The Ultimate Betrayal Read online

  “You got it. How long before you get there?”

  He knew her address, brought the directions up on his cell. “No traffic this time of night. We’re twenty minutes out.”

  “Make it thirty and I’ll meet you there.”

  “You got it.” The phone went dead and Bran glanced around for Jessie, saw her walking back into the living room, already changed into a black T-shirt and sneakers to go with the black yoga pants she’d had on.

  “I’m going with you.”

  He was torn. There was no way for anyone to know they were staying at the Grant. She should be safe. On the other hand, leaving her behind gave him an itchy feeling. He’d rather keep her close. Besides, with Ramos’s connection to her father, she might get something he couldn’t.

  “All right, we’ll both go.”

  “I want a weapon.”

  He frowned. “It won’t be legal here.”

  A half smile curved her lips. “Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.”

  Bran laughed, recognizing one of Danny’s pet sayings. He knew she could shoot. Hell, she was probably a crack shot. No way would Danny not have taught his little sister how to defend herself.

  Since Bran wanted her safe, he retrieved the Smith & Wesson .38 out of his gear bag and handed it over. “Let’s hope you don’t need it.”

  Jessie flipped open the cylinder, which was fully loaded, then flicked it closed and stuck the revolver into her cross-body purse.

  Twenty-five minutes later the Navigator rolled past the address of the condo on Via Mallorca. The house was dark. He circled the block and parked down the street. A few minutes later, Hunt Brady’s black Chevy Blazer eased up behind them and the engine went silent. They all got out of their vehicles.

  “No lights on inside,” Bran said. “She may not be home.”

  “I guess we’ll find out,” Hunt said.

  Bran scanned the area for anyone moving around in the darkness. “Looks clear.”

  “There’s a sliding glass door in back,” Hunt said. “Opens onto a fenced patio. I’ll head in that direction, make sure she doesn’t get out that way.”

  Bran nodded. He and Jessie moved quietly to the front door, Bran holding his pistol in a two-handed grip pointed up. Standing off to the side, out of the line of fire, Jessie knocked on the door. It was after midnight. They waited and she knocked again. There was a rustling sound inside, footsteps, then the porch light went on, but the door didn’t open.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s Jessie Kegan, Mara. I need to talk to you about my father.”

  Long seconds passed. Bran wondered if she’d bolted. Instead, he heard the metal click of dead bolts turning, more than one, then the door swung open. Bran was on her, shoving Mara back inside, Jessie following him in and closing the door. Jessie switched on the light in the living room while Bran cleared the small, one-bedroom condo.

  “She’s alone,” Bran said, returning to the living room.

  “Who are you people? What do you want?” In a pale blue plush robe and slippers, Mara stood stiffly. It looked as if she’d been sleeping, her shoulder-length jet-black hair slightly mussed, her face clean of makeup.

  “I think you know who I am,” Jessie said. “I’m betting my dad showed you my picture.”

  She swallowed. “Jessie...yes...yes, he did. I don’t understand. What are you doing here in the middle of the night? And who is this man?”

  “My name is Brandon Garrett. Let’s just say I’m a friend of the family. Why don’t we go into the kitchen and you can make us a pot of coffee, Mahri?” He said the words in Arabic, which he’d learned in spec ops and spoke fluently.

  Mara’s face went sheet-white, and she swayed on her feet. Bran nudged her forward into the kitchen and set her down in one of the kitchen chairs. He opened the sliding glass door, letting Hunt Brady into the condo.

  “I’ll make the coffee,” Jessie said.

  Bran just nodded. It was going to be another long night.

  * * *

  With her glossy black hair, full lips, and dark eyes, Mara Ramos was indeed a beautiful woman. Her olive complexion made it easy for her to pass under a Hispanic alias. But Bran had spoken to her in Arabic, and she had clearly understood.

  According to Tabby, she was forty-five years old, ten years younger than Jessie’s father. Thinking of the intelligent, vital man James Kegan had been, it wasn’t difficult to imagine them together.

  “What was your relationship with my father?” Jessie demanded, taking the lead.

  “We were...we were seeing each other. We cared about each other.”

  “Bullshit. You never cared about him. Your relationship with my father was nothing but a scam. You just used him, won his trust, then set him up to take the blame for stealing those chemical weapons.”

  Seated in a chair at the table while the three of them stood around her, Mara looked frightened and resigned to whatever happened next.

  “That isn’t true. I loved your father. James was the best man I’ve ever known.”

  Caught off guard by the declaration, Jessie fought a fresh surge of anger. “You’re a liar. You seduced my father to get his personal information—his social security number, bank account numbers, credit cards, everything you could find that would help pin the blame on him. You gave that information to the men who murdered him!”

  “I didn’t know they were going to kill him! I loved him!”

  Struggling with her shock at the unexpected turn, Jessie fell silent.

  Bran stepped into Mara’s personal space, forcing her to look up at him. Her eyes glistened with tears. “When did you start planning the setup?” Mara glanced away but Bran caught her jaw, forcing her gaze back to his face. “How long ago, Mara?”

