SEAN COULDN’T STOP LOOKING AT DARYN.
She was that kind of woman. She drew his eyes-and the rest of his senses as well. If “sensual” truly meant to open the senses, then Daryn McDermott was the most sensual creature Sean had ever met. Not only her look, but the sound of her voice, her scent, the way her skin had tasted…and her touch. God, her touch.
But now he’d begun to get into her mind. She’d shown him a few glimpses into her life. Even masked as Kat Hall, she’d been telling him of Daryn McDermott’s life. The “wealthy, powerful” father, the mother cast aside, the father’s hypocrisy, the search that eventually led her to become an escort…both sensual and complex. A rare breed.
He kept the Jeep pointed north on Interstate 35, letting Daryn give the directions. He glanced at her again, then at her left hand, which extended behind her seat. Britt, in the back, was tugging on Daryn’s hand again.
Sean had been suspicious when Daryn told him they needed to pick up a friend. Then he’d had to struggle to keep his poker face when the friend turned out to be Britt. He said nothing, and neither did Britt, but their eyes had met for a short moment as she got into the Jeep and Daryn “introduced” them.
Britt looked at Daryn with absolute love and devotion. For all her time on the streets, for everything she’d done and seen, Britt still seemed like a child, easily led. Sean had known from the time he saw the photo of the Oklahoma City march that Britt had fallen in love with her, or at least into whatever form of infatuation Britt could view as love. She would do anything Daryn asked.
Daryn directed Sean to exit the interstate at the town of Guthrie, thirty miles or so north of Oklahoma City. Guthrie had in fact been the first capital of Oklahoma Territory after the famous land run of 1889 opened the previously “unassigned” lands. Now it was a pleasant town of Victorian homes and a beautifully restored downtown area, capitalizing on its history to draw in a healthy tourism industry.
Daryn showed Sean where to turn, and he headed north out of Guthrie on U.S. 77. A mile outside the city limits, he said, “We’re being followed.”
“What?” Britt said.
Daryn dropped Britt’s hand. “How do you know?”
“Big blue SUV back there, two guys in the front. It’s been with us since before we left the highway.” Sean thumped the steering wheel. “I’m not sure how long. I wasn’t looking for a tail.”
Daryn looked at him strangely, and Sean thought, Be careful! I’m a woodworker, not a law enforcement officer trained to spot surveillance.
“Just kind of spooked after the other night,” he added quickly.
“How could they have followed us?” Daryn said.
“They may have tracked us from the motel,” Sean said. “Hell, I don’t know. You seem to have pissed off some pretty persistent people.”
Daryn said nothing.
Sean let it go. This wasn’t the time to push it, not with a tail right behind them on a lonely stretch of rural highway.
He nudged the Jeep forward, the speedometer moving past seventy. He saw a bridge ahead.
“Shit,” he muttered.
A green-and-white sign took shape, announcing that the bridge crossed the Cimarron River. The Jeep rolled onto the bridge. The blue SUV moved to overtake them, swinging out into the opposite lane.
“What are they doing?” Britt said. Her voice rose. “What’s going on?”
Neither Sean nor Daryn spoke. Sean punched the accelerator and listened to the Jeep’s engine growl in overdrive. The SUV’s driver kept pace, the right front fender of the bigger vehicle moving toward the Jeep’s left rear.
“Oh no, you don’t,” Sean whispered. He wasn’t about to let the other driver tap him on a bridge at nearly eighty miles an hour. “Hold on,” he said to Daryn and Britt.
He floored the accelerator and jerked the wheel to the left, cutting in front of the other driver. Now they were both speeding north in the bridge’s southbound lane. Sean imagined the other driver’s surprise at the maneuver.
Just as quickly, he saw in the mirror that the other driver was starting to slide over into the northbound lane, and Sean thought: amateurs. Then: but I’m supposed to be an amateur, too. Nevertheless, he repeated the maneuver in reverse, cutting off the SUV’s angle of attack again and putting both vehicles back in the right lane.
Five seconds later, a car entered the bridge from the other direction, a white compact sedan. The SUV nudged into the other lane. The white sedan’s driver leaned on the horn. The SUV ducked backed behind Sean. Ahead, Sean saw the point where the bridge ended.
“Hold on,” he said again. “This is really going to piss them off.”
Beside him, Daryn’s eyes were wide. He couldn’t see Britt. As soon as the Jeep’s front wheels left the bridge and Sean saw the land to the side, he slammed on the brakes and spun the wheel hard to the right. The Jeep skidded into the gravel by the side of the road. The SUV’s driver, caught by surprise, slammed on his own brakes and turned hard the other direction. Sean heard tires squealing, whether his or the other vehicle’s he didn’t know.
The Jeep came to rest pointing east toward the river, in a loose gravel area beside the road. As soon as he’d stopped, Sean was out of the driver’s seat. Almost mirroring the Jeep, the SUV was in a similar position on the opposite side of the highway, its nose pointing west.
It was empty.
Sean turned back toward the Jeep, and for a moment his mind wavered. Who am I? What am I doing here?
He blinked. Daryn. Daryn McDermott. Kat Hall. He was trying to immerse himself in her world, and he’d been slowly descending into it, as Michael Sullivan. And now, twice since he’d met her, there had been an attack. Tobias Owens hadn’t told him this part, back in the Sasabe cantina.
Who was after her? Were they after Daryn, the senator’s daughter and radical? Or were they after Kat, the mysterious professional escort? The political princess or the call girl?
Sean took a step toward the highway, then stopped again. He couldn’t just leave Daryn and Britt here unprotected. What if the guys from the SUV circled back around? What if they had another team approaching from the other direction?
But there might be answers out there in the brush by the river.
Sean’s mind clouded again.
Dammit, I can’t think!
I need a drink. Just one, so I can…
He shook his head. He jogged back to the Jeep. Daryn and Britt were both staring at him, Daryn in terror, Britt with a strange curiosity on her face.
“Do you know how to use a gun?” Sean asked Daryn.
Daryn’s eyes grew impossibly wide. She shook her head slowly. “I never-”
“I do,” Britt said.
Sean looked at her slowly. Something passed between them, a subtle understanding, a knowing. “In my duffel bag,” Sean said. “If anyone comes near the car, shoot them.”
“Michael-” Daryn said.
“I’ll be back,” Sean said.
He ran across the road. The SUV was totally empty, both the driver’s and passenger’s doors standing open. He looked back toward the river. A barbed wire fence snaked away toward the west. The ground-green grass and red dirt-sloped downward to the south, toward the Cimarron River itself. Sean saw movement below, a flash of blue, underneath one of the bridge supports.
Every fiber of his training rebelled-he was going into an unknown situation, unarmed, with no real backup.
But this wasn’t about training anymore. He wasn’t an ICE agent now. He was a civilian, an ordinary woodworker, and this was about the woman he knew as both Kat and Daryn.
His head pounding, Sean took a step toward the river, then another. He stepped into the tall grass. The ground sloped sharply away ahead of him. He saw the movement again, an outline of a man moving behind the bridge support.
Sean took another step. His foot came down on loose red dirt, and the ground sloughed away under him. He went down, tumbling through grass and dirt and rocks before coming to rest on concrete, at least fifty feet below where he had been, lying on his side with his cheek scraping gravel.
At first he heard, saw, felt nothing, though he tasted grass in his mouth. Then there was sound-the river, birds, a car going by on the bridge above his head. Finally, his vision cleared. He saw graffiti scrawled on the bridge-I Love Tina, GHS Sr. ’05, Tony & Marie 4-ever, Rachel gives hot BJ.
The man stood over him. A few years older than he, tall, sandy hair, a few days’ growth of beard, blue jeans and a denim shirt, cowboy boots.
Sean coughed grass out of his mouth. “What…” He spat. “What do you want with her?”
“Who the hell are you?” the man said. “Why do you care about her?”
“She’s…do you know who she is?” Sean said.
“Do you?” the man said.
Sean started to sit up, then the man’s boot connected with his ribs. Sean grunted and rolled over, and the man kicked him again. Before he landed a third kick, Sean tried to grab his leg, but the man backed off.
He heard another voice, not the booted man: “Leave him. We’re done.”
The booted man grunted in reply, but sent one more sharp kick to Sean’s abdomen. Then he moved away quickly, footsteps receding toward the river. Sean rolled over and retched into the grass, tasting all the whiskey he’d drunk.
He lay there for a long time, listening to the river and all the damned birds singing on all sides of him. He heard a car door slam, an engine start.
He raised himself up, his ribs stinging. He felt up and down his chest. Probably bruised but not broken. He took a few deep breaths-hard, but not too painful. Encouraging.
Sean slowly got to his feet, remembering the man’s words.
Do you?
What the hell did that mean? What kind of game were these people playing?
Leave him. We’re done.
By that time, they hadn’t seemed interested in Daryn. They’d been dealing with him, with Sean.
Leave him. We’re done.
Slowly, painfully, Sean began the climb back up toward the highway.
THE TOWN OF MULHALL, OKLAHOMA, EMBODIED history in a rougher, harder-edged way than Guthrie. If Guthrie was a shining example of urban renewal, Mulhall was a slice of rural America at its most real. Poverty coexisted with strong community ties; resilience took a seat right next to the despair that pervaded so many of America’s small towns. Not all of Mulhall’s history was over a century old, either-on May 3, 1999, most of the town had been wiped out by one of the more than sixty tornadoes that struck the state in a single day.
Now, more than half a decade later, Daryn could still see evidence of what had happened here-dead trees and mangled brush by the side of the road. She’d only been to the Coalition house once before, and Franklin Sanborn, who was a history buff, had explained Mulhall’s history to her. It was part of the reason he’d chosen Mulhall as the place to give birth to the Coalition.
Mulhall is the struggle of real people to survive, Sanborn had said. Mulhall is what the ruling classes have forgotten. From the natives to the cattlemen to the laborers who have to find work in the cities, to the desperation that gave way to hope after the storms destroyed the town-Mulhall is real.
The irony wasn’t lost on Daryn. In order to get at what was real, to get the ruling classes-people like her father-to pay attention, they’d had to construct a series of elaborate lies. Daryn had read once that the road to truth was paved with lies. She’d learned the lesson many times over by now.
“Real,” she muttered, without realizing she’d spoken aloud.
“What?” Sean said, half-turning to her.
Daryn shook her head. “Nothing.”
“It sounded like you said ‘real.’ Real was those guys back at the bridge. That’s twice in a very short time.”
Daryn swallowed. “They’re threatened. We’re pushing the envelope of society, and someone up the line is threatened by that.”
Sean said no more, grimacing behind the wheel. She looked at the scratches on his face. She’d already seen the bruises the man’s boots had left on his abdomen. Daryn closed her eyes, trying to shut it all out.
Britt squeezed her hand inquiringly. Daryn gave her what she hoped was a reassuring glance, then turned toward the front again.
Very little moved in the streets of Mulhall. There were a couple of brick Victorian-style buildings, including an old bank that had most recently housed a restaurant, now shuttered. There were a few frame houses along the main drag. Up the hill to the right was a gleaming new school, seeming so out of place that it looked like it had been placed here by mistake. But it was part of the history, having been rebuilt after the deadly tornado.
It took all of two minutes to travel the entire length of the town. Then Daryn pointed to a gravel road just north of the city limits. Sean turned left and drove another half mile between barbed wire fences. Daryn pointed again, and Sean made another left onto a driveway that was simply two deep ruts split by a line of grass. A hundred yards back from the road was a small, unremarkable white two-story frame house. It was neither well kept nor in noticeable disrepair. There was greenery around it, but not much. A chain-link fence surrounded it. Two pickup trucks and a dark four-door-with Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico plates, respectively-were parked in the clearing outside the fence.
Two men appeared at the door to the house-big, burly men in jeans, boots, and button-down shirts. They flanked the door and then Franklin Sanborn strode out onto the small porch.
Daryn almost laughed, despite the tension of what had happened a few miles back down the road. Sanborn himself was almost as forgettable in appearance as the house, as the black sedan he drove: his hair that held just a few gray threads; his eyes a light chocolate brown; his complexion was medium. He was right around six feet tall, weight proportionate, not a hard body but not flabby. Sometimes he wore glasses. Sometimes he didn’t. He was no one to be remembered.
Remember The Cause, he liked to say. Don’t remember me.
That was part of the reason Daryn believed in him. He wasn’t some messianic egomaniac like David Koresh, or an introverted, antisocial genius like Ted Kaczynski. He wasn’t some deprived little boy trying to get the world’s attention. He had a true social and political agenda, and a genius for planning.
Daryn and Britt got out of the Jeep, and Britt immediately reached for Daryn’s hand again as soon as they were outside. Sean got out more slowly, gingerly feeling his ribs. He looked around, then took out his duffel bag, which held his clothes and the extras he’d bought for Daryn.
Sanborn stepped forward. “Welcome,” he said. “Glad you made it out here.”
Even his voice was unremarkable. No discernible accent or regionalism. His English was so perfect that Daryn had often wondered if it might not be his first language, but he’d studied it and mastered general American dialect to perfection. He was fairly soft-spoken, and Daryn had never heard him raise his voice. He’d never needed to.
The two burly men stayed where they were, but Sanborn stepped off the porch and came out to the gate. He swung it open. “Come on in.”
Daryn leaned up to peck his cheek as she passed him. “Franklin, you remember my friend Britt.”
“Of course I do.” Sanborn turned and gave Britt his full attention. “Britt is part of the reason we exist.”
Britt nodded, casting her eyes down as if unworthy. She held even more tightly to Daryn’s hand.
“And this is my new friend Michael,” Daryn said.
Sanborn moved toward Sean, his hand extended. They shook. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Michael,” Sanborn said. “Welcome to the home of the Coalition. I’m Franklin Sanborn. I help to sort of facilitate things around here.”
“He’s much too modest,” Daryn said, looking over her shoulder at Sean. “He leads us.”
“We have different leaders for different things,” Sanborn said with a shrug. “Kat herself is our spiritual leader, if you will, the one who always brings us back to the Cause. I focus on plans and details. Don and CJ back there are our operational leaders. They figure out how to put plans into action. We all lead each other. Unlike the ruling classes, we don’t have to have anointed leaders with titles.”
Sean kept his eyes fixed on Sanborn. “It’s good to meet you,” he finally said. “What Kat said about your…what do you want to call it-a movement, maybe?-made a lot of sense.” He glanced at Daryn. “Some people are pretty intent on sending some sort of message to Kat, though.”
Sanborn looked questioningly at Daryn.
