Operation Proof of Life (11 page)

Chapter Eighteen

The entry to Brigit’s loft was on the side of the two-story building. She took the wooden stairs two at a time, her pulse so loud in her ears it drowned out the cries and yells behind her on the sidewalk.

Rational thought eluded her, but she knew without consulting logic or reason Ella was the girl in her burning loft.

She hit the entry door full force, jerking on the handle. Locked. Ignoring the terrible pain in her left shoulder, she fumbled in the pocket of her pants and found the key. Jamming in the lock, she turned the handle again.

It refused to move.

Frustration and fear drove tears into her eyes.
Get it together, Brigit. You can’t fall apart now
.

Footsteps pounded up the stairs to her side. She tried the key again, wiggling it back and forth so hard the key nearly broke in half. The lock wouldn’t budge.

Michael Stone appeared like a mirage at her side. He must have been the one following her in the Jeep. Without preamble, she turned to him and said, “Door’s jammed. Can you kick it in?”

“It’s steel,” he said, wrestling the key from her hand and trying the lock himself. He threw his shoulder into the door, but nothing changed. “Other way in?”

There were no windows accessible from the landing. “Fire stairs around back go up to the roof.” She took off back down the wooden stairs with the deputy director on her tail.

By the time they reached the roof, she was breathing like she’d sprinted a mile. He didn’t seem to be breathing at all. He tried the fire door exit, but it too was locked from the inside. Peter had done his homework.

“Goddammit,” Michael said, throwing his shoulder against the door.

Brigit located the vent stack that corresponded to her bathroom’s exhaust fan. “Here,” she said, grabbing it with her right hand and giving a yank. Her left hand and arm were useless. “Help me.”

Michael fell to his knees beside her and tugged on the stack until it broke free. “How’s this going to help?”

“I can fit through it.” A good operative always had an escape plan that didn’t use doors or windows. She hadn’t needed SIS training to know that, thanks to her father and the fact she’d once been locked in a bathroom with no escape.

She’d practiced escaping from this one several times from the inside out. Now she’d have to hope it worked in the opposite direction. “I’ll get Ella and hand her up to you if I can’t get her out the front door.”

She squeezed into the hole, realizing at the last instant her extra layers and the bandage on her shoulder were too fat for her to raise her arm over her head. She sat on the lip of the roof and pulled off the jacket she was wearing, then the shirt.
Ella, hang on,
she chanted in her head. The sound of sirens drew nearer.

“Hurry,” Michael said.

Down to her bra, she gripped the edge of the padded bandage and yanked as hard as she could. A small cry of pain escaped her lips as the gauze pulled free from her wound, taking flesh with it.

Blinking the tears out of her eyes, she dropped her body into the hole and fell to the bathroom floor.

Smoke was everywhere and she could hear the crackle of flames in the far room. “Ella!” she called and listened for a response. Nothing.

Ghost fingers of fear curled around her. Holy Mother Mary, she hated fire.

“Brigit.” Michael’s voice sounded far away. “Can you get to her?”

Slapping the fear away, she scrambled through the bedroom to the main living area where she’d seen the girl in the window. Smoke stung her nostrils and made her throat as dry as a desert. Fire burned in the path laid by some type of accelerant across the front door. No going out that way.

Ella was no longer in the window. Brigit called her name again and still heard no reply. There was already a significant lack of oxygen in the loft and her lungs strained to find the precious stuff in the midst of the smoke. She swung around in circles before running to the kitchen. The fire burned out of control there, and made her throw up her hands to protect her face and backtrack to the living room. The papers she had left scattered on the coffee table and futon were gone. The futon itself was smoking as if someone had left a cigarette burning inside its stuffing.

“Ella, my name is Brigit,” she called. She sucked in smoke and coughed. When the fit passed, she called out again. “Don’t be scared. I’m here to help you. Call my name so I can find you.”

Through the din of the sizzling curtains and cracking wood, she thought she heard something coming from the bedroom. Not a voice, but a cough, like hers. Retracing her steps, she stopped in the doorway. “Ella, I know you’re in here. Tell me where you are.”

