Defenseless, p.12
Defenseless, page 12
“I’ll get it. This time of night, I assume you want mint?”
She hesitated again then smiled. “That would be great, please.”
While the water heated in the electric kettle, he sorted through her words and his feelings about them. He didn’t think he’d overreacted at the diner. In that kind of situation, it was better to react the way he had and be wrong than to remain and keep pushing. But to Ethan’s point, perhaps his own history—and his own fears—had blinded him to any other explanation. And in letting his past experiences taint his present, it had been easy to slide into that pity party his cousin had called him on.
“Here,” he said a few minutes later as he handed Sabina a cup. Retaking his seat, he wrapped his hands around his own mug.
“I owe you the rest of the story,” she said after taking a tentative sip.
“You don’t owe me anything, Sabina,” he said. He wanted answers, but not because she felt she owed them to him.
She looked up at him. “You’re wrong, Chad. I do owe you. Not because you’ve asked, but because you’re my friend and someone I trust. And because you’re someone who cares about me. Maybe a little less now than earlier today,” she added with a self-deprecating smile. “I think you still care, though. And even if you don’t, HICC will be helping me so, at the very least, as the director of the West Coast operations, you should know.”
He nodded, not willing to comment on whether he still cared or not. He did. His pity party proved that—if he didn’t care, the events of the evening wouldn’t have bothered him much. But he wasn’t ready to voice that reality.
“Are you familiar with Kevin Jacobs?” she asked.
“The senator from Kentucky?”
She nodded. “Rumor has it he’s going to make a run for president, but we’ll see.” She fidgeted with her mug then turned her attention to the fire. “Eighteen years ago, when he was the attorney general, he murdered my mother. My sister and I walked into the room just after he’d finished strangling her.”
Chad sucked in a breath. “Your sister?” he asked, wanting to clarify that point before she moved on to the rest of what he was guessing would be a long story.
She glanced at him and nodded. “My twin. Kara’s a doctor. She lives in Malibu but travels for work most of the year.”
If someone was after Sabina because of what had happened eighteen years ago, then her sister was likely in danger, too. “Did Ethan…?”
She nodded, knowing what he asked. “Yes, Colton has a couple of buddies down there who were going to check on her. She leaves for Bangladesh tomorrow so should be safe.”
He nodded then waited for her to continue. And when she did, a tale as heartbreaking—and as surprising—as any he’d ever heard emerged. He’d always thought her a strong woman, and now knew just how strong she was. He’d also long suspected she was in danger and unfortunately, her story proved his suspicions right.
She paused after telling him about the moment she and her sister stood together in the middle of the creek, in the middle of the night, and first made the decision to go into hiding. Her gaze took on a vacant look, and he sensed she was reliving those minutes over and over. Chad cleared his throat, and her eyes lifted. “You did the right thing. Running. Hiding,” he clarified.
She gave him a wayward smile. “Most days I think so. Some days, I wonder.”
“You didn’t end up going to the police, did you?”
She shook her head then fought a yawn. She’d already told this story once, probably in more detail than what she was relaying now. After not talking about it for years, Chad recognized it was taking a lot out of her.
“It’s late and you’ve already told Ethan and the others everything. Why don’t you give me the CliffsNotes?” he suggested.
She futzed with her mug then let out a soft laugh. “Thank you. It’s…weird talking about it after so long. But as I said before. It’s time. We can’t keep running forever. There were good reasons for it at the time, but as Kara recently pointed out, we’re not those scared little girls anymore. And science has changed a lot since that night. If anyone can help us find the evidence we need to end this, it’s you and everyone at HICC. I know that.”
He still had more of her story to hear, but the certainty in her voice—both regarding her decision to talk and her decision to work with HICC—gave him some relief.
“Whenever you’re ready,” he prompted.
She gave a sharp nod but turned away from him as she answered. “By the next day, Kevin Jacobs had spun a story to the media. Over and over, the news reported that he’d been dating my mother for a few months. He said he’d stopped by to say a quick good-night only to arrive at the same time as the first responders. I don’t know how he managed to convince people of that version of the events. The only thing Kara and I could come up with was that when he realized he wasn’t going to catch us, he returned to the house, saw that my phone had connected the 9-1-1 call, and somehow managed to get the first responders to witness his supposed arrival. Our house was at the end of a dead-end lane. There was no way he would have been able to drive away without the incoming responders seeing him.”
“Did you have a long driveway?” Chad asked. Sabina nodded. “He probably parked somewhere along the way and waited until he heard the sirens. Then when they were close enough, started back toward the house, making it look like he’d just arrived, and they were following him in.”
“That’s what Kara and I figured, too. But the really big red flag was how, within hours of her death, Kevin Jacobs had put a whole big spin machine into play to protect himself. We didn’t know what it might mean or what we could do about it, but it scared us. Even more than we already were. And so instead of going to the police, we called my mom’s stepbrother, our uncle Mike. Aside from our father, who, at that point, we hadn’t seen in six years, he was the only family we had.
