Frozen Fire (24 page)

Resting her head against the cool glass, Victoria pulled in another deep breath. “On the trip from the airport to the embassy, I had a long conversation with someone from one of the American intelligence agencies. He’s pretty certain an ecoterrorist group was behind the bombing of the plane. There’s evidence that Wendy was involved,” she said bluntly. “That she was somehow convinced to, I don’t know, give someone access to the plane, or—” She faltered to a stop.

Her words were met with a short silence. Then, “Wendy wouldn’t have killed herself.”

Sidestepping that argument for the moment, Victoria continued carefully, “The group is known as GAIA. It’s based out of England and its leader is Garner Blaylock. We’ve encountered them before. The group takes the principles of that Earth First! group and pushes them farther into
the land of crazy. They believe the earth is a living thing and that humans are to blame for destroying it and must be made to pay. They’ve been launching attacks on agribusiness and pharma conglomerates for years—”

“Wendy Watson would not have killed herself, Vic,” Dennis repeated, interrupting her. “She didn’t make it through the Air Force Academy and all those years in Afghanistan to blow herself up like some fucking suicide bomber. Not for some long-haired pissant eco-fucking-terrorist.”

“She might not have known what he intended to do. She might not even have known who Blaylock was. The agent made it sound like she was targeted. Maybe she was, was just swept off her feet and he got the information out of her that he needed. Your travel schedule. When you were flying and on which plane. That’s all he would have needed.” Victoria stopped and pressed one hand against her stomach as if to quell the nausea, then continued shakily, “I don’t know. None of us know exactly what happened, Dennis, except that that plane is down and you were supposed to be on it. The agent I spoke with believes that you were the primary target of that plane crash. If GAIA learns that you aren’t dead, they could try again, Dennis,” she finished slowly.

“Thanks to you, they already know that I’m alive, don’t they?”

She frowned and stared at her reflection in the darkened glass. “What are you talking about?”

“The message you sent right before you left the island. To someone named Gigi Blaine.”

“I don’t know anyone by that name. I don’t recall there being anyone by that name connected with Taino or the institute,” Victoria replied slowly.

“That’s because Gigi Blaine doesn’t exist. But the name is similar to—what did you say the GAIA leader’s name was?”

She felt her eyes widen as the nausea returned with a punch.

“Garner Blaylock,” she replied slowly. “Dennis, I didn’t send any messages before I left. I didn’t tell anyone to send anything for me. And I haven’t told anyone that you’re still alive.”

“The message showed up on Micki’s e-mail.” His voice, if not his words, was an accusation.

Trying to keep her frayed patience intact, Victoria mentally counted to three before answering. “Then she must have sent it, Dennis. Or someone else sent it from her computer. Did you ask her about it?”

“She’s the one who found it. And she didn’t send it.”

Victoria shivered suddenly, as if an icy hand had gripped her by the
neck. “Dennis, did Micki tell you that she suspects me . . . that I knew about... that I had something to do with the crash?” she asked, fumbling the words. She fell back against the window frame as her knees began to buckle.

“Yes.”

“And you believe her?” she whispered.

The silence lasted way too long. “Yes.”

Oh, God
. Victoria closed her eyes, feeling a void open inside her.

“Dennis.” She choked on the word and had to stop for a breath before going on. “Dennis, in eight, nearly nine years, when have I ever given you cause to doubt me? To distrust me? What could I have possibly done to make you believe Micki—”

“Too many bad calls today, Vic.”

“For God’s sake, Dennis,” she hissed, screwing her eyes shut to keep the tears in. “For God’s sake, what was I supposed to do? That plane crash was an assassination attempt. We both know that now, don’t we?
Don’t we?
You were a target. Garner Blaylock
had
to know you would be on that plane.” She took a deep breath. Despite it, her voice still shook as she continued. “The crash was a shock to us all, Dennis. Maybe in retrospect I didn’t make the best decisions this morning, but I
had to
make decisions. You weren’t fit to lead.”

Her words met only a cold, stony silence.

“How can you think I would betray you?” she asked, her voice harsh as she pushed the words past the hard, aching lump in her throat.

“Somebody did, Vic.”

