Proof of Life: Super Agent Series, Book 3 Read online

  A moment later, Ella rose into the air and Brigit crumbled to the floor, exhausted.

  “Come on.” Michael’s voice drifted down to her. In the outside room, Brigit heard glass break and wood pop from the heat. “Dr. Kent, let’s go. You’re out of time.”

  But she couldn’t push herself off the floor. The opening in the ceiling was too far away. He’s right. I am out of time.

  The Tinker Bell doll lay beside her and Brigit lifted her gaze from the doll’s blonde ponytail to the sink where a light burned through the smoke. A nightlight? Where did that come from? I don’t own a…

  An image of Peter and the nightlight in the locked bathroom flashed in her brain. Then an image of Moira. They made her sick to her stomach. How could they have done this to Ella? How could they be so cruel, so selfish? It was one thing to try and kill Cormac O’Bern, who’d made his bed long years ago with the company he’d kept and then betrayed, but an innocent six-year-old girl?

  Bile pushed into Brigit’s throat and she reached for the Tinker Bell doll. What a fool she’d been to try and stop Peter, to try and rescue Tory, to try and protect her father, to sell her soul to countless power mongers in an attempt to redeem herself for her mother’s sake.

  Because in the end, loving her family was destroying her.

  “Brigit?” Michael’s voice shot down the metal hole, sending a fresh wave of adrenaline through her.

  “Is Ella okay?” she yelled up to him.

  “Yes, come on.”

  Accepting the inner self-loathing boiling in her veins, she pushed herself into a sitting position with her right hand. The fresh wave of pain on her left side made the room spin, but she hung on until it passed.

  Rising to her feet, she reached deep for her survivor instincts. She leaned on the vanity and willed the room to steady itself. The nightlight caught her attention again, glowing in the smoky haze. Goddamn, son of a bitch.

  She’d had enough, by God. She was tired of trying to save the lost boy. Jerking it out of the socket, she smashed it against the marble countertop.

  As she climbed onto the counter and raised her good arm up toward Michael’s waiting hands, she silently asked for her mother’s forgiveness.

  Peter better pray I don’t find him, she thought, as Michael gripped her by the wrist and pulled her heavenward, because when I do, I’m putting Batman on his ass.

  Third District D.C. police station

  Two hours later

  Michael viewed Brigit sitting at the table in the interrogation room from behind a two-way mirror. She looked like hell, her head down on the table and her eyes closed. While her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, pieces singed by the fire had escaped. She’d tried to wipe the soot from her face, but faint traces still remained. Her clothes were covered in the black stuff as well.

  But she’d saved Ella, and Michael found her beautiful. Too bad she was the police’s number one suspect in the kidnapping.

  Ella was spending the night at the local children’s hospital under the watchful eyes of the entire nation as well as her parents. She’d suffered smoke inhalation and appeared dehydrated, but a complete physical showed she was otherwise fine.

  Brigit had been treated at the scene for smoke inhalation as well, but refused another trip to the hospital. She was lucky she hadn’t suffocated or burned to death.

  Flynn blew into the room, looking as worn out as Michael felt. “Shouldn’t you be with your niece?”

  “Ella’s doing fine. Ruth called and said she ate two breakfasts this morning already and the nurses are sneaking in Jell-O and milkshakes every time she turns her back.”

  Flynn jutted his chin at Brigit in the adjoining room. “She makes a clean suspect.”

  “She was at the park with us all night. Besides, what’s her angle? Why kidnap Ella and blame this Donovan character? She setting him up?”

  “She knew you’d have those parks under surveillance. Someone would see her there. Makes a good alibi. I would have done the same thing.”

  Michael crossed his arms and studied Flynn. “I can’t figure out if you’d be a better criminal or a better cop.”

  “Could go either way. That’s why I work for you.”

  Michael turned back to the two-way. What was the bigger picture? “She helps Donovan kidnap Ella and then fabricates a story about O’Bern and a bomb so she can walk out to the lectern and get shot?”