“By the time we called, he’d already been notified of her death. Kevin Jacobs had even stopped by to see if either Kara or I had been in touch with him. Uncle Mike was former CIA and had a pretty good bullshit meter. He didn’t believe a word of Jacobs’s concern. He said that the only reason an AG from Kentucky might have to come to his home in Tennessee wouldn’t be a good one.”
Chad let out a soft chuckle at that, and Sabina shared a smile. There was nothing quite like a grizzled, experienced intelligence agent to run circles around a politician.
“What did he do when you called him?” Chad asked.
“He told us to hang tight, stay out of sight, and that he’d come pick us up. A day later, he made good on his promise and managed to sneak us out and back to his place. It got…complicated after that.”
“Even more complicated, you mean?”
She tilted her head in acknowledgment. “With each passing day, more evidence appeared pointing to either a vagrant, or at one point, human traffickers, being responsible for my mom’s murder.”
“Traffickers?”
Sabina nodded. “Another Jacobs spin—traffickers had killed our mom and kidnapped us to sell us off. It was a headline-catching story. But after two weeks of subtly promoting the theory, Jacobs started seeding doubts that we were still alive. A few days after that, he had the authorities call off the search. He did, however, keep in touch with Uncle Mike. In the four months after the murder, he called several times to see if we’d been in touch.”
“What kept you from stepping forward? I’m not passing judgment, I’m curious,” he clarified.
“That was Uncle Mike’s call,” Sabina answered. “The evidence continued to support Jacobs’s version of the story. We were the only two witnesses who could dispute it, but if we did, it would be our word against all that evidence. We debated it. For weeks, we debated it. But then the police found the body of a vagrant, ostensibly a man who’d OD’d, in the next county over. He had one of my mom’s rings in his pocket, so they pretty much closed the case.”
“Did your Uncle Mike think Jacobs, or someone in his camp, killed the vagrant to frame him?” Chad asked. Sabina nodded. “He was worried about what might happen to you and your sister if you came forward,” he said, finishing his thought. Had he been in Uncle Mike’s place, he would have been worried, too.
Sabina nodded again. “We agreed not to go to the police, but he did reach out to one of his former colleagues for help. She managed to get all the case files for us so that we could at least understand the scope of Jacobs’s efforts. More importantly, though, she also set my sister and me up with new identities and full background covers. It wasn’t ideal, especially at our age. But until we could prove something, until we had some way of poking holes in Jacobs’s story, it was the safest way.”
Chad agreed. Despite everything that had happened that night, he grieved for the girls Sabina and her sister had been and everything they’d lost. “And one year turned into another, then another?”
She nodded again. “We went to college under our new names. We’d originally planned to attend the University of Kentucky together, but Uncle Mike and I thought it would be best to split up. I ended up in Boston while Kara went to LA.” She paused, and a small smile teased her lips. “And if you’re wondering, Gina took care of that, too.”
“Gina?”
“Uncle Mike’s CIA friend. Not only did she give us new identities, but she also altered some college records to ensure that our new personas were enrolled. Including fake applications, records of the acceptance letter, housing letters. Everything. She was the first person to show me the magic of computers.”
He chuckled at that. It wasn’t hard to picture a young Sabina leaning over this woman’s shoulder and taking everything in. Then he frowned. “It’s not really relevant, but how did you pay for it?”
She huffed a small laugh at that. “Uncle Mike set up a fake scholarship through a bank in Bermuda. He funded it with his own money. The plan was always to reimburse him once it was safe enough for us to come forward. Or until Lalibela and Nalanda Houseman were declared dead, and my mom’s estate came to him.”
“Is there a ‘but’ I hear?”
Sabina set her mug down on the side table and tugged the blanket higher against her chest. He had a feeling what was coming next was the heart of the matter, the real reason behind her secrecy.
Sabina cleared her throat then answered. “While Kara and I were in school, Uncle Mike and Gina kept working on the case. One evening, in May of my senior year, my uncle called to say he might have found something. By then, Jacobs was making a bid for the governorship. I think Uncle Mike was feeling a little desperate and wanted to bring the truth out before Jacobs gained any more power.”
“Understandable.”
Again, Sabina’s eyes took on a vacant look as she recounted what happened. “But the next day, his car went over a cliff,” she said, her voice quiet in the night. “Ruled an accident, of course. But Kara and I have our doubts.” She paused. “And our guilt. We have a lot of that. All he was trying to do was help us. All he wanted was to bring a murderer to justice and keep us safe. And because of that, he lost his life.”
Chad studied her. Her hair was pulled back into her usual ponytail, giving him a view of her delicate profile. She was watching the flames dance in the fireplace. No doubt remembering those few days so many years ago. After a long pause, she took a deep breath and continued.
“It wasn’t just Uncle Mike, though. I was living with a guy at the time. Nate was everything my life was not. He was gentle and quiet and so kind. I know that sounds dull, but he was also funny in a quirky kind of way and a brilliant artist. He was the first person I let myself get close to after my mother’s death. I wasn’t passionately in love with him, but he was hard not to love, if you know what I mean? He was just so good without being too sweet.”
“What happened?” Chad prompted gently. He had a pretty good idea what had happened, but he wanted Sabina to have the chance to tell him.
