EDGE OF SHADOWS: The Shadow Ops Finale (Shadow Ops, Book # 3) (26 page)

He waited, his face a fingertip away from hers. She blinked, wondering why his face kept blurring. Then decided this wasn’t a time to be listening to her thoughts or memories or even common sense. Instead, she listened to her heart and wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders, pulling him to her. Not for another kiss, but a simple embrace.

“I don’t know if I know how to trust anymore,” she admitted. “But maybe I can learn.”

He pulled back, kissed her gently on the forehead. “That’s a start. Let’s take care of business. Then you and I are going to a beach, someplace warm and sunny and private where we can lie back and let life happen.”

She couldn’t resist a chuckle at that. As if either of them had ever taken a real vacation in their lives. “It’s a deal.”

Chapter 26

Another knock on the door, breaking the quiet magic that bound her and Billy. Reality sucked. Or at least its timing did.

“Rose…” It was Chase. “Someone’s answered your messages.” Urgency sparked in his voice, and she knew he was counting on her to find the key to saving KC.

She ran one fingertip down Billy’s cheek, along his jaw. “Back to work.”

He nodded but didn’t release her hand from his until they left the bedroom.

The kids sat at the table, a pot of beef stew demolished between them. The computer had a new instant message on the screen. One of her assets, a surgical ICU nurse at Georgetown, had come through. Rose called her back via the computer’s secure connection.

“Claire, it’s Rose. What do you have for me?”

“Rose, perfect timing. My friend, Anish, is right here. He was the resident on the case.”

Rose described the man from the tunnel. “Does that sound like him?”

“Yes. Except he had more than one laceration—although the neck wound was the worst.”

Camouflage? Rose wondered. A man with a single, deep laceration to the neck would stand out, get the cops called. “And his injuries were accidental?”

“Far as I know. Here, let me let Anish tell you all about it.”

“Yes, ma’am.” A man with a deep voice and slight Indian accent came on the line. “I can’t divulge the patient’s name, confidentiality, of course, but we did have a trauma patient brought in last week with a severe neck wound. Terrible accident—visiting his mother-in-law, putting up a storm window and it broke. Terrible lacerations to the neck and face. By the time he arrived, he was in hemorrhagic shock. We resuscitated him, but he remained in a coma. Family transferred him to a long-term-care facility near Norfolk two days ago.”

“Transferred? Isn’t that a little quick after just a few days in your facility?”

“Yes, but honestly it was a relief. His trachea was partially severed, and he’d suffered a prolonged period of hypoxia.”

“Lack of oxygen to the brain,” Rose translated.

“Yes. He was showing no improvement, yet the family refused to allow further tests to verify his brain activity or consider DNR. Perhaps their own doctors, closer to home, can help them make the adjustment better.”

“So he was basically brain dead?”

The surgeon hesitated. “Still had a heartbeat but totally ventilator dependent, and his EEG was flat, so yes, although we’d have to do more tests before we ever gave the family that diagnosis.”

“Thanks, doctor, you’ve been a huge help.” She hung up and turned to Billy. “So our third man can’t be responsible for any of this.”

“No. But Norfolk.” He frowned. “For some reason, that bothers me.”

“It’s a port city like Savannah,” she suggested.

His eyes went wide. “The president. He’s in Norfolk today to commission a new destroyer in a few hours. I was supposed to escort Susan there.”

“Billy, you can’t seriously think—” She broke off. He was right. The Preacher wouldn’t have hesitated to target that kind of high-profile crowd, so why would his children? “But the base would've been secured, all traffic in and out of port stopped days ago, no-fly zone in place—”

He turned to look at her. “Just playing a hunch. You think I’m wrong?”

“No. I think you’re right. We’re going to Norfolk.”

“You’ll never get on base,” Chase said. “It'll be locked down tight.”

“Maybe not. But we can check out our guy from the tunnel and his family.” Rose clicked on the computer to where a new message waited. “Claire sent me his name: Malcolm Bennett. Shadyside Care Facility, Room 112.”

