DeliciousDanger (27 page)

“What?” Rick rose from his chair, his face red with anger,
fists clenched.

“Sit down,” Dan ordered in a quiet voice. “That’s just
someone making noise. No one who knows you really thinks you did this. Least of
all us. But it’s all over the press and the story just keeps feeding on
itself.”

Rick slowly lowered himself into the chair again, conscious
of Kelly’s soft hand on his arm.“I want to meet with these assholes. And set
them straight.”

“Absolutely not. We want you as far away from them as
possible.”

“But Dan, this reflects on the agency too. This could mean
trouble for everyone.”

“You let me worry about that. Meanwhile we’ll go ahead with
the plans we made earlier today. Mike’s got the chopper stashed away from our
airfield, just in case someone is still watching there. He’ll fly all of you up
to the cabin.”

Rick smacked his hand on the table, jarring his mug. “Now
that you tell me the real skinny, I’m not so sure I want to leave. I refuse to
run away from this.”

“Rick.” Kelly’s voice was low but firm. “Listen to Dan. This
is the best thing for us. It gets you away from the shooters, the federal
agents and the media. And gives your partners time to get to the bottom of
this.”She looked at Dan. “Rick wasn’t too forthcoming this afternoon. Where is
this cabin we’re going to?”

Dan forced a grin.“A little-known fact in your life. There’s
a road about half a mile past your farm that goes up to the top of the cliff.”

“I know that road,” she interrupted. “It goes nowhere. I
think it’s used as a takeoff and landing spot for Search and Rescue.”

The men all exchanged a look.

“If that’s what you think, then we’re doing a damn good
job,” Rick told her. “We own a cabin at the top of that cliff that we use for
planning missions and hiding out when we need to.”

Kelly gave him a startled look. “You’re kidding. I’ve lived
there all my life. I think I would have known if something was going on up
there.”

“Like Rick said,” Dan put in. “We’re obviously doing a good
job at camouflage. We’ve been using it for years.”

“That’s where we brought Mark when we pulled him out of the
terrorist camp in Peru,” Rick went on. “And where Mia and Dan went after…their
little episode.”

Rick looked at Kelly, then at Dan. “She stays with me,
right? Her and Xena?”

“Absolutely. That’s the plan.”

“I’d be able to check on the farm too,” Kelly pointed out.
“Even though all the dogs are gone I want to make sure everything’s okay.”

“Actually,” Dan looked at Rick and back at her, “that’s a
good thing because you’ll need to make whatever arrangements you can to close
the kennel temporarily. There’s a possibility whoever this is may have
identified you. If so, the first place they’ll look when they can’t find Rick
is the farm.”

Kelly felt the blood drain from her face. “Are you serious?
But that means the cabin might not be safe, either.”

“You said yourself, you live practically in our front yard
and you didn’t even know it existed, so that’s not a problem.”

She had planned to make some sandwiches since they hadn’t
gotten around to dinner but suddenly Kelly lost her appetite. She pushed her
chair back from the table.

“Can you have someone just check to make sure everything’s
locked up and the alarms are set? I don’t want to ask either of the people who
work for me to do it and possibly put them in danger.”

Dan nodded. “Just give us the codes and we’ll take care of
it.”

* * * * *

“I need to speak to your father.”

The disembodied voice at the other end of the call made
Zarife’s stomach cramp. “About what? He’s unavailable at the moment.”

“Because I had you tell him to be. But something else has
come up.”

Zarife clutched his phone tighter. He wondered if he wished
himself on another planet it would happen. “What else could possibly happen
now?”

“Rick Latrobe is still alive, a situation that has to be
rectified immediately.”

“And what exactly do you expect my father to do about it?”
Zarife asked, a terrible feeling of disaster sweeping over him.

“I expect your father to reach out to his contacts in this
country and get the job done. Before Latrobe remembers what we want him to
forget and before the government gets hold of him.”

“Surely you have people who do that sort of thing,” Zarife
said.

“I can’t reach out to any more people on this. There are too
many involved as it is. But I may have something that will help you.”

“And what would that be?”