“Twice now,” Daryn said, “we’ve been attacked.” She described both incidents in detail.
Sanborn frowned. “The ruling classes are nervous. You must be more careful, Katherine. Until the Coalition begins its actual work, you have to be careful what you say, and to whom you say it. If we lost you, I don’t know what we’d do. You are our heart and soul.” He looked at Sean. “Are you all right, Michael? I didn’t notice at first, but you look a bit roughed up.”
“I’m okay,” Sean said. “I’m just glad I could be there for Kat.”
Sanborn nodded. “So am I.”
“So,” Sean said, steering the conversation back around. “Your movement.”
“I suppose you could call us a movement,” Sanborn said. “Not quite what you expected, though, are we? Be honest. When you conjure up an image of a group of people living outside the mainstream, working toward radical change in society, you think of survivalist compounds where everyone carries an AK-47, or some kind of racial superiority complex, or some bunch of nut-cases who babble on and on about black helicopters and computer chips implanted in their bodies by the government.”
Sean smiled.
“You’ll find none of that foolishness here,” Sanborn said. “We’re not conspiracy theorists. We don’t have to be. The reality speaks for itself. Read the Congressional Record. That’s all the evidence we need, right there in the public record. We do have a few weapons scattered around, but more to protect our privacy than anything. No one here carries them on a regular basis, though. We’re not that kind of community.” His brown eyes bore into Sean’s. “May I ask, Michael, if you are carrying a weapon?”
“Yes,” Sean said. “I own a pistol. It’s in my duffel bag right now.”
Sanborn nodded, the look of the genial host never leaving his face. “Of course. You didn’t know what to expect from us. I understand completely. You’re welcome to keep it. I’m certainly not going to ask you to give it up. It’s your own personal property, after all. I’ll just ask you to respect the others here and not show it around a lot. We have a couple of members who actively dislike guns and are quite afraid of them.”
“Sure,” Sean said, confusion evident in his voice.
Sanborn smiled again. “As I said, we’re not what you expected. I take that as a compliment. Come in the house.”
They went in. There was a large, open front room with a few chairs and mismatched tables that looked like yard sale refugees. A man and two women, ranging in age from early twenties to late forties, were scattered around. The two women were reading-one a newspaper, one a battered Edgar Allan Poe anthology. The man had spread out papers on a chipped coffee table and was making notes. There was a chorus of greetings, mostly directed at Daryn, all of them calling her Kat. A couple of nods went in Sean’s direction when he was introduced.
“How many people are here?” Sean asked.
“We’re small but mighty,” Sanborn said. “There are thirteen of us right now. Eight women, five men. We range in age from twenty-one to fifty-eight. We come from all different backgrounds.” He nodded toward Daryn. “Kat brought most of us together.”
Sean waited a moment. “She’s very passionate,” he said slowly.
Sanborn laughed. So did Daryn. “Indeed,” Sanborn said. “So she is. And quite persuasive.”
“Quite,” Sean said.
“We’ve converted all the rooms upstairs into bedrooms,” Sanborn said. “They’re not very big, but they give a small amount of privacy. Unfortunately there’s only one bathroom. We make do, just as any group of people does when they live somewhat communally. There’s a deck out back, and a basement off the kitchen. It has its challenges, but we get by. This place isn’t permanent, but it’s the perfect starting point for us.”
“What about you?” Sean said. “What’s your background?”
“Me?” Sanborn said. “I’m an academic. I was a professor at Indiana University in Bloomington.”
“Professor of what?”
“Interpersonal communication. One of those liberal arts fields where our graduates are expected to ask, ‘Do you want fries with that?’ But, then, someone with a ridiculous number of degrees in communication can actually be useful in setting up a group dynamic like this. I’m an organizer. That’s what I do.”
One of the two big men had come back into the house. He was late twenties, blond, with cold blue eyes and a muscular build. “Let me take your bag,” he said to Sean in a soft Oklahoma drawl. “I’ll put it upstairs.”
“Thank you, Don,” Sanborn said. “Go ahead and show Michael where he’ll be bunking. Then round everyone up, if you would, please. It’s time for the meeting.” He turned to Sean. “You’re just in time for our major planning session.”
“Planning for what?” Sean said.
Sanborn’s expression lost a little of its hostlike veneer and grew deadly serious. He looked in Daryn’s direction before answering Sean. Daryn felt his cool, steady gaze.
“Planning how the Coalition will begin to reshape American society,” Sanborn said.
Sean waited a moment. Sanborn and Daryn both looked at him.
“That’s why we’re here, right?” Sean finally said.
“Yes, that’s why we’re here,” Sanborn said. “There’s only one rule here, Michael. We don’t have a bunch of silly regimens and routines to follow. We’re not a cult, we’re a political organization with political and social goals. But we do require absolute loyalty. Once you’ve joined us, you pledge to follow the goals and objectives laid out by the Coalition for Social Justice. There will be no backing out, and no betrayals, no contacting the ‘authorities’ if you don’t like something. If you do have a problem, we’ll deal with it internally, as a group. You take your problem outside the group, then we have a real problem. Do you accept that, Michael?”
Sean looked at Daryn. Daryn, standing next to Sanborn and still holding hands with the much taller Britt, looked at him, into him, just as she had in the motel room in El Reno.
All eyes in the room focused on Sean. The two women had stopped their reading. The man with the papers stopped making his notes. Don, holding Sean’s duffel bag, paused on the stairs.
“I accept that,” Sean said.
Daryn let out a breath. Anything for The Cause, she thought. She really had a headache now and wanted to lie down, to disentangle herself from Britt and from the rampant, raging emotions of the last few hours, to just be alone in a dark, quiet room for a while. But there was much work to be done. She would rest later.
“Welcome, Michael,” she said.
“Welcome, Michael,” Franklin Sanborn echoed. “Let’s get to work.”
DON, WHO TOLD SEAN HIS FULL NAME WAS DONALD Wheaton, showed Sean up the stairs to a small room at the end of a wood-floored hallway.
“Here,” Wheaton said. “Kat asked for the three of you to share a room, and this is the last empty one.”
“Wait a minute,” Sean said. “The three of us?”
“You and her and the other girl. Britt.” Wheaton didn’t smile, but his face lightened somewhat. “Nice arrangement.”
Sean shook his head. “Thanks. So tell me, Don. What’s your story?”
Wheaton shrugged, working his tongue around the inside of his mouth. “No real story,” he drawled. “I’m in heavy construction. I live in Noble. Got tired of scraping and struggling and other people getting rich off my sweat.”
Sean noticed a silver wedding band on the man’s finger. “Is your wife here with you?”
Wheaton looked embarrassed, fiddling with the ring. “No, but she understands. I call her every other day.”
He tossed Sean’s duffel onto the queen-size mattress in the little room, then backed away.
“Where will the women sleep?” Sean asked. “Kat and Britt.”
Wheaton looked amused. “Well, with you, of course. Aren’t you with them?”
“Well, I…” Sean shut up.
“Some guys have all the luck,” Wheaton said, and went off down the hall.
Sean headed downstairs, where the group was assembling. In addition to a diversity of age, there were two black men, one black woman, and a very young, college-age Asian woman. There were two middle-aged men who stayed very close to each other, and by their body language, Sean took them to be a gay couple. He shook his head. The Coalition for Social Justice was unlike any extremist group he’d ever known. But then, with Daryn McDermott as one of the driving forces behind it, that made sense. She was certainly unlike any woman he’d known.
Franklin Sanborn sat in one of the battered armchairs at the periphery of the group. “Let’s get started,” he said. He was still genial, with the easygoing air, but now there was something else underlying it, a let’s-get-down-to-business sort of urgency.
Sean slid onto one of the couches, squeezing between Kat and one of the black men. Britt was on Kat’s other side, pressed close to her. Sean tried several times to catch Britt’s eye, but she never looked at him.
Partners in this deception, Sean thought, and she doesn’t want to acknowledge me, doesn’t want to acknowledge her own part in it.
Sanborn looked directly at Sean. “For the benefit of our newest members, I should explain that we do have one tiny little ritual that we observe at all general meetings.”
Sean stiffened slightly.
“Don’t worry, Michael,” Sanborn said. “No ritual bloodletting. Not even a secret handshake.” There were a few chuckles from around the room. “We simply reaffirm verbally our commitment to the cause.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll begin. I’m Franklin Sanborn, and I accept the Coalition for Social Justice’s mission and objectives.”
He nodded to his left. A heavyset blond woman in her thirties said, “I’m Jeannie Davis, and I accept the Coalition.”
And so it went around the room. Sean was reminded eerily of the AA meeting Faith had dragged him to-I’m Jack and I’m an alcoholic. Hi, Jack!-but when it came to him, he said, “I’m Michael Sullivan, and I accept the Coalition.” His hands were trembling a little, and he had to sit on one of them to keep Daryn from seeing. It was late afternoon, and he hadn’t had a drink since morning. Just a couple of shots to steady myself. That’s all I need.
Daryn beamed at him and said, “I’m Katherine Hall. I accept the Coalition and believe it will change America!”
There was scattered applause. After it died down, Britt said in a small voice, “I’m Brittany Ray. I believe in Kat, so I believe in the Coalition.”
Sanborn nodded approvingly. “Thank you, friends.” He steepled his fingers in front of his face and touched his index fingers to his lips, looking very professorial. “We’ve had many discussions about how to get the attention of the ruling classes in this country. They weary us with moralistic platitudes and blather on about ‘family values,’ as if every family in America shares the same values, as if we were all carbon copies of each other. While oil companies and brokerage houses reap record profits and their CEOs earn tens of millions of dollars for doing essentially nothing, real people struggle for their lives every day. Women like Kat and Britt have no protection, no health care. People like Jeannie, a social worker, someone who helps others on a daily basis, can barely make ends meet. It’s wrong, and we know it’s wrong.”
Sanborn’s gaze traveled the room. He made eye contact with everyone, lingering for a moment on Daryn.
What’s with the two of them? Sean wondered. Just the connection between the two leaders of the group, or something deeper? He felt a pang of what he recognized as jealousy.
What the hell is happening to me? This is a job, an undercover operation to get Daryn McDermott to come back home willingly. Gain her trust. Bring her back. Period.
But it’s not that simple anymore.
“But then, I’m preaching to the choir, right?” Sanborn said, to another round of chuckles. “What defines the ruling classes?”
“Money,” one of the men said.
“Exactly,” Sanborn said, clapping his hands together. “So we strike at the monetary system. Many groups with radical ideas have tried many things to get the world’s attention. Just a few miles from here, in downtown Oklahoma City, is the evidence of one of them. Did the Murrah Building bombing really accomplish anything? Of course not. Timothy McVeigh was an idiot. Was one single governmental policy changed because of his strike?” Sanborn shook his head.
“It’s because he didn’t strike at the rulers,” Daryn said, leaning forward. “In fact, the people he hurt, the people he murdered, were real people, low and midlevel employees who were all at the mercy of the policy makers, just like the rest of us. That should be a lesson to all of us. To bring about change, real societal change, means you strike at those who have the most to lose.” She smiled. “And you hit them where it hurts.”
Sanborn nodded. “The rulers derive their power from their money. We don’t live in a democracy or a republic anymore. Elections are bought and sold. It’s all about the money. No attempt at reforming the system from within will work, because of the enormous sums of money involved. No ruler wants to give up his kingdom, after all.” He spread his hands apart. “So we strike at the money.”
The man who’d been making notes earlier at the coffee table raised a hand. He had introduced himself as Alan Davenport. “We’ll make surgical strikes at banks. Not to rob them, of course. That’s a silly cliché. To damage them. To destroy them, in some cases.”
Sean’s pulse quickened. They were talking about terrorist acts, pure and simple. Blowing up banks. Good God, they’re a bunch of terrorists! They have a wholesome-sounding name and they’re not blithering idiots, but they’re planning acts of terrorism!
He must have unconsciously made a noise, because Sanborn and Davenport were both looking at him. “Yes, Michael?” Sanborn said. “Do you have something to offer to the discussion?”
Sean’s mouth twitched. Jesus God Almighty, I’ve never needed a drink like I need one right now.
“Michael?” Daryn said.
Daryn McDermott. The reason he was here. How far would he have to go with this? How deeply into her extremist politics did he have to go to get her to trust him, to convince her to go with him? He was still technically a federal law enforcement officer, after all. How much longer could he do this? How much further could he go?
He looked at Daryn, at those deep dark eyes, that perfect face, at a silent plea that she sent to him. For a moment he thought he would do anything for her. She’d seduced him with her body and her mind, had reached into his essence like no one ever had. He understood how Britt-poor tragic Britt, naïve and worldly at the same time-could view Daryn with such utter and absolute devotion. She was intoxicating, more so than any drink he’d ever had.
But how far can I go?
“Fine,” he said, and it came out a rasp. He cleared his throat. “Fine. I’m fine. Just taking it all in.”
He caught a glimpse of Daryn looking at him with relief painted on her face. Britt was appraising him coolly. Sanborn nodded. “There’s a lot to take in,” Sanborn finally said. He sat back in his chair, then a slightly bemused look came over his face. “Perhaps you’ve misunderstood, Michael.”
“How so?”
“We’re not talking about violence here. When we use words like damage or destroy in talking about the banking industry, we don’t mean a literal, physical destruction.”
Sean breathed out slowly.
Sanborn exchanged a long glance with Daryn. “Kat would never allow us to devolve into terrorism. No, we mean demonstrations designed to point up the weaknesses of the ruling classes and their wealth.”
Sean closed his eyes for a second, then nodded. “Thanks for clarifying that.”
Sanborn chuckled. “You were looking rather pale over there.” Another look toward Daryn.
What is it with those two? Sean wondered. And how long will this go on?
“Go ahead, Alan,” Sanborn said.
Davenport nodded. “I’ve come up with a first target. Based on many factors, I believe we should start with the Bank of America in downtown Oklahoma City.”
There were several murmurs. Sean saw Daryn nodding approvingly.
“There’s the symbolic value of the location. It’s literally right around the corner from the national memorial, the site of the Murrah Building. Plus, B of A is a large nationwide banking company, and very powerful in the financial world. Their downtown building faces Robinson Avenue, and there’s a large open courtyard that faces the street. That will be good for media coverage.”
Sanborn nodded. “A good choice, Alan. Everyone needs to spend the next few days staying on message, doing what you need to do to prepare yourself for the start of the campaign. Alan, do you have a list of the next targets and where we’ll go from here?”
Davenport shuffled some papers. “I made copies for everyone.”
