Beneath the Skin

7 DEEPER AND DEEPER

WASHINGTON, D.C.

FBI HEADQUARTERS

March 25

FBI ADIC MONICA RUTGERS strode down the beige-carpeted hallway to her office, stockings whisking, pulse pounding hard through her veins. Something had gone horribly awry at the Wells/Lyons compound.

Not only had Sheridan failed to kill Prejean and Lyons, he was in SB hands.

Worse? Now the SB knew she’d not only disregarded orders concerning Bad Seed, they knew she’d initiated retaliatory action of her own.

And risked the well-being and life of an agent, of a man, she trusted.

Based on Gillespie’s phone call, Sheridan was in dubious condition.

We have your agent, ma’am. Sheridan.

He was only following my orders. I’m responsible, not him.

I understand that, ma’am. He was wounded—

I’ll have the goddamned hide of whoever—

Ma’am, he took a bullet in the thigh and, no, it wasn’t us. My people found him that way. He’ll receive medical treatment before debriefing.

Debriefing. Yes. May I send a couple of my agents to accompany him? And to participate in his debriefing? Sheridan’s a good agent, Chief Gillespie, a loyal agent, and he doesn’t deserve—

No, ma’am, he doesn’t. You should’ve considered that before you sent him to Damascus.

No arguing with the truth. But she’d sent Brian Sheridan out into the deep, dark woods. She’d guide him home again. What in God’s name had gone wrong? With a down-and-dirty, under-the-radar plan to assassinate a sociopathic bloodsucker and a turncoat SAC? Oh, let me count the ways.

Sheridan was now a prisoner of war. A solider who’d followed his orders but hadn’t completed his mission.

When did we become two opposing camps, the FBI and the SB?

But she knew the answer to that question—they’d never been anything else.

Her assistant, Ray Ellis, Bluetooth headset hooked around his ear, looked up from his monitor at her approach, fingers poised over the keyboard. Surprise flashed across his youthful face. Youthful, hell. He was young—only twenty-eight. A kid. But an efficient and competent kid—when she wasn’t catching him off guard.

Ellis jumped to his feet from behind his tidy desk, smoothing a hand along his red diamond-patterned tie. Pausing to scoop up a pile of color-coded files, he hurried around to meet her.

“Did something go wrong at your luncheon, ma’am?” he asked. “I don’t have—”

Rutgers held up a hand. Ellis stopped in his tracks. He held her gaze, his hazel eyes calm, face composed. “That doesn’t matter right now. Clear my schedule and get me Underwood at the SB on the line.”

“SOD Underwood?”

Government acronyms never failed to unintentionally amuse. Unintentional, hell. She was pretty damned sure unintentional had nothing to do with it. SOD. ADIC. SAC. “Yes, the SOD,” Rutgers said dryly.

Ellis shifted his armful of folders to his hip, bright splashes of color against his dark gray trousers. He glanced at her closed office door. Nodded.

“Ma’am, SOD Underwood is waiting for you inside. She arrived about five minutes ago.” Ellis hesitated, then added in a low voice, “She also requested that I clear your schedule.”

Rutgers stiffened. “You refused, of course,” she said, her voice cold enough to hang icicles from Ellis’s well-formed nose.

“Of course, ma’am,” he agreed. “I’ll clear your schedule now.”

“Good.” As Rutgers stepped past her assistant, she paused to pat his shoulder. “Thank you, Ray,” she murmured.

“Ma’am.” A faint smile twitched at one corner of his mouth. “Give her hell.”

“Count on it.” Rutgers threw open the wood and frosted-glass door etched with her name, and stalked inside. Cold fury propelled her across the room.

Celeste Underwood, Special Ops Director for the SB, relaxed in one of two maroon leather chairs positioned in front of Rutgers’s desk, her black trousered legs crossed. She shifted to glance over her shoulder at Rutgers.

“Monica,” she greeted. “How are you?” A smile curved her glossed lips.

“How dare you give my assistant orders.” Rutgers strode to her desk and, automatically smoothing her skirt beneath her, sat in the plush captain’s chair, the leather creaking beneath her weight. She leaned forward, her forearms braced against the desk’s polished surface, her hands clasped. “You have no authority here.”

Smile still in place, Underwood rose to her feet and crossed to the door. She eased it shut, then turned around. Her smile had vanished. “Sure about that?”

“About you having no authority here? Absolutely.”

Underwood shook her head. “Ah, Monica.” She regarded Rutgers with almost maternal fondness, a neat trick for a woman the same age as Rutgers. “Still living in the good old days.”

“Back when we actually upheld the Constitution?”

Underwood laughed, the sound warm, rich, and genuinely amused. “That we never did. Flawed instrument, the Constitution.”

