Deadly Ties (37 page)

In trying to kill her, he had killed himself.

“Lisa! Lisa, where are you?”

Mark
. She swam hard toward the voice, toward the glint, and saw it was sunlight skimming over the water to the bank of land and catching on the bumper of a distant car. “Mark! I’m here! I’m here!”

A pirogue appeared at the edge of the fire. Mark sat in it, an oar in his hand. “Where? I can’t see you.”

“Here!” She waved wildly.

He spotted her. Eating through the water with strong, efficient strokes, he pulled alongside her and lifted her into the boat. “You’re okay?” He wrapped her in his coat. “When I heard that explosion—”

“Dutch did it, Mark.” She sniffed and words frantically spilled from her mouth. “He’s dead. Masson rigged the place to blow. Explosives were everywhere and tripwires. I got free. Dutch made it clear he was going to kill me, so I escaped. He was shooting and shooting at me, and he triggered a tripwire. The next thing I knew, the whole camp was exploding and Dutch got thrown into the water and there was fire everywhere and—”

“Honey. Honey, shh.” He covered her lips with his fingers. “Where’s Masson?”

“He left.” She shivered, snuggled closer to him. Mark was so warm. “I heard the boat. He didn’t come back.”

Relief shone in Mark’s expression. Some of the tension left his muscles.

“Dutch said NINA would demand blood for Mexico. Masson will hide for years.” She shivered uncontrollably.

“I heard the shots and was terrified I wouldn’t get to you in time.” Mark held her close to him, paddled from around her. “I told you not to scare me like that anymore.”

Her hair dripping, her teeth chattering, Lisa smiled. “You weren’t too late. But how did you find me? I didn’t even know about this place.”

He returned her smile. “Annie.”

Lisa brightened. “My mom told you?”

He nodded, his eyes glistening. “She’s awake, Lisa. She’s awake and fine and she sent me here to get you.”

Lisa gasped. “She’s really okay?”

“Really.” Mark blew out a shuddery breath. “And I’m under direct orders to bring you to her.”

“Are there any residual effects from the attack? Medically, I mean.”

“She’s going to be fine.” He pulled the pirogue ashore. Two cars were parked side by side. His and, she presumed, Dutch’s. “Actually, she’s planning on moving into the Towers with Nora.”

“No. She’s coming to live with me in Kelly’s beach house.”

“She and Nora phoned me on my way over here. They’re going to live at the Towers—Nora shouldn’t be alone with her eyes. And you and I are going to live in the beach house.” He cleared his throat. “At least that’s their version—after our wedding of course, which they’re also planning.” He offered her a hand to get out of the beached boat. “What do you think about that?”

“I think it’s going to take both of us to slow them down. We might need your team to help stop them.” Lisa crawled out and stood facing him. “And for the record, I’m not opposed to marrying you. But I think we need some time to be a normal couple before we start talking about weddings.”

“Me too.” He smiled, touched a fingertip to her nose. “You’ve got some catching up to do.”

Lisa wrapped her arms around him and kissed him soundly, loving the solid and steady feel of him. “Maybe not as much as you think.”

29

M
om.” Lisa burst into tears, stretched across the hospital bed, and hugged her mother.

“Oh, Lisa. Lisa.” Her arms were warm, her head burrowed into Lisa’s shoulder. “I can’t believe it,” she said in a trembling voice. “Finally. I-I can’t—Mark.” Annie reached for him. “Mark, come here, darling.”

He rounded the bed and bent low so Annie could wrap an arm around him too. Along moment passed while she sobbed—a moment in which Lisa knew a feeling so long absent from her life: contentment.

“It’s beautiful,” Tim said, his deep voice gruff.

“Yeah it is, bro.” Joe sighed.

Sam sniffed.

Nick elbowed him. “Think steel.”

“No way, bud.” Sam sniffed again. “This needs to be felt. It’s what makes everything else worthwhile.”

Nora and Peggy flanked Sam and linked their arms.

Ben, Kelly, Mel, Harvey, and Clyde were there, along with Selene and Gwen, and few had dry eyes. Then gasps of expelled breaths began and the magical moment faded to the thunder of everyone laughing, talking at once, and details of all that had happened were shared, commented on, and digested.

“Excuse me.” A woman walked deeper into the crowded hospital room, winding between Nick and Nora toward Annie’s bed. Lost in the crush, she raised her voice. “Excuse me.”

Everyone stilled.

Tim and Nick moved in, blocked her entrance.

“It’s okay.” Harvey Talbot stepped forward, looking anything but gentle or welcoming. “Roxanne, what are you doing here?”

Lisa looked at Mark and then at the woman.

“Roxanne?” Mark asked. “Roxy, do you know Harvey?”