“Good. Pass them around.” Sanborn nodded toward Daryn. “Kat, anything to add?”
“The Coalition is about to go public,” she said, almost breathlessly. “Be ready. They won’t be able to ignore us, or our goals.”
“Got an attention getter in mind?” Don Wheaton said.
Daryn grinned. She patted Britt’s leg beside her, then reached up and squeezed the other woman’s breast. “Maybe,” she said. “Britt and I may put on an exhibition for them. That would get it going, wouldn’t it?”
Sean watched the group’s reactions. Some stared openly, others were noncommittal. The social worker, Jeannie Davis, looked quickly away.
“I think that means the meeting is dismissed,” Sanborn laughed.
The group broke up slowly, people talking in small groups. Sean lingered on the couch for a moment, reading the list Davenport had passed around. It was a list of banks that started in Oklahoma City, then spread out across the country. There were twenty-seven in all, ending with Citibank in New York.
“Wow,” Sean said. “So we’re going to travel to all these places? The whole group?”
Daryn touched his arm. “That’s the idea. And we’ll gather more people along the way, once the word starts spreading. We already have small cells near all these places. And it starts right here.” She gestured around the living room. “Appropriate, don’t you think?”
What do you mean by that? Sean thought, but just nodded.
“Come on,” Daryn said. “Let’s see if there’s anything in the kitchen to drink.”
They made their way to the kitchen, Daryn saying a few words here and there to members of the group as she passed them. Like the rest of the house, it was large and open. The linoleum floor was peeling a bit, but otherwise it seemed clean and relatively well kept.
Daryn reached into the refrigerator. “There’s Coke, juice, beer.”
Thank you, God. “I’d love a beer,” Sean said.
“Looks like you can have Michelob or Michelob.”
“I’ll take the Michelob.”
“Good choice,” Daryn said, and handed him a can. “Britt?”
“What are you having?” Britt said.
“Oh, honey, I’m just having some juice, I think. But you can have a beer if you want.”
“Sure, okay,” Britt said.
Sean opened his beer and drank half of it in one swallow. “What’s out there?” He gestured toward the back door.
“Come on, I’ll show you,” Daryn said.
The kitchen door opened onto a huge wooden deck that spanned the entire length of the house. Just like the rest of the place, it showed wear and tear in places but was still in reasonable condition. “Nice,” Sean said, drinking a little more beer.
They walked to the edge of the deck. The ground behind the house sloped gently down, with an excellent view of the rolling countryside. The grass, high from spring rains, was very, very green, Sean noticed, and there were areas of brick-red clay that dotted the land. After seven years in the deserts of southern Arizona, he found the colors almost blinding.
The three of them were alone on the deck, and Daryn said softly, “What did you think, Michael?”
Sean waited a long time before answering. He finished the can of Michelob and set it carefully on the railing of the deck. He saw Britt watching him, standing in Daryn’s shadow.
“I think the ideas are solid,” Sean said. “I don’t know about the rest. The banks, I mean. Change is a hard thing to bring about.”
Daryn smiled at him. “You’re right. But it can be done. If people can reinvent themselves, why can’t societies, countries?”
Sean looked at her long and hard. If people can reinvent themselves. What was she saying to him?
“We all want to change who we are sometimes,” Daryn went on. “We want to throw off the things that shackled us to our past and just become something new.”
“But not many people actually get to do that,” Sean said. “They stay shackled, to use your word. Whether it’s to a job they hate, or a spouse they don’t love anymore, or a city they don’t like living in. Most people don’t have the luxury of going out and just becoming someone new.”
Daryn cocked her head. “Luxury? That’s an interesting way to put it. But you’re right again. If we reshape the way American society looks at people-those very people you’re talking about, people who feel they don’t have any choices-then there will be more freedom. Freedom to choose how they can live their lives, without fear of some moral or financial controls put in place by some out-of-touch rulers.”
Sean managed a smile of his own. “I love your passion. It…it sort of defines you, makes you who you are.”
“Oh, is that what makes me who I am?”
They let that hang in the air for a few seconds, then Sean said, “Do you trust me, Kat?”
“Yes. You saved my life.”
Sean nodded. “But you still haven’t trusted me with much about yourself.”
Daryn lowered her head, then glanced toward Britt, who was still watching Sean intently. Daryn finally looked back to Sean. “What is it you want to know?”
“I don’t know. Anecdotes. Stories. That sort of thing.”
Sean watched her, saw her dark eyes flicker.
Daryn sighed. “My father is a wealthy, powerful man. He’s part of the ruling class. I grew up as part of it before I realized what was going on. My father’s values disgust me. He pushed my mother aside when I was a little girl and paraded a group of whores in and out as trophy wives. Don’t worry, the word whore doesn’t bother me. Since I am one, of course.”
Britt looked at the floor. Daryn took her hand. “Oh, don’t be embarrassed, sweetie. We know what we are. We know who we are. It’s the rest of society that can’t handle it.” She looked back up at Sean. “When I was seventeen, my father had been away, out of the country for some meetings. And like any self-respecting rich, spoiled teenager, I threw a party while he was gone. You name it, it went on. Booze, dope, sex. All of us were stupidly wealthy, so none of us cared about anything. Our fathers could buy our way out of any trouble we got into. It was late, two or three in the morning, and most of the others had gone home. I was in my room, in bed with two of my good friends, Bryan and Jennifer. We were all so busy screwing each other’s brains out that we didn’t notice my father had come into the room.”
Britt drew in a sharp breath. Sean was silent, watching.
“I have no idea how long he stood there watching us have sex with each other. He didn’t say a word, didn’t make a sound. When we were finished, Bryan happened to look up and saw him. My father only said one word. ‘Go.’ Bryan and Jen grabbed their clothes and left me naked in the bed. I was waiting for the storm to hit, but it didn’t. My father never spoke. He simply took off his clothes, came to the bed, and climbed on top of me. It took maybe three minutes, then he got up, got dressed, and left the room. Neither of us ever spoke about it. I never told a soul.” Daryn looked up at Sean. “Until now. There’s your anecdote. There’s your story.”
“Kat, I-” Sean said.
“I’d like to go inside now,” Daryn said. “I need to talk to Franklin for a minute, then I’m going up to our room. Britt, honey, I’d like you and Michael to get to know each other better. I want my two friends to know each other well.”
“Whatever you want,” Britt said.
“Good girl.” Daryn leaned up and kissed Britt lightly on the lips, then turned and went in the house. “I’ll be waiting upstairs.”
She turned, and a moment later the kitchen door closed behind her. Sean leaned on the deck railing. A warm breeze came up the slope from below and tousled his hair. He felt Britt’s presence behind him.
“Does anyone else here know?” Sean asked without turning around. “Who she really is, I mean.”
“I don’t think so,” Britt said.
“Interesting.”
“What does all this mean? I don’t get it. I just want to be with Dar…Kat.”
“I’m not sure,” Sean said.
Britt nodded. “She gets those awful migraines. Her forehead scrunches up when she has one. I wish I could take her pain away.”
Devotion bordering on obsession? Sean wondered. “I know. Did you know about…what she just said?”
Britt cleared her throat. “No. She said she never told a soul. I believe her. She wouldn’t lie.” The girl shuffled her feet. “She wants me to be with you.”
Sean turned to look at her childlike face. “You don’t have to. I’m not a customer.”
“No, it’s not like that. If she wants me to, it’s not like that. She knows what’s best.” She put out a hand and touched his chest.
“No, Britt. I don’t think so.”
She dropped her hand. A sly look came over her face. “You like a good drink, don’t you? One of the other guys has some hard stuff. She told me where to find it.”
Sean’s mouth felt dry. He opened his mouth to say something, then his cell phone rang.
Britt frowned.
Sean pulled the phone off the clip he wore on his belt. He saw Faith’s number on the caller ID.
“Do you need to get that?” Britt asked.
“No,” Sean said after a long moment. When it stopped ringing, he turned off the phone.
Britt looked triumphant. “You know, even if you don’t want to be with me now, you will later.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Isn’t it every guy’s fantasy to be with two girls who are into each other, too?”
Sean gaped at her.
“We’re sleeping together in the same room. In the same bed. You’re like me, you know. You can’t resist her either.”
A shudder crawled up Sean’s spine. Britt smiled crookedly at him, then turned around and started toward the house. In a moment he followed her.
FAITH SLEPT POORLY AND WOKE UP UNRESTED. Even her morning run didn’t help her feel better. Moving by rote, letting the inertia of routine drive her, she got dressed and drove downtown to her office. By seven thirty she was staring at the catfish, Styrofoam coffee cup in her hand.
Her brother was an alcoholic. Too many of the signs were there. It had ruined his career, and she suspected it was the underlying cause his brief marriage hadn’t worked. And now, when she’d tried to help him, it had shredded their relationship as well.
“Dammit,” she said aloud, then repeated it, louder.
She logged onto her computer. Still nothing from Director Yorkton on the final decision about Leon Bankston. She was sure Bankston would be green-lighted, but sometimes it took a while for the attorney general to sign off on the cases. In the meantime Bankston would sit in the safe house in identity limbo, driving Hal Simon crazy. The thought of Bankston haranguing Simon over the house’s décor made Faith smile a little.
It faded quickly, though. Sean, she thought. What to do about Sean? She’d called him seven times from the moment he walked away from the AA meeting, up until this morning, and he never picked up. She had no idea where he was or what he was into. For all she knew, he could have gone out and gotten even drunker, then driven his Jeep off a bridge somewhere.
Aside from times in her teens, Faith had rarely felt powerless. There was always something that could be done. She relied on her intellect, and then took action. At least there’s one thing I have in common with my father, she thought.
She tried to remember everything Sean had said and done since he’d shown up outside her house the other morning. He’d gone searching for a hooker, who, he’d said, had pointed him in the right direction. Then he’d stayed gone all night and had come to her for help. He’d wanted a safe house.
Faith tapped a pen on her desk, then did what she always did when deep in thought: she doodled on her legal pad.
He had talked to her about an incident at an apartment complex. Shots had been fired, and the girl who lived there was missing.
It’s part of this job I’m doing. Yes, I was there, he’d said.
He’d mentioned Department Thirty for the first time, said he wanted Faith to provide a safe house.
Faith, I need your help. I need to keep this girl safe and out of sight for a while.
They’d argued. She finally agreed to let him use the department’s Edmond safe house temporarily, since it wasn’t currently being used for any Department Thirty recruits, with Bankston being kept at the Yukon house. Then she’d demanded that he do something for her, and she’d dragged him to the AA meeting.
“Stupid,” Faith said aloud. It had been the wrong way to approach it. Not only had it not worked, Sean had disappeared and another wedge had been driven into their relationship.
I need to keep this girl safe and out of sight for a while.
So Sean knew where the missing girl was. Or at least he had yesterday morning.
Faith knew nothing about who the girl was, or how deep Sean’s involvement went.
But I’ll find out what I can, she thought.
She picked up the phone.
“Hey,” she said when Hendler came on the line.
“Hey, yourself, beautiful. What’s up?”
“Nothing much. Do you know anything about this missing persons case, a girl who disappeared from an apartment complex? Neighbors reported a disturbance, then a shot, then the girl is gone. Ring any bells?”
“Don’t beat around the bush, Faith. Tell me what you really want to know.”
Faith smiled. “Sorry. You know subtlety isn’t my strong suit.”
“No, really? I know what case you’re talking about. I don’t think we’re in it, though. Oklahoma City PD’s handling it.”
Faith doodled a few more shapes on her pad, ending with a triangle. She traced over each of the three sides of it several times with her pen. “Do you know anyone there who could tell you anything?”
“I don’t know, maybe. Why?”
Faith scribbled Sean’s name along one side of the triangle. “I think…” She stopped.
“What?”
“I think my brother might have something to do with it.”
Hendler waited a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was lower. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure.” She explained some of Sean’s activities, ending with his request for a safe house, and the disastrous AA meeting.
“Holy shit,” Hendler said softly when she’d finished. “I don’t know which part of that is worse, the fact that your brother might have a real drinking problem, or that he might be mixed up in something with this girl, whoever she is.”
Faith was touched. Leave it to Scott Hendler to think of the family aspect of any problem before the law enforcement aspect.
“Well,” Hendler said, “we can’t just go to the city PD and start talking about Department Thirty safe houses here in town. Number one, local cops aren’t going to know what Thirty is, and number two…”
“…They don’t need to know,” Faith finished.
“Exactly. We could try to find out who’s working the case and see what they know. You could use your DOJ ‘special projects’ line if you need to tell them something.”
“Okay. Do you have time to make the calls?”
“Yep. Today’s a computer day for me, writing reports. I’ll call you back.”
Faith hung up and doodled a bit more. She scribbled her own name on the triangle’s second side, then wrote Mystery Girl along the base, followed by several question marks.
Hendler called back in half an hour. “The lead detective is named Rob Cain. I know him. He’s a pro and a nice guy. We’re taking him to lunch at Barry’s Grill. Meet you there at twelve thirty?”
“Got it,” Faith said. “Thanks, Scott.” She thumped her pen some more. “You want to come over tonight? I…I don’t think I want to be alone tonight.”
The last few words were so unlike her that Hendler waited a long, long moment on the phone.
Faith closed her eyes, gripping the phone. “Come on, say something,” she said irritably. “Here I am, being all vulnerable…the least you can do is speak.”
“I’ll be there, Faith,” Hendler said.
“Okay. Okay, then.” The awkward silence descended. “Barry’s at twelve thirty. Detective Cain. Got it.” She hung up quickly.
Barry’s Grill had always seemed to Faith to be a small-town diner that had been plopped down in the inner city, just off the intersection of Northwest Thirtieth Street and May Avenue. It didn’t have the “retro diner” décor that so many restaurants tried for these days, with vintage Americana road signs and such. Barry’s didn’t need them-it was the real thing. It held the standard tables in the center, booths along the wall, old wood paneling that was cracked in a few places, a long ordering counter behind which was the grill.
Faith and Hendler arrived first, and each ordered one of Barry’s legendary cheeseburger baskets. All the burgers at Barry’s were double meat and double cheese, with extras piled on, fries, and a drink, all for only about six dollars. In Chicago, Faith thought, the same meal would have cost twice as much.
Detective Rob Cain arrived a few minutes late, briefcase in tow. He raised an index finger at Hendler, dropped his briefcase at the table, and went to the counter to order before sitting down.
