Jude Devine Mystery Series (62 page)

Disconcerted, Jude answered honestly. “I’ve had better weeks.”

“I thought so.” She searched Jude’s eyes with such piercing intensity, Jude wasn’t sure how to hide the feelings she wanted no one to glimpse. But Chastity didn’t pry. Touching Jude’s arm, she said, “Let’s get out of here.”

Chapter Fourteen

Lonewolf stared with satisfaction at the white blocks of C-4 plastic explosive arranged along her workbench. The quality was better than she’d hoped for. She picked a block up and squeezed it. The waxy, rubbery texture always amazed her. C-4 was happy to stick to any surface, it didn’t care about temperature, it didn’t explode in your face while you were trying to stuff it into a canister, it had a long shelf life, and it was fairly inexpensive. In fact, it was the perfect weapons-grade explosive in so many ways she wondered why people bothered with less stable alternatives.

She’d lucked out on the deal for this initial quantity. For the past year, since her lover Madeline’s suicide, she’d been hanging around survivalist groups on the Internet until she struck pay dirt. A militia member in Texas who had a connection with William Krar was taking some heat and had decided to unload his arsenal. His son knew a methamphetamine dealer and had made an arrangement for his father that would conceal the money trail.

This suited Lone fine. If her Texan connection was picked up by the authorities, she didn’t want anyone noticing a cash withdrawal from her bank account for the same amount received by the militia man and connecting the dots. She’d purchased the meth he wanted from a couple of lowlifes near the Mexican border and paid peanuts, which meant she was ahead of her financial target. The next few hundred pounds would be harder to come by, but she was patient and C-4 was easy to store.

She’d been accumulating cash by withdrawing small increments over time and hiding the money under a loose floorboard in her cabin. Within a couple more months she would be ready to buy again, and the operation would enter the next phase.

Lone glanced up at the wall above her workbench, where she had an official picture of Madeline’s only son, Private First Class Brandon Ewart. Next to this was a wooden plaque Lone had lettered herself with the quotation “Surrender is not in my creed.” A Marine,
Brandon had been deployed to Iraq straight out of training and was killed in Baghdad four months later. The usual story. Inadequate armor on the Humvee. Standard-issue helmet instead of the padded kind the army had switched to.

After their vehicle was blown up, Brandon, seriously injured, was captured by insurgents watching the explosion from a nearby building. They cut his throat later that day and left his mutilated body on the banks of the Tigris.

Madeline had always been high-strung and had been treated for depression in the past. Brandon’s death put her in a tailspin, understandably, but Lone finished her tour of duty shortly after and took the honorable discharge she’d earned, so she could be at home to take care of family for a change. She had busted her ass and spent a pile of her savings to get Madeline the help she needed, to take her on vacations to Europe, to get her mind moving in new directions.

Just when she thought things were improving, Madeline pinned a note on the fridge one day, locked herself in the garage, and left the car engine running. Carbon monoxide killed her.

Her note said:

Lone,

I can’t go on. What did my son die for? They say freedom, but I don’t believe that.

Thank you for loving me. I wish I could feel something for you but I’m dead inside and I don’t want to be here anymore.

Madeline

Lone made a solemn promise the day she watched them put Madeline in the ground. She was going to find out exactly what Brandon had really died for, and she was going to avenge him if she found he’d been sent into harm’s way for any reason but the defense of his country.

What she’d discovered over the past year was that Brandon died a horrible death, and Madeline took her own life, because an evil alliance of men in government and industry had renamed their despicable ethos patriotism and marketed their indefensible acts to a gullible public as a noble fight against terrorism. It served their political and economic interests to keep Osama Bin Laden at large, so they made sure not to capture him. It was good news for them that the Middle East was unstable—it kept oil prices way up there and made them all a pile of money. Money that dripped with the blood of the fallen, the real heroes who made the real sacrifices.

Lately, Lone had begun to wonder if the evil alliance actually knew 9/11 was going to happen and chose to allow it. The loss of thousands of lives meant nothing to them. 9/11 had given them the ultimate propaganda tool, and they had profited from it every day since.

There was a time when contemplating ideas like these would have been unthinkable for her. She would have presented herself at the combat stress unit and obtained appropriate counseling from a division psychiatrist. She would have seen her refusal to accept official explanations as bordering on treason, conduct unbecoming. That was how successfully they’d brainwashed her.

Not anymore. She had joined the ranks of those who took the time to discover the facts, study the data, and draw intelligent conclusions. As a consequence, she knew what she had to do; she owed nothing less to her brothers and sisters in arms. Her mission was the elimination of the sniveling chicken hawks responsible for sending Brandon and thousands just like him to their deaths.

For starters, she was going to eliminate the Vice-President.

*

“She’s finally run out of juice,” Chastity said.

They stood in the doorway of the spare room, looking in on the teenager asleep in one of the twin beds. Jude thought about the trauma of Adeline’s experiences in Rapture. It was a relief to see her so lively and outgoing.

“How is she doing?” she asked on a serious note.

“Amazingly well. I found a good therapist for her. In fact, we’ve both been seeing the same woman.” Chastity smiled. “Different issues, of course.”

Jude couldn’t imagine why a woman as together as Chastity seemed would need to spend time on a shrink’s couch, but she supposed it couldn’t have been easy helping Adeline come to terms with what had happened to her and her sister.

“I think one of the hardest things for Adeline was that she couldn’t help Summer,” Chastity reflected. “She blamed herself for not making Summer leave with her and Daniel when they escaped.”

“Summer would never have gone,” Jude said. “I met her before it went down. She was completely brainwashed.”

