Big Three-Thriller Bundle Box Collection (71 page)

ROYSE ROLLS

Paul Royse Residence Silver Springs, MD July 6, 1700

PAUL ROYSE STEPPED out of his fifteen-year
-old dark green Mercedes and checked both ways. Seeming satisfied no one was watching, he went to his trunk and pulled out a black briefcase. Once again he scanned the area, then headed across the neatly trimmed lawn of his fine English Tudor home, unlocked the dead bolt and opened the door. Darren Hunter greeted him from the other side with an icy stare.

Royse appeared shocked. He paused briefly before turning back toward the car. Janelle Sperling stepped out from a blue spruce tree along the drive and blocked Royse’s path.

Hunter walked around from behind him and set a silver case on the hood of Royse’s car and opened it. Packed inside were fifty thousand, American, hundred dollar bills—five million dollars.

“I believe you expected this to be yours,” Hunter said.

Spurs remembered the first question Royse and Burgess had asked her before sending her on her last mission to kill Hunter. “Why?” Royse had asked, “Why would Hunter do such a thing?” She wasn’t able to answer that question. But they sent her to assassinate him because she “knew him better than anyone else and would be the only one he would allow close enough to kill him.”

“Why?” she now asked Royse
his own
question, already knowing at least part of the answer.

Two nights earlier, on a beach in Tunisia, it had taken Spurs and Hunter only a few minutes to finally put all of the pieces to the
Operation Dead Reckoning
puzzle together. After Hunter recovered from his injuries and found the money on a shallow shelf in the Strait of Gibraltar, he’d posed as the Chameleon in order to trap the real lizard. His idea hadn’t gone exactly according to plan, but at least they sent Spurs to track him down. And, with the clues he’d given her in his letter, Hunter had been easy to find. She was the only one that could help him piece the mess together.

The love that Spurs felt for Darren Hunter made her believe him long enough to hear his explanation and when he’d finished, it was obvious to her that he was not the Chameleon.

The puzzle finally meshed when they realized that Royse was the most likely candidate. He had the connections in the intelligence community. He had the ability to coordinate such a devious plan all from a cushy office in DC. He had the financial need.

The operation that her uncle Paul required for his wife to make her whole again would be expensive. The vacation trip to the holy land that the Royses made had seemed odd to her. Now it made sense. He’d made contact with
Allah’s Jihad
during some point in their recent travels, probably to finalize the deal. The
Atchison
was chosen for his plan for obvious reasons—the new tomahawks, the drunken captain, the schizo XO, the misfit crew. Conniving with Admiral Pierce to ensure that the
Atchison’s
retrofit program would fail, he’d helped Pierce handpick Chardoff, Krebs and Goodman from their well tarnished personnel records, and had them transferred to the
Atchison.
He then won them over to the plot through an outside contact who also informed them that Hunter—North—was CIA. Most likely Royse had been wrongfully assured that the big Marine would take care of Hunter handily and complete the mission.

It all jelled when Royse left his busy assignment and flew to Europe for the memorial ceremony. In actuality, when the
Atchison
sank, he’d most likely been waiting on a southern Spanish beach for Chardoff’s helicopter to return with the money. There,
Allah’s Jihad
would turn over the balance of the ten million and Royse would give Chardoff and his men half of the loot and the necessary visas and passports for safe passage to the countries of their choice and then vamoose with what was left.

They’d pieced all of that together on their own from speculation and the info they’d had. Their shaky theory had solidified after speaking with Spurs’ aunt Katherine, Paul Royse’s wife, twenty minutes before Royse pulled into the driveway.

* * *

The young nurse smiled when she greeted Janelle Sperling and Darren Hunter at the front door.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “Mr. Royse isn’t home yet.”

“That’s okay,” Spurs said, “we’re not here to see Uncle Paul. We’re here to see Aunt Katherine.”

The young woman looked surprised and defensive until a voice came from another room. “It’s all right, Mary.”

