Special Forces Savior (15 page)

Belisario was here in Colorado because he wanted to tie up loose ends.

That loose end was Molly.

Chapter Twenty-Three

All Molly wanted to do was go home, take a shower, sleep and see Derek. Not necessarily in that order.

After the fourth hour of sitting in that interrogation room, with nobody having come in to see her, Molly had been pretty sure she’d made a mistake by turning herself in. How long could they keep her there? Indefinitely? Molly wasn’t sure exactly what the rules were when it came to a case that was tied to a terrorist attack. She was pretty sure they were different from a regular case. Maybe she’d die of starvation or old age or boredom right in the room.

She had thought she would be questioned, but apart from the first officers who had brought her in, no one had asked her anything. Which was a little disappointing since she had been looking forward to rebutting whatever evidence had been found against her. Molly worked with evidence all day every day. If anyone could prove evidence was false, it was she.

But they never brought it.

After what seemed like a million hours, there had been a brief knock on the door before Brandon Han stuck his head in.

“Hi, Molly. Steve Drackett asked me to put on my lawyer suit and come get you out. Are you doing okay?”

Molly could’ve kissed his beautiful Asian face, but he probably wouldn’t have appreciated it. He was a pretty straight-laced guy, not to mention one of the most brilliant around Omega.

“Yes, I’m fine. Just tired and bored.”

“I understand.” His nod was sympathetic. “It shouldn’t be too much longer. I’m filing the paperwork for your release and since no one can find an actual arrest warrant, I’m betting they’ll be pretty quick to let you go.”

“Great. I’m ready.”

“Well, nothing is ever quick when it comes to paperwork at a police station, but I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

That ended up being another two hours.

But now Molly was out. And Brandon told her that Senator Edmundson had been arrested. So it sounded as if everything had worked out the way it should.

She wondered if Derek was still mad at her. Hopefully she could make him understand why she’d had to do it.

Brandon gave her a ride home, stopping by a fast-food place on the way.

“Do you want to go by Omega or just straight home?” he asked her.

“Home, I guess. Derek is going to blow all of this out of proportion. I don’t think I want to deal with him yet.”

Brandon raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, you know Waterman. Legendary for blowing everything out of proportion.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. But Brandon called it in to Steve Drackett as they drove to Molly’s condo.

Brandon parked. “I’m just going to come in and check out your place real quick, if that’s okay.”

Molly was relieved. After the week she’d had, a friendly presence inside her home was welcome.

Molly stood against the inside of the front door while Brandon inspected the rest of the house.

“Looks clear,” he told her, smiling, when he returned. “Do you want me to stay with you? Until Derek, or somebody else, if you really don’t want to deal with him, can get here?”

Molly didn’t want to be a coward. She was going to have to be alone in her home sometime. It might as well be now. “No, with Edmundson already arrested, I think I’m safe. But thanks for the offer.”

“No problem.” Brandon reached to open the door. “But don’t stay here alone if you get scared. Call Derek, or me, or anyone. Post-traumatic stress is a real—”

Brandon’s words were cut off as the door burst open. The butt of a gun cracked him in the head before he could do anything and Brandon fell to the floor unconscious.

Pablo Belisario strode into the room, followed by two of his goons. One shut the door while the other grabbed Molly.

Molly was so flooded by terror, remembering what had happened the last time she’d been in Belisario’s presence, she couldn’t even fight. Not that she could do much damage to the much bigger man holding her.

They backed her away from the door toward her kitchen. Brandon was lying on the floor unmoving.

“What do you want me to do with him, boss?” the man asked Belisario. “Kill him?”

“Not just yet, but tie him up,” Belisario told him, then turned to Molly. “It might end up that the agent can be of some use to us alive. We can always kill him later.”

Belisario walked over to Molly and grabbed her chin. She tried to pull away, but his fingers sank painfully into her jaw. The man holding her arm gripped her tighter, also.

“Of course, keeping someone alive can occasionally come back to haunt you,” Belisario continued, giving her face a brutal shake. “For example, I was supposed to kill you, but I didn’t. And here you are causing all sorts of trouble.”