“I know. They specialize in crushing the spirit.” Chastity’s tone flooded with bitterness. “My sister is a case in point. She used to be a person and now she’s a robot. It hurts…I only understood recently—I’ve lost her. It’s like I don’t have a sister anymore.” She flushed and broke off. “Forgive me. I forgot you’re not Dr. Phil.”

“Don’t apologize. You can talk to me.” Jude gestured toward the living room. “Can I get you a drink?”

Chastity walked with her and took the corner of the leather sofa nearest the gas fire. “I think I’d like that.”

“Wine? Liqueur?”

“Surprise me.”

Belatedly, Jude remembered Mormons didn’t drink alcohol or anything with caffeine in it. Trying for host-of-the-year after the fact, she said, “I can make hot chocolate, if you’d prefer.”

Chastity shook her head, sending a riot of copper curls bouncing around her shoulders. Her eyes gleamed warmly at Jude. On a teasing note, she said, “I’d rather be corrupted.”

Jude dropped her gaze from the broad, full bow of Chastity’s mouth directly to her breasts then looked away, about ready to kick herself. This was a straight woman sitting on her couch. A guest. A Mormon who had been brought up in Salt Lake City and had probably never heard of homosexuality, let alone contemplated experimenting with it.

Get a grip, Jude thought. This was rebound disease rearing its make-an-ass-of-yourself head. An attractive woman was in her home. Whoa! It was late in the evening, that lonely sad-sack time when desperate people flipped to adult cable and didn’t crack up over hilariously named programs like
Lord of the G-Strings
. Celibacy was not working out for her, and she’d had her feelings hurt by a heartless sex-goddess.

Naturally she was afflicted with futile lust.

“You might like Frangelico,” she suggested as casually as she could. “That’s an Italian hazelnut liqueur.”

Her next thought was how good it would taste on Chastity’s lips, not that she would get an opportunity to explore that sensation unless she was shopping for a black eye. She couldn’t resist another look at Chastity’s mouth. It was really beautiful, sweetly turned up in each corner like a smile was always a mere breath away. Her small, straight nose and neat but strong chin were very feminine, but also hinted at the stubborn streak in her Jude had seen firsthand. She smiled, picturing her petite companion hitching her skirt and marching up to the FBI swat team that day in Rapture, so she could tell them exactly where to get off.

“Is something wrong?” Chastity asked.

Jude wanted not to blush, but it was too late. Embarrassed by her hot cheeks, she said, “No. I’ll get that drink.” She didn’t even know if Chastity had said she wanted it.

Thankful to escape to the liquor cabinet, Jude spent an unnecessary amount of time pouring a shot of Frangelico, then sloshed some Talisker into a scotch glass with a dash of water. It was reprehensible to gulp a single malt down in one hit, but she gave in to her baser impulses, telling herself she would make up for it by sipping her second glass like the aficionado she was.

The scotch roared down her throat with a medicinal fire that made her temples burn and restored her thinking to that of a responsible adult. As she caught her breath and composed herself, she saw on Chastity’s face the kind of wholesome smile that spelled out
Don’t even think about it.

“Can I ask you something?” Chastity inquired softly as she extended a hand for the Frangelico.

Jude passed the glass over and invited, “Shoot.”

“Do you think there’s such a thing as soul mates?”

A philosophical question; she could almost feel the headache sprouting. Jude quipped, “If there is, I’m in real trouble. I’ve never found one.”

“Me either. I had a husband but that was a train wreck. We tried marriage rejuvenation and so on. But that was never going to work. Then he started hitting me, and that was all she wrote.” Chastity sipped her drink, slowly licked her lips. “This is yummy. Thank you.”

“My pleasure.” Jude didn’t want to think about Chastity with a husband. She preferred the self-torture of wanting to help lick away the Frangelico.

“I keep wondering why I never meet anyone,” Chastity said. “My friends try to fix me up but it’s a waste of time.”

Jude wanted to say
Why are we having this conversation?
But she figured they’d built up to it over dinner. Chastity and Adeline had asked all kinds of questions about Jude’s family and how she became a detective, and she’d answered fairly frankly. Chastity was probably the kind of person who thought it was only right to engage in turnabout disclosures. Hence the personal stuff now.

Jude took a slow sip of her Talisker, normally a religious experience with that fine malt’s memorable peat-and-salt-air character. But tonight she was having a hard time settling back in her chair to cherish the lingering notes of oak and pepper. Her mouth felt unpleasantly dry and she was weary. Talking was an effort.

Suppressing a yawn, she said, “My friends gave up on me a long time ago. My job makes it hard to have a long-term relationship, anyway.”

“Because work comes first?”

“Yes.”

“Same here. I run my own business. It’s not like you can just take a day off whenever you feel like it. I don’t think partners understand that very well.”

“Are you happy alone?” Jude asked.

Chastity frowned as if entangled by this thought. “I’m not unhappy. I suppose the word is…disappointed. I pictured myself settling down. Being with someone.”

“We all get sucked into thinking we’re failures if we don’t have that,” Jude said. “I don’t try anymore. If it happens, it happens.”

“I’d settle for a few really close friends,” Chastity said, compounding Jude’s discouragement. “I had a lot of friends when I was still going to the temple, but when I got divorced we kind of…lost touch.”

Jude detected unmistakable hurt in her tone and instantly wanted to hold her and tell her the world was full of assholes and not to take things so personally. She said, “People get threatened when someone leaves the fold. It happened to me when I left D.C. A lot of my old colleagues acted like I’d abandoned them. I get treated like an outsider these days.”

It was true. Even though her friends in the CACU knew she’d taken an undercover assignment in counterterrorism, a bunker mentality tended to prevail in the different divisions of the Bureau. When an agent moved sideways, some saw it as jumping ship.

Chastity sipped some more of her Frangelico and said, “I suppose you think I’m weird, being brought up Mormon.”