She had planned to stay standing as she fed him her theory about Peter and Cormac and how Eleanor’s kidnapping tied into it, but the way he guided her to a chair with a heavy, warm hand on her shoulder relaxed the unease in her stomach a notch.
Waiting for him to take his seat across from her, she drew a breath and held it deep in her lungs. Rarely did anyone shake her confidence, but the fear of confessing too much to him made her nerves twitch. She needed to be careful how she phrased her words, how she came across. She had to be a credible source in his eyes if she expected him to take her seriously. “You’re a busy man, Deputy Director, and I appreciate you seeing me on such short notice.”
“You happened to catch me between meetings.” He leaned back in his chair and studied her face. “What can I do for you, Dr. Kent?”
“It’s Brigit, and it’s what I can possibly do for you. I believe I know who kidnapped Ella, but I can’t prove it, and after last night I’ll understand if you have trouble trusting me.” She worried the four-leaf clover. “But trust is what I’m asking for.”
At the mention of Ella, he sat forward, all business. “Go on.”
“I believe Ella was kidnapped by Peter Donovan, also known as Peter O’Connor and a variety of other aliases. He’s a terrorist who split off from the IRA in Northern Ireland in the 1990s and has been linked to car bombings and other activities, although he’s only been caught and prosecuted once as a teenager.”
Michael Stone’s all-business face didn’t change. Neither did his body. “And what does he want with my niece?”
False calm? Disbelief? She couldn’t read him. Plunging forward, she laid out the important points of her theory involving Peter and Cormac O’Bern’s reception. Through the whole thing, the director’s affect never changed.
Finally, she explained Ella’s role and watched his blue eyes harden. “She’s being used as a distraction to suck resources away from the dedication ceremony today.”
“You’ve shared this with Special Agent Edmonds?”
“I only found out Cormac O’Bern was in town less than an hour ago. I placed a call to Edmonds on the way here and left him a voice mail with the important details, but since I have no hard evidence, I doubt he’ll be in any hurry to follow up. He hasn’t even returned my call yet.”
Director Stone remained impassive. The control of his body language was impressive. If she hadn’t read his background bio while waiting to see the president, she would have thought he’d had spy training. Ruling that out, the only other cause appeared to be his God complex.
Meeting his steady gaze, she cleared her throat. “I’m bringing this to you because I know you value family above everything, even your job.”
Something changed in his eyes, just for a split-second. Knowing she’d hit her mark, she continued. “If Donovan stays true to form, Ella won’t be hurt, but there is a possibility innocent people attending O’Bern’s reception today will be.”
Again, his eyes shifted their focus. The wheels were turning. “How?”
“Donovan has been linked to multiple covert operations—taking out a target in a hotel room with a silenced gun, fiddling with brake lines to cause a target to have an accident—but he’s also been linked to large, deadly operations like I mentioned. Car bombs, and also riots. With the publicity this ceremony is drawing, he’ll go for something impressive. Something the news agencies will run twenty-four-seven.”
“A bomb?”
Brigit gave him a tight nod and fingered her pendant again. “What I’m about to suggest goes against everything you’ve been trained for and all your natural instincts to protect your family.” She hesitated, wishing she were standing near the door instead of sitting within reach of the director’s large, strong hands. Even with his forced calm and direct manner, he still resembled a lion, ready to strike to defend his pride. “You need to tell the FBI and local police to pull off the kidnapping and double the security at the O’Bern reception.”
The director blinked and let out a slow breath, drawing back into his chair. He settled an elbow on the chair’s arm and tapped a finger against his desk as he stared at his laptop screen. “You want me to risk my niece’s life on your speculations about Peter Donovan?”
“He won’t hurt her.”
Challenge sparked in his gaze as he met hers. It also echoed in his voice. “How do you know?”
Brigit ran through possible responses in her brain. Logical responses. The truth. Instead, she gripped the pendant tighter and spouted the lame one. “I just do.”