“Apparently better than I thought she did,” Lisa whispered.

“Um, yes, I do.” She looked at Harvey through bright eyes, clearly hungry for the sight of him. “Hi, Harvey.” She swallowed hard. “It’s been a long time.”

“Roxy?” Harvey glanced over to Lisa. “This is your FBI friend Roxy?”

Lisa nodded.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Harvey was clearly flabbergasted.

“Tell you what?”

“I’m Harvey’s wife, Lisa.” Roxy sounded almost shy. “Well, I was his wife.”

“You’re kidding me.” Lisa looked at Mark, and from his expression he hadn’t known that tidbit of information either. “Why didn’t I know that?”

“I was jealous of all of you and the time Harvey spent at the center, so I stayed away.”

“What are you doing here now—at the hospital, I mean?” Harvey couldn’t seem to grasp the fact that his wife was in the room.

“Harvey,” Peggy said. “You know she’s an FBI agent.”

Joe told Selene, “Roxy’s been working on a human-trafficking case linked to NINA for a year.”

“Actually, for three years,” Roxy corrected him, then spoke to Harvey. “Since just after our divorce.”

Harvey’s face turned red. “You didn’t divorce me because I neglected you for my work. You divorced me so NINA wouldn’t use me to get to you on this case.”

“Can we talk about this later?” She worried her lip with her teeth. “Privately would be good.”

“Might as well do it now, I’m thinking,” Nora said, as interested as the rest of them. “We’re gonna speculate anyway, dearie. Best get the truth straight from you.”

“Nora, you’re heartless.” Peggy nodded, adding weight to her claim. “This is about their marriage. They’re entitled to privacy.”

“Fine. Let everybody down at Ruby’s add their little twists on it, then. Because you know they will.”

“She’s right,” Roxy told Harvey. “I’d forgotten about the village grapevine.”

“Roxanne, I couldn’t care less about gossip. I can’t believe you did this to me.” A muscle in Harvey’s jaw ticked. “Answer my questions.”

Looking more afraid of him than of the terrorists, Roxy turned to face her ex-husband. “Yes, Harvey. I got the NINA assignment and divorced you to keep you safe so they wouldn’t hurt you or use you to hurt me.” She looked down at his chest, as if unable to hold his gaze. “I didn’t tell you because you wouldn’t have listened to me, and you would have pitched a fit about my taking the job. Speaking of which, I need to share some information with the people here. Now that’s all I’m saying about us publicly, and that’s that.”

“He looks a little too dumbfounded to talk more now anyway, don’t you think?” Mark asked Lisa.

“Yeah, he does.” Her heart twisted. “We would be too.”

“She divorced him. I can’t believe it.” Mark sent Lisa a loaded look. “Don’t you ever think about pulling anything like this on me. Walking out on him for a job? That’s crazy.”

“You know she had her reasons. She protected him too.”

“Watch Lisa, Mark. She’ll do what needs doing, promise or no promise,” Annie said. “Don’t glare at me, darling. It’s the truth. You’ve always been that way.”

Mark nodded. “True. But what can I say, I love her.”

“She loves you too, though at the moment …”

Roxy cleared her throat. “Listen up, everybody. We’re putting out the word that two people were in the fishing camp and one of them was Karl Masson.”

“What?” Lisa straightened.

“You can’t be saying what I think you’re saying.” Mark squared off on Roxy. “Masson is
not
going to walk.”

She stiffened. “Just listen to me, okay?” She slid an uncertain glance at Annie. “I’m trying to be consid—”

“I know Dutch is dead, Roxy, but thank you for being careful to spare my feelings,” Annie said softly. “Or do you prefer to be called Roxanne?”

“Roxy.” She shrugged. “Sorry if I sounded cagey. I wasn’t sure you’d been told yet, and I didn’t want you to hear it this way.”

“Nora told me before Lisa and Mark returned.”

“No sense in spoiling their reunion with that kind of news.” Nora sniffed. “They’ve waited such a long time for it.”

“Yes, they have,” Roxy said.

Lisa was about out of patience. She opened her mouth to demand answers on Masson, but Nick beat her to it.

“Why are you putting out word Masson’s dead?”

Roxy swiveled her gaze to him. “If NINA thinks he’s dead, they won’t look for him. Kelly, you’ll be safe.”

“While he’s breathing?” Kelly said. “Not likely.”

“Masson is a survivor,” Roxy said. “He knows that if he comes after Kelly, we’ll expose him to NINA. If we do, they’ll neutralize him.”

Kelly gasped and buried her face at Ben’s chest. “He’ll haunt me the rest of my life.”

