Internal Affairs (14 page)

A digital burble sounded, interrupting his half-formed thought. It took him a moment to remember the disposable phone he and Sara had been using. He pressed the button to answer, remembering that they’d only used it to call Sara’s friends, and O’Reilly himself. The phone lacked caller ID, but since O’Reilly was just down the hall, Romo had to assume it was Fax’s fiancée, whom Sara had called on the phone the day before. “Hello?” he said into the small unit. “Chelsea?”

There was a long pause before a soft voice said, “Romo, I’m in trouble. I need you to listen carefully and not freak out. Okay?”

It was Sara. And her tone left no doubt that there was something very badly wrong.

Adrenaline surged through Romo, jolting him to fight mode in an instant. There would be no “flight” this time. He only had “fight” left in him when it came to her. But, mindful of what she’d said, he marshaled his immediate response, “I’m listening. Go ahead.”

His heart drummed against his ribs in the seemingly endless silence that followed his words. Then, finally, she said, “The men who were supposed to be taking me to the safe house were loyal to Jane Doe. Do you understand?”

He closed his eyes on a spear of panic so acute it was like pain. “I understand.” She’d been taken. She’d
trusted his word that she’d be safe, and she’d been kidnapped instead. Damn them.

“You need to come to the tunnel entrance. If you’re not here in an hour, I’m dead.”

The bald pronouncement speared through him, though of course that was the terrorists’ modus operandi. “I’ll be there,” he promised, knowing damn well the location was closer to two hours away driving the legal limit. “What do they want me to bring?” he asked, still thinking he’d misconstrued al-Jihad’s reference to wanting information from him.

“Nothing. Just yourself.” Her voice was fading and strengthening, wavering, though he didn’t know whether it was because she was injured or because someone was holding the phone to her mouth at an inconsistent distance. “Don’t tell anyone where you’re going or why. No messages, no clues. Just get up and walk out now. You’re being watched.”

A chill raced through him alongside confusion, but he didn’t dare ask for clarification. Her voice and his own gut instinct told him they didn’t have much time left on the call. “I’ll be there, sweetheart.”

He practically choked on the last word. Maybe it was a bad move calling her that, as it would clue any listeners in to their relationship. But he needed her to hear it, needed her to believe in him, in them. And besides, al-Jihad had been a step or two ahead of law enforcement all along. He had to know she was important to Romo.

Forget “important,”
he thought angrily, realizing he was once again minimizing his feelings for the sake of
his own emotional safety. The terrorists already knew he’d do anything to protect her. She was the one who needed to hear it from him. “I love you, Sara,” he said finally, his voice catching on the words. “Do you hear me? I. Love. You.”

There was no answer. The phone had gone dead.

Silent tears tracked down Sara’s cheeks as Jane snapped the phone shut and tucked it into the pocket of her suit, which was navy, fitted and totally at odds with the tan fatigues worn by the three heavily armed men who had escorted them to the tunnel mouth for the phone call.

The day was sunny and cool, the sky a deep, cloudless blue. Sara stared up as a hawk passed overhead, and panic lumped in her throat at the sudden certainty that once she went back down into the tunnels, she wouldn’t ever be coming back out.

“Come on.” Jane headed back down into the tunnel, trusting the armed guards to bring Sara and not caring whether she came willingly or had to be dragged kicking and screaming. The former covert operative had already made it very clear to Sara that she didn’t care what it took as long as the job got done. In this case, the job consisted of getting Romo out to the tunnels, though Sara wasn’t clear on why that was so necessary. From what she’d seen inside the tunnel system in the hour or so since she’d awakened from her
drugged stupor, the terrorists were horrifyingly well organized, well funded and well stocked for the planned attack on the ARX Supermax. What did they need Romo for?

When the guards closed in on Sara, she raised her hands in surrender. “I’m going.” She’d tried resisting when they’d come to bring her to the surface for the phone call, and one of the men, without changing his expression an iota, had slammed his rifle butt into her stomach. While she’d been doubled over, retching, he’d grabbed her arm and force-marched her along the tunnel. Having no desire to waste her strength repeating that futile effort at rebellion, Sara followed Jane along the corridor-like tunnel that had been bored into the earth itself. The tunnel was lit by fluorescent lights bolted to the rock ceiling at regular intervals, and conduits and wires ran along one side, bundled together and branching off into each intersecting tunnel they passed.

Sara was following orders, but she was also waiting for her chance to run. She might be nothing more than a doctor who—as Romo had unkindly but accurately pointed out—hadn’t even had the guts to treat living patients, but she damn well wasn’t going to sit by and let the terrorists destroy her home. Not if there was anything she could do to prevent it.

Her mother had eventually come to grips with her sham of a marriage and the wounds it was inflicting on Sara. She’d gotten a divorce, and met and married a sturdy, good-hearted man who would give her the world if he could. Sara had been grateful for her stepfather,
and had maintained a relationship of sorts with her father, who hadn’t remarried, but instead floated from affair to affair. Her parents had found their places eventually.