“It wasn’t me. I swear to you on everything I hold dear that it wasn’t me, Dennis.”

“There’s only one other person who could and that’s Micki. You are the only people who would have access to the—Let me guess. You think she’s behind it,” Dennis said, his voice heavy with sarcasm and scorn.

Victoria swallowed hard and attempted to keep her tone even. “She could be. I don’t know what her motives would be, but she’d have the means and the opportunity. Micki knows the system almost as well as I do. If she put enough effort into it, she might have been able to circumvent some of the security parameters. Get information out. Meet up with people—”

“Not as easily as you could, though. Why did you want to send her away?”

“Because I thought she was losing it,” Victoria snapped, her voice rising.
“When Micki started to accuse you of killing those people for the sake of publicity—”

“What the hell are you talking about?” he demanded.

“I’m telling you what she said to me right before I met with you in my cottage. She said she suspected you brought down that plane to draw attention to your plans. That it was a bizarre publicity stunt because the extraction operations are so close to becoming a reality. It was crazy and I told her so, but she wouldn’t let it go.”

“You’re the—”

“Dennis, be careful,” Victoria interrupted as a frigid tendril of fear began curling through her. “You just said that it had to be one of us, either Micki or me, and I think you’re right. I’ll admit that. If we were being targeted and someone on the outside was looking for a weak spot in the organization, Wendy wouldn’t have been an obvious or a logical choice. Even we, who knew her, are having a hard time believing it could be true; someone from outside would never consider her. But someone inside might have seen things in her—vulnerabilities, maybe, or beliefs that we never questioned.” She let out a hard, frustrated breath. “Micki would have had access to Wendy’s personal information, her psychological profile. They could have become friendly. I don’t—”

“So you think Micki—What is this, Vic, some sort of sick game the two of you have cooked up? You’re both in on it—”

“Dennis, listen to me. Nobody outside knows for sure what we’re doing. Not even the Americans. And if no one knows, no one has any reason to attack us. But if Blaylock does know about the drilling, if he’s been told that we’re starting an operation that he doesn’t agree with, that he would think is a violation of some, I don’t know, natural order, then that alone might be enough reason for him to want to kill you—” As the words came out of her mouth, Micki’s choking confession echoed in her brain and Victoria felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her.

“And that was the end of that dove. I’ll never forget it. It was just awful. I cried for days.”

And then she’d crippled the boy without a glimmer of remorse.

It’s her
.

“Dennis,” Victoria hissed sharply, the horror of realization stealing over her. “It
is
Micki. She’s the mole. It can’t be anyone else. She’s behind the plane crash.”

The silence on the other end of the phone seemed interminably long,
and with every second that ticked by, the constriction in Victoria’s chest began to ease.

Dennis would believe her. He always had.

She straightened against the window, feeling clarity return.

She would get word to the security teams on Taino and Micki would be taken into custody before she realized what had happened. Whatever plans she might have in store—

“Vic, consider yourself relieved of your duties. Charlie will accept your resignation and debrief you. You’ll remain in custody.”

His words, uttered coldly and clearly, pierced her like a shiv to the lung and she couldn’t breathe.

“Dennis, no—” Her words were strangled as emotion too overwhelming to suppress engulfed her. “You’re . . . you’re wrong. Those people . . . the institute . . . No, Dennis, I would never—” A huge, wracking sob, alien and painful, tore through her. “I’m . . . you’re my family, Dennis.”

“No, Victoria. I’m not. I’m your boss,” he said in a tone that froze her. “You’re an employee who killed fifteen people and tried to fuck me over. You’re sick and twisted and you thought you’d get away with it. I don’t know who’s paying you, but you won’t bring me down. Not now. Not ever.”

The line went dead and Victoria let the phone drop from her hand.

Still gasping for breath, she staggered across the room to the bed. Collapsing onto it, she curled into a ball and, with her mouth pressed against the handmade quilt, began to scream. She wasn’t sure how much time passed before the rage, the pain, and the disbelief numbed her and she dragged herself into the shower.

