My Everything (9 page)

Their plane should be over Nevada by now. That should relieve Tom.

Tom’s wife, Mallory, knew the whole story. Tom didn’t keep anything from her. He’d always said forewarned is forearmed. Tom was the management type. He didn’t spend much time in the field. He liked his hot showers and his home-cooked meals and the Saturday soccer games. He had two kids. He wanted to be around to watch them grow up.

That had been Ben’s plan, too. To wind things down after Julie had the baby.

Ben tapped his fingertips against the arm of the chair. Why now?

From what Ben could tell this wasn’t a big operation. It didn’t appear as if Tom had been followed from the office and there wasn’t any overtly suspicious activity near his home. It seemed like the entire exercise was designed with one specific goal in mind, to bring him out of hiding and into the open.

The most obvious answer was that this was payback for Jawar’s death, just like Jawar’s death was payback for Julie’s. Had he left someone from that cell alive, someone who was now hunting him down? If that was the case Angel was already dead because that’s how these men did things.

Ben’s hands curled into fists; his heart turned to ice at the thought. Then he reminded himself, they weren’t that subtle. There was no way Jawar’s group could have known about the apartment. It made no sense. No sense at all. Besides, if they’d suspected he was alive and wanted him to show himself, they would have simply killed Tom. Shit, they probably would have fired the whole damn building where Aris Security had its offices. Why bother grabbing Angel? The entire thing smelled off.

Two people besides himself knew about the apartment and his connection to it. Tom and Julie, but Julie couldn’t tell anyone. She’d only been there once when Ben had received an urgent call from Tom and he’d had to retrieve some papers from the apartment safe. But Julie assumed the apartment belonged to an Aris employee named Evan Spencer. Ben had never cleared up her misconception.

He knew Mrs. Muir hadn’t spoken to anyone. They’d become close after he’d retrieved her purse from a mugger. When the police finished taking her statement, she’d invited Ben in for a cup of tea.

The old woman was sharp as a tack, and it didn’t take her long to figure out he worked undercover. But she’d never said a word, just given him a key to her apartment in case of an emergency.

When he’d appeared in her living room today after more than a year’s absence, Mrs. Muir didn’t bat an eye, she promptly informed him that a man had been canvassing the block two, three weeks before, showing a photo of Ben; asking neighbors if they knew him. Mrs. Muir, of course, said she’d never seen him in her life, but she couldn’t vouch for everyone else.

Ben asked for a description. Mrs. Muir was able to tell him that the man looked to be in his late-twenties, early-thirties. He was attractive, of average height and weight with short brown hair, green eyes and a few freckles scattered across the bridge of his nose. He wore dark slacks and a white, button-down shirt. He didn’t speak with an accent, and he appeared nervous. He claimed he was trying to locate his missing brother.

Ben said, “You would have made a great detective.”

Mrs. Muir blushed.

It always surprised Ben how much information he’d confided to Mrs. Muir. For instance, she knew damn well he didn’t have a brother. She said she was immediately suspicious about the man, but she had no idea how to contact Ben.

Once she’d told Ben everything she knew Mrs. Muir handed him a cup of strong coffee and left through the back door, ostensibly to run some errands. She seemed to know without being told that he wanted to be alone.

So, either Jawar’s men had recruited an American to find him, an amateur at that, in which case the poor schmuck was probably dead, or this had nothing at all to do with Jawar.

Ben felt in his gut that it was the latter, but he couldn’t for the life of him imagine why someone would come after him. There had to be an agenda. There was always an agenda. This wasn’t some off-the-books corporate takeover, and it didn’t seem like an inside job.

Aris was a small agency. He and Tom had kept it that way, their employees carefully chosen for their skills and their discretion. They didn’t advertise. All their business was by referral from old friends they trusted or people they had a history with, people who had been vetted in extremis.

Besides, he kept reminding himself, if this was about Aris or about Tom, Tom would already be dead. You want to kill a snake you cut off the head.

No, this was personal. It was about him. Ben had made a number of enemies, but to most of them he was nameless and faceless. If this was some amateur with a personal grudge that was an entirely different matter. Amateurs made mistakes, big ones, but they were also completely unpredictable. That made him very afraid for Angel.

