Uncovered by Truth (2 page)

I spit on the ground, the taste of blood filling my mouth. “Why would I help you do a damn thing?”

“Because if you don’t, someone you care about will die. And by someone, I mean Elizabeth.”

A cold chill runs up my spine at the thought of her getting hurt. Knowing I have no choice but to play along for now, I say, “I’m listening.”

“You’re going to kill Bill Hutchison.” He looks down at his chest and wipes at some nonexistent lint on his lapel.

I let out a humorless laugh. “And why would I do that?” I’m calm on the outside, but the situation is slowly sinking in. Maybe my cover hasn’t been blown and this is something else completely.

“Because I told you to. I thought we’d already gone over the stakes and what will happen should you choose not to comply,” Cal says.

“Okay, let me rephrase. Why do you want him killed?” I know who Bill Hutchison is. He’s running against Cal in the primary election and is ahead of him in the polls, which is exactly what the Bureau wants. We needed a strong candidate who has a chance of beating Cal. But I don’t want him to know I have this information. So for now, I’ll keep my cards close to my chest and play dumb.

“You don’t need to worry about the details, just worry about how to get the job done.” He stares at me impassively, his face at odds with the request he just made. You would think he’s asking me to pick up some milk at the grocery store or something.

“For me to plan effectively, I need to know who he is to make my job a lot easier.” I already know the answer, but I want to hear him say it.

“He’s ahead in the polls and right now it’s mathematically impossible for me to beat him in the primary elections. Once he’s eliminated, I won’t have any more . . .” he pauses, looking up at the ceiling as he finds the right word, “obstacles. You see, Mr. Matthews,” he says as he leans in closer to me. “I’m a very determined man. If there’s something in my way, I simply remove it. Take you, for example. You come along and suddenly Elizabeth wants a life filled with love. She can’t leave me. I won’t allow it. So I take you out of the equation and she’s back to being her robotic self who waves at the cameras and lets me fuck her hard at night.”

I pull on my restraints and arch my back, trying to get loose, eager to get my hands around his throat for talking about her like that. “You better keep your fucking hands off of her!” I yell at him while the rope around my wrists starts cutting into my skin.

“You don’t get this done, and me burying my dick inside of her will be the least of your worries.”

“You just wait, motherfucker—”

“I’d watch it if I were you,” he warns. I can’t let my emotions get the better of me right now. I have to keep a level head and get through this or I won’t be able to help her.

Taking a deep breath, I quit fighting and say, “And you want me to, what? Walk up to him and put a bullet in his head?”

“No, that could be linked to me since it’s no secret you were my wife’s bodyguard. I need you to do what you were trained to do; kill someone from a long distance without being detected.” I’m sure he’ll just let me walk away when it’s all done, too.
Yeah, right.
“Just remember you’re doing this for Elizabeth. You fail, she dies. It’s simple,” he says with a shrug. With that, he turns to leave.

“Wait!” I call out after him. He stops but doesn’t turn. “Are you going to have one of your goons with me at all times?” I can’t have someone trailing me if I’m going to report all of this back to headquarters.

Cal slowly turns to face me. “Of course I am. Do you think I’m dumb enough to let you run around unsupervised?”

“Then this isn’t going to work.” I look him dead in the eyes, trying to give off a level of authority while I’m tied up to a chair.

“Excuse me?” Anger flashes in his eyes quickly before he masks it.

“I can’t do my research and plan a hit with a tail. Look at these guys.” I nod my head in their direction. “They don’t exactly scream discrete. If I’m going to be sneaking around undetected, I need a little latitude. If I get busted, it won’t take much to connect me to you.”

He’s silent for a minute thinking about what I’ve said. His jaw ticks a few times and I know this doesn’t make him happy. “Then don’t get caught.” His voice is low, no doubt meant to be a threat. “If anything goes wrong—if I think you’re doing anything suspicious—I won’t hesitate to take that bitch out. Am I clear?” I grind my teeth to keep from saying something stupid, but hearing him talk about Elizabeth like that pisses me the fuck off. It’s a good thing I’m tied up right now because I would be beating the shit out of him if I wasn’t.

I nod. “Crystal.”

“Good, get to work. I want you to give my guys daily reports on your plan and progress.” He doesn’t wait for my reply as he turns and walks toward the door. He pauses and turns back to me. “Oh, one more thing.” Looking at one of the big guys, he nods his head in my direction. He approaches, pulls back his fist, and punches me in the stomach. I hunch over in pain as much as my restraints will allow. The wind is knocked out of me and I cough uncontrollably. “That’s for fucking my wife,” Cal sneers. My head snaps up as I struggle to regain my breath.

He comes back over to me. “Don’t look so surprised.” His hand rests on the back of my chair and he leans into my face. “I know everything Elizabeth does.
Everything.
I hope you enjoyed sampling what’s
mine,
because it’ll be the last time you ever touch her again. I’ll make sure of it.”

“Fuck you.” I pull at the rope tied around my wrists needing to get up and strangle this asshole.

“No, thanks. That’s what I have Elizabeth for.” A sadistic smile takes over his face.

I buck wildly at the thought of him touching her. “I will kill you, motherfucker!”

He throws his head back, his cold chuckle cutting through my rage. “You’re not in any position to make threats, Mr. Matthews.” With that, he walks out.

