Hard Landing Read online

  "Take care, Becca."

  Locking the knob, he pulled the door firmly shut behind him. Then he headed for his truck, searching the shadows for any sign of Max.

  Once inside of his Bronco, he fished his cell phone and his pistol out from under the seat. A portion of his confidence returned. He had Hack, Bullfrog, and Master Chief to help take on Max. It was good to know his teammates had his back, even if his own commander didn't.

  Chapter 12

  Bullfrog slipped into Brant's passenger seat, bearing a gym bag and a bagel slathered in cream cheese. He handed the bagel to Brant, shutting the truck door behind him.

  "Oh, you read my mind." Brant accepted the offering and took a huge bite out of it. "Anyone follow you?" he asked around a mouthful. The area around the dojo had begun to attract its most dedicated patrons, even this early on a Saturday.

  "No one." Bullfrog ran an assessing gaze over his rumpled attire. "You stayed with Rebecca all night?"

  "Yep," Brant admitted, ignoring his friend's unspoken disapproval. Starting up his truck, he drove cautiously around the building, on the lookout for Max's Tahoe. Maybe it was his conscience dogging him, but he already felt as though he was wearing a big, fat bull's-eye on his back.

  "Sure hope she was worth it," Bullfrog said, looking away.

  Memories of the night before stirred in Brant like a bed of leaves under a soft wind. "Best night of my life," he admitted, hearing his own amazement.

  His friend flicked a frown at him. "Hack says he'll meet us at Kuzinsky's at seven."

  Grateful for Bullfrog's lack of commentary, Brant nodded and pointed his Bronco south. Leery of running into Max, who might have been staked out at his apartment, he had waited at the dojo for Bullfrog to join him. Now they had only ten minutes to get to Kuzinsky's new place, a fixer-upper situated in rural Pungo, ten minutes down the road.

  They drove in silence, passing fewer and fewer buildings until nothing but flat farmland surrounded them. Brant found himself reconsidering his future. If he followed through with exposing Max's actions, he could probably kiss his career as a SEAL good-bye. Did he really want to go through with this?

  Rebecca's sweet smile came to mind, and the answer was unquestionable: For her? Yes.

  Ten minutes later, they arrived at Kuzinsky's mailbox, situated at the start of a long dirt driveway. Brant swung down it, and a dilapidated farmhouse came into view. Granted, it was backdropped by a picturesque creek framed in marsh grass and cattails. Not a single building other than a newer detached garage stood within sight, just water snaking through the marsh, a lot of trees, and blue sky. But the old house was covered in clapboard that had weathered to a dull gray. Yellow caution tape ran the perimeter of the sagging front porch, and several of the windows were boarded up.

  "What the hell?" Brant marveled.

  Spying Hack's motorcycle parked at the rear of the house, he drew alongside it. As they stepped out of his truck, Kuzinsky poked his auburn head out of the back door and waved them both in.

  The smells of bacon and coffee beckoned them into a warm kitchen. In spite of the home's rough exterior, the kitchen had undergone a full remodel, with handsome white cabinetry that complemented the shiny hardwood floors. Hack looked up from a long table where he sat in front of Max's laptop.

  "Morning," he said, booting it up.

  "Coffee?" Kuzinsky asked.

  Brant and Bullfrog both said yes and pulled out seats. Kuzinsky brought them two steaming mugs as they all sat down.

  He nodded at the equipment in front of Hack. "That's the CO's laptop?"

  "Rebecca gave it to us," Brant explained. He drew a measured breath and let it out slowly, the way he did whenever he settled behind his Stoner SR-225. "She thinks Commander McDougal is up to something he shouldn't be."

  As usual, Kuzinsky's expression gave nothing away. "What makes her think that?" he asked, taking a sip from his mug.

  "She saw something she wasn't supposed to see," Brant continued, "a foreign account in Max's name with fifty thousand dollars in it. He told her it was the task unit's money. Prior to that, according to her, they had maxed out their home equity line and were in danger of foreclosure. Next thing she knew, the loan was paid in full. She asked Max where the money had come from, and he said some great uncle had died, leaving him an inheritance."

