Читать книгу Special Forces Saviour - Janie Crouch - Страница 11

Chapter Five

Derek was listening to what Steve Drackett was saying while trying to force himself not to punch Jon in the face. Seriously, the man had been his colleague and one of his closest friends for over five years, but when he had snatched Molly out of his arms and into his own...

Derek reminded himself that Jon had no romantic intentions toward Molly. And even if he did, Molly was free to date whomever she wanted. Derek had no claim on her.

But damned if he wasn’t totally relieved when Molly stepped away from Jon. Derek pretended not to pay any attention to them whatsoever as he spoke with his boss. But he knew exactly where Molly was.

Of course, he always knew where Molly was if she was anywhere in his vicinity. It was as if he had an internal radar set solely for her. Not that he could do anything but keep a watchful eye on her. Anything else wasn’t acceptable.

“Based on the preliminary report, the fire department feels like it was definitely something from the lab that detonated. Not caught on fire. Actually blew up,” Derek told Steve. “One confirmed death. Protection walls came down, so it looks like other damage and causalities are pretty minimal.”

The director nodded, then turned to Molly. “You okay?”

“Not physically hurt. But sick about David’s death.” Molly’s voice was strained. Derek had to resist the urge to wrap an arm around her again.

The one good thing about the trauma of the explosion was that it seemed to have made Molly forget to be nervous around him. At least she wasn’t stammering.

“Can you give us a report? Do you know what happened?” Steve asked her.

“We were working.” Molly shrugged one delicate shoulder. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Our caseload had heightened, so I called David and asked him to come back in. But we weren’t working with anything hazardous or explosive.”

Molly ran a hand over her face, exhausted. “I’m sorry.” Her voice was shaky. “I’m trying to figure out what it could’ve been. But I don’t think it was anything we were working on. I—” She rubbed a hand over her face again.

“Molly, it’s okay,” Jon said to her, coming to stand close to her again. “We’ll get it all worked out. I’m sure it wasn’t your fault.”

Molly just shook her head, her hand still covering her face.

Jon looked at Derek and Steve, then tilted his head in Molly’s direction. He wanted to take her home. She obviously needed to go and really couldn’t help anything here.

But over Derek’s dead body was Jon taking Molly anywhere. Derek would take her home.

Derek walked over to Molly and touched her gently on the arm. The arm that had been covering her face dropped to her side. Her eyes seemed glassy, dazed.

“Hey.” He bent at the knees so they could be eye to eye. He tucked an errant strand of her long brown hair back behind her ear. “I’m going to take you home, okay? We’ll figure out what happened tomorrow.”

She nodded, swaying slightly toward him. Derek wrapped an arm around her shoulders. He looked back at the guys, ignoring both of their slightly shocked expressions at how he was treating Molly.

Maybe he’d made too much of a show out of never touching her over the past couple years.

“I’m going to put her in the car and will be right back. She needs to sit down before she falls down.” Both men nodded, their gazes flickering to Molly, where she was tucked under his arm. “I’ll take her home in a minute.”

Steve stepped up to Molly. “Get some rest, okay? We’ll work out what happened later. But I have no question that you will be totally exonerated of all blame.”

Molly nodded, but didn’t say a word. Derek walked her over to his car and opened the passenger door, thankful for the balmy May night that wasn’t too hot or cold. But Molly was shivering slightly, so he grabbed a blazer he had thrown in the backseat and put it around her. He knew her reaction was from shock more than cold, but she wouldn’t know the difference.

Once he had her settled in the car, he squatted down so he could look in her eyes again. Hers were still pretty unfocused.

“Hey.” He wrapped the jacket more securely around her, then grabbed it by the lapels to bring her in a little closer. “I’m just going to finish my conversation with Steve and Jon and then I’ll take you home, okay? Five minutes.”

She nodded.

Derek kissed her forehead, then closed the door, jogging back toward Jon and Steve who were walking toward his car. Both of them were still looking at him with odd expressions.

“What?” he barked when they didn’t say anything.

“Nothing.” Jon shook his head. “Just wondering how I can call myself a behavioral analyst and miss certain facts that are right before my eyes.”

“What are you talking about?”

Jon shook his head again. “Absolutely nothing. Is Molly okay?”

Derek glanced back at his car. “Exhausted. A little shaky. Not unexpected, given the circumstances.”

“I believe her when she says that they didn’t have any flammable materials out in the lab at the explosion site. Molly’s record is impeccable when it comes to safety. Hell, when it comes to anything,” Steve stated.

“But she’s been working long hours. Was tired. Could’ve made a mistake she wouldn’t normally have.” Derek’s grim expression matched the other men’s.

The director nodded. “And if that’s the case, we’ll deal with it. I share in that responsibility.”

Jon turned and looked back at the building. “But if human error or some other accident wasn’t the cause of the explosion, then we have to think about what is.”

“What are you thinking? That it was some sort of attack against Omega?” Derek asked.

“Maybe not so much attack as sabotage,” Jon responded.

