Patriot Lies (Jack Widow Book 14) Page 32

Gray grabbed at his jacket and pulled herself into his chest tight. She stood up on tiptoes and kissed him. It was slow, at first. It was soft, at first, and then it was harder and faster. The intensity grew and grew. It turned out that driving cars fast wasn’t the only thing that she liked to do fast.

  She reached up and combed her fingers through the hair on the back of his head. He slid one hand up her back and back down again to the bottom of her lower back. They kissed for a long time. Her lips were soft and wet. Their hearts raced. They both felt it.

  Widow was the first to pull back. He stared down into her eyes.

  He asked, “Did you already book our flight back?”

  “I texted Cameron. She’s got us going back tomorrow.”

  “What time?”

  “At oh eight hundred, Commander.”

  “So, we got all night to kill?”

  “We should sleep.”

  “We will. After.”

  They kissed again. Fervently. Vividly. Intensely.

  They didn’t make it back to the hotel, not right away. They lay in the sand, near the water, in the darkness and moonlight. Widow put down his new jacket, which was big enough to keep Gray’s new clothes off the sand. That really didn’t matter much because she wasn’t wearing them for long.

  Forty-Eight

  Fallow called the client known as The Chief.

  "Chief, Widow is still on us."

  "Does he know who I am?"

  "Not yet. He and that agent are snooping around."

  "What do they know?"

  "They're kicking up old dirt, hoping they'll find something."

  "What exactly are they looking at?"

  "They've been snooping around the Cho thing."

  "It's only a matter of time before they're on to me. Take care of it!"

  "There might be a problem."

  "What?"

  "Widow."

  "He's one man! Kill him!"

  "I'll need some help!"

  "What about your guys?"

  "He's killed one already. Think we'll need more."

  "That'll be easy."

  "Think we'll need more than the usual guys. I think we'll need expensive guys."

  "I've got a lot of eyes on me right now! The media's watching me, watching my spending."

  "We need them, Chief."

  "Fine! How much? And how many?"

  "We got three left, counting me. I'd like three more."

  "Do it. But no more talking for a while. We should do radio silence. I can't be suspected of being involved in this. Everyone's watching."

  "That's why I'm here. I'll contact you after he's dead."

  The Chief hung up the phone.

  Forty-Nine

  Widow and Gray did manage to get back to the hotel room, fully clothed. That changed quickly once they entered Gray’s room. Widow never went to his room.

  In the morning, they showered together, steaming up the shower, and fogging the mirror.

  After, they cleaned each other with soap and water, which started things all over again.

  Widow was the first out. Gray stayed in because she had more parts to clean.

  Widow dressed in his old clothes because the new ones were filled with sand. He left the room, went down the elevator to the hotel lobby, and found a little café in the corner of the lobby with a shared entrance to the street.

  He ordered a couple of coffees and waited near the counter. He glanced over and saw a couple of guys reading a newspaper, not a Hawaiian paper, but the New York Times. Beyond that, there were tourists at every table in the place. He saw Hawaiian shirts everywhere and people wearing sunscreen on their skin. He saw sun hats and ball caps, everything you needed for an island climate. No big deal. All around him, he saw ordinary people doing ordinary things.

  A barista behind the counter called out his order for pickup. He walked over and picked up the two coffees. He popped the lid on one and took a sip. It was pretty great. Really great, actually.

  He looked at the barista who had called out his order.

  Widow said, “This coffee is pretty good! My compliments.”

  Widow smiled at the guy, who smiled back, and he turned to leave.

  The barista said, “Thanks, Chief.

  Widow froze in his tracks. The two coffees heated up the palms of his hands. He turned back around and stared at the barista.

  The guy looked at him weirdly, probably because he was just standing there staring at him.

  The barista said, “Anything wrong, Chief?”

  Chief. The barista had called him Chief.

  Widow smiled and turned back around, but not to leave. He stared at the two guys who were reading the newspaper. They were finishing up.

  One of them noticed him staring at them.

  He asked, “Hey, buddy, you need this table?”

  Widow walked over to them.

  “Actually, I was wondering if you were done with that paper?”

  “Sure,” the guy said, “It’s all yours.”

  The guy folded the paper and handed it to Widow. He set the coffees down on the table that they were deserting and took the paper.

  The two men left. Widow followed after them, abandoning his coffees back at the table.

  He pushed past them and ran back to the elevator and to Gray’s hotel room. He entered. She was out of the shower but she was still in the bathroom and still naked. She was towel-drying her hair.

  Gray asked, “Where are our coffees?”

  Widow ignored the question. He went over to a little table in the room and laid out the paper. He picked up her phone and brought it over to her.

  She wrapped her hair up in the towel and stared at him.

  “What?” she asked.

  He handed her the phone.

  “Unlock it,” he said.

  “Sure,” she said and took the phone and put in her passcode. She tried to hand it back to him.

  He said, “Pull up the file on Cho’s platoon. The one we went over at your place.”

  “Okay. Sure.”

  She went onto the NCIS secure servers and opened the file. She handed him the phone.

