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

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “Hell, yes, I’m threatening you.”

  Julia kept all emotion off her face and locked her mental energy with his. This was the problem with their marriage. Neither of them was ever willing to concede. “Clichéd as it sounds, we’re trying to save the world,” she said. “Save innocent people from dying.”

  Conrad crossed his arms over his chest as he appeared to analyze her tone and body language for sarcasm. Finding none, he said, “I applaud that. But vigilante antics will only get you fired. Who you gonna help then?”

  After all his reckless behavior, it sounded funny to hear Con preach following the rules. Once again, however, Julia had to admit he was right. She glanced out the patio doors, watched a bird peck at some seeds that had fallen from the bird feeder onto the railing. “Zara followed three members of the Sisters of Liberation group from London to D.C. She turned the mission over to me unofficially so she could continue to track them and uncover what they’re up to.”

  “The woman you met at the construction site. You know who she is?”

  Julia’s defenses shifted. She didn’t know why, but she sensed the need to tread carefully. “Her ID said Brigit Kent. DHS.”

  Conrad resumed his seat, shuffling the scattered papers into a neater pile. “So our government claims. Whoever and whatever she is, though, you and Zara both need to keep your distance.” He closed the laptop and pulled a flash drive in the shape of a Lego brick from a USB port. “Got it?”

  “Why?”

  He smirked at her, standing up again to shove the zip drive into his pants pocket. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

  The old spy joke. Now Con was being the evasive one.

  Like a cold breeze brushing against her skin, Julia’s instincts told her Brigit Kent was involved in something important. Something important to Conrad.

  She glanced at the pile of papers next to his laptop, then made a production out of checking her watch. “I’ve got to get a shower. I have duty for the O’Bern ceremony today.”

  As she walked out of the kitchen to head to the bedroom for fresh clothes, Conrad followed her. “I thought you might offer to work the Pennington kidnapping.”

  Julia stalled at the dresser. Michael’s niece was a top priority case at the moment, and she would have given anything to be part of it. She still respected and admired him immensely. Somehow, though, she’d known how inappropriate it would have been to ask for the assignment. She wouldn’t have gotten it anyway. “Kidnappings are outside the scope of my training.”

  Con was silent as she tugged at the dresser drawer and snagged a pair of underwear. She chanced a glance at him as she crossed to the closet.

  “That the only reason?” he asked.

  Facing him, she saw the uncertainty in his eyes. She shook her head. “If I thought I could save that little girl, Con, I’d have taken the assignment in a heartbeat, but it would have been for Ella, not Michael.”

  He nodded and left the doorway. Reappeared a moment later. “Want me to pick up some strawberry pie for tonight?”

  Julia smiled at him, crossing the room to kiss his lips. “I’d love some.”

  He smiled back and dipped his head for another kiss. “You okay?”

  “I didn’t get enough sleep last night, but I’m fine.”

  “No queasiness? Dizziness? You don’t have Zara’s flu bug?”

  Julia shook her head, again remembering her very sick friend. “I should stop back by the hospital after the ceremony. You should track down Lawson and let him know Zara’s in the hospital. They won’t let her use her cell, and he may be trying to reach her.”

  “I’ll let him know.”

  They kissed again, and as Con left the apartment, Julia jumped in the shower. No matter how foolish it was, she was going after Brigit Kent like a flea after a dog.

  Chapter Nine

  Washington D.C.

  Brigit sank into the cushy backseat of the limo and accepted a bottle of water from Truman. She kicked off the pumps, flexed her toes and took a sip of water. Under her clothes, she trembled.

  Truman eyed her with interest, ending a phone call and removing the Bluetooth from his ear. “Did the Great and Mighty Oz grab your ass or something? You look like you’re going to throw a whitey.”

  The way her stomach churned, she just might throw up. Sliding down even further into the leather, Brigit pushed the button to close the motorized privacy panel between them and the chauffeur, giving Truman a warning glance. The last thing she needed was a scandal involving the president of the United States bringing her into the spotlight. “This sucks the big one, as you always say.”

