Chapter 26
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Fiona was the only person in the room without a role, a job or a task. So she appointed herself the team's forward observer.
"This is a mess," Sam muttered. "Wonder what we can do to complicate it?"
Carnahan and Peterbaugh nodded in agreement.
Jesse had just walked everyone through the information he'd shared with Michael at his office during their afternoon meeting.
Michael had discussed his misgivings about how firm a grip the CIA had on their information. Dani mentioned that she'd called Raines earlier while Jesse was at his office with Michael and had asked to have her medical leave status altered; he declined her request for active service, but allowed her restricted activity.
If the near non-expression of irritation on Jesse's face counted, that news came as an utter surprise to him, and Fiona confirmed that when she saw his eyes meet hers a few moments later. She also noticed it was Dani who chose to look away first. She needed no further evidence that what was between them now fell into the category of extremely personal.
Sam responded to Dani's news with a positive, "Hey, she's back. That'll be the help we need, er, Mike needs."
But Michael was shaking his head. "We need Dani's help, but we're going to keep her out of the line of fire." Like Fiona, he'd seen Jesse's reaction. "She can do everything we need her to do from here. We're not meeting at the office for anything from now on. Nick and Ryan, use the range, but watch what you say and who you say it to. I think someone besides Raines has eyes and ears on us there. I don't want to risk a single person in this room. Agreed?"
"You think the office is bugged?" Carnahan asked.
"Yeah, they do," Peterbaugh said, as he sat up, leaned forward and sought simplification. He gestured, using his fingers to count off points. "Be patient with the tactical support, OK? But this is what I've heard so far.
"First, part of the Valdez family, the drug growers and smugglers who are Sophia's husband's people, were killed by the Barbie guy, who's on a different side of the same family. Second, her family was friends with her husband's family in Mexico when they were kids, and her family probably wasn't involved with the drug trade. Third, Anson, knows all this because he was a kid when his dad worked with someone in Mexican government to help set up a drug routes that the other part of the government was trying to shut down. Hmm. Kinda like the CIA and DEA."
Sam groaned at that.
But Peterbaugh continued. "Four. Sophia and hubby are probably being blackmailed by Anson because he knows something about their family background, but, five, she's so pissed you think she'll be reckless if she thinks she's doing something to save them and, six, they're doing all of this under the DEA umbrella of stopping the Sinaloa cartel from establishing a new drug route across the Caribbean. Did I get that right?"
"You missed the part where if we screw up a plan we haven't made yet, the CIA gets blamed, the DEA and ATF get happy because the spotlight moves from them to us, and we all lose our jobs or go to jail," Carnahan added.
"I didn't miss that," Peterbaugh returned. "I wasn't done. So, seven, some cartel, either Sinaloa or Los Zetas or it could be someone else, is gunning for her husband and we don't know why. And eight, we can't screw up anything that might affect the elections, although that seems weird to me. Nine, we don't have enough intel on Anson but Westen needs to talk to Sophia to find out if she's being blackmailed and if she is, we might have a way to find him. So, did I get that right?"
Michael's face was grim. "You did, with the exception that you should have started with taking out Anson Fullerton. That's mission objective for us; it should satisfy the DEA goal. We need to remove the rebuilt portion of the black ops network that operated inside the CIA for the last decade. We don't have a door in on that yet. Until Anson appeared, we thought we had them. If we lose sight of that, we fail."
"Mike's right," Sam interjected. "Thanks to Jesse, we've got some new doors and windows, but we really need to work fast. We don't know what the DEA timetable is for the op they want. Looks like Mike does the heavy lifting here with Pearce as back-up."
"How do you make a plan out of this?" Peterbaugh wondered.
"One thing at a time. I'm starting with what happened to Brennan's arms, going to chat with Larry and Vaughn, then Sophia," Michael said.
"Hang around, kid," Sam grinned. "We do this all the time."
"Let me pull the tapes from the Larry and Vaughn conversations Raines wanted recorded," Dani suggested. "Raines may be taking a Family Medical Leave; his wife is undergoing some specialized cancer treatment so he's not focused on this the way we are."
"Michael," Fiona said from across the room where she sat on a stool by Jesse's breakfast counter. "Might I suggest a door in to the network?"
Six faces turned back to look at her. "And that would be . . . ?"
"Oswald."
Carnahan and Peterbaugh looked at each other before Carnahan asked, "Who's Oswald?"
"Oh, no," Dani said. "Not that guy. I can not allow him anywhere near a CIA computer. Really, Michael. I can't."
Jesse crossed his arms over his chest and watched.
"He came to us, Dani. He reversed Void-BOT. Everyone thought that couldn't be done. Even Oswald thought so until he did it, but he's still worried about Anson. If we give him a way to be free of him forever . . . ?"
