Waiting... On You (Force Recon Marines) (18 page)

When Nick saw Hanna blanch again, he
sent Kurt a warning look to go easy on that line of information.

“The Triad usually likes to smuggle
drugs and whatever else into the country via large freighters,” Kurt continued.
“They hide their illegal cargo in the holds of the ships, which drop anchor
about twelve miles out, where they’re still in international waters and aren’t
subject to a country’s laws. At that point, other boats, usually speed boats,
with all the electronic gear Nick mentioned, unload and carry the drugs or
illegal goods ashore. There are a lot of isolated beaches in the Northwest,
especially off the Olympic Peninsula, and that’s how they have made their drops
in the past. They abandoned that method of operation when the DEA and Coast
Guard started patrolling those isolated spots more, but the Strait of Juan de
Fuca is a perfect body of water to come operate out of. It’s a shipping lane.
And the border between Canada and the United States is on the water, so it can
get confusing who has jurisdiction. We have joint task forces. Sometimes they
work. Sometimes they don’t.”

“Then where do the drugs go once they
come ashore?” Hanna asked.

“Initially and usually to a safe
house, which is what we call a centralized storage location for incoming drugs.
It’s always guarded. From there, the drugs get distributed and sold to other
distributors and dealers.”

“What an efficient operation,” Hanna
exclaimed. “Run just like a business.”

“A multi-billion dollar business,”
Kurt agreed.

Hanna turned to Nick. “Could Yancy’s
heavily guarded estate be a safe house?”

“It crossed my mind.”

“What’s this?” Kurt asked.

Nick filled him in on what they had
found on Shelter Island the day before. Then he asked, “So what did Dylan’s
laptop reveal? Were you able to retrieve his lost file? Any fingerprints?”

Kurt took out a file from his desk
drawer and handed Nick a copy. “Some of it. There were traces of his files left
behind; kind of a ghost record, a magnetic shadow, so to speak. The backup
drives were somewhat helpful, but sketchy. They were not as up to date as what
was erased from the hard drive. But we were able to figure out the essence of
what Dylan was working on. That’s a copy of it,” the FBI agent indicated,
nodding to the file Nick held. “Read it and see what you think. It looks like he
was definitely looking into drug cases in the county. It also looks like he
wasn’t getting any help from his boss, and that he was doing it on his own, by
compiling data from all the drug related arrests made by his fellow deputies.
I’d say it was an independent investigation.”

“Yeah, a couple of the sheriff
deputies I talked to last week told me follow-up on cases, particularly drug
ones, is pretty sloppy at the department. They don’t cross-reference each
other. The sheriff doesn’t coordinate investigations or take them too
seriously, according to his deputies. They aren’t happy with him. He was just
elected two years ago, and they can’t wait to get rid of him. There was talk of
Dylan running for sheriff in the next election.”

“He was thinking about it,” Hanna
confirmed.

“Well, Sheriff Jeff Thomas is an
interesting fellow. He’s from southern California. He was sheriff in a small
desert town. For a little community, it had quite a drug problem. The residents
weren’t happy about the number of dealers selling drugs to the high school kids
there. So when the next election came along, they voted him out of office. Then
he got elected a year later in a small town in Idaho. Same scenario. It just
took longer for the residents to wise up and vote him out of office. He dropped
out of sight for a while. Then he moved to Port George and ran for sheriff.
With more time, we could dig deeper.”

“Sounds like you ought to do that,”
Nick commented. “And how about my ex-high school nemesis, Port George’s Chief
of Police, Phillip Douglas?”

“Other than an interestingly large
bank account for a small town police chief, nothing.” Kurt looked down at the
papers in his file. “Oh, and we didn’t find any fingerprints on the laptop,
except yours. It was real clean.”

“Wiped clean I’ll bet.”

“Probably.”

“Well, besides, testing that tube for
any trace residue, I’d like you to run a background check on Yancy Masters. He
owns Yancy’s Bar and Grill in Port George and that very well guarded, expensive
home on Shelter Island.”

“While you’re here, let me run a quick
preliminary check” Kurt offered. “He might come up in the computer if he’s had
any priors. Let’s see.”

