Troublemaker

CHAPTER 26

BO FROZE. HER SKIN PRICKLED AS IF ICE CUBES HAD slid down her spine. Her knees wobbled like gelatin. Her throat and lungs seized, her heart rate leaped into a full gallop.

But while her body was reacting to the twin bombs of terror and adrenaline, her mind somehow distanced itself, fought for clarity. Two thoughts occurred. One, the voice and accent were American, which meant this was likely Mr. Kingsley. Two, she’d been right about the hacker being right under Axel’s nose. How else could they have been located so fast, when they had talked to Axel just last night?

Tricks was still barking; she was surprised Morgan hadn’t already stepped outside to see what was up. Because he hadn’t, maybe he’d glanced outside the window and was already in action. She had no idea what form that action would take, or what direction he would come from.

Kingsley grabbed Bo’s hair in a painful grip and jerked her head back. “Shut the dog up, or I will. Now!”

Galvanized by the threat, Bo managed to say, “Tricks, sit.” Her voice was thin, but at least it worked.

Her head was at such an angle that she could barely see Tricks out of the corner of her eye, but Tricks stopped barking and her butt hit the ground, and she looked up with her big doggy grin, expecting to be praised and petted. “Good girl.” To Kingsley she said, “She’s a golden retriever. They’re very friendly.” God, don’t let him mistake Tricks’s barking for aggression and shoot her; most likely her barks had meant Someone new to pet me!

“No shit,” he said, jabbing the pistol harder against her skull. “Do I look stupid? But she’s a pretty dog; I might take her with me when I finish here.”

How pathetic was it to feel grateful that Tricks might survive even if she and Morgan didn’t?

Think! She had to think. There was a pistol in the holster at her waist, hidden by the bag slung over her shoulder, if she could get to it without him noticing. Pulled tight against him as she was, he’d notice any movement. Then it didn’t matter because he switched hands with the weapon held to her head and swiftly frisked her, immediately finding the pistol and jerking it off her waistband. “How about that,” he said sarcastically. “Who would ever think the chief of police would have a gun? Did you think I wouldn’t check?”

They knew who she was. She doubted the Kingsleys would have been able to find out both the location of Morgan’s cell phone and her identity without using government assets, so they had-just not the United States government.

She wondered how long he’d been out here. Had he seen them go in, but perhaps hadn’t been close enough to get an accurate shot? Pistols weren’t distance weapons. On the other hand, maybe he’d simply been waiting to catch one of them alone. If it were Morgan, he could kill him and leave, but Bo was the one who had come out of the house first. She knew damn good and well he intended her to be the shield between him and Morgan.

Her thoughts raced feverishly. How good a shot was he? He was a lawyer, right? How likely was he to be expert with a pistol? Competent, maybe, but when people like him went hunting, they were more likely to do game hunting with important clients they needed to impress. Shooting with a scoped rifle was a far cry from being accurate with a pistol.

But what if he was? Unlikely people took up target shooting.

And target shooting was very different from shooting at people, who didn’t just stand there unmoving. One of the classes Jesse had insisted she take had emphasized always running when faced with a pistol, that the odds were you wouldn’t be hit. Okay, if she could pull free-

That thought was interrupted as he tightened his hand in her ponytail, wrapping it around his hand and jerking her toward the house. “Keep your mouth shut, open the door, and don’t try anything. Where is he?”

“He… he was in the kitchen when I came out, but he was going to change clothes so… I don’t know for sure.”

“When we go in the door, where’s the kitchen?”

So he either hadn’t had a chance to reconnoiter and look through the windows, or he’d been too afraid to try. Walking up to someone’s windows during the day and peering in was kind of noticeable. “To the left,” she said, letting her voice quiver. That was kind of accurate: ahead, and somewhat to the left, but definitely not directly to the left.

“Which way does the door open?”

“Ah…” She actually had to think about that, because she opened the door both going and coming and either direction seemed natural to her. “To the right.”

He pushed her forward.

Surely Morgan had seen them. Surely he’d slipped out the back door and was easing around the side of the house. But what if he had gone upstairs for something? She had no way of knowing. She stumbled to buy time; it wasn’t much of a pretense because of the way he had her head pulled back. She couldn’t see where she was putting her feet. If she hadn’t known every foot of her property so well, she really would have stumbled and fallen.

“Stand the fuck up,” Kingsley snarled, pushing her forward another foot or so.

