The Observer (Derek Cole Suspense Thriller Book 3) (18 page)

Derek noticed that Marissa had drawn her gun and was pointing it at his back when he reached the bedroom and had bent down in front of the dresser. "I put it under here. I promise, I'm not going to come back up holding a gun."

"It really doesn't matter at this point what you pull out from under that dresser." Marissa held the gun in front of her, steadied her aim with both hands.

"What the hell are you doing?" Derek said.

"Ending a threat."

The sound was much sharper and higher than what he expected. Three consecutive blasts, followed by the sound of Marissa's body hitting the floor.

He heard the deadbolt slip into position as he was walking down the hallway towards the hotel lobby. He stopped for a brief moment, thinking it was strange for Marissa to be locking the door when she knew he would only be gone for a few minutes. He thought about going back to the room to make sure that Derek Cole hadn't subdued Marissa somehow and was securing the room as he planned his escape. Mark chuckled to himself at that thought, knowing that while Marissa Rica was a petite woman, he'd heard stories about her abilities when it came to self-defense and hand-to-hand combat.

But by the time he got to his car, Mark Henderson's thoughts were crashing into and onto each other, all demanding equal consideration and each stating their cases for being chosen over the others. So much didn't make sense, not the least of which being Marissa Rica's sudden involvement with the case. Though, considering her position within the FBI, Marissa certainly had every right to demand that she be called the second either Cortez or Cole were located, her insistence seemed too aggressive. Too suspicious.

As soon as he unlocked the driver's side door, he noticed something that was absent.

"She came alone?"
he thought.
 

Mark had met Marissa Rica twice before. Once, when receiving a commendation for his exemplary service during a case involving an international child-smuggling network, and the second time when Marissa visited the NYC area Bureau office. Both times, Marissa was never more than ten feet away from FBI agents commissioned as her security force. He thought back to other times when he crossed paths with the higher-ups in the Bureau and recalled that everyone, from the Director level on up had agents assigned for their protection. When Marissa arrived at the Tarrytown office yesterday evening, four agents were close behind and never out of sight.

Mark had heard that once an FBI agent reaches a certain level in the agency, the intel they are privy to, puts them in a "high risk" situation. Not only were there spies and double agents in the US that would be paid handsomely if they could somehow get access to the information that an FBI agent knows, but there were many nations, each with their own agencies and agents, that were always on the lookout for an opportunity to secure and detain an unguarded intel source.

At Marissa's level, a security force of at least two tenured and highly specialized agents by her side 24/7 was practically guaranteed. Yet Marissa Rica arrived at the hotel with no security force. Mark scanned the area again, his trained eye scouring each car, looking for
 
some indication that Marissa's security team was present.

"Why would she come out here alone?
" he questioned as he turned and started walking away from his car and back towards the lobby entrance of the hotel. Then, it hit him. The memory came crashing back to him in a thunderous realization.

"The warehouse. Cortez told me something about the warehouse not being what people believed it to be. He told me that he was beginning to think that something big was being covered up. Maybe by our bureau. Sonofabitch!"

He hurried through the lobby and out the back door leading to a courtyard area, relieved that the front desk was vacant. Hugging the outside wall, he moved quickly and silently past four sets of windows until he reached the first window of the hotel room where Marissa and Derek were supposedly "chatting."
 
He was surprised and thankful to find the first bedroom window was slid all the way open.

He saw Derek Cole, flat on the ground in the first bedroom, looking up at Marissa Rica who was holding her gun with both hands, steadying her aim at the back of Derek's head. Into the barrel of her gun, Marissa had screwed in a sound muffling silencer.

Derek was obviously not posing a threat to Marissa and appeared to be looking for something beneath the dresser in his room. Marissa, however, was certainly positioned as a direct threat to Derek. Without hesitation, Mark pulled out his Glock 23, equipped with an agency-issued Silencero Osprey 40 silencer, aimed the gun at Marissa's head. He knew that a .40 caliber gun, suppressed or not, would report a disturbing and possible disruptive sound . It was early in the AM, and while Mark had reserved the rooms on both sides of the one Derek and Marissa were now occupying, the sound might startle guests throughout the entire hotel.

