The Business of Strangers Read online

  With every sentence he was boxing her more neatly into a corner. The situation was made even more untenable because she could see the logic in his argument.

  She had that money saved. Arranging all the details he’d mentioned would put a serious dent in it, yet it could be done. But the timeline was like a ticking bomb in this case. He was right. Even if she could get it arranged in a little over four days that gave her no time to connect all the dots.

  It gave her no time to defend herself against the next assassination attempt.

  “Maybe it would be better for me to go in at night. Be there when he got home,” she mused. She could put the thing to rest once and for all. Demand the answers she needed, and get the threat he posed out of the way, one way or another.

  Jake was at her side in three quick steps. “Not a chance in hell. We’ll decide what to do about him once we know how he figures in all this. But you aren’t going to confront him. I’m not letting you take that kind of risk.”

  He was standing much too close. She wasn’t going to back down from him, so she angled her chin. “I’m not sure just when you began thinking you had a say in what I do.”

  “Neither am I.” His tone sounded rueful, halfway irritated. “But you better get used to it, baby. You’re not alone in this. Not anymore.” Seconds ticked by, and his gaze never left hers. A slumberous warmth crept back into it. “What are the chances you’re going to invite me to spend the night and finish what we started a little while ago?”

  From any other man the words would have seemed unbelievably arrogant. And they were. But accompanied by the reigniting heat in his eyes, they were also tempting. It was far harder than it should have been to say, “Nonexistent.”

  There was a moment when she thought he would try and convince her. But a second later he was backing away, reaching for his phone. “I’ll call for my car. My driver will pick me up where he dropped me off.”

  There didn’t seem to be anything else to say, so she just nodded. She nearly flinched when he reached out, ran a gentle finger along her jaw. “Get some sleep.”

  Then, as if embarrassed at the gesture, he turned and picked up his coat, shrugged into it. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  She nodded. It seemed impossible to speak. She just stood staring at the door long after he’d passed through it. Long after the sound of his steps down the stairway had faded away.

  It was as if she were poised on a precipice of discovery. The long sought information was there, just out of reach. But never when she’d envisioned this moment had she imagined herself anything other than alone.

  For better or worse, Jake was intricately involved in this. And she still wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

  For the first time in her law enforcement career, Ria found it difficult to concentrate at work the next day. She’d become adept at compartmentalizing the personal aspect of her life from the professional. It was the only way she could stay sane all those years.

  But today the duty rosters couldn’t hold her interest. Nor could the employee yearly evaluation forms that would be coming due next month. Since she’d been on the job such a short time they would take a great deal of research. At the moment she didn’t have the concentration required.

  Instead, she kept wondering about the information she’d requested from Benny. She didn’t doubt that it would be in her e-mail in-box when she got home. He’d never failed her yet. Would the more detailed military records yield answers or spawn more questions?

  When the intercom buzzed in the middle of the afternoon, she was still staring blankly at the half-completed duty roster for March. “Unidentified caller for you on line two,” Marlyss announced.

  “I’ve got it.” With a thrum of anticipation in her veins, she picked up the receiver.

  “Ria.” Just the sound of Jake’s voice had anticipation firing through his veins. “Everything’s set. We leave at 7:00 a.m. tomorrow.”

  “Where should I meet you?” She marveled that her tone was so steady when every nerve of her body quivered in readiness.

  “Columbus Metropolitan. I’ll meet you in the terminal. Gate F. You’ll need to arrive a couple hours early to deal with the parking and security.”

  “So all the arrangements are made?”

  “They will be.” He sounded distant, as if his mind were somewhere else. “I’ll fill you in when we’re on the jet. And you can brief me on what you discover from the new information you get from your friend today.”

  “What about Hendricks? Have your men discovered anything else about him?”

  “Amazingly little,” he said grimly. “Other than the deed to his home, a pricey one at that, there’s not a lot available in the databases. Which means we go deeper, but that takes time. There’s usually a reason for that level of security. I think at least we figured out what that reason is.”

  “What?” Her fingers were clenched so tightly around her pen that her knuckles were white.

  “His job at the Pentagon. He’s special aide to the Secretary of Defense. From what we learned, he’s Kent Samson’s right-hand man.”

  Any hope of concentrating for the rest of the day had been shattered by Jake’s news. Well after she’d left the sheriff’s office and gone home she could hear his words continue to echo over and over in her head.

  He’s special aide to the Secretary of Defense.

  She sat at her desk, printouts of the attachments Benny had sent spread out in front of her. As jobs went, they didn’t get much more powerful than Secretary of Defense. Samson was entering his third decade in public service. He’d spent the last eleven years in the position he held now, under three consecutive administrations—a rare feat for any politically appointed official. Although he’d been coy about his plans, it was generally believed that he was positioning himself for a run at the presidency. The primaries were a mere eighteen months away. With his name recognition, he wouldn’t have to do a lot of early campaigning.

  But what could that have to do with Hendricks? And, by association, with her?

