Troublemaker by Linda Howard
“Do you remember what happened?”
“Yeah.” Maybe he was mentally fuzzy, but he wasn’t amnesiac.
MacNamara pulled a chair around and dropped into it. He was lean to the point of spareness, just a little above average height, but no one would ever mistake his lack of size as a lack of power. He was intense and ruthless, just the kind of guy the GO-Teams needed to watch their backs.
“Do you know who shot you?”
“No.” Morgan drew a breath. “Do you?”
“He was Russian mob.”
Morgan blinked, flummoxed as much as he was capable of being flummoxed. Russian? Mob? What the hell? He didn’t have anything to do with the Russian mob. “No shit?”
“No shit.”
“I don’t know . . . anyone in the Russian mob.” He’d started to say he didn’t know any Russians, but remembered that he did in fact know a number of Russians—none of them in the mob, though. “What’s his name?”
“Albert Rykov. Was. He’s dead.”
Good, Morgan thought. He didn’t have a lot of forgiveness for people who shot him . . . none, in fact. “I’ve never heard of him.” A sluggish thought occurred: “Maybe he was after someone else?”
“No.” Axel’s tone was flat, certain. He wasn’t entertaining any doubt whatsoever.
“Why would the Russian mob target me?” That didn’t make any sense at all. He scrubbed his hand over his face, felt the rasp of whiskers even though he had a vague memory of one of the nurses shaving him at one time or another . . . maybe. Then he stared in shock at his own hand, at how thin and almost translucent it was, not like his hand at all though he knew it was because it was attached to the end of his arm . . . which also looked freakishly thin. For a minute he fought a sense of disconnection, fought to bring his thoughts back on track. What had they been talking about? Right—the Russians.
“They didn’t. Rykov was attached to the mob, but this looks like an independent hit. Someone outside hired it done.”
In that case, the possibilities were legion because he still couldn’t think why anyone would want him dead, which theoretically left the world’s entire population in play.
“Walk me through everything that happened after you reached stateside,” Axel said, leaning back and crossing his arms.
“I debriefed”—he figured that was already known, given that Axel would have all the paperwork—“grabbed a bite to eat at a McDonald’s, went home, took a shower, and went to sleep. Slept a full twenty-four. Then I worked on my gear, took a run in the dark, came home, went back to sleep.” The simple statements were punctuated by pauses to catch his breath.
“Anything happen at the McDonald’s? Or during your run? Who did you talk to?”
“No, no, and no one, other than the cashier who handed my order out the drive-through window.”
“Did you recognize the cashier?”
“No. It was some kid.”
“Did you see anything inside the restaurant?”
“No.” He was sure of that because he remembered being a little uneasy by his restricted line of sight. After a mission, it always took a while to decompress and ease out of combat mode.
“Then what?”
Morgan blew out a breath, tried to whip up his rapidly flagging energy—not that he’d had much to begin with. He was so weak he didn’t recognize his own body, which made him feel even more disconnected than maybe was accounted for by the drugs. “When I woke up, I wanted to go fishing. I called Kodak but he was otherwise occupied, so I went alone.”
Axel nodded. Morgan figured he already knew that, just as he’d known about the debriefing. “Did you talk to anyone?”
“Congresswoman Kingsley and her husband. They were on the river.”
“Anyone with them?”
“No, they were by themselves.”
“Anyone else?”
“Not to talk to.” A memory niggled at him. “Brawley—the marina manager—said hello.”
Axel was a master at reading nuances of expression. “And . . . ?”
Until he heard the “and,” Morgan hadn’t been aware there was an “and.” He took a deep breath, cut it short when the pain in his chest cut into him. “Could be coincidence, but he made a call after talking to me.”
“How soon after?”
“Immediately.”
“Cell phone?” If Brawley had used a cell, Axel could use the time and the cell towers to get a bead on the possible call recipients.
“No.” Very clearly, Morgan saw in his mind the old-fashioned corded phone Brawley had used. “Corded landline.”
“Shit.” Frustration was clear in the word. Getting the info wasn’t impossible, but it would require a warrant. Technology would let them bypass that little detail if the call had been made on a cell.
But, regardless of the phone call, Morgan couldn’t think of any way Brawley would know where he lived or, more importantly, why he would need to set up a hit.
The effort to sit up and answer questions was wearing on him hard. He didn’t have much more juice left in him. “No reason,” he muttered, letting his head drop back. His eyes closed automatically, and he fought them open again.
“What?” Axel demanded.
