Barracuda security compl.., p.43
Barracuda Security Complete Trilogy, page 43
part #1 of Barracuda Security Series
“What about Gregory Colin Johnson?” Briar asked. “Wasn’t Pierce working with him? Isn’t that why Johnson went after his sister?”
“Not exactly.” Black caught his hands in front of him and rocked on his heels a little as he studied Briar. “Pierce knew Johnson. They’d crossed paths when Roman came here to meet with some of his buddies who work for Black Jacket. When Johnson realized who Roman Pierce was, he set out to befriend him. That was how I came to know him, too. I realized he was in a position to get sensitive information I hadn’t been able to access before. Roman and I began meeting in various cities, trying not to pick a place where we might be seen. Unfortunately, Johnson did see us during a meeting in Atlanta. That’s when Roman became convinced that his family might be in danger.”
“Why Rylee?” I asked. It was a question I’d always wanted an answer to.
“Because a soldier doesn’t touch the wife of a brother. And the other members of Roman’s family were off limits for other reasons. She was the only one he could screw around with.”
“So, Pierce hired me.”
Black glanced at me. “He hired you, and your people did a hell of a job getting her out of that little situation just fine.”
“You were in town that night. I saw you with Roman.”
Abraham dropped his head. “We didn’t know she’d been kidnapped at that point. But Roman had a run-in with Johnson, and it didn’t go well. Johnson accused him of working with the feds. It’s actually a good thing that Johnson died that night.”
Briar was silent. Dumbfounded, I think.
“How did your brother find out about Roman?”
Black shook his head. “I’m not sure, but I think it was my fault. I think he figured out I was working with Grosse. I don’t know how?”
“I think I might.” It suddenly hit me, and I was sick to my stomach. Could it be my fault that Roman was dead? “He hacked my security cameras. He could have hacked other things, my office phone, my emails. He could have found out that I’d been in contact with both Homeland Security and military intelligence.”
“Why would he be watching you?”
“Because I put an operative in one of his money laundering businesses. And because I shot one of his men the night Johnson kidnapped Rylee.”
Black nodded slowly. “He is a paranoid son of a gun.”
“I was careful not to speak to these men by phone, but I did meet with them in public. And I had evidence they gave me. If he searched my home…”
“He probably did.”
Briar shook her head. “This is insane! Why Roman? Why Walnut Estates? Why my family?”
Her voice was shaky, near hysteria. Black’s face took on a look of compassion mixed with that uncertain look some men get when they’re afraid they’re going to have to deal with a hysterical woman. I drew her out into the hallway and pulled her against my chest.
“This is almost over, babe. You just have to bear with us a short time longer.”
“I can’t,” she muttered, shaking her head. “I don’t understand! Roman was actually doing the right thing for once? Why didn’t he tell me? Why didn’t I know?”
She shook her head, a little sob escaping her lips briefly. And then she stepped back, reaching into the back of her pants. “I think I know who was behind it all.”
“Is this what you’re looking for?” I held up the USB drive. “It dropped out of your pants;”
She nodded slowly. “I think it’s Roman’s proof. What they were hoping to get in order to take all this down. To take that other brother down.”
“Then let’s see what’s on it.”
Chapter 12
I
Briar
I needed to be alone and Kai said he understood, but I’m not sure he did. We went to a hotel where we got separate rooms. Kai said he’d be busy with the feds all night, anyway. And then tomorrow would be a big day.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it all. Roman had been one of the ‘good guy’. I couldn’t get my head round that. He hadn’t been good to me.
I curled up in the center of the massive bed—this room was ten times better than the one we’d stayed in before!—running it all through my mind. My fingers traced the bruises that were forming on the side of my face. The pain was more familiar than I wanted to admit.
Roman, a good guy.
I couldn’t figure it out. I had believed he was a good guy once upon a time. We’d met at the crab shack on the beach where I worked one summer, six years ago. He was the son of one of the elite who kept houses there on the beach and I was just a girl who’d been passing through on her way to Charlotte, who had decided to apply for a few jobs before moving on, since the chances of getting work here were better than the big city. Not only that, but the tips would be better. I never expected to fall in love.
He walked into the restaurant that night, his dark hair damp from a recent shower. He was with a group of other elites, boys his age who were looking for a little trouble. He was a flirt, smiling and making jokes with all the girls. But the moment his eyes fell on me, he had looked as though all the other girls ceased to exist.
“You’re new,” he’d said.
“New here.”
“I would remember you if I’d ever seen you before.”
And that was it. I was lost in his perfect eyes. He took me out onto the beach that night, walked with me from the crab shack to the room I was renting with a couple of other girls just down the way. He asked me out and I refused, but he kept on and on asking until I couldn’t refuse anymore. From that moment on, it seemed like we were never apart. He was charming and I never tired of seeing his handsome face and hearing the sweet things he liked to say to me.
How could I have known it was all just an act?
