Phantom in the Night (B.A.D. Agency, #2)(34)
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon

Was he not at home or just ignoring the phone when it rang?

Out of habit, she turned to where Sammy normally smiled at her from his desk. Her heart squeezed over the empty chair. He’d have Taggart’s home address.

Where was Sammy?

If he’d been kidnapped, they should have heard something by now. Her stomach twisted at the reality of not hearing a word in the first twenty-four hours_probably dead. The callous agent inside her knew the chance of survival, but the woman who cared for the young man with big plans had a harder time accepting cold statistics.

Who was the young woman Sammy had planned to marry? Why hadn’t Terri asked her name?

And, dammit, why wasn’t Sammy here for her to ask that?

Terri hit her fist against the desk. If Marseaux killed Sammy, she was going to…

What? She understood the urge to personally go after scumbags like Marseaux, but she would not cross the line into vigilante territory. Her job was to bring criminals to justice, not play judge, jury, and executioner.

"We’ll have to turn over the container to the DEA." Philborn had silently walked up to her. The usual hum of noise across the room had cranked up another notch since she’d walked in the door.

"I heard Donnie yelling about that. He was just here this morning with Brady, so what pushed his button now?" She glanced around. "Or have you gotten word on Sammy. Is that what everyone is so tense about?"

"You haven’t heard?"

"Heard what?" Now that she paid closer attention, the atmosphere was more than agitated. The room was filled with matching bleak expressions.

"About the viral outbreak. Killed sixteen so far. Looks like the same thing as the one in India."

"Here, in this country?" She stood up. "Oh my God. Where?"

Chicago.

Terri’s ears rang. She couldn’t speak. Blood rushed from her head, spinning the walls of the room. She heard Philborn from a distance saying, "Sit down."

Next thing she knew her head was between her legs. She had to call Grandma and get her home. Terri shoved her head, swallowing against the nausea. "I’m okay, really."

Philborn looked worried. "You need a doctor?"

"No, it’s just… my grandmother is in Chicago."

"Oh, shit."

"I have to call her. Go do whatever you have to. I’m fine."

"Okay, but don’t stand up quick again." He lumbered back to his office.

Terri hit speed, dial and prayed her cell phone would work. After three rings, voicemail picked up on Grandmas phone. "Dammit." She pounded the desk. Then her cell phone dinged with a voicemail from an hour ago. Why hadn’t the damn phone rung?

She punched send to dial her message box.

Terri, this is Grandma. I’m fine, just feeling like I’m getting a cold and don’t want to fly with my head stopped up tomorrow. We all… to come… They let us fly standby… flight’s not full so I’ll… coming in on… flight…

Terri’s heart thumped over the distress she heard in her grandmother’s voice, but thank God she’d already gotten a flight before the airport was shut down. She grabbed a pen to jot down the flight information, but the message broke up before she could hear all of it.

She lifted the damn phone to smash it against the desk, but stopped before hitting the hard surface. This haywire electronic nuisance was the best chance of Grandma contacting her until she got home. Grandma must have made it out or she’d be calling Terri at work, home, and everywhere if she’d heard about the virus. So, logically, her grandmother was en route to New Orleans. That was a plus. She tried once more to reach her grandmother and got voicemail.

God, please let Grandma be on the way home. Safe…

Terri went cold as another thought occurred to her.

What if that virus had come from their seized container? Had the virus been transported in those teak tools?

The dates didn’t fit, but maybe they had to move up the attack.

If the viral outbreak and this container shipment were connected, her grandmother was just as vulnerable here, and maybe more at risk, until Terri solved this case. Grandma knew nothing about BAD, She thought Terri really was freelancing as a consultant. Call Carlos to help?

Terri started weighing the pluses and minuses, a major one being that she still didn’t know who to trust in any agency with her life. Trusting her grandmother’s with BAD or anyone else in law enforcement was out of the question.

Grandma knew Nathan, or at least that he was a Drake.

Bad as it sounded, Terri’s best hope lay with trusting an ex-con.

