Volcano by Gabby Grant Page B

nightly routine of calling
for her “mama” with wellspring eyes.
    Carolyn sighed and tugged at her collar. While the DOS
laundry service had provided her with clean uniforms daily, she longed more
than anything to get back home and into a pair of jeans. She hoped her younger
sister, Rebecca, was truthfully looking after her cats. Becky, who was just
nineteen and a student at the nearby university, was not always the most
reliable pet-sitter.
    It was a poor reflection of her life, she realized, that she
had no one else to miss her besides two over-fed felines. But, ever since
returning from Kuwait, twice-decorated Major Carolyn Walker hadn’t had much of
a life at all outside the US Army. She’d been to Texas, through advanced
officer training school in Arizona, and, thanks to her wartime service, been
able to escape being assigned to Korea altogether.
    The best time Carolyn had had in a long while had been in
Panama, and that had been more a decade ago. There’d been a Marine there,
someone she’d thought she could care about. Someone who,
quite unfortunately, didn’t appear to return the feeling.
    Carolyn squared her shoulders out of habit and walked into
the cubicle-like kitchen, hunting for a soda. Mark’s division secretary, Alice,
was with the baby and Maria was still downstairs with Sergeant Alexander while
everybody tried to decide what to do with her.
    In reality, what Maria had been able to tell them wasn’t
much help. She was being blackmailed alright .
Blackmailed into passing along information about Mark Neal’s family. She’d been
lied to, though. Told it was a personal investigation, an information gathering
process only- that would bring no harm to the Neals or their baby.
    She’d revealed some of Ana’s personal and computer habits,
strange things that seemed unrelated and didn’t appear to do any harm. How Ms.
Kane spent her free time, how she routinely entered her home...
    Once Ana had disappeared, though, Maria’d panicked, fearing the information she’d been passing along had somehow played a part.
She’d gone into hiding with Isabel because she was scared. And, because, as
strange as it was to fathom, Carolyn did believe she loved the baby.
    Maria’s point of contact had been a man only known to her as El Lobo. As he’d always sat in the front of the limousine and listened,
she’d never actually seen his face. He’d never spoken either. Only listened,
which Maria had found spooky and strange.
    The driver, a dark-skinned middle-easterner ,
she thought, did all the talking, asked all the questions. He was the one who
took her calls and handed over the envelopes in payment for information. As far
as Maria knew, the Arab didn’t have a name, only the lethal black eyes of the
devil. How he and El Lobo had found out about Pepe’s heart condition,
she didn’t know. How they’d discerned the exact amounts of her escalating
medical bills and scheduled their “payments” to meet them, she didn’t know
either.
    Carolyn sat at the small kitchen table and popped the top on
her soda can. Telling Neal now would just give him one more thing to worry
about, and he had enough headaches as it was. Besides, no matter what
information Maria had given away, including her most recent revelation about
Isabel’s location, the baby was safe. Carolyn had assured Mark the DIPAC was a
fortress and she’d been right. Now that security had been alerted, they were
ready and on the alert. No way in hell anybody could get in here now, no matter
what they knew.

 
    ***

 
    Mark spun onto Highway 29 and gunned it north toward
Washington.
    “Not going to make it all the way there in this heap,”
Albert said.
    “No, sir. This is where being Assistant Director at DOS is
bound to have its perks.”   He turned
and smiled at his father-in-law, who seemed to be breathing a lot easier now
that the danger had passed and they hadn’t appeared to pick up a tail.
    Albert grabbed for the car phone with a smile.