Morgan would have heard Tricks barking, in any event. She had to trust that he’d at least looked out the window.

Tricks barked again, that joyous, welcome sound that she gave when she saw just two people: Bo and Morgan.

“She likes to be petted before she’ll eat,” she said jerkily, unable to think of anything else to say but hoping she could distract him from Tricks, both her barking and the possibility that she might be dancing toward Morgan.

Dear God, please let Morgan be coming toward them. Please don’t let this asshole jerk force her inside the house and catch him unawares. If that happened, they were both dead.

“What?” Kingsley sounded startled, as if he couldn’t put her words in any context. That was good. That was what she’d wanted.

“Tricks. When she gets fed at night. She likes to be petted.”

“Forget the damn dog. Don’t open your mouth again.”

He pushed her once more, his hold on her hair pulling her head slightly to the right. At the very edge of her vision she saw movement, movement that wasn’t Tricks. A pistol was jammed against the back of her skull but she had to do something to keep him from seeing Morgan. If she startled him he might pull the trigger anyway. She had no way of knowing whether or not she was signing her own death warrant but there was nothing else she could do. At least Morgan and Tricks would be okay.

The two beings she loved most in the world would be okay, and that was all that mattered.

She simply lifted her feet and let herself drop heavily to the ground.

Hot pain seared through her scalp. Her whole body jarred as she hit the ground. Shots, both a sharp crack and a deeper roar, shattered the morning, the world. Her head and neck burned as Kingsley’s grip on her hair jerked her head around. Moisture, hot and red, drenched her.

Then everything was quiet except for her ringing ears. She felt odd; her focus was both blurred and sharpened, a series of images flashing in great detail while everything else blurred. She was lying on her side without knowing how she’d gotten there, staring at small pieces of gravel and blades of grass, the first post on the porch, the concrete. Everything was sideways, which puzzled her until she realized why. Oh, right; lying on her side would cause that.

She knew she was alive, but wasn’t sure how. She couldn’t order her thoughts enough to… Kingsley… where was Kingsley? He wasn’t gripping her hair any longer though she tried to move her head and couldn’t. Maybe he was the bulk she could feel at her back. Maybe he was still using her as a shield.

She saw Morgan charging toward her, big black Glock in his fist. She saw Tricks right at his heels, heard her barking. She said, “Tricks, be quiet,” afraid Kingsley would shoot her. Then she realized there was no point in being quiet now, nothing to be gained from it, because obviously he already knew Morgan was there. Why wasn’t Kingsley shooting? And why was her voice so weak and distant?

Then Morgan skidded to his knees beside her and shoved away the heavy mass that had been resting against her back. His eyes were pale blue fire in his strangely white face as he gently eased her flat on the ground. “Let me see, sweetheart,” he said softly.

She frowned up at him. “See what?”

“Your neck.”

He was pulling at her clothes. Tricks was whining, nosing her arm. Bo lifted her left hand and gently stroked Tricks’s leg, which seemed to be about all she could reach.

“What about my neck?”

“Kingsley shot you.”

“He did?” she asked, surprised. “I don’t feel shot.”

“Trust me on this.” Morgan turned her head to the side, his touch tender, and he blew out a breath of relief. “It’s more than a graze, more like a deep gouge, but no important veins or arteries were hit.”

“That’s a plus.” She managed a scowl, though she wasn’t certain why-maybe to reassure him that she was okay because grumpy meant okay. “Are you sure you didn’t shoot me? By accident, of course.” Kingsley’s pistol had been against her head. How could he possibly have missed enough to just graze her neck? Or gouge. She couldn’t quite picture the difference.

“I’m certain,” he growled, shucking his tee shirt off over his head and tying it around her neck, cinching it almost painfully tight with the knot right over where her neck was beginning to burn.

“How? I heard two shots.”

“Because my shot hit him.”

That made sense, so she stopped arguing and instead grappled with the logical conclusion. “He’s dead, right?”

“Very.”

She was fairly certain “very” meant something grisly. She didn’t want to look. She kept her head carefully turned away as Morgan slipped his right arm under her knees and his left one under her back, lifted her, and easily stood with her cradled against him. Her head swam from the movement, and she clutched at his bare shoulder. He carried her inside the house, pausing at the door to call Tricks in a sharp tone that had her trotting obediently to him, as if she knew this wasn’t a time for mischief. She whined as Morgan carefully laid Bo on the sofa.

