Cooper Security 06 - Secret Intentions (24 page)

But only if the saw attachment of this little multibladed knife could hold up to the task of sawing through two thick layers of plaster.

“Cav? You hanging in there?” For several minutes, she’d heard little from her friend but sporadic coughing.

She heard a faint sound that might have been Cav’s answer. She hoped it had been. Even though the larger risk from a gas leak was ignition, inhalation could be bad enough, especially if enough gas was leaking to displace the oxygen in the air. From what she could remember about Cav from years ago, he had asthma, which could exacerbate the effects of both the natural gas and the chemicals added to give the gas a warning odor.

She herself was beginning to feel dizzy and tired, although how much was from the panic she was fighting and how much was the gas itself, she wasn’t sure.

Suddenly she heard three loud bangs and froze, terrified for a moment that the gas had already ignited. Only when the sounds came again did she recognize what they were. Someone was knocking on the door.

She stayed very still for a long moment, waiting for any sound from within the house that might reveal the presence of their captors, before she realized they wouldn’t risk staying in a house full of gas. She closed the saw blade and felt her way to the closet door, banging on the wood and shouting. “We’re in here. The place is full of gas! Help us!”

She wondered if anyone heard.

* * *

J
ESSE FOUND A SIDE PORCH
on the alley side of the house, with a rickety screen door sagging on its hinges. It opened with a heart-stopping creak but created no sparks. Jesse stepped onto the small porch and took a look at the door to the inside. It was wood, with a flaked paint job, and had four panes of glass set into a cross frame in the top half of the door. Locked, he learned when he gave the doorknob a futile twist.

He pulled off his jacket and wrapped it around his arm. With a sharp jab of his elbow, he shattered the glass in the pane nearest to the doorknob. After using the jacket to clear off the jagged glass still poking out of the window frame, he reached through the opening and stretched his arm down until his fingers closed around the knob of the dead-bolt lock.

No sparks,
he prayed silently, and twisted the knob. It didn’t move easily, but it moved, and he withdrew his arm and tried the door again.

It swung open, and the odor of gas hit him like a physical blow.

“I’m in!” he called to his cousin and Powell, but he didn’t wait for them to show up before he walked into the small kitchen. Nor did he bother drawing his GLOCK—he didn’t dare use it. He doubted any of the bad guys would have stuck around once they started the gas leak anyway. It was dangerous as hell just walking through the place, thanks to the volatile, highly explosive gas surrounding him.

“Evie?” he called.

Nearby, he heard a racking series of coughs. He followed the sound to a small door just off the kitchen. “Evie?” he called again.

“Not…Evie....” A male voice, punctuated by harsh coughs, came from behind the door.

“Is she in the house?”

“Think so.”

Jesse squelched the urge to leave Endrex, or whoever it was behind this door, to his own devices and search for Evie instead. If this guy was Endrex, and he had the evidence General Ross had believed, he might be their only chance to bring down the Espera Group.

Just then Briggs and his partner, Caleb Lowell, came through the back door, saving him from having to choose. “Someone’s in here, and he doesn’t sound good. I have to go look for Evie.”

“Go,” Briggs said firmly, his dark eyes understanding.

Jesse went deeper into the house. “Evie?”

“Jesse!” The sound of Evie’s voice, raspy but strong, nearly knocked Jesse’s legs out from under him.

He followed her voice until he reached a small closet in the hallway near a tiny bathroom. “Evie, are you okay?”

“We’ve got to get out of here. They’ve set a gas leak—”

“I know. Let’s try to unlock this door.”

“I don’t think there’s any good way to do it without risking sparks. Go to the room to your right and try to cut through the plaster with your pocketknife or something. I’m nearly through my side of the wall.”

He stared at the closed door a moment. “They let you keep a knife?”

Her low chuckle caught him by surprise. “Hid it in my bra. Kiss Megan for me when we get home.”

He raced to the room next door, a small, empty bedroom unnaturally dark for that time of the afternoon, thanks to an overgrown boxwood outside the room’s single window, blocking out daylight. He didn’t risk turning on a light, fearful of striking sparks. He picked a spot on the wall next to the closet and pulled out his pocketknife. “Knock on the wall where you’re cutting,” he called.

