Special Forces Saviour
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“I understand, Liam, but—”
“The largest terrorist attack on American soil in over five years,” Jon continued. “We need the results on all of it right away.”
Molly glanced quickly at Derek. He was just standing there, arms crossed over his large chest. She looked away again, not knowing what she would do if he interjected into the argument. Molly understood the men’s frustration, she really did.
She looked over at the pile of files and packages of evidence on her desk. The problem was, every case was this important to someone. Those packages might provide clues to missing children, or someone’s murder, or the identity of a serial rapist.
Everybody needed everything right away and that just wasn’t possible.
“You guys,” Molly looked at Jon and Liam, and even risked a glance at Derek. “I—I’m sorry. We’re backed up in here.”
“Molly.” Liam wouldn’t let it go. “We need all this now. It’s vital.”
Molly threw her arm out toward the files on her desk. “All those cases are vital to someone, too, Liam. And they’ve been waiting longer than you.”
Both Jon and Liam began their arguments again, but Molly tuned them out. She hated being in this position; hated having to tell them to wait. She knew the men weren’t making demands arbitrarily—what they needed was important. Brows furrowed, she looked down at the items on the table again, began trying to sort through them a little bit. Maybe if she stayed here all night she could get at least a couple of the pieces processed after she finished the cases sitting on her desk.
But which evidence pieces should she process first if she could only get to one or two tonight? In the midst of categorizing the evidence bags in her mind, and placing them in different groups on the table, Molly didn’t realize Liam and Jon had stopped pleading their case.
Or that Derek had come to stand right behind her as she sorted through the evidence bags. He reached over and took the bag out of her hand and laid it on the table, and picked up two others near it.
Startled, Molly spun around, then immediately regretted it as she found herself trapped between the evidence table and Derek’s hard body. Oh, dear lord. Was she supposed to be able to come up with actual words right now? Something coherent?
Derek took a small step backward, just enough so he could hold one of the evidence bags up between them.
“This one is most important,” he said softly, holding up a small bag with what looked like part of a phone or communication device. “Although I know it’s partially melted and will be difficult. The other is just the prints from the dead guy to run for ID. Should be simple. Both as soon as you can manage, Molly. But I know your other work here is also important.”
Molly just nodded.
Derek hooked a finger into the hip pocket of her lab coat. He took the two small evidence bags and dropped them in. But instead of letting her go as she expected, he placed both hands on her waist.
Molly pretty much forgot how to breathe.
“Thank you,” Derek said, his gravelly voice playing havoc with her insides. “I know this means more work for you, and I’m sorry.”
“It—it’s okay.”
“Did you eat dinner?”
“Um, today?”
Derek shook his head and sighed. “I want you to eat something, all right?” His hands tightened the slightest bit on her waist. “You’re too tiny as it is.”
“Wh-what?” Since when was Derek aware of her eating habits?
“And not the vending machine. A real, proper meal. Promise me you’ll go down to the cafeteria tonight and eat something if you’re working here a long time.”
Molly nodded.
“And not tomorrow morning. Tonight, okay? In the next couple of hours,” Derek asked again. “Promise?”
“I promise.” Molly forced the words to come out with no stammer.
Derek smiled, and for a second looked as if he was going to say something else, but then Liam and Jon began talking to each other as they repacked the other evidence to be placed on the in-processing shelf. Whatever Derek had been about to say in that moment was gone.
He dropped his hands from Molly’s waist and took a step back. “Thanks for processing that communication device tonight. I’m hoping it may be a key piece in the Chicago case.”
Without another word, Derek turned and walked out the lab doors. Jon and Liam said their goodbyes as they left, too. Molly finally began breathing normally again.
But as the doors closed, she heard it, although they obviously didn’t mean for her to: quiet laughter and the words Mousy Molly.
Molly stayed where she was against the evidence table as if glued there. It wasn’t Derek who called her mousy, it was never Derek. But it was everyone else. Molly didn’t think Jon and Liam meant any harm by the expression, but it was true. Molly was mousy in all its elements: nervous, shy, lacking in presence or charisma. Heck even her coloring was mousy: brown eyes, brown hair.