“Don’t try to sit up, that’ll put pressure on your neck and make the bleeding worse,” he said as he grabbed up the phone.

“Wait,” Bo said, lifting a hand toward him. She was surprised to see blood on her arm, her hand. “I’m not critical, right?”

He hesitated, his expression still fierce and set as he stared down at her. “Right.”

“Get in touch with Axel first. That’s more important.”

Morgan’s jaw set, then he started tapping the screen of her phone. “I’m sending him a text. If the hacker is capturing all his calls and hears my voice, he’ll know it’s all gone to hell and bolt, alert Congresswoman Kingsley. ‘Ha ha, big brother, I was right,’” he read to her. “He should be able to figure that out, because you’d never call him big brother.”

After the zipping sound that signaled the text had been sent, he tapped the screen some more. “I’m calling Jesse direct, instead of 911. I want to keep this as quiet as possible, give Axel time to throw a net over his hacker,” he said to Bo, then, “Jesse, this is Morgan. We’ve had some trouble at Bo’s house. One man dead, Bo’s injured, not critically. Get some people out here, but keep it quiet. Nothing over the radio. This is all tied in with why I’m here.” He listened for a minute, then said, “Okay,” and thumbed off the call. “Jesse’s getting everyone rounded up,” he said, then eased down to sit on the edge of the sofa with his hip against hers.

“I almost had a heart attack,” he growled. “I heard Tricks bark, looked out the window, and saw him jab that barrel against the base of your skull. I grabbed my weapon and went out the back door, but I expected to hear a shot every second.”

“I had some use as a shield,” Bo said drowsily. Her neck burned and throbbed, but overall she just felt sleepy and very fuzzy. “That was the only reason. Thank goodness it wasn’t Yartsev.”

“Yeah. He’d have had a better plan.”

She would likely never have seen Yartsev, she thought. She’d have driven off, he’d have killed Morgan as soon as Morgan stepped outside, then perhaps he’d have waited for her to return. Probably not; she’d have simply returned home to find Morgan’s body, and she would never, never have recovered from that. Kingsley, on the other hand, hadn’t had the skill or the experience to pull it off. But she was tired of thinking about it, tired of fighting to stay awake. “I’m so sleepy,” she mumbled, and closed her eyes.

“Baby, no, you can’t go to sleep.” He put his hand on her shoulder and shook her.

Her eyelids cracked open just enough for her to give him a baleful look. “Did you just call me baby?”

His lips twitched. “I did. And you can’t do anything about it.”

She managed a smirk. “The joke’s on you. I don’t mind at all. Just let me rest, okay?”

“You are resting. You’re flat on your back.”

“But you keep talking, and I want to take a nap. Just a short one.”

“No dice.”

“Then get a washcloth and get some of this blood off me, okay?”

As soon as his weight left the sofa and he disappeared, Bo closed her eyes and went to sleep.

She was roused by the slow slide of a warm, wet washcloth over her arm. “Tricked me, didn’t you,” he said without heat, his touch firm but tender.

She didn’t feel guilty. “Just for a minute. I’m so tired.”

“Adrenaline crash and blood loss.”

“Where’s Tricks?”

“Lying right here. She’s fine.”

Her phone signaled an incoming text, and Morgan picked it up. “He said, ‘Gloat, why don’t you? 10-4.’ He understands.”

She didn’t see how he could tell that, but he was the one who worked with Axel so she took him at his word.

She was silent for a while as he carefully cleaned as much of the blood off her as he could. She’d have loved to change out of her bloody clothes but didn’t feel like going to the exertion of taking them off. No doubt she’d be taken to the nearest hospital where they’d be cut off her anyway. She didn’t care; she never wanted to wear them again.

Despite her fatigue she began thinking of practical matters. “I’ll need some pajamas and fresh underwear,” she murmured.

He gave her a startled look. “Right now?”

“In the hospital. There’s no way I can get out of going, is there?”

“None.”

“Then gather some things together for me. Pajamas, underwear, robe, toothbrush and toothpaste, hairbrush. Also some jeans and sandals, a shirt and a bra. Make that two pairs of underwear, just in case. And anything else you see that might come in handy.”

He leaned over and kissed her. “Now I know you’ll be all right.”

“Yeah? How?”

“You’re giving me orders, just like when I first showed up here.”

“Someone had to. You weren’t taking care of yourself.”