  “Maybe the original story she told you was right. Donovan wanted to take out O’Bern. She got cold feet, turned traitor, and he shot her for blowing his chance.”

  A detective entered, introduced himself and shook their hands. He was clearly uncomfortable with their presence, as well as the FBI milling around his station waiting for jurisdiction calls to be made to take the case away from him. “You guys sticking around for the interrogation?”

  “Think you can get her to confess?” Michael asked.

  The detective nodded. “After what you and the FBI have told me, she clearly had the means and opportunity to do this. Not clear on her motivation, but that’s not a sticking point. Just got word from the hospital. Kid ID’d her. If I can keep her from lawyering up right away, I might get her to turn on the other guy.”

  The urge to defend Brigit was too strong to ignore. “My niece has been through a trauma and she’s only six. Her memory may be playing tricks with her.”

  The detective frowned as if he wondered why Michael was throwing water on the fire he was building to burn Brigit Kent. “The little girl told her momma the woman who saved her from the fire is the same woman who kept her locked in the bathroom and gave her the Tinker Bell doll. Called herself Wendy.”

  Michael struggled to find a solution to Ella’s story, but after too many nights of no sleep, his brain was a quagmire of crap. For the first time since his father had died, he couldn’t make sense of anything.

  The detective nodded at a table of high-tech equipment behind them. “Everything’s being recorded for posterity. Gotta tell you, though, it’s an open and shut case with the kid’s ID.”

  He left the room and entered the interrogation room, pulling out a chair and sitting down at the table. When Brigit didn’t respond, the detective made a fist and started banging on the scarred wooden top.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Brigit woke to the sound of a railroad spike slamming next to her temple. She cracked her eyes open and realized it was a fist, knuckles knocking on the table. What a wakeup call.

  With effort, she lifted her head and eyed the detective sitting across from her. His wool jacket smelled like mothballs and he sucked on his cheeks, narrowing them in a Dirty Harry impression as he glared at her. He had the Clint Eastwood balding-head thing going for him, but where Clint could nail Dirty Harry with nothing more than the gleam in his eyes, Detective Mothballs just looked like a dweeb in tweed, as Truman was fond of saying. She wished she were back in the caterpillar’s stomach.

  And wasn’t that a sad state to be in.

  He pushed a button on a digital voice recorder on the table. “State your name for the record, Sleeping Beauty.”

  It was obvious she was a person of interest in the kidnapping. If she’d been a civilian, she would have asked for an attorney before even stating her name. Technically, she wasn’t a civilian, and because of what she was and who she worked for, asking for a lawyer wasn’t prudent. She was on her own, and while she was innocent, she had to be careful how she played the game.

  Miranda rights had not been read. Yet. Brigit had the feeling it was only a matter of time.

  Across from the voice recorder, her BlackBerry played three notes and the detective eyed it with suspicion. “Go ahead,” he said. “Answer it.”

  Her throat muscles clenched as she tried to speak, her esophagus raw. She swallowed, cleared her throat, and tried again. “It’s an email.” Hopefully from Truman telling her the cavalry was on its way. “It can wait.”

  “You better read it now. You won’t have your phone much longer.”
>
  Yep. I’ve moved from a person of interest to a card-carrying suspect.

  She picked up the phone, typed a three-key combo and then a password to unlock it. She hit the mailbox and brought up her email. There was one message from Truman, using the code name for their employer, JOE. No subject. One sentence. Lie back and think of England.

  Truman wouldn’t be bringing the cavalry. She was done. Axed. Terminated. Lie back and think of England was the Secret Intelligence Service term for you’ve been burned.

  Cold sweat broke out over her body. Being burned from SIS was like being excommunicated from the Catholic Church. In their eyes, she simply ceased to exist. Except with the intelligence agency, they didn’t just close their eyes and pretend you were invisible. If they were really pissed at your incompetence, they wiped out your savings, dropped your credit score in the toilet, sent you a computer virus. In other words, lie back and think of England while you’re being screwed.