She might not care for Nathan’s tactics, but she did trust him to find a way to protect her grandmother. The plus would be sending him out of sight until she figured some way to clear Nathan of the charges. She used the desk phone to call him, grateful that she finally had a number for him.

"What’s up?" Nathan answered sharply as if he was in a hurry.

"Have you heard about the viral outbreak in Chicago?"

"Yes. Got a lead yet?"

"Not yet. I called because Grandma is in Chicago."

He cursed low, but she heard every word. His anger on her behalf softened her insides. She believed him when he said he hadn’t killed the three men, but Nathan hid secrets and couldn’t see past his need for revenge. They had nowhere to go from here that wouldn’t end up with him on the wrong side of a police-issued weapon.

"The good news is that she’s on her way home," Terri continued. "The bad news is her message on my cell phone broke up so I didn’t get all her flight information."

"What do you need me to do?"

Was he driving? Sounded like the car motor in the background.

"Can you find somewhere safe for her until we get a handle on this? I won’t be able to go home and keep an eye on her and I don’t want someone coming into the house to get me only to find my blind grandmother."

"I’ll handle it."

That was the man who had stolen her heart. Nothing was too much to ask of him… except to abandon hunting for his brother’s killer.

Then again, maybe she did ask too much of him.

"She’ll call me as soon as she lands," Terri explained. "Her friends will take her home. If you could pick her up from home, I’ll call you as soon as I hear from her."

"Stoner will_" He paused. Definitely street sounds in the background."_take her somewhere safe. Too dangerous to be with me."

The APB. Open season on Nathan Drake. "If you’d come in_"

"Write this down," Nathan said, cutting her off. Then he rattled off a phone number Terri scribbled on a sticky note before continuing. "Call Stoner with details. For security, tell your grandmother when she meets him, to ask Stoner where he last worked with me. South America. He has family close to New Orleans in Metairie. She’ll be safe."

"I’ll call you as soon as I hear from her." Terri stopped talking and listened closer. A car engine_the Javelin?_revved high and tires squealed. "What are you doing?"

"Driving. Anything else?"

Sirens squeezed through the phone line.

Terri hunched close to the phone and whispered. "Are you being chased?"

"Yes. Little busy right now. We through?"

Was he serious? How could he sound so calm? "No. You better not get caught, dammit."

"Don’t plan to." The squeal of rubber on pavement stretched for two seconds, then louder sirens filled the lines before a click. He’d hung up.

She clutched the phone. What if they caught him? Would he give up or get shot? The nausea was back. Grandma wouldn’t like being picked up by a stranger, but if Terri told her Vic Stoner was a friend of hers and the Drake boy, as Grandma called Nathan, she would probably understand and go with Stoner.

Terri’s cell phone buzzed. She answered it without looking at the ID in case Nathan had called back with some last words to give her before he got shot or died. Melodramatic? Probably, but she was involved with a lunatic. "Mitchell here."

"Terri, you okay? You sound sick," Carlos said.

"Allergies."

He seemed to accept that. "I’ve been trying to reach you between coordinating with the teams in India."

"My phone has been acting up."

"I’ll get you a new one, but you should be checking in more often."

She accepted the criticism, glad he sounded too tired to chew on her worse, "I didn’t have anything… until now."

"Really? Have any idea who released that virus or what it is?"

"Not yet, but I might soon. Where are you now? Do you have computer access?"

"Yes, I’m at our satellite office in Baton Rouge, but I’m leaving soon, Retter and his team are held up getting out of India, so I may have to put a team together for Chicago."

"I have a lead, well, more of a hypothesis, but I need to get out of here to talk." If Terri couldn’t get Grandma home any faster or save Nathan from the police, the least she could do was find the damn missing tools and see if there was anything there that could help them. "I need someone’s home address."

"Whose?"

"Fred Taggart," She gave Carlos everything she had on Fred, starting with his badge number.

Carlos had the address in one minute. "Need a partner?"