He sat forward again, placing his elbows on his desk as his gaze bore into hers. The eyes darkened as if he could hypnotize her with them and reveal her deepest, darkest secret. Secret
s
. “I thought you were a child psychologist.”
The challenge hung in the air, and Brigit let it. Michael Stone was no fool. He’d probably had her checked out before he’d left Thad and Ruth’s last night. At the very least, he knew her doctorate thesis explored the minds of kidnappers.
When he got no answer, he probed deeper. “If you know so much about this Donovan, why haven’t you helped put him away?”
The question caught her off guard. A vibration low in her stomach felt like she’d swallowed her BlackBerry and someone had just pinged her with an instant message.
Message received. Time to go. “Nothing will make me happier than to see Ella safely returned to your family. If Donovan’s involved, I can say with ninety-nine percent certainty he’ll stick to his pattern, and Ella will turn up physically fine. She’ll be hungry and freaked out, and for awhile she’ll experience nightmares. Maybe even suffer from post-traumatic stress. I strongly recommend therapy for a year or so to help her over the rough spots.”
She stood, walked to the door and checked her watch. “O’Bern’s reception starts in forty minutes. I’ll be there if you have any questions or need my service.”
She turned the doorknob and blew out of his office, glad she’d switched to the lower heels. The vibration had spread to the rest of her body, making her legs shake like Jell-O.
Chapter Eleven
Women were changelings. Capricious, fickle and mutable depending on the moment, their mood and their goal. They would fling themselves into the nebulous air of an idea with a courage specific to their gender and maintain equilibrium in the face of any threat. Their logic and reasoning often defied actual fact, and yet to Michael, more often than not, rang true.
He rotated his office chair to look out the window. Through the cracks in the blinds, he saw only strips of blue sky and a canopy of green leaves going to yellow and brown. The incomplete picture outside reflected the incomplete one in his mind. What Brigit had just told him troubled him on so many levels, he didn’t know where to start.
Julia poked her head out of the bathroom. Seeing the room was clear, she joined him at the window, opening the blinds fully for a better view. “I believe her.”
Women were as likely to be bitter enemies as they were to be indomitable sisters. Julia had no more reason to believe Brigit than he did, but the issue wasn’t truth, it was trust. Julia was an ex-spy and the best counterintelligence analyst he’d ever had work for him. She trusted few and made accurate judgments in the blink of an eye. “I do too.”
Glancing at her watch, she shook her head. “If there was time, I’d dig around in Brigit’s past and try to tie her and her sister to this Peter Donovan, but forty minutes barely gives us enough of a window to find a recent picture of Donovan and ratchet up security. What are you going to do?”
Hate himself probably. He shifted his gaze from the striped fall landscape outside the window and looked up at her. “Go against all my natural instincts to protect my family.”
Brigit pulled up short in the hallway. She’d forgotten one thing. One very important thing.
Pulling her BlackBerry out, she considered forgetting it. Phoning it in after she was outside the building. Having Truman fax it over after Cormac’s dedication, just in case she was wrong. But no, she needed to give the information to Michael Stone and let him handle it. The kidnapping was truly out of her hands now. He was the only one, outside of her brother, who could shape the outcome of Eleanor Pennington’s future.
Back in the waiting area, she scrolled through the application icons, found Tasks and punched it. She’d made a list of the parks and playgrounds in a five-mile radius of the Pennington home. Ella was sure to turn up at one of them in the next twenty-four hours.
Irene stared at her over her reading glasses, brows drawn together, as she continued her Durga routine. She cleared her throat after ending a call. “I already explained that cellular phones and digital devices are not to be used inside Langley without approval from the DCI himself.”
Brigit ignored her and located the list. The phone couldn’t receive anything inside the protected wall of Langley and it wasn’t as if she were passing on secrets or anything. As she brushed past the secretary with a smile, she said, “Forgot something,” and barged back into Stone’s office.