When she didn’t hear anything, she threw open the closet doors, pushing aside the hanging wardrobe of blacks and other neutrals and kicking at the shoes lining the floor. Where was that girl?

Michael’s voice roared from the bathroom. “Ella!”

The smoke had now invaded the bedroom to the point Brigit could barely see. She fell to her hands and knees, another coughing attack assailing her. For a second, her vision blurred and her stomach spasmed. Pushing herself forward, she crawled on the floor, her shoulder a mass of pain. She would have missed the tiny swatch of the red Wonder Woman cape peeking out from under the bed skirt if she hadn’t lain her head down on the floor, searching for a breath of oxygen. “Ella?”

When she flipped the bed skirt up, a rush of relief flooded her limbs at the sight of the little girl gripping tight to a Tinker Bell doll. Her eyes were red from crying and when she saw Brigit, she started coughing. “Wendy?” she choked out.

Forcing her left arm to help her right, Brigit pulled the crying girl from under the bed, lifted her and carried her to the bathroom.

She slammed the door shut and gave Ella a quick once-over. Dirt smudged her cheeks and hands but otherwise she seemed unhurt. “I’ve got her,” she yelled up to Michael. “She’s okay.”

His reply boomed down the vent. “Thank God.”

“Step up on the toilet lid here,” Brigit directed Ella. With her good hand, she guided her. “Now over to the vanity.” Again she nudged Ella into position as she lined herself under the hole in the ceiling.

“Are you ready?” she called up to Michael.

His face was in the opening but he seemed miles away. She could tell he was lying down on his stomach as his hands reached down the exhaust fan’s metal tunnel. “Go!”

“Uncle Michael?” Ella said, looking up.

“Listen to Brigit and do what she says,” he told her.

Brigit addressed the child. “I want you to step over onto my shoulders, okay? Take my hand and place one foot here and the other here.” She tapped each shoulder to demonstrate. “Do you think you can do that?”

The girl nodded and reached for Brigit’s hand.

Balancing Ella was difficult, not because she weighed much, but because Brigit’s left arm hung useless. She couldn’t raise her hand to steady Ella’s legs. She almost lost her once, but the girl dropped her Tinker Bell doll and grabbed her uncle’s hand.

A moment later, Ella rose into the air and Brigit crumbled to the floor, exhausted.

“Come on.” Michael’s voice drifted down to her. In the outside room, Brigit heard glass break and wood pop from the heat. “Dr. Kent, let’s go. You’re out of time.”

But she couldn’t push herself off the floor. The opening in the ceiling was too far away.
He’s right. I
am
out of time
.

The Tinker Bell doll lay beside her and Brigit lifted her gaze from the doll’s blonde ponytail to the sink where a light burned through the smoke.
A nightlight
?
Where did that come from
?
I don’t own a…

An image of Peter and the nightlight in the locked bathroom flashed in her brain. Then an image of Moira. They made her sick to her stomach. How could they have done this to Ella? How could they be so cruel, so selfish? It was one thing to try and kill Cormac O’Bern, who’d made his bed long years ago with the company he’d kept and then betrayed, but an innocent six-year-old girl?

Bile pushed into Brigit’s throat and she reached for the Tinker Bell doll. What a fool she’d been to try and stop Peter, to try and rescue Tory, to try and protect her father, to sell her soul to countless power mongers in an attempt to redeem herself for her mother’s sake.

Because in the end, loving her family was destroying her.

“Brigit?” Michael’s voice shot down the metal hole, sending a fresh wave of adrenaline through her.

“Is Ella okay?” she yelled up to him.

“Yes, come on.”

Accepting the inner self-loathing boiling in her veins, she pushed herself into a sitting position with her right hand. The fresh wave of pain on her left side made the room spin, but she hung on until it passed.

Rising to her feet, she reached deep for her survivor instincts. She leaned on the vanity and willed the room to steady itself. The nightlight caught her attention again, glowing in the smoky haze.
Goddamn, son of a bitch
.