10:30
P.M.
, Saturday, October 25, Gainesville, Florida

Phone pressed to his ear, Sam paced the new wood floors in his kitchen. They were Cyn’s idea, of course. He hadn’t really given a damn that the original floor was no-wax flooring in a pattern that was “so eighties.” The little geese wearing light blue bow ties or yellow bonnets as they marched around the squares hadn’t really bothered him. In fact, until Cyn pointed them out, he wasn’t sure he’d ever noticed them. It was a floor, for pity’s sake. You walked on it, spilled on it, occasionally washed it. And it had been in pretty much perfect shape. But to Cyn, it was a “statement.” So he’d had it ripped up and replaced with a sinfully expensive, appropriately “green” bamboo floor. Sure it looked nice, but it was still a floor. He still walked on it, spilled on it, and occasionally washed it. And now she was starting to bug him about replacing the cabinets.

Woman, if you ever want to get your way again, you had better not come home crowing about getting past Taino’s borders
.

“Yeah, okay, we lost. Happy?” Marty muttered by way of a greeting.

There probably had never been a time when Sam had talked to Marty without a cold beer in his hand. Good times and Marty had always been a natural pair, like socks and shoes, beaches and sand, wind and rain. This
conversation was going to be a first. But he had to get the pleasantries out of the way, so Sam made sure a grin was evident in his voice.

“Hell, yes, I’m happy. Not that I ever thought I’d be otherwise. Maybe y’all oughtta change your name from the Terps to the Twerps. Y’all looked like a bunch of high-schoolers out there in the fourth quarter. And I don’t mean Texas high-schoolers, either. I mean
Yankee
high-schoolers.”

“Are you done? Can I hang up now?”

Sam’s grin faded. “No. Actually, I’m callin’ about something we were talkin’ about earlier. About Taino. You have a minute? I mean, if you’re not consolin’ some cheerleader—”

“Jealous?” Marty drawled.

“Not really.”

Marty laughed. “Liar. Yeah, I got a minute. What did you want to know?”

Sam stopped pacing and leaned his shoulder against the edge of the sliding doors that led to his deck. “Well, that whole wild-ass story you told me about Dennis Cavendish minin’ methane at four thousand feet has sorta been chewin’ on my brain.”

“Yeah?” Marty said cautiously.

“How is that even possible?”

“Lots of money, lots of equipment.”

“No, smart-ass, I meant how could he get it out? The stuff is down there pretty damned deep. I mean, it’s down a couple hundred feet even once you hit solid ground. It’s not like oil. It’s a solid, so pressure isn’t goin’ to help drive it to the surface, and you can’t get in there with diggers. And it’s methane. It’s volatile. So how does he get it out?”

“Well, there have been a few theories floated for getting it out. Basically, all you need to do is get into the reserve and pump superheated water into it. The heat would liberate the gas from the crystals and then you harvest the gas.”

“Well, I’ll be damned, Marty. Is that all? Just push a big ol’ honkin’ pipe through four thousand feet of freezing cold water and pump a few million gallons of boiling water through it to melt the ice?” Sam said, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

“Look, I said it was a theory, okay? I don’t think anyone’s tried to do it. It would cost an obscene amount of money to even attempt it. Cavendish has that and isn’t shy about spending it, but it’s a completely impractical idea. The volatility of the gas is the biggest danger. I mean, there’s the
whole explosion issue, but any kind of big release—without an explosion—is a huge environmental fuckup. And even if he worked around all of those things somehow, I know for sure Cavendish isn’t bringing it up because there isn’t a production plant in evidence on his island. He’d need a power plant to generate the hot water, and facilities for purification, storage, and distribution, none of which he has.”

“Where is it then? On the seafloor?” Sam asked bluntly.

A silence built that Sam was not about to break. Eventually, Marty cleared his throat. “It sounds crazy, really crazy, but . . . yeah. Maybe that’s where it is.”

Sam felt laughter coming on but it died as he realized there wasn’t a shred of amusement in Marty’s voice. “Run by remote control?”

“It would have to be. That wouldn’t be such a big deal, though. You know, the whole thing could be fabricated and assembled on land and then sunk and placed, just like an oil rig. And there are plenty of small offshore oil rigs that are run remotely. People fly out as needed.”