  Kuzinsky's freckled face could have been set in stone. He took another slow sip of his coffee. "Go on," he said.

  Brant gestured to Hack. "I figured Hack could find out more if he had the CO's laptop, which was in the shop because it caught a virus."

  "A boot-sector virus, actually," Hack inserted, "which kept it from turning on. But I was able to boot to a CD in a pre-executable environment, which gained me access to the hard drive. Using specialized tools, I removed the virus and took a look into his user profile."

  A tense silence fell over the table as Hack prepared to share what he'd found.

  "For a period of three months last spring, the CO visited a black market website called Silk Road. He also logged in to a Swiss financial firm called Emile Victor DuPonte. On the surface, it looks like a regular institution, but the Swiss government doesn't recognize it, which means it has some shady investors."

  "Did you get his login information?" Kuzinsky asked.

  "As a matter of fact, I did. But the account is gone. He must have closed it after he realized that his wife saw it. Maybe he opened a new one with the same company. Who knows?"

  "There's more," Brant warned, reclaiming the master chief's attention. "A couple weeks back, Rebecca came home from work and Max was tossing some guy out of the house. Speaking with a New York City accent, he introduced himself as Tony." He turned over the sketch he had laid face-side down on the table and slid it toward the master chief. "This is what he looks like."

  Kuzinsky's russet eyebrows came together. "Who drew this?"

  "She did. It's good, right? Around that same time, she found out Max was using her old post office box. She got into it herself and found this." He handed Kuzinsky his copy of the newspaper article mentioning the mob-related assassinations. "I re-sent the original in an identical envelope in the hopes that Max would never know the difference. Go ahead." He nodded at Kuzinsky. "Read it."

  The coffee machine dripped quietly in the background as Kuzinsky waded through the article. At last, he looked up, his dark eyes as inscrutable as ever. "What are you getting at?" he demanded.

  "We think the CO's working for the mob," Brant stated. Even to his own ears, it sounded ludicrous.

  "Oh, come on," the master chief scoffed.

  Brant looked over at Hack. "Show him what you found on Silk Road," he invited.

  Hack turned the screen toward their leader. "This is what the website looks like. Trust me, it's not easy to find. Only way in is through a pseudo domain." He displayed a handsome website with a black background and blood-red font. "On April 1, the CO responded to an anonymous advertisement posted by—and I quote—'a powerful family seeking a security expert for all their security needs.' He even submitted his resume, which he deleted but I found in his recycle bin." He expanded a minimized document and let Kuzinsky take a look.

  A crease bisected Kuzinsky's freckled forehead. "He listed his sniper qualifications. Why would he do that?"

  "Think about it," Brant answered for Hack. "What kinds of security issues do mobsters have?" He waited a beat and answered his own question. "They wanted someone who could eliminate their problems—an assassin, basically." He stretched out a hand and tapped the copy of the news article. "I think he's the sniper working for the Scarpa family. The timeline matches up perfectly. He applied for the position in April. The two murders described here took place in May and July. Both men were shot in the head at a distance of half a mile from the vantage of a boat. We all know Max owns a boat."

  Kuzinsky pushed his chair back. "There's a lot of speculation going on here," he stated. But an odd light glimmered in his dark eyes as he lifted them to gaze out the wind
ow at the marsh in his back yard.

  "That's not all," Brant said, reclaiming his attention. "Did you know Rebecca left Max last weekend?"

  Kuzinsky blinked, refocusing his attention on Brant. "No, I didn't."

  "Of course not. Max would never admit to having marriage problems. But get this. The night she moved out, Tony was hiding in the back seat of her car. He made her drive at gunpoint to another vehicle." In as much detail as he could recall from Rebecca's rendition, he relayed how Tony had sent a photo of her, bound and gagged, to Max and threatened her life if Max didn't agree to Tony's terms.

  Kuzinsky broke eye contact and stared at his empty mug. "I remember he got a message on his phone while we were in the TOC." He looked up suddenly. "Who else knows about all this?"

  "Just the three of us," Brant said. "And Rebecca, of course."

