Wormhole (The Rho Agenda #3)(46)

“Mr. and Mrs. Smythe and McFarland,” the agent on the left began. “I’m Special Agent Crowly, here with Special Agent McKee.”

“Have you found our kids?” The words spewed from Anna McFarland’s mouth, an accusation befitting the setting.

Agent Crowly pursed his lips, inhaled deeply, and continued. “I’m sorry to say we have. At around midnight last night, they died during a SEAL Team raid on a terrorist compound operated by Jack ‘the Ripper’ Gregory.”

The words hammered Gil in the chest, a battering ram that expelled his breath in a ragged gasp.

“No!” Linda Smythe’s agonized cry was the only other sound to break the stunned silence.

“As the Navy SEALs entered his Bolivian compound, the Ripper executed your children with a single shot to the head before detonating a booby trap that killed fourteen members of the SEAL team attempting their rescue. We’re here to express the United States government’s deepest sorrow for your loss.”

Time froze.

Gil McFarland finally broke the silence. “Wait just a minute. We call you bastards in to help our kids and now you lay this crock of shit on us? You killed them!”

Moving toward the door, Agent Crowly spoke. “I know this is hard.”

“Hard? You sorry sons of bitches!” Fred Smythe’s voice cracked with emotion.

The glass lamp left Gil’s hand before he noticed that he’d risen, and appeared to sail across the room in slow motion. As the two FBI agents ducked out, it exploded into the edge of the closing door, sending a hail of multicolored fragments chasing them into the White Rock night.

Gil took two steps forward, then stopped, his knees threatening to give way beneath him. The sound of Anna’s low wail and Linda’s sobs turned him around. There on the leather couch the two women clung together, their heads pressed into each other’s shoulders. Beside them, Fred stood staring at the door, hands clenched so firmly at his sides that the veins bulged in his arms. And as Gil watched rage and frustration chain his best friend in place, he felt his whole world crumble around him.





The dream was an old one; at least it had that old, worn-out-shoe feel to it, easy to slide into, but not particularly comfortable once you were inside. It unspooled in Heather’s drug-induced sleep, her perfect memory somehow warped and amplified until each heartbeat sounded like the pounding of a bass drum.

In the small gym was a mirrored wall. Along that wall ran a dancer’s balance rail. Across the room was a weight rack, Mark handcuffed to it.

Four brutes held her pinned to the floor, legs spread, Don Espe?osa kneeling between them, fumbling with his belt, button, and zipper, ripping open her blouse, grabbing her breasts. He was taunting Mark. A husky laugh escaped the drug lord’s lips as he turned his attention back to his pecker.

KATHOOM.

She could feel Mark’s heart hammer his chest clear across the room.

KATHOOM.

How could these men fail to hear it? Heather had seen this in her vision, the inevitable consequence of spitting in Espe?osa’s face. She’d had other options, but none quite as exciting or satisfying as this one. So she’d spit a wad between the drug lord’s eyes and let the dominoes topple one onto the next.

Then Mark was among them, crushing, ripping, tearing, their screams drowned in the bloody downpour. But Mark hadn’t killed them. Heather had. And God help her, she’d enjoyed it.

The dream shifted. Glass exploded into the comm center as Heather pressed the laptop’s gunmetal gray ENTER key, sending a rack of 2,000-pound bombs raining down on the American SEAL team. Blood and fire. Again she’d chosen the path.

Jack’s plan had called for them to divert the SEAL team, then move through the same secret tunnel he and Janet had taken, setting off the explosives that would turn the Frazier compound into an inferno, leaving little for the SEAL team to investigate. But Heather had overridden that plan, opting instead for the path of death and destruction. She’d known the risk. She’d known she’d be killing Americans.

She felt herself lifted, flung into the air, wrapped in sticky goo that ensnared her body so completely she never hit the ground. Stunned, Heather hung in the rapidly solidifying web until this drug-induced fog replaced the sharp pain of the tranq dart in her thigh.

“Doctor. She’s coming around.”

The voice wormed its way through the mist. Heather opened her eyes, blinking at the brilliant white surrounding her. She was strapped to a bed in some sort of hospital room. Check that. Her surroundings included some hospital room characteristics. An IV bag hung from a steel stand, dripping its contents into the clear plastic tube connected to the needle in her arm. A portable monitor displayed her vital signs. But there the similarities stopped. This room was soft white with padded walls and white rubber flooring.

Heather glanced at the nurse, a plain blonde woman, slightly overweight, with a white nurse’s uniform, even an old-fashioned white nurse’s hat. The doctor stepped around the nurse and into Heather’s field of view. That face, framed by dark hair, pulled back in a severe knot.

Heather’s breath caught in her throat. What the hell was Dr. Gertrude Sigmund doing here? Wherever here was.

The psychiatrist smiled down at her, that familiar, concerned smile that always preceded a prescription change to a more powerful antipsychotic drug.

“Hello, Heather. Good to see you’ve returned to us. How’re you feeling?”