Maybe she had, too.

The problem was, she didn’t have a clue what to do, or how. She needed help. She needed Romo, she thought, on a mix of fear and wistful hope that he could somehow manage to slip a rescue past Jane and the agent who was supposedly still acting within the antiterror group Jane had once led, feeding her information on Romo’s progress and movements. But there was little hope of that, Sara knew. And if he tried some sort of heroics, Jane had said, Sara was dead. The ex-agent turned traitor was an elegant woman in her early forties, made up and well put together. But she was icy cold, and all but radiated purposeful evil. Sara didn’t doubt her word for one second. If it came down to it, Jane would kill her without hesitation.

The knowledge was a hard knot in Sara’s stomach, but she forced herself to hold it together, trying to keep track of the tunnel’s turns they made on the way down from the surface. Just in case.

Men—and a few women, but only a few—moved through the tunnels with quick, purposeful strides. Some wore tan fatigues, others street clothes. Most were armed. None met Sara’s eyes.

The realization brought a renewed chill.

Focus,
she told herself.
Look for things you can use, things that might be important.
She had to keep thinking about her escape, keep planning for it, because if she didn’t, she thought she would break down.

She counted hallways, saw hollowed-out chambers containing piles of equipment, one filled with a strange piece of machinery that looked like something out of a science fiction movie. Before she could fully register the apparatus, Jane continued onward, but waved for the guards to peel off. They prodded Sara into the same chamber she’d awakened in. The vaguely rectangular room seemed to have been part of an offshoot tunnel at some point, but now was capped off at either end with huge steel plating that extended from floor to ceiling and was set into grooves on either side. There was a door in one of the slabs; after pushing her through, the guards stepped out and locked her in, leaving her alone.

She stumbled to the far side of the room, where there was a single folding chair and a half-f bottle of water that had been that way when she’d awakened. At the time, she’d been disgusted by the thought of drinking a stranger’s backwash. Now she downed the liquid gratefully, replenishing the hydration lost to the drugs, and the weakness of tears.

Those tears were done with now, she told herself. She needed to pull it together and figure out her best course of action. She hated that Jane was using her to bring Romo to the tunnels, where God only knew what would happen to him. But she had an hour, maybe less, before he arrived. What if she could get free before then, meet him at the entrance with information on the tunnels, manpower and equipment?

It might be an unlikely scenario, but it was one that gave her a buzz of hope. She needed to believe that she would see him again, that they would have a chance to
talk about what had happened back at the hotel. Not just the lovemaking—though she had a few things to say to him on that score—but what he’d said about her needing to want him enough to find a way to forgive him. Maybe that wasn’t exactly what he’d said, but that was what she’d taken away from the fight, and that was what she’d thought about after she’d regained consciousness, while she’d huddled in the chill, sparsely furnished room accompanied only by her thoughts.

She’d thought about Romo. And she’d realized he’d been right. Not about all of it, certainly. But he’d been right about enough of it that she’d been forced to admit he hadn’t single-handedly destroyed their relationship. She’d played a part in its deconstruction, too. And in the end, if fidelity had been a test for him, then commitment had been a challenge for her. She’d held part of herself away from him, as though she’d been waiting all along for him to make the mistake he eventually had. Yes, he’d deliberately chosen to do something he knew she wouldn’t be able to forgive…but she’d let him know in so many little ways that she was waiting for it to happen. In the end, while that didn’t make his actions right, it did make her fears something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Neither of them had been blameless, by a long shot. And in reality, maybe that was the take-home of their former relationship. Maybe they hadn’t been ready for what they’d found together. She might’ve thought she was at the time, but she hadn’t been, not really.

She was now, though. In losing him she’d found a part of herself that had been missing before—the part
that now told her she had to fight for him, no matter what it took. Which also meant fighting for Bear Claw, because there was no way the two of them could move forward unless Jane Doe, al-Jihad and the others were brought to justice, once and for all.

“Which sounds great in theory, but is going to be hard as hell to pull off in practice,” she said aloud. Nonetheless, she had to do something.

Gritting her teeth, she lunged to her feet, grabbed the folding chair and slammed it into the wall. She screamed as she swung, not caring who heard her, not caring what they thought. The impact reverberated up her arm and stung her hands as the chair crumpled and dented. She ignored the discomfort and swung again. And again.

On the fourth swing, one leg started to tear free, leaving a jaggedly pointed end. On the sixth smashing blow it came free, and she had herself a pry bar. And a weapon.

Heart pounding, she set to work, hoping to hell that she and Romo wouldn’t miss each other again. Their timing had been off before. She didn’t intend to let it be off again, because this time, getting it wrong could get both of them—and many innocents—very dead.

A few months ago, that knowledge would’ve sent her into hiding. Now it just made her work faster.

