“You’re beautiful.”
Her skin heated even more. At the rate she was going, she was going to look like a cooked lobster inside of two minutes.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” Jack said.
“I … we … it’s complicated.” Megan pulled on a T-shirt.
He chuckled. “If you mean to say that you and me having sex complicates things, yeah, maybe a bit, but I like complications. Especially one like you.”
He stretched like a satisfied cat, his long, hard body only partly covered by the sheet. She turned her back on him. She couldn’t look at him, not like that, without remembering exactly what they’d done together last night. How he made her feel not only during sex, but after. How he’d held her. Kissed her. She’d never felt so comfortable with a man, never felt so alive, so sexy, so desired.
She pressed Send on her phone to return Hans’s call. He answered immediately. “Meg?”
“Sorry, you woke me and I couldn’t find my phone.”
“General Hackett is dead. We’re going to Santa Barbara.”
“Hackett? Dammit, we sent agents to his house to warn him.”
“I spoke to the Los Angeles office. They said they called and Mrs. Hackett said her husband was out of town for the evening.”
“And they didn’t follow up?”
Hans paused. “They assumed that if he was out of town, the killers wouldn’t know where. See where assumptions can lead?”
Megan blanched. Hans was still angry, but she was more confident that her actions were right. “I’ll be ready.”
“You should also know that Barry Rosemont, the reporter Frank Cardenas told us about, was also murdered, and his partner is still at large. The gun that killed the two men was left at the scene, but the knife that cut Hackett’s hamstrings is missing. The detective in charge will meet us at the airport, fill in the details, and walk us through the crime scene. But the gun is the same caliber-nine millimeter-as the firearm that killed the Hoffmans. And,” he added, “same bullet casings.”
“What did-”
Hans interrupted. “We need to leave.”
“Jack can fly us. It’ll be faster, especially during morning commute time-”
“Ask him.”
She paused. Did Hans know Jack was in her room? “Okay. What about Rosemont’s partner? He just skipped out?”
“No sign of the partner at all. We don’t know if Rose-mont or the UNSUB killed Hackett, but it’s clear that Rosemont was murdered. The police are going through all security tapes and are interviewing staff and guests. We’ll know more when we get there.”
“But-” She felt Jack behind her, his hands on her shoulders.
“Thirty minutes, meet me in the lobby.”
“Yes, but-”
He hung up before she could say anything else.
“What?” Jack asked, massaging her muscles.
“Barry Rosemont. He’s one of the killers, apparently.” She turned and faced Jack. “I’m so sorry. About this, about your friend, Scout. And General Hackett, he’s also dead. We couldn’t warn him in time. I feel awful.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Hans is still mad at me. I don’t know what’s going on with him, but he’s not acting like himself. And we still don’t know who Rosemont’s partner is.”
“Maybe by the time we land in Santa Barbara the police will have answers.”
“I hope so. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m part of this until the end. You know that, right?”
She nodded. “We’re leaving in thirty minutes and I need to shower-”
“
On the way to the airport, Hans was in front with the taxi driver, talking quietly on his cell phone. Megan had hoped that because she and Hans were working together on the case, he had rethought his comments from the night before, but if his icy reception this morning was any indication, he was in a worse mood now. Any other time she would have called him on it, but he wasn’t himself so she tread lightly.
Jack squeezed her knee. He leaned over and was about to say something when Megan’s cell phone beeped, indicating a high-priority e-mail. She glanced at it. “It’s from my office.” She opened the e-mail and added, “It’s about the van in Sacramento.”
She skimmed the report. “It was wiped down with Clorox Clean-Up. Bleach. There were bloodstains, but they were contaminated. No prints so far, but they’re still going through it. However, there was a pair of shoes in the middle of the back of the van. Worn sneakers with blood. It’s our John Doe’s blood.” She tapped Hans on the shoulder. “Did you hear me?”
Hans turned, and pointed to the cell phone he held to his ear. She leaned back and sighed. “So we know where he was tortured, and they found two long, thin needles that appear to match the marks on the body. They sent one to the morgue for verification.”
“And nothing else?”
“No.”
Hans was on the phone the entire drive to the airport, and finally shut it off when Jack was taxiing the plane for take-off.
“That was Rick Stockton,” he said.
“And?”
“The Orlando field office is reviewing all the evidence in the Russo murder and will get back to me. He also pulled the Russo interview from CNN and ordered a transcript, which will be e-mailed to us as soon as they get it. But it was pretty much an apology for screwing up a mission. Russo took the blame. Or, as Rick said, he shared the blame with the whole team.”
“Prick,” Jack said.
Sitting behind, Hans didn’t respond.
“What do you think happened in Afghanistan?” Jack asked Hans.
“I don’t know.”
“I can tell you that Frank Cardenas doesn’t lie. If he said the reporter jeopardized the mission, then the reporter jeopardized the mission.”
“Soldiers tend to support each other,” Hans said. “When one speaks out-”
“They usually have an ax to grind,” Jack interrupted. “We take care of our problems internally. We don’t share them on Oprah.”
“A lot of good your internal solutions have been.”
“Your point?”
“The military is notorious for covering up failed missions. This time, they couldn’t.”
“You’re not going to get an argument from me on that one,” Jack said, “but failed missions are caused by many things, and leading the failures is bad intelligence, followed by assholes in public office who think they can run a battle from behind a desk and jerks like General Hackett who want to stroke the media and open our missions like a ride at Disneyland.”
“Hackett’s dead,” Hans said coldly.
“I’m sorry he’s dead, but that doesn’t mean he was right.”
“Hans,” Megan interjected from the co-pilot’s seat, not liking the direction the conversation was going, “can we get Rosemont’s medical records? Anything the military has? He must have been debriefed, hospitalized, maybe on medication.”