Lisa swallowed hard. Kelly had lived with constant fear of Masson showing up to kill her. This could spare her that.

“Makes sense.” Nick looked at Joe, who nodded.

“Not good enough.” Mark crossed his arms.

“It’s the only way he’ll ever surface, Mark.” Roxy sighed. “I don’t like it any more than you do. But anything else we do leaves Kelly, Lisa, and the village wide open. He’ll lay low, but men like him always surface. When he does, we’ll get him.”

A lot of thought had gone into this. “Is there more you can’t tell us?”

Roxy didn’t answer.

Mark scanned his old team. Lisa saw their subtle nods. They agreed with her.

“Yeah, bro. If Roxy says this is best, then I trust her.”

“Are you saying that, Roxy?” Mark asked her.

“I am.” Roxy looked him right in the eye. “It’s not perfect, but it’s the best we can do right now.”

Mark stared at her a long moment. Resignation settled in his expression. “We’ll be notified of any change that impacts us?”

“You have my word.”

He nodded. “We’ll still have to stay on our toes,” he told Ben and Kelly and then looked over at Roxy. “What about Masson’s boss?”

“We don’t know who that is yet,” Roxy said. “You know it’s not like in the movies. At the end of an operation, we don’t get everyone all wrapped up with a nice bow. We just stay after them and take them down as we can, and we pray a lot in between.”

Mark pushed. “Chessman?”

“He’s been told Masson’s dead. He knows who their boss is, of course, but he’ll never reveal that.”

Seeing Beth near the door, Joe waved her to him.

“I thought Chessman had crossed over,” Mark said.

Beth fell in beside Joe and smiled at him. He smiled back. Lisa liked that. From her twitching lips, so did Peggy.

Roxy held off a second, then answered. “To an extent, Chessman has helped us. But the minute he tells us the identity of his boss, he’s dead and he knows it.”

“Wait.” Mark lifted a finger. “Juan mentioned Frank getting a call from the boss.”

“Did he say who that was?”

Mark hesitated, his eyes glazed as if he were pulling the conversation from memory. “Yeah, he did. Raven.”

“Raven.” Roxy made a note of it. “Well, that’s a start. You guys ever heard anything on him?”

“It’s not a him. Raven is a woman,” Lisa said. “In the truck, they referred to her as a female.”

“They did.” Selene nodded.

“I heard it too,” Gwen added.

“A woman.” Roxy stiffened. “Now that’s a surprise.”

“Women are as capable of evil as men.” Annie tugged at her sheet.

“Ain’t that the truth, dearie? My sister Nathara’s there in a pinch, but she’s mean as a snake.” Nora sniffed. “Not at all gentle like me.”

Lisa smiled at Mark. Nora was many good things, but gentle wasn’t among them.

“Roxy? What about my manager?”

“I’m sorry for not already telling you, Selene. I do have news for you and Gwen. Your manager and, Gwen, your husband, Derek, are in custody. We followed the money and picked up payments from each of them to Chessman. Don’t expect them to be a bother any time soon.”

“May he die of old age wearing stripes.” Selene grimaced.

“That would work for me.” Gwen shot a glance at Lisa. “I know. That forgiveness thing. I’ll work on it. But right now I’m pretty steamed. Pray for me?”

“Always.” Lisa smiled.

“Raven, it appears, will be another battle for another day.” Roxy shrugged. “Unless we get lucky and make a connection through Chessman and the payments.”

“Something will turn up,” Clyde said. “It always does.”

“Eventually.” Nick tilted his head. “But sooner would be better than later.”

Roxy grunted. She hesitated, then spoke to Annie. “I don’t know if it’s appropriate under the circumstances to express my sympathy for your loss.”

Annie gave her a soft smile. “I do love an honest woman.”

“Well, I’ll get out of your way. I just wanted to catch you up. We’ll keep in touch through Jeff Meyers.”

“We understand. Thank you, Roxy.” Mark turned to Lisa.

“What’s that in your hand?” she asked.

Mark opened it. “Our sand dollar.”

Her eyes stretched wide. “You carried it with you?”

He nodded. “Everywhere, just like you did.”

Annie sighed her content. “It’ll be harder to keep track of who has it at what time after you’re married.”

“You’re getting married?” Tim brightened.

“Later, if everything works out,” Lisa said. “We need time. So you two wedding planners need to back off. We’ll let you know when and if we’re ready.”

“Pshhh!” Nora blew off that statement, as if the prospective bride and groom had nothing to say on the matter. “They’re perfect together, Annie.”

“I know and you know. Soon enough they’ll know.”

Lisa warned them off. “After we have some time together, then we’ll see.”

“Well, all right.” Tim held out his hand, palm up. “Pay up, ladies.”