Larson was right. Mark could handle it that way, but he wouldn’t. He grabbed a towel from the basket next to the door and wiped down. He’d request that Beth be added to the team this morning before leaving Baltimore.
As it had several times since he’d left her place last night, his mind drifted slightly off-topic and into more personal avenues, where he wasn’t so much thinking about her as an agent but as a woman. Even during their short conversation, he’d found himself distracted more than once by her attractiveness. It seemed reasonable to assume her presence would impact at least a few members of his team in the same way.
He had just draped the towel around his neck when his cell phone went off. Even as he reached for it, he and Larson glanced toward the television, focusing on the closed caption, looking for the kind of bad news that would lead to a predawn call, but the text at the bottom of the screen still dealt with the lobbying scandal.
The ringer sounding a third time, Mark checked the number to the incoming call. It was his SAC, special agent in charge, David Daughtry.
As he listened to what Daughtry had to say, the knot in Mark’s chest—the one he’d been battling recently—tightened. He sank onto the closest bench. Larson sat only a few feet away having abandoned his weights, his elbows propped on his knees as he listened.
Even from the one-sided conversation, it would be obvious to him that after months of chasing a ghost, they’d officially run out of time. The investigation had suddenly rocketed into a whole new phase. With even higher stakes.
Disconnecting less than three minutes later, Mark dragged the towel from around his neck and tossed it toward the hamper. Bellingham, North Carolina. He’d never heard of it, had no idea what larger, more-familiar city it was located near. He soon would.
When was the last time he visited a city, a town, a destination where something bad hadn’t just happened? When was the last time he’d climbed onto a plane with a bathing suit and not a business suit packed in his luggage?
Larson’s face had gone from flushed to pale. “It’s finally happened, hasn’t it?”
“Too early to be certain. Call came in just over an hour ago, requesting our assistance.”
“Where?”
“Bellingham, North Carolina.” Mark tried to breathe past the knot. “A high school.”
Larson swiped the sweat from his face with a single hand. “How many casualties?”
Mark climbed to his feet. “Two.”
Still sitting, Larson looked up in surprise, his eyes narrowing in disbelief. “Only two?”
Two casualties. Mark knew he should be relieved by the number, but somehow it didn’t make any difference. Even two was too many.
Taking a deep breath, he then let it out slowly. The maneuver didn’t help. The tightness in his chest was still there. “Obviously, if it was MX141, it’s just a warm-up exercise.”
Breathing hard, Beth hefted the sledgehammer to waist level, her right hand choking down near the steel head, her left one sliding to the very end of the wooden shaft before tightening. A radio tuned to a rock station blared in the background, and construction dust floated around her. Good thing her neighbors were out of town.
The decision to take out the wall between her kitchen and the small breakfast room had been a spur-of-the-moment one when she couldn’t sleep. Perhaps it was a bigger project than was sensible to take on like that, but she’d needed some kind of physical activity to block out the nonproductive thoughts that had been plaguing her since Mark’s departure.
When she’d last checked it had been 4:00 a.m., but that probably had been more than an hour ago. In another thirty minutes or so, she’d need to shower and get dressed. Start psyching herself up for another round of questioning by some of Baltimore PD’s finest and for a face-to-face with Bill Monroe. The first wouldn’t require much in the way of preparation, but the latter would. Undoubtedly, Monroe would find some way to turn last night’s attempt on her life to his advantage.
She nudged aside the two-by-four that had fallen, widening her stance once more as she studied the framing above the doorway. She’d been at the demolition for possibly three hours now and her muscles were beginning to slow even if her mind wasn’t.
“Name three things—” she heaved in a breath “—that are deader than a doornail.”
She’d lost track of the times she’d ticked off the first two. Leon Tyber. Rabbit Rheaume. And since it was only her testimony during Rheaume’s upcoming trial that had been keeping Bill Monroe in check, her career was likely to be number three on the hit list.
Unless Mark intervened.
But that still didn’t justify what she’d done. She’d intentionally misled him when she’d said she might be able to recognize the voice if she heard it again—an exaggeration born of a desperate desire to save her career. A prime example of careerism.
Her gut roiled with guilt. She’d sat there in the garage tonight with Tom, acting as if she possessed more integrity, pretending that her principles were superior to his, when in reality they weren’t.
Her biceps and shoulder muscles tensed as she lifted the sledgehammer higher still, taking careful aim. She put all her weight and upper-body strength into the swing, but as soon as iron struck wood, she quickly stepped back. The loosened chunk of framing slammed to the floor, kicking up a small cloud of plaster dust.
What if Mark had known he was being manipulated? And even if he hadn’t, even if he bought the idea that she might recognize the voice, would he be likely to go to Bill Monroe?
If not, her awkward attempt to save her job wasn’t going to be worth squat. It would be only a matter of time before she was sent for a fitness-for-duty exam. She wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Bill Monroe was already making the arrangements. Which meant that in a matter of weeks, even before Christmas rolled around, she could be out of a job.
The idea left her feeling as if she’d been sliced open, twenty feet of gut pulled out and run through a meat grinder. From the time she’d been eleven and had written to the FBI, asking for a silhouette target, she had dreamed of becoming an agent. She had worked hard, acquiring skills to give herself the all-important leg up over the competition.
And now it was very likely going to be taken away from her. Just like that. Because she’d confronted Bill Monroe. Because she’d believed the oath she’d taken to protect the American public was a sacred one—more important than anything else…even the survival of her career.
Recognizing that she’d allowed her thoughts once more to get bogged down in things she had no control over, she shifted her grip on the sledgehammer.
Maybe what she needed to worry about was how she was going to live with herself if Mark did believe her. She’d lied to a man whom she held in great respect. She was intentionally trying to use him to save her ass. Both of which made her extremely uncomfortable.
She heaved out a breath. “Let’s not pull punches here. Everything about the man makes you uncomfortable.” That damn intense gaze. Those probing questions. And that lean body was pretty damn hard to ignore, too. All those lovely muscles…
She suddenly realized she was about to start down yet another wrong road, one with even less value than the previous one. What she needed to do was remain completely focused on the really important things right now.
“Name four things that are deader than a doornail…Leon. Rabbit. Your career.” Ducking her head, she used her forearm to wipe sweat from her forehead. “And coming in at number four on tonight’s big countdown…what’s