“The first time I started to explain things, I wasn’t as coherent or… calm. They gave me some kind of knock-out drug halfway through before I even got to the part about the cell phone. Next time I tried to tell, I was more cautious in holding back information, and before long I didn’t know what to believe. Maybe I was a mix of rational and delusional. But I didn’t know who to trust with that chip. I was afraid to let even my psychiatrist know. The paranoia paralyzed me. Until Rachel paired me up with the therapy dog, Harley.”
Harley nudged his hand.
Harris stroked the dog’s head in a way that appeared to soothe him. “Rachel said she would go with me to the authorities…” He shrugged. “It didn’t pan out as we’d hoped.”
“What about the chip in the cell phone?”
“I turned it over during my second interview with the OSI.”
“And now there’s no way to verify what you’ve told us.” Damn it, this guy had been stringing them along for nothing. The threats could have all been set up by him, especially if he’d had a psychotic break.
Liam looked from Rocha to James and could see they feared the same thing. That they were stuck in the boonies with a seriously unhinged and dangerous individual.
Harris stuffed his hand behind his back.
“Gun!” Rocha shouted.
Liam and his PJ teammates piled on top of Harris, knocking him from the chair. Harley growled, and from the corner of his eye, Liam saw Rachel grab the dog’s collar. Harris thrashed underneath them. Hard. Damned hard. With punches and kicks of a trained security force specialist. It took all three of them to pin his raging body.
Dimly, Liam heard Catriona scream, felt Rachel’s hand on his arm. The red faded from his eyes and he calmed enough to assess the restrained lieutenant. Harris’s chest heaved, his skin paling. His eyes darted from side to side. He appeared scared—but rational.
Liam leaned to catch Harris’s attention. “Talk to me.”
“No gun,” he said through gritted teeth. “A cell phone. I made a copy of the chip and stored it in another phone.”
Liam nodded to Cuervo to check it out. Cuervo reached into the guy’s back pocket and pulled out…
An iPhone.
Liam rocked back on his heels. “My apologies, Lieutenant.”
Harris sat up slowly, his muscles visibly twitching. “It’s okay. I’d have done the same in your position.”
Rachel knelt beside him with Harley. Harris hooked an arm around the dog’s neck, but he wasn’t meeting Catriona’s gaze across the room. That sure answered a couple more of Liam’s questions. Harris had a thing for the dog-sitter. Made sense that he would be embarrassed around someone he wanted to accept him as manly. Harris didn’t appear to care what Rachel thought of his masculinity.
Harris rubbed the back of his neck. “Any chance you guys can decipher the information on the chip?”
“Good news, bad news. We’re a team for a reason. We all have different skills. And our computer geek, Data—Marcus Dupre—is back home.”
Rachel shoved to her feet. “Now would be a great time for the good news part.”
“We have a generator and top-notch computers here. And thanks to the storm that’s keeping us from leaving, it’s also impossible for anyone to find us. So we have time.”
Time to figure out if the cell phone contained world-shaking information—or if that phone was Brandon Harris’s version of a crazy tinfoil hat.
Either way, he was keeping Harris the hell away from Rachel.
***
Rachel was going seriously stir-crazy.
The cabin that had seemed like such a safe haven initially had now become more of an overcrowded jail cell because of the storm. She sat cross-legged and pretty much useless on a bed with a sunburst quilt.
After Brandon’s meltdown, they’d cranked the generator. Liam hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said it kicked ass. Air conditioners pumped cool air through the shack. Three computers had been set up on the dining table. The Internet was spotty, going in and out as they worked to reach Marcus Dupre. But Liam and the two members of his team were poring over the computer chip, with Brandon trying to break the code.
Catriona and Sunny were in the kitchenette and had quickly evicted Rachel, insisting she’d been on the road longer than they had, so she should rest.
Even the dogs had abandoned her. All four canines had piled pack-style on the porch, not a bad place, since they would serve as a first alert to anyone approaching. Their ears would be better tuned to nuances in the symphony of storm and marsh noises. She hugged her knees, resting her chin on them, drifting off…