  The master chief considered the laptop for a moment. "Okay," he said, reluctance dripping off the two syllables. "You've convinced me that there's something going on. I'll take your suspicions to NCIS as soon as they can see me."

  Relief loosened the knots in Brant's shoulders. "Thank you."

  "In the meantime, I suggest you keep a low profile and keep your distance from Rebecca," his leader added sternly.

  A wave of heat rose up his neck. "Yes, Master Chief." He determined that he'd heaped enough onto Kuzinsky's plate without bringing up his fears that Max might try to kill him. That was something he was going to have to deal with on his own.

  Hack and Bullfrog would, of course, help to cover his six. But no one had held a gun to his head forcing him to sleep with the CO's estranged wife. That had been his decision alone and, in spite of the shit storm that was about to break loose, he couldn't bring himself to regret it.

  * * *

  Rebecca stirred and stretched. Her heightened senses catalogued the smooth glide of the sheets, the tenderness of her satiated body, and then the empty space beside her. She lifted her head with a stab of concern at finding herself alone.

  "Bronco?" she called, not expecting an answer. Not a trace of his body heat remained, suggesting that he had left some time ago.

  Disappointment pinned her back against the mattress, and her heart gave a throb of loneliness. What had she expected—that because it was a Saturday, he would spend the day with her? Yet, after last night, it had seemed nothing had the power to keep them apart, so why hadn't he stayed?

  Because of Max, of course. Max had seen the one-of-a-kind Bronco parked near her apartment. If the evidence Hack had found on his laptop were true, then Max had announced his credentials as an experienced terminator to the mob. He probably had no compunction about killing Bronco, as he'd hinted at more than once now.

  "Oh God." She rolled out of bed, stripped of her happiness.

  Regarding her pale reflection in the bathroom mirror, she asked herself what, if anything, she could do to protect him. As she brushed the tangles from her hair, a suggestion skated into her thoughts. She recoiled from it, slamming her brush down on the marble sink top. Never.

  She left her room and crossed the living area, where her gaze strayed to the spot in front of the fireplace where they'd first made love. Her clothes still lay in a heap on the floor where Bronco had dropped them. Longing rolled over her in a powerful wave.

  She went into the kitchen to fix herself a cup of tea. There, she encountered the dishes left over from their dinner. With a troubled heart, she washed them, replaying every special moment of their conversation, cherishing every spoken word, every subtle nuance. He'd told her that he really liked her. The words warmed her heart anew.

  Then the awful idea that had occurred to her earlier lodged itself in her mind a second time. She was certain Brant could convince Master Chief Kuzinsky to approach NCIS with the evidence against Max. But then Bronco would be the first person Max suspected of betraying him—unless Rebecca rushed in and doused the flames of his suspicion.

  She drew a troubled breath and let it out. Her heart beat unpleasantly hard.

  A detestable plan, but it just might work.

  Bronco, of course, would abhor it. She could practically hear him insist that he was a big boy, fully capable of defending himself.

  But Bronco didn't know Max quite as well as she did.

  I should do it. Grim resolve slowed the tempo of her heartbeat. If it kept Bronco safe, then it was worth the humiliation and even the danger and punishment that could potentially arise.

  Like a person being led to the gallows, she walked slowly toward her charging cell phone. Every fiber of her being rebelled at the prospect of talking to Max. And the last thing she wanted to do was to give him her new number, but if she called from a payphone, he would have reason to doubt her sincerity, and she had to be convincing—for Bronco's sake. She needed to make it look like she still trusted her husband.

  Wetting her dry lips, she picked up her phone and tapped out Max's number. So long as progress was being made to investigate his wrongful actions, she could pretend to consider reconciliation. It was the only solution she could think of to keep him from going off the deep end.

  * * *

  Standing in a short line at the computer repair shop, Max willed the woman in front of him to hurry the hell up. He hated running errands on a Saturday. A dozen items needed to be struck off his to-do list that day. Amazingly, he had checked his new account and discovered that his advance had indeed been doubled. Now he was committed to killing Special Agent Doug Castle. But first he had to advance his plan to strike Brant Adams off the face of the earth.

