She had to tell him about Ethan Brooker.
She was slim, green-eyed and smart. It would be false humility to pretend she didn’t know she was smart. She’d attended Harvard on a full scholarship and graduated magna cum laude. Her father, a house painter, had tried to get all the Sherwin-Williams Dover White out from under his fingernails before attending her graduation ceremony. Her mother, a housewife who did her ironing to soap operas, had cried.
Mia had earned her master’s and doctorate at Columbia, and when she was hired to work at a prestigious Washington think tank, she thought she’d found her home.
Then the White House had called.
And now, six months later, she was scrambling to dig herself out of the biggest mess of her life.
“The mission was a success,” she told President Poe.
Brooker and his team had rescued Ham Carhill and spirited him to the American embassy in Bogotá, where, emaciated and terrified, he nonetheless provided the details to a plot that involved the kidnapping and murder of a dozen innocent Americans working in Colombia, and even more innocent Colombians. Forewarned, authorities were able to avert further disaster.
Mia still didn’t know if Ham’s kidnappers had realized just who they had detained. A rich Texas adventurer, yes, but a Carhill? A brilliant man who’d been passing on valuable information to the U.S. government for much of the summer? Ham Carhill had an uncanny ability for ferreting out names, addresses, accounts and plots. He could see patterns and connections others missed.
Mia figured his kidnappers hadn’t a clue that he was a national security asset—thank God.
Yet in the nineteen days of his captivity, they’d made no ransom demand for his release—at least Mia wasn’t aware of any. They could have been taking their time to make their next move, but the absence of a ransom demand was just one of the things about the entire situation that didn’t add up.
Nor was Mia certain she entirely understood Poe’s close interest in Ham Carhill’s predicament. She’d begun to suspect the president’s commitment to the rescue mission had more to do with Ethan Brooker than with anything or anyone else.
“Mr. Carhill?” the president asked.
“He’s safe, sir.”
“Major Brooker and his team?”
“Everyone’s okay. There were no deaths or serious injuries to any of our people.”
“That’s good.”
Poe studied her a moment, seeming to measure her mood. In his late fifties, he was a self-made millionaire and the former governor of Tennessee, but he never forgot his humble origins on the Cumberland River, found as an infant on the doorstep of the family home of two sisters. Violet and Leola Poe had never married, never lived anywhere but Night’s Landing. They took him in and raised him as their own. With his polite manner and soft middle Tennessee accent, his tenacity and toughness often went unnoticed at first.
“Why don’t you look relieved, Dr. Farrell?” the president asked her quietly.
Mia looked out at the green, perfect lawn and fought an urge to run. She didn’t belong here. She was too naive. She didn’t have any political aptitude—she tried to be, even when she was keeping secrets, a straight shooter.
“There’s been a wrinkle, Mr. President.” She shifted her gaze back to the powerful man who’d placed his trust in her. People said her eyes were unflinching, even at the worst of times. She was thirty-two, but felt older. Seemed older. She didn’t even try to smile. “A small one.”
President Poe put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “In this job, Mia, there are no small wrinkles. Tell me.”
Five
Ethan tossed his cigarette on the sidewalk across from Juliet’s building and ground it out under the toe of his boot, the last of the pack he’d allotted himself for the duration of the Colombian mission.
He’d flown from Bogotá to Miami to D.C. to New York in the past twenty-four hours, and he looked the part. He hadn’t shaved, showered or slept. He and his team had plucked Ham Carhill out of the mess he was in two days after Ethan had met Juliet at Federal Hall. Ham had been free for almost a week. He’d given Mia O’Farrell and her people whatever information they needed and was whisked away, supposedly safe and sound, recuperating from his ordeal with his family in west Texas.
No one seemed that interested in tracking down the people who’d kidnapped him.
Two guys were at the camp when Ethan and his team had arrived. Low-level thugs. One fought and was killed, the other ran off into the mountains. It wasn’t within Ethan’s mission objectives to go after him. Ham’s safety—the information he had—was paramount.
But no Bobby Tatro.