Omega Force 01- Storm Force (2 page)

“You want Robin and me in Houston?” Nik handed the sheaf of notes to Robin, and Kell’s glance rested again on the photo of Emory Chastaine, all-American girl terrorist.

“The rest of us in Houston,” Kell affirmed. “Houston PD’s anonymous rat said the bombing was engineered by this environmental activist group known as the Co-Op. No direct evidence, but Homeland Security is investigating. Trouble is, by the time the bureaucrats get their heads out of their asses, Labor Day will be a memory. They can’t move fast enough.”

Robin had stopped at a page in the notes headed
Co-Op
. “Says here the director is a woman named Emory Chastaine — goes by the name Mori. They’ve been protesting the meetings to create a new industrial center northwest of Houston, particularly biochemical manufacturing. She’s openly accused the governor of creating a cancer hazard for local citizens as well as encroaching on native habitats. They’ve always been outspoken but peaceful.”

Kell nodded. “Unless they’ve changed tactics. I’ll be going in as a Co-Op volunteer. You and Nik, see what you can find at the crime scene, and check out the link with the governor. He’s presumed dead, but the body hasn’t been found.”

Kell looked back at the screen. “We’ll work out the rest of the details on the way to Houston. And remember, this job doesn’t exist. We don’t exist. Stay undercover and in touch. Nobody’s a cowboy. Everybody clear?”

“Except for one thing,” Nik said as Kell closed the connection. “You’re about the least crunchy-earthy guy I know. How the hell are you gonna pass for a granola grabber?”

He was talking to Kell, but his hooded eyes were focused on Robin, who’d stripped off Kell’s T-shirt and was giving Nik an assessing look right back.

Great. On top of everything else, he’d have to come up with a No Sex Within the Omega Force rule. “Robin, don’t you have to fly away somewhere?”

She grinned at him, then shimmered back into a golden eagle and squawked at Nik when he opened the door to let her outside.

Kell swore that, before she took flight off the end of the porch, she shook her tail feathers at them.

Mori Chastaine thought she’d be prepared when the phone call came. Not so much.

She’d known Shonna was dead, had been convinced of it deep in her gut where fears hadn’t yet been molded into words. Her admin hadn’t missed a day of work in almost a year of employment, and if she were going to be late, Shonna would call, text,
and
e-mail to make sure Mori got the message. They’d even joked about her overdeveloped sense of responsibility.

Until yesterday. Everyone in the Co-Op offices had gathered in the cramped conference room, watching the small TV set with sick fascination and a growing sense of dread as the morning dragged on and the news from downtown Houston grew worse.

Nobody said it, but the unspoken thoughts filled the room. Shonna took the Southwest Freeway to work every morning, right past the Zemurray Building. The force of the building collapse had taken down a big chunk of the freeway, always heavy with traffic.

Shonna was never late. No one answered her phone.

Still, when Shonna’s husband finally called, Mori hadn’t been prepared for the sick feeling that threatened to overwhelm her. His voice was thin and tinny, as if coming through a dense fog. Rescuers had found Shonna’s car beneath the rubble of the collapsed section of I-59 nearest the bomb site, he said. It happened so fast Shonna hadn’t suffered.

But that was what officials always told family members to make them feel better. One could never truly know another’s pain or fear or the fleeting regrets that had to pass through a person’s mind in the moments before death.

Standing beside Shonna’s desk, Mori flipped through the stack of donations waiting to be processed. Gifts of ten, twenty, fifty dollars from people who couldn’t afford to support an environmental action group but who believed in the work they did.

Except it didn’t seem so important now. Even the issues she faced with her family seemed to pale beside such violence, although Mori knew her personal problems would resume their proper place of horror soon enough.

Walking into her own office, she slumped in the chair and picked up a wooden carved tree she used as a paperweight, crafted generations ago by one of her ancestors from a piece of live oak uprooted by a hurricane. It symbolized the strength of her people, their ability to draw solace from the earth, the passion that drove her to try and preserve what land they had left.