“I have no idea how Jacobs or his people found out that Mike was still looking into the case. They did discover his involvement, though. And along with his involvement, they somehow managed to discover where I lived. Probably from the phone records of the call he made to me. Thankfully, he’d only called me. And not Kara, too.”
“And once they had the phone number, it wasn’t hard to figure out who, or where, you were,” Chad said.
“It wasn’t,” she agreed. “Nate and I…we were home that night. We’d been play-arguing about who’d take the garbage out. I lost the bet and popped down to the bins in the basement. When I got back…it was like a repeat of the night my mom died. I walked in and…and there was a man, not Jacobs, standing over Nate.” She wiped a tear from her cheek. Grabbing the tissue box from the side table, Chad leaned over and handed it to her. She took it with a wan smile.
“He’d shot Nate and was obviously looking for me. Like that night with my mom, I ran. The man was standing between me and the front door, so I ran back to the kitchen, hoping to reach the door to the service stairs. I was almost there when he hit me on the head with the butt of his gun and knocked me out. Or at least that’s what the doctors surmised happened based on my injuries. Whoever he was wasn’t done yet, though. Before he left, he set fire to the apartment.” She dabbed her eyes then traced the side of her mug with her fingertip.
He wanted to ask what happened next but held back. She’d tell him in her time. Half a minute passed before she took a deep breath and continued.
“Rather than kill me, though, he dragged me close to Nate, left the gun in my hand, then lit the place on fire. I can’t say for certain that making it look like a murder-suicide was his plan, but over the years of thinking about it, that’s what Gina and I came up with.”
“It would have kept the police from looking into it too much,” Chad concurred. “But you woke up.”
She gave a jerky nod. “I did. And I tried to save Nate. I mean, not save him. He was already dead, and I knew it. But I tried to save his body. I latched onto this idea that he’d died because of me and the least I could do was give his family a body to bury.” She choked on a sob then, and he couldn’t stay away any longer. He was still bruised, but she was bleeding from her scars.
Only he didn’t get far across the room before his phone vibrated with another alarm. Halting midway to Sabina’s side, he reached for the device. A few swipes later, he accepted that his night had taken yet another grim turn.
“Sabina? Honey?”
She blinked and looked up.
“I need to know if what you said earlier today—here in the house, not at the diner—was true. Do you trust me? Are you okay with me?”
She frowned. “Yes,” she answered without hesitation. “In case you haven’t figured it out, I love you. I’m in love with you. But I didn’t want you to turn into another Nate. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if that happened. That’s why I kept my distance.”
There was a lot in that statement he’d tuck away and process later, but for now, he held out his hand. “I need you to come with me then.”
Shifting the blanket off her lap, she reached for him. Then, curling her fingers around his, she rose. “What’s going on, Chad?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute. Can you go wait by my office door?”
He saw the questioning look on her face, but he’d already let go of her hand. After shutting the fireplace off, he hurried to the mudroom and grabbed his boots. As he pulled them on, he dialed a number. He was on his way back to Sabina, who was waiting where he’d asked, when it started ringing.
Ethan answered as Chad reached for a small spot alongside the doorframe into his office.
“Did you make nice?” Ethan asked.
“There are three figures making their way across the back part of my property. They may have come up from the lake,” he said. Beside him, Sabina sucked in a breath. He cast her a reassuring look as he pressed his fingers onto the four hidden sensors that would read his fingerprints and pulse.
“I’m taking Sabina out the back way. I need you and Teague to deal with the intruders,” he said.
“You focus on her. We got this,” his cousin replied.
“See you at the cabin,” Chad replied before hanging up and sliding his phone into his pocket. “Don’t be startled,” he said to Sabina as a three-by-three section of the floor popped up.
She didn’t gasp or startle, but she did inch closer to him. “Chad?”
The opening was cleverly aligned with the natural breaks of the hardwood floor and impossible to detect with the naked eye. And even though he’d been the one to design it, he couldn’t help but admire the results.
Reaching down, he lifted one side, angling it up and revealing a steep staircase. “A light will go on as soon as you set foot on the first step,” he said.
Her hesitation lasted less than two seconds, and then she was scrambling down with him hot on her heels.
“What is this?” she asked when the door above them started closing and they stood on solid ground. Solid ground fifteen feet below the foundation of his house. “A safe room?”
“It can be,” he answered, taking her hand and leading her down a short hall and into a room. Once inside, he hit a few buttons and brought two monitors to life.
Sabina leaned forward and studied the screens. There wasn’t much to see at this point. The figures weren’t in range of the video cameras he had positioned closer to the house. But they could make out three human heat signatures moving through the woods toward his home.
Sabina sucked in a breath. “It’s happening again,” she said. “I brought this on you. Just like Uncle Mike. Just like Nate. This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen, Chad. Exactly why I tried to stay away from you.”
“I’m not Nate,” Chad said, reaching under his desk and pulling out a small gun case. He’d left his own weapon beside his bed, but he had plenty in storage.
“Chad.” The look she turned on him was so wary, so sad, and so scared that he paused. Slowly, he raised a hand and traced the fine line of her jaw.