"No, He’s a friendly. Let me get down to my car and I’ll catch you up." She walked out to the parking lot with two officers, who climbed into separate squad cars. Nathan wouldn’t be here to watch over her if she ran into trouble. She hurried to reach the exit ahead of both cars, then waited on them.

When she pulled out, they were right behind her. Her car purred while she waited on an opening. She scooted out ahead of a string of traffic, leaving the two squad cars stuck.

And anyone who might have been right behind them hoping to follow her.

What was Nathan doing? Had they caught him? Instead of the GPS she should have had a police scanner installed, Terri tried Nathan first_voicemail_then called Carlos back.

Carlos answered on one ring. "What are you going to do at Taggart’s?"

Shake that fool until his teeth falls out if he doesn’t hand over what he stole. "Nothing that requires two people. Just going to ask him for contents the captain believes he took from the container to determine if he has anything that will help with the investigation. I’ll offer to keep him out of trouble if he comes clean."

"So what’s your hypothesis?" Carlos prompted.

"I think the drug shipment was a Trojan horse to get something more important out of customs quicker. With New Orleans so shorthanded on law enforcement, they probably figured getting to it in the police yard would be less trouble. The dead body threw a kink into getting the container released, so the NOPD gets a tip on drugs inside and, bam, the container is released into their custody. If the person who broke into the container had gotten what they wanted the first time, it wouldn’t have looked odd, but they broke in twice so it was clearly not for the drugs. The steel frame had been opened the first time and the drugs were removed."

"What do you think he was looking for both times?"

She whipped her car around a bus that had stopped in her lane. "I’m thinking a virus was transported somewhere in that box of teak pieces. Nothing else makes sense. I only unwrapped a couple of tools when I first searched the container, since those didn’t appear to be anything but merchandise. I don’t know if Taggart has something significant or not, but if he does I’m going to get it."

"Joe’s short on people for Chicago. I may be on the way there. He’s got two teams arriving in Nashville this afternoon from India. Call me as soon as you determine if Taggart has anything we want. If he doesn’t hand it over willingly, I’ll send Retter to retrieve it." Retter was part of their clean-up and extraction unit. When things got messy, he was one of the agents who got dirty.

"I will," she said and hung up. She should have finished that sentence, which was, "I will… not leave without everything Taggart stole." She didn’t need BAD’s top muscle.

Her phone rang again.

Grandma. Thank goodness.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Terri read house numbers as she cruised down Taggart’s street. His neighborhood was west of the city, far enough away not to have been flooded from the looks of the houses in good repair. Her cell phone rang. "Mitchell here."

"We think we found Sammy." Philborn sounded more glum than his usual flat personality.

Think? She licked her suddenly dry lips. "What do you mean? Is he alive?"

"No, and we can’t visually identify him. Running DNA tests and checking for dental records."

"Oh, dear God. Was he burned?"

"That probably would have been better. Looks like some kind of virus. We’re thinking the same thing that hit Chicago. Our ME quarantined the body and called the CDC. It’s pretty disgusting."

Her stomach lurched. "Where did you find him?"

"In a plastic bag next to the Dumpster in our parking lot. We don’t know who dropped it, but they wanted to leave a message. Doesn’t fit Marseaux’s standard MO, except for the arrogance. Where are you?"

"Running down a lead on the contents." There was Taggart’s brick home, "I’ve got to go, but I’ll fill you in as soon as I get back." She’d have to at this point. But the minute she was out of here, she would personally put her grandmother on an airplane to visit Grandma’s sister in Houston.

New Orleans might not be safe now.

Bile climbed her throat at the quick image of Sammy killed like those poor people in India and Chicago. And if her theories were right, this proved someone had control of a deadly virus and was carefully choosing targets.

How dare they play God?

Terri hung up and pulled into the drive behind Taggart’s late-model pickup truck parked inside a carport.

She rushed over to the front door and pounded. A television played inside.

Loud grouching carried above the television announcer, then the door opened and Fred squinted at her. Dressed in a white undershirt and faded jeans, he was the epitome of a man trying to enjoy his time off. "What do you want?"

"The tools you stole from the container."