I worried for him when he left. He came to see me that day, holding me close beside his Mercedes, promising he’d write every chance he got. He never did. He also promised that he wouldn’t forget me, but the first time I saw him in the hospital, his eyes registered a big blank when they fell on my face. I told myself at the time that it was the head injury. But even then I suspected the truth. There’d been other girls and I was just one of many.
But I was the one with his child.
Molly was five months old when I found out Roman had been badly injured in Afghanistan, but was now back in the States recovering from a coma.. Rylee told me. She was the one to drive me to the hospital the first time. I don’t know if it was my idea or hers, but we went together. Marigold was there. When she set eyes on me, there was instant dislike in her expression. She looked at me as if I was nothing more than a gutter rat come to ruin her afternoon and her visit to her son. But when she saw the pictures of Molly I showed Roman, her opinion changed.
“A child? How delightful,” she’d said like I’d announced I’d made brownies for dessert. But not twenty-four hours later, Roman called me and asked me to come visit him again. I did. Three times a week for two months. And then had come the awkward marriage proposal and my stupid insistence on ignoring every instinct that told me to run as far from him as possible.
had been married six months when I found the letters. They were in a shoebox in the closet. The letters I’d written him, with all my addresses from the crab shack to the small place I rented when I graduated. I think, unconsciously I’d realized even then, with the first letter, that he wouldn’t even remember me and , that maybe he hadn’t cared about the letters I had sent him.
“I still have those?” he asked when he came into the room.
“They’re all open. You must have read them.”
“Actually, I got them that way. Some nurse told me that a patient who shared my room in Washington DC read them to me, hoping they’d bring me out of my coma. Stupid, right?”
It was not long a after finding the letters that he hit me for the first time. I had burned the toast for his breakfast because the baby was crying, and the toaster had been acting up. We needed a new one, but if you turned it up high enough and watched closely enough, you could catch it at just the right moment for the toast to be edible. But I wasn’t paying enough attention and the house filled with smoke.
“Dumb bitch!” he’d called me. “You could burn down the house.” He unplugged the toaster and tossed the whole thing into the trash—probably more likely to cause a fire there than on the counter—then turned and backhanded me, all in one smooth motion. It didn’t seem to matter to him that I was holding his year old daughter in my arms, or that his actions made her scream more than she’d been doing before.
“Shut her up!” he yelled, as he turned and walked out the door like he hadn’t done a thing.
That was the first, definitely not the last and not nearly the worst.
I think it was the abuse that I lost track of the man I had thought Roman was. Or maybe it was just that he never allowed me in after his head injury, not like he did that summer on the beach. He didn’t talk to me about his dreams, about his desires. He didn’t laugh with me, didn’t sing to the songs on the radio or share his favorite television shows with me. Married just over three and a half years, we never shared anything other than angry words.
I think he resented me. I think his mother had made him marry me and he resented me for that rather than her. I used to think if I tried harder to draw him out, if I encouraged him to share his story with me, things might improve. But now I was sure that his problems were more to do with his relationship with his mother than me. And because of her, I lost the opportunity to get to know him and to love him.
Was he a good man? Not to me. But could he have been?
I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling, thinking of Kai. I’d wanted a good man to read my letters, to come home to me and make me promises I was afraid to ask for. I thought that man was Roman, and now I was wondering if things had been different, that man could have been Roman. But then I realized that even though Roman had been doing the right things up to the time of his death, it didn’t change who he really was. He might have loved Molly in his own, screwed up way, but he never would have been the man I needed him to be. It was Kai who was the good man, the one who’d read my letters—the man I’d wanted Roman to be. The man I’d dreamt of, who I’d made myself believe could fulfill my desire for love and a normal family life. Was that really still what I wanted? Was that really how my story should end?
I was too confused to know.
II
A private plane waited on the tarmac to fly us back to North Carolina. It was late in the morning, and Roman’s funeral would have taken place an hour or so ago. He was still heavy on my mind, for reasons I couldn’t define, let alone interpret. The news had been filled with reports on a shooting at a private military contractor’s office outside Vegas, but no names or details had yet been given. But we were still fighting the clock to finish what had gone down here. There was one more person left to be arrested; the brains behind the whole operation. The person who’d ordered Roman’s death.
Kai had Zachary Black’s story on video. This and the information on the USB was enough evidence to arrest Black’s silent business partner.
as a driver for a guy here in Vegas. I got into conversation with one of my boss’s guests when I was driving them around the town. My boss had gone off to a meeting and the guest and I were alone for what seemed like hours. Somehow I got to telling them about my past, about the trouble I’d had in the military, about my unfair discharge, and about the stigma that followed me around. I talked about friends I’d had in the military, friends who’d suffered the same sort of disgrace I had. It turned out that this person—my boss’s guest agreed with some of my opinions and took me up on them.”
The story continued with the background to the operation and the huge sums of money that had been stolen and laundered.
“Putting everything in Abraham’s name was my idea. Everything else…I wasn’t smart enough for some of that shit, you know? I just went along because we got the results I wanted. I got everything I wanted.”