Each man processed that for a minute.

“It seems a little extreme, I know,” Jon continued.

“Until you take into consideration someone killing himself rather than being questioned, and perps burning that house to the ground today to keep evidence out of our hands,” Derek finished for him.

“Exactly.”

Derek grimaced. “Whatever we took into evidence must have been pretty important to blow up the whole damn lab for it.”

Steve had been quiet up until now. “And if this is all connected, then we also have to think about who knew we had that specific evidence here.” He shook his head.

“Nobody really knew, but us,” Derek said. “Unless you think we have some sort of mole?”

There had been moles in other divisions of Omega Sector in the past. But the Critical Response Division was not a clandestine section of Omega. They worked out in the open, not generally undercover or in the shadows. And although they didn’t talk publicly about investigations, Derek had no idea why a terrorist would keep a mole inside the Critical Response Division. Information was pretty open there.

“Not necessarily, at least not within our division,” Steve responded. “But perhaps amongst the people we’ve been reporting to every day.”

“The government committee?” Derek asked.

“Actually, I was thinking about that very fact last night, after Congressman Hougland was giving you a hard time,” Jon said. Derek wasn’t surprised to hear his friend doing what he did best as a behavioral analyst: piecing everything together.

“What did you come up with?” Steve asked.

“Like we’ve already talked about—obviously there was critical information at the location yesterday, based on the lengths the suspects were willing to go to try and keep us from getting it.”

Both Derek and Steve nodded.

“This lead was also unique because we weren’t here at Omega when you got the info, Derek. We were in the air following up on something else and switched our focus to the new lead.”

They’d been on one of the small Omega jets traveling back to Colorado from a lead in Chicago.

“Yeah, that’s true. We moved quicker on this lead than we have some of the others,” Derek agreed.

“We also didn’t follow exact protocol since we were already out. We hadn’t called in our exact location, just decided to go to Philly, and then the building, immediately, since the option was available.”

Derek was beginning to see the pattern Jon was suggesting. “Unlike every other lead we’ve investigated for the last two weeks. Where we’ve followed protocol pretty much to the letter. And all have led to nothing.”

Steve grimaced. “You’re thinking sabotage.” It wasn’t a question.

Jon shrugged. “It’s hard to believe that every single lead we’ve followed has been completely dead. Although I guess that’s possible.”

“No, I agree with Jon,” Derek told Steve. “Sometimes it felt like the people we were after were one step ahead of us. Almost ready for us.”

They’d had the normal factions attempt to take credit for the bombing, both international and domestic groups. All had been investigated and all had come to naught. Then all other aspects of the investigation—the bomb site, witnesses, the type of explosions—had also led nowhere.

Maybe everything had led nowhere because someone was deliberately running interference on the perpetrators’ behalf.

There were very few people who could have done that effectively. A dirty agent inside the Critical Response Division could, but having one there was unlikely.

And since Derek and this investigation had been under such close scrutiny by high-ranking government officials, any one of them could be responsible, too. Which was uglier, but made more sense in a lot of ways.

“Gentlemen,” Steve said. “It looks like there’s every possibility that we’ve got some high-ranking US official who is tied in with the Chicago terrorist attack.”

Jon pointed at the now-destroyed lab. “And we’re looking at the third extreme example of what that person, or people, might be willing to do to keep us from making any progress on the case.”

“Whoever it is has also put us back at square one in terms of evidence.” Derek could feel his teeth grinding, knowing they’d been so close to a real breakthrough only to lose it. “Nothing in the lab survived that explosion. It was definitely important, but now it’s gone.”

All three men looked at the smoke still rising from the building. The fire was out, but the smoke would linger for a while.

“Well, they may have successfully destroyed whatever evidence we’d gotten yesterday, but they also tipped their hand a little too far,” Jon said. “They’ve given us an edge they don’t know we have by revealing they have inside knowledge. We should use that to our advantage.”

The director nodded at both men. “I agree. I’m going to start keeping much more careful track of what information is going to which offices. The committee we report to every day hasn’t been the only ones requesting information. I’ll see what I can narrow down. And I damn sure won’t be sharing actual pertinent info about the case any longer.”

Steve turned away from the lab. “Go home, get some rest,” he continued. “Tomorrow you guys head back out to the house in West Philly, see if anything there can be salvaged. Track down where the lead came from and see if you can get any further info.”

Derek nodded. He needed to get Molly home, let her rest. But then he’d be coming right back, or at least working out of his house. Sleep could wait for him. He glanced over at Jon and knew the other man felt the same way.

“I’ll let you know when the building is open,” Steve said. “This fire is meant not only to destroy evidence, but to misdirect us. Give us a lot of other stuff to be worrying about. We’re not going to let that happen.”

“Damn right we’re not,” Jon said.

Some of the firefighters were beginning to pack up their equipment.

“I’ve got to go sign off on all this,” Drackett said, shaking his head. “I’ll see you later.”

He began walking toward the fire trucks, but then turned back. “And boys, watch your backs. If this goes as high up as I’m afraid it might, we all have targets on us.”

