Amelia Autin - Killer Countdown

Integrity counts, Carly mused. Then added with a touch of cynicism, Sometimes.

She shifted positions, tucking her pillow between her head and the wall of the plane, her thoughts growing drowsy. Drowsy...and dangerous.

She’d been drawn to Shane both physically and emotionally. Yesterday and today. But she knew better than to let herself get involved with someone like him. After Jack she’d sworn off men completely, then modified her stance somewhat. She would only date those who didn’t threaten her closely guarded heart.

And Senator Shane Jones was a threat—no question about that. Not only did he have the emotional depth and strength of character she admired, he’d suffered the kind of injury that had stolen Jack from her. And that she couldn’t bear. She couldn’t lose another man the way she’d lost Jack. She just couldn’t.

Chapter 4

The ringing of the phone roused Carly from a chaotic dream, the basic elements of which lingered even after she pried her eyes open, glanced at the alarm clock and collapsed back onto the bed. She tugged her pillow over her head, ignoring the phone for once. She’d had all of three hours of sleep, and unless the building was on fire, there was no emergency that would get her out of bed.

Eventually the ringing stopped. Then her brand-new, less-than-twelve-hours-old smartphone began chirping. She hadn’t had time to set up all her ringtones yet, so she had no idea who’d be calling her at the ungodly hour of—

She emerged from beneath the pillow and cracked one eye open to peer at the clock—8:34 a.m. Not so ungodly, but still...she hadn’t arrived home until fivefifteen this morning. She’d dumped her carry-on suitcase in the hallway, stripped off her clothes without bothering to hang them up and tumbled naked into bed without even brushing her teeth, an oversight she was paying for now with the yucky taste in her mouth.

Her smartphone stopped for all of five seconds, then started chirping again. Whoever was on the other end was persistent, she’d give them that. She tugged on one purse strap until she managed to pull her purse off the dresser and into bed beside her, then fumbled until she found her new iPhone. “Hello?”

“Carly? It’s J.C.” The clipped British accent of her producer at the cable news network she’d joined last year filled her ear.

“You have ten seconds before I hang up on you,” she told J.C. “So whatever it is, it had better be good. And quick.”

“Senator Shane Jones is trying to reach you.”

That made her sit up, then clutch the bedclothes to her chest as if J.C. could see her naked. “What?”

“Yeah, the subject of your broadcast last evening wants you to call him ASAP.”

“Did he say why?”

“Wasn’t the senator himself. His press secretary called the network looking for your contact info, and that got routed to me. You know what this is about?”

Carly slung her long, dark hair over one shoulder and scrubbed a hand over her eyes, her brain scrambling to focus. Was the senator just pissed because she’d reported on the assassination attempt? That didn’t make sense—she wasn’t the only reporter covering the story, and he had to know it. Of course, she was the only one with footage of the gunman, which raised her story head and shoulders above the rest. Still, even if he’d seen her broadcast, she hadn’t said anything he could really object to, hadn’t mentioned why he was there at the Mayo Clinic.

“Carly?” J.C.’s voice took on an impatient tone.

“I’m thinking,” she countered quickly. No, she reasoned, if he’s trying to get in touch with me, there’s only one explanation. He intends to go public with— “He promised me an exclusive,” she told J.C.

His voice sharpened. “When did he promise you that? You never mentioned it to me.”

“I don’t tell you everything.” A long silence followed, during which Carly could have sworn she could hear J.C.’s thoughts.

He didn’t say any of the things she figured he was thinking. All he said was, “When the senator arrived in DC last night, he released a statement through his press secretary.”

“Saying?”

“Nothing more than he’d been asked by the Phoenix police and the FBI not to discuss the incident since it’s still under investigation. But his press secretary refused to take any questions during the press conference, including the one every reporter there wanted to ask—what was he doing at the Mayo Clinic? Congress is in recess, and as far as anyone knew, Senator Jones was back home in Colorado.” J.C. let that statement hang there for a few seconds, then asked, “Do you know why?”

Carly’s heart skipped a beat. “Yes,” she admitted. “But only on deep background. I can’t report the story until he’s willing to go on the record, and when I spoke with him two days ago he had no intention of doing that.”

“Damn it, Carly,” J.C. growled.

“But I think he must have changed his mind,” she said before J.C. could go ballistic. “Or rather, the events yesterday must have changed his mind. Other than that, I can’t imagine why he’d want to talk with me. It can’t be anything to do with the assassination attempt—he’s staying mum on that, isn’t that what you told me?”

She didn’t wait for J.C.’s agreement. “So the only thing he and I have to discuss is...what I can’t tell you until he gives me the go-ahead.” She tugged her notebook out of her purse along with a pen and added, “What’s the phone number?”

* * *

A clean-shaven Marsh Anderson pulled his carry-on luggage from the overhead compartment and deplaned at Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC. He strode confidently through the airport, past the airline employees and TSA checkpoints, then retrieved his nondescript white Chevy truck from the long-term parking lot. As he drove to his home in Arlington, Virginia, his thoughts dwelled on the two phone calls he’d received yesterday—one from the man who’d hired him, one from the man on the inside. Neither had been at all happy with the outcome. Marsh agreed with their assessment that he’d screwed up. Not so much for missing his shot—that could happen to anyone due to circumstances beyond his control—but for allowing himself to be recorded as he made his escape.

“Damned reporters,” he whispered under his breath. He’d planned everything so carefully. He’d waited nearly an hour in the little park across from the entrance to the Mayo Clinic, moving around a little from spot to spot so as not to draw attention to a man lying in wait. He’d assembled his AS50 sniper rifle even earlier, secreting it between a boulder and a large aloe plant—close enough to retrieve at a moment’s notice, but out of sight. He’d known when the limo had pulled up in the driveway in front of the hospital, that was his signal the senator would be down shortly. He’d surreptitiously retrieved the rifle and had moved into position—a hidden vantage point he’d scouted and tested two days previously.

But everything had gone wrong from that point forward.

He’d followed his original plan regarding the disposal of the weapon he’d used and the clothing he’d worn, too, just as if he’d been successful in his assassination attempt. He’d immediately and without a qualm dumped the AS50 in a ravine in the Phoenix Mountains Preserve southwest of the Mayo Clinic—after he’d wiped it clean of prints, of course, and had rammed a metal rod down the barrel. That would ensure no one could match the rifling marks to any of the bullets it had fired—in case any had been recovered in usable form.

He’d also changed clothes in one of the restrooms there and had trashed what he’d been wearing in a Dumpster in Paradise Valley. Then he’d returned to his motel west of Phoenix to shave off the beard he’d grown specifically for this job.