Nick and Hanna watched silently as
Kurt typed in some information and searched his data base. It didn’t take long
for the agent to come up with something.

“It looks like Mr. Yancy Masters has
been arrested several times for possession of illegal substances and driving
under the influence. He spent three years in jail for dealing some small stuff
years ago, then went back to jail a few years later for assault and battery,
got out, stayed clean for a while, then got in trouble again for illegal
possession of drugs and firearms. Basically, he’s had quite a few run-ins with
the police, but he’s got nothing on his record in the last ten years. Interesting.
And you say he came into a lot of money a few years back?”

Hanna answered him. “He’s lived in Port
George for eight years or so. Five years ago, he supposedly won a large amount
of money at one of the Indian casinos. Not long afterward, he bought the restaurant
and bar he now operates. Grandma says he just bought the old Thompson estate on
Shelter Island a little over a year ago.”

“Well, he’s another one I’ll do more
checking on. In fact, I’ll keep investigating all three of them— Masters,
Douglas, and Thomas. If there is some drug running going on here, they could
all be involved some way. If the Triad is involved, you’ve got big trouble and
so does the DEA. And they usually try to get the cooperation of local law
enforcement through bribery or threats.”

“See what you can get out of the DEA
about Triad operations up here in the Northwest,” Nick advised. “Do you have
any buddies in the Seattle office who could look into this and keep it quiet? I
don’t want to set off any alarm bells while Lance is still missing. We have a
better chance of finding out what’s going on and what happened to him and Dylan
if we let these guys operate as normal for a while. If we alert them, they
might go underground.

“There’s a couple of ex-Special Forces
guys in the Seattle DEA office,” Kurt informed him. “I’ve worked with them
before. They’ll keep all this under wraps and help us out. They probably know
you anyway, Colonel.” Kurt grinned. “By the way, congratulations on the
promotion to Lieutenant Colonel. Got your new orders yet?” Nick shook his head
no. “Ah hell,” the FBI agent continued. “It’s about time they give you some
soft office job stateside. Haven’t you about had enough of being overseas in
the field?”

“Actually, I have,” Nick replied,
glancing at Hanna. “I’ve been thinking a lot about doing nothing more strenuous
than diving instruction and mission planning. Might be time to settle down and
stay in one place for a while.”

Kurt looked at Hanna speculatively,
and then back at his ex-Recon buddy. “Sounds like a good future for a warrior
who’s done more than his share of national defense. You’ve been a bachelor too
long, too, Nick. I’ll tell you, being married is a hell of a lot better than
being single.”

“How is your wife? I have yet to meet
her and you’ve been married— what? Two, three years?”

“Three years this September,” Kurt
said proudly. “She’s fine— gorgeous, great!” He laughed and looked across at
Hanna. “She’s a nurse at Harbor View.”

“Really?”

Kurt told her all about his wife,
Trisha, over lunch down the street, at a small café frequented by the downtown
business crowd. Then Hanna told him about her work and training at Harbor View
while they sat at the table on the sidewalk, beneath a gloriously sunny Seattle
sky. As they watched shoppers and tourists pass by, they agreed to get together
at Kurt’s condo, off Pike Place Market, maybe over the weekend, to meet Trisha.

After parting from Kurt at the FBI
office, Nick and Hanna walked back to the garage where his motorcycle was
parked.

“Do you still think we’ll find Lance
alive?” Hanna asked.

“Yeah, I do. I can’t explain it. I
just don’t feel like he’s dead.” They had reached his bike. Hanna put her
helmet on. Nick grabbed his. “I’ve always had pretty good instincts,” he said
as he snapped her chin strap on. “Guess they’re what have kept me alive so
long— that and your prayers.” He smiled tenderly down at her. “They’re telling
me Lance and Dylan got caught up inadvertently in something that caused your
brother’s death and mine’s disappearance. I think we’re going to find Lance, if
we keep digging into this as quickly as possible. That’s why I bugged Yancy’s
office, to speed up this investigation.” He helped Hanna climb up onto the long
low slung seat of his Harley. “And that’s why I’m going out to Yancy’s house
tonight to plant a few more bugs. He’ll be at the bar, and I did enough
reconnaissance yesterday to get into the house and past the guards.”

