Power Relinquished (D.C. Power Games Book 3) Page 7

  “Don’t go out there,” Carrie exclaimed. “We should call the police.”

  “We will. This is more serious than I thought though. We need to get you out of here.”

  “I’ll go to the paper. I can crash in one of the offices.”

  Peter didn’t respond. The front door was open, and he was staring at something.

  She rushed toward him, but he held up his hand. “Stay back.”

  Now she was curious, so she pushed forward anyway. Tacked to the front door, was a note.

  Stay away. This is your last warning. Listen or die.

  As a newswoman, she had to admire the fact that they got straight to the point. As the victim of the threats, she was fucking terrified.

  “What do we do now?”

  “Call 9-1-1,” he said. “We’ll wait for them.”

  After making the call, she went back to the bar and gathered the pictures she had laid out. They were packed up in her laptop bag before the sirens reached the apartment.

  For the next hour, she talked to the apartment complex manager, and the police.

  “Do you have any idea what the note means, Miss Davenport?”

  Since she didn’t want to lie to them, but she also wasn’t ready to go public with the story, she hedged. “I’m a journalist. I’ve got several stories going right now. It’s probably somebody trying to get me to stop looking into them.”

  The officer nodded and wrote something down in his tiny notebook. “We’ll need a list of those stories and the people involved, ma’am.”

  “I’ll need to clear that with my editor first.”

  The cop rolled his eyes. “Fine. But the more you tell us, the more likely we are to find who did this.”

  Carrie knew he was right, but with the number of powerful people she had seen in the Doll House, she didn’t know how far reaching this was. The police could be tainted too, so she wasn’t going to give anymore information than she had to.

  In all of this, Peter stayed back, only answering a few questions. Finally, he interjected.

  “I’d really like to get Miss Davenport out of here. Is it possible for her to come to a station and finish this at a later date if you have more questions?”

  The officer agreed and Peter turned to face her.

  “Pack some clothes. You’re staying with me.”

  “Oh really?” she asked, putting one hand on her hip.

  “Carrie, damn it. Don’t argue. Just pack some clothes. Get what you need for a week and let’s get the hell out of here.”

  She hated that he was right. It was better to stay with him until they figured this out. She just wished he didn’t seem to have such a problem with her profession.

  In her bedroom, she grabbed a duffel bag out of the closet and tossed in clothes. In a garment bag, she hung two suits. Next, she went to the bathroom and packed her makeup and toiletries.

  In the living room, she went to the small desk in the corner and loaded up her laptop and a few notes she might need later. By the time she finished, the police had moved outside to talk to the complex manager while they waited for a crime scene team to come and gather evidence.

  After giving the officer a cell number, Peter led her to his SUV.

  “I can just go stay in a hotel. Really, it’s not a problem,” she said as he started the engine.

  “Not happening. We don’t know who’s following you and this seems to be connected to me somehow.” He eased the car into traffic, heading for his apartment.

  It was nearly eleven by the time they made it to his place. He insisted on carrying her bags into the building and onto the elevator where they rode to the fourth floor. It was a nice building but not ostentatious. It didn’t scream money, but it was definitely too rich for Carrie’s blood.

  Inside his unit, he carried her belongings down the hall to a guest bedroom.

  “My room is at the very end of the hall. There’s a bathroom across from you. I have to be back at work in less than six hours, so I need to sleep.”

  “Thank you for believing me.”

  “I’m not saying I believe whoever sent you this shit but there is obviously something going on,” he said as he headed for the door.

  “You’ll need to get up when I do so I can drop you at the paper. Unfortunately, you’ll need to stay there for fourteen hours. I’ll do my best to make sure work doesn’t run late.

  As he spoke, her eyebrows rose.

  “You want me to get up and go to work with you at six in the morning?”

  “Well I can’t let you stay here alone. Not only do I not trust you, it’s not safe for you to be by yourself.”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “I have no intention of spending fourteen hours in my cubicle. I have shit to do.”

  “Sorry. It’s not safe,” he said with a shrug.

  “Who died and made you boss?”

  He crossed the room and glared down at her. “You very nearly did. What if you had been in bed when they threw that into your apartment?”

  Carrie shrank away from him. He was right, but he was still being a dick about it. “All I know is I can’t just follow your work schedule.”

  “We’ll figure something else out for the rest of the time we’re stuck together. I just need you to be a good girl and cooperate with me for tomorrow.”

  Her eyes narrowed to slits when he made the good girl comment and she turned and stomped toward the bed, throwing her suitcase on it with more force than needed.

  “Whatever. If you’re making me get up at six, I guess I should get to bed.”

  He backed out of the room. Just as he crossed the threshold he said, “I’ll be leaving here at five-fifteen.”

  “Oh, this just gets better and better,” she said, hurling an article of clothing at him. Until he reached up and caught them midair, she didn’t realize it was a pair of panties.

  “I prefer thongs, but these are pretty cute,” he said holding them out to her.

  Crossing the room to him red faced, she snatched the panties from him and slammed the bedroom door. When she heard him in the hallway laughing at her, she felt her face heat further.

