Jae's Assignment (14 page)

“What the hell!” Trevor shouted with astonishment, pushed back, then jumped up from the stool as if he’d been burned. Backing away, he searched her face, studying every detail before dropping back onto the stool, stunned as he gazed into her eyes.

Jae dropped her hand from her hair and took a sip of her soda pop.

Trevor threw back his head and laughed, hard. He laughed even harder when she continued to stare at him as if he’d lost his mind. When he finally recovered, he reached for her hands and pulled her to her feet. “I was going to offer you that job permanently and with full benefits, too,” he said.

“I wouldn’t have been able to accept. I already have a job, Dr. Grant, and besides, you fired me, remember?”

Trevor dropped his forehead to hers. “You were spying on me weren’t you?” he asked quietly, kissing her cheek and holding her tightly.

“For the Bureau, yes,” came her whispered answer as she fought to suppress another growing bout of longing and heat centering in the pit of her stomach.

“What did you do?”

“My assignment was to upload data from your hard drives through an untraceable program linked to the field office.” When he asked how often she had done that, she told him every day during his lunch hour and then filled him in on some of the case.

“You were very good because I never suspected a thing.”

“Yes, I’m very good at what I do, Trevor.”

“Why did they send
you
?”

With his hands framing her face, Jae smiled demurely and batted her eyelashes at him.

“Oh, I get it. The FBI thought I’d be a pushover for a beautiful woman with buttoned-up-to-the-neck blouses, ugly chunky shoes, and an attitude, huh?”

Laughing, Jae pushed him back. “When that assignment was over, I took those outfits and shoes right back to the thrift store. The attitude, well, that was all mine for you staring at me and giving me your little one-word answers. Man, did that get on my damn nerves.”

“I would have never suspected you of anything. You didn’t even try to come on to me,” he teased affectionately between ripples of laughter.

“Oh please! You mean like those lab techs did? You didn’t see them teetering down the hall coming to your office. They primped up their hair as high as their silicone implants and then left your office as deflated as those boobs really were. Honestly, Trevor, that was fun to watch in an otherwise very dull job.” Jae made a sour face. “Oh, and hitting on you was the last thing on my mind. You were a big bear with all that hair—a throw back from the era of hippies holding signs of peace, love, and free pot.” Jae laughed at the image.

“I grew that hair for a reason, sweetheart,” he said and swept his lips across hers. “Would you consider hitting on me now, Miss Regina?”

“That’s not my name,” Jae murmured against the exhilarating effect his lips had on her.

“I know, but I used to imagine what it would be like to kiss her and now I get to find out,” he said seconds before his mouth covered hers hungrily at first, then more gently.

When Trevor’s arms enveloped her in his warm embrace, it pushed the previous bad stuff away. She went along when he stood up, pressing his body against hers, evoking desires she thought had deserted her long ago. He stirred her passion and she found that both alarming and exciting. And yet, it didn’t stop her from returning the kiss, although she could list a thousand reasons why she shouldn’t. Like her job…and her life. “Please, please stop.” She dragged her lips from his.

Trevor had heard those same words before on the night she’d been shot. In the motel she’d been partially sedated, but awakened and began fighting him while he struggled to keep her flat on the bed to prevent the wound from bleeding further.

After he’d carried her unconscious into the motel room, he’d had little time to do anything except get her undressed and fix her up. He’d been so concerned about making the impromptu operating room as sterile as possible he hadn’t focused on her face that had been contorted in pain, or her hands that were balled into tight fists at her sides. The image would be forever branded in his mind like the dead bodies of the Marines. Stepping back from her he said, “I’m sorry.”

“So now that you’ve gotten kissing Regina James out of your system, let’s get back to the matter at hand, shall we?” Jae was all business again as she mentally stamped out the flames of desire. “Trevor, as hard as it is for me to say this, let’s work together to find Grainger. I truly believe that by doing so, we’ll also get the answers you seek. Can we agree on that?”

Staring at this gorgeous woman, Jae Randall, stirred something in him that he couldn’t deny even if he wanted to. “Yes, Jae I can agree to that. Can we kiss on that to seal this partnership?”

