Shattered Shield: Cole Cameron Thriller Series Book 1 Page 11

  “So, it wasn’t the thought of food that disgusted you, it was the thought of being seen in public with me,” Cameron said, verbalizing his realization.

  “Exaaactly,” Hannah’s response dragged out.

  As they reached their floor, Cameron suggested they meet in fifteen minutes, giving him enough time to shower.

  “Why don’t you guys go ahead and order us something. I’ll get cleaned up and come over, is that OK?” The usually self-conscience Cameron decided to let his guard down.

  “Sure. We can use my room. We’ll see you in few,” Amy said.

  Shortly after his shower, Cameron knocked at the door. He dressed in jeans and a blue tee shirt, and the girls were both in tee shirts and yoga pants.

  As he entered the room with his two female associates, he became aware of how it might look. It made matters worse when the food arrived, and the young delivery guy gave Cameron a look of ‘you, lucky dog.’

  He must think I’m living out every man’s fantasy right now, Cameron thought with a mix of embarrassment and machismo. What the hell, let him believe it, Cameron concluded, choosing the latter sentiment.

  “Oh brother,” Amy said turning her nose up at the food delivered.

  While the food was not very appealing to his appetite, the truth was that Cameron was still a starving man. Not famished for food, but the company of friends. His soul’s craving was for female companionship.

  His participation in this operation had opened his mind to imagine that perhaps happiness was a possibility with the right purpose and the right person. Focus, Cameron thought, asserting control over his wayward mind.

  They talked about the operation and their plans to start the next day around nine o’clock, giving them a few hours of sleep. As time went on and their energy wore down, Amy’s eyes closed shut as she succumbed to her fatigue.

  Hannah and Cameron sat silently and intimately gazed at each other, speaking the language that can only be communicated with the eyes. Cameron wondered if she felt as attracted to him as he was to her. He wanted so badly to reach out to her, to quench the yearning that was building inside of him. Instead, he reminded himself again, Focus and sighed, “Guess I’d better go.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Tucson, AZ

  The sound of the cell phone ringing wrecked the deep sleep Cameron was experiencing. He looked at the clock on the nightstand. 6:57 AM. Just a little over three hours of sleep for the staggering Cameron. He felt the stiffness in his shoulders from his work the night before. I’m getting too old for this shit, he groggily muttered, as he answered his phone with a rough morning voice.

  “This is Cameron.”

  “Hey Cole, it’s Jason. Hernandez and I are headed over to finish up at Roslin headquarters. Do you need anything from us?”

  “Yes,” Cameron cleared his throat. “I was going to call you later. See if Bremen can get you information on a ‘Project Y44’. I’d like to know the chemical components of it.”

  “Yeah, I got that from Hannah,” Albright said.

  “You spoke to Hannah?”

  “Yeah, I called her first. I just got off the phone with her, and she said you wanted me to call ASAP.”

  “Oh, she did, huh?” Cameron had to chuckle at Hannah’s need to share the misery of interrupted sleep.

  “Thanks, Jason, see you when you get out here,” he said with his voice gaining clarity.

  Since he was already up Cameron took care of some administrative work that was overdue and reported to McCune the mission status, including the meeting with Clarisse and that he disclosed Ramsey’s activity. He could tell McCune was getting anxious, but also suspected she was holding something back when it came to Grant Ramsey.

  It was 9:45 before his co-workers knocked at the door to say they were ready to begin the day. This time all three wore sunglasses.

  “We’ve got to find coffee and quick,” Amy said in her zombie-like state.

  Cameron collected his things, and they drove through the main streets looking for a coffee house. Soon they spotted their target and Hannah quickly whipped the car into a parking space. The two moved like drug addicts anxious for a fix. Cameron stayed in the car but changed his mind.

  “Amy, grab me a cup of green tea!”

  While the women were ordering their coffee, Cameron called Clarisse to meet with her again. He wanted to find out more about ‘Project Y44.’