  “You don’t look so good.” The detective smiled. “Bad news? Your boyfriend leaving you holding the bag?”

  Brigit returned to the home screen and set down the phone. It wouldn’t ring any more, wouldn’t receive any more emails, text messages or calls. Just in case it might go Mission: Impossible on her and explode, she slid it toward the detective’s side of the table.

  Like a predator smelling first blood, he sucked in his cheeks and picked up the phone, turning it over and fiddling with the buttons. Brigit wasn’t worried he’d find anything. The phone was encrypted and encoded with enough security it would take an accomplished hacker to figure it out. Even if one did, there was nothing criminal on it.

  The detective frowned as if perplexed and set the phone back on the table. Then he began to interrogate her.

  He pulled a photo from a file. Peter, bald and sporting a goatee, wearing a tie under a wool sweater. “Eleanor Pennington claims this is the man who kidnapped her. What’s his name?”

  Brigit pressed her lips together. Everyone from Michael to Detective Mothballs knew Peter’s name. She was too blown out to play Name That Terrorist.

  Between the pain in her arm, the lack of sleep, her recent brush with smoke and fire, and the news she’d been burned, her mood mimicked a black-sucking-hole. Her brain and her body felt like she’d spent time in a blender. Topping it with the fact she’d accepted her brother did indeed intend to do her in, and she was ready to take the detective’s tie and choke him with it.

  And then go hunt down Peter.

  The question was, could she still save Tory?

  Probably not.

  A wave of crushing defeat threatened to knock her to the ground. She gripped her hands in her lap and forced her body to stay upright.

  After a long minute, the detective again demanded an answer. She continued her clam routine.

  “Eleanor Pennington also stated you helped him keep her captive in your bathroom.”

  Brigit’s stomach dropped. Why would Ella say that? She had never met the girl until this morning when she’d battled the fire to rescue her.

  “Why did you spend the night at Grant Avenue Park?”

  She took a deep breath and called on her training to keep her body frozen in place and appear calm. Refusing to answer questions didn’t seem rational, but then she wasn’t rational at the moment. If she answered anything, started talking at all, she might slip up and give the detective something he could use against her. Until she cleared her head, she needed to buy time.

  He was unrelenting. “Anybody see you there?”

  Michael and Conrad had seen her. Then they’d followed her home. Michael’s bodyguard had to have been somewhere in the vicinity too. All because she’d been a suspect in the kidnapping ever since she’d opened her big mouth.

  She glanced at the mirrored glass, sure a certain laser beam was firing back at her, and debated mentioning her tail. While she wanted to get the hell out of the police station, she wasn’t going to spill her guts. If Michael and Conrad wanted to step forward as witnesses, they would have already. Why neither had was a mystery, but she had no plan to stick her neck out and accuse them. They could deny it and make her look even more suspect.

  While the police detective continued drilling her with questions, it occurred to her that as long as she was in the suspect Twilight Zone, she might as well take a risk. Knowing SIS could toss her to the wolves at any time, she’d always hedged her bets. The president of the United States was one of them, and because of that, there was one person who might still help her. She glanced at the mirror again.

  The cop finally lost his patience. “Fine. You don’t want to talk and straighten things out? I’m placing you under arrest. Twenty-four hours in the hole downstairs and you’ll be begging me to talk. You have the right to remain silent.”

  She didn’t want to remain silent anymore. She had no one left to protect. No loyalty to any intelligence service. “Wait.”

  He raised an eyebrow and sucked in his cheeks. A gleam appeared in his eyes. He thought he’d broken her, and she was ready to spill her guts.

  It takes more than a dweeb in tweed to break Brigit Kent. “I want to talk to Michael Stone, Deputy Director of the CIA.”

  The gleam of satisfaction disappeared. Sitting back in his chair, the detective sputtered. “You want what?”