A passion that — according to her parents, anyway — didn’t sink deep enough into her fiber for her to make the sacrifices needed to save them all.

She shouldn’t have to bear that burden, damn it.

A tear splashed on the wood worn smooth by years of handling. She wasn’t sure if she was grieving for the lives lost in downtown Houston or for her own diminished future if she let herself be bullied into becoming the wife of a man she hated.

“You ready to go downtown?” Taylor Stedman stuck his head in the office door, interrupting Mori’s attempts to make sense of the senseless. “Our flyer crew will work harder if they see you there, supporting them.”

Mori scrubbed her hands over her eyes, wiping away the tears, and stared at her assistant director. What was he thinking? “Tay, I told you to call in the flyer crews yesterday. Now’s not the time to be handing out pamphlets and bad-mouthing the governor. The man might be dead. The executives from the other countries are either dead or wounded. Nobody is talking about building new manufacturing plants anymore.”

Tay flinched, and Mori closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go off on you. It’s just that Shonna…” She took a deep breath. “No flyer crews until further notice, OK?”

“What about the calling campaigns? It might be a good time to shore up our support.” Taylor had that pinched, obstinate look Mori had grown to dislike — one he used a lot since she’d beat him out for the director’s job last year.

Co-Op volunteers had been blanketing the area around the Zemurray Building throughout the week as Governor Felderman and industrial leaders from several G-8 nations met to discuss new manufacturing inroads into southeast Texas. Their position was clear, but now wasn’t the time to press their point.

“Call the phone crews and tell them to wait for further instructions. We do nothing else until things calm down. All we’d get now is bad publicity.”

Mori stood and walked around her desk, not ashamed to use her five-eleven height to intimidate her shorter assistant director. Taylor was a good organizer and had the passion for protecting what was left of the native East Texas–West Louisiana habitat, but the man didn’t have a lick of common sense, as Mori’s granddad used to say.

“But there are a lot of people out in that area, and it’s a good time to remind them what a biochemical plant in their backyard would mean.” Taylor got that whine in his voice that annoyed the bejeezus out of her. He was proof that the line between passion and fanaticism was often a fine one. The environmental movement’s greatest strength across the board — passionate people — was also its greatest weakness.

“Give it a rest.” She raised her voice, not something she did often. The slump of his shoulders told her she’d made her point. “If we go out there now, we look insensitive and lose support, not gain it.” .

As soon as Taylor sulked his way down the hall to his office, Mori returned to the small conference room. Two of the three Co-Op office volunteers, college students from nearby Rice U, watched the ongoing disaster coverage.

“Anything new?” These kids had been with her when the phone call came about Shonna, and both were failing miserably in their attempts to maintain their cool-dude demeanors.

Brian, an engineering major, looked at her with red-rimmed eyes. “Think there’s any way we can help?”

Mori shook her head. “It’s too soon. They’re still looking for evidence, I imagine. The best way to help is to stay out of their way.”

The explosions had turned Houston into a chaotic doughnut. Business ran at its usual frantic pace around the edges, while everything in the central area near downtown remained at a shocked, fearful standstill. The downtown streets were eerily empty except in the vicinity of the Zemurray Building, where investigators swarmed like ants around a smoke-bombed anthill.

Mori couldn’t blame the kids for wanting to help; they were joiners who kept organizations like the Co-Op alive. She’d come to consider this little gentrified house-turned-storefront in Montrose more of a home than the furnished one-bedroom where she slept. She’d poured everything she had into the Co-Op since taking over the directorship, and they’d made progress in small steps, even convincing a couple of the governor’s industry-rich backers to consider scaling down expansion.

Feedback screeched through the TV microphones as a middle-aged, stone-faced reporter stopped his ongoing commentary to listen into a headset. “We have a development in the recovery efforts at the Zemurray Building,” he said, nodding as the video cut to a barely recognizable pile of rubble. Concrete and rebar had been piled into a mountain beside the tall uprights that at one time had supported an elevated section of roadway and a seventy-story high-rise.