In movies and books, police detectives were often depicted in one of two ways: either as veterans just shy of retirement, rumpled, overweight, and wearing bad suits; or, as young hotshot studs, with three or four days’ growth of beard, tight jeans, and bad attitudes. Rob Cain was neither. Faith thought he was a pleasant-looking man in his late thirties, with light brown hair and soft hazel eyes with a few worry lines. He looked trim and fit, but not overly so. Cain clearly didn’t haunt the gym. His clothes were simple-clean, pressed khakis, a navy blue polo shirt, brown loafers. He wore a simple silver wedding band and a white ribbon on the breast of his shirt.
He and Hendler shook hands. “Sleepy Scott Hendler,” Cain said, in a pleasant voice. “Good to hear from you. I haven’t been to Barry’s in ages.”
Hendler nodded. “Rob, this is my friend Faith Kelly. She’s in special projects for DOJ.”
“Sounds ominous,” Cain said easily.
“It is,” Faith said with a smile.
Cain smiled back “And I really don’t want to know. Not even mildly curious. Trust me, I have enough special projects on my plate these days.”
“What’s the ribbon?” Hendler said.
Cain fingered the little white ribbon pinned to his shirt. His smile widened. “Parental pride. Once a month my youngest daughter’s preschool gives these out to parents to wear for the day, just to show you’re proud of your kid. Neat idea.”
Faith couldn’t help but smile as well. In the space of a couple of minutes, Rob Cain had shattered every possible stereotype about urban cops. She could see why he and Hendler would like each other-they were both inherently decent human beings. In the murky world Faith had inhabited for the last few years, something as simple as a white ribbon denoting a father’s pride had the power to move her enormously.
Her smile faded. If only Joe Kelly-another father, another cop-had worn a few white ribbons in his time, maybe things would be a lot different. Maybe…
Their names were called, one by one, and they went to the counter to get huge burgers-a chicken mushroom sandwich, equally huge, for Cain-and baskets of thick-cut French fries.
“This may kill me,” Hendler said, “but I’ll die happy.”
Cain snorted. “Don’t give me that. You haven’t put on a pound in at least five years, Hendler.”
Hendler shrugged and dug into his burger. They ate in silence, with both Cain and Faith adding liberal jolts of Louisiana Hot Sauce to their burgers.
“Good stuff,” Hendler said after they’d eaten.
“Yup,” Cain said. “Down to business?”
Hendler and Faith both nodded.
“Well, Sleepy Scott Hendler doesn’t call me on cases every day,” Cain said. “And even though he’s Sleepy Scott, he’s still a fed, so I’m required by law to pay attention.”
Hendler laughed. Even though the tension between local police forces and the FBI was legendary, the Oklahoma City Police Department had a good and solid working relationship with the local FBI field office. “Right you are, Rob. Tell me about this strange little missing persons case.”
“Two nights ago, just after ten o’clock, we get a 911 call of a disturbance at this apartment complex on Fiftieth near Portland. The neighbors to the apartment in question are a couple in their eighties, a Mr. and Mrs. Holzbauer. They were at home watching the ten o’clock news when Mrs. Holzbauer heard what sounded like the door being broken down next door, followed by loud voices. We had units rolling immediately, but before they got there, according to the neighbor lady, there was something of a scuffle, then a gunshot. One single shot.”
“She didn’t go outside?” Faith said. “Stayed in her own apartment the whole time?”
“I see where you’re headed,” Cain said. “The walls in these apartments are basically made of plywood and chewing gum. They’re so thin you could probably hear your neighbor getting up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. No, she stayed put. Smart lady. Her husband is mostly deaf, by the way, and heard none of this. Just sat there watching Gary England’s weather forecast like nothing was happening. Mrs. Holzbauer hears a car start up and roar out of the parking lot. Then it’s quiet for a little while. She goes to the window and peeks out in time to see two men coming out of the next-door apartment, arms around each other, sort of helping each other move. It was dark, but she swears she saw blood on one guy’s shirt.”
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Hendler said, glancing at Faith.
“Yep,” Cain said. “The two guys get into a dark four-door and drive off fast. They just pass our unit as it’s turning into the parking lot.”
“The girl who lived in the apartment,” Faith said. “What about her?”
Cain shifted a little on his seat and took a drink of Diet Coke. “You know, I hate diet drinks. They’re nasty, vile, awful stuff. Nutrasweet is evil. But my doc says I’m prediabetic, have to cut down on the calories.” He took another drink and made a face. “The apartment was leased to a Katherine J. Hall, age twenty-four. She’d just lived there about a month. Mrs. Holzbauer said she was friendly enough, but she didn’t see her very often. The girl, Hall, was supposedly a writer working on a book. At least that’s what she told the neighbors, and that’s what she put on her rental application. She paid the first three months rent in cash, in advance.”
“Any other leads on her?” Hendler said.
“She’s not real,” Cain said.
“What?”
“She’s a phantom. We couldn’t reach any of her rent references. The landlord says they all checked out a month ago, but all we got were post office boxes and disconnected phones. Her Oklahoma driver’s license was issued just last month, and-get this-her Social Security card was only issued two months ago. Her credit history is all bogus. She has no credit cards, no employment records, hasn’t paid taxes or paid into Social Security. The girl’s a ghost. A ghost who’s missing. How do you find someone like that?”
They all looked at each other.
“One theory that I’ve floated,” Cain said after a long moment, “is that she was in some sort of witness protection.”
Faith shifted on her seat, bumping her knee against the bottom of the table.
Cain looked at her.
“Sorry,” she said.
Cain appraised both of them. “Neither of you know anything about that, do you?”
“WITSEC is run by the U.S. Marshals Service,” Faith said.
“I know that,” Cain said quickly. “I’ve already talked to them. The chief deputy in the local office is a guy named Mark Raines. He checked up the line, and to his knowledge, they have no jurisdiction in the case. That’s his way of telling me the girl’s not theirs.”
“Any lead on the two men?” Hendler said.
Cain shifted again. Faith marveled at how the man had given them every bit of information without once referring to written notes.
“Oh, this all gets better,” Cain said. “Have you been watching TV and listening to the radio on this?”
“A little,” Hendler said.
“The media’s loving it. They’ve fallen in love with the neighbor lady. Refugee from Nazi Germany, she’s lived in Oklahoma for sixty years but still sounds like she’s just off the boat from Munich. Sweet face, probably bakes cookies for the reporters. They love her, so they love the story. Mrs. Holzbauer talks about how she viewed ‘poor dear Katherine’ as a surrogate grand-daughter, since all her own grandkids live in California. Literally wrings her hands on camera.”
Faith smiled.
“Anyway, she got a partial license plate on the dark four-door that the two guys left in. Wasn’t hard to find, though. We found it in the parking lot of French Market, over at Sixty-third and May.”
“That’s barely a mile from the apartment complex,” Faith said.
“Right. Theory was, they had another car ready and waiting for them there.”
“Did you run the car?” Faith asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Cain said. “The plot thickens, as they say. It was a rental, and it was rented to a Franklin Sanborn, with an address in Bloomington, Indiana. So we track him, and he’s a ghost too. His address is fake, so’s his phone number. You get a time and temp recording from Indiana if you call the number he left with the car rental place.”
“One ghost going after another,” Faith said quietly.
Sounds like Department Thirty business, she thought, then had to remind herself that not all strangeness in the world was centered on her little corner of the Department of Justice.
“There were bloodstains in the rental car,” Cain said. “The lab’s working on them now, along with the fingerprints.” He spread his hands apart. “That’s all we have. Chasing shadows while the TV stations wonder what we’re doing to find ‘poor, dear Katherine.’ ” Cain leaned back against the back of the booth. “So what’s your interest here? I’ll take all the help I can get, but I admit that I’m not quite sure why you called me, Scott.”
Hendler nodded at Faith.
Faith sat motionless.
Franklin Sanborn.
I know that name, she thought.
“Hello?” Cain said.
Franklin Sanborn.
It was nothing to do with any of her Department Thirty cases. She knew that-all of those names, past and present, were burned into her memory by now. But she’d heard the name Franklin Sanborn, had seen it, knew it.
“Faith?” Hendler said. “Did you want to…” He tilted his head in an are-you-going-to-tell-him gesture.
She’d told Hendler on the way to the restaurant that she intended to give the detective her brother’s name, and describe what had happened with him, carefully omitting details about his suspension from ICE. In a way, he was a missing person as well, and he wasn’t a phantom.
But now…
Cain was looking at her intently. She thought he was seeing for the first time the white line scar that ran from alongside her nose almost to the edge of her upper lip. He didn’t look away.
Faith met his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Hendler’s eyebrows went up.
“I have nothing to say,” she said. “Thanks for the information, Detective Cain.”
But why do I know the name Franklin Sanborn? Faith thought.
She stood up. “I have to get back to my office,” she said abruptly. She needed the DOJ database, and she needed it right now. Hendler had met her at the courthouse and driven them to Barry’s, so he stood with her.
Hendler shook hands with Cain. “I’ll be in touch, Rob,” he said quietly.
Cain clasped his hand a moment too long. “What was all this about, Scott?”
Faith was already halfway out the door. “I’m not sure,” Hendler said.
A WEEK PASSED.
The house near Mulhall was alive with activity. Two members were responsible for “media relations” and began drafting press releases. Two others-Daryn and Alan Davenport-kept the troops focused with “pep rallies” every evening, with lectures and readings ranging from de Tocqueville to Marx to Emerson.
Sean and Daryn talked and talked. She gave up more little pieces of herself to him, embellishing the portrait of her fictional father with tidbits from her real father’s life and career. She never mentioned the incest again. Sean played the game with her, creating an authoritarian father and a bad marriage that mirrored his own real life. She’d also kept Sean well supplied with bourbon. She’d learned to watch his signs, knew the tremble of his hands and the furrow in his brow when he’d gone too long without a drink. It was a strange twilight existence.
Every night they unleashed physical passion with wildness and abandon. Daryn let him take her in every way possible, and she took him as well a few times. Sometimes Britt joined. Sometimes she watched. But when she joined the sex, she only touched Sean at Daryn’s urging, at her direction, and only seemed to derive pleasure from Daryn herself.
At six o’clock in the morning of the seventh day since their arrival at the house, Daryn slipped out of bed and pulled on a pair of gray sweatpants and a T-shirt. She rarely slept well anymore and was always tired, but she couldn’t think about herself. Not any longer.
She took three extra-strength Tylenol and went downstairs. Jeannie Davis, the unlikely revolutionary-a social worker from Edmond-was in the kitchen, making coffee.
“Morning, Jeannie,” Daryn said.
Davis turned. “Good morning, Kat.”
Of the Coalition members, only Britt and Franklin Sanborn knew her real identity. The others knew her name wasn’t Kat Hall, and that she’d only been an “escort” long enough to establish a cover, but they hadn’t been told who she really was. They would learn in time.
The whole world will know in time, Daryn thought, rubbing her forehead. And it won’t be too long, thank God.
“Is he out there?” Daryn asked.
Davis nodded. “Every morning. You want some coffee?”
“No, thanks. Wrong chemical for me.”
She reached into a kitchen drawer and took out a pack of cigarettes and lighter. She didn’t smoke often, and had taken up the habit at fifteen mainly to annoy her father. No one smoked in the house, and Daryn escaped to the deck to light up a couple of times a day.
She walked out into the predawn. The humidity was up, and thick mists had formed across the lowlands downhill from the house. She could barely make out the dark ribbon of Skeleton Creek in the far distance, the mists rising off it like steam from a kettle.
Sanborn was standing at the rail of the deck, unmoving, as he did every morning. “Good morning,” he said without turning around.
Daryn lit her cigarette and exhaled. “Morning.”
Sanborn sniffed the air. “Should you be doing that?”
“What’s the difference?” she said, taking a long drag.
She didn’t really like Sanborn, and didn’t trust him at all. But he was the organizer, the one who’d worked out all the exquisite, painstaking details of the plan. He had his own motivations-he’d never made a secret of that-but then, they all came to The Cause from different perspectives, with different ways of thinking. That was part of the beauty of it, that their diversity created unity.
“We need to move,” she said, leaning against the railing a few steps away from Sanborn.
“He’s really on board?”
“Just about.” She stared into the mists. “Britt and I have almost literally fucked his brains out. He’s totally under my control.” She took another deep drag on the cigarette, holding the smoke in. The burning in her lungs helped dull the pounding in her head. “Let’s move today.”
“Yes,” Sanborn said.
Daryn ground out the cigarette on the deck railing and left the butt sitting there. She glanced at Sanborn. He’d grown increasingly edgy over the past week, nervous and short-tempered. The open-minded academic and the easygoing host was still there, but an undercurrent to the man was rising. The closer they’d come to today, the more in evidence it was.
“I’ll wake everyone,” Daryn said, and went back in the house.
By eight o’clock all thirteen of them were up and dressed. Tension ran like whitewater rapids through the group.
Sanborn walked into the center of the living room and clapped his hands. “The day is here,” he announced. “Today the message of the Coalition for Social Justice starts to be spread.”
There were general murmurs of approval.
“Four cars should do it,” Sanborn said. “Especially since Jeannie has brought her minivan for us to use.” He looked directly at Sean. “Your Cherokee has some room, Michael. I’m sure Kat and Britt would like to ride with you, but could you take a couple of others?”
Sean looked at Daryn. “Sure, why not?”
“Excellent, then, it’s settled. Michael’s Jeep, Jeannie’s minivan, my car, and one of the trucks. That should be sufficient for all of us. Let’s get ready to roll.”
People talked in low voices and began moving toward the front door. Sean stepped out onto the porch, squinting into the sunlight. The fog and mist had burned away, and the morning was brilliant and blinding. He blinked several times.
“A little bright for you?” Don Wheaton said as he went past him, carrying a suitcase.
“Not too much,” Sean said. He’d taken two big shots of bourbon this morning, then quietly gone into the bathroom and vomited. That had been happening more and more of late, so much so that he almost began to accept it as part of his morning routine. My own kind of morning sickness, he’d thought at first.
Daryn came up beside him and put a hand on his arm. Her touch was both soft and electric at the same time. He thought for a long moment. Soon, very soon, he needed to talk to her about why he was here.
But why am I here?
To find Daryn McDermott, of course. To do a job, to convince her to go back home. To have Senator McDermott put in a good word for me and redeem my career. He repeated the words to himself like a mantra. But even as he did, the images of Daryn-above him, below him, inside her, the way she used her body, giving it to him as if he owned it-crowded his mind, jostling his thoughts like people standing in line for an amusement park ride.
A part of him didn’t want this to end.
God help me, Sean thought.