“She gave him up? She knows she could get fired and a huge fine, right?” Billy said.

Rose shrugged. “She knows.”

“This is what you did. All those years with the CIA. You convinced people to break the rules.”

“I wouldn’t say convinced. More like gave them a choice. Which rules were worth following and which weren’t? Like Claire. Her cousin was killed by an IED in Afghanistan. So when I call and need a patient’s name, she knows I wouldn’t be asking unless I was trying to stop someone like the men who killed her cousin. Makes the decision easy.” She turned to him. “Wasn’t it the same with Delta? A lot of your job was working with locals.”

He snorted. “Yeah, but the Army takes a different approach. Bribery. It’s a whole lot quicker than your touchy-feely, win-their-hearts way.” He paused, pulling up a map of the area, finger tracing the quickest route. They could be in Norfolk in under an hour. “What makes you think Bennett’s family will be with him?”

“The man who took me was focused on retribution for my killing his father and brothers.”

“That’s what the man on the Mall said yesterday as well. You paying for the Preacher and his brothers’ deaths.
Brothers
plural. How many of them are there?”

She shrugged. “What’s important is that they care enough to move this guy close to where they are. If you were a fanatic, brought up to believe that your family was destined to be the next messiahs, to lead this country to greatness, would you leave a wounded brother unattended?”

“No man left behind,” Chase said.

Rose turned to him. “We’ll find her, Chase. I promise.”

He stared at her long and hard before finally nodding. She grabbed her gear and turned to the door where Billy was waiting. She glanced back at Chase and nodded to where Jay and Eve sat talking. “You’ll keep them safe?”

“Do you even have to ask?”

She smiled at him. “No. I don’t.”

She and Billy headed out to the van. As they sped down the dirt road leading to the highway, Billy said, “Maybe we’ll get lucky and EZ will be there. I’d like a conversation with that rat.”

<><><>

The Shadyside Rest Home was a beige
, single-floor facility on a small patch of land just outside of the naval base. Rose and Billy arrived just after one o’clock and, here in Norfolk, the sun was shining. Everywhere, it seemed, except over Shadyside. The rest home was cloaked in perpetual shadows cast by the taller office buildings that flanked it.

Billy parked the van, and Rose undid her seat belt. She dialed Billy’s burner cell. He answered, kept it on speaker as he slid it back into his jacket pocket, behind his handkerchief, while she muted her handset.

“Remember what we decided,” he said. “Keep out of sight. You’re supposed to be dead.”

“I don’t like you going in without backup.”

“It’s a nursing home, not Mogadishu. I think I can handle it.” He leaned over the center console to give her a quick kiss. “I’ll be back,” he promised.

Rose couldn’t help herself. Allowing her emotions to escape their locked boxes, to give them freedom—it made her feel giddy and selfish and thrilled and…she grabbed Billy’s wrist and hauled him back for a proper kiss. One that neither of them would forget.

When she released him, he made a small, animal noise, and she knew he wanted more. She grinned in satisfaction. Mission accomplished.

“Okay, you can go now,” she said, dismissively. A blue Volvo pulled up beside them, and a woman got out.

Billy took a moment to regain his composure, a sly smile crossing his features. “When this is all over, you and I are going to have a proper conversation in a place where we finally have some privacy.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” she assured him, her hand squeezing his thigh in a most unprofessional manner.

To her surprise, he took her hand, turned it over and kissed the sensitive skin of her palm. Gently, carefully. As if he understood how very hard this was for her, revealing her true feelings, letting someone inside the barbed wire she’d barricaded her heart behind all these years.

“I won’t be long,” he promised.

Rose slid over to the driver’s side and listened through the cell phone as Billy talked his way past the reception desk. Such a smooth operator. He even whistled as he walked down the hall—more for her benefit than keeping in character, she was certain.

“Bennett’s in the fourth room on the south side,” he said. “I’m going in.”