  Pain surfaced in her eyes. Bran let her go and she swallowed. “I suppose you could say all my life. I was twenty-three when I came to this country. The people who paid my way also paid for my education, and when my visa ran out, they gave me a new identity. From the beginning they made it clear I owed them a very big debt and that someday they would expect to collect.”

  “Go on.”

  She shivered. Her gaze seemed to turn inward, to someplace inside. “The debt I owed was the reason I never had children. I always knew the time would come. I didn’t want a family that could be put at risk.”

  Jessie hardened her heart. Her father was dead because of this woman. Nothing she could say could justify what she had done.

  Bran didn’t back away. “You keep saying they. Who are you talking about?”

  “A group I was involved with in Yemen. But it was a long time ago.”

  “What was their name?”

  “They called themselves jaysh alaslam alyamanii. Army of Islam of Yemen. But they’ve changed the name half a dozen times since then. I don’t know what they’re calling themselves now.”

  “When did someone from the group contact you?”

  “About five months ago. He said his name was Ahmed. Nothing more. Ahmed said it was time for me to pay the debt I owed. He said it was all arranged. I was to move to Colorado Springs, into an apartment rented in my name. It would only be for a few months, he said. While I was there I would meet a man, a colonel in the army named James Kegan. Ahmed told me to get his personal information. I understood what that meant.”

  Jessie’s fury mounted. She ground down on her temper, determined to stay in control. “So you seduced him. You slept with him to win his trust and get him to help steal the weapons.”

  The woman cringed. “James didn’t help them! Your father would never have betrayed his country. That was never part of the plan.”

  Relief spiraled through her. She felt Brandon’s hand on her shoulder, steady and comforting. He understood the importance of those words.

  “So what was the plan, Mara?” Bran asked.
“You said you didn’t know the men were going to kill him.”

  “No. Ahmed said all I had to do was get close to him, get his personal information. He never said what they planned to do with it, but he made it clear they would kill me if I refused. I owed them everything—my education, my life here, the friends I had made. Everything. James was nothing to me then. It didn’t seem like a high price to pay.”

  “Where did you meet my father?” Jessie asked.

  “There was a party for one of James’s friends. Someone set it up so I would be invited. I don’t know who, but I was welcomed. I was a schoolteacher. There were single men at the party, military men from the base. As the evening progressed, I sought out your father and pretended to be interested in him. He was a very attractive man, and I found him to be likable and smart so it wasn’t difficult. He asked if he could see me again and I said yes. We started dating. That was part of the plan.”

  “Where was this party?”

  “Around the pool at the Marriott Hotel.”

  “Whose party was it?”

  “I don’t remember. It was a big party, lots of people invited. A twenty-five-year anniversary celebration. I don’t remember the couple’s name. Perhaps someone suggested the colonel and I would suit. Which we did.”

  “So you slept with him,” Jessie said. “And while he was in your apartment, you stole his personal information.”

  She nodded. “A little at a time, yes. But even after I had done what they asked, James and I continued to see each other. I knew I should go back to San Diego before things got any more complicated, but by then I was falling in love with him. After he was arrested and charged with those terrible crimes, I understood what I had done.”

  “And a few days later he was killed,” Bran finished.

  Fresh tears collected in Mara’s obsidian eyes. Her voice cracked. “If I had known, I would never have done it.”

  Jessie felt a fresh surge of anger. Was the woman acting? Or could the emotion possibly be real?

  “But you did do it,” Bran pressed. “The colonel is dead because of you.” He leaned over her, braced his hands on the arms of her chair, caging her in. “Now it’s time for you to undo some of what you’ve done. We need to know the names of the people involved.”

  Mara shook her head. “I don’t know. I only saw Ahmed once. After that, he called me on a disposable phone whenever he wanted to give me instructions.”

  “Do you still have the phone?” Bran asked.

  “No. He told me to throw it away.”

  “So you have no proof that anything you’ve just told us is true,” Jessie said.

  Tears rolled down Mara’s cheeks. “No.”

  Bran glanced over at Hunter Brady. “You get all that?”

  Hunt turned off the recorder on his cell phone. “I got it.”

  Bran turned back to Mara. “You understand where this is going, right? You’ll be arrested. There’s nothing I can do about that. You’re involved in what appears to be a terrorist plot. Someone you worked with is now in possession of enough chemical weapons to kill or injure thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people.”

  A sound of distress slipped from her throat.

  “If you know something—anything that could help stop a possible attack—now is the time to tell us.”

  She shook her head. “I wish I did. I’m so very sorry.”

  “I wonder what my father would say if he were standing here now?” Jessie asked, her eyes on the woman’s exotically beautiful face.

  Mara looked stricken, her dark eyes liquid with tears. “I’ve asked myself that a hundred times.”

  Jessie stared at her hard. “Unfortunately, because of you, we’ll never know the answer.”

  * * *

  Bran pulled out his cell to call General Holloway’s direct number. It was the middle of the night. The call would not be welcome.

  “Wait!” Mara rose from her chair at the kitchen table. “I don’t want people dying because of me. Maybe there’s a way I can help.”

