Loose Ends (The Hammer Commission Book 3) Read online

"Sure it is. Now when?"

  Helena sighed, "After telling the others not to bother you, I can hardly bother you now myself, now can I?"

  "Helena," Mark said in a very soft and low voice. He noticed the two in the back were suddenly being very quiet. "Did you ever think that maybe I wanted more children with you?"

  Mark almost laughed as Helena turned the brightest shade of red that he could ever recall seeing her blush.

  "Ummm..." Helena said eyes focused on the road, "soon?" she said, her voice almost a squeak.

  Mark smiled and put his hand on her arm. He'd get closer but the console was in the way and she was driving, "Love you, Hon."

  Helena purred almost the entire drive back to Hope's house.

  "I expect to see you the moment you go in," Mark said and leaned over to give Helena a kiss as he opened the door to get out. He looked at Denise and Dave, "Get that stuff burned, and don't let the head anywhere near the body."

  "You got it!" Denise said and Mark hopped out of the truck and let himself be dragged off by Hope who had come out and grabbed his arm and was pulling him back towards her house.

  "Where the hell were you!" She growled.

  "Sorry, Dear, work stuff."

  "Don't you ever do this to me again, understand?" she growled.

  Mark smiled and scooping her up, he threw her over his shoulder and ran for the door. Hope got very militant when she was in heat, unlike Helena who became a complete creampuff.

  "I love you too," he chuckled and going inside, took her to the bedroom, before she decided that any place in the house was good enough, now that her mate was here.

  # #

  Mark yawned and stretched as Helena and Hope cuddled up against him, one on each side. It was nice to be home again, he was going to have to talk with both his boss, Father Otto back at Manresa, as well as Agent Woods back in Washington. He'd been away too long, and the urge to stop running around was starting to get rather strong, especially now that he didn't have Jake around to always egg him on. He'd done his part and they were training up a bunch of new recruits anyway. Maybe it was time to pass on the torch and let the others handle things. Or at least stick to one continent, so he could live at home again.

  He looked at Hope, who was half-awake now and smiling and gave her a kiss. Helena was still out like a light. Apparently 'soon' had meant 'Saturday' and Helena had showed up in serious full-blown heat. Mark hadn't dealt with two of his wives like that since back when he'd first been turned when Faith and Hope had both hit at almost the same time.

  Either he was getting stronger with age, or they were mellowing out, because he was still conscious.

  He smiled at that, Hope and Helena didn't often end up in bed together with him. Part of that was because Hope rarely argued with Helena and usually did what Helena told her too, and when she didn't, well Helena looked the other way. But with them in heat, and the way it affected them each so differently, it had been a rather interesting affair. Hope had ruled the bedroom all weekend, and Helena hadn't minded one single bit.

  Once again Mark was reminded how lucky he was that none of his women fought with each other. Oh, they had their minor snits and arguments, but they never really fought or really got mad with one another. The same couldn't be said about his daughters, sadly. While Jess and Gail were like sisters, Karen and Christine hated each other and Melanie didn't seem to care much about any of her sisters, half or full. At least Melanie got on great with her brothers as well as her mothers.

  Picking up his phone Mark turned it on and checked what day it was, the clock said it was only seven in the morning, but he had no idea if it was Monday or Tuesday. He'd had his mind on 'other' things.

  "Going somewhere?" Hope growled playfully and latched on to him tightly.

  "Just seeing what I missed," Mark said and yawned again. He'd have to see about some food soon as well, his stomach was starting to growl rather loudly.

  "I've heard that line before," Hope said.

  "Me too," Helena said yawning as she woke up.

  "Yeah," Mark agreed, "but I've been thinking."

  "Of what?" Helena asked and pulled his head down for a kiss.

  "Of working out of Portland," he told the two of them.

  "Really!" they both said together, getting rather happy looks on their faces to Mark's surprise.