He hesitated for a moment, desperately trying to think about something he had missed, not seen or that Marissa had told him to explain why she arrived at the hotel alone. It was the look in her eyes, and the way Derek seemed to be completely shocked and terrified when he looked up and saw Marissa standing above him, gun in hand with the obvious intention of shooting him racing through his defenseless body.

Mark fired off three rounds through the window and into the body of Marissa Rica.

***I***

Derek could see three distinct bullet wounds, all within ten inches of each other, on Marissa's body when she collapsed to the floor in front of him. The fall had forced out her final breath from her lungs but wasn't strong enough to drop her eyelids. Derek hated seeing dead people's eyes. The rapidly expanding glazing film covering them had stopped sending images of this world to their owner's brain.

He scrambled to his feet, more concerned about being only inches away from Marissa's dead and fully opened eyes than what had caused the three bullet wounds and the glazing of her eyes to occur.

"Cole. Out through the window. Now"

Derek turned slowly towards where he believed the voice calling him was coming from.

"Now Cole. Damn it, move your ass!"

When he recognized his caller as Mark Henderson, Derek dropped back to the floor and began reaching under the dresser.

"What the hell are you doing?" Mark said.

"Getting Juan's phone."

With both his iPhone and the phone Juan gave him in his hands, Derek pulled open the sliding window and squeezed his way out of the room. Mark grabbed Derek and pulled him as the two snaked their way around the hotel, avoiding the lobby and making their way towards the parking area where Mark's car was waiting.

"Where's my coffee?" Derek asked as Mark shoved him into the backseat of his car.

"Shut the fuck up and keep your head down," Mark snapped.

"I shouldn't complain as I know you probably saved my life back there, but, you FBI agents really seem to have a thing for me. Kind of concerning."

"Shut the fuck up."

To his surprise and relief, Mark didn't see any of the hotel guests or staff peering out of their windows, trying to catch a glimpse of the two men scurrying away from the hotel, jumping into a car then speeding way. Though the possibility that he and Derek weren't seen was a refreshing idea, Mark knew that it wouldn't be too long before someone noticed something, said something and alerted someone. Best case scenario, he assumed that the hotel would be swarmed with FBI agents and Connecticut State Police troopers within 15 minutes.

"Mind telling me what the hell just happened back there?" Derek asked as he lay flat in the backseat of the car.

"What did Juan tell you? And don't bullshit me. I just took out the Regional Director of the FBI to save your ass, so I think I deserve the truth."

As they drove north, Derek told Mark everything that Juan had shared with him. Starting with the note Juan had slipped into the case folder to how Derek was instructed to use the burner cell phone once he believed that the FBI believed that he wasn't involved in Juan's plan. He told him what Juan had seen in the warehouse and how he had placed the murder victim's body in his room at the Marquis before detonating the bomb.

"That vic was the unknown suspect we asked you to locate," Mark said.

"The one you included a picture of in the folder you gave me?"

"Same guy."

"You don't seem all that surprised about anything I just told you," Derek said. "Did you suspect that Juan was on to something?"

"I didn't want to believe him when he said that something about this whole terrorist case was being covered up. But when Marissa arrived at the hotel without her entourage, things fell into place."

"She was in on the cover-up?" Derek asked, realizing how close he had been to death just a short while ago.

"I don't know what the hell is going on or who is involved, but I do know that she was about to take you out of any equation and would have if I hadn't stopped her.“
 
Mark felt horrible about killing Marissa on many levels. She was, despite whatever her motives were, a member of his team. Someone who had proven herself to be a talented and dedicated member of the FBI and, like he was, sworn to protect the citizens of the US. She was young, valuable and well respected. If she was preparing to kill Derek in order to keep him quiet and to prevent what Juan had told him from ever getting out into the public, she was doing it only because she received orders to do so. Orders from someone much higher in the government. From someone who, if Juan was right, was calling the shots to keep the cover-up well covered.