A communal living situation in an old house outside the tiny town of Mulhall, Oklahoma. All the liquor he wanted, no demands placed on him, and imaginative, unbridled sex every night, sometimes with two women at once.
Sean felt he could just drift away on a tide of the Coalition for Social Justice, with Daryn McDermott, as Kat Hall, steering the way.
He closed his eyes against the sun again. Don’t be stupid. You have a job to do. Don’t be led around by your cock.
Then he looked at Daryn again, the big dark eyes. The conflicting feelings careened through him. He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry.
“Let’s go,” Daryn said.
Sean nodded. Later. Later, after they’d done the demonstration. He’d talk to her then. He’d get her away from Britt, away from Franklin Sanborn, and they would talk.
Later.
They started toward the Cherokee, two others of the group following silently. Daryn stopped, watching Don Wheaton putting the suitcase he’d been carrying carefully into the bed of one of the pickup trucks, then climbing in the bed himself. The man named CJ-Sean had never heard his last name-had an identical suitcase.
“What’s in the cases, guys?” Daryn called.
Wheaton and CJ looked at each other.
“Hello?” Daryn said.
“Nothing,” Wheaton said. CJ nodded. Sean hadn’t heard the man speak once during the entire week.
“Nothing?” Daryn echoed. “Hey, this is me, guys. What’s in the suitcases?”
Sanborn stepped between them. He’d been just about to get behind the wheel of the dark sedan. “Problem?”
“I’m just curious about what Don and CJ are carrying,” Daryn said. “Those cases seem awfully bulky, and I think we have everything we need for today.”
“Don’t worry about it, Kat, my dear,” Sanborn said. The words were meant to be reassuring, but an edge crept into Sanborn’s voice.
Daryn’s voice rose. “I will worry about it. You don’t keep things from me around here. What’s in the cases?”
“Leave it alone,” Sanborn said, his voice low.
“Goddammit, Franklin, what’s in the fucking cases?”
Sanborn faced her savagely. “C-4. Plastic explosive.”
All movement had stopped, as if choreographed.
“Oh, shit,” Sean said.
“What?” Daryn whispered.
“Come on now, Kat,” Sanborn said. “Don’t be foolish. You’re not as naïve as your little pet over there, after all.” He pointed at Britt. “You understand the world. Going and making speeches or putting on sex shows or sending out press releases will not get the attention of the rulers. Those things are components of the plan, but they will be useless, utterly pointless, unless we get their attention first!” His voice had risen steadily until he was almost shouting.
“But you said…” Daryn was trembling. “Franklin, what about how violence dilutes the message of the Coalition? You said-”
“This is what we’re doing, Kat!” Sanborn shouted, and all resemblance to the genial, easygoing professor was gone, as if it had vanished along with the morning mists. “Does anyone want to challenge me?”
No one moved. No one spoke.
“Well?” Sanborn thundered.
Britt shuffled her feet.
“You keep quiet, young Britt,” Sanborn said. “I only allowed you here so Kat could have a toy to play with. Stay in her shadow where you belong.”
“Look, Sanborn…” Sean said.
“The same with you, you drunken fool!” He lowered his voice, then softened his posture. “Listen to me, people. The explosives are only enough to break some windows, to grab attention. Then we go through with the demonstration.”
Sean swallowed. “You think you can set off an explosive at a downtown bank building, and calmly go about doing an organized demonstration? It’ll never happen. It’ll be pure chaos, and you’ll be arrested. You stand around there to make speeches after doing that and everyone will be arrested under the Patriot Act.”
“And how do you know so much about this, Michael?”
Sean tossed his duffel bag into the Jeep and slammed the door. “Drunken fool or not, I do pay attention to the world around me. It’s suicide for yourselves, and for the movement, if you do it this way.”
“I can do without your input,” Sanborn said. “But perhaps I should clarify one thing-the demonstration won’t be at the same bank as the attention getter. There are other banks downtown. Alan?”
Davenport, who’d been standing by Sanborn’s car, stepped forward. “There’s a Chase Bank around the corner from Bank of America Plaza, at Main and Broadway. Those of us doing the demonstration will be there instead of at B of A. We point out that while the ruling classes and their law enforcement puppets scurry to find out what happened to their banking center, real people everywhere have no choices. It’s a fine point and counterpoint.”
“You’re crazy,” Sean muttered.
“Wait, Michael,” Daryn said.
Sean turned, his heart pounding. Daryn was looking at him strangely. She looked at him for a long moment, then slowly turned to Sanborn. “We don’t want to hurt any real people.”
Sanborn exhaled noisily. “Of course not. We break some glass, that’s all. Don and CJ simply walk up to the door and put down the cases. They walk away. There’s a small explosion. We’re around the corner. We do our public demonstration. By the time anyone figures out what’s going on, we’re finished and on the move again. Don’t you see, Kat? It has to be this way.”
Daryn waited for a long moment. “We’ve come too far to let the Coalition fall apart.”
“I know that,” Sanborn said. “You have to trust me, Kat. I don’t want real people to be hurt either. But if we don’t first start with getting their attention, then the message itself will be lost. We’re not terrorists, because the message is always secondary to whatever action we take to open the door to it. People will listen this way.”
Daryn waited again, looking across the clearing, watching every face.
“Let’s go,” she said.
“Kat,” Sean said.
“Shhh, let’s go.”
“And you should control your pets a little better, Kat,” Sanborn said.
“They’re not pets, Franklin. They’re real people.”
“Perhaps,” Sanborn said, and walked to his car.
“Kat,” Sean said.
“Get in the car, Michael,” Daryn said.
“But-”
“Get in the car!”
The other two Coalition members who’d been assigned to ride with them approached the Jeep, but Sean said, “No, ride with someone else!” and they melted away.
Sean, Britt, and Daryn climbed into the Jeep. “I’m not a pet,” Britt said. “He shouldn’t have called me that.”
“No, sweetie, he shouldn’t have,” Daryn said without looking at the other woman. “And he shouldn’t have kept it from me that he was planning to use explosives.”
She stared through the glass of the windshield. Sanborn’s car pulled out of the clearing. Next came one of the trucks. Don Wheaton sat in the bed, staring at her as they passed. Jeannie Davis’s minivan went next. CJ sat in the front passenger seat. Sean pulled the Jeep in behind them.
“You can’t let this happen,” Sean said as they wound toward the road.
“I know,” Daryn said, “but you heard him. I didn’t…dammit, no one stood up to him.” She dropped her head into her hands. “I’ve been an idiot. I believed him, I trusted him, and he’s taken my movement-my movement! I started this, not him! If we use violence, we’re no better than McVeigh or bin Laden or any of the cults and the antigovernment nuts. We’re better than this!”
She looked up. Her eyes burned into him. To Sean’s surprise, she began to cry. Tears were not something he associated with her-for some reason, he hadn’t thought she was capable of crying.
They reached the highway and the little caravan turned south toward Mulhall, toward Guthrie, the interstate, and Oklahoma City. Toward Bank of America Plaza.
“Michael,” Daryn said, still crying, tears streaking her pale face.
Sean glanced at her. He still saw Britt out of the corner of his eye. She was staring at him too.
“Michael, please,” Daryn said. “We have to stop this. Even if he says it’ll just break windows, it might not. What if someone is standing right next to the window when it breaks? We can’t…”
Sean pulled off the road in front an abandoned car wash just as they crossed into Mulhall. He took out his cell phone and started punching buttons.
“Who are you calling?” Britt said.
“Someone who can help.”
The phone rang three times. Look at the caller ID, Faith, Sean urged her silently. Come on, don’t be so pissed off at me that you won’t answer the phone.
A moment later he heard his sister’s voice: “Where the hell are you?”
“I don’t have time to explain,” Sean said. “Listen to me. Call your friend.”
“What? What friend?”
“What do you mean, what friend? The geeky one, with the bald spot. You remember him?”
Faith was quiet for a moment. “Why?”
“He needs to get some more friends and they need to go to the Bank of America in downtown Oklahoma City. It’s on…” He glanced at Daryn. “What’s the street again?” He realized he was supposed to live in Oklahoma City, and by asking the question, his cover may have been blown. But then, he was going to blow it himself anyway, very soon.
Daryn looked at him quizzically, turning the question over in her mind. “Well, it’s on Robinson.”
“Robinson,” Sean said into the phone. “It’s right downtown, near the memorial. Your friend and his friends should get there quick if they want to stop something from happening.”
“Sean,” Faith said. “I can tell that you feel like you can’t talk, but what’s this about?”
Sean took a deep breath. “It’s about preventing an act of terrorism. Please believe me. Whatever bullshit there may be between you and me, believe me on this. It’s real, and it’s serious.”
Faith waited. “I believe you,” she finally said. “I’ll call Scott.”
“I’ll talk to you later,” Sean said before she could say anything else, then clicked the End button on his phone.
“Who was that?” Daryn asked. She reached out and took Sean’s free hand. His other hand was gripping the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles were the color of paste.
“Just someone I know,” Sean said.
He pulled back onto Highway 77 and accelerated to catch up with the rest of the Coalition for Social Justice.
FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER SEAN EXITED THE Centennial Expressway into downtown Oklahoma City. He took Sixth Street west to Robinson, then turned south toward the heart of downtown. He recognized the area now-it was very, very close to the federal courthouse and his sister’s office.
With the stop he’d made to call Faith, they’d fallen a few minutes behind the other Coalition cars. As he slowed into the southbound flow of traffic, Sean searched for them. Bank of America Plaza was ahead on his right. He recognized the red, white, and blue logo and saw the courtyard, which was commanded by an unusual modernistic sculpture just off the street: huge reddish orange metal cylinders, each open on one side, all twining around each other, reaching toward the sky.
People were milling around the courtyard, up and down the sidewalks. Men and women in FBI wind-breakers were scattered about. A knot of people broke behind a car that was parked illegally right in front of the courtyard. Sean drew in his breath-it was Jeannie Davis’s van.
“My God,” Daryn whispered.
Sean angled the Jeep into the far left lane, away from the bank on the one-way street. As he drove slowly past the van and the courtyard, he could see more people. He recognized some of the Coalition members. They’d been cuffed and were standing alongside several unmarked cars. CJ was lying on the ground, his hands cuffed behind his back. Several feet away, with three officers standing next to it, was the suitcase full of explosives.
“Who did you call?” Daryn said.
“Someone who knows someone in the FBI,” Sean said.
Daryn bowed her head. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. If Franklin had just told me what-”
They had just crossed Couch Drive, approaching Park Avenue, when they heard the explosion.
Daryn screamed. Britt leaned forward.
“Jesus, what was that?” Sean said.
Then it came to him-he hadn’t seen Sanborn’s car or the truck. The truck into which Don Wheaton had loaded the other suitcase of explosives.
“Shit,” he muttered. “Where’s that other bank?”
“Main and Broadway,” Britt said. “The big tower. Chase Bank.”
Daryn was shivering, arms wrapped around herself. Britt stared at her as if seeing her for the first time.
“He blew the other bank,” Sean said. “He used this one as a diversion, sacrificed the people, and blew the other one.”
“He lied to me again,” Daryn whispered. “He lied again.”
“But Daryn,” Britt said, “what about The Cause?”
Sean jerked as if he’d been poked with something hot. Britt had just called Daryn by her real name.
Daryn seemed not to notice. She was staring forward through the windshield, eyes unmoving, as if in a waking coma.
Sean turned onto Park, a tiny downtown street that dead-ended one block later at Broadway. Directly across the way was Santa Fe Plaza and the Skirvin Hotel, the landmark three-towered hotel that was in a state of constant renovation, always seemingly on the verge of reopening, just to be sold again and again. So Faith had told him, in the early days of her life in Oklahoma City. She’d pointed it out to him during their sightseeing last week.
Was that only a week ago? Sean thought. Seems like a hell of a lot longer than that.
To the right was the Chase Tower.
Thick black smoke rolled out from the glass front of the ground floor. Sean could see broken glass on the concrete, but the smoke was so thick and so dark that he couldn’t tell the extent of the damage.
“Jesus,” he said.
On the far side of the building, along Main Street, was Franklin Sanborn’s car and the other Coalition truck.
“There!” Britt pointed.
“Son of a bitch,” Sean whispered. “Hang on, people.”
He whipped the steering wheel to the left, climbed the median, and came back down on the other side of Broadway. Contradicting its name, the street was very narrow in this stretch of downtown. Sean kept the Jeep pointed diagonally southeast, toward Sanborn’s car on the other side.
Sirens sounded. People were beginning to run, some toward the Chase Tower, some away from it. People fell to their knees, coughing from the smoke. One woman had blood on her face. But Sean could still see very little for the smoke. He drove under it and through it, across the sidewalk toward Main.
Sanborn’s car pulled away from the curb.
“No you don’t, you bastard,” Sean said.
“Why are you chasing him?” Britt blurted. “He just tried…I mean, the Coalition. You didn’t…he-”
“Britt, that’s enough,” Daryn said, turning to face Britt with blood in her eyes. “Don’t get into things you don’t know about.”
“But he called the FBI. You didn’t…you didn’t go through with it.” Britt’s eyes filled with tears. “I don’t understand.”
“Shut up!” Daryn screamed. “Shut up, shut up, goddammit, Britt!” She pressed her hands to her head as if she were trying to keep it from cracking in two. “Just leave it alone!”
Sanborn’s car shot into the intersection and into E.K. Gaylord Boulevard, which marked the eastern edge of downtown and the beginning of the Bricktown entertainment district. It was a wider, large thoroughfare, and Sanborn went through against the light.
Sean, three car lengths behind, watched as a burgundy-colored four-door twisted to get out of Sanborn’s way. The driver was almost successful, and wound up just clipping Sanborn’s bumper. Sanborn fishtailed, but he righted the car and made it through the intersection.
The burgundy car’s driver stopped, like any normal citizen involved in a fender bender, and started to get out. Sean whipped around the car and followed Sanborn across the boulevard, under a railroad bridge, and into Bricktown. Main was at the north edge of the former warehouse district that had come to redefine Oklahoma City’s cultural life.
Just past the bridge, Sean blinked at what had to be an apparition: to the left, in a vacant area, dozens of buffalo. Sculptures-ceramic, papier-mâché, he had no idea, but they were all standing in a field, as if in a real buffalo herd, and all were painted with brightly colored designs.
He squeezed his eyes closed. Had to be the booze, playing tricks on his mind. He opened his eyes. The buffalo stood there serenely.
“I’m losing it,” he muttered.
“Look,” Daryn said.