"It's just a guy on a computer, Dani," Sam said, pleading the case. "I'll grant you, he's a little strange, but, what do you say?"
"I'll make him stay at my office," Jesse offered. "We can break into CIA computers from there."
Dani looked back at Fiona. "Great idea, Fiona," she said with a healthy dose of sarcasm.
Fiona just smiled. And, for a long moment, no one in the room said a thing. It was a lot of information to absorb, with multiple of implications, odd tangents and submerged hazards.
Michael turned to Jesse. It had been a fleeting thought when he saw the Buller file; he hadn't gone back to it until now. "What do you suppose the odds are that Fullerton is also operating under the Buller name?"
Jesse thought on that briefly. "First letter exchange, right in the open. Change your name to clean the family history for educational purposes, background checks with the DIA. Sounds like his style, doesn't it? Live life as Dr. Fullerton, have a career, then operate in the shadows under your real name. Hold on. I've got some nifty software and a secure network here."
"Here? Well, of course you do," Michael said.
"All yours whenever you want," Jesse teased as he left the room, went into the bedroom and came back with a laptop which he attached to an outlet hidden inside an end table drawer. He flipped another switch inside the drawer and secured the network, then sat down at the corner of the couch. Ten minutes later, he had his answer and smiled as he looked away from the screen.
He'd been talking to himself the whole time, barely under his breath, but audible so that everyone in the room heard him and was entertained by his form of concentration.
"And there you are, you weasel," he finally said, looking up at his audience, faces filled with curious and amused expressions. "What?"
"Party in your head again, Jess," Sam said. "What'd you find?"
"Randolph J. Buller looks a whole lot like Anson Fullerton." He turned his laptop around and displayed a Georgia drivers' license and a Florida drivers' license side by side. He was Buller in Georgia, Fullerton in Florida.
Sam and Fiona recognized the Florida address. "That's his empty apartment here," Sam explained. "With a CNR on the patio."
"And one more," Jesse said, turning the laptop back to display an Alabama drivers' license. "Yeah, Randy Buller looks like a good ole boy, doesn't he?"
"So two different Buller IDs. Anything else?" Sam wondered.
"Oh, yeah," Jesse grinned. "He likes the water."
He turned the laptop screen around so everyone could see. The psychologist didn't look like a nattily-attired shrink in this image, but rather, a too tanned sportsman, a fisherman beaming next to a very large tuna standing in front of a sign that read Seguro - The Finest in Deep Sea and Charter Boat Fishing. "He's an owner."
Jesse tapped a few more keys. "And . . . look at this website. Seguro Luxury Yacht Repair and Storage." He clicked on the map next and turned the laptop around. "Yacht storage facilities from the Caymans, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, St. Kitts, St. Vincent and Paramaribo. And it's not a secret the businesses are related; there's a link to either on both websites."
Jesse wasn't done. "He's got fishing boats, so that's one avenue off the panhandle with the charter fishing company and another luxury yacht repair and storage off south Florida," he said, as he continued to click through the Seguro images.
"Jackpot, Mike," Jess said looking up. "Wonder how much we'd find if we spent more than 10 minutes with this."
"Yes."
"It's a supply chain," Sam said. "Built for transporting drugs, arms, whatever illegal activity his little heart desires. Has either business hit the CIA or DEA radar yet? Hey, it must have. How else would the DEA know to look for Anson?"
"Sam, do you want to use my office for more research on Buller? Dani, you want to be there, too?" Jesse asked.
"That'll work," she said softly. "And I can keep an eye on Oswald when you import him."
"Can that be my job?" Fiona wondered.
"We'll do it together," Michael said.
"And we're . . .?" Carnahan asked.
"Staying healthy, keeping quiet about this, keeping your skills sharp," Michael said.
"What are you doing, Jess?" Sam asked.
"My job. Providing access to you all, and doing a little recruiting and research."
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"What did Jesse mean about recruiting?"
Michael looked away and smiled to himself. "He told me today he'll get a bonus if he recruits me to work at SecuriCorp."
"And you said?"
"I said if you got pregnant, I'd help him get his bonus."
"You said that to Jesse?"
They were getting ready for bed. He'd just tossed his shirt in a laundry basket and turned around at the faint sound of distress in her voice.
"Are you upset about that?"
"You just got your job back."
She had been sitting on the edge of the bed smoothing lotion on her arms. The pale gown she wore was nearly transparent, and he wondered why she'd bothered to put it on because she had to know it wasn't going to stay there long. When he reached her, he pushed her down, his soft woman in their soft bed.
"I just got you back. I keep my promises, Fi."
She reached up to smooth her hand along his whiskery cheek. "I'm not pregnant yet."