It was clear that Belisario did not plan to make the mistake of keeping her alive twice. Through the haze of fear, Molly tried to figure out why he hadn’t already done it. Why he’d come here himself. But as long as she was still alive, she was going to at least try to make the man see reason.

“Mr. Belisario.” Molly’s words came out funny because of how he held her face. “We found evidence, but nothing had anything to do with you. It was all concerning Senator Edmundson. Evidently, he was working with the White Revolution Party in the Chicago bombing a couple weeks ago.”

Belisario released her chin and tilted his head at the man holding her arm. He threw Molly down into one of the chairs at her kitchen table.

“White Revolution Party, the white supremacy group? What a shame the senator got caught up with people like them.” He tsked and shook his head. “But sometimes you have to do business with people you find distasteful.”

There was obviously something Molly didn’t understand here, a vital piece of information she was missing. And it all came down to what could be important enough that Pablo Belisario would be here, in Colorado, himself. That would happen only under the most dire of circumstances, she was sure.

And then the obvious truth hit her. “You’re part of the Chicago bombing, too.”

“So clever.” He touched her on the cheek and Molly cringed away. “I guess I should expect that from a scientist.”

“There’s something on the data drive that incriminates you also.”

“The Chicago bombing was
my
plan. Edmundson already had ties to the White Revolution Party long before that happened. But he was key to me being able to do business with them. They are white supremacists after all, and I am Latino. Ignorance of that magnitude is so difficult to swallow.”

“But why would you want to perpetrate a terrorist attack on Chicago? On anywhere in the United States? What would you stand to gain?”

“Interestingly, the White Revolution Party, Edmundson and I were all united on that one point—we all wanted the US Government focused on terrorists and international threats. Something like this happens and everyone in the government gets thrown into a tizzy. Money is flung everywhere.”

Belisario’s smile made Molly’s skin crawl. “Edmundson wanted the government to propel money toward whatever he was trying to get funded. I don’t know exactly what it was, and I don’t care. He called himself a ‘patriot who was willing to slaughter a few to protect the many.’”

He leaned down close to her. “The White Revolution Party and I realized that every time the national focus is on solving some big attack, or finding some elusive Middle Eastern terrorist group, less focus is on us and our activities. I’ve been able to move billions in product since the bombing, easier than ever before.

“The three of us working together made a perfect triangle. The White Revolution Party planned and created the bombs, since they had the means and knowledge, but they couldn’t actually plant them because of how they are watched by federal agents all the time. I had no knowledge of how to make bombs or where to put them, but was not being watched for this sort of activity, so my men could plant the explosives.”

His face, only inches from hers, was almost giddy with his own self-importance.

“And Edmundson handled misdirecting the investigation away from you or the WRP,” Molly finished for him.

“Exactly.” He stood straight again.

“It was a good plan.” Molly had to admit it. She also had to admit to herself that there was no way she was leaving this house alive. Not with all the knowledge she now had about Belisario.

Molly had no idea how to get herself out of this. As long as Belisario kept monologuing, she was relatively safe, but that couldn’t go on forever.

“But something went wrong, didn’t it?”

Belisario’s lips tightened into a thin line. “No honor among thieves. That’s the saying, is it not? I knew I could not trust either party I found myself partnered with, but especially Edmundson. It would be just like him to try to make himself the hero by proving the White Revolution Party and I worked together on the bombing. Thus the drive with all the pictures of the WRP leadership and Edmundson together.”

Out of the corner of her eye Molly saw Brandon shift slightly on the floor, then still himself. Maybe he was awake.

“Ends up my instincts were correct. Edmundson was already giving signs of double-crossing me, threatening to lead law enforcement my way. So I decided I best show Edmundson the damning evidence I had on him, although I didn’t necessarily plan to use it.”

“The pictures,” Molly whispered. She tried to shift farther away on her chair, but a hand instantly clamped down on her shoulder.