There were brick buildings lining either side of Main, but it only ran two blocks before dead-ending at a high wire fence and several pieces of heavy construction equipment.
“No way out,” Sean said.
He braked the Jeep, and it came to rest in the middle of the street. Ahead, Sanborn saw the dead end too late. He tried to turn, but the car fishtailed again, the passenger side slamming into the fence.
Sean reached over the seat of the Jeep and retrieved his duffel bag from near Britt’s feet. He felt in it, but his gun wasn’t there.
“Goddammit!” Now he remembered-he’d taken it out of the duffel and put it in the little nightstand beside the bed, back in the Mulhall house.
He flung open the door of the Jeep, then crouched behind it.
“Sanborn!” he shouted. “They’ll be coming for you, any minute now. You son of a bitch, you have no idea what you’ve just done! You’ve done more harm to your own movement than you could possibly imagine!”
To his surprise, Sean heard laughter, low and controlled. Sanborn stepped out of the black car. A tiny trickle of blood bloomed from his hairline, running down his left cheek. Behind him, in the car, Don Wheaton was slumped against the passenger door, unmoving. “You’re the one who doesn’t know what’s going on here,” he said. He took a few steps forward. Sean spotted the gun in his hand, pointed downward. “Agent Sean Kelly,” Sanborn added.
Sean jerked again.
Behind him, Daryn got slowly out of the Jeep.
Sanborn made a tsk-tsk sound. “All that trouble with the bottle, Agent Kelly. It could make a man desperate to salvage his career. It could convince him to take a job hunting down the wayward, politically extreme daughter of a United States senator. One of the rulers himself.”
“Franklin, don’t,” Daryn said, but she was staring at Sean.
“Don’t? Don’t, my dear?” Sanborn raised the gun. “I knew someone would betray the Coalition. I didn’t know it would be you, but I knew someone would. Betrayals run rampant in the world of revolutionaries. You called the authorities, and they’ve taken CJ and Jeannie and the others. I knew it would happen. That’s why I had to be ready to strike at a second target. I’m very disappointed.”
Daryn walked slowly into the middle of the street, closing the distance between them. “Franklin, let’s stop while we can salvage the Coalition.”
“But what about your friend?” Sanborn said, pointing at Sean with the gun. “Your little sex toy there represents the ruling classes. He came to get you, Daryn. He came to bring you back to your daddy.”
Daryn stopped, closer to Sanborn now than to Sean and Britt. She turned and looked at Sean.
“This isn’t what you wanted, Daryn,” Sean said. It was the first time he’d called her by her real name. “All your commitment to social justice. This isn’t social justice. This is terrorist bullshit, all his nonsense about getting people’s attention. Terrorism doesn’t work. ‘Attention getters’ don’t work. It cuts off your message and then no one hears it.”
Daryn walked a few steps farther toward Sanborn. “Franklin-”
“Daryn?” Britt said, in a small voice. “What about me?”
Daryn stopped again. She turned to look at Britt, and in a lightning move, Sanborn closed the distance between them. In one motion he had his arm around Daryn’s neck, the gun at her temple.
Sean flexed his hands. Suddenly he felt nauseous, just like he did most mornings. “You don’t want to do that, Sanborn. Right now you might still be able to get out of this, but anything else and you’re a dead man.”
“And what about you?” Sanborn said. “Anything I’ve done, you’ve done too. It’s called conspiracy. Little more than you bargained for, isn’t it, Agent Kelly?” He moved then gun from Daryn’s temple and shoved it under her chin.
The driver of the burgundy car, a middle-aged, well-dressed black woman, was running toward them, but stopped short when she saw the gun. She turned and began to run back toward the street.
“The cops will be all over this street in a minute or two,” Sean said. “That woman’s pulling out her cell phone and calling them now.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Sanborn said. “There’s just been an act of terrorism at the Chase Tower. See that smoke? That means a lot more right now than some strange little altercation on a dead-end street.” He twisted the gun under Daryn’s chin. “I could just fix this right now, Daryn. One shot, a blinding split-second of pain, and then no more pain at all, of any kind, ever again. But no, maybe I won’t do that after all. You’d like that too much, wouldn’t you?”
Sean stared at him, not understanding.
Sanborn raised his voice. “Britt! Come here, girl.”
Britt didn’t move.
“Now, girl. Come to me or Daryn dies right here, right now.”
Britt walked slowly to him.
“Now you, Mr. Kelly. You’re going to step away from your car, over to the curb. Should have kept your weapon with you, shouldn’t you? But then, I suppose whiskey and sex have your mind a bit rattled these days, yes?”
Sean very slowly moved away from the open door of the Jeep, toward the last building on the block, which was vacant. A faded sign on the building read Billy’s Candy & Nectar Co.
He moved to the curb, holding his hands out away from his body, trying to think. But his brain felt encased in some kind of gel, something that surrounded him and wouldn’t let him go, wouldn’t let him think.
“Traitor,” Sanborn hissed, lowered the gun and shoved her hard. She tumbled to the ground and he kicked her in the ribs. “We’ll regroup in Mulhall. The Coalition isn’t dead, young Miss McDermott. We’re just getting started. The rulers will know that we’ve spoken, and one of them will be your father.”
He motioned to Britt with the gun, then ran for the Jeep.
“Daryn?” Britt said.
“Come now, Britt!” Sanborn shouted. “She betrayed the Coalition. She betrayed you! You loved her and she betrayed everything we stand for! Come on!”
“Daryn?”
Daryn was curled into a fetal position, clutching her ribs. Sean moved toward her. Daryn didn’t speak. She hadn’t made a sound since Sanborn grabbed her. Her eyes were squeezed closed. Tears streaked her face and ran onto the asphalt.
Britt finally walked to the Jeep, never taking her eyes from Daryn.
“If you try to come back to the Coalition,” Sanborn said, “I’ll kill you, or I’ll have you killed. And maybe…” He slid behind the wheel of Sean’s Jeep. “…maybe I’ll have you killed anyway.”
Britt got in beside him, and Sanborn turned the Jeep around, maneuvering it out of the dead-end street.
Sean looked up. He saw a face at a window across the street. He heard more sirens, and pandemonium from down the street. Smoke billowed and streamed from the Chase Tower.
He went to Daryn, picked her up in his arms, and took her back to the curb.
“He’s going to kill me,” Daryn whispered. “He’s going to come after me. He thinks I’m a traitor…but he…he’s the traitor. It wasn’t supposed to…” She contorted her face in pain, in anguish.
Sean’s head was pounding. Everything had gotten mixed up. He didn’t know who was who or what was what anymore. For a moment he could almost imagine that he was back in the cantina in Sasabe, drinking whiskey and eating tortillas half a mile from the Mexican border.
But he’d found Daryn McDermott. Her identity was in the open, as was his. Somehow Sanborn had broken his cover. But that didn’t matter anymore. Nothing was the same. Sanborn was right-Daryn would be implicated in any conspiracy charges. She and Sanborn had together been the driving forces behind the Coalition’s plans. Behind the plans yet to come. He remembered the list of other banks, all over the country, culminating with a “strike” on Citibank in New York City.
A little bit of the gel surrounding his mind melted. “Oh my God,” he said aloud. He knew in that instant he would never see the rest of Tobias Owens’s money, that Senator McDermott would probably never see his daughter again, and there was no chance at redemption for his career. But he had to make a choice. He pulled out his cell phone.
When Faith answered, he said, “Where are you right now?”
“At my office. All hell’s broken loose downtown. Why didn’t you-”
“Faith, we’re not far away. Come and get us.”
“What? What do you mean, us?”
Sean cradled Daryn’s head in his lap. “You’re in the protection business, right? I have someone who needs protection, and I think she might have some information you and your bosses would find useful.”
FAITH HAD TO LITERALLY PLUCK THEM OUT FROM under the noses of the local cops. As soon as she hung up the phone with her brother, she knew the us he referred to had to be himself and the missing girl, Katherine Hall. She also knew that if she was about to become officially involved, not as Sean’s sister but as a Department Thirty case officer, she needed to avoid any entanglements with the locals. All she would need was Detective Cain sniffing around what had turned into a federal matter.
Since her Miata was strictly a two-seater, she pried Hendler temporarily away from the downtown melee. The girl was to ride with Faith, and Sean with Hendler in his Toyota. Sean complained about the arrangement, but Faith silenced him with a look. He was in her territory now.
With no time to make other arrangements, she decided to use the Edmond safe house after all, and they headed north. The girl, Kat Hall, kept looking at her during the half-hour drive, kept trying to talk to her.
“Wait,” Faith told her. “Just wait, then you can talk all you want.”
Faith did look at her quite a bit herself, though. She looked almost frail, waiflike, but with eyes of pure steel. There was something vaguely familiar about her, though Faith couldn’t place it. Just like the elusive Franklin Sanborn. She’d searched every database she had access to, and had come up empty. But she was still positive she knew the name. With any luck, she’d know why very shortly.
Department Thirty’s safe house in the white-collar suburb of Edmond had once been the home of Frank and Anna Elder, the new identities assigned to James and Natalia Brickens, aka “Adam and Eve,” who had once been the world’s premier freelance assassins. They were still considered the biggest catches ever in the department, though both were now dead. Their case, and the turbulent search of their son to find his own real identity, had been her introduction to Department Thirty. That case had led to the death of her mentor and father figure, Art Dorian, and had brought her into his world.
The department had held on to the house, though, paying the mortgage, taxes, utilities, and insurance through a variety of accounts. It was in a quiet subdivision just off Santa Fe Avenue and Danforth Road on the north side of Edmond. The suburb had grown hugely just in the years Faith had lived in Oklahoma. The corner of Danforth and Santa Fe had once been an open field. A single convenience store had been the only business. Now all four corners were occupied by bustling shopping centers.
Faith kept a garage door opener for the house, just as she did for the Yukon safe house. She pressed the button and pulled the Miata into the two-car garage. Hendler’s Toyota pulled in behind her. Sean got out, but Hendler leaned out his window and said, “I have to get back downtown. There are a lot of…well, we’re still not quite sure what happened.”
“I’ll talk to you later,” Faith called. Hendler backed out. Faith lowered the garage door.
They went into the house through the garage and into the kitchen. The house was quite musty. Unlike the one in Yukon, this house had once been occupied on a long-term basis, and consequently, all its furnishings had belonged to the occupants, Frank and Anna Elder. Faith had scavenged some furniture for the place, but it wasn’t much: a couple of sagging armchairs in the living room, a coffee table, an ancient TV set. Those cases who’d been housed here temporarily slept in sleeping bags on the floor.
“It’s not much,” Faith said, “but it’ll do for now.” She turned and faced Sean and the younger woman. Her eyes zeroed in on the girl’s scratched face, and the way she was slightly hunched over. “Are you hurt? Do you need a doctor? I have one that I can get here if you need medical attention.”
“No, I don’t need a doctor,” she said. Faith thought she detected a ghost of a smile on her face, and wondered what it meant.
“You hit your head when he shoved you,” Sean said. “And he kicked your ribs. You might need X-rays.”
“No. No X-rays. My ribs aren’t broken, and my head’s pretty hard.” There was the strange little smile again.
“All right, then,” Faith said. “I’ve made the offer. If you don’t think you need medical attention, I can’t force you to get it.” She walked into the living room and motioned them to chairs. She sat on the edge of the coffee table. She didn’t even look at her brother. “Your name is Katherine Hall, is that right?”
“Yes,” she said.
“No,” Sean said.
Faith looked at both of them. “We’re not going to get anywhere if we can’t even get past the basic stuff.”
“Tell her everything,” Sean said. “This is the time to tell the truth, good and bad, Daryn. If you want protection from Sanborn, and if you want to save your cause from turning into just another domestic terrorist group, you have to tell everything.”
“And you?” Daryn said. “Why don’t you tell the truth?”
Sean shrugged. “My name is Sean Kelly. I’m an agent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security. At least I was.”
Daryn said nothing, staring at him.
“But none of this was official,” Sean added quickly. “This is a freelance job.”
“My father hired you.” A statement, not a question.
“He sent someone to hire me, yes.”
“To bring me back before I embarrassed him?”
“Essentially, yes.”
“Bastard,” Daryn said.
“Who are you?” Faith asked.
Daryn looked up at her slowly. For a moment it seemed as if she wasn’t focusing. Then her eyes cleared, and Faith noticed the same hard darkness she’d seen there before. “My name is Daryn McDermott. My father is Senator Edward McDermott of Arizona.”
Faith waited, thinking. “Now I know why I recognized you. You’re the one who was arrested for public nudity at the demonstration in front of the Capitol.”
“Isn’t it funny,” Daryn said, “how society works? It doesn’t matter what else I’ve done or said. But once I took off my clothes, people paid attention. The very fact that we have laws against public nudity in this country are proof of the change we need.”
Faith glanced over at Sean. Sean shrugged. Faith looked back to Daryn. “So you were involved in what happened downtown today?”
Daryn squared her shoulders and looked Faith in the eye. “Yes. And now let me ask you a question.”
“Go ahead.”
“Who are you? The two of you are related, right?”
Before Faith could speak, Sean said, “I guess that’s pretty obvious when you see us together. Daryn, this is my sister, Faith Kelly.”
“And what exactly is it you do, sister Faith Kelly?”
Faith took note of the way Daryn McDermott had swung from quiet bemusement to anger to insolence in her tone, all in the space of a few minutes. “I work for a special unit of the Justice Department.”
“Witness protection.”
“Not exactly. Not witness protection, but criminal protection.” As she always did, she paused for a moment to let that sink in.
Faith and Daryn locked gazes for a long moment. Daryn looked away first.
“If you were involved in what just happened downtown, you’ve been involved in an act of terrorism. In this country, here and now, that’s taken pretty damn seriously. Now, Sean seems to think you need protection, and he also seems to think you have something to tell, something that might warrant that protection by the U.S. Government. Do you?”
Daryn looked at Sean.
“There’s no other way,” Sean said. “You heard what Sanborn said at the end.”
“Sean,” Faith said, “I’m going to advise you to keep your big Irish mouth shut, okay? This is what I do, and you stay out of it. Also, the fact that I still don’t know the extent of your involvement in this makes me wonder how deep you are in it. I’ll deal with you later.”
Sean sat back. He’d never heard the cold, official Department Thirty side of Faith before. He raised his hands in a mock surrender.
“Who’s older?” Daryn said suddenly.
“What?” Faith said.
“You’re brother and sister. Which one of you is older?”
“He is, by eighteen months,” Faith said.
Daryn nodded. “Interesting dynamic, isn’t it?”