He smiled and carefully removed the lovely gown. "Yet."
They put aside the outside world that came between them as he wrapped her in his arms and kissed her forehead, her cheek, her lips, her neck, his breath hot against her throat. "I need you again. How can I need you so much more every day?"
"I know. I feel the same way, and I don't understand it."
And then, with one more kiss, he was completely hers again, and there was nothing between them except a maddening passion that quickly escalated until they were whole, complete, one.
She had not understood the strength of surrender until she had surrendered everything for him, and to him.
Surrender ultimately brought her peace and the overpowering fulfillment of things that previously appeared in her dreams, distant and unformed. She had spent so much of her life in that incomplete state of loving him, waiting for him, hoping that he would come to her.
Her gift had been the humility she learned from spending so many years knowing she would have exchanged everything to have a life with him, to have his child. When she settled for so little after he asked her to live with him, she thought it would be so much more. Now she knew that never would have been enough. She would have always been empty.
Until she surrendered everything and had given up her freedom, her love for him. It was then, after he understood, that he returned everything to her.
The greatest gift he had ever given her was to want the same of her as she wanted of him. To become one, to have a child. They had become whole in each other, and she discovered that moment when they made love now, the moment that never existed before.
Because it could never have existed before.
Now, they empowered the other, the giving and the taking of their essential selves in that shared moment that was so intense that unbidden tears arrived to fill her eyes and his.
This was theirs alone. Something precious, something to be protected.
They discovered it was not an accident of emotion. It was the full force of love, and it would be repeated. And every time it was, she was humbled anew by the depth of this love Michael had held and hidden inside himself, until he had finally given it to her after she had completely surrendered.
She thought once, she could not love him more. Now, she knew she was wrong. Each day began anew, each day she loved him more than she had yesterday. To have Michael return her love the same way, sent her heart reeling from the intensity of his gift.
This was such new time and place in her life. As a woman who spent most of her youth and adult life competing in the same arena as men, the idea of submitting, of being submissive in love was daunting and more than a little terrifying until she discovered it could also be freeing and liberating.
It was then she learned a truth: submitting to love was power.
It was also the most joyous, delicious, perfect sensation she had ever experienced, and she knew now she could not live without it.
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Fiona was shocked to find Barry and Oswald together at Carlitos. She'd opened her phone prepared to call Barry when she spotted them sharing a table near the perimeter of Carlito's seating area. Michael's phone rang as they approached, so she left his side and walked over to their table.
"You two seem to be getting along, better, " she commented.
Oswald looked down. "We've been . . . scammed."
Fiona took a chair. "Sherry?"
"She ran off with a friend of ours. Greg." Barry looked down at the table.
"I'm so sorry to hear that. What else did she run off with?" Fi asked.
"My BMW," Oswald said, his face long and glum.
"And cash," Barry said. "A lot of cash. I bet she doesn't even have a sick aunt."
"You could report-" Fiona started to say but Barry shivered.
"Don't even suggest that."
Michael joined them then and made quick work of his offer to Oswald. "You'll be out of the loop for a while," he explained.
"Lucky," Barry said. "I wish I could drop out like that."
Michael paused. "Would you like to help Sam with a little project he's working on?"
"Are these related?" Oswald asked.
"Yes."
"And what's in it for me?" Barry wondered.
"Gratitude, Barry. Lots of gratitude."
"And Sherry will have to wonder where you both are when she leaves Greg," Fiona said. "Because you know that will happen, only neither of you will be around for her."
Oswald and Barry looked at each other. Barry nodded.
Michael called Jesse and informed him of the change in plans. "Are we good to go?"
"Yeah, as long as you have a car," Oswald said. "Because mine is missing."
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Jesse relocated Barry and Oswald temporarily in one of the guest apartments for potential clients at SecuriCorp. It provided a personal level of security and a comfort zone of personal space for both of them for the evening.
They started working the next morning when Jesse and Dani arrived at his office. Seven hours and 27 minutes after they started, they produced results the likes of which Jesse and Dani had never seen. Anson had buried a list of NOC agents and his income and personnel sources in the CIA, FBI, DEA and all the lettered agencies that provided allergic reactions for Fiona.
Sam coordinated information.
Dani looked at Oswald and Barry. "The CIA needs to hire you."
Jesse grinned. "Nope. SecuriCorp does."
"No, no, no, no," Barry said. "No. I'm allergic . . . to abbreviations. If I stay here much longer, I'll break out in hives. "
"What he said," Oswald agreed. "And corporations. And besides, I don't have a degree. Those people are big on degrees."
Oswald found the leak in the CIA network, used his reverse programming tools to locate the hidden files behind layers of firewall. He'd worked so quickly and easily, that while he did that he explained to Pearce why the CIA needed to upgrade their networks. "If I can hack you, anyone can. And does, from the looks of this."