In her tailored black suit, rose button-down blouse, her modest and well-trimmed Afro sprinkled with strands of silver, gold jewelry glinting at her ears and left wrist, Underwood looked warm, accessible, every bit the boss with an open door policy.

Easy to imagine her as the grandmother she was, in jeans and gardening gloves, her round face shaded beneath a straw hat. Rutgers even caught a hint of cinnamon and apples, as though Underwood had baked pies just that morning.

Just an ordinary woman doing an extraordinary job.

But Rutgers knew better. Had learned long ago to look past the warm facade Underwood projected. Inside, the woman was empty, heartless, a golem of flesh manipulated by a keen and cold intelligence.

Underwood sauntered back to her chair, amusement lighting her face. Sitting down, she crossed her legs again, and leaned back. “Have you forgotten that when it comes to Bad Seed, I have authority over your every move?”

Rutgers’s knuckles whitened and she unclasped her hands, dropping them to the arms of her chair. “I haven’t forgotten. But the project’s been terminated.”

“Not completely.” Underwood’s eyes glittered, iced obsidian.

“Since when?” Rutgers said, trying to figure out what game the Special Ops director was playing. “I was instructed—”

“Exactly,” Underwood cut in. “You were instructed.” She tilted her head and studied Rutgers for a moment. She pointed at her ears. Arched her well-groomed eyebrows. “Unless you prefer to waltz around the bush … ?”

Rutgers sighed. Underwood was right, of course. Hidden electronic ears listened in each office and hallway within Bureau headquarters. Eavesdropping. Recording.

This particular conversation would be treacherous enough without misunderstanding greasing the cliff edge. She fetched the audio jammer out of her bottom drawer and set it up on her desk.

Small and slim, the jammer looked like an iPod. She switched it on and chirps and burbling bleeps filled the room instead of music, desensitizing any and all audio recording equipment in the room.

“I want my agent back.” Rutgers’s blunt words hooked Underwood’s dark gaze.

“Impossible. He’s being sent to one of our facilities for debriefing. And you’re really in no position to make demands.”

“Let’s be honest, here. You intend to interrogate a wounded man,” Rutgers said, voice flat and hard. “Not debrief him.”

A smile skimmed across Underwood’s lips, glittered in her eyes like sunlight on ice, dazzling and cold. “You sent him into the line of fire. These are the consequences of action you spun into play and your agent will pay the price.”

A twinge of guilt tightened the muscles in Rutgers’s chest. “There’s no need to interrogate Sheridan. I take full responsibility for his actions. He was simply following my orders.”

“And those orders were … ?”

“To kill Dante Prejean.”

“Even after you were instructed to take your people off Prejean?”

“Because I was instructed to take my people off Prejean.”

Underwood tsked and shook her head. “Defying instructions like a jilted ex slapped with a restraining order. That’s not like you.”

“How would you know?” Rutgers asked. “None of us are the people we were when we started this.”

“True.” Underwood’s expression softened. “Very true,” she murmured.

She glanced out the window and Rutgers wasn’t sure if she was gathering her thoughts or simply taking in the view beyond the glass—pink cherry blossoms shivering on slender-branched trees, caught in a strengthening breeze as a late March storm rolled in, framing the delicate blossoms between green lawn and bruised sky.

“Prejean’s not your concern,” Underwood said, her gaze shifting back to Rutgers.

“He murdered one of my agents in cold blood.”

“Seems to me Prejean was merely the means your agents used to commit murder.” Underwood rose to her feet and smoothed the wrinkles from her slacks. “One SAC murdered. Another SAC and a much-lauded FBI hero implicated in that murder.” She looked at Rutgers from under her lashes. “Seems to me you need to tend to your own house.”

“Only because of Prejean.”

“We’ll deal with him,” Underwood said. “You tend to your agents.”

“Meaning Prejean will become just another shadow within the Shadow Branch? How appropriate.” A muscle tightened in Rutgers’s jaw. “I’d like Sheridan released ASAP and sent to the nearest hospital.”

“He will be as soon as we’ve finished with him.” Under-wood strolled to the door.

Rutgers pushed back her chair and stood. “I’ve already told you what his mission was. There’s absolutely no need—”

“Ah, but there is.” Underwood paused at the door, swiveled around, her warm and matronly facade back in place. “He needs to corroborate your statement. Needs to let us know where Lyons, Wallace, and Prejean disappeared to.”

Dread dropped cold pebbles into Rutgers’s belly. “Dis-appeared?”

“Something else that’s no longer your concern,” Under-wood replied. “I hope you don’t plan to sacrifice more good agents in your quest for petty revenge.”

“There’s the pot calling the kettle black.” Rutgers chuckled, the sound knotted and bitter. “How many people have died because of Bad Seed? Sacrificed in the name of curiosity?”

“Is that all you think the program was? A curiosity?” Underwood half turned as she grasped the doorknob. “By the way, I’ve informed your deputy director that we’ve severed all Bureau ties to Bad Seed. Bad Seed and its cleanup—and everything related to it—now belongs solely to the SB.”