“Jordan emailed me a photo of a woman and a dog. They
arrived at Latrobe’s house with him and apparently were with him wherever he
was taken after Baghdad. I’m tracing her now. When she’s identified, she may
lead you to Latrobe. Then she will need to be eliminated also.”

“But I can’t—”

“I don’t want to hear it. Anyway, I thought killing was
second nature to all you people.”

At the words
all you people
anger replaced fear in
Zarife’s body. If it had been within his power, he would have found this man
and— No. He needed to keep focused.

“I have men here who can handle all of this,” Zarife began.

“I know all about your men here,” the man interrupted. “We
had this discussion before Latrobe went back to Iraq. They didn’t get the job
done either. You get hold of your father and give him this number. It will only
be good once so don’t screw around with it. Do it now.”

Zarife began to protest again but he realized he was talking
to empty air. The man had hung up.

* * * * *

“Getting you out of here is going to be the tricky part,”
Dan said. “We don’t know how many pairs of eyes are watching, so we can’t just
walk you out the front door.”

“Especially with Xena and me,” Kelly pointed out. “We aren’t
exactly hard to miss.”

“Exactly. So we need a plan to get you to where Mike has the
helicopter. Then he’ll fly you up to Maine.”

She nodded. “I know you don’t want me near the farm but if
I’m going to be away for any length of time I do need to get some personal
things. I didn’t expect to be here even this long.”

“All right,” Dan agreed. “Let me think how we’ll do this.”

Kelly looked at the grim expression on Rick’s face and the
worry in Dan’s eyes and held up her hands.“Never mind. Except for dog food I’m
good.” She smiled at Rick, trying to soften the look in his eyes.

“We’ll take care of it,” Dan assured her and opened his cell
phone.

“I don’t suppose anyone’s located Greg Jordan, have they?”
Rick asked.

“No but we’re hoping you can do it from the cabin,” Mike
told him. “All you need is a secure phone, your computer and your list of
contacts.”

“That bastard thinks he can disappear off the face of the
earth but he’s wrong.” A muscle twitched in Rick’s cheek. “I’ll run him to
ground wherever he is. You can take that to the bank.”

“All right, then. We’d better figure out how we’re going to
do this.”

* * * * *

“I have my own problems,” al-Dulami told his son. “I can’t
be involved in what’s happening over there.”

“But you
are
involved,” Zarife said. “They will find
out who took the weapons, they will find out about me and we will all be in
trouble.”

“Not if you don’t lose your nerve.”

“It isn’t a matter of nerve,” Zarife insisted. “We must get
rid of this man. When he figures out the link he will take us all down.”

“My sources tell me Jordan has disappeared. Is that true?”

“Yes. As the Americans say, he has bailed on us.”

Al-Dulami cursed softly. “When this is finished, there won’t
be a place in the world he can hide from us. I promise you.”

“Latrobe has a woman with him,” Zarife said. “And a giant
dog. Not like anything I’ve ever seen before. Before he disappeared, Jordan
took her picture and did a search on her.”

“And?”

Zarife sighed. “Another problem. Let me tell you about this
woman and her dog.”

* * * * *

The man who had put this all in motion sat in his den with
the afternoon sunlight filtering weakly through his window. He’d left his
office early, telling his secretary he had some personal business to take care
of.

Personal business. It certainly was that.

Fortunately his wife was at a spa for two days. Both their
children were away at college so there was no chance of them disturbing him or
asking what he was doing home at this unusual hour.

In front of him on the desk was a Baccarat crystal tumbler
filled with ice cubes and Jack Daniel’s Black, his favorite Kentucky aged
whiskey. He wasn’t normally a man to whom alcohol was attractive, allowing
himself the occasional social drink, or a shot of Jack Black in honor of some
special occasion. But today he didn’t think the entire bottle would be enough
to blot out his troubles.

It had all seemed so simple in the beginning. He’d taken
months to study the scene in the Middle East, checking out each and every
possible buyer, looking for the right connection where the buyer would require
as much secrecy as he did. And have the extensive cash available to pay him.
Very quietly he’d done his research and zeroed in on the al-Dulami family. It
helped, of course, that he’d stumbled across Zarife al-Dulami, a seemingly
harmless engineer who was doing his own
subrosa
work, searching out
resources for his family which was looking to regain its former glory.

