north of my position.”
He set the AR aside and studied the image McBride had sent. The lake was roughly kidney shaped with houses in various stages of construction scattered along the far bank. There was one road in and out. No trees, outcroppings, or shrubs to hide behind. No ravines in the artificially created landscape. Near the mouth of the development, large excavation equipment sat idle beside a trailer that was probably used as an office. To the north and east was open pastureland.
“Where was the van parked?”
“They said they spotted it between the two houses at the northernmost tip of the lake—the two that are more fully built.”
Javier assessed the situation. He could take the road, but Kimball would see him coming almost immediately. That might provoke him into killing Laura, if he hadn’t already. Or Javier could take a route that Kimball wouldn’t expect.
“SWAT is already on its way. I’ll be at your position in about ten minutes. SWAT should arrive in fifteen to twenty.”
“I’ll have her by then. I’m going to swim underwater across the lake and come up behind those two houses. There’s a concrete pipe that spills from the lake into a nearby irrigation ditch off the road to my left here. It was probably built to carry away overflow. I can enter the lake that way so that he won’t spot me climbing over that embankment.”
“Corbray, listen to me. You’re taking a big risk. It’s March, and this isn’t San Diego. The water in that lake won’t be much over forty degrees, if that, and it looks to me like you’ll have a least a half mile to cross.”
“Hey, this is my job, remember?”
It
But Javier had more experience than most SEALs, and he had powerful motivation. If he failed, the woman he loved would die.
“I’m telling you to wait, Corbray. We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
But Javier’s gut told him Laura didn’t have ten minutes.
He disconnected the call, stripped off his coat, clipped the AR to a harness on the Kevlar—and set off for the concrete pipe at a run.
EGO.
That was the key to buying herself time. Kimball was a true narcissist. Some part of him wanted her to appreciate how hard he’d worked to kill her. Some part of him wanted her to be impressed.
Laura fought to hold herself together, fought to see beyond the loathing in Kimball’s eyes, the joy he so obviously felt to know she’d suffered. “I’m supposed to believe you were behind my abduction just because you say so?”
He told her the story. How he’d bolted in the middle of the ambush that had pinned down his platoon in Fallujah, angry and humiliated by the sentence he’d received. How he’d gone into hiding, made his way to Pakistan. How he’d seen her one night as she entered her hotel. And how the idea had come to him.
“I realized I could get back at you. I was going to be a Green Beret, and you ruined that for me.”
“You ruined that for yourself. You broke U.S. law, shamed your uniform, stole from innocent people. I did my job. I expose the truth.”
He struck her again, the blow leaving her dizzy.
“You should have sided with us—with your own countrymen. Instead, you stood up for the enemy.
She didn’t want him angry. She wanted him to talk about himself.
She struggled to clear her head. “H-how did you know where I was going to be?”
“I followed you every day for weeks. I ate in the same dining room, stayed in the same hotel, drank at the same bar. You even said hello to me once when you bumped into me getting out of the elevator. But finding out your plans—that was the real trick.” He leaned down and grinned at her. “I did a favor for someone, who hacked your phone and turned it into a roving bug.”
Laura had heard about that kind of technology, knew federal law enforcement sometimes used it, transforming the mic in someone’s cell phone into a listening device that operated even when the phone was off. “You heard every word we said.”
He stood upright, still smiling. “I picked the time and place and made contact with some of Al-Nassar’s men. They took it from there.”
So Derek Tower had been right—in a manner of speaking. She had been betrayed to Al-Nassar by a fellow American who’d gotten her location straight from her. But it hadn’t been her fault. Not that there was any comfort in knowing that now.
“I thought you were dead. He’d claimed he’d killed you.” Kimball reached out and slid his fingers into Laura’s hair. “But I guess he wanted to keep you for himself.”
Laura shuddered. “It must have been a shock to find out I was alive.”
“You were alive, but you weren’t the same, were you, Laura?” He knelt down beside her, speaking in that same sad, sympathetic voice he’d used in her phone interviews with him. “I enjoyed hearing about all the things that had happened to you. Then you came back to the U.S. and started living a normal life again, while I was working my ass off doing black ops for hire.”
“You decided you had to kill me.”
“Exactly. Took me a while to get here. I had to sneak into the country, get a fake ID, pull some cash together. Sean remembered me, helped me out, gave me a place to stay, a place to work.”
“He helped you.”
Kimball laughed and got to his feet. “He barely knows his own name. I drove him from place to place, gave him money, sent him in to buy supplies for me. He thought we were making fireworks. We talked about old times, but he couldn’t remember much. I got him some replica firearms that fire pellets. We played with those indoors. Then his damned social worker came around, and I knew I had to get rid of him.”
Understanding hit Laura, making her sick. “You set him up. You sent him after Javier knowing Javier would kill him.”
“I painted the tip of my handgun orange, loaded it. I knew your SEAL boyfriend went for a run every morning. I watched, and when he set out, I went after Sean. We meant to catch him on his way back but he went a different route. I followed, dropped Sean off at the store. Sean thought we were still playing. ‘See him?’ I said. ‘He wants to play, too. Just walk up to him and shoot. Score one for the team.’”
Laura felt sick for both Edwards and Javier. “You
“Your boyfriend is good at killing. He got rid of a loose end for me. Oh, don’t look so horrified. That’s what a good Special Forces operative does. We work behind enemy lines, move in the shadows, turn one person against another, kill when we must. I would have made a great Green Beret.”
She glared up at him, her stomach churning, rage, disgust, and terror coiled so tightly inside her she couldn’t tell them apart. “A
This time when he struck her, she saw stars.
CHAPTER
30
JAVIER SURFACED, EXHALED, inhaled, his lungs aching, his body chilled to the core. He had about sixty