“It would be if we were talking about my family dynamics,” Faith said. “But we’re not. There are two questions you have to answer. Do you believe you need protection, either from prosecution or from the threat of bodily harm? And do you believe you have information vital to the national interests of the United States? Yes or no, right now.”
“Yes, on both counts,” Daryn said, her head high.
Faith spoke to Sean but kept looking at Daryn. “Sean, you have to leave now.”
“What?” Sean said. “But I brought her in. I’m the one who-”
Faith whirled to face him. “Listen to me, dammit! The less you say the better, for her, for me, for yourself. Just for your information, most of my department’s cases don’t come in this way. We find them, they don’t find us. There’s only been one exception in the department’s history. So we all have to be very, very careful here. Do you understand me? I’m not bullshitting you, Sean. This is the way it has to be done.”
“But-”
“No buts. If she qualifies for the program, which we still don’t know at this point, every aspect of her life will change. She will have no connection with her past life. Do you know what that means? It means you won’t ever see her again. I don’t know what’s going on here, between the two of you, but you brought this to me, and now you have to understand the implications of what you’ve done. You get that, big brother?”
“Jesus, Faith, you’re-”
“A coldhearted bitch, I know. I’ve been called everything in this job. Don’t get me wrong. You’re still my brother and you’ll always be my brother, but by calling me in on this, you’re in a whole different universe now.”
“I know. At least I guess I…” Sean’s voice died away. He looked past his sister to Daryn.
“I guess you didn’t finish the job my father hired you to do,” Daryn said. Her look now was triumphant.
Sean pressed his fingertips to his head. “No. I’m not even thinking about that anymore. I…Kat, I mean, Daryn…it’s different. I didn’t have to call Faith. I could have let them arrest you, or I could have let you take your chances with Sanborn. You’re so committed to your agenda, and Sanborn twisted it so much, that-”
“You should listen to your younger sister,” Daryn said. “Just stay out of it from here on out. I’ll deal with whatever happens next.” She sat back in the lumpy armchair. “No last fucks for the road, Sean. Or I could call you Michael, for old times’ sake. You got a lot more sex than you paid Kat Hall for, so you shouldn’t complain.”
Faith looked at both of them, but kept silent. Pain was scribbled on Sean’s face, as if in bloody red capital letters. When she looked back at Daryn McDermott, the girl’s own expression had changed again, with a softness she hadn’t expected. Furrows slashed into her forehead.
“I’m sorry,” Daryn said, and her voice was very gentle, almost faint. “Could I just lie down for a while?”
Faith observed the way Daryn’s manner could shift so abruptly, so completely. This was, she thought, a very dangerous young woman.
“Yes,” Faith said. “Down the hall, first bedroom to the right. There’s a sleeping bag you can use. Be sure to shake it out. It hasn’t been used in a while.”
“Thank you, Faith.”
Without looking back at Sean, Daryn heaved herself up from the chair, as if it were a great effort, and walked out of the room.
Faith looked at Sean. “You should stay out of sight for now,” she finally said. “I still don’t know what’s going on here. The tip about Bank of America…they caught the group there.”
“We didn’t know about the Chase bomb,” Sean said wearily. “Turns out Sanborn anticipated that we’d call someone, and he used the B of A group as a diversion, while he took the other set of explosives to Chase. Jesus Christ, Faith. How bad is it? The bombing. Could this city stand another thing like that? Could any city?”
“If any city could, this one could,” Faith said. “But I don’t know anything else about the extent of the damage. Scott’s there, and I’ll find out more from him later. For now, you go back to the house. Don’t stop anywhere, don’t do anything.”
“You mean, don’t drink,” Sean said, standing up.
“Yeah, I do mean that. Take my car.” She dug in her purse for keys and tossed them to him. “Yours is gone, I guess?”
A strange look came over Sean’s face. “Sanborn took it. He had a gun on us, on Daryn. My gun’s…”
“Where?”
“Never mind. It doesn’t matter now. How will you get home?”
Faith shrugged. “I’m not sure when I’ll get to go home. When I’m doing an intake like this, I sometimes don’t get to go home for a couple of days at the very beginning. I’ll either get Scott to give me a ride, or if he’s too tied up, I’ll have someone from the Marshals Service get me a car. I’ll have to call in a couple of them to work protective detail for your friend in there.”
“Faith,” Sean said.
Faith waited.
“I’m sorry.”
Faith nodded. “Go on back home. Try to forget about her. I don’t know what’s already happened, and I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but you have to put her out of your mind.”
“She’s not an easy woman to forget.”
Faith glanced down the hall. “I believe you,” she said.
FAITH WAITED UNTIL SHE HEARD THE MIATA LEAVE the garage. Then she walked to the front window, pulled aside the curtains, and watched her car until it reached the corner and turned.
She walked down the hall, doing a breathing exercise as she went. When her friend Alex had had a baby, three months premature, last year, Faith had learned about the power of controlling one’s breathing, and now often used prenatal breathing exercises to steady her nerves and focus her senses.
Daryn McDermott wasn’t lying down when Faith walked into the bedroom. Rather, she was sitting on top of the sleeping bag, her back propped against the wall. The lights were off.
“Let me turn on the light,” Faith said.
“Don’t, please,” Daryn said. “I get these terrible headaches, and it’s better in the dark when I have one.”
“If someone shoved you to the ground, you may have a mild concussion,” Faith said. “The offer of medical attention still stands.”
“No, thank you. Getting shoved to the ground didn’t cause my headache.”
“All right.” Faith sat down on the floor, at an angle to where Daryn sat. Not too close, not too far away. “Can I get you anything? A glass of water? I’ll do some shopping later and get some supplies in here.”
“No, nothing.” The sky outside had become overcast, and much of the room was in shadow. “Tell me something, Faith. Are you as good a lover as your brother?”
Faith didn’t blink and didn’t hesitate. “That depends on who you ask, I suppose.”
Daryn chuckled lightly, yet another new emotion from her. “True. Your brother’s quite good, actually.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“No, I guess you wouldn’t. Though you never can tell in some families.”
“Voice of experience?” Faith said.
Daryn was silent for a long time. “You’re impressive. Usually when I make statements like I just made, people are shocked, appalled, outraged that such a pretty young ‘thing’ would talk about such matters.”
“Number one: you’re not a thing. Number two: nothing shocks me. I am capable of outrage, though.”
“I’m sure you are. So am I.”
“Obviously.” Faith crossed her long legs at the ankle. “What outrages you, Daryn?”
“Social injustice. Phony moralistic laws, unfair tax codes that punish real people while the ruling classes-those like my father and his cronies-gain wealth and power on the backs of others. My father’s never worked an honest day in his life.”
“Well, I’m no lover of politicians myself, and trust me, I’ve known a few.” Faith wondered what Daryn would say if she knew that the newly reelected president of the United States considered Faith a personal friend. Faith didn’t like the man, but that hadn’t stopped them from doing “professional favors” for each other.
“Oh, it’s not just politicians. I’m not just another antigovernment nutcase.”
“That’s refreshing.”
“Yes. It’s the entire fabric of society. It’s corrupt and immoral, cloaked in this invisible language of ‘values’ and ‘the American dream’ and that kind of silliness.”
“Okay, then,” Faith said. “What led the daughter of a United States senator to be here, at this point, talking to me? Start with this guy Sanborn. He sent people to break into your apartment, you get away, and somehow you wind up connected with him afterward.”
Daryn moved her head in the semidarkness, but only slightly. “I misjudged Franklin.”
“You don’t seem surprised to find out that he sent those guys to your apartment.”
“I’m not surprised by anything I learn about Franklin Sanborn now. I trusted him, and he betrayed that trust.”
“Who is he? Ever since you-or ever since Katherine Hall, I should say-became a missing person a week ago, and I found out from the local police that the guys who broke into your apartment drove a car rented by Franklin Sanborn, I’ve been trying to find out about him. He’s a ghost, a phantom. He doesn’t exist.”
“He was a professor in Indiana.” Daryn’s voice was very soft and very even. “I think he was fired for his political views. He’d read about one of my tours last year and he found me in Washington. He had a plan, he had a vision for the cause I was already promoting. That’s how we created the Coalition for Social Justice.”
“Nice name. This Coalition for Social Justice? It’s responsible for bombing the Chase Tower?”
Daryn sighed. “I don’t know when, but somewhere Franklin lost control. Maybe it was seeing me with Michael…I mean Sean. I was never with Franklin sexually, yet he struck me as the kind who could have been very possessive, even without having ever done it.”
Faith shook her head. “You speak a lot of different languages, Daryn. You talk to Sean about ‘last fucks for the road,’ like any street hooker, and here and now, you sound like a social scientist.”
Daryn said nothing.
“So you and Sanborn created this Coalition. Why here? Why Oklahoma?”
“I’d been through here on my tour last year. I made a friend here, one of the girls on the street. Plus, there’s the whole ‘heartland’ syndrome. That’s about the only possible thing I could agree with that fool McVeigh on. Starting in New York or Washington or Chicago or Los Angeles would have been lost on everyone.” Daryn shifted on the sleeping bag. She moved a little closer to Faith “Why don’t we get down to business, Faith?”
“Okay, we’ll get down to business. When I talk to my boss, he’s going to want to know what information you have, and how important it is to national interests. Let’s start there.”
Faith thought she heard Daryn’s breathing quicken.
“And so,” Daryn said after a moment, “you would protect a terrorist if the information was right?”
“Are you a terrorist, Daryn?”
“You answered my question with a question.”
“Yes, I did,” Faith said. She didn’t move, staring at the other woman with unflinching eyes.
There was a long silence.
“You’re a very disarming woman,” Daryn said after a full minute. “I’m rarely at a loss, and you’ve done it twice now.”
Faith shrugged.
“It’s a very attractive quality. To me, it’s quite erotic.” Daryn’s voice was almost a whisper.
Breathe, Faith, breathe.
“Well,” she said slowly, “I’m only into guys, Daryn.”
Daryn moved a little closer. “No, you’re not, Faith. You say that, but you’re not. Let me touch you, Faith. I want to touch you everywhere.” She reached toward Faith, fingers outstretched.
“Daryn,” Faith said. “If you put your hand on me, I will break your wrist.”
Daryn froze.
“And then I’ll take you back downtown and drop you off where I found you. You’ll have to face the choices you’ve made, whether it’s with the FBI or your father or Sanborn. Your window of opportunity will close because of inappropriate behavior toward a federal officer.”
“You’re not just a federal officer, Faith. You’re also a woman.”
“Yep, and I’m a woman who’s into guys. And I’m a woman who doesn’t do quickie fucks with people who might be under her official jurisdiction.”
Daryn pulled away. “You’re not much like your brother. And you’re pretty good at speaking two languages yourself.”
“Comes with the territory. And as for my brother, he’s off limits to you now. Are you a terrorist, Daryn? Yes or no?”
Daryn leaned back and closed her eyes. “I didn’t intend to be. It wasn’t supposed to turn out the way it did.”
“Were you involved in a conspiracy to bomb the Chase Tower today?”
“Yes.” Eyes still closed.
“Are you involved in a conspiracy to do other similar acts with this Coalition?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have information about these other acts?”
“Yes.” Daryn reached into the pocket of her black jeans. She pulled out a folded piece of paper and tossed it to Faith.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a list of other targets, other banks we were going to strike, with the dates. It’s Franklin’s master plan.”
Faith squinted in the dim light. The list included some of the largest banks in the country, and the dates began one week from today.
“You’ve made your point,” Faith said. “Do you know where Sanborn is now?”
“He…” Daryn cleared her throat. “He took Britt-”
“Who’s Britt?”
“She’s my…friend here in town. She’s a street girl. She’s not very bright, and she was obsessed with me, never wanted to be far away from me. I don’t know how she’ll do.”
“Where did he take her?”
“They took your brother’s Jeep. Franklin said they were going to regroup in Mulhall.”
“Mulhall? As in the town of Mulhall? North of Guthrie, that Mulhall?”
“We had a house there where we were all living together. I guess the ones who didn’t get caught today went back there. They might still be there.”
Faith rattled the list in her hand. “These other locations. Do you have other groups of your Coalition?”
“Small cells in towns outside the metro areas of each bank. Five or six people each. We were the main center here, because this is where we were starting. I can give you the towns where every group is.”
Faith stopped a moment, studying the younger woman. When talking about the Coalition, Sanborn-anything but sex-Daryn’s voice had been flat, almost without emotion. Only when she’d tried to seduce Faith had she seemed animated. Daryn McDermott was complicated, and Faith still didn’t have a feel for which Daryn was the “real” one.
“Let me shift gears for a moment,” Faith said. “Who was Katherine Hall? She wasn’t a writer working on a book.”
“No. That’s what I told the landlord and the neighbors.”
“Mrs. Holzbauer is quite upset about what happened to you.”
“She and her husband are very sweet people. I’m sorry I had to lie to them.”
Did she just use the word sweet? Faith thought. She’s even more complex than I thought.
“More sorry than being a part of blowing up a building?”
“I’m not going to answer that.”
“That’s okay,” Faith said. “I wouldn’t answer it either, if I were you. So what about Kat?”
“I knew the Coalition was coming together, and that we’d be moving on our agenda very soon. And I knew that Daryn McDermott would have to lend her name to it.” A little note of bitterness crept into her voice. “The nutty daughter of the U.S. senator. Like it or not, Daryn McDermott’s name is known. She’s a minor celebrity. But for a while, I didn’t want to be her.” She seemed on the verge of saying something else, but was silent.
“That’s a fairly common feeling among people who’ve been in the spotlight for most of their lives.”
Daryn nodded. “I was born into the ruling class, and as much as I despise what it stands for now, I can’t deny being part of it. That would be hypocritical, and regardless of everything else I may be, I’m not a hypocrite. I wanted to taste the real world. I’ve crusaded for the rights of sex workers, and my own sexuality helps define a big part of who I am, so that’s what I became.”
“Sex workers? Isn’t that what they call them in the European countries where prostitution is legal?”
“That’s right. Very good. I spent a summer interning in Amsterdam, and that’s part of what opened my eyes about this issue. But I’d never had the experiences, and I wanted the experiences. I craved a real life. So Kat Hall was born. I knew her life would be short. I designed a website, put escort ads in various places on the Internet, and just like that, I was a professional escort. I met some intriguing men and women, had some great sex, some not-so-great sex, made connections with people. I knew it wouldn’t last long.” Her voice grew far away. “I had even asked the people at the Mulhall house to call me Kat, at least for a while, until we went public. It kept her alive a little longer.”