“Sources are saying that a local environmental group known as the Co-Op has been identified as an entity of interest in the investigation. The Co-Op has been actively protesting the industrial expansion policies of Governor Felderman and, specifically, this week’s meetings…”

The voice droned on, but Mori blocked it out. Her sense of unreality deepened as she honed in on the image superimposed behind the reporter, the oak leaf in a circle that made up the Co-Op logo. Surely they couldn’t be serious. Could anybody really believe they’d work so hard to protect wildlife habitat and then do something that would kill people?

“Mori?” Brian touched her arm, and she startled, looking up and following his gaze to the conference room doorway. Taylor, so pale his long dark hair looked like a bad dye job, stood next to the anti-Taylor. Tall, tanned, short dark hair just unkempt enough to look as if it might be starting to grow out, strong cheekbones, and eyes a shade of clear blue-green she’d only seen in the Caribbean on her one trip to the Cayman Islands. An Army green T-shirt hinted at the muscles beneath.

She hated to say it of her own people, but this guy looked way too buff and downright
masculine
to be an environmentalist.

He held out a hand for her to shake. “Name’s Jack Kelly, and I was hoping to come on as a volunteer at the Co-Op. You’re the director, right?”

Mori struggled to focus on his words, glancing back at the TV, where the Co-Op logo had been replaced by the mayor giving yet another press conference. “I’m sorry, Mister…Kelly, was it? This is really not a good time. Maybe you could come back in a couple of weeks?”

Surely to God this nightmare would be over by then, including the ridiculous idea that the Co-Op was involved. Although, for many families, it wouldn’t be over for a long time.

A little wrinkle of annoyance briefly appeared between his brows, then smoothed away. Mori knew that look from working with the power brokers. Jack Kelly was used to getting his way. “Call me Kell. I’m sorry for the lousy timing, but if you give me a chance, I promise to make myself useful. I’ve just come off active Army duty and need something to fill my time. I believe in what you guys do.”

Mori rubbed her eyes. She had to find out how the Co-Op had been linked to these bombings, not babysit a struggling soldier.
Be nice. He deserves a break for what he’s been through.
But his timing sure sucked.

“OK, of course.” Besides, Taylor needed to stay busy and training a new volunteer would do nicely. “Taylor, can you show Kell around and give him the volunteer spiel? Then I’ll —”

Holy cow, when had the Co-Op gotten so damned popular? Two nondescript, somber-faced men wearing somber suits and even more somber expressions had appeared behind Taylor and the new volunteer.

One of the men, a blank-faced brunette, stayed in the background. His companion stepped forward. “Emory Chastaine?”

Jack took a side step so he was facing the newcomers — definitely looked like something a soldier would do. These guys looked more threatening than the soldier volunteer, though.

These guys looked like cops.

She walked toward the man in front, her hand outstretched, ready to greet him despite the dread churning her stomach to acid. “I’m Mori Chastaine. Can I help you?”

Instead of shaking her hand, the guy in the suit thrust a Homeland Security badge in front of her face. “Agent Tim Bradford. We need you to accompany us downtown, please. We have some questions in relation to the Zemurray Building bombing.”

Mori swallowed hard, and her gaze met Kell’s. He had that look again, the one that said he wasn’t getting his way and he didn’t like it. Join the crowd, buddy. She turned back to the FBI agent. “Am I under arrest?”

His smile was grim. “Not yet.”

“I don’t need a fucking bag of cash — she’s been detained, not arrested. Find out how long they can hold her without charging her.”

Kell ended the call and tossed his cell phone on the scarred dinette table of his apartment, part of a big complex located between Westheimer and San Felipe just inside the 610 Loop. He’d held the lease on the place for more than five years, and it still had the same old furniture he’d taken from his folks’ place in Jeanerette when they died in an auto accident. He hadn’t been able to make himself move back into their house, where he’d stayed whenever he was home on leave or between tours. So he took Gator, sold everything but the cabin (their “fish camp”), and moved to Houston.

