Noble Intentions: Season Three (35 page)

“What’s going on?” Sasha said.

“He got another threat. They told
him it’s not over, we got the wrong guy, and he’s next.”

Sasha looked all around. “Where’s
Jon with the van?”

Jack and Bear looked at one
another. Bear’s mouth hung open an inch.

“You don’t think?” Jack said.

“Son of a bitch,” Bear said.

“He was right there the whole time.
Right under our damn noses. Now he’s got a head start.”

“Jon?” Sasha said. “There’s no way.
Look, I know he’s a bit rough around the edges, but his top priority is keeping
Alex safe.”

“Then why isn’t he here now?”

“None of us are thinking straight.”

Jack shook his head. “You stay
here, Sasha. Keep him inside the truck.”

“Where are you going?”

“Not far.”

Jack and Bear headed toward the
rear of the fire engine, split up. Jack walked to where Mason stood. The guy
had a blue blanket draped over his shoulders and wrapped around his body.
Mason’s gaze followed Jack as he approached.

“Tell me the truth, now,” Jack
said.

Mason said nothing.

“If you had something to do with
this, you’re better off letting me know than having them extract it from you.”

A smile formed on Mason’s lips. The
dying fire reflected in his eyes, cast shadows across his face.

“Dammit Mason, talk to me.”

“I left six of my men to burn,
Jack. And why? Because I couldn’t pull a damn trigger? I was too afraid that
son of a bitch was going to push a button and blow us all to hell.”

“You were following orders, that’s
all, Mason.”

“Orders? What orders said kill half
a dozen men?”

“You were told to bring him in
alive. He changed the plans, and you had to improvise.”

“I froze, Jack. That’s what I did.”

Jack said nothing. What could he
say?

“And now you want to know what I
had to do with it. Nothing, that’s what. If I did, I would have taken him out
clean and let those men live.”

Jack felt the pain of the man’s
words, but he knew that if Mason were involved, all evidence of it was
destroyed. No better way to do that than blowing up the house that held the
truth.

But Jack could not deny Mason’s
apparent mental state. His words sounded true, not a fabrication.

Mason turned his head. Jack looked
back to see what the man had noticed. Headlights approached. As they neared the
house, the van came into view.

“Wait here,” Jack said. He stepped
into the middle of the road. It forced Jon to stop beside the fire engine.

Jon jumped out of the van, looked
around, and then ran up to Jack. “What’s going on? Where’s Alex?”

Jack stepped sideways in a
half-circle. Jon followed, turned his back to the truck.

“Who’d you call while you were
gone?”

“Call? What the bloody hell are you
talking about?”

“You made a call. Who was it?”

“I’m not telling you a damn thing.
Where’s Alex?”

Jon started to turn. He buckled
forward when Bear hit him from behind. The men crashed to the ground. Bear wove
his arms between Jon’s, yanked him up.

“What are you doing?” Jon kicked
and thrashed, but could not break free from Bear’s grasp.

Jack stepped forward. The men were
face to face. Inches separated them.

“Who did you call?” Jack said.

“What the bloody hell are you
talking about?” Jon said.

“Dammit Jon, you left and less than
ten minutes later Alex got another threat. None of us called in to report this.
It had to be you. So tell me, who did you call?”

Jon thrashed side to side in an
effort to free himself. Every movement he made resulted in Bear tightening his
grip.

“Get him off of me,” Jon said.

“Not till you tell me who you
called.”

“Nobody, OK. Take my damn phone out
of my pocket and you’ll see I didn’t call anyone.”

Jack nodded at Bear. The big man
released Jon, who pulled out his phone and handed it to Jack. A few flicks of
Jack’s finger confirmed that no call had been placed.

“He could have erased it,” Bear
said.

By this point, Sasha had joined
them. “Let me see it.”

Jack handed her the phone. She
tapped on the screen a few times and activated the speaker. The phone rang and
a moment later a man answered.

The guy said, “What are you guys
doing out there?”

They all turned toward the fire
engine and saw Alex looking at them through the side window. He had his cell
pressed to the side of his head.

“What was the time stamp on the
last call between them?” Bear said.

