Chapter 11
CHAPTER 11
“ A re you seeing this?” Anna poked her head into Pat’s office.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
For the last few minutes, he’d been glued to his laptop, watching the standoff between Al-Jabiri and Jasmine in the living room, trying to make out what they were saying. Before that, he’d caught a glimpse of Buzzard leaving the house.
“What we need is a lipreader,” he grumbled.
“I’ll see if I can find one,” she offered.
He glanced up, “It might be worth sending them that clip, and seeing what they find.”
“Copy that.” She left the room.
Pat gazed at the image of the empty living room. One thing he’d learned by that exchange was that Jasmine McCarthy was not there voluntarily. She might have the alarm code, and a key, but she was being held against her will. They had something on her, but what, he didn’t know.
So far, everything he’d learned about her was above board. No affair, no secret assignations, no fraudulent behavior or unauthorized sharing of patients’ records. She was as clean as they came.
Sighing, he got back to work. Twenty minutes later, Anna rushed in. “Pat, you’re going to want to read this transcript.”
“Huh?”
“I sent it to the lipreader.” She placed a printed piece of paper on his desk in front of him.
“Holy shit,” he murmured.
“Yeah. I know. We completely missed that she had a child.”
“Where is her son now?” Pat asked. Was that what they were blackmailing her with? Her child? Was that why she was so compliant?
“He’s at a boarding school in Virginia. Name’s Ryan and he’s fourteen years old. Bright kid, according to his teacher.”
“You spoke to them?” Pat asked. “He’s there?”
“Safe and sound,” she confirmed.
“They’re blackmailing her, which means they’re watching the kid.”
This changed everything. They needed Jasmine on their side. She was their way in.
“I’m going to meet with her,” he said abruptly.
Anna’s eyes widened. “Are you sure that’s wise?”
“I’m sure.” His voice brooked no argument. “I can turn her, I know it. If we get her on our side, we’ll have direct intel on Falcon’s operation. It’ll save time. Save lives.”
Anna hesitated. “We don’t know for sure if he’s blackmailing her.”
“Think about it. The phone call at the coffee shop, the tears, the photograph. She was talking to her kid—I’d stake my career on it.” He snapped his fingers and pointed at the screen. “That’s where I’ll confront her tomorrow.”
Pat pressed the buzzer to Izzy’s stylish apartment block and waited as the glass doors slid open. Nodding to Lewis, the concierge, he strode through the marbled lobby to the elevators.
His heart pounded as he rode up to the penthouse. Fuck. He was really doing this. He’d felt calmer dropping into warzones.
He took a few deep breaths, trying to still his nerves.
Please don’t let this be a complete disaster.
Izzy broke into a smile when she opened the door. Her dark hair was loose, and she wore minimal makeup. It struck him, as it always did, how much she looked like her mother. A natural beauty. His chest tightened. Astrid would be so proud of how her daughter had grown up.
“Hey, Pat. Viper said you might stop by. Come on in.”
He followed her into her fashionable living room and stood on the fluffy white rug. The TV, an enormous thing that covered most of the wall, was on, but muted. “I was just watching some reality TV nonsense,” she said, switching it off. “How about a drink?”
“Sure. I brought this.” He put the bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, which he knew she liked, down on the countertop.
“Brilliant. I could use a glass. Viper just left for the airport.” She sobered. “You’re not sending him anywhere too dangerous, are you, Pat?”
“Nothing he can’t handle.”
If she knew what her fiancé was doing in Colombia, she’d probably never speak to him again. Fast-roping from a helo into dense jungle, sneaking into a heavily guarded cartel compound, locating a kidnapped American exec being held for ransom, and probably engaging in a brutal firefight on the way out.
Viper’s night was just getting started.
If things went sideways, he’d need to improvise. Move through hostile terrain with cartel enforcers on their heels, reaching the extraction point at the river, where a CIA helo would be waiting to get them out before reinforcements arrived.
Pat exhaled. Yeah. Nothing he can’t handle.
She handed him two glasses and he poured the wine.
“To a successful mission,” she said, holding it up.
“I’ll drink to that.”
Taking her glass, she sank onto the leather sofa. “Now, why are you really here? You checking up on me?”
He sat tentatively beside her. “Actually, there was something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.” Fuck, this was hard. “It’s about your mother?”
“Oh, really? That’s a coincidence, because I’ve been meaning to talk to you about her too.”
He was momentarily thrown.
“You have?”
“Yes, I wanted to ask how you two met? I mean, I know you go way back to before I was born, but no one’s ever told me how.” A cloud passed over her face. “She was very fond of you. I remember, you were always at our house.”
He’d spent more time at Astrid’s house than his own. Mostly, because she had Izzy, so it made more sense for him to go there. When she’d left for college, they’d behaved like man and wife. It had been tough pretending otherwise when she came home for the holidays, and it was even worse when Richard came back, and he couldn’t see them at all.
He hesitated. This wasn’t the direction he was hoping to go in, but maybe it would help soften the blow.