Okay, yeah, it hurt a little bit. Molly didn’t want to be mousy. And really most of the time she wasn’t that bad. It was just when she was around Derek that she became unbearable to herself.
Molly brought her hands down to her waist where Derek’s had been. Derek had actually touched her. That didn’t happen very often. Although they saw each other a few times a week, Derek was very careful not to touch her in even the most casual way.
He really hadn’t touched her at all since the time he showed up at her condo three years ago—drunk—and they’d had sex.
Molly still grimaced when she thought about it. He’d been inebriated, he’d needed a friend. She should’ve just made a pallet for him on her couch and let him sleep it off.
Instead of taking him to her bed and having the most wonderful night of her life.
Except Derek had been gone when she woke up the next morning. And he had never brought it up again, so she assumed he didn’t remember much about that night at all. But Molly did. She also remembered their embrace in the lab about a year ago... The only other time he’d touched her.
Molly sighed and pushed herself off the table. There was no way she was going to start thinking about this again. She had entirely too much work to do. She would put in a call to David, the newest young tech, and see if he was willing to make some extra money by coming back in and helping her with this processing.
There was a lot of important work to do and she planned to get it done. She might be Mousy Molly like the guys said, but there was one thing she knew how to do well: her job.
Chapter Three
Derek cringed when he heard Jon and Liam’s Mousy Molly comments as they followed him out the lab doors. How he hated that nickname. He knew the guys didn’t really mean any harm by it, neither Jon nor Liam would ever purposely be unkind to someone like Molly, but Derek still hated it.
“I think you probably could’ve pushed to get more of our evidence processed tonight,” Jon said with a little snicker as they walked down the hallway. “I don’t know why Liam and I even tried talking to her. We should’ve used you from the beginning.”
“It’s not like that, Jon.” Derek kept walking, hoping they’d just drop it. They had a meeting with Omega’s Critical Response Division Director Steve Drackett in five minutes, teleconference with state officials not long afterward.
Both men laughed. “Uh, it’s exactly like that. Of course, it’s always like that with Molly when it comes to you,” Liam told him.
Jon continued, “Yeah, if you had asked her to process all our evidence tonight I bet she would’ve done it. If she could’ve managed to get a sentence out.”
Liam stopped walking and, with a dramatic sigh, grabbed Jon by the waist and pushed him up against the hallway wall. Liam pulled out a pen and held it in front of Jon’s face.
Derek stopped to watch the show that was obviously for him.
“Just this one piece of evidence, Molly.” Liam deepened his voice to mimic Derek, wiggling the pen and keeping his other hand on Jon’s waist.
Jon’s falsetto was even more annoying, especially given he was three inches taller than Liam’s six-one. “B-but D-Derek, we’re s-so busy.”
If anything, Liam’s voice got even deeper. “Please, Molly. For me? Because I’m Derek Waterman and I’m the best agent in the world.”
“For you D-Derek, anything.” Derek watched as his two coworkers embraced, then pulled apart, bowing.
Derek raised an eyebrow and just stared at them. “You morons done?”
He started walking down the hallway again.
“Oh, come on, Derek.” Jon caught up to him first. “We like Molly as much as anybody. Hell, everybody likes her, she’s so sweet and kind. But she gets so awkward around you, it’s pretty entertaining.”
“Obviously, she’s not your type,” Liam continued. “That’s cool.”
“What do you mean she’s not my type?” Derek knew he shouldn’t let himself get drawn into this conversation, but couldn’t help it.
Of course Liam was right, Molly wasn’t his type. Molly was sweet, kind, tender, gentle.
Everything Derek knew he should stay away from. Everything he knew he would destroy if he allowed himself near.
“I just mean you’re not interested or attracted or whatever. It’s obvious by the way I’ve never even seen you touch her before today.” Liam shrugged. “You don’t take advantage of her feelings, which is admirable.”