Jesus. He couldn’t help but imagine the worst.

Ben wondered, if he hadn’t disappeared would Angel still be safe, hanging out with friends and swimming at Lake Travis? Would she be in jeopardy, a pawn in someone’s idea of an insane chess game where the stakes were life and death?

Ben massaged the side of his head. He was getting a headache. For the life of him, he couldn’t recall a single person from his past capable of something like this. He didn’t deal with amateurs, and he didn’t target innocents.

What about Grace? Maybe her appearance was too much of a coincidence.

Two men on a routine assignment are killed with his gun. Angel is grabbed and then Grace magically appears at his hotel room door. She was the only face from his past he’d seen in over a year. Yet try as he might, Ben could not convince himself that Grace would commit cold-blooded murder and kidnapping. She’d taken care of Angel for four years. He didn’t believe Grace would ever hurt his sister. Her appearance had to be coincidence, pure and simple.

Despite his intention to stay on task, his mind rambled. His night with Grace had far surpassed any sexual experience he’d ever had. He’d loved Julie with all his heart, yet he’d never felt the same intense, raw, physical and emotional connection with her that he had with Grace.

He should feel damn guilty about it, but instead of remembering Julie, Ben found himself wondering how in the hell he’d managed to refrain from taking Grace ten years ago, or even why.

He wanted her again. He wanted to roll those sweet apple blossom nipples in his mouth. Just thinking about Grace made him as hard as stone.

Well, regardless of what his cock wanted, Ben didn’t intend to put Grace at risk. Julie was dead, and Angel was missing. He wouldn’t let anything happen to Grace.

When this was over, if Angel was safe, he’d think about the future. He’d think about Grace then. He couldn’t afford to think about her right now. Angel’s life was at stake. If nothing else, he’d trade himself for his sister. In a situation like this there were no guarantees. He had no way of knowing if whoever took Angel would actually be willing to trade or if she was merely a piece of bait. Ben figured she was bait. That meant the minute he gave himself up Angel was expendable.

He had to find her. Mrs. Muir’s suspicions about the man who’d been looking for him confirmed that the apartment was a logical place to begin.

Ben carried his untouched coffee to the kitchen and dumped it into the sink, washing the cup and placing it in the plastic dish drainer. He headed out the back door, locking it behind him. He cut through the alleyway and exited at the far end of the block. He crossed the street at the light and entered the apartment building through the rear.

Ben took the stairs two at a time, climbing to the fourth floor. The hallway was empty. He used his key to unlock the door, and he ducked under the yellow police tape. He closed the door softly behind him and flipped the deadbolt. The apartment was silent and dark, stale and unused. Most of the blinds were still drawn. Tom was supposed to clean the place out, but obviously he never got around to it. Ben stood still for a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dim light. The place had been dusted for fingerprints, but for the most part, everything was exactly as he’d left it.

Ben began by walking the perimeter of each room, looking for anything out of place, something different, something that might have been moved by someone other than the police or the feds.

He’d never bothered to set up an alarm system. The place was bare bones, utilitarian, serviceable. He kept nothing of value here but the gun and a couple of disposable cell phones. The cell phones he’d smashed and tossed before he left. Tom was supposed to come by and pick up the gun. Ben occasionally stored something of value for a client in a safe in the bedroom closet.

When he’d brought Julie by, it was because he’d had to retrieve some papers from the safe on short notice. He hadn’t wanted to leave her sitting in the car alone. He’d told her the apartment was rented by the agency.

Whoever broke in did so through the window over the fire escape. Shards of glass lay scattered across the floor. Ben squatted next to the frame to get a closer look. Someone had cut himself or herself on a jagged piece of glass. The amount of blood was small. He assumed both the locals and the FBI had taken swabs.

Ben rose and walked into the single bedroom, heading straight for the closet. The metal box containing the gun was gone. He’d expected that. The door to the safe was intact, but it appeared someone had taken a knife or a screwdriver to it in a futile attempt to open it. The metal was scarred and scraped. Ben had left only one thing inside. He inserted two keys into the locks and opened the heavy door. He pulled out a small wallet-sized wedding photo, his wedding photo.