  “Literally? You gave the big guy head?”

  As an assistant, Truman’s organizational skills and willingness to abide by her confidentiality protocol on all cases were extraordinary. His attitude and snarkiness when he was alone with her, however, was always a test of her patience. “Don’t be crude. I was referring to the situation with the Penningtons and the president.”

  “You have to take the kidnapping out of the picture. It’s making you emo.”

  “Emo?”

  “Emotional. Whiny. ” He pushed buttons on his phone and replaced the earpiece. “I sent today’s itinerary to your crackberry. We’ll hit the office first for a meeting with Roz, then do the O’Bern dedication and reception. At two, you’re sitting in on the Ethics Committee hearing at the Capitol.”

  Brigit held up a hand. “The O’Bern dedication?”

  “Cormac O’Bern. Poet laureate and famed peace monger?” Truman shuffled in his man bag and brought out a book. Dreams of Peace by Cormac O’Bern. “There’s a dedication and outside reception at the Randolph library today. Your invitation came while you were in London. I RSVP’d for you and a friend. I’m the friend, by the way. Total Cormy cult member. Hope you don’t mind.”

  She reached out for the book, flipped through the pages absently. Cormac O’Bern was in town. Like Tetris blocks dropping into a grid to form a straight row, Ella’s kidnapping and Tory’s appearance snapped into the ah-ha grid in Brigit’s mind. Peter and Cormac, the inseparable troublemakers. Everything became so clear.

  She shut the book with a snap. “Reschedule the meeting with Roz. I need to go home and change my clothes.”

  Truman’s call must have gone through, because he greeted the person on the other end before covering the mouthpiece and frowning at her. “You have to wear the prison guard suit all day. No exceptions.”

  He returned to his call. Nausea cramped her stomach. Again, her brain ran through the past twenty-four hours and a row of blocks formed, flashed and blinked out. She buzzed the chauffeur. “Change of plans. Take me back to my loft.”

  Truman threw his hands up in disgust but continued speaking to his phone companion without missing a beat.

  Brigit watched the landscape as the driver began making the necessary lane changes and turns to follow his new route. It was a beautiful fall day. Crystal blue sky as far as you could see. Sunshine brightening the few leaves still left on trees. The library board had chosen a perfect day for Cormac O’Bern’s dedication and reception.

  Grabbing the book in her lap, she flipped through the stanzas of poetry and examined the back cover. While he looked older, the crisp, terse words of poetry he used in his verses still rang with authority. There was nothing warm or fuzzy about Cormac O’Bern’s preachings, on paper or in person. He was a man of passion and strength, only these days he used his gift to promote peace instead of war.

  If only Peter had chosen the same path. Her half-brother possessed the same type of character as Cormac. The two had been inseparable during their teens. While Cormac had gone on to college, Peter had joined a splinter group of the Real IRA. Each found his place in the new generation of Catholic versus Protestant war. Cormac ended up in jail with a group of his college buddies for inciting riots on campus. Peter had ended up there at the same time with his own comrades for similar antics i
n downtown Belfast. In jail, the two groups joined arms and went on a hunger strike.

  Brigit’s mother had begged her father to pull political strings to get Peter and Cormac released. He’d refused. “They aren’t boys anymore,” he’d told her. “They’ve committed crimes and now they have to pay the price.”

  As Peter and Cormac wasted away in jail, Roberta had sent them boxes of books, mainstream bestsellers to military history. One day, the books were returned. “I have my Bible and God,” a note from Peter stated. “I need nothing, and no one, else.”

  Roberta had cried.

  To Peter, Roberta’s marriage to William Kent cut their blood ties. When Peter was finally freed from jail, he was fifteen pounds lighter and his heart was hardened against his mother and her husband. During the hunger strike, one of the boys died and several others were hospitalized. Upon their release, Peter and Cormac struck a bargain. All for one and all against the British.