My blood boils just beneath the surface of my skin and I know if I don’t get my shit together quickly, this will get bad, and that ultimately puts Elizabeth in danger. After several seconds, I let out a slow breath and some of the tension coiled tightly in my body with it.

This is definitely not an ideal situation; I just hope I can get enough space to accomplish what I need to without blowing my cover. So far, it looks like he has no idea I’m an agent and I need to keep it that way. If he finds out, I know for sure my ass is done, and Elizabeth will likely die too. The thought of her hurt turns my stomach.

So many things start running through my head as I try to formulate some kind of plan quickly. I’ll need to find a way to contact my boss as soon as possible to let him know what’s going on. While living at the Fitzgerald residence, I would send a short text every night letting him know what I was finding out. Luckily, Cal was gone a lot, giving me the opportunity to search his office here and there. I’ll give him credit though, the bastard is careful. I wasn’t able to find anything concrete to link him to the charges we were going after.

“Bruce, you grab him while I pull the car around,” one of the big guys says. I don’t recognize the name and make a mental note to report it later. Bruce walks over and starts to untie me from the chair.

Before he finishes, he looks at me and says, “You try anything and you’re a dead man. Understand?”

“Yep,” I reply. Once my hands are free I bring them around to my lap and rub my sore wrists. They’re really red and raw from the friction of the rope, and my fingers start to tingle as the blood returns to them. Bruce yanks me up by my arm, which causes me to stumble a little since my body is so stiff from sitting in one spot for so damn long. “Where are we going?” I ask once we’re outside and they’re shoving me into the backseat of a black car with windows that are just as dark.

“We’re taking you to the apartment where you’ll get started,” the other guy says.

THE NEXT DAY I’m absently searching for general information on Bill Hutchison in this dingy ass apartment they’ve got me staying at. On the way here yesterday, I had convinced Bruce and Rodney—the other guy watching me—I needed a computer to research my target. They’re dumber than shit, so it didn’t take a whole lot of effort on my part to get my way. I sent a quick, coded message to Turner, and made it look like I was actually working on a plan to assassinate Hutchison.

Bill Hutchison is the complete opposite of Cal. Where Cal comes from a lot of money, Hutchison is a self-made man. He’s relatable and likable, something Cal has always struggled with. As I sit here, my mind replays all of the events from yesterday to try to piece together any extra clues. Cal said I’d be perfect for the job given my skill set in the military. I can only assume he’s referring to my sniper qualification I received while serving. While I’m doing some digging, I come across a video of Cal at his most recent campaign stop from this morning. I click on it and once it starts, my heart drops to the pit of my stomach.

It’s not what Cal is saying that causes this reaction; I couldn’t give two fucks about him. It’s my beautiful girl sitting off to the side who makes me feel like I’m breaking in a million pieces. She’s always put up this fake front in the public eye, and that used to piss me off. But I’d much rather see that than what I’m staring at now. She’s looking straight ahead with a blank look on her face. There’s no smile, no clapping.

No life.

Her face is void of any emotion and it’s killing me.
God, what is he doing to you?
Throughout her obvious misery, she still had a light, an inner fight about her. Now it’s gone.

I jot down a few of the campaign stops Hutchison is planning to make in the next week or so and decide this is a good place to start. The sooner things get started, the sooner I can end all of this and get to Elizabeth. Judging from this video, she needs to get the hell away from Cal quickly before she becomes this empty shell forever.

“Tell the boss to get his jet ready,” I say. “We need to go to Iowa next week.”

“Prepare for landing,” the pilot says over the intercom. I was hoping we’d be on Cal’s private jet to connect him to all of this, but no such luck. I tried to remember the wing number as we were boarding to pass it on to my boss so he can find out who owns this. Maybe that’ll be our link to Cal.

The plane touches down on a runway in Iowa and finally comes to a stop. Once we unload, I’m immediately ushered into a car that will take us to the location I specified last week.

Anything can happen on the job, and you try to expect the unexpected. From the very beginning I’ve been thrown into situations I didn’t plan for. It all started when I looked into big green eyes. One look at Elizabeth and I knew I was fucked. There was no way I was going to be able to resist her. She caught my attention with her gorgeous looks and quiet intelligence, but I was a gonner when I found out what a selfless person she was. Once she told me about her mom, I fell for her, and I fell hard. I knew she wouldn’t leave Cal to be with me, and I wasn’t going to ask her to make that decision. Not when her mother’s health was on the line. When she said she was leaving him, I’ve never felt so damn happy in my whole life. That was short lived. The thought of what could have been eats at me, and I constantly think about what we would be doing right now if we were together instead of in this fucked up situation. A situation where she doesn’t even know I’m alive.

My motivation has always been the job. In the military my sole focus was bringing down terrorists. When I got out and joined the FBI, it was the same. Until I met Elizabeth. Now, she’s what’s most important, and I’ll do anything and everything to get her out of there.

We stop a few blocks away from where the event is being held. It’s not starting for another three hours, but I wanted to see what kind of holes are in the security to see how easy it would be to set up in advance. At least that’s what I told the guys. When I went over my plans for this trip, I told them it was a bad idea to send Rodney with me, but they wouldn’t listen, insisting I needed one of them with me so I “didn’t do anything stupid.” What they don’t know is I’m setting them up. I need them off my ass so I can move around with a little freedom.