Troublemaker (37 page)

She was silent for a while as he carefully cleaned as much of the blood off her as he could. She'd have loved to change out of her bloody clothes but didn't feel like going to the exertion of taking them off. No doubt she'd be taken to the nearest hospital where they'd be cut off her anyway. She didn't care; she never wanted to wear them again.

Despite her fatigue she began thinking of practical matters. “I'll need some pajamas and fresh underwear,” she murmured.

He gave her a startled look. “Right now?”

“In the hospital. There's no way I can get out of going, is there?”

“None.”

“Then gather some things together for me. Pajamas, underwear, robe, toothbrush and toothpaste, hairbrush. Also some jeans and sandals, a shirt and a bra. Make that two pairs of underwear, just in case. And anything else you see that might come in handy.”

He leaned over and kissed her. “Now I know you'll be all right.”

“Yeah? How?”

“You're giving me orders, just like when I first showed up here.”

“Someone had to. You weren't taking care of yourself.”

“And you aren't taking care of yourself now. I think I'll wait until reinforcements get here before I get your things,” he said, proving that he was smarter than the average bear.

“I'm lying here, aren't I?”

“Yeah, but I can't tell the difference between asleep and unconscious, so I need you to be awake.”

“All right, all right.” Her neck was hurting worse by the minute; she wasn't certain she could go to sleep anyway.

“I think I'll get a tattoo of a bull's-eye on my neck,” she threw out to see what kind of reaction she could get out of him. Given that she
currently didn't feel like doing anything, not even sitting up, that was about the limit of her entertainment.

“Bullshit,” he said, frowning down at her.

“Hey, you did.”

“I got the tattoo before I got shot.”

“I can pretend I did, too.”

“All right, so ‘Mom' on my triceps would have been less in-your-face, but the GO-Teams are an in-your-face group of guys. One time we—” Whatever tale he was about to get into was halted when he lifted his head at the distant sound of sirens. Tricks jumped up but didn't run to the door as she normally did whenever she heard something unusual. Instead she stood by the sofa and gave her tail an uncertain wag; the expression on her face was the same one she'd gotten as a puppy whenever she broke something and didn't know exactly what had happened but figured she was guilty anyway. She whined softly.

Bo cautiously shifted enough that she could touch Tricks, slide her fingers deep into the soft fur. “It's okay, princess. I smell bloody, but I'm fine.” To Morgan she said, “I expect you'll be heading to D.C. as soon as I'm hauled off, right?”

“It's my job,” he said, not even hesitating.

She hadn't expected him to stay and wouldn't have asked that of him. What was going on was a lot bigger than what had just happened here, despite the dead man lying in her yard.

The sirens rapidly got closer and louder. Morgan stood to look out the windows as the parade of vehicles roared into the yard. “Jesse's leading the posse,” he said. “Medics right behind him.” He opened the door to let the medics in and went out to meet Jesse.

From that minute on, Bo had no control at all—not that she'd had a lot before. Within a minute her house and yard were swarming with crisis personnel. Medics surrounded her, their bodies preventing her from seeing anything other than them. Morgan's tee shirt was cut off from around her neck, but part of the fabric stuck and they left that, bandaged over it. It said something about how she felt that she made no protest at the blood pressure cuff, the light in her eyes, the IV line that
was started almost immediately. Jesse came in to see her, his face that combination of carefully blank eyes and nothing-going-on-here expression that cops used to keep events at a distance so they could function.

“You're leading an interesting life lately, Chief,” he said.

“I keep interesting company.”

“Tell me about it. He filled me in. We'll handle things on this end. Don't worry about it. Nothing will hit the news until he gives the okay.”

She managed a truncated nod because the thick bandage kept her from moving her head very much. “Can you take care of Tricks? Take her to Daina?”

“No problem. If Daina can't take her tonight, I'll take her home with me.”