  Her gaze dropped to the copies of officer evaluations. As expected, there was far more detail included in them than in what they’d already accessed. These were the records that would have been used to make decisions about promotions and special assignments. Commanding officers wrote detailed reports about each officer or enlisted person’s strengths and weaknesses.

  The first thing Ria did was read through the six females’ reports, scanning each of the narrative evaluations. Distantly, she noted that her hands were trembling slightly. She hadn’t admitted, even to herself, how much she was banking on finding something in them that could reasonably describe her, six years earlier.

  After the first time through, she started over, reading more slowly and carefully. But by the end of the task she had to admit that nothing sounded in the least familiar.

  Disappointment bloomed, too strong to be ignored. There were those that had some of the training she’d obviously picked up along the way. A couple of the women were expert marksmen, but their ages didn’t seem right. One would be older than she guessed her own age, by at least a decade. Another was the mother of two. One of the few things Ria could at least be scientifically certain of was that she’d never borne a child. Three of the women were bilingual, but no reports described a woman who could speak six languages.

  Try as she might, she couldn’t make any of the women’s reports fit her situation. Whoever she’d been back then, it wasn’t anyone detailed in these pages.

  She was missing something. Shoving away from the desk, she rose to pace the small area. Either her identity was hidden on one of these sheets, and she just wasn’t interpreting things correctly, or she’d made an error in her original thinking.

  That thought had merit, so she pursued it. She’d originally decided to have Benny search for deceased military personnel because she’d figured she was connected in some way to the two men who’d been sent after her. Since she’d killed them, she’d figured th
eir deaths would have to show up on the massive military record management system.

  It went without saying that she wasn’t dead. Yet. The dark thought intruded, a shadowy reminder of the three days and some hours remaining in the week Jake had been given. So if she’d been army, how had her disappearance been explained? She’d imagined since it hadn’t been made public that they would have wanted to hide it in some way. What better way than to list her as dead?

  Ria grappled with the question for a long moment. She wouldn’t have been left on the enlisted rolls. There would be pay records, assignment rosters…too many possible pitfalls to try to hide a military person missing from duty.

  Unless they’d reported her that way…

  Once the thought occurred to her, she couldn’t believe it hadn’t before. She could have been reported as AWOL or Missing in Action. That would have galvanized military resources in the search. Would have been a red flag to any law enforcement agency or hospital she might have gone to for help.

  And it would have ensured that she would be handed over to the army had she ever requested assistance.

  Galvanized by the possibility, she went to her cell phone, put another call through to Benny. But although she waited impatiently through a half-dozen rings, she ended up getting an answering machine.

  Caution was too ingrained for her to risk leaving a message. Instead she replaced the phone and sat down at the computer, sending Benny an urgent e-mail request. She hit the send button, fairly certain that she’d have a reply within twenty-four hours. But with the time ticking resolutely by, they were twenty-four hours she couldn’t spare.

  Deliberately, she set the records of the females aside and started in on the males’. At one point, eyes aching, she got up and retrieved a magnifying glass to aid her. Much of the print was poor quality.

  Several of the men had the background and training in skills similar to those she possessed. She recognized the military jargon. Skilled in formal and informal weaponry. Superior surveillance techniques. Successfully engaged and subdued enemy forces. She focused on finding similarities in post locations, deployment orders or other timelines.

  It was fairly easy to start placing pages in sequence according to post locations. Soon she had several piles, symbolizing different spots internationally. She picked up each stack, rereading the reports, discarding records that seemed dissimilar to the others. This task went more easily and she was able to move through the piles quickly.

  Perhaps too quickly. She almost missed it. She had to backtrack to see what it was that had alerted her subconscious. She scanned halfway down one page before a single name jumped out at her.

  C. Albert Hendricks.

  She stared at the name, blood pounding in her temples. With her index finger she traced the scrawled signature on the officer’s report. Looked at the typed name above it. There was no mistake. Every officer had to fill out reports evaluating the performance of each of the personnel they supervised. There, under commanding officer, was the name C.Albert Hendricks.

  C as in Chad?

  Furiously, Ria flipped through the other pages, ran her finger down each until she identified the commanding officer. When she was done, four of the deceased men whose records lay before her had at least one evaluation signed by Hendricks.

  Same post. Same commanding officer. She’d been looking for something that connected these men and she’d found it. The commanding officer might well be the same man who had gone to Jake Tarrance and hired him to kill her.

  Ria had never flown first class, much less in a private jet. She looked around at the lavish appointments speculatively. From what Jake had said, he’d grown up teetering on the brink of poverty. His childhood was a far cry from the luxury he now seemed to take for granted.

  He walked down the aisle, returning from the captain’s cabin, having just conversed with his pilot. “We’re not expecting any turbulence. Should set down in Dulles in an hour and a half.”

  “You still have your men in D.C.?”

  He nodded. “They attached a tiny recorder to the keypad alarm system of Hendricks’s house at night. He returned home from work yesterday evening about six-thirty, punched in his code. The recorder was retrieved and hooked to a computer, which identified the numbers and sequence by their pitches. And simple as that—you have the code to get in.”