Hanna looked at him anxiously. “You’re
going to break in and plant the bugs all by yourself?”

“I can’t ask Kurt to go. It would
compromise the prosecution if we get these guys.”

“Then I’ll go with you.”

“No, you most definitely won’t go.
You’re not trained for this. I am. I would never put you at risk like that.”

His adamancy prevented Hanna from
further argument, but she was not happy about his decision to go on such a
dangerous mission alone. Never mind the fact that probably did this kind of
thing all the time away from her. Now that she knew exactly what he was going
to do, she fretted all the way home.

CHAPTER
13

COCOONED IN ONE of Colleen’s
beautifully crocheted afghans, Hanna curled up on Jessie’s thickly cushioned
sofa and stared at the grandfather clock against the far wall. The slender
brass hands read one thirty in the morning. As she watched them move toward
two, she shivered.

Nick had gone to Shelter Island to
plant his bugs and wire taps over three hours ago. Yancy’s bar would be closing
soon, and the bartender would be returning to his estate. So what was taking
Nick so long? How much time could it take to get the job done and get off the
island? Was it that difficult to bug someone’s home? It had only taken him
fifteen minutes to bug Yancy’s office the other night. Something had to be
wrong for it to be taking this long!

Hanna hadn’t been able to wait at her grandmother’s
house. Visions of Nick getting caught had troubled her since he’d left. She
felt wired with tension. Jessie had waited with her until an hour ago when
she’d finally gone upstairs to bed. Kurt Palmer’s vivid description of the
violent Triad gangs haunted her. She kept seeing Nick lying in a pool of blood,
dead or grievously injured.

“Stop that, Doctor!” Dressed in her
nightgown and robe, Jessie came back down the stairs, into her living room,
where only a single lamp was lit. “You’re worrying yourself sick, aren’t you?”

“I can’t help it,” Hanna admitted,
swinging her legs out from beneath her. “I keep having these horrible visions
of Nick getting caught. Where is he? He’s been gone a long time!”

Jessie sat beside her young friend on
the sofa and slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Nick has probably done
things like this hundreds of times, honey. I’m sure he knows what he’s doing.”

“You’re not worried?”

“Well— yes, but I’m trying not to let
my imagination get too carried away.” Jessie caught one of Hanna’s hands. “Your
fingers are like ice, sweetie.”

“I can’t seem to get warm.”

“How about something to drink? Tea,
hot milk, a glass of wine?”

“Do you have any more of that Sangria
I like?”

“Sure do.”

Hanna stood up and stretched as Jessie
left for the kitchen. Moving helped. She didn’t want to be a basket case by the
time Nick came home. Jessie was right. Nick did this stuff for a living. She
just had to have more confidence in him. Still, would she know if something bad
happened to him?

Jessie came back into the room with a
bottle of dark red Sangria and two crystal stem glasses. She poured Hanna a
drink and handed it to her, then poured herself a glass and sat down.

Hanna paced for a bit, taking an
occasional sip of the wine. She was wearing a faded pair of navy blue sweat
pants and a cropped white cotton t-shirt.

“Come sit and talk to me,” Jessie
said.

Hanna resumed her position beside her
friend. Balancing her glass of wine, she pulled the afghan her grandmother had
made Jessie for her birthday over her shoulders again. It was soft and
comforting. As she snuggled into it and drank a little more wine, she began to
relax a little.

“Feel better?”

Hanna nodded and returned the smile.
“Thanks, Jessie.”

Nick’s mother studied her quietly,
then observed, “You’re still in love with him, aren’t you, sweetheart?”

“Oh Jessie, when have I not been? I’ll
be as old as grandma and still be hopelessly in love with him.”

“Maybe not hopelessly. I’m pretty sure
that oldest son of mine is finally starting to think of you as more than a
friend. When Lance comes home, I don’t imagine he’ll be too pleased to see what
his disappearance has brought about.” She responded to Hanna’s quizzically
raised eyebrow with a short laugh. “Honey, Lance has been in love with you since
high school. He knows how you feel about Nick, but he’s always hoped you’d get
tired of waiting for him one of these days. There’s nothing you can do about it.
Lance will just have to deal with it. You and Nick have always been fated for
one another.”