Morgan focused, laboriously reconstructed his thoughts. “No reason for Brawley,” he finally said, or thought he said. Maybe his mouth wasn’t working. His eyes closed again. But he didn’t care because darkness was rising up and swallowing him whole, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
The next time he saw Axel, Morgan was actually sitting up under his own power. It was almost three weeks since he’d been shot; he knew because he’d asked. Sitting up wasn’t all he could do. Twice a day for the last couple of days he’d taken a few steps across the small room, bracketed on each side by nurses so he didn’t face-plant. He was eating halfway-solid food now, and he’d never before in his life been so grateful for mashed potatoes, or oatmeal. He didn’t even like oatmeal. Tomorrow, they’d told him, he could have eggs. He’d requested steak with those eggs, and they’d laughed at him. Hands down they were the meanest nurses he’d ever been around.
Even more disturbing, he was beginning to love them.
He didn’t know how long it had been since Axel had been there, but he figured it was about a week. The only surprising thing was that Axel hadn’t been there every day to badger more details out of him.
Sometimes Axel’s persistent nitpicking was a pain in the ass, but now Morgan would have welcomed it because he wanted to get the bastard or bastards who had set up the ambush. It was typical of Axel that he’d chosen that time to stay away.
“About time,” Morgan said by way of greeting.
“I’ve been busy, running down details and setting things up.”
“What things? What details?”
“That’s what I’m here to tell you,” Axel snapped as he dropped into the visitor’s chair.
Being snapped at was good; if Axel had tried to be kind—with emphasis on the word “tried,” because he’d never really succeed—Morgan would have suspected he wasn’t recovering as well as a few steps and mashed potatoes would indicate.
“So, talk.”
“You were located by your boat registration. We’ve found where someone hacked into state records and got your info off your registration form.”
There was something wrong with that. Morgan said, “I use my post office box as my mailing address.”
“Yes, but the form also includes your Virginia driver’s license number and your social security number. Those were both traced, and that’s how they got your address.”
“The big question is why.”
“Yeah. But there’s another wrinkle, one that’s even more serious.”
It was almost amusing that Axel would think something was more serious than one of his operatives being targeted. Well, given that he dealt with global issues, he was probably right; Morgan had to give him that.
“When you were first brought in, w
“Other than the people who transported me here.”
“I changed transport teams three times.”
Yeah, that was Axel, paranoid and cautious to a maddening degree. “So what’s this new wrinkle that has you worried?”
“The GO-Team files were hacked after I had you moved.”
Shit. Morgan frowned, working it through. Obviously, whoever had tried to kill him was still after him. Just as obviously, whoever it was knew what he did.
“It’s the security breach that worries me more than anything,” Axel said, and Morgan stifled a wry smile. Yeah, the loss of one of his men would definitely rank below security in his book. “After I had you moved, I let it be known that you had some memory problems but were recovering, and the doctors saw no reason why you wouldn’t regain all your memories.”
That was cold, even for Axel. Morgan growled, “Well, hell, why not just paint a target on my back?”
“The target’s already there,” Axel pointed out. “My job is to find out who and why. Unless you’re fucking someone else’s wife, the strong possibility exists that this is work related.”
“I’m clear on the domestic front.”
“Then it’s related to the GO-Teams.”
There was no arguing with that. Still—Morgan shook his head. “But why?”
“If I can figure that out, then I’ll know who. And vice versa. All I need is something to point me in the right direction.”
“So what’s your plan?” Because Axel always had a plan; Morgan might not like it, but he had no doubt the plan existed.
Axel said, “I’m going to bury your location under enough security that whoever wants to find you will really have to dig to find it, and that’ll trip an alert I’ve had set up. But I can’t make it easy to find, or whoever it is will know it’s a setup and won’t bite.”
“That’s it? What do I do in the meantime?” Other than work at being able to walk for longer than thirty seconds at a time, that is.
What could only be described as a truly evil smile spread over Axel’s face. “I’m sending you to my ex-stepsister.”
Whatever Morgan had expected, that wasn’t it. “What?”
Axel obligingly repeated himself, word for word.
“You’re involving civilians?” That was what startled him the most. What they did was kept away from normal people, though of course there was civilian support staff, but they had signed on knowing what the work involved. Deliberately throwing innocents into danger wasn’t something they did.
“I don’t expect any real problems. I’ve been doing some digging, getting things set up. No reason any civilians should be involved, other than her giving you a place to stay.”
“And your ex-stepsister has agreed to this?”
“She will,” Axel said carelessly. “Once the alert is tripped, we’ll move in.”
“The alert won’t tell you who.”
“It’ll give me a direction, but best of all, I’ll be able to put some people in place to catch any threat coming after you.”
“How in hell will you do that?”
Axel ticked off the reasons. “It’s a very small town, small enough that any strangers will be noticed. It’s relatively close to D.C., in West Virginia, which means no airports or trains or bus lines involved; whoever comes after you will come by road, and the number of roads I’d have to cover is very limited.” He paused and gave what could only be described as a satisfied sigh. “And best of all, it’ll really piss her off.”