  Chapter Eight

  At four the next morning, Peter cursed the assholes who made it necessary for him to stay up until almost midnight. As his alarm squawked in the dark, he was tempted to throw the phone across the room.

  Instead, he pulled himself out of bed and made his way downstairs to the apartment complex gym where he ran for half an hour.

  Normally, he would go longer, but he needed to get some coffee and make sure Carrie was up. Thoughts of her sleeping down the hall in his guest bedroom had made his sleep restless, and he was feeling the effects.

  When he had showered and dressed, he knocked on the bedroom door. There was no response, but he could hear the faint sound of Carrie snoring. It was kind of cute. Hoping she wasn’t sleeping naked, he pushed open the door and called her name.

  “Carrie. It’s time to wake up. I’ve got to get going soon.”

  Still nothing. She didn’t even stir.

  Grumbling, he crossed the room to the bed and gently shook her. This time, she mumbled something incoherent and rolled away from him.

  “Come on. It’s almost time to leave and you have to come with me,” he said as he jostled her again.

  “This is stupid,” she muttered, rolling back toward him with one eye open.

  “I agree, but this is where we’re at. There’s coffee in the kitchen. I need to leave in twenty minutes.

  When he was certain she wouldn’t fall back to sleep, he went to the kitchen where he poured himself some coffee and set an empty travel mug on the counter for her to fill.

  Fifteen minutes later, she was in the kitchen looking bleary eyed. She made a beeline for the coffee pot and filled the mug. He watched with amusement as she drank half of it and filled it again.

  “Do I really have to stay at my office all day?”

  “It’s safer this way,” he said.

&nb
sp; “I don’t do cooped up well.”

  He moved closer to her and put his hand on her arm. “I have a feeling you’ll do cooped up better than you’ll do dead.”

  Her eyebrow went up.

  “That’s a little dark for five in the morning buddy,” she said with a huff.

  He fought the urge to grin. Her sarcasm amused him, and he wanted to bring more of it out in her. That thought made him frown. He needed to keep his distance from this woman.

  Still a reporter, he reminded himself.

  “I want to take the photos and such to work with me and inspect them a little closer if you don’t mind. I’ll bring them back in one piece, I swear,” he said when she frowned.

  “Why can’t we look at them together?” she asked.

  “We can do that too, but whoever sent you this clearly knows who I am. I just want to see if I can pick up any clues you haven’t and figure out who this guy is.”

  Carrie pulled the manila envelopes from her bag and handed them to him.

  A few minutes later, they made their way to his SUV, and he navigated the early morning traffic to her office.

  “I’ll be here as quickly as I can tonight, but I’m on duty until eight,” he said as he pulled up the curb in front of her office. “As long as the director is home or in his office at the end of my shift, I can do my paperwork on time, otherwise there is a chance I’ll be late.”

  Carrie just nodded, and he had a feeling she was still half asleep, so he shooed her out of his car and waited until she was inside before driving away.

  When he got to the CIA building, he facilitated the shift change, ran the morning briefing and then locked the conference room door to take a closer look at the mysterious packages.

  Last night, he had only gotten a cursory glance at the pictures and notebook before the evening had gone to hell.

  Now he laid each photo out and examined them. Several of the men in the photos looked familiar. Most seemed to be of Dino Carranza and Corbit Upwood but there was also a senator, an undersecretary in the department of state, and a couple of other powerful movers and shakers in the city.

  The women were all unfamiliar to him, including the ones from the Doll House Cabaret. There were eleven women. Flipping through the notebook, he determined that twelve women seemed to be indicated there. Peter wondered why there was no picture of the twelfth woman, if these pictures were indeed the missing women.

  When he came to the photo of the picnic bench, he scrutinized it. Why such an odd picture? It didn’t make sense and yet something about it seemed oddly familiar. Turning it over, he read the single sentence.

  There was a dot of ink in the middle of the C. Then it hit him, and he pulled out his phone. Finding the camera app, he snapped a close-up photo of the C. When he zoomed in, he realized it wasn’t just a random ink dot. It was a very tiny star. There was something important about this photo, and he had a feeling he knew what it was. Picking it up in one hand, he grabbed another picture from the stack and held it in his other. Sure enough, the photo of the picnic table was slightly heavier than the others.

  It took a minute, but he was able to separate the paper. It was two pieces pressed together. Embedded in the layers, was a very tiny micro-chip.

  This couldn’t be good. Whoever sent these packages knew he was former CIA and was using a trick he had used during a stint in Colombia to pass sensitive information along, including the location of a drop point. If he had to guess, he would say that the rest area is a place the anonymous individual wanted him or Carrie to visit.

  He needed to pick Carrie’s brain again. For now, though, he had to focus on his job. This would have to wait. Pocketing the microchip, he gathered the rest of the photos and put them in his messenger bag.

  There were only a handful of people who knew enough about his time as a spy to mimic his tactics. Corbit Upwood was one, but he doubted the CIA Director was sending a reporter mysterious packages. It shouldn’t be too hard to come up with a list of who else it might be and track them all down.