Dani wasn't sure she agreed with his self-deprecating assessment, but she understood what he was saying.
While Oswald was hacking, Barry had been searching.
He'd located layers of financial records that linked Seguro Charter Fishing with Seguro Yacht Repair and Storage and three FBI agents and two DEA officers and a DIA counselor and dozens of others who could be employed in law enforcement.
"I'm calling . . . Oh, there he is," Sam said as Michael held open the door for Fiona and walked in behind her.
Barry wanted to know if they were done.
"Yeah," Jesse explained. "For a while. But Mike may have some more stuff later today after he's done talking to some other people." Better they didn't know about Larry or Vaughn yet.
Jesse looked over at them. "You two guys want to be roommates for a while longer?"
Neither looked comfortable with that.
"I have clients," Barry protested.
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They had been living intimately, sharing nearly every intimacy except for one important intimacy. It wasn't that she didn't want that. She did. But she knew he wouldn't consider it until she had healed more. Then she had that other thing she should tell him about, but doubted she'd be able to.
Currently, Jesse helped her get dressed. She could now raise her arm almost halfway up her body; it was quite an improvement in mobility since day of the perfume bottle glass bomb. He continued to change her bandages and tell her what she couldn't see, but today, he didn't replace the bandage on her scapula.
"I don't think you need it anymore," he explained as he smoothed antibiotic cream over the scar.
The idea that she might not need his help was becoming far more painful than the wounds she had been recovering from. His gentle touches had become something she craved. Something essential to her life.
"Hey, grab my brown belt out of that center drawer for me," he asked. He was other side of the room, getting ready to go to work. Dani was already dressed, and she would be going along again.
She opened the center drawer to his dresser, and there, amid several neatly rolled up circles of belts she found a photo sitting on top of a child's painted wooden box. She removed the belt he asked for and then the photograph. It was old, the corners were bent, the image was slightly out of focus, and it very obviously was a precious keepsake to him. She found herself picking it up gently and looking at it. When she felt his presence behind her she looked into the mirror to see him looking down at her.
"That's Mom."
"What happened?"
When he didn't reply, she spoke again, softly. "You said you had foster moms. How many?"
"Five." He broke his gaze with hers in the mirror and took the belt from her hand before turning away.
She put the photo back in the drawer, and slid the drawer shut. "What happened, Jesse?"
After a moment of what she could see was some kind of internal debate, he told her, without looking at her, using words he must have rehearsed long ago.
Jesse took the same moment to wonder what he'd done now, and if he'd done it on purpose again. He couldn't seem to stop himself with this woman. What in the hell was he thinking? Or risking?
The thought that she'd soon be healthy enough to return to her own place had created an internal schism. His logical, sensible self always told him he was better off alone. That had held true for most of his adult life. His illogical, romantic half told him never had a woman, any woman, felt so right, so natural, so necessary in his arms. The thought that she wouldn't be in his bed some night grew increasingly painful.
He knew what was in the drawer, of course. Some part of him had been holding his breath waiting. He used the same words he used to tell Madeline when she'd asked. He told her how his mother had been killed. He had protected himself for so many years that deflecting the questions he knew would come next had become second nature. He took advantage of the moment to redirect with a question for Dani.
"Raines said he called your mother to tell her about your injury, but she was too busy to come to see you."
"That sounds like my mother."
"Doesn't she like you or something?" He was being flippant, and he was surprised when she answered honestly.
"This will sound strange, but no. My parents never planned on me. I was a surprise for them."
Jesse sat on the bench at the end of the bed and leaned down to tie his shoes. "Your mother doesn't like you. Wow. Did you argue a lot or . . .?"
Dani sat next to him. "No, we don't talk, so we don't argue. My parents were diplomats. A child interfered with their work, and I was an ugly kid. I embarrassed them."
Jesse looked at her. "Ugly? I don't think so."
She laughed. "I usually had a black eye or a sprained or broken limb. Band-aids. Braces. Glasses. Scraggly hair. Worse, I was always more tomboy than girl."
"What do they think of you now?"
"My dad was happy I found work I liked, but he's gone now. My mother is horrified I know karate and can use a firearm."
He put an arm around her shoulders and leaned in to kiss her lips with another one of those earth-shattering moments of intense sweetness. "Not ugly. Not."
And when he got up and left the room, Dani's heart fell to the floor, bounced up and did handsprings across the floor, walls and ceiling.
He was waiting for her by the door. She put her hand on his shoulder and rose on her tip toes to kiss his cheek. "I'm very sorry you lost your mother that way. That had to be really hard for you as a kid."
He held her hand when they walked to his car.