She’d had enough, by God. She was tired of trying to save the lost boy. Jerking it out of the socket, she smashed it against the marble countertop.

As she climbed onto the counter and raised her good arm up toward Michael’s waiting hands, she silently asked for her mother’s forgiveness.

Peter better pray I don’t find him
, she thought, as Michael gripped her by the wrist and pulled her heavenward,
because when I do, I’m putting Batman on his ass.

Third District
D.C.
police station

Two hours later

Michael viewed Brigit sitting at the table in the interrogation room from behind a two-way mirror. She looked like hell, her head down on the table and her eyes closed. While her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, pieces singed by the fire had escaped. She’d tried to wipe the soot from her face, but faint traces still remained. Her clothes were covered in the black stuff as well.

But she’d saved Ella, and Michael found her beautiful. Too bad she was the police’s number one suspect in the kidnapping.

Ella was spending the night at the local children’s hospital under the watchful eyes of the entire nation as well as her parents. She’d suffered smoke inhalation and appeared dehydrated, but a complete physical showed she was otherwise fine.

Brigit had been treated at the scene for smoke inhalation as well, but refused another trip to the hospital. She was lucky she hadn’t suffocated or burned to death.

Flynn blew into the room, looking as worn out as Michael felt. “Shouldn’t you be with your niece?”

“Ella’s doing fine. Ruth called and said she ate two breakfasts this morning already and the nurses are sneaking in Jell-O and milkshakes every time she turns her back.”

Flynn jutted his chin at Brigit in the adjoining room. “She makes a clean suspect.”

“She was at the park with us all night. Besides, what’s her angle? Why kidnap Ella and blame this Donovan character? She setting him up?”

“She knew you’d have those parks under surveillance. Someone would see her there. Makes a good alibi. I would have done the same thing.”

Michael crossed his arms and studied Flynn. “I can’t figure out if you’d be a better criminal or a better cop.”

“Could go either way. That’s why I work for you.”

Michael turned back to the two-way. What was the bigger picture? “She helps Donovan kidnap Ella and then fabricates a story about O’Bern and a bomb so she can walk out to the lectern and get shot?”

“Maybe the original story she told you was right. Donovan wanted to take out O’Bern. She got cold feet, turned traitor, and he shot her for blowing his chance.”

A detective entered, introduced himself and shook their hands. He was clearly uncomfortable with their presence, as well as the FBI milling around his station waiting for jurisdiction calls to be made to take the case away from him. “You guys sticking around for the interrogation?”

“Think you can get her to confess?” Michael asked.

The detective nodded. “After what you and the FBI have told me, she clearly had the means and opportunity to do this. Not clear on her motivation, but that’s not a sticking point. Just got word from the hospital. Kid ID’d her. If I can keep her from lawyering up right away, I might get her to turn on the other guy.”

The urge to defend Brigit was too strong to ignore. “My niece has been through a trauma and she’s only six. Her memory may be playing tricks with her.”

The detective frowned as if he wondered why Michael was throwing water on the fire he was building to burn Brigit Kent. “The little girl told her momma the woman who saved her from the fire is the same woman who kept her locked in the bathroom and gave her the Tinker Bell doll. Called herself Wendy.”

Michael struggled to find a solution to Ella’s story, but after too many nights of no sleep, his brain was a quagmire of crap. For the first time since his father had died, he couldn’t make sense of anything.

The detective nodded at a table of high-tech equipment behind them. “Everything’s being recorded for posterity. Gotta tell you, though, it’s an open and shut case with the kid’s ID.”

He left the room and entered the interrogation room, pulling out a chair and sitting down at the table. When Brigit didn’t respond, the detective made a fist and started banging on the scarred wooden top.

Chapter Nineteen

Brigit woke to the sound of a railroad spike slamming next to her temple. She cracked her eyes open and realized it was a fist, knuckles knocking on the table. What a wakeup call.

With effort, she lifted her head and eyed the detective sitting across from her. His wool jacket smelled like mothballs and he sucked on his cheeks, narrowing them in a Dirty Harry impression as he glared at her. He had the Clint Eastwood balding-head thing going for him, but where Clint could nail Dirty Harry with nothing more than the gleam in his eyes, Detective Mothballs just looked like a dweeb in tweed, as Truman was fond of saying. She wished she were back in the caterpillar’s stomach.