Greg Jordan had been the frosting on the cake. Through him
he’d managed the whole thing without ever having to reveal his identity.
Collect the money. Deliver the goods. And he was home free.

But then Jordan had made a mistake which apparently was
going to collapse the whole thing. He’d thought the man performed better than
that. Helping him disappear had been the smartest thing to do, because idiot
that he was, Jordan had still hidden an insurance policy—evidence that would
point directly to him. Otherwise he would have disposed of Jordan when he
screwed up the Latrobe killing.

Well, there’ll be plenty of time for that later on. After he
figured out how to retrieve the incriminating papers.

Why had he chased money he didn’t even need? He was secure
in the life he’d bought for himself. Why had he let that devil greed goad him
into this? At first it had just been the renewed thrill of planning, the danger
inherent in the project. Then the greed had taken over. No matter how much he
had, he always wanted more. He should have used his head but it apparently was
on vacation.

He looked at the computer printout on his desk. Kelly Monroe
and her wonder dog. He’d heard about Caucasian Ovcharkas. One-owner dogs. Brave
and fearless. He knew that unless they were properly socialized and trained,
they were ferocious animals, sometimes unmanageable. They considered every part
of the owner’s family to be their family and would fight viciously to protect
all of them. The dog’s presence could seriously complicate things. Especially
with their rumored psychic link to their owner.

And apparently Kelly Monroe, dog trainer, and the big
Ovcharka were Latrobe’s new guardians. The damn dog had certainly screwed up
Jordan’s attempt with the rifle.

He’d forced Zarife to call his father and tell him to get
his ass in gear, to call his contacts in the States and get him a first-class
assassin. But he needed a way to neutralize the woman and her dog. Something
that would take her away from Latrobe and leave him protected only by normal
human beings.

Tapping his fingers on the desk, he sipped at his whiskey.
He had an idea but it meant bringing yet another person into the equation, one
more person who could expose him, bring him down. Well, it couldn’t be helped.

Swallowing a healthy taste of the liquor, he unlocked the
side drawer in his desk and pulled out a thin book with phone numbers. In for a
penny, in for a pound, he guessed, as he dialed a number.

* * * * *

“We’ll use your shiny new Navigator,” Dan said. “It’s just
sitting in the garage and no one’s seen it so it’s pretty innocuous. We’ll load
from there.”

Kelly and Rick stood in the front hall, each with a duffel
bag at their feet, Kelly holding her rifle, her H&K tucked into the small
of her back. Rick had his Glock in the pocket of his windbreaker. Xena sat at
their feet, watching and waiting.

“I want Xena to check everything out first,” Kelly told
them.

“Good idea.” Dan opened the door leading into the garage.

Kelly leaned down and took Xena’s head between her palms,
her eyes looking directly into the dog’s. The connection between dog and woman
was obvious to everyone watching.

Seek the danger. Protect Rick.

I will.

She whispered in Xena’s ear, signaled her with her hand then
gestured toward the garage.

Xena loped down the two steps and began patrolling the area,
sniffing at everything. Slowly she paced around each vehicle, looking for all
the world like a four-footed, gigantic inspector checking for defects. Finally
she went back to the bottom of the steps, looked at Kelly and Rick and emitted
a single bark.

“I may have to put her on salary,” Dan joked. “Okay, folks.
Let’s do this.”

Rick had set the timer for the lights so the house would not
be dark at night. Now he set the alarm and they all piled into the car, rolling
quietly through the neighborhood, all eyes alert for an appearance of anything
out of the ordinary. In ten minutes they were on the interstate heading for the
chopper.

“Is it far from here?” Kelly asked.

“We’ll be there in just a few minutes,” Mike answered.

Twenty minutes later they turned off the highway onto a
two-lane road that ended at what looked to Kelly like a country airfield. Off
to one side was a two-story house, lights glowing in the windows. The
helicopter stood straight ahead of them.