  Ria looked at Jake, outrage battling admiration. “You seem to have access to all sorts of odd skills.” She’d worked several B and Es in Denver, but none of the burglars had risen to this level of proficiency.

  Jake gave a self-deprecating shrug. “What can I say? Where inventiveness fails, a little research often does the trick. It doesn’t hurt that I have employees with, uh, varied interests.”

  She snorted. “Interests that will land them in a federal pen one of these days, no doubt.” But in this case, she had little reason to feel superior. She had no qualms about using the knowledge to engage in an illegal act herself. She’d be the one going inside. If caught, she’d be the one prosecuted.

  Ria didn’t give the possibility much consideration. If Hendricks was who she thought he was, if caught she’d never live to be tried.

  Rather than choosing one of the plush chairs across the aisle, Jake settled on the couch beside her. “Did you call in sick today?”

  “Of course not.” It hadn’t even occurred to her. “After you phoned yesterday I filed to take a vacation day.”

  His teeth flashed. He seemed in abnormally high spirits, given the circumstances. “Some vacation. Did your friend come through with the information you requested?”

  “Yes. And I realized I’d been spinning my wheels searching for a female listed as dead around the same time I was shot.” Quickly she filled him in on her lack of success with the records of the females and the conclusions she’d drawn about how her absence might have been explained.

  “That’s possible,” he said. “Actually, it seems pretty likely, since you’ve exhausted the reported-deceased angle. The military has to be like any other government bureaucracy. Paperwork in triplicate, all of it leaving trails. AWOL or MIA, either would have you turned over to them once you were found.”

  “That’s what I thought, too.” Not even to herself did Ria like to admit there was comfort in having someone else to discuss the possibilities with. It wouldn’t do to get used to the sensation. But since the opportunity was there, she might as well take advantage of it.

  “I’ve brought along some things you might need when you go into Hendricks’s place,” Jake told her.

  Thinking of the weapons she’d packed in her small carryon, she smiled grimly. “So did I.” In any undercover operation, there were a number of things that could go wrong. She wanted to be prepared for all of them.

  “You know how to run a digital camera?”

  “Of course. I brought my own.”

  “As long as it’s got a USB cord, it should work. What’s the card hold?”

  She thought. “About four dozen images, I think.”

  “We’ll use mine then. It takes closer to a hundred pictures.” Seeming not to notice the look she sent him, he went on. “I’ve also brought you a mini scanner in case there are documents you want to copy, and of course you’ll wear a wire.”

  “A wire?” Trepidation began to mingle with anticipation. “Just how sure are your men that Hendricks will be gone?”

  “I’ve got a half-dozen on him. We’ll know if he doesn’t leave for work, or starts home early for some reason. The house should be empty. He seems to live alone. At least he hasn’t had any visitors since surveillance began. But to bar against any unforeseen complications, you’ll wear the wire. And that’s not negotiable.”

  The suggestion made sense, but she found his tone objectionable. “And who will be monitoring the electronic surveillance?”

  “I’ll be in the van with a couple of my men. If anything looks wrong, anything at all, you’ll get the hell out of there.” He took her chin in his hand, turned her face
to him until she met his gaze. “I mean it, Ria.” His expression was grim. “At the first hint of trouble, you’re out of there. Don’t take any chances.”

  “I’m not going to take unnecessary risks,” she snapped, moving away from his touch.

  “Bull. If you find anything in there, you’ll stay as long as it takes to finish the job.”

  Annoyance flared. “You think you know me so well?”

  “It’s what I would do.” She stilled at the certainty in his voice. “We’re alike that way. But you may as well come to terms with this right now. If the situation calls for it, you’ll abort and get out to safety.”

  “I can handle myself.”

  He searched her gaze for some minutes before finally nodding. “The wire will ensure that we’ll know if you need help. If anything looks odd, you can let us know, and we’ll find a way to get you out.”

  Nerves were bunched in her stomach, adrenaline already starting its heady march through her veins. She was barely two hours away from discovering if Chad Hendricks and C. Albert Hendricks were one and the same. If they were, the pieces would begin clicking into place more and more rapidly.

  A thought occurred to her. “What was the name on the deed to Hendricks’s house?”

  Jake slipped out of the heavyweight leather jacket he’d been wearing. January could be a bit more unforgiving in D.C. than in Alabama. “I already told you. That’s how we discovered his name. Chad Hendricks.”

  “No middle initial?” she persisted. She told him about the signature she’d found on a few of the personnel evaluations last night, of the commanding officer a few of the men had shared.

  “C. Albert?” He shook his head, but already was reaching to dig the cell phone from his coat pocket. “I know the deed reads Chad, but…” He broke off to dial a number. “Cort? Read the name off that deed for me again, would you? The full name.”

  Ria read the answer to her question in the stillness that crept over his face. After a few more moments, he disconnected, looked at her. “The deed is recorded in the name Chad A. Hendricks.”