And wasn’t that a sad state to be in.

He pushed a button on a digital voice recorder on the table. “State your name for the record, Sleeping Beauty.”

It was obvious she was a person of interest in the kidnapping. If she’d been a civilian, she would have asked for an attorney before even stating her name. Technically, she wasn’t a civilian, and because of what she was and who she worked for, asking for a lawyer wasn’t prudent. She was on her own, and while she was innocent, she had to be careful how she played the game.

Miranda rights had not been read. Yet. Brigit had the feeling it was only a matter of time.

Across from the voice recorder, her BlackBerry played three notes and the detective eyed it with suspicion. “Go ahead,” he said. “Answer it.”

Her throat muscles clenched as she tried to speak, her esophagus raw. She swallowed, cleared her throat, and tried again. “It’s an email.” Hopefully from Truman telling her the cavalry was on its way. “It can wait.”

“You better read it now. You won’t have your phone much longer.”

Yep. I’ve moved from a person of interest to a card-carrying suspect
.

She picked up the phone, typed a three-key combo and then a password to unlock it. She hit the mailbox and brought up her email. There was one message from Truman, using the code name for their employer, JOE. No subject. One sentence.
Lie back and think of England.

Truman wouldn’t be bringing the cavalry. She was done. Axed. Terminated.
Lie back and think of England
was the Secret Intelligence Service term for
you’ve been burned
.

Cold sweat broke out over her body. Being burned from SIS was like being excommunicated from the Catholic Church. In their eyes, she simply ceased to exist. Except with the intelligence agency, they didn’t just close their eyes and pretend you were invisible. If they were really pissed at your incompetence, they wiped out your savings, dropped your credit score in the toilet, sent you a computer virus. In other words, lie back and think of England while you’re being screwed.

“You don’t look so good.” The detective smiled. “Bad news? Your boyfriend leaving you holding the bag?”

Brigit returned to the home screen and set down the phone. It wouldn’t ring any more, wouldn’t receive any more emails, text messages or calls. Just in case it might go
Mission
: Impossible
on her and explode, she slid it toward the detective’s side of the table.

Like a predator smelling first blood, he sucked in his cheeks and picked up the phone, turning it over and fiddling with the buttons. Brigit wasn’t worried he’d find anything. The phone was encrypted and encoded with enough security it would take an accomplished hacker to figure it out. Even if one did, there was nothing criminal on it.

The detective frowned as if perplexed and set the phone back on the table. Then he began to interrogate her.

He pulled a photo from a file. Peter, bald and sporting a goatee, wearing a tie under a wool sweater. “Eleanor Pennington claims this is the man who kidnapped her. What’s his name?”

Brigit pressed her lips together. Everyone from Michael to Detective Mothballs knew Peter’s name. She was too blown out to play Name That Terrorist.

Between the pain in her arm, the lack of sleep, her recent brush with smoke and fire, and the news she’d been burned, her mood mimicked a black-sucking-hole. Her brain and her body felt like she’d spent time in a blender. Topping it with the fact she’d accepted her brother did indeed intend to do her in, and she was ready to take the detective’s tie and choke him with it.

And then go hunt down Peter.

The question was, could she still save Tory?

Probably not.

A wave of crushing defeat threatened to knock her to the ground. She gripped her hands in her lap and forced her body to stay upright.

After a long minute, the detective again demanded an answer. She continued her clam routine.

“Eleanor Pennington also stated you helped him keep her captive in your bathroom.”

Brigit’s stomach dropped. Why would Ella say that? She had never met the girl until this morning when she’d battled the fire to rescue her.

“Why did you spend the night at Grant Avenue Park?”

She took a deep breath and called on her training to keep her body frozen in place and appear calm. Refusing to answer questions didn’t seem rational, but then she wasn’t rational at the moment. If she answered anything, started talking at all, she might slip up and give the detective something he could use against her. Until she cleared her head, she needed to buy time.