He followed the series of raps until satisfied he was cutting in the right place. His saw blade made quick work of the chipped, cracked plaster wall, slicing a large square open in just a couple of minutes. Carefully pulling the chunks of plaster away, he looked inside the wall and, for a moment, saw only darkness.

Then Evie’s small, oval face appeared in the opening, her eyes wide with a combination of fear and relief. “Get me out of here,” she said in a whiskey-dark voice.

He caught her arms and pulled her through the opening he’d made, crushing her close. “Are you hurt?”

She wriggled free. “This place is a big old bomb waiting to go off. Let’s get out of here!”

Grabbing her hand, he led the way out.

Chapter Nineteen

Jesse returned from the coffeepot on the far side of the waiting room with two cups full of hot, steaming wake-up juice to find Evie talking to a man wearing green scrubs. She looked relieved when the man walked away.

“Cav’s out of the woods.”

Cav, Jesse knew now, was Nolan Cavanaugh, the real name of the computer genius who went by Endrex online. General Marsh had called with that information shortly after he and Evie arrived at the hospital. Evie hadn’t wanted to be checked out by the paramedics who’d arrived on the scene of the gas leak along with the fire department, but Jesse had insisted she let them take a look. To his relief, she’d been given a clean bill of health by the emergency medical techs.

“She’ll want to go to the hospital with her friend,” Jesse had warned his cousin Briggs when he and his partner looked inclined to take her to police headquarters for debriefing. “You can get her statement there.”

And so he had, questioning her for almost an hour while they waited for word of Nolan Cavanaugh’s condition. Evie had given Briggs a detailed description of both men, and the Birmingham Police Department had an APB out on both of them.

“We need to talk to Cav about his evidence,” Evie said. “He never told me where he had it, and I have no idea if he told those men where it was. We can’t let them destroy our best chance to stop the Espera Group.”

“I’m not sure they’re letting nonrelatives see him.”

“I’ll tell them I’m his sister. Who’s going to check?”

As it turned out, they didn’t have to tell anyone anything. Briggs came into the waiting room and motioned for Evie to join him. “Mr. Cavanaugh needs to talk to you.”

“I’m coming, too,” Jesse said, giving his cousin a look that warned against argument.

Briggs nodded and led them down the hall to the private room where the hospital staff had put Cavanaugh to recuperate from his exposure to the gas fumes.

He frowned at the sight of Jesse following Evie into the room. “Who are you?”

“Evie’s boyfriend,” Jesse answered flatly.

Evie’s gaze whipped up to meet his. He silently dared her to contradict him, a smile tickling the corner of his lips.

Her mouth curved in response as she turned to Cavanaugh. “Jesse Cooper, this is Cav. Cav, Jesse.” She sat on the edge of the bed and took Cavanaugh’s hand. “You scared me. I was terrified you weren’t going to make it long enough for me to get out of that closet to help you.”

“Me, too,” he said with a weak grin. He leaned his head closer to hers. “I have what you’re looking for. I trust you to do the right thing with it.”

“Where is it?” she asked.

He bent closer and whispered something in her ear.

She sat back in surprise. “You’re kidding.”

He managed a weak smile. “It seemed to be the safest place.”

“Where is it?” Jesse asked, trying not to sound as impatient as he felt.

Cavanaugh reached over to the bedside table and picked up a small plastic bag full of his personal items, things the E.R. staff had removed while they were working on him. He pulled out a gold ring with a blue stone and handed it to Evie. “Push the stone three times.”

Evie did as told. After the third click, the stone setting popped open on a hinge. As Jesse stepped closer for a better look, Evie withdrew three tiny chips from the hollow compartment inside the ring.

“Everything’s there. I pulled it from personal computers, work computers, satellite transmissions—I’ve been on this for years, since I first heard about what the State Department did to Maddox Heller.” Cavanaugh’s hoarse voice dripped with indignation. “Total railroad job, and I wanted to prove it. Heller was my personal bodyguard during some work I did for the leathernecks before he was deployed to Kaziristan. Stand-up guy. But the deeper I looked, the more slime I found. It became about so much more than one good Marine being slandered.”

“You should have told someone what you had.”

“I did. I told General Ross. And you saw what happened to his son. And then to him.”