  Widow took it and sat down in a chair and scrolled through it, searching.

  Gray turned back to the bathroom mirror and started running the water out of the faucet. She took out a disposable toothbrush provided by the hotel and she brushed her teeth.

  With the toothbrush in her mouth, she paused and asked, “What’s this about?”

  Widow ignored the question and continued to scroll and read, like he was searching for something.

  She repeated the question.

  “Widow, what’s this about? What’s going on?”

  He said, “SEAL teams consist of six platoons each with sixteen SEALs. Remember?”

  “Yeah? We know that. One name was missing. You said that didn’t mean anything. Maybe one guy was in transition?”

  “There are two officers, thirteen enlisted…” Widow said and stopped. He paused a beat, studying the list of SEAL names from the NCIS file. He went over the names.

  “And? What, Widow? You stopped mid-sentence.”

  He said, “Six platoons each with sixteen SEALs: two officers, thirteen enlisted and one chief. There’s no chief listed here. No chief listed in charge of Cho’s platoon.”

  Gray walked over to him, stopped behind him, and leaned over his shoulder.

  She said, “Every officer is called Chief. You know that. It’s common. Chief just means the guy in charge. You were called Chief once.”

  “Right, but here in Cho’s platoon, we have only one officer.”

  “Eggers,” she said.

  “Right. Which means the missing name is the other officer.”

  She said, “Maybe this was when they were in transition, without one. You said that happened, right?”

  “Not likely. Not with officers. The team needs a leader. Cho was out on a mission just days before he was murdered. They had just gotten back from an op in Iraq. No w
ay would they’ve been green lit without a chief in place already.”

  “And it wasn’t Eggers?”

  “I don’t think so. I think it was someone else.”

  “The missing name?”

  “Usually there’s a promotion within the platoon or they have someone from outside brought in just before the outgoing chief leaves. But we don’t go out on a mission missing one. There has to be someone in charge.”

  “So what? They went out on a mission without a chief?”

  “No. The chief, the head honcho, is the name that is missing.”

  Gray said, “Gaden?”

  “Yes. Has to be. That’s how Frost got onto him in the first place. He figured out he was the missing name.”

  “Why is his name missing?”

  “Maybe he was transferring to a different team.”

  “Or maybe it got covered up somehow?”

  Widow said, “Could be. If he’s got a reach like that.”

  “You said yourself that whoever is at the top of the chain must have money.”

  “That’d explain why he didn’t stay in the Navy any longer, why he retired right at rear admiral.”

  Gray slid her hands to Widow’s face and moved around him like a ballet dancer around her partner and she sat on his lap. She smelled sweet and felt soft.

  She said, “Didn’t you go downstairs for coffee?”

  “I left it in the café,” he said, embarrassed. The fact that he abandoned coffee had just set in with him. He had never done that before.

  “Why don’t you go back for it, come back up here and we’ll go over all this.”

  Widow looked at her, smiled, and nodded. She kissed him.

  Fifty

  Widow went back downstairs for the coffees. Luckily they were still on the table. He scooped them up and returned to Gray’s room.

  Gray was dressed in her clothes from before Los Angeles. Her and Widow’s new clothes were folded up in the shopping bag. They sat on a little sofa in the corner of the room.

  They didn’t have Gray’s laptop, so they huddled together and stared over her phone at the files. They read Gaden’s file.

  Nick Gaden had been a Marine and then a SEAL. He was one of the only SEALs to ever pass the elite Marine sniper school as well. He had an impressive record except for one blip.

  The blip was an investigation into Gaden that ended abruptly, which led them to read an unofficial NCIS report that had been filed away. It covered the whole thing. They switched over to it on a different page.

  Gray read out loud.

  “According to Unit Ten’s own report, Gaden was the head of Cho and Eggers’ platoon for six months, back in two thousand one, post nine-eleven. The reason his name wasn’t officially on the list was that he was in transition. His trident and status were removed temporarily because he was under investigation by NCIS.”

  Widow took over, reading the rest out loud.

  “There were accusations that he sniped and murdered several children in the Middle East, calling them “piglets.” And that’s only the stuff noted here. That’s not the only charge. It says he was being investigated for stabbing a prisoner to death.”

  Gray said, “This is horrible. So what happened? Why is it just gone after that?”

  “It says here that Gaden was acquitted because of lack of evidence.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. It says there were multiple witnesses.”

  “Six in total,” Widow said.

  “Six? No NCIS agent would arrest a decorated Naval officer without enough evidence already to convict him.”

  “I agree. And six witnesses are definitely enough. It’s even a little overkill. To get that many witnesses is damn fine police work.”

  “So, why did they drop the charges?”

  Widow said, “Look here. They dropped the charges because five of the witnesses retracted their statements.”

  Gray said, “Look at the date! It was the day after Cho died!”

  Widow said, “And Cho was stabbed to death.”

  They looked at each other.

  Widow said, “The other witness was Cho. According to this, he was the witness. He was the one who got the complaint out to NCIS. He was the one pushing for Gaden to be investigated.”