He was unrelenting. “Anybody see you there?”

Michael and Conrad had seen her. Then they’d followed her home. Michael’s bodyguard had to have been somewhere in the vicinity too. All because she’d been a suspect in the kidnapping ever since she’d opened her big mouth.

She glanced at the mirrored glass, sure a certain laser beam was firing back at her, and debated mentioning her tail. While she wanted to get the hell out of the police station, she wasn’t going to spill her guts. If Michael and Conrad wanted to step forward as witnesses, they would have already. Why neither had was a mystery, but she had no plan to stick her neck out and accuse them. They could deny it and make her look even more suspect.

While the police detective continued drilling her with questions, it occurred to her that as long as she was in the suspect Twilight Zone, she might as well take a risk. Knowing SIS could toss her to the wolves at any time, she’d always hedged her bets. The president of the United States was one of them, and because of that, there was one person who might still help her. She glanced at the mirror again.

The cop finally lost his patience. “Fine. You don’t want to talk and straighten things out? I’m placing you under arrest. Twenty-four hours in the hole downstairs and you’ll be begging me to talk. You have the right to remain silent.”

She didn’t want to remain silent anymore. She had no one left to protect. No loyalty to any intelligence service. “Wait.”

He raised an eyebrow and sucked in his cheeks. A gleam appeared in his eyes. He thought he’d broken her, and she was ready to spill her guts.

It takes more than a dweeb in tweed to break Brigit Kent
. “I want to talk to Michael Stone, Deputy Director of the CIA.”

The gleam of satisfaction disappeared. Sitting back in his chair, the detective sputtered. “You want what?”

As if she’d called him into being, Michael opened the interrogation room’s door and walked in, stopping a few feet from the table. Still fiercely handsome, he looked fresh and clean, like he’d just stepped out of the shower. He smelled like it too. A light scent of aftershave and shampoo drifted to her nose. The only hint that he hadn’t enjoyed a normal night’s rest was the fatigue in his eyes.

His expression was torn, as if it pained him to see her this way. More likely, he hated her for bringing him into her interrogation. His gaze stayed on her as he spoke to the detective. “I’ll take it from here.”

A sense of security washed through her, unbidden and inexplicable. The cop started to balk, but one hard-assed look from Michael sent him on his way, grumbling under his breath.

As soon as the door shut behind him, Brigit let her guard down, melting under Michael’s gaze. “How’s Ella?”

His brow creased, showing surprise at her question. “Ella’s fine. You, however, are not.” He turned the hard-assed look on her. “What do want to tell me?”

“Not here.” She struggled to her feet, dizziness rushing over her, and leaned on the table for support. “No cameras, no tape recorders. I’ll tell you everything you want to know, but it has to be just you and me.”

He wanted the truth and she had it. His expression told her he didn’t like anyone grabbing him by the balls and forcing him to do what they wanted. Still, he wasn’t about to let this opportunity pass him by. “Take the phone,” was all he said before ushering her to the door.

A man’s word wasn’t what it used to be. Michael had to sign off on multiple forms and swear up and down to the police and the Federal agents waiting in line that Brigit would remain in custody with him in order to get her out of the station. He had no jurisdiction in her case and everybody knew it. He was, however, tied to the case and respected by most of the men and women wanting a piece of her.

As she sat in a side chair watching him perform gymnastics and tap dance around legalities, her face remained a blank slate. She’d retreated so far into herself, he wondered if he’d be able to get anything out of her.

In the Marines, he’d seen the same look on men who had lost touch with reality. Depressed, suicidal, up against a wall. CIA recruits often got the same look on their faces after Flynn had put them through The Farm. Win or lose, they had nothing left to give.

When the call from FBI Director Agouti came through, Michael took it standing up. “Give me twenty-four hours,” Michael said to his old friend and even older enemy.

Out of the corner of his eye, Michael saw Brigit’s assistant, Truman, slide into a seat next to her. Her face changed in an instant, lighting up and then shutting down again as Truman spoke to her.

