Sudden Death

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Megan was awakened by the hard, naked body wrapped around her.

Jack’s arm was draped over her, the blankets were on the floor, and the sheets a tangle around them. She would have been freezing if she wasn’t lying next to a self-charging heater.

“Your phone’s ringing,” Jack said. “I didn’t think I should answer it.”

She jumped up and found her phone in her purse, which she’d dropped on the small desk when she first came in the night before. Before the spontaneous swim, before making love to Jack.

She missed the call. It was from Hans. Suddenly, she was mindful of her nakedness.

“You’re blushing,” Jack said.

“How can you tell?” she asked, looking around for her shirt. She found the cami she’d worn the night before; it was still damp from the pool. She opened her small suitcase.

“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-”

“We need to shower.” He kissed her. Her lips were sore from last night’s passion, but his caress was gentle, kind, loving. He picked her up and carried her to the bathroom. “Thirty minutes should be just enough time.”

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.”

“The military isn’t going to share-it’s most likely classified. Rick already put in the request yesterday when we got his name, but doesn’t expect them to be forthcoming. As far as medical records, we need a warrant.”

“We should be able to get one,” Megan said. “There could be something important there.”

“I’ll make sure it’s put in. But it’s not going to bring Hackett or the Hoffmans back to life.”

“What is going on with you?” Megan demanded, turning around in her seat so she could face Hans. They were thousands of feet above the earth; no way he could avoid her this time. “You’re testy and snide and being an asshole.”

He glared at her, face hard, eyes unreadable. “I don’t have to answer to you, Agent Elliott. The only reason you’re on this plane to Santa Barbara is because Rick Stockton didn’t agree with me that you fucked up. But he’s looking into it so don’t think you’re in the clear yet.”

Megan turned away from Hans and blinked back the threatening tears. She didn’t know what to say; what could she say? His reaction to her wrong assumption about the victim in Sacramento was over the top. Something else had to have happened, and it was obvious Hans wasn’t going to tell her. Did he tell Rick? Was there something he wasn’t saying?

Did Hans know about her and Jack? Did he think she’d been unprofessional? Maybe she had been. It wasn’t like she’d planned to have sex with Jack Kincaid. And she didn’t regret it. She hadn’t jeopardized the case, or slept with a witness or suspect. Jack was essentially a civilian consultant. Hans thought she screwed up the case, that was it. But she couldn’t talk to him about it now. He wasn’t open to anything she said.

She saw her best friendship disintegrating and she couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it.

Santa Barbara Detective Grant Holden was in his early forties and reminded Meg of the blond cop from the classic show Adam-12. After introductions, he drove them to the hotel and filled them in on the double homicide.

“The chief of the forensic unit is handling the evidence himself. He’s methodical and in my opinion the best in the state. You’ll want to talk to him when we get there; he can walk you through the crime scene. Frankly, the whole thing is a circus.”

“A circus?” Megan asked. She was in the back of the car, Hans was in the front. Jack stayed at the airport and said he’d take a cab-he needed to arrange to have Scout’s plane refueled.

“Media is all over it.”

“How’d they find out?”

“Police scanners. Hotel staff and guests. But it’s not that they’re simply on scene reporting a murder at the resort-they know Barry Rosemont is the Hamstring Killer.”

“That’s not good.”

“We think the info came from Hackett’s widow, but how can we accuse her right now?”

“Good point.”

“Because it leaked out, we decided to use it to our advantage. We’ve released a photograph of Rosemont to the media and have asked anyone who believes they have seen him in the last forty-eight hours to contact my office. We’re hoping if a witness comes forward he or she can describe Rosemont’s accomplice.”

Megan said, “Good. Let us know how we can help get the word out.”

“I do have more information than I had earlier this morning when I spoke with you, Agent Vigo,” Holden said. “Apparently, Hackett was getting chummy with a woman last night in the bar.”

Both Megan and Hans turned to Holden. “A woman?” they said simultaneously. Megan added, “Brunette?”

“Blond. Attractive, late thirties to late forties. Not a registered guest.”

“Name?”

“The bartender who worked last night is on his way to meet us at the resort. He’s the only one who talked to her.”

“What about the crime scene?” Hans asked. “You said the room was registered to Ethan Rose, but the manager identified Barry Rosemont as the individual who reserved the room and paid.”

“Correct.”

“And he came in alone?”

“Yes. We’ve been looking at the security footage and have seen Rosemont on tape only briefly-when he registered he entered through the main entrance. Yesterday early afternoon, one thirty-seven p.m. Alone. Asked specifically for a cabin on the beach. They weren’t going to rent it to him because they were booked for the weekend, but he wanted it only one night. Said he was passing through.”

“Driver’s license?”

“Ethan Rose. We found his false identification. Quality fake. He also had an expired New York driver’s license under the name Barry Ethan Rosemont, which we’ve learned is his real name. His prints came back as Barry Ethan Rosemont. Criminal record. He’d been arrested while a student at Berkeley, eighteen years ago.”

“For what?”

“Breaking and entering. He was working for the student newspaper and broke into the security office to pull reports of rape that had been filed by students. He was doing an expose of the administration covering up on-campus assaults. Charges were dropped.”

“Did he run the story?” Megan asked, curious.

“Not that we know.”

Hans said, “Any leads on Rosemont’s partner?”

Holden shook his head. “Nothing so far. We’ve dusted the entire room, printed the staff, and are going through every guest methodically. So far, nothing. But there’s a lot to process. Extensive blood, spatter, angles. We’re still not exactly sure what happened. Ian, our chief forensics guru, can walk you through the evidence when we get there.”