The skin along Rutgers’s spine prickled. And everything related to it. “Sheridan had nothing to do with Bad Seed.”

“Wrong. You involved him.” Underwood opened the door and stepped over the threshold. “Now he’s ours. I suggest you start doing damage control.”

Rutgers stared at the Special Ops director, fury blurring her vision, scalding her cheeks. Just as she opened her mouth, Ellis’s voice cut in from her desk intercom.

“The deputy director is on the line, ma’am.”

Underwood offered a sympathetic smile. “Good luck, Monica.” Turning, she strode down the hallway in brisk, efficient strides.

“Ma’am?” Ellis’s intercom-tinny voice inquired.

“Yes,” Rutgers said, closing the door and her eyes. She rested her forehead against the cool frosted glass. “Finalize the press release about SA Heather Wallace, then send it to me.”

What was one more shitty lie in a whirling shit-blizzard of lies and half truths?

“Go ahead and put the deputy director through.” With a sigh, Rutgers opened her eyes and turned around.

The large-screen monitor on the north wall flickered to life. Deputy Director Phil Beckett’s angular face appeared, the deep blue, gold-edged FBI seal on the wall behind and just above him. Bannered beneath the emblem’s red stripes: Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity.

It represented the Bureau’s idealistic heart, a dream bold and golden and brimming with hope for each agent, each division.

A dream long lost.

“Monica?” The DD’s voice rumbled up from the comcon monitor. Far from pleased. It matched his tight-jawed expression.

“Here, sir.”

RUTGERS SANK INTO HER chair and rubbed her temples. Her conversation with Beckett had lasted only five minutes, five excruciating minutes. In her favor was the fact that the DD was unaware that she’d sent Sheridan to kill Prejean. Beckett believed that she’d provoked the SB by keeping a tail on Prejean. A tail who’d allowed himself to be caught.

Jesus, Monica, couldn’t you have at least sent a competent agent?

He’s one of my best. I suspect he was unlucky, not incompetent.

I’ll see what I can do to get your man released or at least get one of us admitted into his debriefing.

I appreciate that, Phil.

As far as you’re concerned, Bad Seed no longer exists. Stay the hell out of Underwood’s business. In fact, keep as far from the Shadow Branch as possible.

Believe me, I’d like nothing more.

If you even feel the urge to pull another stunt like this, just tender your resignation and do it as a private citizen because you’ll be done here.

Understood.

Rutgers’s pulse pounded in her aching temples. Nothing had been accomplished. Sheridan was still wounded and in SB hands. And, despite Beckett’s words, likely to remain that way. And she’d been assigned to do damage control. The old cover-your-ass tango.

Rising to her feet, Rutgers went to the beverage cart tucked in the corner, and brewed a cup of vanilla tea. When she returned to her desk, resting her plain lavender mug on a small cup warmer, she glanced at her monitor. The file she’d requested was waiting in her message queue.

Clicking it open, she reviewed the press release that would destroy SA Heather Wallace’s career. And as collateral damage? The career of her father, the renowned and respected FBI forensic expert, SA James William Wallace.

Dammit, I warned her.

As Rutgers read the words she’d composed just a week earlier, she wished that Heather Wallace had never met Dante Prejean or that she had failed to save Prejean from the psycho hunting him.

But most of all, she wished Heather Wallace had listened.

Wallace had been one of the Bureau’s best, her desire to serve the cause of justice undimmed and untarnished, despite six years of working in the criminal investigative division; despite six years of studying the bodies of the brutally murdered.

I want to be a voice for the dead, Wallace had stated on her admissions application. And for six years, she’d been exactly that—a voice for those who’d had their own stolen. For six years, she’d spoken for them: That’s the person who killed me.

Then she’d thrown everything away for a goddamned vampire.

Rutgers took a sip of tea, savoring the hint of vanilla creaminess flavoring the dark tea. Time to quit stalling.

As she punched the intercom, she realized it wasn’t tension knotting the muscles in her chest; it was sorrow. The lovely, intelligent, dedicated agent she’d known as Heather Wallace was dead. Had died the moment she’d first set eyes on Dante Prejean.

Rutgers knew in that moment that she’d ignore Beckett’s orders. That she’d never give up her quest to see beautiful, soul-stealing Dante Prejean dead.

“Ma’am?” Ellis asked.

“Send out the release. Everywhere—the usual drill. Then get me James Wallace at the West Coast lab on the line.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Rutgers owed it to Wallace to let him know what was coming down the pike, courtesy of his daughter. And let him know who to call if Heather should happen to contact him.

Rutgers’s gaze locked on the press release headline: TRAGIC MENTAL ILLNESS CLAIMS FBI STAR PROFILER.