Yeah, Derek tried not to touch Molly, because every time he did it went further than he wanted. Like a few minutes ago. He’d touched her waist, and all he could think about was sitting her up on that table and kissing her until neither of them even remembered what the word evidence meant.
“Yeah, I wish someone would get that tongue-tied around me,” Jon said. “At least you got her to process the important evidence.”
“Molly works hard, you guys. She’s probably going to be here all night, doing what we asked plus all her other stuff. None of us will be working all night. So stow the comments.”
That shut them up. Good. Derek needed to drag his focus away from Molly Humphries and back onto this case since they were walking into the director’s office.
“Quite a mess today, gentlemen,” Steve Drackett, division director, said as he opened his office door and met them in the hallway. “Walk with me on the way to the teleconference room.”
“Yeah, it was a mess,” Derek told him.
“What happened?” Steve’s tone wasn’t angry or condescending.
Derek explained what happened this afternoon, about the suspect killing himself and the house being burned to the ground. Since no harm had come to any bystanders, it was a little easier to report.
“So today was both good and bad,” Steve said.
“Mostly bad,” Jon muttered.
They made it to the conference room door. Derek opened it and they all moved inside. Steve had been giving daily briefings to a group of DC state officials—a committee of congressmen, senators, members of the Department of Defense and Department of Justice—each day since the Chicago bombing. Since Omega Sector’s Critical Response Division was a multiagency task force made up of the best people each agency had to offer, faster, better and more detailed results were generally expected. And they were expected from people very high up in the governmental food chain.
So not having those expected results, hell, not having any results at all when they reported every day was getting a little old for everyone.
“We’ve got just over seven minutes until the call,” the technician working the room told them. In seven minutes they would be staring down five different government officials on different screens.
“The only good thing to report about today is that it was at least an actual live lead,” Derek told Steve. “We’ve personally followed up dozens since the Chicago attack which have led to nothing. This at least led to something.”
Steve nodded. “Yeah, an important something. Critical enough that your suspect would kill himself rather than be taken into custody. That’s pretty extreme. Do we know who the guy was?”
“Lab is running prints. We’ll know in the morning. Local PD should be bringing the body, too.”
“Yes, I got a report that the body was on its way, should be here within the hour,” Steve told them.
“Hopefully this guy’s ID should provide some sort of clue,” Liam said, settling himself in a corner that would be out of the way of the cameras. Smart man. “But not as much as having him alive for questioning. Sorry, boss, if I’d had any inclination that he would off himself, I would’ve tackled him. I thought he might shoot at us, but not himself.”
Steve shrugged. “You did the best you could with the info you had. Don’t beat yourself up.”
One thing Derek liked about having Drackett as his boss was that Steve hadn’t been out of the field so long that he’d forgotten that sometimes things just went to hell for no particular reason. Steve was probably only ten years older than Derek’s thirty-three years.
“Was anything recovered from the house before the fire completely burned it down?” Steve asked.
“We got out a few potential pieces of evidence. One looked particularly promising. Some sort of communication device. Looks like it could hold pictures or other data, if it can be retrieved,” Derek told him, as Steve took notes. “Molly is rush-processing that for us herself tonight.”
Jon and Liam made eye contact with each other at that, but Derek ignored them.
“Molly’s got to get more people hired in the lab so she’s not at Omega twenty hours a day.” Steve scribbled something else on his notepad. Derek hoped it was a reminder to talk to Molly so she could get some of the lab workload off her shoulders. She looked tired.
Pretty, as always, but tired.
“What I find most interesting,” Derek said, reining in his thoughts, “is that whatever was there, they burnt the building to the ground to get rid of it, definitely using an accelerant. The fire was almost as drastic as the guy killing himself.”
“Which means you were really close to something,” Steve finished for him. “All right, let’s present this to the committee.”
“One minute until the call, sir,” the technician told him.
Steve nodded and looked at Derek. “You ready?”
“Oh, yeah,” he answered, rolling his eyes. “Getting chewed out by government officials who really have no idea how to do police work is the favorite part of my day.”