Jesse had seen a lot of people suffer at the hands of the SSU and the people who paid their bills. “We’ll get this to the right people.”

“Call Blackledge.” Cavanaugh grimaced. “General Ross told me the senator’s a wily old bastard, but he plays it straight on stuff like this. He won’t let this evidence disappear.”

“We will.” Evie squeezed his hand and let go. “You take care of yourself, okay? And you know where to find me.”

Cavanaugh grinned at her. “With him?”

Evie turned to look at Jesse with bright, inquisitive eyes. “We’ll see.”

They stepped out of Cavanaugh’s room and almost ran straight into Megan and Isabel. “We got here as soon as we could. Are you two okay?”

Jesse hugged his sisters. “We’re good. And we have the evidence.”

“Really?” Isabel’s eyes widened. “On you?”

“Yes.” He looked at Evie. “And we need to get it somewhere safe. We’ve all risked too much to let it slip out of our hands this time.”

* * *

A
QUIET BUT INTENSE
Cooper family party commenced in the conference room at Cooper Security within an hour of their return. Jesse’s brothers and sisters, and even a few cousins, showed up for the impromptu celebration, along with Evie’s parents, her sister and her brother-in-law. After an emotional reunion with her family, Evie found herself handed from Cooper to Cooper for hugs and congratulations.

Even Rick’s wife, Amanda, who was the most reserved and cautious of the Cooper family, gave Evie a fierce hug, with a laughing apology for her very pregnant belly getting in the way.

“You took a huge risk today,” Amanda said softly, her eyes shining with understanding. She rubbed her stomach. “I hope everything you’ve done today makes the world a safer place for all of us.”

Jesse had handed over the evidence chips to his brother Rick as soon as they arrived, telling him, “Put it in the safe at the alternate site.” Evie had no idea where the alternate site might be, but she trusted Jesse knew what he was doing, at least where his work was concerned.

Where his heart was concerned, however, she was beginning to wonder if he had a clue. For a moment in Cav’s room, when he’d called Evie his girlfriend and looked at her with such possessive passion in his dark eyes, she’d been sure he was on the verge of telling her he had realized she was the Marsh sister he really wanted. But once he’d run into his sisters at the hospital, he’d been all business, except for these few moments of family celebration he allowed himself.

But even that didn’t last, as he quickly excused himself and headed out onto the terrace outside the conference room. As Evie watched, he pulled out his cell phone and made a call.

Evie couldn’t wait any longer. She followed him outside, trying to keep enough distance that she didn’t eavesdrop on his phone conversation. Even so, the terrace was small, and she made out enough of his end of the call to realize he was talking to Senator Gerald Blackledge, Alabama’s savvy and experienced senior U.S. senator.

“Thank you, sir. I’ll meet you in Montgomery tomorrow afternoon.” Jesse said goodbye and hung up the phone, sticking it in the pocket of his jacket. He shot Evie a smile that made her heart shimmy. “Hell of a day.”

She nodded, rubbing her arms as the cool evening air began to seep through her thin cardigan. “Do you think Cav’s evidence is going to be enough?”

“Delilah and my cousin Troy just headed over to the alternate site to take a look. They’ve been running our SSU apprehension unit, so they know the most about the Espera Group and what they’ve been up to. They’ll let us know what we have as soon as they take a look. But I think it must be pretty good. I don’t think General Ross would have risked so much to protect something that was anything less than explosive.”

“If only Cav weren’t so paranoid. He could have given General Ross or someone the information a couple of years ago.”

Jesse shrugged off his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders, tugging her closer with the jacket’s lapels. “I don’t want to talk about your hacker boyfriend.”

She arched an eyebrow and kept her voice light. “I thought you told Cav
you
were my boyfriend.”

“I did, didn’t I?” He smiled down at her, his arms sliding around her waist. “I suppose I forgot to consult you. I’m absentminded that way.”

She lifted her chin. “A girl likes to be asked.”

“So I hear.” He leaned closer, his breath warm on her cheeks, smelling of peppermint and coffee. “The question is, what should I ask?”

“Can’t help you there, big guy.”

He threaded one hand through her hair, his palm settling against her cheek. “You’re going to make me walk out here on this shaky limb all by myself?”