Ben stared down at the photo cradled in his palm. He and Julie held hands. She looked lovely. Her red hair was pulled back in a bun, and her ivory skin glowed in the California sunshine. He didn’t remember exactly why he’d locked it away. Locking away a piece of his heart maybe, keeping it safe and out of sight. Ben ran a light finger over Julie’s image before tucking the photo into his jacket pocket.

He closed the safe and relocked it. As he turned back to the bedroom, he noticed that the bedspread appeared wrinkled near the head of the bed, next to a nightstand. It looked as if someone had sat there. He supposed an investigator, or even Tom, might have sat down on the bed but that seemed unlikely.

Ben walked over to the bed and sat in that exact spot. His eyes swept the room several times. He quickly noted that some of the dust was disturbed along the front edge of the nightstand, but the chest hadn’t been dusted for fingerprints. The middle drawer sat slightly askew.

Ben reached down and opened it. Inside he found his usual collection of miscellaneous items, pens and pencils, packing tape, and a notepad still wrapped in cellophane. Beneath those items he spotted a screwdriver and a penknife.

Pulling on a pair of gloves, Ben retrieved the screwdriver and the penknife. He’d never used either. They were freebies from the office supply store. The screwdriver was bent and the blade of the pen knife had been broken off. He was certain they’d been used on the safe. He was surprised the police and the feds hadn’t noticed. He turned them over in his hands. Ben doubted there were fingerprints aside from his on either. According to the police report he read, no prints had been found anywhere in the apartment. He pulled out a plastic bag anyway.

As Ben dropped the screwdriver and the penknife into the bag, the white edge of a torn piece of paper caught his eye. It was wedged along the inside front facing of the drawer. He peeled it carefully away from the wall of the drawer. Holding the paper gingerly by the edges, he turned it over.

Ben blinked a couple times to make certain he was seeing correctly. It was the same photo he’d just stuck in his jacket pocket. The same wallet-sized wedding photo, except this one had been torn in half. Julie’s half was missing. He was alone in the photo wearing a dark sport coat, the arm that would have reached for Julie’s hand had been torn off, leaving a ragged edge.

Trying to clear his head, Ben sat perfectly still. Someone else had sat right here on the edge of the bed, looked in the drawer, grabbed the screwdriver and the penknife, scraped the hell out of the safe and dropped this photo. Ben pulled the other picture out of his jacket pocket and compared the two. They were identical.

Ben suddenly realized he’d neglected to ask Mrs. Muir what photo she’d been shown. He’d been so focused on what the man looked like that it didn’t even occur to him to wonder where someone had gotten a photo of him.

That fact pointed out to him just how much he’d forgotten. He needed to get his ass in gear for his sister’s sake.

Carrying the photograph as if it were made of hand-blown glass, Ben strode into the kitchen and searched the drawers for another plastic bag. He found a sandwich-sized Baggie, dropped the picture inside and sealed it. Ben was willing to bet good money he would find at least one fingerprint on the photo.

He’d show Mrs. Muir his wedding photo and see if this was the picture she was shown.

He knew for damn sure that he hadn’t torn that photo in half and left it in the drawer. This was not the work of Jawar’s men. This was something entirely different. These actions screamed personal vendetta.

How the hell did someone get a copy of this photograph? There were very few in existence. He had the copy in his pocket. Julie had carried one in her purse, the purse that had burned along with everything else in the car in Indonesia. Tom and Mallory kept a copy. Julie’s parents had several copies. His mother had a couple. That was it. And he hadn’t made any large prints, just wallets from pictures taken with Tom’s digital camera. Ben had printed them up himself on his computer and he’d made sure to wipe that computer’s hard drive before he left the country. The only existing copy of the photo disk was locked in his workroom at the house in Costa Rica.

What in the hell was going on? Ben was no longer concerned about an insider at Aris. The cold-blooded murder of two of his co-workers was intended to get his attention.

What a tragic, indifferent waste of human life. That was what haunted him about Julie’s death, the coldness of the men who murdered her. That’s why he left it all behind in the first place. Ben believed himself guilty of the same indifference, regardless of the reason, no matter how justified he felt. He left because he was becoming too much like Julie’s murderers.