Page 76 of Chasing Grace
“The buzz around Washington has him hinting about the possibility of throwing his hat in the ring for the next election,” the colonel said.
Next to Grant, Chase leaned his ass against the table and crossed his arms. “So he uses a domestic terrorist event and his position as the Secretary of Homeland Security to secure the majority of votes, and boom, he’s the next president.”
“Holy shit,” Grant muttered. Nothing sent the masses to the polling stations like the threat of domestic terrorism. And the man who would get the credit for defending the United States of America against the single biggest terrorist attack since 9/11 would reap the benefits all the way to the White House.
It was a brilliant strategy. One he had a decent chance of pulling off, right up until he involved Grace Emerson. “So, why pull Gray in?” Grant asked before he could catch himself. This wasn’t his problem, and these weren’t his people.
“Goes back to Jordan,” Jay said, looking over the top of his computer screen at Gray. “Why did Jackson send you to Ruwaished?”
A shadow of pain ghosted across Gray’s face before she buried it under a frown. “I never knew why Jackson sent me anywhere.” She shrugged. “We didn’t work that way. He wrote the stories. I took the pictures. That’s it.”
“But you had a target,” Adam said.
Gray shrugged again. “H5 pre-positioned cache on the northern border of Iraq.”
Colonel Grayson’s gaze cut sharp to his daughter, his eyes narrowing. “That’s classified intelligence. Nobody knows about H5.
She rolled her eyes. “From what I saw,everybodyknows about H5.”
“What did you see?” Grant and Chase asked at the same damn time.
Bracketed between the driver of the Suburban and the big bastard with the John Deere ball cap, Gray had been studiously ignoring both Grant and Chase for the past thirty minutes. Apparently, they were still in the doghouse because she didn’t look their way when she responded, “Trucks, crates, handshakes. The usual shady shit. I caught some faces but didn’t get close enough to see inside the containers before they were loaded.”
“Got close enough to get shot,” Canker mumbled.
Next to Gray, John Deere swelled to twice his size. “Shut the fuck up, Hoyt.”
“The MANPADS,” Jay said, making a connection Grant didn’t get.
“Motherfucker.” The man standing closest to the colonel scrubbed a huge hand over his shaved head. “Johnson was using his kid to steal the missiles. He sells them to the middleman in Lebanon. They scrub the serial numbers and make a profit selling them back to Bodak.”
Jay nodded. “Not just Jonas Junior, but yeah, it looks that way.”
“So, Gray gets too close for comfort, and Junior takes his best shot.” The man with the long blond hair shook his head. “Then what? He grows a pair, decides Daddy’s an asshole, and saves the woman he shot in the first place?”
“Somebody applied the tourniquet to Gray’s leg and radioed for the medics,” Jay replied, grinning when she cocked a brow at him. “Genius hacker, remember.”
“How about you, Gray? You remember anything after being shot?” Adam asked.
She shook her head. “Nothing until I woke up in Amman. I never saw Jonas Junior until he came to the hospital in Miami.”
“Where’s he now?” Colonel Grayson demanded.
A couple of taps and Jay responded, “Arlington Cemetery, sir. Jonas Johnson Junior was killed in action three weeks after returning to Jordan.”
“Fuck. You think Johnson killed his own kid as part of a cover-up?” John Deere asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” Adam replied. “Johnson blames Gray for setting off the chain of events.”
“Not just Gray. Secretary Johnson handpicked the colonel too.” Chase looked at his boss. “Did he suggest Adam for the JTT as well?”
The colonel nodded sharply—once. “He did.”
“Okay, so you have your guy. Now what?” Gray demanded, getting to the point. The woman had a hard shell, no question, but on the inside, she wasn’t as tough as she pretended to be. Grant had wiped the tears off her cheeks earlier. When it came to her friend, he’d witnessed her pain up close and personal.
“Well, I don’t know about the rest of you,” Adam said. “But I’m done with playing Johnson’s game. He’s been messing with us for two long years. Thanks to Gray, we have the advantage. I say we cut the strings, roll the dice, and make Johnson bleed.”
The majority of heads in the room nodded in agreement with Adam’s take on things. These cowboys were ready, willing, and able to take this to the next level. It was a ballsy move considering how well connected Johnson appeared to be. Not to mention, they didn’t have a clue how deep the corruption went. For all they knew, they could be taking on some of the most powerful political figures in Washington.
