The Freelancer – Chapter 86

With the headstart we had, Banks wouldn’t know I ran off with Jenna until it was too late to catch us, but getting to a country without an extradition treaty posed a problem. Unless I found a way to smuggle Jenna out of the country, she needed a passport.  Mine was always in the glovebox.  Even though I planned to tell her everything once we got where we were going, I couldn’t risk raising her suspicion.

I tried to make my voice nonchalant. “What do you think about someplace sunny, tropical?”

“I like that idea.  Florida or California?”

“Actually, I was thinking Mexico.  Should we go back to the condo for your passport?”

“Um…” She opened her purse and rummaged for a moment.  “Nope.  I’ve got it right here.”

She was walking around with her passport? Who does that?  Who expects to leave the country on a moment’s notice?

Federal agents.

International salespeople.

Criminals.

I couldn’t do this.  Pulling over onto the shoulder, I turned to Jenna.  “This is a crazy idea, isn’t it?”

“A little, yeah.”  She bit her lip.  “I’m all for Mexico, but I’d sort of like to pack a few things first.  Maybe we should stick with the reunion for now.”

We were at the reunion for a half hour before my cell phone rang.  Jenna was at my side, so I answered carefully.

“It’s Collin.  Two pieces of good news.  One, the clerical staff came through and I’m getting my team into position.  Two, Jenna isn’t involved.  She’s clean.”

I was stunned.  “Are you certain?”

“Positive.  I’ll fill you in on the details later, but the short of it is I was given a piece of evidence to clear her and I just got it substantiated.”

“This could be good news.  I need to know how you know for sure.”

“Is Jenna standing there with you?”

“Of course.  Why?”

Collin hesitated.  “Call me back when you’re alone.”

“Why?”  I didn’t understand why he wouldn’t tell me.

“You won’t want to be around anyone when I tell you,” he answered before disconnecting.

After I hung up I turned to Jenna and said, “I’m sorry about that.  I need to make another call that could last longer.”

“Is everything alright?”

“Perfect, Jenna.”  I gave her a quick kiss, pulled away to gaze at her, then gave her a deeper kiss.  “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

As soon as I was out of her view, I sprinted to the hotel room my team was using as its mobile command center.  I had to stop them from approaching anyone.  We would be better served if they joined the other teams at the airport.  Even though nothing should happen tonight, we’d agreed to man the terminal 24 hours in advance in case Blackstone showed up to set things up.

I called Collin the moment the last agent had cleared out of the room.

“Are you alone?”

“Yeah,” I barked.  “Stop wasting time and tell me how you cleared Jenna.”

I listened as he relayed his visit with Trista to me.  He didn’t go into much detail about their conversation, but I hoped Trista could keep her mouth shut.  Facing Jenna with the truth about me would be hard enough.  It would be impossible to make her understand if her best friend got to her first.

When he paused, I asked, “How did you substantiate it?”

Collin cleared his throat.  “Because Blackstone was at the reunion, we sent someone into his apartment.  He, uh, found some tapes.”

“Tapes?  What does that have to do with this?”

“They were surveillance tapes.  Of Jenna’s apartment.”

“He’s been watching her!” I shouted into the phone, understanding why he wanted me alone when he told me.

“I had our man view the tape for Monday night and it turned out that everything Jenna said happened actually happened.”

I slumped down into the desk chair.  “What’s going on with the rest of the tapes?”

“They’ve been taken in as evidence.”

My throat was dry.  “All of them?”  Jenna might forgive me for my deception, but I doubted I’d ever get her to forgive me once she found out half the FBI had seen us having sex.

“I’ve had one of my tech pals assigned to handle the viewing.  He’ll be discreet about it.  I can arrange for him to have you present when he views certain rooms.”

“What certain rooms?”

Collin cleared his throat again.  “The rooms that, um…you know…where the two of you…uh…”

I’d always prided myself in being a man who wasn’t often embarrassed, but that was out of the question in this situation.  I was hard pressed to think of a room in which I hadn’t practically ripped off her clothes.  “That would be all of them.”  I paused and blew out a breath.  “I don’t want to hold up the investigation.  Just make sure that this guy understands…Jenna would be destroyed if she knew…”

“You can trust me on this one, Jackson.  You just make sure Blackstone doesn’t head back here until we’ve finished replacing the tapes with dummies.”

I disconnected the call and buried my head in my hands.  Once I was reasonably certain I’d be able to face Jenna again, I left the room.  I spotted Blackstone the moment we arrived and I’d been itching to take him down then.  Now that I knew what he’d done, I just hoped I’d get five minutes alone with him before he lawyered up.  He tried to set up Jenna, to make me doubt her, and I had no intention of letting him get away with that.

But he was already gone.

The agent assigned to tail him had lost him while I was on the phone with Collin.  He could be anywhere by now.  I called Collin back and broke the news.  Losing Blackstone so close to zero hour…this was a setback we could ill afford.

Now, I just have to figure out how I can go back to Jenna and pretend everything was still fine.

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