Operation Proof of Life by Misty Evans Read Free Book Online Page B

to teeter on her heels, she snagged the first chair she reached at the table, even though it was enough distance from President Jeffries to cause him to raise an eyebrow. She motioned at the newspapers and files fanned out before him. “At it already, I see.”
    He winked at her. “No rest for the wicked.”
    Like most men in power, Jeffries probably had wickedness on tap, to be served up whenever necessary. His good-guy persona wasn’t completely false, but Brigit didn’t trust him any more than she would trust a cobra swaying stealthily in front of her.
    However, as his personal consultant—a job even his wife didn’t realize Brigit held—Jeffries demanded her loyalty like a pet dog on a leash. “So what did you bring me on my enemies today, Doctor?”
    Brigit pulled the BlackBerry from her jacket’s hip pocket and punched several buttons. As the file she wanted emerged on the screen, Michael Stone’s smile flashed across her mind. Blinking it away, she also tamped down the tiny flare of betrayal in her stomach. “Would you like to start with Thad Pennington,” she asked the president, “or Ruth?”

Chapter Seven
    Maryland
    Peter Donovan had known deep passion in his life. Cutting pain as well. He’d sold his soul as a young man for a cause people believed was past history. A bloody, pointless war buried in political correctness these days and discussed in university studies as a conflict .
    Even back home in Belfast, the cause he’d prayed for, bled for and killed for had been reduced to the Bombs and Bullets Tour given by taxi drivers who escorted tourists from the Protestant side of town to the Catholic side and back again. They gawked and snapped photos of monuments and murals depicting the two most prevalent objects in most wars…crosses and guns.
    Fingering the tiny gold cross in his right earlobe, Peter repeated the only prayer he ever said anymore. Know thy enemy. Know thyself . While he still fought for the Catholic tradition, he no longer believed in a merciful or just God. God had deserted him too many times. Left him to bleed and suffer the betrayals of his family, his friends and his conscience. After all the fighting, all the struggles, he now believed only in the truth.
    Before exiting the delivery van he was driving, he slipped a pair of leather gloves on his hands and pulled the brim of his painter’s cap down until it touched the frame of his sunglasses.
    The side of the van was labeled Conglomerate Painting Services. It claimed the company did interior and exterior painting. A toll-free number, long ago disconnected, was stenciled under the lettering.
    Behind the sunglasses, Peter scanned the residential neighborhood as he walked around the van to the sidewalk. Pedestrian traffic was minimal, but starting to pick up. Car traffic was too, as people exited their townhouses and condos and jumped in high-end SUVs for work.
    Dry leaves scattered around his feet, and he flipped the collar of his paint-splattered coveralls up against the cool wind rushing by. As he pushed a button on the key fob, the van’s side door opened to reveal a collection of tarps, paint cans and tools. Hoisting a rolled-up canvas onto his shoulder, he stepped back and hit the key fob button again. The side door slid shut.
    Jogging up the front stairs of the duplex, he kept his head down and whistled softly under his breath. The door was unlocked. Stepping inside, the smell of freshly sawn wood and primer filled his nose. He knocked the brim of his cap up with his knuckles and lowered his sunglasses to glance around. The duplex was undergoing a complete remodel. One that had already taken months longer and thousands of dollars more than the owners had ever dreamed. After today, however, their ailing budget and mounting impatience would dissolve in a heartbeat when the pull of a trigger from the top floor of the duplex sent a message to the world.
    Taking the inside stairs with a purposeful, if slower, gait, Peter