Silence for a moment. And then the sound of a man’s voice.

“Billy, what took you so long?” EZ said. “I was expecting you hours ago.”

<><><>

Billy acted surprised
, even though he wasn’t. Reminded himself that he was here to gather intel, not to grab the pistol EZ held on him and turn it on the man who’d betrayed them all. Much as he so very dearly wanted to.

He raised his hands in surrender. The room was small, one window, blinds drawn tight, a hospital bed with a man lying in it surrounded by machines, a single wooden chair, bathroom, and EZ. EZ stood beside Billy, just out of arm’s reach, weapon pointed at Billy’s head, and gestured for Billy to move forward.

Now came the tricky part. Thankfully, EZ made it easy.

“Hands on the bed, lean forward,” he commanded. Billy stepped toward the bed, slipping the phone with the open line to Rose under the top blanket as EZ frisked him and took his Beretta, knife, and second phone.

When he was finished, EZ jerked Billy up by the collar and pivoted him down onto the chair.

“Told you he wouldn’t be able to resist the bait,” he said, perching on the edge of the bed and talking as if the man in the coma could hear them. He patted the man’s hand. The steady beeping of the monitor and whoosh of the ventilator were the only indications that the man was still alive. “Thanks, bro.”

“Is he really your brother?” Billy asked. “Or is that a term of endearment?”

EZ gave him a long, hard stare. “My father had six sons, one daughter. Thanks to you people, we’ve lost all but three. So don’t speak of my family again or you’ll regret it.” Then he laughed, a sound that was unnerving in the tiny room filled with the noise of the machines keeping the man alive. “What am I saying? He’s going to regret it anyway, isn’t he?”

Billy decided to play along, focus on business rather than EZ’s obvious personal issues. The computer specialist had always been a bit on the manic side, but nothing like this. Was the pressure getting to him? If so, Billy could use that.

“Three of you are going to stop us?”

EZ snapped his gaze to meet Billy’s. “We already have. You really don’t get it, do you? We already won. Not today, not last week with the glorious passing of our father. We won twenty years ago when our father first conceived his plan. The might of this entire corrupt government cannot eclipse his brilliance.”

“Twenty years ago? You would've been, what, thirteen?” It wasn’t exactly the intel Billy had come looking for, but as long as it kept EZ talking.

“Twelve. Sent to live with foster parents. Followers of my father but accepted in your society.”

Billy thought back to EZ’s personnel file. “Your parents were professors at MIT.”

EZ nodded. “Exactly the kind of people whose child prodigy would earn the attention of the intelligence services. When the NSA recruited me, everything unfolded as my real father had planned. As difficult as it was leaving him as a child, the day I knew I was exactly where he needed me was the proudest day of my life.”

This was nuts. Whether or not it was true, Billy needed info about the here and now. “And today’s another proud day for your family, isn’t it? Assassinating the president?”

He hoped to nudge EZ into divulging their plan. Instead, EZ merely grinned as he flicked off the monitors attached to the man in the coma.

“It won’t be long now.” He stroked the man’s hair, then turned to Billy. “Part of being family is making the tough choices.”

“Like using your own brother as bait?”

“Exactly. I understand what’s most important. So does he.” EZ turned off the machine breathing for the comatose man.

Billy lunged forward, but EZ waved him back with the pistol. “No one’s coming to help,” he said. “He’s DNR, and the nurse working this shift is one of our people.”

He held the gun on Billy as the man gasped, fought for air, then slumped motionless.

Billy looked on in horror. How the hell had he worked beside this man for two years and not seen the monster he was? Although, honestly, he hadn’t paid much attention to the computer tech. As long as he got the job done, there wasn’t much to pay attention to.

“Our father taught us what’s most important.” EZ’s voice dropped as he turned his back on his dead brother. “What tough choice are you prepared to make, Billy? Will you do your duty and protect your president?” He paused. “Or will you save the life of the woman you love?”