  Mark set the phone back down and wrapping and arm around each of them, pulled them close. "I've got cubs on the way, I'll need to be home more to help keep them out of trouble, plus, after all this time, I think I've paid my dues. I think I've earned this."

  "What if they say no?" Helena asked.

  "They won't say no," Mark smiled.

  "Why not?"

  "Because I'll quit."

  Mark was suddenly inundated with kisses from two very happy wives.

  Breakfast was obviously going to have to wait.

  20: FBI Field Office, Portland,, Oregon

  "Ah, Mark. Nice to see you're still among the living," Agent Woods joked as they all gathered in a secure conference room. Agent Woods had flown out to Oregon to meet with Mark, Michael, and Denise to go over the events of last week personally, rather than debrief via conference call, or even a secure teleconference.

  Mark smiled and shrugged, "Hey, Chief, I'm a family man, what can I say?"

  Woods chuckled and motioned to Michael and Denise, "So, is it safe to assume these two are doing okay then?"

  Mark nodded, still smiling, "Yup, though in the case of Denise I think perhaps it's my son Dave that is the one having to do the most adjusting."

  Denise snorted at that and Michael did his best not to laugh.

  "Well, that's good. I've been going over your reports; I noticed you left a few names out?"

  Mark nodded, "I still think it's best if we don't put the names of any friendlies into the system. Politics change, as we both know, and these people aren't going to want to keep helping us if they start getting approached by regular humans, especially if those humans have government written all over them. Plus, let's be honest, how secret is anything in Washington once it gets passed around to all the other agencies?"

  "Agreed, and it enhances our position if people have to go through us, and not around us, or should I say, you?" Woods asked with a questioning look.

  "You have to understand my position here, Chief. Because of who and what I am, I have responsibilities to the other lycans out there that I deal with. They are willing to work with us, not only because I'm a lycan like them, but because they know I won't out them, or let them come to the attention of others in the government. They don't trust the government, because they don't trust humans all that much. It's a paranoia that's pretty ingrained in all of us, along with the desire to not come to the public's attention."

  Mark shrugged, his hands in the air, "That may change in time, but the only way to get there is to earn it."

  Woods sat back in his chair with a thoughtful look, "I understand, and it's not like they're breaking any laws, or are even a threat. Still, I would love to recruit more of them for the agency, and not just because having more lycans in my group would help with the mission. Henry and the oversight committee have been becoming really impressed with the rather strong commitment lycans seem to have to law and order as well as their extra abilities."

  Mark thought about that a moment, in a way it made sense, but lycans were primarily committed to their own laws and following them first and foremost. Then again, that was from his more feline influenced perspective. From what he'd seen, wolves were very much about rules and teams, even the bears he'd met seemed to feel that way. Unlike say the cougars he knew who were more about just staying out of the public eye than following the laws, actually he was pretty sure that applied to most of the feline lycans.

  "I'd tell them not to rush in on that," Mark said, thinking of some of the stunts his own kids had pulled. "But I will do what I can to encourage those who I believe would do well in law enforcement jobs to apply."

  Woods n
odded, "I'll pass on your recommendation, you're still our only real expert on the subject." Woods picked up the file on the desk before him, "Now, let's go over the case. I see where the local team went through the surveillance footage of the two gas stations she stopped at and identified two more victims?"

  "Yes," Mark said, nodding. "Plus the one in the car, Mr. Cole, her father, mother, and the others at the ritual site."

  "Do you think that's all of them?"

  "I don't know for sure. There's the possibility she may have picked up another hitchhiker or two on the ride here, and there is also the possibility that she might have gotten someone, somewhere else that we missed. The only thing we can do is to keep an eye on missing person's reports and the reports on any discovered dead bodies."

  "What did Walters and Timms tell the folks down in Klamath?" Michael asked.

  "We came up with a story of a ritual gone bad. That they were experimenting with some mind enhancing drugs and that one of them went into a psychotic rage, and killed the others. Then the next day when they realized what they had done, they committed suicide," Woods told them.