  “Project Y44?” she repeated his question. “I’m not sure what that has to do with anything. Unless…” She stopped herself. “Cole I’ve got another call, its Mr. Garrison, Chief of Security. Can you hold for a second?” Before he could reply she had switched over to the other caller.

  Cameron wanted to tell her not to let him know that they had met. He hoped she would use discretion.

  After a couple of minutes, Clarisse was back on the line.

  “Sorry Cole. Mr. Garrison wants to meet with me before I’m scheduled to meet with the FBI. I called them as you suggested, but they can’t see me until 1:30 this afternoon. Somehow Mr. Garrison found out about it and wanted to know why I requested an earlier meeting.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him I had requested an earlier meeting because of some family matters.”

  “Good, did he seem to believe you?”

  “I think so, but he still wants to see me before I go. I’m scheduled to meet him for lunch. Even if I wanted to, I don’t know if I can keep information from him. I have to admit I’m intimidated by him.” Cameron heard her anxiety through his cell phone just as Hannah and Amy re-entered the car.

  “Listen, I think you need to go directly to the FBI.” Hannah looked over her sunglasses at Cameron.

  “I have an FBI agent with me right now, Special Agent Hannah Jacobs. Where do you live, we’ll come right over?”

  Clarisse agreed and gave directions to her house located in a suburb of Tucson. As they drove through the city, the bright sun reflected off the car windshield. The upper-middle-class neighborhood carried the usual array of different vehicles in driveways.

  “You’re carrying your weapon, right?” Cameron asked Hannah. The question seemed to be a strange contrast to their surroundings.

  “Yes, always.” Hannah calmly replied. “And you?” He shook his head with a positive response.

  “Do you think Clarisse is in danger?” Amy asked from the back seat.

  “She’s certainly frightened, and something is going on here that we can’t see yet.”

  Cameron recognized Amy’s anxiety, so he tried to calm her down.

  “Look, it’s probably nothing. This woman has had a lot happen to her in the last few days. It’s understandable for her to be shaken.”

  His words seemed to reassure Amy, but Cameron was upset at himself for not trusting his gut. His instincts continued to nudge at him that things were off.

  “Here it is,” he said recognizing the street address. They pulled into the empty driveway. Hannah did a quick weapon check, and Cameron suggested Amy stay in the car.

  A housekeeper answered their knock at the door. Her broken English was hard for them to understand. Cameron tried his basic Spanish skills that proved equally difficult for comprehension. Clarisse was not home, but he didn’t know why. He tried her cell phone, but it went immediately to voice mail.

  Then the words clicked for him.

  "School and emergency" he translated. “Where is the school?” Cameron asked in Spanish. She replied in Spanish with greater speed and more detail than Cameron could grasp.

  “This has got to be more than a coincidence. Clarisse would have called me.”

  He tried with the housekeeper again.

  “Where is the school?”

  “I’ll find out,” Hannah said quickly dialing on her phone. After going through a couple of transfers, she was finally working with someone who was retrieving the information she needed.

  Cameron was trying to calm the housekeeper down as his eyes surveyed the photos of the
family.

  “Got it. Academy of Tucson Middle School on 22nd street,” Hannah said as the two rushed back to the car.

  “I’m driving,” Cameron demanded. Hannah tossed the keys to him.

  “What’s wrong?” Amy asked as they entered the car.

  Cameron abruptly shifted the car in reverse and peeled out of the driveway. As he was looking over his shoulder, he directed Amy to call the local police and instruct them to pull over any vehicles registered to Johnson’s address and to get a description of the car.

  Slamming on the brakes, he noticed Hannah, busy on the phone, had not buckled up. It startled her, as Cameron reached over across her body grabbing the seat belt and fastening it tight against her. She smiled at his thoughtfulness as the tires squealed again.

  “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine back here,” Amy said rolling her eyes as she dialed her phone.

  “Do you even know where you’re going?” Hannah shouted as they sped along.