“Hours ago,” Sasha said. “Unless
he’s hiding another phone, it wasn’t him.”

Jon turned his pockets inside out.
“Search me. Search the damn van. I’m telling you for the last damn time, I
didn’t call anyone.”

About that time, Mason walked over.
He stared through them, past them. The expression on his face was null and
void. “Couldn’t help but overhearing your conversation. I called and reported
this to Mills a few minutes after the fire truck arrived.”

“Who is Mills?” Jack said.

“His boss,” Sasha said.

The four of them stood in silence
for a beat. They looked from one another until all stares fell upon Mason. The
moment seemed to snap the man back into reality. His blank expression turned to
fear, then anger.

“Wait a minute,” Jack said. “Mills
is your boss? Mills would have been the one who issued the no kill order then.
Right?”

Mason nodded. “It came through him,
at least. Could have been from his boss, though. Maybe even another on his
level. Maybe outside the organization.”

“That would be us,” Jon said. “Or
them.” He pointed toward Sasha.

Jack made eye contact with Sasha.
“This whole time you’ve been watching Mason and his partner, did you ever hone
in on Mills?”

She looked at Mason, then back at
Jack. “I can’t discuss that with him around.”

Jack grabbed her hand and pulled
her away. They walked until they were beyond the bright pool of light cast by
the fire.

“This good enough?” he said.

She looked back, took a deep
breath. “We’ve had Mills under surveillance for over twelve months. He’s clean,
Jack. I’ve got nothing to support any notion that he was working with Naseer.”

“But you can’t say that for sure,
can you?”

“Yes, I can.”

“Can you say with certainty that
Mills isn’t the one that’s making threats on Alex’s life?”

She said nothing.

“Can you?”

She remained still for a moment,
then shook her head. “That doesn’t mean we can go in and detain him.”

“Like hell you can’t,” Jack said.
“So this is what we know. Mason called Mills and told his boss what’d happened
here. We’ve got a gap of what, twenty minutes? Maybe thirty since then? How far
could the info have traveled during that time? How high up the chain? And how
far up were you looking?”

She said nothing, crossed her arms.

“Look, either Mills called Alex
just now, or someone he was in contact with did. We need to find out who he’s
talked to, and we need to know now. Can your people do that or am I wasting my
time?”

She stared at Jack for a few
seconds, then pulled out her phone. “Carrie, listen to me. I need you to get
the records of every call Cameron Mills placed and received starting three days
ago. Yes, all of them. Home, office, cell, tin cans. I don’t care from what, I
want to know where to. Call me back.” She hung up, glanced at Jack, placed a
second call. “Send a team to detain Cameron Mills. No, don’t bring him in. Keep
him wherever he is. Yeah, even if he’s on the toilet. Don’t be a jackass.
Detain him in his house if he’s there. Call me when you’ve got a location, and
then again when you’ve got him.”

She hung up and forced a smile at
Jack. Despite the gesture, she did not look pleased at being told to do her job
by him. “Mills isn’t going anywhere.”

“OK. We are. Let’s get out of here
before someone realizes that’s the Prime Minister in the fire truck.”

So Jack put his hand on her
shoulder and led her to the van. He nodded toward Bear, who opened the door to
the truck’s cab and helped Alex down. Then Bear, Alex and Jon got inside the
van, joined by Jack and Sasha. Ragged breathing led to steamed windows. Jon
fired up the engine, hit the accelerator. Windows went down and cool air
wrapped in smoke whipped around inside.

They were halfway down the street
when Jack yelled, “Stop!”

Jon slammed on the brakes. The van
veered toward the ditch, stopped when the front tire hit the grass.

“What is it?” Jon said.

“Mason didn’t get in,” Jack said.

Jon put the van in reverse and
traveled backward almost as fast as he had forward. He went easier on the
brakes this time and they came to stop next to where Mason was standing. The
man got inside without a word and without making eye contact with any of them.
Sasha slid over rather than making Mason climb over her.