“First caller is connecting now,” the technician announced. Derek and Steve sat down behind the computer that would show all the people on the call, and also make Derek and Steve visible to them.
And great, it was Congressman Donald Hougland. Always the first person on the video call and the last person off. And always the most vocal about Omega Sector’s lack of results with the bombing.
“Gentlemen,” Congressman Hougland said. “Hope we have good news today. Or at least not no news at all, as usual.”
Derek reminded himself not to roll his eyes because that could be seen by the other man.
“Congressman Hougland.” Steve was a much better diplomat so Derek let him talk. “We’re just waiting for the others, and we’ll provide an update. We’ve had a breakthrough. I believe you’ll be pleased.”
“I doubt it,” the older man said. “For an organization that’s supposed to be stellar, I’ve yet to see evidence of that. Of course, I’ve yet to see evidence of anything.” He laughed at his own joke.
Thankfully, the other committee members chose that moment to connect to the conference call so Derek could force himself to swallow his tart retort for Congressman Hougland.
Derek had been raised on a ranch in Wyoming by his reluctant, confirmed-bachelor uncle when Derek’s parents had died when he was twelve. So cursing had been a prevalent part of his upbringing.
But telling a US congressman to kiss his ass was probably not going to help any part of this conference call or overall situation. He could see Steve looking over at him cautiously as if preparing to kick him under the table if he opened his mouth. Derek glanced at him and nodded to let him know he wasn’t going to do anything stupid.
The head of the committee, and much more amiable, Senator Edmundson, opened the conference. “Director Drackett, Agent Waterman, thank you for speaking with us today. We know your time is valuable.”
“Senator,” Steve responded respectfully. “Ladies and gentlemen.”
“Let’s cut to the chase, Robert,” Congressman Hougland said, practically cutting off Steve’s greeting to the committee. “Drackett mentioned they have some news. I’d be thrilled to hear that.” Sarcasm dripped from his words.
Annoyance floated over Senator Edmundson’s face before he reschooled it into its polite mask.
“All right, then. Director Drackett, please.”
“Agent Waterman and his colleagues received a tip earlier today while returning from Chicago. They changed route midflight and headed to Philadelphia. Upon their arrival at the location, they were met with gunfire.”
The men and women were listening attentively from their screens. It made for a nice change from the past two weeks when they’d had nothing of any interest to report.
“One man gave chase, and unfortunately killed himself rather than be taken into custody,” Steve continued. “The suspects also burned the location to the ground while the team was chasing the running suspect.”
“So basically, Agent Waterman, you had a more exciting day, but still have nothing to show for it,” Congressman Hougland jumped in. “Is that correct?”
Derek counted to three before answering. He’d once been thrown from a spooked horse and had to walk the four miles home on a broken ankle. He’d survived that.
He could survive this.
“Actually, Congressman, we were able to retrieve a few pieces of evidence from the house before it was totally destroyed. One piece in particular, a communication device of some kind, looks particularly interesting. Although it was damaged by the fire, we’re hopeful the data on it can be retrieved.”
Most of the committee were nodding, at least accepting that this was progress. Not Hougland.
“Hopeful,” he scoffed. “Not exactly confidence-inspiring.”
“All right, Don, let’s stay positive,” Senator Edmundson said.
“The only thing I’m becoming positive about is that Omega Sector might not be living up to its reputation any longer,” Hougland spat back.
Derek’s lips thinned. As much as he disliked the congressman, the man wasn’t totally incorrect. He and the team had been pretty inept on this Chicago case. They hadn’t caught a single break until today.
“We should also have identification of the dead man soon,” Drackett told the committee. “That will also point us in a direction.”
“The body is there now, at your facility in Colorado?” Senator Edmundson asked.
Steve nodded. “Yes, our lab is or very soon will be, running the prints. We’ll also have any other helpful evidence from the body.”
“And the communication device? When will you know if that will provide anything useful?” Hougland asked.
“By tomorrow morning,” Derek replied. He hoped that would be true. “The lab is working on it tonight.”
