The Hunted

79

Lauren’s jaw went slack as she just sat there, staring at him. The truck hit a pothole and shook her from her daze. “You’re what?”

Bradley leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees. “I was the man the FBI was looking for when they came to Placerville. Your husband bears a striking resemblance to what I looked like before I had my second session of plastic surgery. The marshal’s office supplied the Bureau with a photo that was taken after I’d seen their surgeon. Because I knew that photo existed, and because I’d learned to trust no one, I had a second operation no one knew about. Michael looks like I did before the second surgery.”

“So the FBI thought that my husband was you.” Lauren shook her head and tried to contain her anger. With bloodshot eyes, she glared at Bradley. “Everything you told me, Nick, everything was a lie.”

“Not everything. You have to understand—”

“I’ll tell you what I understand, Nick — or Harper, or whatever the hell it is you want to be called now. Bottom line is, you used me like a pawn. That’s what I understand.”

“I realize you’re upset with me. You have every right to be.”

“And what about you, Agent Rodman? How do you fit into all of this?”

“Some information remains classified, Dr. Chambers. Like it or not, that’s the way it’s got to be.”

“So am I supposed to assume the FBI was in on all this?”

“The Bureau was as much in the dark as you were. After agents made contact with your husband, he was involved in an automobile accident and banged his head up pretty good. The head trauma caused a great deal of memory loss. The Bureau was in a difficult position. They needed Harper Payne to testify, but he couldn’t remember anything. They did their best to reeducate him.”

“But the fact remains that Michael was never in the FBI. Couldn’t they see that he didn’t have the skills? Wasn’t there something that tipped them off that they had the wrong person?”

“Michael spent eight years with the Army National Guard’s SoCom, short for Southern Command,” Bradley said. “That’s where the skills came from that the Bureau mistook for his prior FBI training.”

“Michael was never in the National Guard,” Lauren said.

Rodman raised an eyebrow. “Goes to what I was saying before, about how much we really know about our loved ones.”

“It was twelve years ago,” Bradley said.

“I don’t understand. If you were the Agent Payne they needed to make the government’s case, why didn’t you just step in and take his place?”

“At first, I didn’t know what was going down. I really did leave WITSEC, so I was out of touch with everything and everyone. I don’t read the papers and I don’t watch TV. I live in a small town and keep a low profile. But the second I saw Michael’s photo on that flyer, I thought I knew what had happened. Someone, probably working for Scarponi, screwed up and mistook Michael for me.”

“So if you knew that, why didn’t you do something?”

“Because it served my purposes. And because I was guessing, and because I didn’t know where Michael was. Just like you, I didn’t know what had happened to him. For all I knew, Scarponi could’ve killed him. I had to find out.”

“You could’ve gone to the FBI.”

“I spent years trying to distance myself from the government because contact with them could put my life in danger. So it was a selfish decision. Like I said before, I thought I could use you and Michael to get at Scarponi.”

“After the incident in Fredericksburg,” Rodman said, “Agent Payne contacted us. One of my colleagues acted as the go-between.”

“Where’s my husband’s body?”

Bradley consulted his watch. “Lauren, please let us finish. We don’t have much time.”

“Time? For what?”

Rodman took a seat next to Bradley, opposite Lauren. “Dr. Chambers, please listen. Director Knox had suspicions that your husband wasn’t really Agent Payne. Something showed up on a physical exam that didn’t make sense. A heart murmur that the real Agent Payne didn’t have. But the director didn’t have any choice. He had to go along with the charade until he could put all the pieces together, to be absolutely sure. Because of the mole, the former director had Agent Payne’s fingerprint card destroyed as an added precaution. There was no way to verify Knox’s suspicion about your husband. Plus, the director had other pressures on him that I’m not at liberty to discuss with you.”

“I started working with an agent,” Bradley said, “who brought me into the operational plan that was devised to somehow fix the whole situation. By now, everything was a mess. Somehow, they needed to recapture Scarponi, while at the same time protect you and Michael in the event they weren’t successful. He’s a dangerous assassin, Lauren. He’s had a contract out on me for several years. His people had already decided that Michael was me. It’s not like the Bureau could call up Scarponi and tell him, ‘Don’t gun for Michael Chambers. It’s really this guy Nick Bradley you want to kill. ’

“But we caught a break. There was a mole in the Bureau years ago who almost got me killed. He was feeding sensitive information about my whereabouts to Scarponi. Since technology is a great deal more advanced than it was even six years ago, the Bureau was able to back trace some internal data paths and identified who the mole was. They pummeled him for information and got his contact information for Scarponi. Then I went to work, posing as the mole. We set Scarponi up by giving him something he couldn’t pass up — the chance to kill Harper Payne.”

“But all loose ends had to be tied up,” Rodman said.

Just then, the ambulance came to a stop. Rodman reached above him and quickly extinguished the interior light. The ambulance’s rear doors opened into the pitch-black of a one-lane country road. From what Lauren could see in the darkness, nothing was around.

A man dressed in black clothing, with black paint on his face, extended a hand toward her. “Come with me, ma’am. Quickly.”

“Who are you? Where’s my husband? I want to see my husband, goddamn it!”

The man in black reached in and grabbed her arm. “Please, we don’t have time. It’s dangerous out here. We’ve got to go now.”

She did not move. “Not until you tell me where my husband is!”

He yanked her from the back of the ambulance and pulled her, with a modicum of effort, out into the darkness.

As she fought him, her eyes caught the stare of Troy Rodman. “Am I just another loose end, you son of a bitch?” She dropped down to her knees, the way a tantruming toddler does when trying to wrest himself free from his parent. “Nick, help me, please!”

The man in black clamped a large, meaty hand across her mouth.

“I’m sorry, Lauren,” Bradley called after her. “I’m sorry about everything!”