  “Are you saying that Gaden murdered Cho to stop the investigation?”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time someone’s killed to cover up his crimes. It also wouldn’t be the first time that the boys in the Pentagon would want to cover up a piece of nasty business like this.”

  Gray nodded. They both went quiet and read on through the morning, drinking their coffees, mostly in silence and shock. At one point, Gray stopped and canceled their flight home.

  They hardly spoke until finally Gray said, “It says that Gaden was in confinement. How did he kill Cho?”

  “He may have been in confinement, but Fallow wasn’t.”

  Gray nodded. “He was a Marine at the time.”

  “So was Dwayne Shore.”

  Gray stared at Widow.

  She said, “SEAL Platoons are a bunch of guys who are very, very close. Like brothers. I bet they all knew Cho was gay. I bet Fallow was stationed with Shore.”

  Widow put his finger on the phone and scrolled back to Fallow’s dossier. He stopped on it and read it out loud.

  “Fallow is a graduate of Marine sniper school. The same months that Gaden was there.”

  Gray said, “They knew each other.”

  Widow nodded.

  Gray took over the phone and scrolled back to a paragraph she was reading.

  She said, “Here. They were all at the same base at the same time. That’s our opportunity.”

  “And motive.”

  “What about the money? Eggers had fifty million in stocks? Is it tied to this?”

  Widow said, “There were six witnesses against Gaden before Cho was killed. One of the other five was Henry Eggers. He was one of the five who recanted after Cho died.”

  “And he gave the Chos and Ms. Shore all that money. He was the life insurance. That’s why he abruptly quit right after Cho died. And why he gave them all that money,” Gray said. She paused a beat. Then she said, “He felt guilt.”

  “It’s probably why he lived homeless, drank himself to sleep for twenty years. It’s probably why his daughter is estranged from him. He couldn’t live with himself.”

  Gray said, “He bore a horrible secret and could never tell. Why couldn’t he tell after?”

  “Fear. I guess he feared Gaden and Fallow and whoever else was involved. He feared they’d kill him, probably his daughter too.”

  “And the money?”

  Widow pointed at the New York Times on the table.

  “That’s why I brought up the paper. I saw a guy down in the café reading over the stocks. Nick Gaden. I knew that name was familiar.”

  Widow reached out to the paper and flipped a page to the stocks section. He put his index finger over the page and scanned it until he found what he was looking for.

  He pointed at it.

  Gray looked and read out the name of the stock.

  “SHG.”

  Widow said, “Samson, Hardy, and…”

  Gray said, “Gaden.”

  “Gaden is a junior. Nicholas Gaden, Sr. owns and operates as a partner in Samson, Hardy, and Gaden. I read about it the other day on their website.”

  Gray said, “They manufacture weapons.”

  “More than weapons. They manufacture battle vehicles. Big ones.”

  Gray said, “They have Navy contracts. Is that what this is about?”

  “No. The father is in the company. Not the son,” Widow said. He flipped the page of the paper a few pages over to the politics section.

  He planted his finger on a small article about a Senate election.

  He said, “And guess who’s running for Senate?”

  Gray stared at the article. There was no picture, but there was a name. She read it aloud.

  “Nicholas G
aden, Jr. is running for a Senate seat in Alaska.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So why did Eggers have so much money?”

  “My guess is that Eggers and the other five witnesses left alive were both scared and bribed into retracting their statements. Maybe the other four were easily bought out. And Eggers wasn’t. But he took the money anyway. Maybe to prove to Gaden that he was loyal. Maybe to save his daughter’s life.”

  “They bribed him with fifty million dollars? It seems a lot cheaper to kill him. Gaden already killed Cho. Why not Eggers too?”

  “It wasn’t fifty million dollars’ worth of stock, not twenty years ago. Samson, Hardy, and Gaden didn’t get those big Navy contracts until around years ago. Their stock has been soaring ever since. The Chos and Ms. Shore never told us when they started getting money from this trust. I bet if we ask them, it’ll be right around the time that Eggers’ stock started to soar.”

  Gray said, “So, that’s why they killed Eggers now. Gaden is running for Senate and feared all these old loose ends coming unraveled after all this time?”

  “I’d say that’s a good enough motive for this sadistic bastard to kill.”

  “This will be hard to prove. You’re talking an old case and a vast conspiracy. Spanning two decades.”

  Widow said, “It’s not my job to prove it. That’s yours.”

  Gray said, “So, what do we do first?”

  “Gaden is campaigning in Alaska. We should pay him a visit.”

  “I was afraid you were going to say that. I prefer the weather here.”

  Fifty-One

  Fallow called Gaden to tell him the bad news.

  He said, “I’m sorry, Chief. But Widow got away.”

  “It was your job to manage this!”

  “I’m sorry. There’s more. They’ve been talking to Cho’s family, and then they visited Hawaii. I guess to see Shore’s mother. And they talked to Frost.”

  Silence.

  “Chief?”

  Fallow heard Gaden breathing heavy on the other line.

  Gaden said, “Do they know about me?”

  “My guess is by now they probably know your name. They probably see the dots. Not sure if they’ve connected them yet.”