  Michael nodded slowly, "Not like anyone is going to say otherwise."

  "Exactly," Woods agreed, "also, they were experimenting with things better left untouched."

  "I do wonder," Mark said, "if that girl Beth was like that at the start, or if she was corrupted by the power because of where it came from?"

  "That is the timeless question," Woods agreed. "Does power corrupt? Or does it just show us the true nature of the people who get it? Still, from what we've managed to learn by digging around and asking a few questions, it seems she was the kind of person who liked having power over others. Her high school records were a rather interesting read."

  "What about the Air Force guys?" Mark asked. "I don't know how much they saw, and I have no idea what they thought about it."

  "I talked to them yesterday, actually. I borrowed a high ranker from over in the Pentagon who is in the know and we de-briefed the three of them individually yesterday."

  Woods smiled, "I think they quickly realized that when a general is asking you questions and telling you to forget what you saw, that forgetting is a really good idea. The only things that seemed to stick in their minds about that night are that you jumped out of a helicopter that was fifty feet above the ground with a machine gun. Other than that, they were more concerned about getting back home and following orders."

  Michael spoke up again, "Do we have any more information on the guy who was with Luis Gutierrez when they tossed Tommy's house?"

  "On him? No, but we have a few suspicions. It turns out that Haines and Chance have made a lot of progress on that end of the case."

  "Really?" Mark asked.

  "Besides the ones that Smith was bribing, we found another inside man at your brother's labs; one of the janitors who worked there. He came up in a general background check when they found he had more money than he could account for. Turns out he was feeding information to one Carlos Santiago."

  "That name sounds familiar," Denise said, sitting up.

  "It should be," Woods told her, "he's one of the people the DEA has been after for years now. I think you helped them take down a few of his mules back before you came to work for me."

  Denise nodded to that.

  "So, who is he?" Mark asked.

  "He runs a major drug lab for Manuel Guaviare in Guatemala. We've been trying to get our hands on him for years now, but he hasn't set foot in the USA for over a decade, that we know of at least. As far as our CIA brethren can tell us, recently he's started to diversify his lab's efforts from refining existing drugs into discovering and producing new ones.

  "Needless to say, his involvement in this situation has a lot of people worried, especially those who know just what those samples were."

  "So, what are we going to do about it?" Mark asked.

  "We? Nothing," Woods told him. "It's not in our jurisdiction. But there's still that one missing sample that Haines hasn't been able to track down."

  "So, Smith was working for this Carlos then?" Mark asked.

  Woods shook his head, "Not that we can tell. From what we've been able to determine from emails we recovered in Smith's system, he was working a deal with Carlos to sell him the sample that we found at his place. Smith had a much better idea of what that stuff was than we realized and was talking it up quite a bit with Carlos. He had apparently heard some of the rumors surrounding the emergency landing of the airplane in Utah and when that mechanic contacted him with the remains, he put two and two together and correctly came up with four. Then armed with the results he was seeing from your brother's lab he decided to squeeze Carlos for whatever he could get.

  "Carlos, we think, decided to try and do an end run around Smith, who was asking for a lot of money. So he sent Luis up here, I guess to investigate or negotiate a better deal. Luis found out about the mechanic somehow, and tried that route, when that didn't pan out, we're guessing he decided to kidnap your brother and just steal a sample from the lab. I guess he figured if he couldn't get the sample that way, he'd just pay Smith's asking price.

  "So why did Smith pull a gun on us and try skip out with a hostage? He hadn't committed any felonies at that point, had he?" Mark asked.

  Woods leaned forward in his chair putting his folded arms on the table as he continued.

