Dark Sky (Cold Ridge/U.S. Marshals #4)

“Nevertheless, it wasn’t long after your name was in the media this last time, in connection with the assassin in upstate New York in late August, that Ham was kidnapped—a fellow Texan, a neighbor of yours, a very private individual only a handful of people would easily recognize. You ‘just happened’ to be one of that handful.”


Mia finally drank more of her Coke, but she didn’t relax. “You’re worried about me, Major. What if I should be worried about you? Ham spent most of the past two years in South America. So that brings me back to the same questions. How did Bobby Tatro figure out who he was, where he was? How did he get to Colombia so soon after his release from prison, find men to hire, get the money to pay them?”

Ethan half smiled and said to her, “Tatro might not be your ringleader after all.”

She didn’t seem to notice he was teasing her.

“What’s Ham saying?”

“Very little. He blanked out a lot of the past few weeks.”

Ethan doubted that. Once something got in Ham’s brain, it stayed there. “That’s what he told you?”

“For now. He needs rest. He doesn’t have the training or the experience you do.” Mia’s frown deepened again, as if she were trying to convince herself that Ham Carhill wasn’t pulling a fast one on her. “He retained every detail of the information he’d gathered pre-kidnapping. We got it in the nick of time. It saved lives.”

This woman operated in the very bowels of government, knew things few others did—and she tried to get it right. Ethan was fairly certain that whatever Mia O’Farrell was hiding, it wasn’t because she was venal, or just didn’t give a damn about anyone else.

She leveled her very green eyes on him. “You saved lives, Major Brooker.”

A torturous route she’d had to take to where he’d saved lives. “Have you considered that Ham’s kidnapping might have had nothing to do with the work he did for you? The Carhills aren’t just rich, you know. They’re richer than God.”

She reddened slightly. “I realize that. Everything’s happened very fast. Ham has been a surprising asset. He has a brilliant mind—”

“His family thinks he’s strange.”

She nodded, looking at her hands.

“I hope his life and the other lives ‘we’ saved were worth the risks. If you’d wanted answers to the kidnapping, you could have gotten them. Some, if not all of them. But you wanted Ham. That was the mission.” Ethan was just repeating, in essence, what she’d told him. “If my team had been killed, Ham would have been killed.”

“It’s not what we wanted—”

“It was an acceptable risk. Better Ham dead and quiet than alive and talking to the wrong people, endangering lives.”

“Rescuing him saved lives. I just told you. Ham gave us information about a plot that would have killed a dozen innocent people—we averted a real disaster.”

“Rescued is better than dead. But dead was better than leaving him in the hands of Tatro and his goons. You couldn’t take the risk that Tatro wasn’t after money—that he or whoever was manipulating him wanted what your guy Ham had tucked in that supercharged brain of his. Contacts, information, connections. It’s all what he’s good at acquiring. He absorbs and processes things the rest of us never see to begin with. That’s what you were protecting, Dr. O’Farrell. Not Ham himself, or the lives his information saved.”

O’Farrell raised her chin, a coolness coming into her steady gaze. “I didn’t call this meeting to explain myself to you, Major Brooker.”

Ethan ignored her. “Did Tatro make a ransom demand?”

“No. Not that I know of. Believe it or not, I haven’t figured out precisely what he wanted with Ham.” She paused a moment, as if waiting for him to argue with her. “It’s possible you and your team rescued him before Tatro could decide on his next move.”

“Possible,” Ethan said, but didn’t believe it. He doubted O’Farrell did, either.

She set down her Coke and stood, and when Ethan got to his feet, she tilted her head back, studying him, nothing about her expression softening. “What does Deputy Longstreet know about your mission?”

Not naive at all, Dr. O’Farrell. “She knows I didn’t catch Bobby Tatro.”

“Do you trust her?”

“As much as I trust anyone.”

Mia smiled a little. “You’ve heard it all and done it all, haven’t you, Major? I’m sorry. If I had to do it over again, I can’t say I’d ask you to get involved in this situation. Ultimately, we did everything by the book, and I didn’t have the final say about your role. But I could have kept you out of it.”

“President Poe wanted me in.”

The clear green eyes focused on him. “Yes, he did.”

She didn’t go further—why the president wanted him, why Poe had stuck his nose in the Carhill mess at all. For all Ethan knew, those were more questions for which Mia O’Farrell had no answers.

“Go home, Ethan,” she said quietly, lifting her briefcase and holding it next to her. “You’ve never taken the time to mourn your wife. Take it now and go home.”

“Right now, my home’s here in this suite.”