Hanna looked down at the dark red
liquid in her goblet, and thought about what Jessie said. She knew how she felt
about Nick Kelly. She adored him— was crazy about him. If Lance felt the same
way about her, she felt awful for him. She could never love anyone but Nick.

“Lance says he’s married to the Corps—
for life,” Hanna finally said after a long pause.

Jessie laughed. “The Corps can’t keep
him warm at night, or sit up waiting for him to come home from a mission, or be
there when he needs to talk.”

“Apparently, he’s never needed those
things.”

Nick’s mother sipped her wine and
frowned. “I think I’m to blame for that.”

“You?”

“Nick saw how much I hurt when his
father died in combat. Nick senior and I were deeply in love. And we were very
close. I nearly died when he did. If it hadn’t been for the boys, then Sean
Price.... Nick was eight when his dad died, and he was a very astute eight. He
was devoted to his father. He idolized him. And he hurt as much as I did when
we lost him. Our mutual grief created a deep bond between us. Even though he
was so young, he used to comfort me as much as I comforted him.” Jessie stared
at Hanna, and smiled sadly. “I think he decided when he went into the Corps and
became a Recon Marine that he would never burden any woman with the grief I
suffered. It’s been hard for me to watch him lead such a dangerous, solitary
life.”

“It hasn’t been easy worrying about
him all these years,” Hanna agreed. “It’s one of the reasons I work so many
hours— to take my mind off it.”

Jessie put her wine glass down on an
end table and turned to embrace Hanna in a reassuring hug. “Oh, sweetheart!
You’re his guardian angel. If only he knew how much you love him!”

Hanna’s eyes widened with fear. “You
haven’t told him....”

“I’d never say a word. That’s for you
alone to tell him— when you’re ready.”

It was nearly three a.m. when Nick
finally walked through the front door. The presence of both his mother and
Hanna sitting on the couch, drinking wine, brought him up short.

“Ladies,” he said, eyeing the nearly
empty wine bottle. “What are you up to at this hour?”

Filled with blessed relief, Hanna’s
eyes dropped to her glass, but his mother chuckled. “We couldn’t sleep, and
just got to talking. I guess we didn’t notice how late it was getting.”

“Right, Mom,” he commented dryly. “And
Doctor? I didn’t know you were sleeping over.”

“I’m not. I was just keeping your
mother company.”

“Ladies, excuse the insult, but you’re
lousy liars.”

Jessie threw up her arms. “All right!
We were waiting for you, son. Just to make sure you returned safe and sound.”

He smiled at his mom, then at Hanna.
“Feels nice— having two beautiful ladies waiting for me to make sure I’m okay.”

“How did it go?” his mother asked him.

Nick stepped into the light, and for
the first time, Hanna saw him clearly. He was wearing the leggings to his wet
suit, but he’d removed the zipped jacket, and was now wearing a short-sleeved,
black t-shirt. Clothed entirely in black, he had painted his face a dark
greenish color. Only his white eyeballs showed. He had a dark stocking cap on,
which he removed and tossed aside. His short hair stuck out at odd angles.
Self-consciously, he raked his hand through it, restoring some order to it.

“I got the place bugged and wired.
Then I took a look around.”

Jessie rose from the sofa and walked
up to her son. “I don’t suppose you found your little brother, did you?”

The question was so poignantly
touching, it nearly broke Hanna’s heart. She heard the suppressed tears and the
slender thread of hope in Jessie’s voice.

“Oh, Mom!” Nick pulled his mother into
his arms. “No, I didn’t, but I will. I promise you I will.”

“But he’s been missing over four weeks
now!” she cried, the sound of her anguished voice muffled against his chest.

It was such an intimate moment, Hanna
almost left mother and son alone, but because she loved Jessie like a mother,
she got up and went to comfort her.

Nick looked over at Hanna and caught
her hand, pulling her close. “I don’t have any good answers yet, Mom, but
bugging Yancy’s restaurant and house will give me some soon, I’m certain. All I
can tell you is that I don’t feel like Lance is dead. I know it’s not much,
but....”

