Rafe Sinclair's Revenge

The Phoenix Brotherhood was a private organization that had been formed by Cabot and a few of his ex-operatives. No longer under government direction, they set their own agenda, bringing the skills they once had used in the defense of their country to bear on all manner of private problems. As much as he’d like Sinclair to be a part of what they were doing, however, that hadn’t been his purpose in seeking him out.

“You were never much inclined to social visits, so…” Rafe walked over to the rosewood box to compare the curve of the handle he’d just created with the original.

“There’s something I thought you should see.”

Cabot reached into the breast pocket of his blazer and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. He didn’t bother to open it before he held it out to Sinclair.

There was a hesitation, long enough that Cabot had time to wonder what he would do if Rafe refused to read the information contained in the security alert. After all, Sinclair had been adamant about leaving the agency, so much so that eventually Griff had been forced to stop arguing against it or risk their friendship.

Finally the blue eyes lifted from the unopened paper. They studied Griff’s face for a few seconds before Rafe’s lips compressed. Then the same long, scarred fingers that had delicately shaped that piece of rosewood reached out to take the alert.

Sinclair unfolded it with a flick of his wrist, holding the document out between them. His eyes rose again—briefly—as soon as he saw the heading.

Griff could read the question in them, but he didn’t bother to respond. There would soon be other questions that would have to be answered.

After a moment Rafe’s gaze returned to the alert that had been clandestinely, and illegally, passed on from one of Griff’s contacts within the CIA. Carl Steiner had thought this was something he ought to know. As soon as Griff read it, he had called to reserve a seat on the first flight out of Washington.

“Why are you showing this to me?” Rafe asked.

“You’re the expert on Jorgensen. I thought if you could shed any light—”

“He’s dead,” Sinclair said flatly.

There was no overt emotion in the phrase, but his hatred for the man the pronoun referred to permeated each syllable. The force of it held Griff silent for a moment.

“The signature of those last two bombings has been the same. It’s distinctive enough that the agency’s experts—”

“Screw the agency and their experts. I’m telling you Jorgensen is dead.”

“There’s always the possibility—”

“I watched the bastard die. Whoever this is, it isn’t Jorgensen.”

Without denying what Rafe had said, Griff let the silence stretch again. The tension it produced grew as the slow seconds ticked off, their eyes locked.

Finally, Griff asked, “And you’re willing to stake her life on your certainty of that?”

The blue eyes changed, darkening as they always did when Sinclair was angry. Of course, that wasn’t all he was seeing in them now, Griff acknowledged. He had known this man too long and too well to be mistaken about what was there.

“You bastard,” Rafe Sinclair said, the words so soft they were almost a whisper. “You conniving bastard. You haven’t changed at all, have you? You’re still doing their dirty work. They sent you here—”

“Nobody sent me,” Cabot interrupted, his own anger flaring unexpectedly. “Least of all the agency. I assure you they no longer have the power to send me anywhere.” Rafe should know better than that. He should know him better.

“You’re here strictly out of friendship.” The tone this time was mocking. Sardonic.

“I’m here because I thought you should know about that,” Griff said, gesturing with an upward tilt of his chin toward the CIA document. “What you do with the information is up to you. Good luck with the pistol,” he added before he turned, striding across the workshop to the outside door.

He had almost reached it when Rafe’s voice stopped him.

“If I’m wrong about your motives, I apologize. I’m not wrong about the other. Jorgensen is dead. You can tell Steiner that I guarantee it. Tell him that whoever this is was probably a protégé. An admirer perhaps. Imitation is still the sincerest form of flattery.”

“There have been a couple of sightings,” Griff said without turning. “One in Bern. Another in Prague.”

“There are always sightings. How many times has someone reported that they’ve seen Mengele?”

It was an apt analogy, given the death and destruction Gunther Jorgensen had been responsible for.

“I thought you should know,” Griff said again. “For what it’s worth.”

He took another step, the next to the last that would carry him out from under the artificial light of the workshop and into the daylight. Automatically, the force of habit too deeply ingrained to deny, his eyes surveyed the panorama spread out before him. Somewhere in the distance a thrush sang. There were no other sounds.

“You ever get the urge to say ‘I told you so’?” the man behind him asked.

“Occasionally. I try to resist.”

“I’m not sure I’d be able to,” Rafe said. And then he added, the mockery wiped from his tone, “Thanks for coming.”

There was another long beat of silence.

“Do you know where she is?” Griff asked, and then wished he hadn’t.

“Of course,” Sinclair said simply.

Unconsciously, Cabot nodded, the movement subtle enough that the man behind him was probably unaware of it. He took a deep breath and stepped through the doorway and out into the slant of late-afternoon sunshine.

He walked to the car he had rented at the Charlotte airport and climbed in without looking back. He was aware almost subliminally as he turned the wheel to pull onto the unpaved drive that Sinclair was standing in the doorway of the workshop, watching him.

And he knew, because they had once been as close as brothers, that the far-seeing gaze of those blue eyes would follow his car until it had disappeared into the twilight haze that gathered over these ancient mountains.

Some things never change.

Chapter One

The woman known as Beth Anderson lifted her hand from the key she’d just inserted into the ignition to adjust the rearview mirror of the SUV, pretending to check her makeup. As an added bit of play-acting, she touched her index finger to the small indention in the center of her top lip as if wiping away a smudge of lipstick.

Not that she could see her lip, since the mirror was focused on the line of cars behind her in the grocery store parking lot. And there was nothing suspicious about any of them. No one suspicious.

With the late-afternoon heat, there was almost no one in the parking lot at all, which made her feel more than a little foolish. It was a feeling she was becoming accustomed to.

She reached up and readjusted the mirror, putting it back into driving position. Old habits die hard, she thought. In this case, it was more like a resurrected habit. Resurrected from a life that was long dead.

She couldn’t remember making such a conscious effort to be aware of her surroundings in years. All week long, however, she’d had the sensation that someone was watching her. Maybe even following her.

In the quiet, summer sombulance of Magnolia Grove, Mississippi, that was patently ridiculous. And that was exactly what she’d been telling herself since the first flutter of that “eyes on the back of her neck” feeling had drifted along her spine.

She’d been out of the game too long for anyone to be interested in her. Her current position as the junior partner in a two-person law firm had once or twice evoked an angry response from someone she’d gone after in court. No one, including Elizabeth herself, could believe that any of her current cases might generate enough heat to cause someone to trail her around.

The whole thing was ridiculous. There wasn’t a single, solitary reason under the sun for anyone to be remotely interested in her daily routine.