  As if she’d called him into being, Michael opened the interrogation room’s door and walked in, stopping a few feet from the table. Still fiercely handsome, he looked fresh and clean, like he’d just stepped out of the shower. He smelled like it too. A light scent of aftershave and shampoo drifted to her nose. The only hint that he hadn’t enjoyed a normal night’s rest was the fatigue in his eyes.

  His expression was torn, as if it pained him to see her this way. More likely, he hated her for bringing him into her interrogation. His gaze stayed on her as he spoke to the detective. “I’ll take it from here.”

  A sense of security washed through her, unbidden and inexplicable. The cop started to balk, but one hard-assed look from Michael sent him on his way, grumbling under his breath.

  As soon as the door shut behind him, Brigit let her guard down, melting under Michael’s gaze. “How’s Ella?”

  His brow creased, showing surprise at her question. “Ella’s fine. You, however, are not.” He turned the hard-assed look on her. “What do want to tell me?”

  “Not here.” She struggled to her feet, dizziness rushing over her, and leaned on the table for support. “No cameras, no tape recorders. I’ll tell you everything you want to know, but it has to be just you and me.”

  He wanted the truth and she had it. His expression told her he didn’t like anyone grabbing him by the balls and forcing him to do what they wanted. Still, he wasn’t about to let this opportunity pass him by. “Take the phone,” was all he said before ushering her to the door.

  A man’s word wasn’t what it used to be. Michael had to sign off on multiple forms and swear up and down to the police and the Federal agents waiting in line that Brigit would remain in custody with him in order to get her out of the station. He had no jurisdiction in her case and everybody knew it. He was, however, tied to the case and respected by most of the men and women wanting a piece of her.

  As she sat in a side chair watching him perform gymnastics and tap dance around legalities, her face remained a blank slate. She’d retreated so far into herself, he wondered if he’d be able to get anything out of her.

  In the Marines, he’d seen the same look on men who had lost touch with reality. Depressed, suicidal, up against a wall. CIA recruits often got the same look on their faces after Flynn had put them through The Farm. Win or lose, they had nothing left to give.

  When the call from FBI Director Agouti came through, Michael took it standing up. “Give me twenty-four hours,” Michael said to his old friend and even older enemy.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Michael saw Brigit’s assistant, Truman, slide into a seat next to her. Her face changed in an instant, lighting up and then s
hutting down again as Truman spoke to her.

  Michael couldn’t make out what Truman was saying because Agouti was speaking in his ear. “I don’t understand what you’re up to, but I’ve learned not to ask questions where you’re concerned, Stone. It’s four o’clock now. I’ll give you to eight.” He sighed. “Don’t make me regret this.”

  Agouti meant eight p.m. Michael conveniently heard eight a.m. “You won’t, Gute.”

  He handed the phone over to the special agent in charge so Agouti’s instructions could be conveyed to the rest of the group. As he did so, he heard Truman saying, “…destroyed. The smoke and water damaged everything the fire left.”

  Brigit tipped her head back and closed her eyes. “You couldn’t save anything?”

  “I snagged the files I could find and your laptop for security reasons, but it was all trashed.” He pulled something from his pocket and handed it to her. “This was my mom’s. Figured you could use a little luck.”

  In order to continue eavesdropping, Michael put his head down, grabbed a pen and shifted through the papers he’d already signed as if he were still working on getting Brigit released. With his back slightly turned, he appeared busy, yet could still hear and see them.

  “You’re all over the news,” Truman said softly. “That’s why they burned you.”

  The fine hairs on Michael’s neck rose. Burned? Was Truman referring to the fire in her apartment or something else? In the intelligence world, a burn notice was termination. Worse than termination. It was the equivalent to being stripped naked, beaten to a pulp and left for dead.

  Michael had the impression Brigit nodded. “You shouldn’t be here. If you’re seen with me…”

  “I can take care of myself. Look”—he lowered his voice another notch—“the only way out of this is for you to tell your dirty little secret. You know it, and they know it. That’s why they burned you. You walk out of here with him—” There was a brief pause and Michael knew Truman was eyeing him. He picked up a paper and pretended to read. “You’re risking your life.”