“And you aren’t taking care of yourself now. I think I’ll wait until reinforcements get here before I get your things,” he said, proving that he was smarter than the average bear.

“I’m lying here, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, but I can’t tell the difference between asleep and unconscious, so I need you to be awake.”

“All right, all right.” Her neck was hurting worse by the minute; she wasn’t certain she could go to sleep anyway.

“I think I’ll get a tattoo of a bull’s-eye on my neck,” she threw out to see what kind of reaction she could get out of him. Given that she currently didn’t feel like doing anything, not even sitting up, that was about the limit of her entertainment.

“Bullshit,” he said, frowning down at her.

“Hey, you did.”

“I got the tattoo before I got shot.”

“I can pretend I did, too.”

“All right, so ‘Mom’ on my triceps would have been less in-your-face, but the GO-Teams are an in-your-face group of guys. One time we-” Whatever tale he was about to get into was halted when he lifted his head at the distant sound of sirens. Tricks jumped up but didn’t run to the door as she normally did whenever she heard something unusual. Instead she stood by the sofa and gave her tail an uncertain wag; the expression on her face was the same one she’d gotten as a puppy whenever she broke something and didn’t know exactly what had happened but figured she was guilty anyway. She whined softly.

Bo cautiously shifted enough that she could touch Tricks, slide her fingers deep into the soft fur. “It’s okay, princess. I smell bloody, but I’m fine.” To Morgan she said, “I expect you’ll be heading to D.C. as soon as I’m hauled off, right?”

“It’s my job,” he said, not even hesitating.

She hadn’t expected him to stay and wouldn’t have asked that of him. What was going on was a lot bigger than what had just happened here, despite the dead man lying in her yard.

The sirens rapidly got closer and louder. Morgan stood to look out the windows as the parade of vehicles roared into the yard. “Jesse’s leading the posse,” he said. “Medics right behind him.” He opened the door to let the medics in and went out to meet Jesse.

From that minute on, Bo had no control at all-not that she’d had a lot before. Within a minute her house and yard were swarming with crisis personnel. Medics surrounded her, their bodies preventing her from seeing anything other than them. Morgan’s tee shirt was cut off from around her neck, but part of the fabric stuck and they left that, bandaged over it. It said something about how she felt that she made no protest at the blood pressure cuff, the light in her eyes, the IV line that was started almost immediately. Jesse came in to see her, his face that combination of carefully blank eyes and nothing-going-on-here expression that cops used to keep events at a distance so they could function.

“You’re leading an interesting life lately, Chief,” he said.

“I keep interesting company.”

“Tell me about it. He filled me in. We’ll handle things on this end. Don’t worry about it. Nothing will hit the news until he gives the okay.”

She managed a truncated nod because the thick bandage kept her from moving her head very much. “Can you take care of Tricks? Take her to Daina?”

“No problem. If Daina can’t take her tonight, I’ll take her home with me.”

With all the people grouped around her she hadn’t seen Morgan come back in, but he appeared beside her as she was being loaded into the back of the medic truck, one of her suitcases in hand. He’d taken the time to pull on another shirt. “Here’s your purse, too,” he said, putting the suitcase inside the truck and setting her bag on top of the stretcher with her. “I put your phone in it.” He leaned down and kissed her, his blue eyes intent as he studied her. “I’ll call you when I can.”

“Go do what you have to do,” she said, lifting her hand to touch his jaw. “I love you.”

“I love you back. Remember that.” He gave her one more fierce kiss, then was gone.

From inside the medic truck, she couldn’t even watch as he drove away.

Sometimes things just went to hell and there was nothing you could do about it except pick up the pieces and deal with what was left. He hadn’t anticipated-no one had-the hacker actually being the one guy Axel had gotten to set up the trap and try to trace the hack. They must have had a big laugh about that, picturing Axel anxiously waiting for a trap that was never sprung because they knew it was a trap.

Dexter Kingsley had moved so fast Morgan hadn’t had time to put in more sophisticated security measures, and the ones he had installed had been useless. Kingsley had evidently driven partway up the driveway while they’d been on their walk. Then he’d simply waited, maybe crouched out of sight behind Morgan’s Tahoe, until someone left the house. If Morgan had been first, he’d have been shot on sight. But Bo had been first, and Kingsley couldn’t shoot her without alerting Morgan, so he’d decided to use her as a shield.