  Bran cocked a skeptical eyebrow. “And in exchange you want...what? Your freedom? You got a man killed, Mara. You have to pay for that.”

  “I got the man I loved killed. I will pay for that the rest of my life.”

  He kept the cell phone in hand, the threat clear. “What are you offering?”

  “I have a way to contact Ahmed. He said I should only use it in an emergency.”

  He flicked a glance at Jessie, who had gone from angry to alert. “Go on.”

  “I could set up a meeting, tell him that the colonel’s daughter came to see me, that she believes I had something to do with stealing the chemical weapons. I could ask him to meet me. I believe he would come.”

  Bran’s gaze returned to Jessie. Mara Ramos had been at least partly responsible for her father’s death. The army would lock the woman up and throw away the key. The call was hers. Even more important, once the terrorists knew Jessie was alive and in San Diego, her life would again be at risk.

  “It’s dangerous,” Bran said, spelling out the threat. “They’ll know where we are.”

  Jessie’s shoulders firmed. “We have to stop these people. This is the best chance we have.”

  She was right. He didn’t like it, but the longer this continued, the better chance one or both of them would wind up dead—or there would be a terror attack.

  He fixed his attention on Mara. “All right, you set up a meet with Ahmed. He doesn’t show, we call in the army. You try to run, we call in the army. In the meantime, we stay right here. You do anything we don’t like, none of us will hesitate to put a terrorist in her grave.”

  Her lips trembled. “I won’t run.”

  “If you do this and we find these people, there’s a chance you might end up with a lighter sentence, maybe avoid spending the rest of your life in prison.”

  She swallowed, wiped fresh tears from her cheeks. “I once had a naive belief that terrorism was a way to make things better for my country. I outgrew that belief many years ago. I don’t want people to die.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  They spent the rest of the night at Mara’s condo, taking turns napping on the sofa or a blanket on the floor. The door to Mara’s bedroom stayed open while she slept, though Jessie didn’t imagine she actually got much rest.

  Too wired to sleep herself, Jessie made a fresh pot of coffee and sat at the kitchen table with Bran while Hunt took a turn on the sofa. Bran had retrieved his laptop from the Navigator and set it up on the kitchen table. Jessie had spent an hour looking for info on the Army of Islam of Yemen, but aside from an old reference here and there, she found nothing.

  She took a sip of coffee, glad she had brewed a new pot. “I’ve been thinking about something Mara said.”

  Bran leaned back in his chair, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “I keep trying to figure out how Mara got invited to a party given by one of my father’s friends. She said there were single men there, mostly military. We’ve always figured the link was through a civilian employee at the chemical depot, but maybe someone in the army is connected to the terrorists.”

  Bran nodded. “It’s possible. On the other hand, big party, maybe somebody knew somebody. Could have been anyone.” He sat up in the chair. “But even the chance you’re right isn’t good.”

  Jessie sighed. “Seems like every answer we get just creates more questions.”

  Bran reached over and squeezed her hand. “We caught a break with Mara. Let’s see how it plays out.”

  At 8:00 a.m. that morning, Mara phoned Ahmed, told him her fears, and asked him to come to the house. Ahmed agreed, but said he couldn’t meet her till eight o’clock that evening.

  The hours dragged as they waited for nightfall. They spent much of the time making preparations, making sure their cars
were parked out of sight, checking their equipment. While Jessie retrieved a small bag Bran had assembled and set it down on the kitchen table, she could hear him moving around in Mara’s garage. She wondered what he was doing out there, but she had too much on her mind to worry about it.

  At one point in the afternoon, she went back to check on Mara, found her sitting in a chair staring into the tiny patio outside the bedroom window. Jessie stopped in the doorway, angry, but curious to know more about the woman.

  “You and my father,” she began, “You really must have had him fooled.”

  Mara’s dark, troubled eyes swung in her direction. “That’s not how it was. Falling in love with James wasn’t something I planned. It was an accident.”

  “An accident,” Jessie scoffed.

  “That’s right. At first I was just repaying a debt. But in order to win your father’s trust, I needed to get to know him. I needed for him to know me.” Tears welled in her eyes and she glanced away.

  “Then something happened,” she said. “The more time I spent with James, the more I came to respect him, the more I admired him, and little by little I fell in love with him. The best day of my life was when James asked me to marry him.”

  Jessie’s chest felt tight. “Even though he proposed, it wasn’t really you he was asking, was it? It was the woman you were pretending to be.”

  Mara wearily shook her head. “I left that other woman behind many years ago. I thought once my debt was paid, I would be free. Instead, I lost the only man who ever mattered to me.”

  Jessie studied Mara’s haunted features. It was impossible not to be moved. “My father never mentioned you to me. Why should I believe you?”

  “At this point, I don’t suppose it matters, but I’ll tell you this. James and I were planning a trip to Denver. Your father wanted you to meet me. He wanted us to spend some time together before he told you our plans.”

  Something shifted inside her, a distant memory of a visit her father had mentioned. She didn’t want to believe Mara was telling the truth. But she did.