The cabin had survived Audrey, Rita, Ike — any number of lesser hurricanes and tropical storms. He figured any building that stubborn deserved to be kept.

Nik sat at the table nursing a scotch. The city was painful for him, and Kell recognized the tightness of his jaw that gradually disappeared when he stayed outside the city a few days. The man never knew when something he’d touch would bombard him with a story, usually an emotional or traumatic one. The whiskey didn’t seem to get him drunk or dull his reaction times or judgment, but it did dull the visions.

“The colonel’s trying to give you bail money?” he asked. “I thought they hadn’t arrested her.”

“Not the colonel, but his aide. It’s a precaution, but I don’t think it’s necessary and it’ll take too long. There’s no evidence to charge Mori Chastaine with anything. In fact, if Homeland Security wasn’t involved, they wouldn’t have been able to detain her this long without charging her.”

“You think the anonymous caller was the real bomber and was trying to set up the Co-Op for some reason?” Nik took a sip of scotch and rattled the ice around his glass.

Good question. The colonel had told Kell that investigators had found nothing concrete to connect the Co-Op to the bombing except the anonymous phone call and some flyers left around the scene — one was even tacked to a support beam. “Every connection they’ve found is purely circumstantial. But whoever made that call fingering the Co-Op had some credible information. So the Co-Op is the place to start looking for answers. Either they’re involved or someone’s out to hose them. Then again, we might be wasting our time.”

In fact, it wouldn’t surprise him if other Omega Force teams in other states were investigating the same case from other angles. It’s what he’d do if he were making the assignments. In case that Labor Day threat was real, he’d spread teams all over the place, exploring every possibility.

Kell opened a new bottle of ibuprofen, poured four into his palm, and knocked them back with orange juice out of the new carton he’d bought at Randalls yesterday. He’d finally escaped the officious Taylor Stedman by late afternoon after learning more about the evils of habitat encroachment than he could ever want to know. Every single hairy spider and East Texas leech and scrubby species of bush was now in his vocabulary. He could be on fucking
Jeopardy
.

He agreed with a lot of what the Co-Op preached, but not if they were willing to kill people. And it hadn’t escaped his notice that Taylor didn’t seem the least bit concerned that his boss had been hauled off as a potential ecoterrorist.

“Where’s Robin staying now that she’s here and Gadget and the kittens have taken over her apartment in New Orleans?” Kell sat next to Nik at the table and pulled his tan canvas rucksack toward him, rummaging inside. Gator rose from a dead, snoring sleep in the far corner at the sound of the pack and padded over in hopes of a treat.

“She’s at my place.” Nik’s attempt to sound casual was pathetic.

Kell shot him a sharp look and tried to imagine Razorblade Robin in his friend’s downtown warehouse-turned-apartment.

“What?” Nik shrugged. “She relaxes me. I can’t get visions off her, and she says such outrageous stuff it makes me laugh. Plus, she goes out flying all night, so I have plenty of privacy. God only knows what she does out there.”

Kell arched a brow. “Don’t eagles hunt down rats and eat them, tail and all? I bet she has rat-ass breath.”

Nik laughed. “I’ll not tell her you said that. Why don’t you like her?”

Kell shook his head. “I like Robin fine. But a hundred-pound woman who can outdo me on the bench press threatens my manhood, and I’m man enough to admit it.” He finally found what he had been looking for in the pack. “Take a look at this.”

He set the carved wooden tree on the table between them, and Nik studied it without touching while Kell slipped Gator one of the liver treats he always kept in his pack’s front pocket.

“Beautiful work, but it doesn’t look like your style.” Nik nudged the tree with a finger to see another side of it.

“It isn’t. I lifted it off Mori Chastaine’s desk on my tour of the Co-Op offices yesterday, after she got hauled off for an overnight stay with the DHS guys. Thought it was worth you trying to get an image. It was the only thing I saw that looked personal.”

Nik nodded and pushed his drink aside, drying his palms on the thighs of his camo shorts. He reached out and gently lifted the tree, wrapping his fingers around it. Then both hands. He closed his eyes, and Kell watched in fascination as his friend communed with the tree, or the spirits, or whatever the hell caused the visions.

