffed the bulky suit. From there an agent led her to a waiting vehicle, and her heart swelled when she saw Curt inside. She hadn’t seen him since the first minutes after the FBI had taken Robert Beck into custody at the roadside. They’d had to be questioned alone about what had happened in the safe house and in the ambulance.

She slid into the seat and right into his arms. She snuggled against his side in contented silence.

Finally, Curt said, “They found the agent in the garage. He was inside the SUV when the bomb went off. Thanks to the concrete walls and sturdy vehicle, he was trapped but unharmed.”

She smiled. “I heard. I’m relieved.”

“Jeannie’s going to be okay.”

Jeannie had been found inside the compound when the search warrants were served. She claimed she’d been a prisoner, but it would be her word against Beck’s. Mara believed her and feared the woman had been put through hell.

“She’s not ready to see you,” he added.

“I know. We’ll talk eventually.” She sighed and snuggled closer. “I think every part of me aches. I feel like I smacked into a wall.”

Curt threaded fingers through her hair. The tickling sensation felt heavenly. “Next time, will you please wear a seat belt?”

She closed her eyes and smiled. “Are you kidding? After what I saw you do with the seat belt to George?” She shook her head. “Seat belts are dangerous.” She opened her eyes. “Thanks for saving my life again.”

“I think we need a score card to figure out if we’re even.”

“That depends. You took out both George and Beck, but I was the one who had a gun on Beck in the end. So is that one or two?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s two.”

She chuckled, then turned serious again. “How did you know the secretary of state was involved?”

“Your uncle told me he kept him informed, and everything clicked into place. When I spoke to him about the smallpox bomb, he shut me down in no uncertain terms. He used all the right words and excuses, but it didn’t sit right. Then there’s the fact that Raptor knew where we were in Hawai’i, Arizona, and Virginia. In Hawai’i and Arizona, the military appeared to be the weak link. But Virginia… I thought Evan had tracked us through the phone, although I couldn’t figure out how he did it, because the connection was so brief.

“Before I arrived in DC, my office was billed for the ten grand the Arizona US Attorney’s Office gave us. It turns out the USA’s assistant had also cc’d the bill to the State Department. That was all the secretary needed to determine who had provided us with a vehicle. As I mentioned before, all federal vehicles have tracking devices.”

“Would that have been enough to indict him?”

“No. He
did
follow up on the smallpox with the president. He did everything right, while quietly discrediting you and me. Last night I got the judge to authorize a wiretap, but he might have walked if Robert Beck hadn’t betrayed him by ordering the attack on the house while he was still inside.”

Her eyes drifted closed. She hadn’t been this tired since the first day they met—the longest day of her life. “Are you always this busy?” she asked. “Because every time I’m with you. it’s nonstop. You promised me dates with dinners at restaurants and fun football games. But all I get are explosions, men trying to kill me, and we hardly
ever
eat.”

“I’ve got tickets to a football game a week from Sunday.”

She bolted upright. “You really got tickets?”

“Of course. I bought the tickets and a five-year-old’s artwork.”

“I thought you’d made that up. It was an adorable story.”

“It was pure wooing gold. Wait until you see Katie’s drawing. You’ll be crawling all over me.” Curt’s grin set her heart pounding. He had a new smile, just for her, and it conveyed all the intensity of his feelings as well as a hint of their shared intimacy and a promise for more.

“Can we really go to a football game? In public? Don’t I need to hide?”

“Beck has lost his mercenary army. He can’t pay the bills, so his employees won’t take orders from him anymore. It’s one of the nicer things about mercenaries. Zealots are so much harder to stop.” He lifted her fingers to his lips. “So, Mara, will you come with me to the football game?”

She grinned. “I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to take me out to dinner first.”

E
PILOGUE

C
URT AND
M
ARA
stood on the fringes of the small graveside gathering in Arlington Cemetery. The remains of Captain Allen Baldwin, the man who’d piloted the F-86 Sabre she’d excavated that last day in North Korea, were being laid to rest at long last, and Mara didn’t want to draw attention away from the man being honored by making her presence known. Weeks had passed since the explosion at the safe house, and the excessive media attention had finally died down, but the press still occasionally followed them.

Curt held her hand as the flag was carefully folded and presented to the man’s widow. The widow was flanked by her children and grandchildren, several of whom were Mara’s age, reminding her so much of her own family and how her grandmother had longed for a ceremony like this one.

Someday, perhaps, JPAC would return to North Korea and retrieve her grandfather’s remains, but Mara wouldn’t be on the crew. Nor would Jeannie. Jeannie’s legal troubles were still being sorted out, but it looked like she’d get probation in exchange for her testimony against Beck.

Mara had seen her, briefly, at Jeannie’s brother’s funeral, which Curt and Mara had flown across the country to attend. Now, here she was, again dressed in black, attending the last of the memorials related to the North Korean deployment and Raptor’s foray into biological weapon manufacture and homegrown terrorism.

Robert Beck, two scientists, and his four most loyal mercenaries were being held without bond. They had enough to convict them without her testimony, and Mara had no reason to fear any rogue operatives would target her.

Still, she’d breathe easier when the convictions were handed down.

The ceremony ended, and they waited for the crowd to disperse before she approached the freshly filled grave. From her purse she pulled a JPAC coin, a grinning skull on one side with the words “Search, Recover, Identify” on the back. She set the coin in the loose soil and whispered her thanks to the man who’d given his life to prevent the US from committing a wartime atrocity.

The cold December wind cut through her wool coat, and she shivered as they walked up the path toward Curt’s car. Days like today made her miss Hawai’i, yet she looked toward the coming mainland winter with a surprising amount of hope.

They returned to Curt’s condo, where she’d been staying since Beck’s arrest. The press no longer camped outside his building. Life was starting to feel almost normal.

Inside his home, she kicked off her shoes and walked straight to the fireplace, where she warmed her chilled hands while Curt checked messages. A few minutes later, he approached her from behind and wrapped his arms around her waist. “Just got word, a man has stepped forward with an offer to buy all of Raptor’s assets.”

She frowned. “Raptor isn’t dissolving?”

“He says he wants Raptor’s existing government contracts in addition to the various training grounds and compounds.”

“If Raptor keeps operating, am I in danger?”

“My source says no. The man is Alec Ravissant. He’s a retired Army Ranger. Sterling reputation. He’s agreed to government oversight and says he’s determined to redeem the organization. The deal won’t go through without a thorough vetting, and so far he looks good.”