R
OMO SLIPPED FROM THE BUILDING
where the Cell was headquartered, took a cab to the lot where he’d left his truck days earlier and considered himself lucky to find the vehicle still waiting for him, keys hidden where
he’d left them. Inwardly, he was on the brink of panic. Outwardly, he forced himself calm, made himself do what needed to be done. He paid the cabdriver, got in the truck and navigated out of the city, moving fast but keeping it close enough to legal that he didn’t find himself pulled over.

Sweat prickled across his shoulder blades, itching along the stitches. His mind raced as he tried to figure out al-Jihad’s plan. The terrorists didn’t care about the flash drive anymore, that much was plain. But why did they want him? Was there yet more vital information locked behind an amnesiac block? He didn’t think so—he felt as though he’d gotten it all back, remembering what he’d needed and wanted to remember. Was it a case of simple revenge? Al-Jihad might be seeking to maintain face at having been taken in by an undercover operative who not only wasn’t trained for undercover work, he wasn’t even a true operative, merely an internal affairs detective who’d gotten an offer he’d told himself he couldn’t refuse.

That scenario played, he supposed. But it didn’t offer much hope for his or Sara’s safety.

Romo cursed under his breath as he cleared the city limits and hit the gas, spiking the odometer well past eighty miles per hour, edging toward ninety as he headed hell-bent for the tunnel entrance.
What do they want?
he kept asking himself. More, how was he going to get Sara to safety without hinting to the terrorists that the Cell and other agencies were strategizing an attack?

He didn’t know, and the lack of a plan had him beyond worried. He’d done his best to alert O’Reilly
that there was a serious problem, leaving the senior agent’s office in disarray on his way out. He hadn’t dared leave a note, because he had to believe that there were still more conspirators within the Cell. Which meant there really wasn’t anyone he
could
trust at this point, didn’t it?

Sara trusted Fax, he remembered. O’Reilly also trusted him. And, if he was really honest with himself, Romo realized that on some level he trusted the big, brooding agent, too. Even injured, he was more backup than Romo’d had in many months.

As he blasted along the highway, Romo waged an inner war. The instructions Sara had relayed, coming from Jane Doe and the terrorists, had been explicit—tell no one. But he couldn’t do this alone. He needed help, not just to get Sara to safety, but to avert al-Jihad’s terrible plan.

Cursing bitterly, Romo yanked out his phone, recalled the last number dialed off the disposable phone and hit Send. When a woman’s voice answered, he said, “I need Fax’s cell number, right now.”

“Who is this?” Chelsea responded, immediately suspicious.

He hesitated the briefest instant before he said, clearly and calmly, “This is Romo. My death was faked. I’ve been undercover the whole time with al-Jihad’s people, except for the past week, when I’ve been living with Sara, trying to keep us both alive. I messed up, though, big-time. Jane Doe has Sara in a set of mining tunnels north of the prison. I’m meeting them there, I need help and I don’t know who else I can trust.” He
paused, and when there was no response, he tossed his damned pride out the window and said, “I know you don’t have any reason to trust or believe me at this point, not after the funeral, and after what happened between me and Sara. But please, for her sake, help me. Give me Fax’s damn number.”

This time there was barely a pause before she said, “I’ll do better than that. Tell me exactly where this tunnel is.”

It was a test, he knew. A challenge. His trust for hers. Before, he would’ve hung up. Now he took a deep breath, and told her, finishing with, “Tell Fax there’s someone inside the Cell funneling reports to Jane Doe. So he’s got to be absolutely sure of anyone he talks to.”

“Understood,” Chelsea said briskly, all business now. “Promise me that you’ll wait for us?”

“I—” He broke off, went with the truth. “I’d promise you, but it’d be a lie. I’m going to get there and see what the situation looks like. If I need to go in to keep Sara alive, that’s what I’m going to do, and I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that you guys get there in time to haul us out if things go bad.”

He reached the highway exit leading into the backcountry. Letting up on the gas only slightly, he sent the truck roaring in the direction he needed to go. The cheap cell started to hiss and spit as Chelsea said, “You always did go your own way, Detective.”

“You’ll help?”

“Of course. See you there.” Chelsea cut the call, leaving Romo hoping he hadn’t just made the most costly mistake of his—and Sara’s—life. But if he’d demanded
that she learn to be more flexible, he had to give the same in return, which meant asking for help when he needed it. Like now. He’d told her to have faith in him, but it wasn’t fair to ask for something he wasn’t willing to give.

Working off the map that had been on the flash drive, the details of which were seared into his brain thanks to his near-perfect recall of math, computer and engineering stuff, Romo turned onto a narrow dirt track leading into the scrubby woodlands that made up the outlying tracts of the Bear Claw Creek State Forest. The undeveloped land was state-owned but not part of the park itself, which meant it wasn’t ranger-patrolled and didn’t get much attention. Although the land around the prison was secured for several miles in each direction, the tunnel system began outside that range, which was undoubtedly why al-Jihad’s plan had gone undetected for so long. That, along with some help from the new prison warden, Weberly.