Twenty minutes after leaving the hotel and the body of Marissa Rica behind, Mark received a call on his cell phone.

“Henderson, you with Director Rica?”

The caller was a fellow FBI agent named Peter Jacobson. Jacobson and Mark Henderson joined the FBI the same year and had been in lock step throughout their careers.

“Not now. How did you know she was coming out to see me?”

“I didn’t. The agents assigned to her came into the office this morning all in a tizzy. Started firing off questions to everyone to see if Rica contacted any of us or if anyone knew where she was. I figured that since you’re the only agent that’s working the case who isn’t in the office, that she might be with you.”

“I called her a couple of hours ago after I had a break in the case. She met me at a hotel outside of the city. Rica asked me to leave her alone with the suspect I picked up. And, before you ask, the suspect wasn’t Juan. She sent me out to get her coffee and asked me not to come back for a few hours.” Hearing Jacobson ask if he was still with Marissa, let Mark know that her body had not yet been discovered. He found it difficult to believe that none of the hotel’s guests hadn’t reported hearing gunshots and that none of those same guests didn’t see him and Derek racing around the building, jumping into a car and speeding away. Though he considered Jacobson a friend, Mark was suspicious of his question.

“Well,” Jacobson said, “her lack of communication is getting a lot of folks nervous around here.”

“Did anyone try her on her cell?” Mark asked.

“Not me, but I have to believe her security force has.”

“Like I said, I left the hotel around 30 minutes ago and wasn’t planning on heading back for another hour or so. Thinking that I should head back and see if there’s any problem?”

“You know how those Directors are. If you don’t follow their instructions, they piss up one side of you and shit down the other. Head back when she told you to and then circle back with me and let me know what’s going on.”

“Roger that,” Mark said.

“By the way, what was the break in the case all about that she was meeting you about?”

“Possible witness. I don’t think there’s much to it but, with her doing the interview, you never know what she’ll pull out.”

“Agreed. When you get back to the hotel, just let me know. Okay?”

“Sure. And if you hear anything in the meantime, give me an update.”

As he ended the call, Mark sighed deeply.

“Mind if I sit up like a big boy now? Derek asked from the backseat. “My back is starting to cramp up.”

“Sure,” Mark replied.
 

“Feel like telling me what that call was all about?” Derek asked.

“It was all about what my next move has to be.”

“And that is?”

“Dropping you off and heading back to the hotel.”

“Are you serious? You're going to stroll back into the hotel room, and do what?”

“Every bullet that every agent uses is marked and registered. That means that once her body is found, the medical examiner will retrieve the bullets, turn them over to our lab, who will take all over three minutes to figure out that those bullets were assigned to me. Which means that three minutes and five-seconds after the lab gets those bullets, I’ll be more wanted than Juan.”

“So,” Derek said, unable to disagree with Mark’s logic, “what’s your plan?”

“Get rid of the bullets before they’re found.”

“But the bullets are in her body.”

“I know where they are. I put them there.”

Mark knew that authorities would be looking for Derek Cole, but that they wouldn’t be looking too hard. There were too many things going on and too many people to track down for the FBI or any other authority to spend the time and resources looking for a private investigator. Henderson and Cortez had vetted all the investigators they were asked to hire, and Derek Cole’s background, despite showing a possible concern regarding his attempted suicide attempt, was spotless.

When he dropped Derek off at Starbucks, he offered two suggestions.

“Don’t make yourself too conspicuous and don’t make yourself too inconspicuous.”

“That’s some really good advice, Special Agent Henderson. They teach you that at the FBI?”

“Just blend in. If I’m not back within two hours, assume that I’m not coming back.”

“Then what do I do?” Derek asked.

“You’ll figure it out, I’m sure. One last thing,” Mark said as Derek climbed out of the backseat of the car. “I need you to contact Juan. Tell him what happened and that I’m on his side. Let him know that I’m heading back to the hotel to clean things up and that I want the three of us to meet later today.”