That seemed to placate everyone. Since there weren’t any other questions from the committee and Hougland had evidently gotten tired of poking holes at their case, Steve said good-night to everyone, promising to keep them posted. After the last of the committee had disconnected from the screens, Derek ran a weary hand over his face.
Jon and Liam stood up from their chairs in the corner.
“I am so glad I’m not you guys,” Jon said. “That was brutal.”
Derek couldn’t agree more. He just wanted to get home, change out of his smoky clothes and shower. The burns on his back and shoulders were still bothering him a little. Everyone said their good-nights, agreeing to meet back first thing in the morning.
Derek partly wanted to go check on Molly, but decided it was better to just let her work on her own since his presence tended to discombobulate her so much. But he hated that she had more work on her plate—probably a whole night’s worth—because of him. Derek promised himself that when this case was over, he would make sure that Steve forced Molly to hire some more people for the lab.
He needed a good night’s sleep. Once they had this evidence in hand, it would hopefully lead them somewhere, and they’d all need to be able to hit the ground running. Derek was still thinking about the evidence through his meal, shower and even as he was falling asleep. Why would someone kill himself rather than be arrested? What was on that device that was worth burning a building to the ground? Molly’s results would point them in the direction they needed to go. He drifted off to sleep with it on his mind.
The phone ringing at 2:42 a.m. jerked him out of his sleep. This was not the first call he’d gotten from Omega in the middle of the night. Derek looked at the caller ID: Steve Drackett.
“Steve, what’s up?” Derek tried to wipe the sleep from his voice the best he could.
“Derek, I need you to get back to HQ right away. There’s been an explosion at the building. I’m on my way in now, but you’re closer.”
Derek was instantly awake. “Like what, a fire?”
“No. I don’t have many details yet, but I know it was an explosion. In the forensic lab.”
Derek could actually feel his heart stop beating. “Forensic lab?” he parroted.
“Yes. And I know there’s at least one confirmed death.”
Chapter Four
Derek’s general idea of “help from above” was a sniper on the roof, but he prayed like he had never prayed before as he broke multiple traffic laws driving back to Omega Headquarters in downtown Colorado Springs.
It was nearly three in the morning. The forensic lab had just exploded. One person was dead.
No matter how much he tried to twist it, there was no way to think that it wasn’t Molly. Who else would even be there at almost three o’clock in the morning?
Acid ate at his gut when Derek thought of the fact that she wouldn’t have been there at all if he hadn’t asked her to stay. To do something specifically for him.
But he categorically refused to assume the worst until there was no other choice. Until he was presented with proof positive that it was Molly who was dead.
He hit the gas harder and rounded a corner, nearly blinded by all the emergency vehicle lights parked at Omega. A uniformed officer stopped him from pulling into the parking lot, but let Derek through when he flashed his badge and ID.
Which saved Derek from having to pull his gun on the man. Because there was no way in hell he wasn’t getting into that parking lot.
Chaos reigned as Derek parked his car far enough away not to hinder any emergency vehicles and jogged over to a small group of personnel who seemed to be directing the efforts.
Behind them he could see the building burning, the concentration of flames largest in the southwest corner. Smoke billowed from right where the forensic lab was located—what was left of it.
“I’m Omega agent Derek Waterman, standing in for Director Drackett until he gets here in a few minutes.” Derek pulled out his ID, but the men barely glanced at it.
“Captain Jim Brandal, with Station 433,” the man closest to Derek, holding a hand radio, said, nodding at him. “You’ve had some sort of explosion in the southwest corner of the building.”
“That’s the forensic lab.” Derek kept the panic out of his voice.
Captain Brandal looked over at the man standing next to him and both of their faces turned more grim. “That’s what we figured. Any hazardous materials there?”
Derek shrugged. He was sure there were, but he didn’t know what. “Almost definitely. You have one confirmed dead?” His throat tightened as he said the words.
“Yes,” Captain Brandal agreed, and then started to say more before stopping to respond to a report from the radio in his hand.
Derek shifted in frustration. Who was dead? Where? Had the ID of the victim been established?