That was what it was all about. Everyone was out for themselves—greed and getting rich was all that mattered. Morality and honor were nothing to these people..
“The heist was scheduled for next week. We were clearing out, wrapping up all the loose ends so that we could leave the country and disappear with the money we were going to make from the sale of the weapons. Everyone in the know was cleaning their money, applying for new passports, doing whatever they needed to do to get leave without leaving traces. It was our biggest deal, and we were all going to live happily ever after in countries without extradition treaties with the States.”
It killed me to realize how close we’d been to allowing them to get away with it all. Another week, and it would have been over. If Kai had gone to jail; if I’d stayed behind with Molly for Roman’s funeral … if…if…if.
The ifs could drive a person insane!
The SUV pulled onto the tarmac. Teddy slid over and opened the door, reaching back to help me once he was on the ground. Kai came next, and everyone was silent as though we really were attending a funeral. Kai was limping a little as he went to the back to help the driver with our bags. That blister must have spread from all the serious activity of yesterday. I would like to have bet too that he hadn’t treated it at all and hadn’t even removed his prosthetic until the moment he fell into bed—the stubborn man!
The door of the plane stood open, and a pretty flight attendant was standing in the doorway at the top of the steps. I hesitated before going up. I had never flown before and I felt a little nervous about flying in a small, private plane. What were its chances of getting us home safely? But then a little face peeked out around the flight attendant and all my fears were instantly forgotten.
“Molly!”
“Mommy!”
My daughter came out of the plane and down the steps out so fast that she literally flew into my arms as she reached for me. I swung her up and held her so tight that I could have broken both her ribs and mine, but I couldn’t let go. She buried her face into my shoulder.
“I love you, baby. I love you so much!”
“I love you, too, Mommy.”
I rocked her, a sob escaping my lips. She pulled back and took my face between her tiny hands and said, “You don’t have to be sad, Mommy. The bad guys are all gone now.”
“I know, baby.” I kissed the tip of her nose. “I know.”
“I thought you’d like to see her, so I asked Teddy to arrange for the plane to make a detour in Connecticut on its way here.”
“Thank you.”
Kai shrugged. Molly caught sight of him and began to squirm, insisting on being freed from my arms. Kai squatted down even though I knew that was a difficult position for him because of his leg. But he didn’t seem to notice or care. Molly ran to him the moment I set her on the ground and wrapped her arms around his neck. He stood and held her as closely as I’d done, pressing his lips to the side of her head. It was in that moment I realized he loved her as much as I did. I knew he liked the kid, I knew he’d loved to tease and entertain her. But now I saw that he loved her like a father should; the way Roman never had.
And I loved him for it.
We boarded the plane, Paxton and Ayden, were there, all smiles and excited to see us, too. Especially Kai.
“He confessed, so I heard,” Paxton said.
“Got it on video,” Kai admitted, accepting the high five Paxton offered.
And he had. Zachary Black had looked straight into the camera and confessed to killing Roman Pierce.
“He was gathering sensitive information to give to the feds. My partner discovered it and ordered that he be taken care of. The idea of framing Kai Gabriel for it was just a bit of inspiration on my part when I realized that he’d been investigating members of my team. We used footage we’d taken from the cameras he’d set up himself in Mrs. Pierce’s house to make it appear as though Gabriel was the one who placed Roman’s body in his former wife’s house, but it was actually one of my men in a shirt that was a replica of the one Kai Gabriel had been seen wearing.”
I sat by the windows and stared out, still a little lost in my thoughts. The idea of what was about to happen weighed heavily on me. I wasn’t sure I was ready to shoulder what was waiting for me.
How had I not known? I had seen the evidence on the USB drive. I knew the dates, knew the truth, yet I hadn’t been able to wrap my mind around it. I guess I had simply avoided the truth because it scared me. If this person was that powerful, if this person could do those things, what was to stop this person from inflicting more pain on the people of Walnut Estates, on the people who had thought this person a pillar of society? How could Roman have been so close to this person, and then to have been strong enough to share the sort of evidence he’d gathered?
“Is it true?” Paxton asked. “She’s really his partner?”
I glanced over at her, saw Kai glance at me while gesturing for Paxton to lower her voice.
“It’s okay,” I said. But was it? Really?
There wasn’t much more talk after that. The flight was a few hours long, but everyone else seemed just as lost in their thoughts as I was in mine. Molly came to sit with me and ended up falling asleep with her head against my shoulder. I held her close, grateful for the opportunity to get some sleep myself. All this excitement must have worn her out. It had me.
When the plane landed, Kai slipped my little girl from my arms and carried her to the car. She was awake by the time we got there, fussing a little when he put her in the booster seat. I got in beside her, and took her hand, promising to take her to McDonald’s when we were done with our business.
“They’re at the house,” Teddy announced as the SUVs we were traveling in started out. It was only a ten-minute drive from the private airstrip to the heart of town, and another five to the house in question. It was the longest fifteen minutes of my life.