“No, how about we shake hands?” She took his offered handshake.

“Darius issued a direct order for me to come down to your field office in two hours for questioning or they were coming back for me,” Trevor said, walking over to the patio railing.

Glancing down at the street, he spotted a tan sedan slowly rounding the corner, coming to a stop at the curb. When he looked in the opposite direction, he spotted another sedan. This one was gray in color, doing the same thing. It was apparent to Trevor that Darius and his posse didn’t believe that he or Jae would turn him in so they were coming for him.
So much for giving me two hours
, he thought cynically as he turned and walked over to the potted palm, which was leaning again. What he was actually doing was looking around the Egyptian-paneled screens where he had a partial view of the side of the building. He didn’t see any other unmarked or suspicious looking vehicles.

Turning back to her, he said, “I assured Darius that I didn’t break in or hold you against your will.” Trevor held up his thumb and forefinger to her raised eyebrows. “Tiny lie,” he said.

“What else did they say?”

“A lot, but basically Special Agent Mighty Mike and Amil both expressed a real passion for wanting to beat the shit out of me, while Special Agents Darius and Iverson chimed in with the many ways they could make that happen,” Trevor said, imperceptibly glancing at his watch and crossing the patio to the door.

“Where’re you going?” Jae asked, standing, prepared to follow him.

“I’m going to finish loading the dishwasher. Would you believe your crew used every plate and coffee mug you own?” Trevor encouraged her to sit back down by resting a hand on her shoulder. “Enjoy your oasis for a few minutes while I finish the dishes and when I’m done maybe you can tell me about Ronnie’s wedding as we head down to your office.” Trevor stepped inside the apartment, sliding the patio door closed behind him.

Glancing over his shoulder, Trevor watched her nod thoughtfully before rocking in the swing. He guessed she’d be fully asleep in five minutes.

* * * * *

Not far from the field office, Randy Cross was meeting with a man who’d proven his worth more times than he could count. Once again, their topic of discussion centered on adjusting Dr. Grant’s formula on their newest test subject, a man Randy knew was in excellent shape both mentally and physically.

“Randy,” Dr. Otis Holmes started, “as a physician, I’m telling you there’s too much of a risk of miscalculating the formulas again. I’ve been tweaking it and as you saw earlier, our current subjects are not staying under long enough to perform the task and rigors we’re putting them through. Again, I caution you not to get too comfortable by relying on it, particularly with this new test subject,” he said, holding up a three-ring binder. “I’m telling you there’s more but Dr. Grant didn’t write it down on paper, at least not in these papers,” he stressed fretfully.

“You let me worry about that because I believe Dr. Grant will be resurfacing soon,” Randy said and smiled, shrewdly.

“Then we’ll finally be able to get this business over and done with; too many lives have been lost due to our work,” the doctor added.

“Yes, but we’ll be paid more money than either of us would ever see in ten lifetimes. For that, Otis, I’m willing to suffer the humiliation of sitting at a desk job with a reduction in salary, not to mention, you’ll have ownership of this institution.” Waving his hand up, Randy continued. “But trust this. I’ll make all of them pay for what they did. Dr. Grant will get a taste of his own medicine and that is how we’ll get what we need.”

“Randy, please rethink any retaliatory action you’re planning. It was your hasty actions at the bank that led to your desk job, not the actions of your colleagues. I told you it was too soon to send those young men out there on such a task. But no, you wouldn’t listen and insisted they could pull it off. They weren’t ready and neither was the formula,” Dr. Holmes said, grabbing papers from his desk in frustration.

“Relax, Otis. The new test subject will be more than capable of the challenges you’ll be putting him through. He’s a tough bastard,” Randy said absently. “I saw that he followed your orders very nicely under the influence of the hypnosis, but the dosage may be the problem.”

“Yes, I’m afraid so, Randy. When he’s leveling down, he presents symptoms of rage and hysteria, so that’s where I’ll concentrate on tweaking the formula, make it stronger for his next level of tests so that it holds him longer,” Otis said, tapping his fingers on his desk.

Randy smiled and nodded at the doctor.

