J Saint - Collateral Damage

"?Adelante!" he ordered. The new Fidel opened the door and reeled on the threshold. The idiot was afraid of heights, which may be why Andreas chose to set up office in the Magic Carpet Room. The floor and walls surrounding him provided a panoramic view of the world they were flying over. Cameras positioned at strategic angles sent live feed, giving him a true magic carpet ride through the clouds.

George loved it, found the sensation of floating through the air calming. It was amazing the things he had in common with his son.

"?Ahora que?"

"Good news and bad news. Three of Bill Collins's colleagues that he sent letters to are dead and no letters were found with them. I am still waiting to hear from the operatives sent out to eliminate the other two. The good news is the operative sent after Conrad Gardner has located Bill Collins's wife and the military guy helping her. He followed them as they left Gardner's residence. They're in a populated motel in Lavonia, Georgia. He's going to wait until later tonight before taking them. Also, Collins sent a number of erotic emails to a woman in Brazil. I took the liberty of having her escorted to El Santuario for you to question. You may even find her very appealing."

"Excellente." Andreas stood and paced over the clouds swirling on the screen at his feet. "Collins's children?"

"Are not with their mother."

"Bien. Keep monitoring all communications. Tell the operative to act quickly. The woman has already escaped him once, twice would prove to be adverse to his health and mine, something I guarantee he doesn't want to have happen. Let me know the minute Collins's wife is captured and alert the pilot that we will be diverting to the closest airport to her so she may accompany us for the rest of the flight to Peru."

Fidel left and Andreas joined his son to watch the clouds.

Lavonia, Georgia

2030 hours

The pizza was cold but tasted great. Jack chowed down on a slice as he surfed the net, searching for any thread of information that would connect Collins's friends to a terrorist group, or any other common element that could give him a handle on what was going on. Thomas fell to his death from his deck. Edward was clubbed to death in a supposed robbery. Gardner was supposedly blown up on his boat. All dead ends, literally. And Jack had almost joined the club.

Who had been at Gardner's?

Now, according to the phone calls he'd made to Brazil, Collins's girlfriend was missing. The events chilled Jack to the bone. What had Collins done? Who was behind it all?

And what was up with his body? It disappeared from Lebanon to show up two weeks later in Brazil and now had disappeared again?

He glanced over at Lauren, his heart and gut twisting with guilt, worry and something more, none of which he wanted to face at the moment.

The local evening news blasted from the TV and Lauren had her gaze glued to the tube, hoping to catch a report about Gardner at Lake Hartwell. She was hurting to be with her sons. The call they'd made to Rico a short time ago found the crew already on the way to Disney World. Her goodnight routine with Matt and Mitch reminded him of when Livy was little and unsettled him, disrupting the status quo of his personal life even more.

The deaths of Bill's friends had her upset as well. She kept saying she should have done more.

Jack wasn't so sure. After finding out Bill's girlfriend was missing, he and Lauren had called the local police in Tampa and Savannah where Bob Cantrell and Ray Branson lived. All the police could do was check the residences for signs of trouble, then wait until there was evidence of a crime before they could act. The world was a society of addressing disasters and problems after the fact rather than preventing them from happening in the first place.

Jack wished he could do more to distract Lauren. A humorless grunt escaped him. More?

Any more and he would likely have to go to the hospital after all. He'd carried through with his promise to back her to a wall and make her forget anything to do with Collins. It'd been the shower wall. She'd been gloriously wet inside and out and he'd nearly passed out by the time he'd thrust them both to heaven. Yet, looking at her now, wearing one of his T-shirts, knowing she was naked under it… Damn, but he could already feel another hard-on coming. And the nap they'd taken had restored his"Jack!" Lauren leapt from the bed, rushing toward the other side of the room, where the windows were covered with thick curtains. He had his feet propped up on the dinette table and the chair angled back on two legs with his computer across his lab. Driven by the alarm in her voice, he slammed upright and had to catch the computer in midair as he reached for his P226.

"What?" He sucked in air, searching for a threat and found nothing.

"The letter," she said. "Bill's letter." She reached into his backpack and pulled it out of the compartment they'd placed it in this morning."

Setting aside his pistol and the computer, he joined her. "You scared the crap out of me. Have you remembered something?"

"No. But I just saw a commercial for Coliseum National Bank and Trust based in Rome, Georgia. The letter said NB amp;T, right?" She opened the letter.

He looked over her shoulder, a tinge of excitement kicking his pulse up a notch.

…our visit to the Coliseum in Rome and the kiss we shared despite our "suspicious minds" this "July". NBT if you can believe it. The trip was just like our love me tender honeymoon in "blue Hawaii".

"I think you're on to something."

"We can go there first thing in the morning and see if Bill had an account or even a safety deposit box there."

"Why wait? He's given you clues. Why not log onto the bank's website and see what we can do." He grabbed a pen and paper and she carried the letter over to the computer.

"Now that I'm looking at this as a bank, there aren't any numbers in the sentence to indicate an account." She frowned with doubt.

Jack groaned. "I can't believe he'd make it this easy, but there are quotation marks around three sections of the sentences."

"Easy? If I hadn't seen the commercial, I wouldn't have put it together. You didn't at first pass either. I don't know how he expected I would have figured it out."

"Maybe he left clues in other places that you haven't found yet. Let's log in and see. Passwords usually require you add a number into them. So use suspiciousminds7 for that. Blue Hawaii for the sign in."

Lauren entered the information and amazingly moved to the next step where it asked her to answer several security questions. Bill's mother's maiden name. City where he was born. And the make of his first car. Lauren knew the answers, was likely one of only a handful of people who did, if not the only person. She logged in and nearly fainted from shock. It was a joint account in both her name and Bill's name. Two million dollars was in it.

"Dear God."

Jack whistled. "Nice share."

"What was he into?"

"First, change the email address attached to the account to yours. Second, change the password to something only you would know and I mean only you and don't tell a soul. Not even me. Then we'll search through the account's activity and see if we can find where the money came from."

"Okay, but the last activity on the account was two weeks ago."

Jack set his hands on either side of her face and made her look directly into his eyes. "Somebody is killing people. That money could be the reason. I'll be damned if you're going to be next. But we also need to do everything we can to stop whoever it is from getting what they want. Bill sent you clues in a letter. He might have sent them to the others too. Damn! If this money is what the whole thing is about and three of Bill's five friends are dead, that means either Bob or Ray or both of them together could be behind the murders."