With all the people grouped around her she hadn't seen Morgan come back in, but he appeared beside her as she was being loaded into the back of the medic truck, one of her suitcases in hand. He'd taken the time to pull on another shirt. “Here's your purse, too,” he said, putting the suitcase inside the truck and setting her bag on top of the stretcher with her. “I put your phone in it.” He leaned down and kissed her, his blue eyes intent as he studied her. “I'll call you when I can.”

“Go do what you have to do,” she said, lifting her hand to touch his jaw. “I love you.”

“I love you back. Remember that.” He gave her one more fierce kiss, then was gone.

From inside the medic truck, she couldn't even watch as he drove away.

Sometimes things just went to hell and there was nothing you could do
about it except pick up the pieces and deal with what was left. He hadn't anticipated—no one had—the hacker actually being the one guy Axel had gotten to set up the trap and try to trace the hack. They must have had a big laugh about that, picturing Axel anxiously waiting for a trap that was never sprung because they knew it was a trap.

Dexter Kingsley had moved so fast Morgan hadn't had time to put in more sophisticated security measures, and the ones he
had
installed had been useless. Kingsley had evidently driven partway up the driveway while they'd been on their walk. Then he'd simply waited, maybe crouched out of sight behind Morgan's Tahoe, until someone left the house. If Morgan had been first, he'd have been shot on sight. But Bo had been first, and Kingsley couldn't shoot her without alerting Morgan, so he'd decided to use her as a shield.

God save him from amateurs. They were unpredictable, they did wild shit that anyone with half-assed training would never do, and sometimes it worked. What if Kingsley had thought to use a silenced weapon? He'd have shot Bo, maybe Tricks too, then waited until Morgan came out. Kingsley hadn't thought of it, and the dumbass plan hadn't worked out, but Bo had come so close to being killed Morgan had lost ten years off his life. Only his training had kept him moving, kept him thinking, all the while he was almost insane with gut-wrenching fear.

He wanted the hacker—Devan Hubbert—in a bad way, but Hubbert had given them the slip. At least Axel had been able to secure Hubbert's personal computer and currently had a whole computer forensic team breaking it down to the code. Whether or not they could find anything incriminating against the Kingsleys was up in the air. The bad news was that street cams showed Hubbert entering the Russian embassy, which meant either he had asylum or he was a deep plant. They couldn't touch him, at least not without the Russians' permission—which wasn't going to happen. In the meantime, they were digging as deep into his background as they could to determine if he was a deep plant or a homegrown traitor.

When Morgan had entered the GO-Teams headquarters, everyone he met looked surprised to see him. There were a lot of people on the support side who he knew on sight but whose names he didn't know. Everyone knew his name, though, and knew something really bad had gone down a few months before. The place looked like a fire drill, with everyone rushing around and a sense of urgency permeating the air.

He'd gone straight to Axel's office; though they hoped Devan Hubbert wasn't still able to monitor Axel's conversations, until they knew for certain, they were maintaining strict protocol over the phone, so nothing much had been said. Axel's office, his car, his home were all being swept for bugs. They were routinely swept anyway, but this time everything was being checked down to the wiring. All computers were being checked for any keylogging program. The damage Hubbert could have done—likely had done—was enormous.

“Let's step outside,” Axel said sourly, indicating how worried they were about the entire building being compromised. There was a safe room, completely shielded from electronics, but evidently he wasn't trusting even that right now.

From the street the building looked like a nondescript, slightly run-down office building in need of some repairs. There was secure parking from a discreet entrance in back, and adjacent was a public parking area where Morgan had parked since he didn't have his security ID with him.

The three-hour drive had put him there in the late afternoon, when the D.C. heat was oppressive, the humidity close to a hundred percent. Because of that, as well as the possibility of a parabolic mic being aimed their way—who the hell knew?—they got into Morgan's Tahoe and he cranked up the air conditioning as well as the radio.

“What happened?” Axel brusquely demanded.

