Now You See It (20 page)

They didn’t talk about the case again until they were in bed.

As Gemma settled in, Brady punched up his pillows, turned to her and said, “The attack on Ned is the anomaly. Take that out of the equation, and Doug looks pretty good for this.”

“He says you did it,” Gemma said.

Brady stiffened and blinked. “What?”

“He’s said from the beginning there were too many mysteries around you. He keeps asking how well I really know you. Where you were when these things happened.”

“And what do you tell him?”

“That I trust you.”

“I’ll bet that really pisses him off.”

She was quiet for a beat. “It does. But I don’t care, any more. You know, I never learned all the boy/girl games. First there was Trevor, and then Ned came along and was so insistent. He caught me when I was really vulnerable and just swept me off my feet. I never dated, really. If I’d been more experienced, I’d probably have known better than to ever get involved with him. I was such a fool.”

“So, should I leave you alone for three or four years until you catch up?”

“Just try it.” She smiled at him. This was what had been missing, she realized. Just this. She linked her hands behind his neck, looking up at him. He rolled over so she was on top, balanced heart-to-heart. “I belong here, with you. When you hold me, it’s like coming home.”

Brady suppressed a shudder. Gemma’s last two “homes” had been destroyed out from under her. Maybe the third time was the lucky one, but somehow he didn’t think it would be. He didn’t need any extra
senses
to know something bad was coming.

All evening he’d been preoccupied with thoughts of his Team. They’d been something else, all right. Gemma had been dead on about that. He wished he could talk to her about them all, but their existence was buried probably one thin layer above the real records of Roswell and the Kennedy assassination.

Brady still didn’t know which genius in the Department of Defense had come up with the idea. It was probably bound to occur to someone eventually. There was no way to entirely hide something like a psi ability in a group as tightly knit as a SEAL team. And guys always talked—even the SEALS talked to other SEALS. Probably decades of scuttlebutt about this guy or that one with “something extra” that gave his Team or squad or whatever an edge had finally penetrated what passed for brains in the Pentagon’s rarified atmosphere. So somebody had the brilliant idea to pull a bunch of them together into a single Team.

Brady was the Tracker, for obvious reasons. Mike was communications and their link to standard intel. Gemma was wrong about Mike’s abilities. Under the stress of a military operation, he could sense other
Next Steps
, tell if they were dead, or wounded, or in more trouble than expected—handy information in an ambush, or in the dark. It just didn’t work on “Ords,” as the Team had called Gemma’s “Normals.”

Brady missed the team. There had been some talk that threatened funding: no sane government functionary wanted to hang their reappointment hopes on a SEAL Team from the X-Files, and they’d been disbanded after only a year and reassigned to other Teams as replacements. He wondered what had happened to them all. If they’d grown as restless and rootless as he’d felt in his new Team, surrounded by men who didn’t know and never had time to learn what he really was capable of. Until he got them blown to hell.

* * *

Mike pulled into the brick-lined parking garage under his office building. For a happy surprise, no theatergoers had taken his parking place. They usually didn’t respect the “Reserved” sign on the wall after business hours.

Someday
, he vowed as he went through the painstaking and stressful process of angling his car between the wall and a concrete pillar,
I’m going to get a better parking space. If one ever opens up. Or maybe a better office building.
The trouble was, he loved the old rattletrap. The exterior was original and ornate, and in spite of the inconveniences, the whole building had a solidity and strength of character that felt like home to him.

He opened his car door carefully to avoid dinging it on the concrete and squeezed out with a sigh. This garage was still better, and a lot less expensive, than one of the commercial lots. He reached into the backseat for his briefcase, and stiffened as the hairs rose on the nape of his neck.

He pulled back quickly and looked around, but saw nothing that should have spooked him. The garage tended to feel a little eerie at night. It was always badly lit, but for some reason, at night the shadows seemed to fall differently. He stared across the rows of cars, hardly breathing, listening with every pore in his body. Nothing. He shook his head. He was losing it. Between the murder—shit, two murders, a vandalism, three arsons, but who was counting? Then a fight with Mary Kate—he swallowed bitter bile. He was glad she and Timmy were safely away, but he hated having them gone. Mary Kate was the only woman he’d ever loved, the only one he’d ever wanted for more than ten minutes. He wasn’t going to lose her over anything smaller than Armageddon. So she’d just better get ready to work this through.