  After escorting the director to a lunch meeting, he made sure his team was stationed where they were supposed to be and made his way to the Secret Service building to do some paperwork. At his desk, he made a list of people who were with him in Colombia. He would track down each of these people and see what they were up to now days.

  As he added people to the list, he realized that Corbit Upwood was in Colombia at the same time he was as well. Was there something about Colombia he should look closer at? This was all so confusing.

  Pulling out his personal cell, he clicked on Carrie’s name and waited for it to ring.

  “Are you calling to tell me you got off early?” she asked without saying hello. There was a hint of panic in her voice.

  “Sadly, no. Feeling cooped up?”

  “Oh my God yes. I need an outlet for my caffeine intake. I can only pick on the fact checkers so many times before it gets boring.”

  He had no clue what she was talking about, but it made him chuckle.

  “Here’s an idea. You could always lower your caffeine intake.”

  “Bite your tongue, mister.”

  I would rather bite you. He banished the thought as quickly as it surfaced.

  “As much fun as this is, Miss Davenport, I called for a reason. I need you to go over the events of your attempted kidnapping again.”

  In the background he heard what sounded like the tab on an aluminum can popping. Was she drinking soda to go with her coffee? He shook his head.

  “There isn’t a ton to tell. Carla, one of the bartenders, brought me a drink after I spooked her. Said it was an apology. When I stood up, I got dizzy but didn’t think much of it. I hadn’t eaten much that day.”

  Of course she hadn’t, thought Peter as he listened.

  “By the time I got to the door, I could barely see, and the room was spinning so I knew somebody had put something in my drink. Looking back, I’m pretty sure it was Carla. I tried to tell the doorman but him and another man just put me in the limo. I don’t know if he was working with them or if he just thought I’d gotten too drunk and the limo was my ride home.”

  “OK, now what about the accident?”

  “What about it? Somebody rear-ended us and then after the two men sitting in the backseat with me got out, someone pulled me from the other side. It was dark, so I never got a look at whoever it was.”

  Peter hated the knot her story put in his stomach. She could have died.

  “And what exactly did the person say before you got in the cab?”

  “Just told me he had a car waiting for me around the corner and that I should go home and call you.”

  “How did they say my name?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I mean, did they say Agent Mercer, Mr. Mercer, or something else?”

  “Oh. Neither, they said Go home. Call Peter Mercer. Why is this so important? Have you figured something else out? Tell me.”

  Her rapid-fire questions put a smirk on his face.

  “Calm down. I don’t know yet. It’s just important for me to have as many details as possible. I can’t talk about it on the phone, but I found something in one of the pictures. We’ll talk tonight but right now I have to go.”

  “You’re such a tease,” she said with a huff.

  “Darlin’ you have no idea,” he said without thinking. “That was inappropriate, I’m sorry.”

  Carrie giggled. “You have to loosen up. I thought it was funny. But I’ll have mercy on you and pretend I need to go now,” she said just before disconnecting the call.

  He stared at the phone, dazed for a moment. She was tiresome and delightful all at the same time. He slipped the microchip out of his pocket and put it in the slot on his phone.

  It was probably more secure on his company phone, but he wasn’t sure who to trust just yet and his boss had already told him to tread lightly when it came to Corbit Upwood.

  Opening the folder, it was clear i
t would take a long time to sift through everything on it, so he quickly opened the plain text document that was first on the list.

  Just as he suspected, there was an address. It was a rest area just outside D.C. The next document outlined a travel timeline for someone. It took a few minutes to pinpoint that it was a list of places Corbit Upwood had been. Next to each trip was a name. Were these the girls that had gone missing? Was this person saying Corbit had something to do with the disappearances? It seemed like a stretch.

  This was going to require some pretty deep digging. Was Corbit Upwood part of a sex trafficking ring? Just a few weeks ago, he had testified at a senate hearing about the trafficking rings the CIA had had a hand in breaking through intelligence gathering. It was his mission to get an anti-trafficking bill passed. Or so he had said.

  Peter always knew he was a pervert but to go as far as trafficking women into forced sex work? That would sicken him.

  His mind drifted back to the visit to the Doll House Upwood had insisted on making. He swore it was to meet an asset, but Peter didn’t buy it. The CIA Director rarely actually did things like meet assets or do field work. Upwood had claimed he was a hands-on kind of director and there wasn’t much Peter could argue about.

  Then when they arrived and he discovered that he was meeting Dino Carranza, Peter just assumed Upwood had manipulated him so he could meet with the man they had refused to let him see.

  Now he wondered if the meeting had to do with something illegal. Dino had struck him as oddly familiar, but Peter couldn’t place him, and he just chalked it up to the years he spent running down drug cartels. Dino Carranza had a stereotypical bad guy look about him. That didn’t mean he was a criminal though.

  There were a lot more questions than answers, but he had to do his job and set this aside. He was going to keep a closer eye on the director for suspicious activity though.

  His experience told him not to put faith in whistle-blowers and reporters, but there was something about this that had credibility and was screaming for him to pay attention.

  As he was putting his phone away, Director Higgins approached his desk.

  “Agent Mercer, I see you’re enjoying the wonderful task of paperwork that comes with being in charge.”