“Dexter Kingsley showed up. Good thing it wasn't Yartsev, or the outcome would likely have been different. I didn't have any fancy security in place yet; it's sheer luck Bo and I aren't both dead. He grabbed her when she left for work. I heard the dog barking, saw what was going down, and flanked him from the rear. He was holding Bo with his pistol to the back of her head,” Morgan said tersely, his face tightening as he relived the sheer dread and, yes, terror, that he'd had to fight through so he could function. “She lifted her feet and dropped straight to the ground. He shot but his aim was off, got her in the neck.”

Axel's sour expression didn't so much as flicker. “Is she dead?”

“No. He didn't hit anything vital.”

“I assume he's dead though.”

“Correct.”

Axel said, “That's something, then. We still don't have shit against the congresswoman. Maybe there'll be something on Hubbert's personal computer, but until then we can't overtly move against her.”

“Overt” was the operative word. What was done in private was a different animal from what was said in public.

“I suggest we pay Congresswoman Kingsley a visit,” Morgan said, glancing at the time. “I wonder if she's still in her office.”

“No. I put a tail on her. She went home twenty minutes ago.” His smile was cold and mirthless. “I think talking to her is a good idea. Unofficially, of course.”

“It will be a pleasure.” The long drive had taken Morgan from a hot murderous rage down to a cold murderous rage, driven by the knowledge that he couldn't do what he wanted to do. His instinct was to walk up to the door and when Joan Kingsley opened it put a bullet in her forehead. He couldn't do that. He didn't give a damn about the law, but he did give a damn about whether or not he'd be free to spend the rest of his life with Bo. That mattered. Personal vengeance was one thing, but stupidity was another. Axel would take care of Congresswoman Kingsley, whether that action involved something catastrophic to her health or was restricted to removing her from a position of power—or a combination of both. Things happened. Sometimes those things were truly accidents. Sometimes they weren't.

“Let me drive,” Axel said. “I know the way.” They swapped seats, though Morgan wasn't crazy about it because Axel was a shitty driver. But when they arrived at the Kingsley residence in Bethesda, he saw why. The house was a gorgeous Georgian mansion, three stories, thick columns. A gated drive prevented casual access to the property. Axel let down the window to press the button. From his vantage point Morgan couldn't see a security camera, but there almost assuredly was one, and Axel would have known that. He preferred to keep Morgan in the passenger seat, out of sight. Morgan aided in that by looking down as if he
were fooling with his phone in case there were multiple cameras with different viewpoints.

“Yes?” came a voice, without identifying the residence.

“Axel MacNamara to see Congresswoman Kingsley.”

There was a short pause, then the gates began smoothly sliding open on their tracks. When there was enough room, Axel pulled forward. Watching in the side mirror, Morgan saw the gates slide together again.

There was a lot of money represented here, in the three-car garage, the security, the house, the manicured grounds. Morgan remembered their cabin cruiser, which wasn't a small one. He guessed it would run a couple of hundred thousand, at least; he'd never priced a boat that big or that fancy. Congresswoman Kingsley's salary wasn't anything to sneeze at, but neither was it sufficient for this. Dexter Kingsley must have been a hell of a lawyer—either that, or they'd been raking money in on the side for quite a while.

Axel got out and closed the driver's door. Morgan waited a little bit longer, watching the curtains to see if he detected any movement. Axel continued without pause up the sidewalk to the front door. Morgan thought he saw a slight twitch of the curtains, enough that whoever had peeked out had seen only Axel going to the door.

Quickly he exited, vaulted a piece of shrubbery, and was standing beside Axel when Congresswoman Kingsley opened the door, a calm smile on her pretty face, her silver-white hair immaculate.

He hadn't accomplished anything except surprise, but it was worth it to see the absolute shock on her face when she recognized him.

She began, “Morgan! It's wonderful to—” Then she stopped, realizing the pretense was no good because she knew that he'd remembered what he'd seen that day. She knew because of the hacker. She knew because her husband had gone to silence him. What she didn't know was what had happened to her husband.

“Congresswoman,” Axel said into the abrupt silence. “May we come in?”

She didn't say anything, simply opened the door wider and stepped away, leaving them to follow her or not.