Chapter Twelve

Lifting her head from the back of the swing, Jae stretched lazily. She guessed her exhaustion stemmed from her middle of the night visitor, followed by her early morning invaders.

Jae got up and wandered over to the patio railing. Saturdays meant her neighbors would be starting their morning routines and because it was already heating up, the pool was sure to fill up by early afternoon.

Despite the morning hour, the street below was oddly quiet. At first glance nothing seemed unusual. But when she took another look she noticed a tan-colored sedan parked at the corner of her street. It looked undeniably familiar, like an FBI or government-issued vehicle.

Glancing down at her wristwatch, she saw that it was twelve thirty in the afternoon. “That can’t be right,” she murmured, bringing her wrist up to her ear confirming it was ticking. Widening her eyes in disbelief, Jae saw that she’d been asleep for almost two hours.

Rushing inside her apartment she looked around as she called out Trevor’s name. Not getting a response, she walked into the kitchen and opened the dishwasher. To her surprise, there was no blast of steam and the rinse cycle had been finished for at least an hour, not to mention the kitchen was spotless.

Walking further around her apartment she found every room empty. Finally, wandering into her bedroom, she saw the bed had been made and her cache of pillows was neatly stacked against the padded headboard. Her eyes lit upon a folded piece of paper on the nightstand, propped up on the broken lamp. With a sinking feeling, she crossed the room, snatched up the paper, and read the note.

I now owe you a bag of potato chips and a lamp. Take care, Sweetheart.

Anger bubbled inside of her, but her thoughts were suddenly interrupted when she heard a commotion and raced to the living room. It was coming from the corridor outside her apartment. As she approached, four hard raps shook the door, causing her feet to halt briefly.

If she’d guessed correctly the hard raps were made with the butt of a metal police baton. She stuffed Trevor’s note into the pocket of her jeans before opening the door to find Darius, Iverson, and McGuire standing there. And they were not alone.

They were flanked by four Virginia police officers.

Darius’s eyes scanned the living room. Then using hand signals, he sent the officers in different directions inside her apartment.

Jae said nothing as she held out her hand for the search warrant that was being crumpled in Iverson’s sweaty hand. After glancing at the familiar document, she presented Darius with a bored expression. “Seriously?”

Darius moved past her, slamming the door behind him.

“So, where is that jerk-off doctor?” McGuire asked.

Ignoring him, Jae watched Iverson head for the kitchen. “Iverson, you already ate the rest of the pancakes and bacon.” Turning back to Darius she told him that Grant was gone.

“No, he’s not.”

“Yes, he is and I don’t know where he went. I fell asleep out on the patio and when I woke up he was gone.” Jae watched the officers give a negative head shake to Darius, indicating their search was futile, then they left her apartment as silently as they’d entered.

“Well, he must have vanished into thin air like Houdini because he sure as hell was here ninety minutes ago. Nobody saw him leave because we have cars parked on each corner,” Darius said.

“Hey, maybe he blended in with the hot babes walking down the hall heading for the pool. Oh, by the way, Jae, do you know the blonde who lives up the hall in C-cups, I mean in apartment 4C?” Iverson asked, ignoring Jae’s curled lips.

Darius continued. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you could be facing for helping him escape? Not to mention we had to go on record to get a judge to sign the search warrant and involve the cops. They already hate us, Jae, so how do you think that makes us feel having to come down on one of our own?”

“Probably as bad as I felt for having to submit that report on Randy Cross, but listen, Trevor, ah, Dr. Grant and I discovered something today. It’s really huge.”

“Woo hoo,” Iverson roared. “You see guys, I told you, size
does
matter to women.”

Before Jae jumped on Iverson, Darius said, “Iverson, shut the hell up. You and McGuire check and see if Trevor, ah, Dr. Grant,” he mocked, “left anything, including a shoe print.”

As soon as Iverson and McGuire went down the hallway in the direction of her bedroom, Jae turned to Darius. “Listen to me, we need Trevor’s help to find Grainger.”

“Jae, I received an email from Luke late last night. He’s on a special OP and there was nothing to suggest that anything was wrong. The email was sent from his personal account.”