  In retaliation against his British stepfather and his traitor of a mother, Peter kidnapped Brigit and Tory. As the new leader of his freedom fighters, he’d planned to use the two girls as a weapon…to trade them for money to buy guns and bomb-making supplies for his new army.

  His plan failed when Roberta, who knew her son well, found the girls and in the end died saving them. Peter disappeared and William, along with certain friends in the government, covered the incident up. Fearing he couldn’t protect his daughters, William moved them to America, far away from the continuing unrest between the Irish and the British, Catholics and Protestants.

  Only years later, after Brigit had undergone intensive therapy, did she understand the depths of Peter’s extremist personality. The human psyche was a fascinating puzzle to her. She’d been a psychologist for nearly eight years, but she’d been studying people her whole life. Long before she’d received her doctorate, her aptitude for code breaking had emerged.

  Human beings were one giant code from their DNA to their personality triggers. Once you understood the code, you could dissect it and rebuild it for better purposes, or exploit it for negative ones. Either way, Brigit’s in-depth studies and experiments had received attention from every government on the planet.

  Every few years, a kidnapping occurred fitting the parameters she was interested in. The young son or daughter of a dignitary, a drug company president or a financial guru would go missing, usually from a public arena. Local law enforcement would immediately tag it a kidnapping. Leads would be nonexistent. There would be no ransom demand. A call would be placed, and the child’s anxious, often hysterical voice would ask for mom or dad. Proof of life would continue to be offered over a period of forty-eight to seventy-two hours without any logical reason why. The child would turn up hungry and terrified, but otherwise unharmed, in another public venue. The kidnapper or kidnappers would remain at large.

  To the untrained eye, it seemed random, more like a sport than a calculated crime. With time, the case would grow cold, the traumatized child and family would move on, and the public would forget.

  To Brigit, these kidnappings were not random. Each one served a purpose…a distraction, a drain of resources, or even to make a point.

  If the pieces of the puzzle snapping together did indeed form a solid row, the Pennington kidnapping was all three. Peter’s fingerprints were all over it and yet, she realized with a start, she couldn’t prove a thing. You’ve never been able to pin any of the previous kidnappings on him. Why should this time be any different?

  Like usual, there was no hard evidence and she had no starting point to hand to the FBI. She’d already talked to an agent and asked him to check into Peter’s whereabouts but had come back with information he was living and working in Argentina under an assumed name.

  Brigit’s resources were only slightly more accurate than the FBI’s, but she knew Peter had never visited Argentina, much less lived there. And while she carried a lot of weight with everyone from the president of Microsoft to the president of the United States, the FBI regarded her as little more than an overpaid, independent profiler. A profiler who could hand them nothing more than wild speculation.

  With this case, she wouldn’t blame them for blowing her off. All she had were suspicions and an intangible code ingrained in her body from a terrifying couple of days spent long ago in a bathroom over a pub on the outskirts of Belfast. Who would believe her? Who could possibly find Peter, the man who moved like a ghost in the night?

  “Earth to Gidget.”

  Truman was staring at her again, his call complete.

  Brigit closed her eyes for a second before shifting gears. “What did I miss this time?”

  “By the cut of that jacket, I’d say the last decade. You look like Hillary, pre-Monica.”

  Hillary Clinton. Now there was a psychological code Brigit would have loved to break. “You know this is the only suit I own.”

  “A high-powered psycho-babbler should live in Chanel, not Gap.”

  “Gap is more comfortable.”

  Truman rolled his eyes and handed her a sheet of paper. “Since you’re skipping the meeting with Roz, who won’t be happy, you know, because you are the meeting, I’ll fax your analysis of the top three domestic groups to her. She can share with the rest of the taskforce.”

  The domestic terrorism taskforce was the least of Brigit’s worries at the moment. A growing sense of dread pulsed under her skin. While Cormac had changed and embraced peace as his life’s work, if he and Peter were in both in D.C. at the same time, nothing but trouble could be brewing. Where was Peter? And what was he planning?