Michael couldn’t make out what Truman was saying because Agouti was speaking in his ear. “I don’t understand what you’re up to, but I’ve learned not to ask questions where you’re concerned, Stone. It’s four o’clock now. I’ll give you to eight.” He sighed. “Don’t make me regret this.”

Agouti meant eight p.m. Michael conveniently heard eight a.m. “You won’t, Gute.”

He handed the phone over to the special agent in charge so Agouti’s instructions could be conveyed to the rest of the group. As he did so, he heard Truman saying, “…destroyed. The smoke and water damaged everything the fire left.”

Brigit tipped her head back and closed her eyes. “You couldn’t save anything?”

“I snagged the files I could find and your laptop for security reasons, but it was all trashed.” He pulled something from his pocket and handed it to her. “This was my mom’s. Figured you could use a little luck.”

In order to continue eavesdropping, Michael put his head down, grabbed a pen and shifted through the papers he’d already signed as if he were still working on getting Brigit released. With his back slightly turned, he appeared busy, yet could still hear and see them.

“You’re all over the news,” Truman said softly. “That’s why they burned you.”

The fine hairs on Michael’s neck rose.
Burned
? Was Truman referring to the fire in her apartment or something else? In the intelligence world, a burn notice was termination. Worse than termination. It was the equivalent to being stripped naked, beaten to a pulp and left for dead.

Michael had the impression Brigit nodded. “You shouldn’t be here. If you’re seen with me…”

“I can take care of myself. Look”—he lowered his voice another notch—“the only way out of this is for you to tell your dirty little secret. You know it, and they know it. That’s why they burned you. You walk out of here with him—” There was a brief pause and Michael knew Truman was eyeing him. He picked up a paper and pretended to read. “You’re risking your life.”

“What’s left of it anyway.” Brigit sounded like she was smiling. “Truman, thank you for the rabbit’s foot. It means a lot to me.”

Michael saw them embrace in his peripheral vision. He cleared his throat and made a show of facing them, glad to break up the Hallmark moment. “Ready?” he said to Brigit.

She nodded once and rose, Truman taking her by the hand and helping her. He squeezed her hand and Michael fought the urge to kick him to the door. “Let’s go.”

Brigit cocked her chin at Truman, signaling him to leave. The kid started to say something to Michael, thought better of it, and fled.

“There’s a mass of reporters outside who’d love to put you on the evening news,” he said. “Keep your head down and don’t say a word or I’ll let them eat you. Got it?”

Brigit scanned the room and that’s when Michael noticed the glares of cops and federal agents locked on them. She spoke glumly and glanced down at the rabbit’s foot in her hand. “Wolves or lions, can’t decide which I’d rather be thrown to.”

When she looked back up at him, her face was again a blank slate. “Got it.”

Outside, Brad had the Navigator ready to go, and Flynn was on the steps ready to run interference with the reporters. Michael murmured to Brad to ride up front so he could be alone with Brigit in the back. Then he motioned for Brad to help him sandwich Brigit between them as Flynn made a path from the steps to the car.

Once inside the car, Brigit settled into the seat across from Michael like she’d done earlier that day. Her back stiff, she buckled herself in and stared at the reporters and cameras crowded around the car. When they finally broke free of the congestion, the driver buzzed the backseat intercom. “Where to, sir?”

“Home,” Michael replied before thinking about it.

Brigit glanced at him, lifting one of her brows. He shrugged a shoulder as if it were a logical decision. “It’s the only place I guarantee is free of listening devices and cameras.”

She accepted the answer and went back to looking out the window, spine still stiff as a rod. He had to admire her stamina. She was obviously bone tired and in pain. It had been a helluva day for everyone.

Ten miles down the interstate, the rod in her back broke and she leaned her head against the door. Before another mile passed, she was asleep, her head tilted at an uncomfortable angle. Michael watched her features soften and a dark spot on her running clothes caught his eye. Blood was seeping through her jacket on the injured shoulder. She’d pulled a couple of her stitches at the fire rescuing Ella and had barely received the oxygen she needed before the cops and FBI had hauled her off to the station.