Jude Devine Mystery Series (88 page)

Debbie hesitated. “She won’t like that one bit.”

“This is just between you and me,” Jude said. “I’m concerned for her well-being, Debbie. It’s a precaution, that’s all.”

“Are you going to call her?”

“No. It’s better if she doesn’t know I’m involved.”

Reluctantly, Debbie supplied the number. “She’ll probably change it again soon. You know how that is.”

“Have you spoken to her again since the argument?”

“No, I haven’t picked up.” Anger infused Debbie’s voice with strength. “Now it’s her turn to wonder where I am.”

Jude worked quickly through her options, seeking a way to exploit the situation. If this was Debbie’s attempt at leaving a relationship with a controlling partner, Jude would help. But if Debbie wanted to work things out, Jude would also do what she could, including getting Sandy to a shrink before she imploded. Whatever the scenario, she needed information, and the situation was now even more delicate. She wasn’t sure how Sandy would react to the quarrel with her girlfriend. Would the extra stress trigger a response? Jude needed to locate her hideaway.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” she told Debbie, taking a calculated risk. “Don’t talk to her today. Not in person and not on the phone. Will you promise me that?”

“I promise.” Debbie sounded determined, but she would cave the moment Sandy turned up on her doorstep with flowers. That was their pattern. Jude had heard all about it during haircuts.

“If you want things to change, you need leverage. Right now, you don’t have any. She’s been pulling this shit for months and you’ve enabled her.”

Not an unfamiliar concept. Jude didn’t want to think about Mercy. It still blew her mind that she’d put up with being one of two lovers, pathetically waiting her turn while Mercy saw who she wanted when she wanted. Was she nuts?

“I’m speaking from experience,” she said, masking her bitterness with an aura of calm common sense. “If you want a different outcome you can’t keep doing the same thing.”

“Oh, God. What if she leaves me?”

“Trust me, she’s not the type to walk away.” Jude framed her next question carefully. “Debbie, are you sure you want to this relationship to continue?”

“I love her. I just want us to be closer.”

“That’s only going to happen if she starts letting you in more. Give her a chance to realize that she has to make some changes. Then, tomorrow, pick up one of her calls and tell her you’ll see her but there are terms.”

She could picture the puzzlement on Debbie’s face. “Terms?”

“Tell her you’re not ready to spend a night with her, but the two of you should talk and it has to be at her place. Period. Not negotiable.”

“Why?”

“It’s symbolic. She’s shut you out of her life and her home. You need to be invited in.”

“She won’t do it.”

“Fine, then tell her there’s no meeting. Say it like you mean it.”

Debbie uttered a strangled sound.

“You have nothing to lose,” Jude said in her most reassuring tone. “If it doesn’t work, you can go back to how things were. But if it does, you’ll have broken down a big wall.”

After a long pause, Debbie said, “I’ll try. I really will.”

“Good. As soon as you’ve arranged the meeting, let me know.”

Jude wished her luck and ended the call. She watched a couple of ducks circle, then went back to the Dakota and located her latest Bureau cell phone. For a few seconds she deliberated, then she called Arbiter and requested the trace.

“What’s cooking?” he asked.

“It’s hard to say, but I don’t think she’s a Company asset. That’s just my gut talking.”

She knew Arbiter was equally concerned about other members of the alphabet soup, the NSA, NIC, DIA, and DEA, not to mention the offshoots that didn’t exist officially. Even if Sandy was exactly what Jude thought she was—a dangerous loose cannon susceptible to external stressors—she could still be working for a government agency at the more clandestine end of the spectrum. Those folks weren’t picky about the mental stability of their operatives if they were getting results.

“NORTHCOM has to be a candidate given her background,” Arbiter said. “They just asked the Pentagon to formalize CPOC as a separate subcommand and they’ve been recruiting special ops commandos.”

Jude frowned. U.S. Northern Command was the Pentagon’s Homeland Security arm. They were supposed to respond to threats, not carry out independent black ops on American soil. As far as she knew, their Compartmented Planning & Operations Cell was a top-secret planning committee inside NORTHCOM.

“What are they up to?”

“Good question,” Arbiter said. “They’ve been running sensitive operations here and in Canada and Mexico for the past few years. We liaise with them, but it sounds like they want more independence.”

“So it’s some kind of turf war?”

“Our friends at the Pentagon don’t like the current accountabilities,” Arbiter said. “They’ve been trying to dump their dependency on the CIA ever since 9/11, and they’re not thrilled with the Bureau either.”

“Because we’re the lead agency? Just a wild guess.”

Jude had trouble getting her head around the web of government agencies involved in homeland security, but no one except the FBI was authorized to direct military antiterror operations on U.S. soil. The Domestic Emergency Support Team was a combined Bureau and military special ops strike force formed for that purpose.

“There’s buzz that Joint Special Operations Command has something major on the horizon,” Arbiter said.

“An exercise?”

Arbiter didn’t respond immediately. “So rumor would have us believe. It’s hard to confirm since we’ve been left out in the cold so far.” His voice held an edge of irony.

The skin around Jude’s hair line prickled. If she was reading her handler correctly, he was telling her that the Pentagon was up to something terror-related and the Bureau knew nothing about it.

“Remember Don’s folly?” Arbiter said in a conversational tone.