Jessie put her fingers to her son’s
lips. “I trust your intuition. I know how close you and Lance have always been,
close enough to sense things.” She turned and gave Hanna a watery smile. “Thank
you, sweetheart, for sitting with me. Feel free to spend the night. Colleen
knows you’re here. She won’t worry. I’m going to bed. The wine has made me
sleepy. See you in the morning, dear,” she told Nick with a quick kiss on the
cheek. “Sleep in. You look tired.”

Nick returned his mother’s kiss, then
watched her walk slowly up the stairs. “Good night, Mom.” When she was out of
sight, he turned to Hanna and rubbed the back of his neck, clearly troubled.
“Maybe I shouldn’t get her hopes up. What if I can’t find Lance?”

Hanna put her hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t lose confidence, Nick. You’ve laid a lot of good ground work. I’m sure
something will turn up soon.” He gazed down at her a long time, frowning,
immersed in worried thought. She coaxed a smile out of him finally, a small
one. “You look strange with that face paint on. Are you really under all that?”
Her finger traced a short path along his high cheekbone, through the color.

“It’s camouflage paint. It keeps us
shiny white boys from showing up in the dark,” he joked, moving closer until
their bodies were lightly touching. “Want to kiss me?”

“Definitely not at the moment, thank
you!”

He stepped back and laughed. “So, are
you going to spend the night?” The husky invitation in his voice made her heart
skip a beat. “You could sleep in my bed.” He let that image linger in the long
silence between them, then shot her one of his typically teasing half grins.
“I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“I better go home.”

He nodded. “Let me take a quick
shower, then I’ll walk you home.”

“I can get there by myself.”

“You’ll wait for me.”

She sent him a smart salute. “All
right, Colonel. Go take your shower. I’ll wait.”

Satisfied, he walked to the back of
the house to use the downstairs bathroom, next to the laundry room. Hanna
stretched out on the sofa on her side to wait for him, positioning a couple of
loose throw pillows under her head. With a heartfelt prayer of gratitude for
Nick’s safe return, she shifted until she was thoroughly comfortable. Relief
washed over her draining all the tension from her body. She closed her eyes with
a big sigh.

When Nick returned thirty minutes
later, she was sound asleep, curled up like a contented cat, wrapped snugly in
the afghan. He couldn’t bring himself to wake her.

She looked so pretty, he didn’t want
to leave her. Her gold-highlighted hair spilled over her forehead to partially
cover her face. Her thick rimmed glasses had slipped down her nose. Carefully,
he lifted them off her face and set them on the end table, next to her head.

Returning a few moments later with a
blanket for himself and a couple of pillows, he turned out the lamp, and then
stretched out on the floor alongside the front of the sofa. A few minutes after
he got settled, he felt Hanna’s hand land on his shoulder.

Catching it in his, he gently kissed
the back of it. She murmured something unintelligible in her sleep. As he
drifted off to sleep himself, he wondered if she ever dreamed about him the way
he did about her.

TOM AND JERRY’S GOOD NATURED BICKERING
woke Hanna from a sound sleep. Tom and Jerry? Had she been dreaming of the
cartoon characters? Lord, she hadn’t watched them since she was a little girl!

She opened her eyes and realized she’d
fallen asleep on Jessie’s sofa late last night. Where was Nick? He was supposed
to have walked her home. He must have come out of the shower, found her asleep,
and decided not to disturb her.

She was lying on her stomach, with the
afghan twisted around her legs. She pushed the hair out of her eyes and
squinted toward the sound of the television. Everything was its typical blur
without her glasses. Extending a hand toward the floor, she was groping around
for them when she came into contact with a big hard body. Startled, she peeked
over the edge of the sofa.

On his back, lying on the floor, Nick
gave her a drowsy smile. At least she thought it was a smile. “Hey, sleepy
head,” he greeted her huskily.

Without her glasses, he was a blur.
“Nick? Why are you sleeping on the floor?”

It looked like he put a finger to his
lips. “Shhh.... Christopher is asleep down here, next to me. He came down about
six this morning and wanted to “sumber party” with us. He turned on cartoons
and promptly went back to sleep.”

Hanna could barely make out Nick, let
alone his nephew. “Have you seen my glasses?”