Opening his eyes, Nik held the tree up to the light. “Weird.”

“Weird how?” What was weirder than reading stories off inanimate objects?

“I get stray images with no meaning behind them. I’ve never had anything read that way before. Usually, it’s either an onslaught of history or nothing at all.”

Kell’s phone chirped, and he read the text. Mori Chastaine would be released at two. “Gotta head out in a few. Describe the images.”

“Forests. Big, empty vistas. Dead cattle.” Nik took a sip of scotch. “An old man in a cowboy hat.” He set the tree down and shoved it back toward Kell. “Don’t ask what it means. I don’t have a clue.”

Kell picked up the tree and studied it. The carving was old, and it had been cared for. The grooves were worn smooth, and the whole thing shone from handling. It should have a lot of tales to tell.

But it would have to wait. He stuck the tree in his pack so he could slip it back in the Co-Op offices before anyone realized it was gone, and stuffed the bottle of ibuprofen in with it.

“You’re gonna eat out the lining of your stomach with that shit.” Nik finished off his drink, gave Gator a quick ear rub, and ambled toward the door. “I’m heading over to the bomb site to handle some rubble — see if I can learn anything. Get something else belonging to Mori Chastaine and let me try again tonight.”

He paused in the doorway. “I’ll do it while Robin’s out eating rats.”

All law enforcement offices smelled alike, whether a metro police department, an FBI headquarters, or a county sheriff. Entering the first-floor lobby of the FBI field office in northwest Houston, Kell inhaled the same stale-coffee-gun-oil-testosterone aroma he’d grown up with while hanging out in the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department, where his dad had been a deputy. John Kennedy “Jack” Kellison Sr. always said he had stayed a deputy because he wasn’t mean enough to be elected sheriff. When he was a kid, Kell figured his dad was joking. Later, he’d seen what tough SOBs really looked like and figured his gentle, artistic dad was being honest.

After inquiring at the information desk and learning Mori would be out shortly, he leaned against a wall in the back of the waiting area and watched the scurry of activity in and out of one of the country’s largest federal field offices. Kell was glad he’d only spent time in Houston between tours. No danger of being recognized or suspected of being anything other than an unemployed veteran with a bad back.

He spotted her long before she saw him. Mori was a head taller than the young Hispanic officer who accompanied her out of the elevator. Kell didn’t need Nik’s expertise in reading body language to tell she was tense, depressed, and overtired. Her shoulders were rigid but hunched too far forward, and she kept stretching her neck from side to side.

Mori shoved the envelope with her confiscated belongings into her messenger bag and turned with a terse thank-you to the female officer. Her gaze scanned the lobby clockwise, gliding past Kell before suddenly shifting back. Her mouth formed a small, involuntary “O” before clamping shut.

That was his signal. Kell made his way toward her. “See, told you I could make myself useful. I thought you might need a ride home.”

Dark circles ringed her eyes and she clutched her purse handle like she was trying to choke it, but she managed a small smile. “Thanks. Your name is Kell, right? Taylor sent you?”

He didn’t want to tell her Taylor Stedman seemed to flourish in her absence and had given Kell the impression, without saying so, that he hoped she’d be arrested and detained indefinitely.

“Everyone’s worried about you.” Tactful, thy name is Jack Kellison — or, for now, Jack Kelly.

Mori laughed. “Sorry, but you aren’t that good a liar. Tay probably redecorated the office. He didn’t take my desk yet, did he?” She slapped a palm against her forehead. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. If you hang around the Co-Op very long, you’ll learn I have a bad habit of speaking my mind before I think about how much trouble it’s going to cause. I’m not as bitchy as that sounded.”

Kell thought she was giving Taylor too much credit. “You just sound like someone who didn’t get any sleep last night. Ready to go?”

“More than ready. Oh” — she rested a hand on his arm — “and thank you. I’d left a message for my dad and thought he’d be here to pick me up, but I guess he got delayed or something.”