“But you didn’t
talk
to him. Did you authenticate the message?” When he nodded that he had, Jae was really stumped as to how to explain that. She also needed to find out how Trevor made it out of her apartment without being seen by the security detail that Darius had in place around her building. That meant all four corners were manned, including the hallway, elevators, and stairwells leading to her door.

“Come with me.” Darius took her by the hand and led her across the living room to the patio where he pointed to the swing. “Have a seat,” he said then sat on the stool facing her. “Now, how the hell are we supposed to go back to the office without the good doctor in tow and explain that you weren’t a co-conspirator? It’ll look like we’re covering for you, especially since we all saw him here this morning.”

Jae waited for Darius’s tongue-lashing to end, but in her mind she pictured Trevor sitting in that same spot earlier. He too had stared at her in disbelief.

“Okay, it’s just you and me, because I know you don’t want those two boneheads in there in your business, so come on, Jae. What’s really going on with you and the former hairy ape-man who, by the way, makes pretty decent pancakes?”

“Oh, please! Nothing’s going on,” she squealed in exasperation.

“Did it start when you worked that assignment in his office a few months ago? Did the two of you stay in contact?” Darius tilted his head. “Did you guys have a little fling going on?”

Crossing her arms over her chest, Jae gave him a critical look. “Only in his dreams.”

“That’s not how it looked this morning.”

“Forget this morning, Darius. I was in total shock when he showed up here.”

“I can’t forget it, Jae. It looked like he came here early enough to make a sweet little ‘morning after’ breakfast and because you never have that much food in your refrigerator, perhaps he slept over, then this morning the two of you woke up hungry and then skipped off to the market,” Darius teased despite the serious issue at hand.

Jae leaned forward and poked his chest. “Wrong, bonehead number one, he broke in some time around two-thirty.”

“He broke in at two thirty in the morning? Did that idiot hurt you?”

“No, just scared the hell out of me.”

“What’d you do?” Darius asked with obvious concern. “Did he pull a weapon on you?”

“No, but I sure as hell pulled mine on him.”

“Then you should have shot him!” Darius snapped. “What’s going on with this guy?”

“Absolutely nothing, and Darius, you’re as bad as those other two boneheads in there who’re probably rummaging through my underwear drawer. I’m not that hard up or stupid to do what you’re suggesting.”

“All I’m saying is that’s not how it looked this morning.”

Jae pushed herself up from the swing and stepped away. When she heard him grunt, a satisfied smile lifted the corners of her mouth as she walked over to the left front railing.

“I know you wanted that swing to hit me, but I anticipated your move and it missed my knees. I’m real fast, honey,” Darius said. He chuckled as he walked over and stood at the railing beside her.

“Yes, I know. That’s what your wife, said while we were out shopping one day.”

Darius was flustered, but quick to explain. “Hey, she was probably still harping about that time we drove down to Florida. I was dead tired and there she was showing off some little sexy outfit and…” When he caught Jae grinning and guessing that his wife hadn’t said any such thing, Darius clammed up. “Okay, you got me. So why’d that hairy ape come here?”

Jae told him what Trevor had said about the unreadable data drive.

“And you believed that crock of crap? Now, you see, Jae, that’s what concerns me. You’re a tough agent. You’re smart. You’ve got guts and you don’t fall for the line of BS these guys try to run on you.”

“You’re damn right I don’t! So why would I jeopardize my job and self-respect if I didn’t feel strongly in my gut that something isn’t right about Grainger? You
know
him. And it’s obvious that Trevor is connected to all of this.”

“But there’s no case, Jae. Grainger sent you on an assignment originally because the geek doctor slash terrorist was looking for some secretarial help, right?”

“Administrative help,” Jae corrected.

“Whatever. In any case the report you filed following your
administrative
stint in his office has vanished from the database; even the photo of that hairy ape is gone. I can’t even say the man I saw here this morning, all shaved down to his skin, was the same Dr. Grant aka hairy ape-man we’d received a photo of in our initial meeting several months ago.”