“Yes. But then the WRP found out we were meeting and got nervous and sent their own representatives. And that’s when your Omega agents caught the trail. The drive wasn’t destroyed in the fire and the WRP man was killed.

“Edmundson hired someone to blow up the lab when we learned the drive wasn’t destroyed. And asked me to question you to make sure all the data had been eliminated.”

Belisario shook his head as if in disbelief. “Despite all our attempts otherwise, that drive is still in the hands of law enforcement. Unfortunately, with Edmundson out of the picture I no longer have a foothold in law enforcement. But I don’t need it, because I have you.”

“M-me?” Molly stuttered. Although it sounded like a good thing, it was bad. Really bad.

“There are, unfortunately, a couple of photos on the drive that are incriminating for me. One of my men that I had placed within the WRP was in one of the photos. You, and the men who rescued you from my estate, are the only ones who can make the link between him and me.”

He smiled almost sweetly at her.

“I need you to call your friends and tell them to come here. Right now.”

“But...” Molly did not want to call Derek and invite him to his death. “There were, like, twenty people who rescued me.”

The blow from Belisario knocked her off her chair. The world spun as the guy behind her picked her up and plopped her back in the chair.

“That was for the lies, the made-up names you gave me before,” Belisario said. He turned and pointed at Brandon Han. “Bring him over here.”

They dragged the agent over to the table. Blood was oozing from the wound on his head just behind his ear.

Belisario pulled out a gun elongated by its silencer and pointed it at Brandon’s head.

“We know there were two men who broke in to the estate that night. You will contact them right now, or I will kill this man.”

Brandon’s brown eyes looked at her, but he didn’t say a word.

“One.”

Could she trade Brandon’s life for Derek’s?

“Two.”

“Okay, stop!” Molly yelled. “I will call him. But I don’t have a phone.”

“See, he did come to some use, didn’t he?” As if they were having a genteel conversation about dinner plans, Belisario handed her his phone. “By all means, use mine.”

She dialed Derek’s burner phone number—thank God he had forced her to memorize the new number—and listened as it rang. She thought he wasn’t going to pick it up, which would at least take this impossible situation out of her hands.

“Waterman.”

“Derek, it’s Molly.”

“Molly, are you okay? Where—”

Belisario snatched the phone out of Molly’s hand. “Derek Waterman is it?”

“Belisario.” Molly could hear Derek’s voice even though she didn’t have a phone up to her ear.

“Oh, good, you know who I am. I will make this very easy for you, Mr. Waterman. I have the lovely Ms. Humphries right here with me at her house. Hold just one moment, please.” He put the phone on her table and extended his hand out to Molly. She reluctantly placed her hand in his. When he brought it up to his lips, she barely restrained her cringe.

But then he turned her hand around in his and calmly yanked sideways while twisting on her pinky.

Molly felt the bone break.

White dots flashed in front of her eyes and she let out a scream at the unexpected searing pain. Only the thug behind her with his grasp on her shirt kept her upright in the chair at all.

She saw Brandon stand up and lunge across the table, even with his hands tied, before he was roughly thrown back down by the other man and slugged in the face for his efforts.

Molly tried to get her breathing under control, but could only seem to sob as she cradled her wounded hand to her chest. Belisario brought the phone back up to his ear.

“Now, now,” he laughed. “Is that the language becoming of a federal agent? Hold just a moment and let me put you on Speaker so you and Ms. Humphries can hear each other more easily.”

Molly knew Belisario wanted her in hysterics to motivate Derek to do what he asked. But even knowing it, she couldn’t seem to stop sobbing.

“Molly? Molly, baby, hang in there,” Derek said. “I’m coming, okay?”

“That was her pinky, Mr. Waterman,” Belisario told him. “I will break another of her bones every ten minutes until you and the other man who was with you at my estate arrive. Alone.”

“I’ve got to find Liam, and I’m across town, you bastard. There’s no way I can get there in less than thirty minutes.”

“Unfortunately, then, it seems like Ms. Humphries will have three more broken bones by that time.”

Belisario smiled at Molly and disconnected the call.