The nurse stepped aside and Spurs stepped in to see her aunt lying in a hospital-type bed, watching from the doorway of the atrium.

“That’s my niece,” the frail woman said. “You’ll have to forgive Mary, Janelle. She’s my new nurse. Please come in. I see Darren Hunter is with you. This isn’t social, though, is it? I think I know why you’re here.”

Spurs and Hunter entered the large plant-filled room.

“That will be all, Mary,” Katherine Royse said and the nurse left them to talk.

“Good afternoon, Aunt Katherine,” Spurs said. She tried to smile.

“Hello, Mrs. Royse,” Hunter said nodding.

She grinned at him. “Always so formal, so respectful, my dear Darren.” To Spurs, she said, “It’s been so long since you’ve visited, Janelle—months. And every time I see you, you look more and more like your mother.” She seemed to leave them for a second, bemusing into the past. “She was so beautiful.” She soon drifted back to the present. “Paul is very proud of you, young lady,” she said grinning wide. “And, if I would have been able to have children, I would have wanted a daughter just like you. You know, you worried us sick when you were undercover?”

Spurs blushed. Aunt Katherine had been like a mother to her ever since Spurs’ mother died. And, with her father seldom present, she’d sensed a mutual sort of daughter/father love with Royse. He’d always been the one to look out for her. And, he certainly hadn’t wanted her to be mixed up in the Chameleon investigation. Before all of this, there’d been many times she’d wished Paul Royse was her father. Now she felt betrayed, but somehow guilty for feeling that way.

“Mrs. Royse, I’m sorry, but we’re here speak with you about . . . ,” Hunter began.

“Please, Darren,” she said, still smiling at Spurs. “Let’s not play games. You’re here to arrest my husband and me for treason. Isn’t that right?”

Hunter drew a deep breath.

“Why would we arrest you?” Spurs asked. She frowned at her sympathetically.

“It was Paul’s little surprise for me. But I knew what he was doing all along. I could have stopped him.” Her eyes looked up to the ceiling as if seeing an epiphany and her voice rose in excitement. “But I wanted to walk again. I wanted to go out and dance again—to enjoy evening strolls and hold my husband in my arms again. I could have stopped him. I’m just as guilty as he is. Hell, I’m even guiltier—he was doing it for me.” Now, she looked wide-eyed at Spurs. “The government health insurance w
ouldn’t pay to fuse my spinal cord back together. ‘The operation is experimental,’ they said. There were certainly no guarantees that it would work, anyway. Only a twenty-five percent chance.”

“What happened to Paul, Mrs. Royse?” Hunter asked.

She stared out into the flowers and vines.

“Last fall, I guess about nine months ago, the NCIS had been working with the FBI to uncover a terrorist plot to recruit US Navy personnel for some sort of drug thing. Well, they’d caught a guy but had to let him go for lack of evidence. His name was Tijani-Hewidi—something like that. Anyway, they’d found out the terrorists were willing to pay ten million dollars for whatever they were up to. Half was more than enough for my operation. Paul agonized over it for a long time. You see, he felt responsible for my accident.”

“Responsible?” Spurs asked.

“Yes, I’d driven off furious when I saw him with her. You know—the affair.”

Spurs flinched. It was as if someone had just slapped her on the back of the head.
Affair? Uncle Paul?
Somehow being unfaithful to Aunt Katherine was even more shocking than him being unfaithful to his country.

Katherine continued, “He never forgave himself. He promised me that, no matter what, he would make it up to me and somehow find a way to make me walk again. He meant it, too. We tried them all— the experts, the surgeons and scientists, all the big hospitals. None of them offered any hope. Then, we heard about this experimental surgery they were doing in Germany on people with sev
ered spinal cords. They were having
some
success, but the price tag was so high. Coincidentally, this Chameleon thing came up and the money was right. Paul contacted this Hewidi guy through a third party and made the deal with him. With Paul’s connections in the intelligence community, he didn’t have to reveal his name or even show his face. He told him to call him the Chameleon—because that was what Paul felt like— he’d changed his red, white and blue colors to black, Paul told me later—a black field with a skull and crossbones in the middle.”