God save him from amateurs. They were unpredictable, they did wild shit that anyone with half-assed training would never do, and sometimes it worked. What if Kingsley had thought to use a silenced weapon? He’d have shot Bo, maybe Tricks too, then waited until Morgan came out. Kingsley hadn’t thought of it, and the dumbass plan hadn’t worked out, but Bo had come so close to being killed Morgan had lost ten years off his life. Only his training had kept him moving, kept him thinking, all the while he was almost insane with gut-wrenching fear.

He wanted the hacker-Devan Hubbert-in a bad way, but Hubbert had given them the slip. At least Axel had been able to secure Hubbert’s personal computer and currently had a whole computer forensic team breaking it down to the code. Whether or not they could find anything incriminating against the Kingsleys was up in the air. The bad news was that street cams showed Hubbert entering the Russian embassy, which meant either he had asylum or he was a deep plant. They couldn’t touch him, at least not without the Russians’ permission-which wasn’t going to happen. In the meantime, they were digging as deep into his background as they could to determine if he was a deep plant or a homegrown traitor.

When Morgan had entered the GO-Teams headquarters, everyone he met looked surprised to see him. There were a lot of people on the support side who he knew on sight but whose names he didn’t know. Everyone knew his name, though, and knew something really bad had gone down a few months before. The place looked like a fire drill, with everyone rushing around and a sense of urgency permeating the air.

He’d gone straight to Axel’s office; though they hoped Devan Hubbert wasn’t still able to monitor Axel’s conversations, until they knew for certain, they were maintaining strict protocol over the phone, so nothing much had been said. Axel’s office, his car, his home were all being swept for bugs. They were routinely swept anyway, but this time everything was being checked down to the wiring. All computers were being checked for any keylogging program. The damage Hubbert could have done-likely had done-was enormous.

“Let’s step outside,” Axel said sourly, indicating how worried they were about the entire building being compromised. There was a safe room, completely shielded from electronics, but evidently he wasn’t trusting even that right now.

From the street the building looked like a nondescript, slightly run-down office building in need of some repairs. There was secure parking from a discreet entrance in back, and adjacent was a public parking area where Morgan had parked since he didn’t have his security ID with him.

The three-hour drive had put him there in the late afternoon, when the D.C. heat was oppressive, the humidity close to a hundred percent. Because of that, as well as the possibility of a parabolic mic being aimed their way-who the hell knew?-they got into Morgan’s Tahoe and he cranked up the air conditioning as well as the radio.

“What happened?” Axel brusquely demanded.

“Dexter Kingsley showed up. Good thing it wasn’t Yartsev, or the outcome would likely have been different. I didn’t have any fancy security in place yet; it’s sheer luck Bo and I aren’t both dead. He grabbed her when she left for work. I heard the dog barking, saw what was going down, and flanked him from the rear. He was holding Bo with his pistol to the back of her head,” Morgan said tersely, his face tightening as he relived the sheer dread and, yes, terror, that he’d had to fight through so he could function. “She lifted her feet and dropped straight to the ground. He shot but his aim was off, got her in the neck.”

Axel’s sour expression didn’t so much as flicker. “Is she dead?”

“No. He didn’t hit anything vital.”

“I assume he’s dead though.”

“Correct.”

Axel said, “That’s something, then. We still don’t have shit against the congresswoman. Maybe there’ll be something on Hubbert’s personal computer, but until then we can’t overtly move against her.”

“Overt” was the operative word. What was done in private was a different animal from what was said in public.

“I suggest we pay Congresswoman Kingsley a visit,” Morgan said, glancing at the time. “I wonder if she’s still in her office.”

“No. I put a tail on her. She went home twenty minutes ago.” His smile was cold and mirthless. “I think talking to her is a good idea. Unofficially, of course.”

“It will be a pleasure.” The long drive had taken Morgan from a hot murderous rage down to a cold murderous rage, driven by the knowledge that he couldn’t do what he wanted to do. His instinct was to walk up to the door and when Joan Kingsley opened it put a bullet in her forehead. He couldn’t do that. He didn’t give a damn about the law, but he did give a damn about whether or not he’d be free to spend the rest of his life with Bo. That mattered. Personal vengeance was one thing, but stupidity was another. Axel would take care of Congresswoman Kingsley, whether that action involved something catastrophic to her health or was restricted to removing her from a position of power-or a combination of both. Things happened. Sometimes those things were truly accidents. Sometimes they weren’t.