Jack took one last look at the
house. The firefighters had the blaze under control and confined to one small
portion of the home. The charred remains rose into the night like a slumbering
dinosaur skeleton. He thought about the men who perished inside and he wondered
if Naseer had men in there who had managed to escape. Owen, for instance.
They’d seen him earlier at the store, but there had been no evidence that he
had been inside the house. Mason had told him they only found Naseer and two of
his men. Where had Owen gone? Was the guy on the run with Mason’s partner?

Mason yawned, stretched his arms.
He turned in his seat and leaned against the van’s sliding door. He looked
toward Jack. The two men stared at each other for a moment.

“What?” Mason said.

“Nothing,” Jack said.

He had questions for the guy, but
not now. He let his gaze drift and settle on Sasha. Their gazes lingered on one
another for an uncomfortable moment. Then the woman had the same idea as Mason.
She shifted in her seat and leaned back against the window and let her eyes
slowly shut.

“Don’t close your eyes,” Jack said.

“Why?” she said.

“Your concussion.”

“But I’m sleepy.”

“Exactly.”

“Just five minutes, Dad.”

Jack shook his head, tapped Bear on
the knee. “Flick her any time she closes her eyes for more than five seconds.”

They remained quiet for a few
minutes. The sound of the tires gliding along the asphalt was like a 747’s
turbine.

Bear leaned forward and said, “Can
you check and make sure Mandy’s doing all right?”

“Gloria too,” Mason added.

Jack lifted an eyebrow. Had the
forced time together helped the couple settle a few issues? Mason dismissed him
with a flick of his hand.

From the front of the van, Alex
placed a call to his staff and verified that Mandy and Gloria were safe and
doing well. Jack wondered about Mia and Erin. He’d heard nothing of Erin’s
condition since he last spoke with Dottie. Now that the raid was finished, his
thoughts centered on the women and Mia. He cycled through his phone and found
Leon’s number. He sent a text asking about Erin’s condition.

A two word response followed.

Doing OK.

That would have to do, Jack
figured. He’d go visit her the first chance he got. Knowing that Erin had
pulled through eased his mind. He leaned back, let his head fall to the side.
The image of the burning house seemed etched into his mind’s eye. He replaced
the flames with the faces that surrounded him, and the faces of those he wished
surrounded him. A couple of the faces remained the same. Then, after several
moments of focusing on Erin and Mia, a new face appeared. With hair as rich and
red as the flames that engulfed the house, and eyes as deep as the emerald sea,
Clarissa smiled and reached out for him. And in her imagined embrace, Jack
drifted off to sleep.

Hannah took off her thin blue
jacket and placed it over Mia. The girl had laid down a few hours earlier, her
body stretched across three chairs. The cool temperature and relaxing ambient
lighting made the small room more conducive to sleeping than the main waiting
room. It also helped that they were alone. At the same time, that fact made
Hannah more than a little uneasy.

A group of men had shown up at
Dottie’s an hour after Leon and Clarissa had left with Erin. They had come
inside and set up in various rooms in the house, and said nothing. Dottie had
spoken with one man at length, and he escorted Hannah and Mia to the hospital.
And then he left.

They had been kept in the dark
about Erin’s condition since their arrival. Clarissa had spoken briefly with
them, but Leon had yet to be seen. To make matters worse, they wouldn’t allow
Mia to see her mother. This frightened Hannah, and she had begun to expect the
worst. She put on a brave face for Mia, but with the little girl asleep, she no
longer had to.

So she rose and went to the window
that overlooked the city. Tears distorted the view. Lights burst into a
kaleidoscope of colors. She choked back a sob, wrapped her arms across her
chest and hugged tight. Tears slid down her cheeks. They were as much a result
of the moment as a reaction to the cumulative events.

What would happen to Mia, she
wondered, if Erin didn’t make it? Surely, the child could not live with Dottie.
Not now, not with everything Erin had discovered about the woman. The truth had
come out about Jack being the father, but she considered him to be in no
position to raise a child. She doubted he could take care of himself, let alone
a kid, if forced into a regular lifestyle. She didn’t know him all that well,
but it was obvious the guy wasn’t cut out for the nine to five.

Hannah lifted her head and adjusted
her gaze toward the horizon. The first traces of the sunrise appeared in the
distance. Dark blue faded to pale. She glanced at her watch. Five-fifteen a.m.
Would they hear something soon?