Derek nodded. He could feel it, too.

He got back into the car and looked over at Molly. She was sitting in the exact position as when he had left, staring straight out the windshield.

“You doing okay?”

“Yeah.” She finally nodded. “I’m just trying to go over in my mind if anything we had out in the lab could’ve caused this.”

He wasn’t sure if he should tell her that it might have been a deliberate attack. “Molly, we’re looking into a lot of possibilities for what happened. But believe me, no one is assuming you’re at fault. You run a pretty tight ship in that lab.”

She seemed to relax just a little bit. “Everyone’s safety is always my first priority.”

“I know that. Everyone knows that.”

She seemed tiny inside his blazer, huddled in the seat as he drove out of the Omega parking lot and toward her house.

“You know where I live, right?” she said in a small voice.

Did he know where she lived? Was she kidding? He was guilty of driving by her condo sometimes even when it was almost the opposite direction of the way he needed to go.

And every single time he wanted to stop and knock on her door like that one night three years ago.

Knowing she wouldn’t slam the door in his face, wouldn’t tell him to go to hell, was the only thing that kept him from doing so. She was too gentle, too kind, too soft to send him away.

And he wasn’t so much of a bastard that he was willing to drag her down into the dark world he lived in. He didn’t want her touched by the ugliness of the sordid things he’d seen and done.

But damned if that wasn’t the hardest thing he’d ever done.

“Yeah, I know where you live.”

He could almost see the flush move up her cheeks.

“I just mean... The one time you were there you were...not your normal self. A-and I just wondered.”

“Hey.” He reached over and grabbed her hand. “You’ve gone the entire evening without being nervous around me.”

“That’s because I was upset.”

“Then stay upset, at me if you need to. No need to go back to nervous.”

She shrugged. He knew he made her nervous, made her uncomfortable.

Just like he knew the way she looked at him when she thought he couldn’t see. And he cherished it even as he tried to keep himself distant from it.

Her condo wasn’t far from Omega Headquarters and soon he pulled up and into her parking space. She was already opening her door when he came around to help her.

“I’m okay,” she said, and although her voice was soft, it wasn’t shaky. “Thanks for the ride. My purse was in the lab with my keys in it. Let me get the spare.”

He watched as she hunted around her bushes, and saw her pull it out from where she had used electrical tape to attach it to the main branch. Much better than just slipping it under a front doormat.

“Found it!” The small victory had evidently thrilled her.

“May I?” He took the key when she offered it and opened the door for her. “Do you have another set inside?”

“Yes. This is just for true emergencies.”

“Okay, I’ll put it back out for you.” He slipped it into his pocket.

She stood there in the doorway swamped in his jacket, plaster in her hair, smelling like smoke, smiling her slightly awkward smile that always seemed to be uniquely for him.

She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

All the lecturing he’d given himself on the drive here about not dragging her down into his darkness completely vanished.

Molly was alive and he had to taste her.

He slipped one arm around her small waist under his jacket and threaded his other hand through the hair at her scalp underneath her long brown braid. He backed her up against the door frame and brought his lips down to hers.

He heard her soft gasp of surprise and took advantage of it to slip his tongue into her mouth. A knot of need twisted inside him as he drew her closer. He felt her arms wrap around his neck as her tongue dueled with his.

His jacket falling from her shoulders and pooling at their feet brought some sense of reality back to Derek.

This could not happen. As much as he wanted it to.

He dropped both hands to her waist and took a step back. “Molly...”

She blinked up at him, arms still around his neck.

“Molly, this isn’t a good idea.”

“Why?” She leaned forward again.

Hell if he could remember why in this moment. Her lips were almost to his. If he kissed her again he wasn’t sure he would have the strength to stop. “You have plaster in your hair.”

“What?”

“Plaster. It’s all in your hair.”

Her face that had just been so flushed and soft from his kisses became shuttered. Her arms dropped to her sides, before one came up to her head to find the plaster he had mentioned. Why the hell had he said that? He didn’t care about anything being in her hair. He’d just meant that she had been through a trauma and that they shouldn’t do anything she might regret.

Or he might regret. Like break her heart.

“Oh. Yeah. I—I probably need a shower pretty badly.”

The thought of Molly in the shower had everything in Derek’s body tightening, but the slight stutter wasn’t lost on him. He hated that he’d made her uncomfortable around him again. And her eyes were wounded.

Damn it. He had to get out of here just to stop the damage he was inflicting.

“I’ll pick you up tomorrow at nine, okay?” He glanced down at his watch. “Actually, that’s only about four hours from now, so let’s make it ten. You’ll need to give an official report.”

Molly nodded and stepped inside her door. She picked up his jacket and held it out to him, wary, as if she didn’t know what to expect.

Derek didn’t blame her. He couldn’t run more hot and cold if he tried.

He took the blazer from her. “Just get some rest. It’s been a crazy day for all of us.”

He waited until she closed the door—without a word—then turned and walked back to his car.

Damn it.