“We met when we were both young. I had just joined the Navy, and your mother was still modeling. It was in a bar in Virginia Beach—she was out with friends, and I was on leave, blowing off steam. The base wasn’t far, and my buddies and I were raising hell, as usual. Then I looked up… and there she was.”
He smiled at the memory. “She was breathtaking. Just walked right past me to the bar, and for the first time in my life, I was completely lost for words.”
Izzy stared at him, surprised. He could tell this wasn’t the story she’d expected, but he pushed on.
“I bought her a drink and we got talking. She was smart and funny, and we hit it off.”
“You mean romantically?” Her eyes widened.
He chuckled. “Yeah, romantically.”
“No freaking way!”
“Yeah. We spent the whole weekend together, and then?—”
“You slept with her?”
He stopped, worried by her response.
“Oh, my God. You did, didn’t you?”
He gave a slow nod.
“So, what happened? Why did you split up?”
“We didn’t split up, it was more like we never got together.”
Izzy frowned. “I don’t understand. I mean, I know you didn’t have cellphones in those days, but surely you could have made a plan?”
He laughed. “It wasn’t that simple. I left for my first tour of the Middle East. It was a six-month stint and had no way of calling her.” Special ops, active duty, behind enemy lines. There was no way he’d been able to promise her anything.
She looked disappointed. “So, you lost touch?”
“Yeah. It was several years before I saw her again. I was home on leave, and she looked me up.”
“Did she want to hook up again?”
He shook his head. “No, she wanted to tell me she was married.”
Izzy shook her head. “Oh, no. I’m so sorry, Pat. You must have been gutted.”
“I was, but shortly after that, I found myself back overseas and the years flew by.”
“But hold on, I remember you from when I was little. I remember playing with Joe in the yard.”
“I was married by then. Val and I ran into Astrid and Richard in D.C. They’d recently moved to the same area. We began to see each other socially, and you kids played together. It was nice.”
“But nobody knew about your past relationship?”
He shook his head.
Izzy studied him, like she wanted to say something, but didn’t know how. He took a deep breath.
“It was only when Val passed away, that we grew close again.”
“You got back together? But what about my father?”
Pat clenched his jaw. “Richard was away a lot?—”
She gasped. “So you had an affair? Oh, my God. How did I not know this?”
“I’m sorry, Izzy. We couldn’t tell you. We couldn’t tell anyone.”
There was an awkward silence as she struggled to process what he’d just said. Eventually, she shook her head. “I guess I understand. I barely remember him from those early years. Even when I grew up, he was always away.”
Relief flooded through him. “You’re not mad?”
“Why would I be mad? I get it. At least she had someone to look after her when my dad was away.” She reached over and patted his arm. “You’re like a favorite uncle, I’m so glad it was you.”
“There's something else,” he said, his stomach in knots.
Crunch time. He couldn’t bail now. He had to see this through.
“What is it? Does it have something to do with how she died?”
“Kind of . . .”
She stared at her glass of wine. “I wasn’t there. A police officer came to find me and gave me the news.”
She must have been devastated.
Pat took her hand and held it in his. “Richard found out about us. That’s why they were arguing.”
“How?” she whispered.
“Honestly, I don’t know how he found out, but he did. He was furious. I felt terrible. I should never have left your mother with him. If I’d stayed—” He broke off as his voice cracked.
“Why didn’t you stay?” she asked, pinning him with her gaze.
“Because that wasn’t the only thing he discovered.”
“What else was there?”
Pat hesitated before answering.
“Pat,” she prompted, her lower lip quivering. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Shit, Izzy. I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just going to come out with it. Richard found out that he wasn’t your biological father.”
Her hand flew to her mouth. “You?” she whispered.
He nodded.
“Oh, my God!” She jumped up, knocking over her wine.
“Izzy–!”
She was shaking her head like she couldn’t believe what she’d just heard.
“Izzy, I know it must come as a shock, and I wasn’t sure whether I should tell you or not. But after everything that’s happened, after nearly losing you last year, I couldn’t keep it in anymore.”
She glared at him. “ Of course you should have told me! Don’t you think I have a right to know who my own father is?” She paced up and down, reminding him of himself. “I can’t believe this. All this time I thought Richard was my father. The man who abandoned us, who missed all my birthday parties, and never came to my school plays. You let me think he was my dad, when my real father was there all the time?”
Pat got to his feet. “I’m sorry?—"
But she cut him off, still pacing. “It all makes sense now. How you were the one who was always there, never him. How you always kept an eye on me, came to my graduation, came to my rescue when I got kidnapped.” Her eyes widened. “It was all you !”
He nodded.
She threw herself onto the sofa. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know until your father found out and confronted us. She kept it from me too.”
Izzy shook her head. “That was eight years ago.”
A sob escaped her, and he wanted more than anything to take her into his arms and give her a hug, but the look in her eye told him not to.
“Izzy–”
“I need you to go.”
“Come on, let’s talk about this.”
“Please, Pat. Just go.”
So he left, feeling like the biggest dick in the world.