“But how did he figure to get away with it?” Spurs asked.

“He didn’t. Not really. Oh, we made plans. A man in his position has ways of changing identities. We talked about a small ranch in Brazil or a cabin in the Alps. It was just a dream, it all hinged on my surgery—and this terrorist operation. I think he just hoped he could get me through the surgery before the FBI found out he was spending millions of dollars that he couldn’t have possibly obtained legally. I’m sure he was going to try to leave me out of any wrongdoing and take the blame himself. He finally told me about it on our trip to the Middle East. He insisted we go—I couldn’t understand why it was so important.” She frowned. “I’ve never been much for faith healing. It didn’t matter to Paul what happened to him, just that I could walk again. He’s always been such a sweet man.”

Sweet
, Spurs thought. He was responsible for so many deaths—it could have been thousands. And, he’d cheated on Aunt Katherine.

“You said affair, Aunt Katherine,” Spurs said. “Do you mind me asking, what affair?”

“Janelle, you really
don’t
remember, do you? We’ve wondered all along about that. You never did say anything. It was as if you’d blocked it out.”

“Aunt Katherine, what are you talking about?”

“Janelle, you were the one who told
me
about it. You were twelve. You and your mother were staying with us on the ranch in Oklahoma while your father was away with the Pacific Fleet. Paul had his FBI job in Oklahoma City at the time. I’d just pulled in our long driveway and saw you racing up on Rocket. You stopped me halfway to the house, crying like your best friend had died. Said something about some rabbit you’d killed and that your mama and Paul were acting funny and making noises like they were sick. That’s when I looked up to the house and saw Paul at the window of the guest room—your mother’s room.”

“My God,” Spurs said.

* * *

It all flashed back. Crying. Riding Rocket. Wanting to tell her mother. Have her comfort her for the terrible thing she’d just done—killing the poor bunny. Running into the house. Looking for her. Hearing the groans—agonizing, pain-filled moans, she’d thought. Without pausing, she burst into her mother’s bedroom. “Mama,” she’d said, breathless, her eyes still blinded from the rest of the world by the horrible image of the dead rabbit at her feet. “I didn’t mean to—I didn’t want to hurt him—the poor little bunny. . . .”

But her sight returned, and big eyes stared back at her—her mother’s. Uncle Paul on top of her mother—naked, squirming, kissing. Then, Uncle Paul had twisted around to see her. She couldn’t help but stand and stare, dumbfounded at their entwined arms and legs, their glistening naked bodies. She’d pulled the door shut hard, as if that would make it stop.

She ran down the hall, the steps, out the front door and leapt on Rocket. She wanted to get away.

She wanted to sort it all out. Make it go away. She saw Aunt Katherine turn in the driveway and rode wildly to her. All the while, it soaked in deeper, deeper. What had she seen? She knew a little about the birds and the bees. She’d seen the farm animals mate—horses, cattle, sheep, even dogs. That’s what they were doing—her Uncle Paul and her mother were mating. Not her father and her mother—that would have been shocking enough for her twelve-year-old eyes. Not her Uncle Paul and Aunt Katherine. No, it was her uncle and her mother.

When Uncle Paul appeared in that window, it was the last blow. She turned Rocket toward the hills and rode and rode and rode. It was the look that did it. His face when he gaped down at them, broken, scared, guiltily. She loved the man so much. She’d wished he was her father. He was so kind and gentle, not like his stepbrother the Admiral—her
real
father. Uncle Paul was always so understanding and protective. And she’d broken that. She’d broken that thin glass case that encapsulated everything so neatly. She’d broken everything inside that neat little glass box. She’d broken the man who she’d trusted— loved like a father. She had done that, and she wanted to take it all back. For, after that day, she knew her life, Uncle Paul’s life, Aunt Katherine’s life and her
mother’s
life would never be the same.

* * *