The Woman Left Behind: A Novel Read online

  Dedication

  To all the Avon/HarperCollins editors and assistants and production staff who work tirelessly to make a book the best it can be, and to the art department for an awesome cover.

  To my sweet girl Molly, who went to doggie heaven almost a year ago. I miss you every day, pretty girl.

  To Tank, who climbs in my lap to cuddle and give comfort, and leaves behind enough white fur that I could knit another dog—if I knew how to knit, which I don’t.

  To the FBI, for not coming knocking on my door demanding to know why I was Googling such alarming things as mobile missile placement, Syria, night-vision devices, and such things as that. Thanks for not arresting me. I’m just a writer. Honest.

  To my agent, Robin Rue, and my editor, May Chen, for the endless support this past year.

  And last but definitely not least, to my beloved friends and family. I hesitate to start listing you, for fear of inadvertently leaving someone out, but if you count yourself as either, then know you’re in my heart.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Troublemaker

  About the Author

  Also by Linda Howard

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Congresswoman Joan Kingsley moved quietly through the deep night-shadows of her home, not turning on any lights because darkness suited her these days. She resented the sun for shining, people for laughing, the days for passing. The anguish in her heart, her soul, was too all-encompassing for her to do anything more than function as she must.

  She hated the house. It was big, much too big for just her, but even hating it now she couldn’t bring herself to leave it. She and Dexter had fallen in love with this house as soon as they saw it; they’d strained every financial muscle they had to buy it, but from the first it had felt like home, like them. They had raised their son here. Here they had seen their dreams of power and riches come true; oh, they’d worked their asses off to make those dreams come true, but this was where so much of it all had been planned and seen to fruition.

  It was just so empty now, without Dexter.

  She had loved him so much—still loved him. Death didn’t stop love, it just kept on, an ache now instead of a glow.

  And it was her fault he was dead—hers, and Axel MacNamara’s. She hated that son of a bitch with a fierceness that had only grown with time. He was still having her watched, followed, every communication intercepted and read. Well, he thought he was having every communication intercepted, but with luck, what he didn’t know would definitely hurt him. She was planning on it.

  MacNamara thought he had her pinned down. He’d forced her to resign from her position of power, her husband was dead, her cohort within the GO-Teams had fled the country.

  She was content to let him think that, for now. Devan Hubbert was smarter than any of the other computer experts MacNamara had on staff, way smarter. Given the time and tools, there was no firewall he couldn’t get through, no system he couldn’t penetrate, no go-around he couldn’t devise, and when the circumstances called for it, he was flexible enough to revert to low tech. He’d been in touch with her within a week of leaving the country.

  She didn’t know why; she had no power left to broker, thanks to MacNamara. She had no intel or influence to sell. Devan had been there for the money, the same as she had. Staying in power in D.C. was damned expensive, but that was where you had to be to make the real money. Dexter had been content, really, with what they already had, but he’d supported her all the way in her plan to sell relatively minor intel to the Russians and profit enormously. With enough money and power behind her, she could have gone all the way to the White House. How bitterly ironic that Dexter had been the one to lose his life because of the scheme, instead of her. He’d been doing what he’d done all along, backing her up.

  For whatever reason, Devan had kept in touch. He had an idea for exacting revenge on MacNamara. Maybe he saw the possibility for making more money, though she couldn’t see how; the knowledge of her involvement with the Russians might be contained, for now, but killing MacNamara wouldn’t make it go away.

  She didn’t care. Money didn’t matter, not now. All she wanted was to make Axel MacNamara pay for Dexter’s death, and if she could take down his precious GO-Teams at the same time, all the better.

  One way or another, he had to die.

  One

  “You’re all being reassigned,” Axel MacNamara said tersely.

  Ten workers from various departments were crammed into MacNamara’s office, which was surprisingly drab and small for the head of an organization. Jina Modell hadn’t been lucky enough to be one of the first two to arrive, so they had gotten the two visitors’ chairs and she and the other seven stood in various uncomfortable poses around the cramped room.

  Her first reaction to MacNamara’s announcement was one of relief; none of them had known the reason for the mass summons and she’d expected they were, at best, being laid off, though she’d been braced for the worst—being fired—because budget cuts happened, even to dark projects funded by money that was deeply buried and almost invisible.

  She evidently wasn’t the only one of her fellow workers to think that, because a low sigh, almost a hum, of relief went around the room.

  Then she frowned. Yes, having a job was nice, and this one was very nice. She worked in Communications, and she really liked it. She liked the money, she liked the coolness factor—and it was way cool, even for D.C.—plus she liked the vicarious satisfaction of kicking terrorist butt through the actions of the GO-Teams, all without ever leaving the climate-controlled comfort of the Communications room. She liked climate-controlled comfort. Being reassigned might not be such a good thing.

  “To where?” she asked, after a moment of silence with no one else voicing the question.

  MacNamara didn’t even glance at her. “The Teams,” he replied, picking up a sheet of paper and scowling down at it as if he didn’t like what was written there, though as head of the agency he was almost certainly the one who had done the writing. “Donnelly, you go to Kodak’s team. Ervin, you’re on Snowman. Modell, Ace.” He continued reading down the list, giving them their assigned team, though none of them knew yet what the hell they were supposed to do.

  “Ace” was the call sign for Levi Butcher. She knew the name but had never personally met any of the team operatives. Ace had the reputation for pulling some of the toughest jobs and now, oh hell, just what was she being reassigned to do?

  Jina had trained herself to think before she spoke, because the cool job required it. No one could know what she really did, or where she really worked. She made herself pause and think now—for a whole second, because questions needed to be asked and no one else, evidently intimidated by MacNamara’s nasty reputation, was making a move to ask those questions.

  She raised her hand. MacNamara must have caught the motion, because he paused in his reading to lift his head and bark “What?” at her.

  “What are we