Even thinking of her leaving made his stomach hurt.

The interior of the building had the olive-oil and oregano smell of aging, real wood and floor polish. Mike took a deep, appreciative breath as he stepped blindly into the elevator and pushed the button to the fifth floor. He rolled his shoulders, unable to shake off a sense of menace.

The corridor to his office was deserted. The nighttime lighting left darker areas along the hall that seemed to breathe in the silence.
Nonsense. Buildings don’t breathe.
Chiding himself for his foolishness, he unlocked the office door.

His paralegal sat behind a stack of books. The legal tablet she was hunched over had half its pages rolled up over the top of the pad. “Cinda. What are you still doing here?” he asked.

She finished the note she was making before she answered. “Trying to study. It’s quiet here.”

“It’s dangerous. I told you, I don’t want you here alone, especially at night.”

“Well, I’m not alone now, am I?” She bounced the butt end of her pen against her thumbnail. “Do you need me to help with anything?”

“‘She offered with mock sincerity,’” he said. “No, thanks. I just want to pull few things together, then I’m heading out—and so are you.”

She started to protest, but gave it up when she saw his face. “Okay. The kids will be asleep by the time I get home, anyway.”

“Your mom waiting up for you?”

“Always,” she laughed. “That woman is relentless.”

“No doubt.” Mike smiled. Clarissa Barstow was a force of nature. She and Cinda were both well over six feet. Cinda was almost too thin, but Clarissa carried her two-hundred-plus pounds with the pride of royalty. And she had passed her assurance on to her two daughters and five grandchildren.

Two years ago, she had come to Mike when a nephew ended up on the wrong side of a weapons charge. She had insisted on paying all his fees in full. And she had dragged the young miscreant into Mike’s office afterward for a full apology. Mike shook his head.
Great family
, he thought, as he unlocked the inner office door.

He stacked up files and tablets, opened his briefcase, and set it on his chair. As he loaded up handfuls of folders, he double-checked the label on one file, set it back on the desk, and snapped the case shut on the rest of the stack.

“Cinda? You about ready?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but flipped off the light and pushed through the door into the outer office.

He had a split-second sight of a man in night camos and Cinda lying boneless on the floor at his feet. He caught a quick, coppery scent of blood before a blow like a hot sledgehammer hit his chest and his vision grayed as he staggered backward through the doorway. Instinct had him rolling to the floor before his mind grasped that the intruder had a gun.

Mike fell heavily on his left hand, unable to raise his right arm to catch himself. He twisted toward his desk and rolled to reach the handle of the bottom-right drawer. He heard his assailant panting, closer, closer. Mike pulled the drawer open just enough to grasp the Glock 17 he’d kept in the office since Sam Dawkins’s murder. He tried to chamber a round, but couldn’t grip the weapon tightly enough to work the slide. He jammed it between his knees for leverage and was rewarded by a slight
snick-snick
as the shell slid into place.

Ferocious pain thumped through his chest and right arm, and he knew he was losing too much blood, too fast. The gray was back, narrowing his field of vision. Pulling out his last reserves, he lifted the 9 mm semiautomatic just as Camo Guy arrived backlit in the doorway. Mike fired, and had the satisfaction of seeing the creep recoil from impact before the darkness closed in. He never heard the bottle shatter against the row of wooden files, or saw the flames licking their way across the gasoline-soaked carpet.

* * *

Brady woke up to Gemma’s frantic voice and the rapid, insistent prodding of her toe. “Brady! Brady, wake up! It’s Mike.”

He shook his head to clear it. “I’m awake. What?”