  “22nd Street, right? We just crossed fourth, so I just need to know which way to go on 22nd when we get there.”

  Hannah pushed the microphone button on her phone:

  “Siri, I need directions to Academy of Tucson Avenue Middle School.”

  Siri replied, “I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.”

  Cameron yelled as he jerked his head toward Hannah.

  “Are you serious!”

  Hannah shouted back, “Cole, just a minute!” She resorted to typing the school into the search bar on the phones map app.

  Amy shouted from the back seat. “The police want to know who the hell I think I am to make such a request.”

  “Give me the phone,” Hannah said as she exchanged phones with Amy. “Give him the directions…Hello!”

  Cameron couldn’t keep up with them as they were both talking at the same time.

  “Which way? Which way?” he shouted twice waiting for an answer as he came to 22nd street.

  “To the right, to the right!”

  “It’s about a mile and a half up the road.”

  Hannah had finally spoken to the appropriate person who assured her they would contact her if they found the vehicle registered to Clarisse Johnson.

  “She’s in a blue Yukon,” Hannah said as they each peered through the windows looking for signs of her car. Cameron tried her cell phone again, still no answer.

  They arrived at the school.

  “I’ll check with the school office and see if she’s been here,” said Hannah.

  Cameron nodded. “We’ll keep an eye out for her here.” He and Amy stood outside the car as Hannah made her way to the office.

  After a short time had passed, Cameron saw Hannah returning to the car shaking her head ‘no.’

  “She’s hasn’t been here,” she hollered out as her cell phone rang. She stopped to answer the call. Cameron could not hear the conversation, but he did not like her body language as he saw her shoulders drop.

  She walked back to Cameron and Amy, who were now standing side by side.

  “They found Clarisse in her Yukon at the intersection of Kenyon Drive and Pantano Road. She’s dead. Witnesses are saying that it looked like an attempted carjacking. They need us over there right away.”

  Cameron’s heart sank as leaned back against the hood of the car. Amy held her hand over her mouth in disbelief and began wiping her eyes under her sunglasses. Cameron reached out to console her, and she instinctively fell into his arms.

  He looked at Hannah, who had her head down, looking at the ground.

  “Tell your people to plow through Roslin. This was not a carjacking. They should start with Garrison.” Cameron gritted while holding Amy.

  Hannah nodded.

  “Let me have the keys I’ll drive.”

  She took Cameron’s hand that was firmly gripping the keys while resting against Amy’s back. He didn’t realize how tight he was holding them until Hannah gently worked to pry them out.

  After she had gently unlocked his grip, she left her fingers intertwined with his a few seconds. They looked into each other’s eyes with tenderness until Amy stepped back breaking apart their interlocked fingers and their temporary yet intimate connection.

  Hannah pulled the car up to the curb behind a squad car parked on Pantano Road. The silence that they had submitted to on the short drive to the scene was invaded by the noise and sounds of an active crime scene.

  Police officers were controlling the growing crowd from the usually quaint neighborhood. Constant chatter was heard over the police radios, and an occasional chirp from a siren signaled a new vehicle needed to get through.

  From where they were parked the Yukon Clarisse had been driving was in partial view. The driver’s door was wide open. The three sat in the car for a moment, trying to brace themselves for the inevitable.

  “Amy, why don’t you stay here?”

  Amy never said a word, but stepped out and leaned against the back of the car facing away from the scene.

  Cameron and Hannah found the officer in charge who had more questions than answers. He continued questioning the two attempting to add up the pieces of his investigation. Cameron was growing impatient with the officer, whose slow deliberate method, was adding to his anxiety.

  Finally, the officer divulged some information, which he directed primarily to Hannah, “Well, witnesses are saying that two men pulled up next to her while she was stopped here at the traffic light. The passenger opened the victim’s car door, there was a brief struggle, and then he shot her twice. One in the chest and one to the head.”

