Troublemaker Read online

  “Do you remember what happened?”

  “Yeah.” Maybe he was mentally fuzzy, but he wasn’t amnesiac.

  MacNamara pulled a chair around and dropped into it. He was lean to the point of spareness, just a little above average height, but no one would ever mistake his lack of size as a lack of power. He was intense and ruthless, just the kind of guy the GO-Teams needed to watch their backs.

  “Do you know who shot you?”

  “No.” Morgan drew a breath. “Do you?”

  “He was Russian mob.”

  Morgan blinked, flummoxed as much as he was capable of being flummoxed. Russian? Mob? What the hell? He didn’t have anything to do with the Russian mob. “No shit?”

  “No shit.”

  “I don’t know . . . anyone in the Russian mob.” He’d started to say he didn’t know any Russians, but remembered that he did in fact know a number of Russians—none of them in the mob, though. “What’s his name?”

  “Albert Rykov. Was. He’s dead.”

  Good, Morgan thought. He didn’t have a lot of forgiveness for people who shot him . . . none, in fact. “I’ve never heard of him.” A sluggish thought occurred: “Maybe he was after someone else?”

  “No.” Axel’s tone was flat, certain. He wasn’t entertaining any doubt whatsoever.

  “Why would the Russian mob target me?” That didn’t make any sense at all. He scrubbed his hand over his face, felt the rasp of whiskers even though he had a vague memory of one of the nurses shaving him at one time or another . . . maybe. Then he stared in shock at his own hand, at how thin and almost translucent it was, not like his hand at all though he knew it was because it was attached to the end of his arm . . . which also looked freakishly thin. For a minute he fought a sense of disconnection, fought to bring his thoughts back on track. What had they been talking about? Right—the Russians.

  “They didn’t. Rykov was attached to the mob, but this looks like an independent hit. Someone outside hired it done.”

  In that case, the possibilities were legion because he still couldn’t think why anyone would want him dead, which theoretically left the world’s entire population in play.

  “Walk me through everything that happened after you reached stateside,” Axel said, leaning back and crossing his arms.

  “I debriefed”—he figured that was already known, given that Axel would have all the paperwork—“grabbed a bite to eat at a McDonald’s, went home, took a shower, and went to sleep. Slept a full twenty-four. Then I worked on my gear, took a run in the dark, came home, went back to sleep.” The simple statements were punctuated by pauses to catch his breath.

  “Anything happen at the McDonald’s? Or during your run? Who did you talk to?”

  “No, no, and no one, other than the cashier who handed my order out the drive-through window.”

  “Did you recognize the cashier?”

  “No. It was some kid.”

  “Did you see anything inside the restaurant?”

  “No.” He was sure of that because he remembered being a little uneasy by his restricted line of sight. After a mission, it always took a while to decompress and ease out of combat mode.

  “Then what?”

  Morgan blew out a breath, tried to whip up his rapidly flagging energy—not that he’d had much to begin with. He was so weak he didn’t recognize his own body, which made him feel even more disconnected than maybe was accounted for by the drugs. “When I woke up, I wanted to go fishing. I called Kodak but he was otherwise occupied, so I went alone.”

  Axel nodded. Morgan figured he already knew that, just as he’d known about the debriefing. “Did you talk to anyone?”

  “Congresswoman Kingsley and her husband. They were on the river.”

  “Anyone with them?”

  “No, they were by themselves.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Not to talk to.” A memory niggled at him. “Brawley—the marina manager—said hello.”

  Axel was a master at reading nuances of expression. “And . . . ?”

  Until he heard the “and,” Morgan hadn’t been aware there was an “and.” He took a deep breath, cut it short when the pain in his chest cut into him. “Could be coincidence, but he made a call after talking to me.”

  “How soon after?”

  “Immediately.”

  “Cell phone?” If Brawley had used a cell, Axel could use the time and the cell towers to get a bead on the possible call recipients.

  “No.” Very clearly, Morgan saw in his mind the old-fashioned corded phone Brawley had used. “Corded landline.”

  “Shit.” Frustration was clear in the word. Getting the info wasn’t impossible, but it would require a warrant. Technology would let them bypass that little detail if the call had been made on a cell.

  But, regardless of the phone call, Morgan couldn’t think of any way Brawley would know where he lived or, more importantly, why he would need to set up a hit.

  The effort to sit up and answer questions was wearing on him hard. He didn’t have much more juice left in him. “No reason,” he muttered, letting his head drop back. His eyes closed automatically, and he fought them open again.

  “What?” Axel demanded.

  Morgan focused, laboriously reconstructed his thoughts. “No reason for Brawley,” he finally said, or thought he said. Maybe his mouth wasn’t working. His eyes closed again. But he didn’t care because darkness was rising up and swallowing him whole, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  The next time he saw Axel, Morgan was actually sitting up under his own power. It was almost three weeks since he’d been shot; he knew because he’d asked. Sitting up wasn’t all he could do. Twice a day for the last couple of days he’d taken a few steps across the small room, bracketed on each side by nurses so he didn’t face-plant. He was eating halfway-solid food now, and he’d never before in his life been so grateful for mashed potatoes, or oatmeal. He didn’t even like oatmeal. Tomorrow, they’d told him, he could have eggs. He’d requested steak with those eggs, and they’d laughed at him. Hands down they were the meanest nurses he’d ever been around.

  Even more disturbing, he was beginning to love them.

  He didn’t know how long it had been since Axel had been there, but he figured it was about a week. The only surprising thing was that Axel hadn’t been there every day to badger more details out of him.

  Sometimes Axel’s persistent nitpicking was a pain in the ass, but now Morgan would have welcomed it because he wanted to get the bastard or bastards who had set up the ambush. It was typical of Axel that he’d chosen that time to stay away.

  “About time,” Morgan said by way of greeting.

  “I’ve been busy, running down details and setting things up.”

  “What things? What details?”

  “That’s what I’m here to tell you,” Axel snapped as he dropped into the visitor’s chair.

  Being snapped at was good; if Axel had tried to be kind—with emphasis on the word “tried,” because he’d never really succeed—Morgan would have suspected he wasn’t recovering as well as a few steps and mashed potatoes would indicate.

  “So, talk.”

  “You were located by your boat registration. We’ve found where someone hacked into state records and got your info off your registration form.”

  There was something wrong with that. Morgan said, “I use my post office box as my mailing address.”

  “Yes, but the form also includes your Virginia driver’s license number and your social security number. Those were both traced, and that’s how they got your address.”

  “The big question is why.”

  “Yeah. But there’s another wrinkle, one that’s even more serious.”

  It was almost amusing that Axel would think something was more serious than one of his operatives being targeted. Well, given that he dealt with global issues, he was probably right; Morgan had to give him that.

  “When you were first brought in, w