Jae turned around to face him. “What do you mean? There’s a file on the mainframe. I accessed it when I returned from Virginia to prepare the supplemental report.”

“As of this morning the file isn’t there, so I figured Grainger must have reclassified it since the last time I saw it. ”

A fleeting idea raced through Jae’s head. Something she’d only thought about that now made her believe that Trevor knew Luke Grainger personally, despite his claim to the contrary.

“Darius, you know I always trust that gut instinct you’ve told us time and time again to listen to. Please believe me when I say Grainger may be in trouble and if I’m wrong I’ll walk away from the Bureau,” she said just as Iverson and McGuire came out on the patio, both munching on a fist full of corn chips. “And if you guys made a mess in there, I’ll kill you!”

“They didn’t. I told them to take a load off while I talked to you,” Darius admitted.

McGuire walked over to the side railing, looked out, and suddenly yelled, “Hey, stop!” as best he could around a mouthful of corn chips, pointing out over the railing.

Jae assumed McGuire was getting another parking ticket on the sedan. That is until he spit out the chips and shouted. “Don’t you move, Dr. Grant!” Whipping out his cell phone, he raced back inside the apartment and out the front door.

Jae, Darius, and Iverson rushed to the front railing just in time to see Trevor turn and look up. He gave them a mocking salute before casually walking up the street and rounding the corner as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

All three were spurred into action as they rushed inside the apartment. Darius was last out the door, but shouted for Jae to stay put.

Jae sprinted into her bedroom and snatched up her bag from the chair. Stopping suddenly and looking around, something was missing. Her digital picture frame wasn’t on the dresser and she didn’t have to guess why he’d taken it. Pulling her digital camera from her workbag, Jae turned it on and accessed the media card where her photos were also stored. Scrolling through the pictures she halted at several that had been taken at Grainger’s house. In the background of one particular picture was the street sign, boldly showing the name of the road leading to the development where Grainger lived.

Hearing several sirens, she rushed over to the bedroom window and looked out. Police cars and unmarked sedans were circling the block and scouring the parking garage of the building next to hers. The manhunt was on.

Tearing a slip of paper from the notepad on her nightstand, Jae scribbled a quick note for Darius and then taped it to the dresser mirror.

She’d written eight words she hoped would put an end to the chaos going on, at least where she lived.

I’m going with my gut. Please trust me.

* * * * *

After leaving Jae’s apartment and then Grainger’s house, Trevor headed to the public library to do some research.

He’d initially thought he needed to go back to the beginning to find out who blacklisted and incriminated him in the deaths of the soldiers. At first, he blamed General Murphy and Dr. Harmon, the two men who’d approved his funding. Now, he decided to change his point of reference.

Trevor just couldn’t understand why Grainger would go to such lengths to protect him. By all accounts Grainger had risked his position and his life to help him. Trevor wanted to know why because finding that out might give him the answers he needed to get his life back.

One disturbing thought kept resurfacing. Was Grainger involved in the mishandling of his research? Could he have been connected to the people behind his research funding? Jae had told him that Grainger was ex-military, which could mean that he might have personal connections with the top brass.

Closing his tired eyes, Trevor recalled the day he had met Grainger on the airplane in the middle of the night. In that brief meeting, he believed the agent was genuinely concerned for his safety and sincerely wanted to help him. Grainger warned him if he wanted to stay alive, he needed a new identity. If not, his family could be targeted to get to him. Grainger he explained how the witness protection program worked, before presenting him with that packet of papers—his new life; a life that didn’t include his family, friends, career, or Gina.

But now there was nothing in the FBI database to show that he ever existed. If that was the case, then there was probably no trace of his true identity, either, he thought. Unless his identity was deeply buried somewhere in the system.

Opening his eyes, the library’s logo was bobbing slowly up and down, back and forth on the computer monitor. In the screen’s reflection Trevor saw the man he really was inside. Adian Cole.

Sadly, despite taking on a new name and faking his own death, he was no safer than he had been before he went into hiding. The blue eyes staring back at him were those of his late mother. The plastic surgery he’d had the day after that airplane landed somewhere in Connecticut couldn’t change his eyes or the shape of his mouth.