Only to come to a dead halt with Irene on her heels. A woman stood next to the director, both of them facing his office window, but Stone was staring up at the woman’s profile.
“Oh, Director,” Irene stuttered. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea…”
As if pulled by the same string, they turned their heads in unison, and Brigit’s breath caught in her throat. The woman was the FBI agent from the construction site. Where had she come from?
More importantly, what had she told Director Stone about their earlier encounter? And why had he been looking at her with such a mix of admiration and frustration?
Brigit’s insides curled up like frostbitten flowers.
Director Stone waved Irene off. “It’s okay, Irene.”
The secretary gave Brigit a contrite look and huffed back out of the office.
Brigit glared at the woman on the other side of the desk. “Agent Barbie.”
Her smile was tight. “Julia Torrison. Remember?”
As if she could have forgotten. Images of that morning’s scene flashed in her brain.
Protect Tory
. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were following me, Agent Torrison, but that scenario doesn’t fit, does it? You’re always one step ahead of me instead of one behind.”
Torrison shrugged. “Coincidence?”
While random coincidences did happen, Brigit knew this encounter was no coincidence. She glanced to her left, saw a door that had been closed before now wide open. Inside, she could see a towel bar and the edge of a shower stall. Julia Torrison had been hiding in Deputy Director Stone’s bathroom.
How interesting.
And awkward. Brigit’s admiration for the good director nose-dived. She’d bet even Irene hadn’t known her boss was carrying on with Agent Torrison right under her nose. To the right, Brigit noted an elevator door. Convenient for keeping trysts in his office secret.
Male personalities best suited to powerful positions drew women like pollen to bees. Keeping disgust from registering on her face, she met Director Stone’s gaze with neutrality. “Forgive my interruption, but I forgot to mention that I believe Donovan will leave Ella at one of the playgrounds in the vicinity of the Pennington’s home. There are three of them.”
She grabbed a pen from the desktop and copied the names from her Task list to the top sheet of a square notepad. “Ella should show up at one of these spots in the next twenty-four hours. I wouldn’t put surveillance on them though. Donovan will spot it and then there’s no telling where he might dump her on his way out of town.”
Through the whole interaction, Stone stayed quiet. Was he embarrassed to have been caught with Torrison? If so, he didn’t show it. His body language and facial expressions never wavered. He was one hundred percent focused on Ella again. “Can we catch Donovan at the dedication?”
Betrayal burned inside her. Not the guilt kind like she’d experienced with the president a few hours ago. This was betrayal of another animal. An intimate one, which shocked and surprised her. How had Michael Stone gotten under her skin so fast?
But she knew the answer to that without hesitation.
He’s such a family man.
Whether Torrison had been hiding out to prevent their affair from being discovered or because Stone wanted her to eavesdrop on his conversation with Brigit, she didn’t know. Bottom line, it didn’t matter. The sting of the betrayal was sharp with mean-spirited candor.
Forcing it away, she reminded herself a little girl’s well-being depended on her. The only real thing to worry about after that was the possibility Agent Torrison had told Director Stone about her rendezvous at the construction site with Tory.
If he did know, he seemed not to care enough to bring it up. Brigit decided to proceed likewise. “Donovan is probably the only person who knows where Ella is. You capture him and you’ll seal Ella’s fate.”
“He’ll use the information to cut a deal,” Torrison said.
Peter’s ability to compartmentalize his emotions and his actions as well as perpetuate the survival of an empty political formula spoke volumes about his personality.
A memory of their mother crying over returned books flashed through Brigit’s mind. “Peter Donovan doesn’t make deals,” she said with quiet authority. “If you capture him, Ella’s odds of dying will increase dramatically.”
The focused but still calm energy emanating from the deputy director changed in a heartbeat. His body tensed under his jacket, and rage, raw and powerful, glinted in his eyes. “You said he wouldn’t hurt her.”
Before Brigit could answer, a deep male voice spoke from behind her. “Guess my invitation to the party got lost in the mail.”