  It all came down to strategy. Luckily, Max had twenty-plus-years of experience at tactical planning. He was still the puppeteer, pulling the strings to make others dance at his command. Even the Scarpas had proven malleable to his will. The only person still making him look weak was his wife, who had left him to cavort with another man.

  But not for long, Max vowed. All too soon, Adams would succumb to a drug overdose. His death would reveal his unhealthy habit, and a disillusioned Rebecca would realize what a mistake she had made in turning her back on her upstanding husband. If he had to coerce her to make her return to him, he would. But he would not, could not, let her go. What was once his would remain his forever.

  The buzzing of his cell phone pulled him from his dark thoughts. He eyed the unfamiliar number before answering, "Commander McDougal."

  "Max?"

  Rebecca's familiar voice kept him mute.

  "Can you talk?" Her hesitant tone was counterbalanced by a warmth that kept him intrigued.

  He considered the customer in front of him, too engrossed in discussing her wireless connectivity issue to pay any heed to his conversation. "What do you want?" Besides a divorce? he added in his mind.

  "I... I wanted to apologize."

  He slit his eyes with immediate suspicion.

  "I know that my leaving must have caught you off guard."

  "Is this your new phone number?" he asked, ignoring her observation. He eyed the number again, glad to have it.

  "Yes. I didn't think it was fair to you to stay on your phone plan."

  What was she up to, trying to play nice when she'd deserted him? Oh, of course. She wanted him to agree to a no-fault divorce. Like that was going to happen.

  "Anyway," she continued, plowing ahead in spite of his silence, "Chief Adams dropped by my place last night and suggested that I call you to try to patch things up."

  Intrigued, he turned his back on the woman in front of him and marched to the front of the store to stare at the busy parking lot. "Did he, now?" He highly doubted it.

  "Yes. I'm sorry I left the way I did. It must have jolted you to find me gone like that. It's just... I was traumatized by what happened to me."

  He cupped a hand over his mouthpiece, hissing words that were meant for her alone. "That should never have happened. I told you the man was trouble. You should've called me to say you were okay. I was worried sick for days!"

  "I'm sorry," she repeated. "I was so upset by
what those thugs did to me. But you're not like them, Max. I should have trusted you to explain what's going on. Why would you even know people like them, anyway?"

  Was this an olive branch she was extending? Why now, when she and Adams were surely conspiring against him?

  "It's complicated," he hedged.

  "I guess so." Her pitch conveyed disappointment. "Well, I wouldn't be talking to you right now if Chief Adams hadn't convinced me to try again. He reminded me what a skilled and capable commander you are," she insisted.

  Christ, she was trying to protect her lover! To keep her husband from adding infidelity on top of desertion, as his reasons for declining her no-fault divorce. Not that he intended to pursue a fault-grounds divorce. She would be his again before any kind of divorce took place between them.

  "Have dinner with me," he demanded. If he could look into her eyes, he could begin to work his will on her, while finding out how much, if anything, she'd already told the chief.

  "Oh. I'll need to check with my lawyer to see if that's a good idea."

  "You're referring to that line in the separation agreement about respecting your privacy and having no contact with you outside of the courtroom." He let her know by his mocking tone what he thought of the stipulation. "I haven't signed the agreement," he informed her. "Nor will I, ever."

  "Oh." She fell quiet for a moment. "That-that line was my lawyer's idea," she stammered. "He thinks Tony sounds dangerous, and since he associates with you, it's better if you and I aren't seen together."

  Christ, she knew Tony's first name. Did she know his last, too? Was she fishing for more information about him in order to taint Max's reputation? A cold sweat swept across his brow. "He's not an associate. Listen, I'm busy. I'll talk to you later," he told her, hanging up.

  It made little difference whether her apology was sincere or not. She was threatening his hard-won prestige with her show of independence, and he wouldn't stand for it.

  "Sir, can I help you?"

  Marching back to the counter, he told the technician that he wanted his laptop back. The man had had it for a month, and he obviously hadn't fixed it yet.