Axel MacNamara didn’t give a shit about most people and most things, but he did give a shit about his country and the operatives on the GO-Teams he oversaw. Every mission they went on, they put their lives on the line, and he not only respected that but he was sworn, both professionally and privately, to do his best for them regardless of the context. Sometimes it was fighting tooth and nail to make sure they had the best equipment available, sometimes it was smoothing the political way, sometimes it was polishing and spinning certain events so pertinent details were either distorted or hidden completely. They did the jobs they were tasked with doing, and if any shit rolled downhill, he wanted it to stop at the people in charge, not the men he regarded as his.
Generally he hated politicians, but he was a lot like them and by the very nature of his job had to associate with them.
It was a bunch of bullshit, but he played the game.
The situation with Morgan Yancy was worrisome—not because of the threat to Morgan’s life, though he would hate to lose such a skilled operative—but because the GO-Teams computer system had been hacked. Their missions were highly classified and extremely sensitive politically.
He had to move very cautiously; if he was too obvious, he might frighten off his prey. If he wasn’t obvious enough, the wrong conclusions could be drawn and the bait ignored. That was why he dropped a few tidbits of information here and there, but never much at any one time, and sometimes he didn’t say anything at all.
A few days after talking to Morgan and laying out the basics of the plan, he managed to maneuver himself into position at one of D.C.’s endless parties, where Congresswoman Joan Kingsley was in attendance. Her husband, Dexter, was absent, but she had navigated the capital’s social waters for so long that she was perfectly comfortable on her own. As politicians went, she was very likable—even to him, and he didn’t like anyone. He tolerated her much better than he did a lot of others, though he never let himself forget that she was a politician first and an ally second, even if Morgan’s team had saved her son’s ass. Gratitude went only so far in D.C.
Inevitably, she and her husband were both on the list of suspects. They’d had contact with Morgan that day. Maybe she was clear and her husband wasn’t, or vice versa. Maybe they were both clear, or both guilty—he didn’t give them the benefit of the doubt because he didn’t know and therefore assumed they were both guilty. Regardless, Congresswoman Kingsley had contacts and avenues of information, both going and coming, that he himself didn’t have, and she was a good conduit for getting out the word that he wanted out.
He didn’t approach her, though she was very easy to spot with that striking white hair. She made a practiced circuit of the crowded room, chatting with everyone, smiling the warm smile that charmed almost everyone she met. Axel was immune to charm. He started every day assuming most people were up to no good and the others simply hadn’t thought of it yet.
At one point he lost sight of her—though he was careful not to let her know he was watching—but she reappeared in about ten minutes with freshly applied lipstick, so his best guess was a trip to the ladies’ room. She could also have been meeting a lover, exchanging information, or making a private call. Without any evidence to the contrary, though, he was going with the ladies’ room theory.
They were an hour and a half into the party when their circuitous routes around the room brought them together. He tilted his glass toward her in acknowledgment but didn’t interrupt his current conversation with a senator’s aide even though it was deadly boring and he’d have liked to cram a pair of dirty socks down the pompous jackass’s throat. Let her come to him. He wasn’t approaching anyone.
Finally the senator’s aide paused when he stopped a passing waiter to deposit his empty glass on the man’s tray. Congresswoman Kingsley smoothly slid in and said, “Hello, Karl, Axel.”
“Congresswoman,” Axel replied in acknowledgment, and watched in amusement as the senator’s aide struggled with his ego and the pecking order on Capitol Hill. The congresswoman was an important personage, but Karl looked on the House as inferior to the Senate; therefore
“Congresswoman Kingsley,” Karl finally muttered, using her title while she’d used his first name. Oh, the slings and arrows, Axel mused.
She gave Karl one of those smiles and said, “Would you excuse us? I’d like to discuss a few details with Axel.”
There was nothing Karl could do except say, “Of course,” and take himself away.
Axel sipped his drink—sparkling water on the rocks because when you were wading in a pool of sharks, you needed all your wits about you—and waited for her to steer the conversation in the direction she wanted, though he did paste a faintly questioning expression on his face.
“I heard something disturbing,” she said, pitching her voice low so only he could hear her.
He gave a slight lift of his eyebrows that invited her to continue.
“I heard Morgan was killed.”
“Not so,” he promptly replied.
Relief flickered in her eyes. “Thank God. But—was he hurt? My source was very specific about the victim’s name.”
He’d like to know exactly who her source was, but he didn’t waste time trying to dig that info out of her. She was a seasoned veteran of the dance.
“He was shot—and I won’t lie, it was serious. But I have him in a protected location while he recovers.”
“What happened?”
“Assassination attempt. The problem is he can’t tell me why.”
“He doesn’t know?”
Axel rocked his hand back and forth. “He thinks he does. He suffered a serious concussion and he’s having a few memory problems, but he says he knows what’s going on if he can just remember it. There isn’t any permanent brain damage, and the doc says that he’ll remember when all the swelling is gone.”