So she had family in town. Kell’s gaze met hers as he opened the door and waited for her to go out ahead of him. Her eyes, which crinkled at the edges when she smiled, were almond shaped and a rich brown. Even without makeup, she was smooth skinned and kind of exotic looking, with high cheekbones and full lips.

He’d be damned if he could see anything in that face to indicate she was capable of mass murder. No edge of manic energy, no hard aura of meanness, no pent-up anger. Just fear, which could come from any number of things, including suspicion of terrorism and a night in an interrogation room.

The niggling suspicion he’d had about that anonymous tip grew stronger. While he was investigating Mori Chastaine, he also needed to figure out who might have wanted to frame the Co-Op or Mori herself. Maybe DHS was so desperate to pin it on someone they jumped at the first option.

Ranger training had taught him to trust his gut. He didn’t know this woman, but his gut said either she was no killer or had fooled him so completely that she was very, very lethal.

They walked through the parking lot as he directed her toward the Terminator, a boat of an old powder-blue Oldsmobile that had belonged to his parents for the past two decades. At the sound of her choked-back laugh, he felt the need to apologize.

“I haven’t been in the States much the last ten years.” He shrugged and couldn’t help but return her grin, which had transformed her from pretty into a wholesome kind of beautiful. Something he didn’t need to be thinking about a suspect.

“Therefore, you bought the ugliest thing you could find so you could look like an old lady while you were home?” She laughed, a hearty bray without a trace of self-consciousness. “Sorry, there I go again with my mouth. It’s, uh, lovely.” She cleared her throat. “Really.”

Kell stopped and looked at the Olds. It
was
hideous, with geriatric-blue paint rusted off in spots. Why had he kept it? Probably because it was like the furniture. If he bought his own sofa or drove his own car, it would be admitting he was off duty for good. “I’ll have you know it has great family significance.”

Mori’s chuckle as she slid into the passenger seat said she didn’t buy it for a second. He’d outed himself as a commitment-phobe and maybe a mama’s boy. Neither of which he could deny.

He pulled out of the parking lot and drove back toward Near Town. She’d wanted to check in at Co-Op headquarters, see how the organization’s financial supporters were reacting, and get her car. Meanwhile, he could ply her for information. “Your family lives here in town?”

“West of town, just across the Austin County line.” She looked out the window at the endless vista of traffic and concrete.

Which meant farming or ranching, most likely. “What do your folks do?”

She shifted to look at him, the sun glinting off her hair like a halo. Kell looked back at the inching traffic and gave himself a mental shake. Terrorists didn’t have halos.

“My turn. Do your folks live in Houston, and are they aware you’ve stolen their prized vehicle?”

Kell fought to keep the smile from inching its way onto his face. “They died five years ago in a car accident during a tropical storm — back in Jeanerette, Louisiana. You’ve probably never heard of it.”

“I’m sorry about your family. Brothers or sisters?” Mori settled back in her seat and leaned her head against the headrest with her eyes closed.

“No, only me. My turn.” Kell thought about how to reapproach the family thing. It seemed to ratchet up her tension level when he’d mentioned them before, pushing her to change the subject.

Mori spoke again before he decided on a tactic. “Did you know there used to be tons of Louisiana black bears around Jeanerette, or north of there?” She still had her eyes closed. “They’re endangered now. You ever see one? Oh, and my dad’s in finance, but my parents live on the ranch we inherited from my grandfather.”

Kell filtered and processed the bears, the finance, the ranch. He wanted to ask about the dad’s work — it might provide a motive or connection to the bombing since there was certainly high finance involved. But he was posing as an environmental nut, so he better play the role.

“I’ve seen a couple of bears down in the delta when I was growing up. Shame about them.”
Shit, that sounded lame.

“A
shame
?” Mori turned toward him, the beginnings of a frown scrunching her brows together. “They’re beautiful animals and running out of space to live. We saved the alligators. We should be able to save those bears. Those are the species the original teddy bear was based on, you know.”