She held a cell to her ear. “Yes. There’s a fire on the fifth floor, Room 576. Mr. Cavanagh has been injured. Please hurry.” She pressed the off button and dialed 911, tight-lipped, her eyes huge. “Yes,” she said into the phone, “I’d like to report a fire at 716 University. There’s an injured man on the fifth floor, where the fire is. Please hurry.” She hit Off again, and scrambled from the bed, tugging on a pair of sweats and the first shirt she could grab out of the closet.

“Mike’s hurt?”

“Oh, God, Brady.”

“Fire?”

“Building security are the only ones close enough to get to him before the fire does.”

Brady was already jamming his feet into hiking boots. He pulled the laces tight and tucked them along the sides to save time.

“We can’t get there in time,” she said through chattering teeth.

His arm went around her, and he gave her a quick squeeze and kissed her hair. “He’ll be all right.”

* * *

He raced down the five flights of stairs, careful to stay close to the wall, rushing from shadow to shadow, pausing only to listen for pursuit. It was all coming unwrapped. But then, nothing ever came to him easily. His father would have said nothing that came easily was worth more than the effort it took to acquire it. A lot he knew. Well, at least the brother’s files were toast, so if there was anything in them about him, it was gone. He’d seen the burning liquid run into the cracks between the drawers, a fire fall that even safety cabinets couldn’t block.

In the darkness of the basement parking garage, he pulled off his ski mask and camo shirt with his uninjured arm, swore under his breath at the sudden pain when he pulled his wounded arm free. He threw the shirt and mask into a debris barrel at a small construction area he’d found earlier on his way in. He retrieved the sport coat he’d left there, and slung it over his shoulder until he could get to his car. As long as the blood didn’t drip onto the ground, he should be able to make it.

He clenched his good hand into a fist to stop the trembling rage. Nothing was going right for him. Nothing. Not that he minded killing the brother, since he would probably have had to go, in any case. He was much too close to Gemma, too influential.

The woman, though. He had to admit there were compensations. That had been glorious. The terror in her eyes as she understood there was no hope—was it his implacable stance or the insouciant smile he’d practiced so carefully, just in case? He laughed softly. He so looked the part he’d chosen to play tonight.

Killing Sam Dawkins hadn’t been nearly so satisfying. He’d had no idea it would be like that—the surge of power. He hadn’t planned to kill anyone. Not that first time. No one should have been in Dawkins’s office at that time of night. Seeing Sam come through the door was a nasty shock. Threw him off his game. He’d had to improvise, and he’d gotten the information he’d come for, but not with his usual style. Then Dawkins had recognized him—he still didn’t know how. They hadn’t been that close. But it gave him no choice. None at all. Still, the whole experience had left him feeling tainted. Lesser. He’d gotten better, though. And look at him, now.

Tonight was the best yet. And shooting was so much...
more
. God, the rush. The silencer had been a brilliant touch.
Pfft
! In that instant her eyes had gone from terrified to empty. Nothing. Amazing. He flexed his hand as he walked through a narrow open arch into the parking garage under the next building, and out the other side into a swarming after-theater crowd. His planning had been flawless, as he’d known it would be. Streets and sidewalks were jammed as people hurried to their cars and patrons spilled out of restaurants and bistros into the balmy summer night. The pain in his shoulder was building, hot and voracious. He could feel beads of sweat on his face, but around him, everyone was sweating. He blended right in. God, he was good at this.

Two men walked up behind him as he reached his car. “Mr. Vinh would like to see you.”

“Can’t it wait until morning?” He needed some rest, some meds. A little time to regroup and enjoy his triumph.

The one on his left showed him the tip of a blade, and the two men led him away in silence.

* * *

“It’s a fucking light-bar convention,” Brady said. Red, white, blue and yellow lights flashed from fire trucks, police and aid cars in front of Mike’s building.

The tires screeched as Brady stomped the brake. He left the car running and trotted to the nearest aid car where an EMT was clambering into the back. “Yo!” he shouted, and slammed a hand against the door.

“We need to go, sir. Please back away.”

“Is that Michael Cavanagh?” He could feel Mike inside, but needed a second or two more to get a better read on him.

“Sir—”

“Because if it is, I have his sister in the car.”