  And why did it involve Ella Pennington?

  Brigit placed a call to Special Agent Edmonds, the FBI profiler in charge of the kidnapping. She got his voice mail and left him a message, asking him to check into Peter Donovan’s background. Explained her idea about his possible involvement with the kidnapping. Even to her own ears, her reasoning sounded weak, implausible.

  She disconnected the call and rubbed her temples. Truman was staring at her, but she avoided meeting his gaze. What should she do? The O’Bern dedication was less than two hours away. If Peter was planning something, what would it be? Would he try to scare Cormac? Take him out? Would it be a public display or something more subtle, after the show?

  Would Special Agent Edmonds follow up on her call? Even if he did, it could be hours, or even days before he and his group uncovered anything concrete. By then, the dedication, and possibly the kidnapping, would be over.

  In her heart, Brigit knew they didn’t have hours or days to piece it all together. Something was going down today. Knowing Peter, it would be something big.

  There was one possible person who would listen to her theory and cut her a tad of slack. One person with superior intelligence and a knack for understanding terrorists. A person who carried enough weight in Washington and the intelligence community to make Edmonds and his team follow up on her theory with speed and efficiency.

  If nothing else, her wild speculations might receive a fair shake from him based solely on the fact that no one, including Ruth Pennington’s overprotective brother, had any other lead to follow.

  “Fax the info to Roz and find out Michael Stone’s whereabouts. Immediately.”

  “Stone? Of the CIA?” Truman looked perplexed. “What for?”

  The car pulled up to the curb in front of Brigit’s apartment. She buzzed the driver. “Wait here. I’ll be back in ten minutes.” She released the call button and said to Truman, “What do I wear to CIA headquarters?”

  Truman stared at her, seemingly at a loss for words, which was an alien concept. Brigit snapped her fingers in front of his eyes. “Earth to Capote.”

  He blinked once and raised his chin, miffed at the Capote reference. If he could call her Gidget, it seemed only fair she could call him names too. He looked down his nose at her. “Do you want to be taken seriously?”

  Brigit sighed and shoved her sore feet back into the pumps. “Yes, but I can’t carry myself in thes
e shoes, and the skirt makes me look like I have watermelons for hips.”

  “Keep the jacket, switch to black trousers and go with a lower heel.”

  She leaned over and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Thanks. I’ll be right back.”

  Stunned into silence again, Truman only nodded.

  Inside, Brigit switched her clothes and shoes at the speed of a racehorse, more so out of fear she would change her mind about going to see Stone than out of guilt for keeping Truman and her driver waiting.

  Stopping at her bedroom window, she scanned the near-perfect blue sky. Right is right. If Peter is involved in this little girl’s kidnapping, he has to be stopped.

  Her gaze fell to the park nearby where several mothers sat on a bench and chatted while two small children tried out the slide and one sat in a pile of woodchips, throwing them like confetti into the air. If only childhood could be innocent and fun for all kids.

  As if someone was watching her, bumps rose all over her arms. She lifted her gaze and scanned the area. Under a group of maples in the far corner of the park, a man stood alone and immobile with feet spread and arms hanging at his side. The shade was dense under the orange and yellow leaves, keeping him in shadows.

  Brigit took a step closer to the window, squinting to try to bring him into focus. He wore a cap and what looked like a one-piece coverall. None of his features were visible and yet Brigit’s stomach churned. He was so still, so hidden in the shadows. If it hadn’t been for the beautiful day and the oblivious mothers and children, it could have been a scene from a horror movie.

  Peter, Brigit’s brain screamed.

  Stumbling back from the window, she sat down hard on the bed when the backs of her knees hit the mattress. A band tightened around her rib cage and she could barely breathe.

  Truman’s voice behind her made her jump back up. “JOE wants you to keep a low pro— Whoa, you look like you just saw Howard Stern naked. What’s wrong?”