  Cameron glanced over to see Clarisse’s limp body still slouched over the center console. As the officer continued sharing other details Cameron’s glance became a stare. He felt a growing pain in his chest as his eyes teared up. He couldn’t help thinking about how he had been with this person just a few hours earlier.

  It was the first time he had seen death this tragic and this close. It was his lesson on the frailty of human life, and it would be a lesson he would not forget. He felt enraged that someone could so callously have taken this mother’s life. Then he was overwhelmed by a different emotion. It was the haunting sense of guilt, and it would refuse to be quickly evicted from his heart.

  “I’m trying to understand why you guys were looking for the victim. I need to know why you had requested a search on the vehicle,” the officer continued.

  “This was not a carjacking,” said Cameron.

  Hannah stepped between Cameron and the officer.

  “I’ve got it, Cole. I’ll take it from here. You should check on Amy.”

  Cameron nodded. He joined Amy, standing behind at the back of the car away from the scene. They stood speechless leaning their backs against the trunk of the car that was slowly heating up from the desert sun.

  “What’s going on here, Cole?” Amy finally spoke for the first time since they had received the call.

  “I don’t know. But someone will pay.”

  As Cameron sent those words into the air the new tenant of his heart nudged him. Maybe I’m responsible for this, he thought, I should have done something last night. Hannah’s sudden presence triggered the verbalization of his thoughts.

  “This is my fault. I should have taken Clarisse to the FBI last night.”

  He spun around to look again at the scene for which he felt responsible. He then glanced at the Pantano Road sign next to their car.

  “If I came up Pantano Road instead of racing out of there, maybe we could have stopped this.” Cameron continued on the trail of self-doubt.

  “Cameron!” Hannah shouted using his last name for emphasis.

  “Stop it. You can’t do this. You can’t start down this path. You had no way of knowing this would happen.”

  Cameron went to turn away, but she grabbed his arm.

  “Look. There are a dozen different routes you could have taken to get here. There’s no way you could have known.” Now she was pointing her finger at him. “You told her to go dir
ectly to the FBI. If anything, I should have insisted on seeing her last night.”

  Hannah paused to catch her breath and find a calmer voice.

  “Look I’m screwed up enough as it is, let’s not go down this path.”

  At that point, Cameron knew that the burden he carried was his to bear alone. He wanted to harness his mouth to avoid causing Hannah from feeling the weight of guilt he carried.

  “Officer Ramirez will need a statement from you. I don’t know how much you want to share, but I’m going to call HQ and get one of the FBI agents working at the Roslin site to head over and take over the investigation.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Washington, DC

  The wheels of the Cessna Citation greased the runway at Regan International at 12:30 AM. The team looked beat, in addition to the troubling events, the long flight and time zone change took its toll. As the jet taxied to the ramp, Cameron suggested a later than usual start at CTC.

  He turned to Hannah and said, “Would you like to join me tomorrow morning for a trip out to Reston? I want to check in on Grant Ramsey’s ex-wife. See if she has any additional information.”

  “Sure, what time?” Hannah asked.

  “I’ll text you a place and time in the morning. I’ll see if I can catch his ex on the phone first and make sure she’s available.”

  “Sounds good.”

  The next morning Cameron confirmed a late morning time with Grant’s ex-wife, Rachel. He stopped by the park and saw there was nothing new at the dead drop. He met Hannah at a coffee shop near the CTC office. After getting her coffee, she climbed into the Range Rover.

  “Wow. Nice car. I must be with the wrong agency.”

  “Hey, it’s nearly four years old and is part of the benefit of having part of my career in the private sector.”

  The two continued small talk on the drive before shifting to the project at hand. Cameron explained that he was hoping to learn more about Grant’s situation from Rachel but knew it was a long shot.

  He was right. The time at Rachel’s was a complete bust. She shared that other FBI agents had already been by to question her, but she agreed to meet with Cole since he had worked with Grant before. According to her, she had not heard from him since Christmas when he had called to speak to his kids, and that was just fine with her.