Torrison flinched. Stone shifted his rage back under an icy coolness. “Flynn,” he said. “We have a situation.”
Brigit studied the dark and dangerous-looking man in the doorway. Every hair on the back of her neck stood up. There was absolutely nothing neutral about this man. Anger radiated from his very pores. Controlled anger, but Brigit sensed he was struggling to keep it that way at the moment as he stared down Torrison. “I can see that.”
“Dr. Kent.” Torrison slid around the corner of the desk and motioned to the man. “This is my husband, Conrad Flynn. He’s CIA Director of Operations.”
Flynn ignored Brigit, venom pouring from his gaze as he switched it from Torrison to Stone. Her worst fear confirmed, Brigit took a step back, reining in the urge to flee the office. Julia’s husband was about to lose it, and she didn’t blame him one bit if her assumption about their affair was accurate.
Stone sat unfazed by Flynn’s nonverbal death threat, and Brigit instinctively relaxed. His body language told her she had nothing to fear as he spoke to Flynn. “Dr. Kent has brought some important information to me this morning about a small-time terrorist named Peter Donovan. He may be the person behind Ella’s kidnapping, and he may be planning to set off a bomb at today’s Cormac O’Bern ceremony.”
Flynn’s death glare lessened at the mention of Ella. In the next minute, it completely evaporated as Stone laid out the nuts and bolts of Donovan’s plans.
He glanced at Brigit with a perplexed expression. “Holy shit, there’ll be five, six hundred people there today. Are you sure about this?”
“I’m not sure it will be a bomb, but it will be something major and will be targeted at Cormac O’Bern.”
His dark eyebrows drew together. “What kind of bomb?”
Brigit and Stone spoke at the same time. “Car bomb.”
Their gazes met and a ripple of something foreign and entirely too nice ran through her. She dropped her focus to her shoes, shocked again at the way he affected her.
Torrison spoke up. “The library’s parking lot is roped off for the outdoor reception, but there will be dozens of cars parked up and down the streets surrounding it. Even if it’s not a car bomb, we need to evacuate the area immediately, get the bomb squad and their dogs inserted, and circulate Donovan’s photo to all security personnel in the area.”
As Stone reached for his phone, Brigit stepped forward. “If you alert Donovan, he may disappear, thus making it nearly impossible for us to find her.”
His hand stilled over the handset. He glanced at Flynn. “Options?”
Flynn set his hands on his hips, dropped his head back and stared at the ceiling without seeing it. After a few seconds, he returned his attention to Stone. “Have the Feds notify O’Bern there’s been a threat on his life, but keep it quiet. Send an ambulance with a couple more Feds as the EMTs. They can take him out on a stretcher and transport him to a safe house. No O’Bern, no ceremony, no target. Everybody goes home healthy and Donovan doesn’t know we’re onto him. A six-year-old is trouble and he no longer needs a distraction. The worst he’ll do is abandon her.”
“But we don’t know where she is,” Torrison said. “We could still be signing her death warrant.”
“Peter has never killed a child,” Brigit told them. Stone, Torrison and then Flynn looked at her. Grasping at the four-leaf clover, she rubbed it hard between her finger and thumb. “It’s a big risk, but I know his MO well. With a little luck, I’ll be able to find her.”
The silence lasted only a second. Stone nodded at her, a speck of appreciation flickering in his face. “Flynn, you and Julia head down there. We’re running out of time. I’ll alert Director Agouti, and then Brigit and I will follow you.”
Flynn and Torrison scrambled out of the office, and Michael barked orders at Irene from his desk. Brigit moved slowly and steadily toward the still-open door.
Stone’s voice brought her up short. “Skipping out now?”
“I have a car waiting at the main gate.” She glanced over her shoulder. “I’ll meet you there if you like.”
“No.” The order was voiced quietly. “You’re riding with me. We need to talk.”
Her limbs defying her, she waited patiently for the deputy director to show her to his personal elevator.