“Let me drive,” Axel said. “I know the way.” They swapped seats, though Morgan wasn’t crazy about it because Axel was a shitty driver. But when they arrived at the Kingsley residence in Bethesda, he saw why. The house was a gorgeous Georgian mansion, three stories, thick columns. A gated drive prevented casual access to the property. Axel let down the window to press the button. From his vantage point Morgan couldn’t see a security camera, but there almost assuredly was one, and Axel would have known that. He preferred to keep Morgan in the passenger seat, out of sight. Morgan aided in that by looking down as if he were fooling with his phone in case there were multiple cameras with different viewpoints.

“Yes?” came a voice, without identifying the residence.

“Axel MacNamara to see Congresswoman Kingsley.”

There was a short pause, then the gates began smoothly sliding open on their tracks. When there was enough room, Axel pulled forward. Watching in the side mirror, Morgan saw the gates slide together again.

There was a lot of money represented here, in the three-car garage, the security, the house, the manicured grounds. Morgan remembered their cabin cruiser, which wasn’t a small one. He guessed it would run a couple of hundred thousand, at least; he’d never priced a boat that big or that fancy. Congresswoman Kingsley’s salary wasn’t anything to sneeze at, but neither was it sufficient for this. Dexter Kingsley must have been a hell of a lawyer-either that, or they’d been raking money in on the side for quite a while.

Axel got out and closed the driver’s door. Morgan waited a little bit longer, watching the curtains to see if he detected any movement. Axel continued without pause up the sidewalk to the front door. Morgan thought he saw a slight twitch of the curtains, enough that whoever had peeked out had seen only Axel going to the door.

Quickly he exited, vaulted a piece of shrubbery, and was standing beside Axel when Congresswoman Kingsley opened the door, a calm smile on her pretty face, her silver-white hair immaculate.

He hadn’t accomplished anything except surprise, but it was worth it to see the absolute shock on her face when she recognized him.

She began, “Morgan! It’s wonderful to-” Then she stopped, realizing the pretense was no good because she knew that he’d remembered what he’d seen that day. She knew because of the hacker. She knew because her husband had gone to silence him. What she didn’t know was what had happened to her husband.

“Congresswoman,” Axel said into the abrupt silence. “May we come in?”

She didn’t say anything, simply opened the door wider and stepped away, leaving them to follow her or not.

She went into an elegantly appointed living room, the furniture upholstered in a yellow-and-white-striped fabric that was probably silk. “Please, sit down,” she said, her voice only slightly strained.

Morgan planted his ass on the striped silk, impassively watching her. He waited for Axel to speak but when Axel didn’t and she didn’t, the silence grew and deepened until all the color had leached from her face except for the artificial hues of her makeup. Morgan was accustomed to being the weapon, the point of the spear, but he realized that this time Axel was content to let him take the lead.

“Ma’am,” he said, “I regret to inform you of your husband’s death.”

She flinched, an instinctive move that was swiftly conquered. She straightened her shoulders. “I see. May I ask… the circumstances?”

“Head shot,” he replied laconically. “While he was attempting to commit murder.”

Joan Kingsley wasn’t made of steel, she was made of titanium. She sat quietly, watching them, waiting for one of them to betray exactly how much they knew. She wasn’t going to give them anything, not a single detail.

Axel spoke up. “We believe Foma Yartsev left the country this morning. A full-press search is going on for Devan Hubbert, but we have his personal computer, and a team is doing a thorough forensic investigation of it now.”

She had gone even whiter as she listened, but she didn’t break. She folded her hands, said calmly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m sure you don’t. Let’s be frank, Congresswoman. We know. We can’t prove it-yet-but we know.”

“Does this have anything to do with my husband’s death?” she asked, still not giving an inch, determined to play her hand as long as she could. If they couldn’t prove anything, she was for damn certain not going to confess.

Axel ignored the question. “You won’t be allowed to leave the country. The FBI will be watching every move you make. I suggest you resign from the Armed Service Committee immediately. In the short term, that might be beneficial to your health.”

She glanced swiftly at Morgan. He met her gaze with all the icy menace he felt.

“And in the long term?” she asked.

He didn’t blink. “You have to take your chances,” he said finally.

“I see.” She stood, lifted her chin. “Thank you, gentlemen, for stopping by to give me the… bad news. If you don’t mind, I’d like to be alone now. May I ask when my husband’s body will be released to me?”

“We’ll let you know,” Axel said, and they left.