The euphemism made Jude aware that they were normally less explicit in their cell phone communications. “Don’s folly” was Arbiter’s code for a new espionage organization proposed by Donald Rumsfeld five years earlier. Among its various functions, the P2OG was supposed to provoke terrorist attacks, or fake them, in order to justify US “responses.” The plans were leaked and no one had said much about the P2OG since then, but organization was up and running, having morphed into the Strategic Support Branch. As far as Jude knew, they ran their black ops offshore.

She picked up Arbiter’s cue with a phony laugh. “Who could forget Don?”

“I was talking with my farmboy friend last week.” For the first time since she’d known him, Arbiter sounded anxious. “He’s off-loading some real estate. One of his Mayflower holdings.”

Jude felt chills. “I see.”

“Farmboy” was a euphemism for graduates of Camp Perry, where the CIA trained its assassins and saboteurs. Reading between the lines, Jude surmised Arbiter’s contact had warned him about the Plymouth Rock area. She couldn’t come right out and ask why. Their call was probably being surveilled by a rival agency. Joining the dots, she concluded Arbiter was dropping a big hint. He suspected there was a Pentagon plan to instigate a domestic terror incident.

“Do you think our subject could be interested in that real estate?” she asked, thinking about Sandy’s mysterious trips away.

“Do us both a favor and find out.”

*

Lone tried to catch a short nap after her phone call with Debbie, but her mind refused to slow down. Her first thought was to drive out to Paradox Valley and make Debbie see sense. She hated hurting the woman she loved, but she had no choice until her primary objective was achieved. There had to be some way to make Debbie happy and to show herself worthy of trust. The answer came to her in a flash. Canada. Debbie resented being kept in the dark about the details, and thinking about it, Lone could see she’d taken too much for granted.

She had tried to introduce the subject over time, talking about moving there and reassuring Debbie that she wouldn’t have to earn a living. But she’d missed the perfect opportunity to make Debbie feel included without having to tell her what was really going on. She would be blown away once she saw the property. A hundred acres on a lake, a tricked-out double-wide trailer, and a beautiful log cabin, now half built. Lone was going to sell the Monticello house to pay for the rest of the building as soon as things quieted down after the assassination.

But why wait? She could take Debbie up there soon and convince her to make the move. She would hire a truck and empty Debbie’s house, pack up the cats, and it would be a done deal. Debbie would have plenty to do working on plans for the new kitchen of her dreams and shopping online for furnishings. She loved that shit.

Eventually, when the time was right, Lone would tell her about Operation Houseclean. It was tempting to disclose a few general details now, just to test the waters, but she couldn’t afford to jeopardize her mission at this critical point. Civilians couldn’t be expected to appreciate the necessity of a plan like hers. Debbie had no understanding of politics and Lone was reluctant to destroy her naïveté by explaining how the world really worked. Gentle souls like Debbie made life worth living for warriors like Lone. She refused to imagine a future without that sweet companionship.

Debbie just needed some time to cool off. Her threat to go away was as hollow as it was unlikely. Where would she go? She didn’t have close friends, and she had no money for a hotel, or airfare, or the cost of gas for a long trip. She had her cats to consider, and she couldn’t just take time off work. No, she would be holed up in her house with the curtains closed, watching that damn
Sleepless in Seattle
DVD.

By this evening she’d be desperate to hear from Lone and regretting every word of that pointless conversation. Lone would head over there with a pizza and Debbie’s favorite ice cream, and a bunch of flowers. She would grovel and take full responsibility for being thoughtless and inconsiderate. She’d learned long ago that butches had no other choice after a quarrel. They were always wrong and the girlfriend was always right. The details were irrelevant.

Feeling in control once more, Lone deactivated her close perimeter alarms and traversed the buffer zone to her workshop. She dropped down through the concealed trapdoor into her secure bunker and added her notes and sketches from Jackson Hole to the file on the VP’s residences. She then consulted her shortlist of likely event venues for the rest of 2007. The men of the evil alliance were writhing under the bright lights of scrutiny. They had to maintain a stranglehold on power in case the unthinkable happened and they lost the presidential election as well as the house and senate.

Lone felt certain Cheney would soon start raising campaign dollars as he had in 2006, holding thousand-dollar-a-plate chicken dinners to boost the war chests of the most vulnerable GOP candidates. Helpfully, before Karl Rove’s departure, his office had released a “priority defense” list. Most candidates were trying to distance themselves from Bushdom and would avoid making a big deal out of a visit by either Bush or Cheney. But they wouldn’t say no to money, so there would be discreet events at private homes and hotels.

Lone had compiled a list of the most likely beneficiaries and the locations where Cheney events were normally held in their respective cities. In addition, she’d donated to the campaigns of the top five prospects so she would receive advance notice of fund-raisers. As she did every day, she logged on to the Internet and checked to see if any of her targets was about to benefit from the Dicktator’s legendary fund-raising mojo. She wasn’t expecting a hit until September, but she was ready to roll anytime.

Smiling, she glanced at the MK-153 SMAW rocket launcher on the bottom shelf of her dedicated Operation Houseclean wall unit. Lined up alongside it was a collection of HEDP and CS rockets, ideal for taking out an armored town car. On the shelves above, Lone stored her sniper rifles and .300 Win Mag rounds, stun devices, assorted tactical weapons, and disguises.