  "Well, he'd already been selling Carlos information on the lab's procedures and processes for some time, including some very confidential data on research your brother was doing. That not only made him a co-conspirator, but we suspect he believed that if Carlos was going to try and squeeze him out he might just decide to kill him and take the sample, rather than pay for it. Plus if we took him into protective custody he undoubtedly felt that Carlos would figure it was only a matter of time until Smith sold him out, and Carlos has a long list of people he's had assassinated."

  Mark nodded slowly; it made sense, sort of.

  "So if the one missing sample wasn't sent to Carlos," Michael asked, "who was it sent to?"

  "We suspect it went to another lab, one here in the States."

  "And you don't have any email on this?" Mark said, rather surprised.

  "Oh, we have some emails, but whoever they were, they were using some fairly high-grade encryption. We've passed it on to the NSA spooks, and are just waiting for them to crack it for us."

  "I'd like to go on that raid, when it happens," Mark said.

  "We'll see," Woods said. "If you're close enough to get there on time, we'll call you in. After seeing what happened here, we're not going to hesitate once we find out where it went."

  Mark had to agree with that, the Church's records had made it fairly clear that they'd narrowly avoided a nightmare scenario on this. If Beth had dug her heels in and tried to make a stand back in Klamath Falls, or had even stopped in Bend, the body count would have been astronomical.

  "There is one thing I'd like to ask for, Chief," Mark said.

  "What's that?"

  "I'd like for the group to set up an office here in Portland, to cover the west coast. It would give you quicker response times, and if you want to outreach to the local lycans to bring them on board, well, this would be a good place."

  "Tried of traveling?" Woods asked with a smile.

  Mark nodded, "A bit. I'm going to talk to my boss at the Commission and ask to be permanently based here. I think they'll agree, and well, if I'm here, it would make even more sense for you to have an office here for when you need my help, once this loan business runs out."

  "And if they fire you or you quit, that would make it easier for me to hire you on directly," Woods stated bluntly. "I'll run it by Henry, but I think you have a good idea, plus Washington is too visible for something that really is supposed to be out of the public's view. I've actually already started pushing on moving our headquarters to Atlanta, its close enough to Washington that I can commute to any oversight meetings I may need to attend."

  Mar
k nodded, "Well, that went easier than I thought it would."

  "Oh, you'll still need to come back to Washington for another month, I want you to pass on whether or not Steve and Mary are fit to go back to work, same as Michael and Denise here. Also, as our resident expert, you may find yourself pulled into the occasional meeting with other agencies, or even a private hearing or two with the oversight committee."

  Mark shook his head and sighed, "I'm not very good at politics, Chief."

  "Yes, I know," Woods agreed, and then smiled, "however, you don't work for us, and you're just on loan. So you can speak your mind without and fear of losing your job or not getting promoted."

  "So, what happens now?" Denise interrupted. "If there's nothing else, I have a husband to get back to and a wedding to plan."

  "And you Michael?" Woods asked looking at him.

  "Yeah, me too. And before you ask, yes, it's complicated."

  "I think that about wraps it up for me, I'll see you all back in Washington in about a week. I'll let you know the status on getting an office set up here by Friday, after I discuss it with Henry and the Director."

  Mark nodded and getting up shook hands with Woods, "Thanks Chief, see you later."

  Denise and Michael got up as well and they all filed out of the room to head back to Charity's house where Michael and Denise were currently staying.

  "Just where do you live, anyway?" Michael asked when they finally pulled into the driveway at Charity's.

  "Oh, I have a condo outside of Portland, a couple of miles to the west."

  "I haven't seen you spending anytime there," Michael pointed out.

  Mark nodded, "I only stay there on occasion, normally I stay with one of the girls."

  "And who decides which one?" Denise asked from the back seat.

  "I have no idea, I just do what they tell me to," Mark chuckled. "So what are your plans tonight?" Mark asked the two of them.

  "Dave's going to teach me how to hunt deer!" Denise said with a grin.

  "The girls want to go camping," Michael said. "I think they may have similar plans about teaching me how to hunt as well."