Faith got to her feet. “You’re a very unusual person, Daryn. I’ve dealt with some intriguing people in the last few years, but none like you.”
Daryn’s tone changed, became animated again. “You could still stay here with me for a while, woman to woman. I’m still interested.”
“And I’m still just into guys.” Faith moved toward the door. “There are some things I have to do now, to begin processing your case. I have phone calls to make, paperwork to do.”
“You’re not going to leave me here alone, are you?”
“I’ll call in a protective detail. There will be two deputy United States marshals here with you, a man and a woman. Do not under any circumstances try to seduce them, Daryn. If you do, I’ll know about it, and you’ll be on the street. Is that clear?”
“Yes.”
“They will not know any details of why you’re here, or what’s happening. They will not try to get information out of you. I am the only one you talk to about the case. The only things they can talk to you about are neutral subjects like what you want to eat, if you’re comfortable in the house, that sort of thing. Just so you know, they will be armed. They’re required to be, just in case. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Do I look like I could overpower two federal marshals?”
“Stranger things have happened,” Faith said. “I’ll be back when I can.”
“Will you be seeing your brother?”
“Not for a while. He needs a ‘time out’ too. I’ll deal with him later.”
“You know that he’s an alcoholic,” Daryn said, without emotion. “It controls him.”
“Yes, I know that,” Faith said, and left the room.
AT FIRST FAITH THOUGHT DARYN WOULD FOLLOW her out of the bedroom, but Daryn stayed where she was, propped against the wall in the semidarkness. Faith whipped out her cell phone. Her first call was to Chief Deputy Mark Raines in the office of the Marshals Service. She ordered a protective detail-two teams, twelve-hour shifts-and Raines got right on it, no questions asked. She also asked if they could provide her a car for the short term. Affirmative, with no questions. Such was the way of Department Thirty.
The two deputies arrived in two cars, a little less than an hour later. Faith knew both of them. The woman, Hagy, had done protection on the Alex Bridge case last year, and the man, Leneski, was one of the few Faith actually counted as personal friends. She gave them vague instructions-vague instructions are my life, she thought for a moment-then left to go shopping. She went to the giant supermarket on the corner of Danforth and Santa Fe and bought a variety of ready-to-eat and microwavable foods, bottled water, juice, and some Tylenol for Daryn’s headaches. She took the groceries back to the safe house, then left Daryn and the two deputies.
It was a little past noon, and the brilliant skies of morning had turned to drizzle. You don’t like the weather in Oklahoma, wait five minutes, someone had told her shortly after she moved to the state. It was especially volatile in spring: sunshine, heat, wind, thunderstorms, even tornadoes-all in the space of a single day. She’d seen it many times by now.
She wasn’t really hungry, adrenaline pumping in overdrive, but she’d learned in doing recruitments-or “intakes”-that she got so wrapped up in things that she sometimes simply forgot to eat, and would then suddenly find herself sapped of energy when her adrenaline crashed. So she drove through McDonald’s, ate without tasting, and made her next call as she drove south through Edmond.
“Richard Conway,” said a voice she knew well.
She had to wait a moment, as she always did. She knew the voice, the precise, occasionally pompous diction, but he wasn’t Conway to her, and never would be. He was still Dean Yorkton in her mind. Ironically for the present case, he’d been a field officer, living next door to Frank and Anna Elder in the neighborhood she’d just left, for more than twenty years. Now he was the director of Department Thirty, administering the unit from a tiny unmarked office in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
“Mr. Director,” she said, knowing how he liked formality.
“My dear Officer Kelly,” Yorkton said. “I haven’t heard your voice in a while, though I was just preparing to type you a message giving you the go-ahead on the Bankston case.”
Faith nodded. “Good. I’ll move him as soon as I can. I’m calling about something new that’s come my way.”
“I’m listening,” he said.
“Have you heard anything about a bombing of the Chase bank building here in Oklahoma City this morning?”
“It was on CNN. Dreadful business. I know that building well, from when I lived there. Though it wasn’t Chase then…that was three or four bank mergers ago. From the coverage I’m seeing here, it could have been much worse than it was.”
“I don’t know details yet,” Faith said. “What I do know is that I have one of the lead conspirators in the bombing sitting in the safe house in Edmond.”
Long pause. “He came to you?”
“She. And yes, she was brought to me.”
“What do you mean, she was brought to you?”
Faith slowed through a construction zone on Santa Fe. All parts of Oklahoma City were under construction these days, it seemed. “It’s complicated.”
“Yes?”
“I know, I know, everything we do is complicated. Actually, my brother brought her to me.”
“Your what?”
“My brother.” She explained Sean’s involvement, omitting any references to his drinking. By the time she’d explained what she knew of the situation, she was out of Edmond, on the Broadway Extension crossing Interstate 44.
“Oh my,” Yorkton said when she’d finished. “This is messy, isn’t it? How did your brother know about your job? Oh wait a moment…he’s Customs, isn’t he? So he knew of our existence, then put two and two together and brought the girl to you for protection. You didn’t actually tell your brother you worked for Department Thirty, did you?”
“No, of course not.”
“That would have been a severe breach of security protocols.”
“Blah, blah, blah. I know that. What’s your take on the girl?”
“A senator’s daughter. Very, very messy. But if she’s truly the force behind this coalition, she could qualify. If we can prevent any other bombings from happening…”
He was counting political brownie points, Faith knew. That was what he did, what she supposed he had to do. She had enough difficulty grappling with Department Thirty’s mission at times, just as a case officer. She wasn’t sure she could have handled the political end of it.
“You’ll investigate her information, of course,” Yorkton was saying.
“I’m moving on it now.”
“Send me the list of targets.”
“I’ll do it as soon as I get to the office. Can you run this Franklin Sanborn name?”
“You sound uncomfortable about it.”
“I am,” Faith said. She steered around a slow-moving truck. “I know the name. I’m positive I know Sanborn, but I’ve come up totally empty so far. When the local cops were running this as a missing persons case, they looked for him, and he’s a phantom. But I don’t think so. I know him, I’m just not sure why.”
“I have confidence in your abilities, Officer Kelly,” Yorkton said. “If he’s there to be found, you’ll find him, I’m sure. And you have access to almost every resource that I do. But I will do some checking on this end.”
“Thanks. I’ll keep you updated.”
She ended the call and drove on. A deep, irrational part of her didn’t want to know damage estimates or the death and injury toll from the Chase Tower bombing. She couldn’t make herself listen to the radio news. She was in the middle of it now, and even worse, so was Sean.
Her own brother.
Her hero.
Her handsome, intelligent, intuitive big brother. The one who kept things neat and tidy and who could cook gourmet meals and who was popular with small kids and animals. When the Kellys gathered in Chicago for the big Memorial Day reunion-dozens and dozens of relatives, from as far away as California and Vermont, and one time some distant cousins had come from County Wicklow, Ireland-the young children were drawn to Sean as if magnetized. She’d finally realized it was because he was one of them, childlike to the end. He rarely considered consequences, whether it was rolling down a hill with his little cousins or drinking whiskey for breakfast or being sexually manipulated by a vixen like Daryn McDermott. He had an innocence that betrayed all he’d done and all he’d seen. Faith supposed she no longer had that, and the children could sense it, gravitating toward their cousin Sean instead of their cousin Faith.
Sean. If only he’d thought about the consequences.
If only were the two most useless words in any language. That sounded like something her father would say. The thought made Faith a little sad.
Downtown was cordoned off after the bombing, so Faith had to backtrack to the Tenth Street exit and drive several blocks west, before working her way back to the courthouse. She saw a handful of FBI and ATF officers she knew on the streets, talking in small groups. She thought she also caught a glimpse of Detective Rob Cain, huddled in a knot of uniformed officers a few blocks away from Bank of America Plaza.
She parked in the garage, then walked right in the front door of the federal courthouse. There was no lockdown in progress. The security guard simply nodded to her as she put her SIG Sauer in the tray and passed through the metal detector.
“Ms. Kelly,” he said.
“Hey, Clayton,” she said. She went through the detector without setting it off, then retrieved and holstered her SIG. “Much excitement over here?”
“Nah,” Clayton said. “They locked us down for a while, but we were on top of it pretty quick.”
“I had to leave,” Faith said. “I’ve been out of the loop for a couple of hours.”
Clayton looked at her but knew better than to ask questions. “Well, your friend is upstairs.”
“Which friend?”
Clayton smiled. They both knew she didn’t have that many friends that would visit her at the courthouse. The guard motioned to the top of his own head and drew a little circle with his index finger.
“Bald spot,” he said.
Faith smiled. “Thanks, Clayton.”
“He said he’d wait for you down in the Marshals’ office.”
She took the ornate stairs to the second floor and turned down the hallway. To her surprise, Hendler was standing in the hall across from her office door. He was wearing his dark blue FBI windbreaker over his standard white shirt and red tie, with charcoal gray suit pants. Faith, who’d once prided herself on “dressing for success,” felt suddenly scruffy in her uniform of blue jeans and a polo shirt. Her only jewelry was the tiger’s-eye gem Sean had sent her from Arizona, encircled by stainless steel wire and worn on a thin black string around her neck.
“Hey,” she said. “Clayton said you were waiting with the Marshals.”
“No one I knew was around. Seems Hagy and Leneski had to run out on a last-minute protective detail.”
“Do tell.” Faith unlocked the bare door to her office and they went in. Once inside, the door closed, she leaned down and kissed his cheek. “You don’t look half bad, for having gone through a bombing. Who’s doing what over there?”
“Dunaway’s running it now. She runs the antiterrorist squad these days anyway. She lives for terror, you know.”
Faith pictured petite, elegant Cara Dunaway living for terror. She smiled. “I know.”
Hendler plopped into one of the guest chairs. “Man, we got off lucky this time.”
“How do you mean?” Faith perched on the edge of her desk and kicked off her sneakers.
“Of course, I guess the families of the six people who died won’t say we got off lucky.” Hendler rubbed his face. “When you called and we mobilized to Bank of America, we were ready for the worst. Another Murrah Building. We evacuated, set up a perimeter, it was one smooth operation.”
“I didn’t know about Chase when I called you,” Faith said. “I guess Bank of America was a diversion, and they planned to hit Chase all along.”
Hendler looked at her strangely.
“What?” Faith said, growing impatient. “What’s that look about?”
“The woman you drove to Edmond…she’s the missing one, right? The one Rob Cain was working on. How much are she and your brother connected to what went down a few blocks from here?”
“Neither confirm nor deny.” She’d said the same thing many, many times by now. “What kind of casualty figures do you have from Chase? Six dead. What else?”
“It could have been much, much worse. It was a relatively small cache of C-4. Six dead, twenty-nine taken to hospitals, thirteen of those treated and released, mostly glass cuts, bruises, smoke inhalation. The ones who died were people nearest the suitcase of C-4, which was placed right outside the bank’s revolving door. Structurally, the building will be fine. Lots of ground-floor damage, but nothing approaching the scale of the Murrah Building. Still…” Hendler bowed his head. “Six dead. One was a two-year-old boy, Faith. His mom was going into the bank to make a deposit. She was one of the ones treated and released. The little boy was standing almost on top of the suitcase, right by the door. The mom was two steps ahead of him.”
Faith leaned forward, steadying her hands on Hendler’s knees.
“Faith, I don’t know what this is,” Hendler said. “And I don’t know where you and Thirty are in it. But terrorism just came back to Oklahoma City.”
Faith found Sean half an hour later, passed out on the couch in her living room, an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s placed carefully in the center of the coffee table.
That’s Sean, Faith thought bitterly. He might pass out dead drunk, but he’ll be damn sure he doesn’t spill anything or knock anything over. Wouldn’t want to make a mess, after all.
“Hey!” she called, kicking at the edge of the couch.
Sean stirred slightly, moved an arm, stayed asleep.
“Wake up!”
He didn’t move.
“Shit,” Faith muttered.
She slapped his leg. He rolled over, away from the edge of the couch.
Sean was wearing heavy-soled hiking boots. Faith grabbed one, unlaced it, and pulled it from his foot. She started hitting him lightly with it, working up his body.
Sean finally started moving. “Hey,” he said thickly.
“Wake up! Wake up before I get to your head!”
She hit his rib cage with the boot and he rolled over defensively, finally coming up in a half-sitting position.
“What the hell, Faith,” he said. “Let a guy get a nap.” He squinted; then his hands went to his temples.
“Some nap. I specifically told you not to stop anywhere, not to get a drink. I wanted you to come straight here.”
“What…well, shit, Faith.” Sean pressed his hands tightly to his head. “I…shit, I can’t think.”
“Now that’s a surprise.” She flung the boot at him. He put up his hands in a halfhearted effort to deflect it. “Ow! What’s the matter with you?”
“I told you to come straight here!”
Sean’s eyes seemed to clear. “Well, you know what, baby girl, I don’t take orders from you. You’re getting just a little bossy for my taste.”
“Can you possibly be that stupid, or that drunk, or both?” Faith kicked the air in front of her. “You’re hooked up with an extremist group, you’ve been screwing around with a senator’s daughter, and you’ve dragged Department Thirty and me into it. Right now you’d better damn well take orders from me.”
“Can’t I just sleep for a little while? I’ve been through a lot of shit the last week. I bought a bottle just to-”
“Don’t even say it, because I don’t want to hear it. I don’t care what today’s excuse is. Go in the bathroom, wash your face, do whatever you have to do so you can pay attention to me. We have a bit of a problem.”
Sean focused on her with great effort. “Problem? Is Daryn all right?”
“She’s fine for the moment.”
“What do you mean, ‘for the moment’?”
“Dammit, you sober up and then we’ll talk.”
Faith stalked down the hall to her bedroom and slammed the door behind her. In a strange mimicry of Sean, her own hands were shaking, but from rage instead of alcohol. She remembered something Cara Dunaway had told her, about an alcoholic’s only three choices: Get sobered up, get locked up, or get covered up. Sobriety, jail, or death.
Her brother had faced a real potential of the second, with all of this mess. She worried about how dangerously close he might be skating to the third.
She stomped about the room like an enraged lioness, losing track of time. A knock sounded at her bedroom door.
“Faith, I’m here,” Sean said. “Let’s talk. What’s going on?”
She opened the door. Water dripped off his face and he’d smoothed out some of the wrinkles in his shirt. “Can you pay attention?” Faith snapped.
“I can always pay attention,” Sean shot back. “Whether I’m shit-faced or not, I can comprehend what someone says to me.”
Faith shook her head. “I can’t believe you.”
“You have something to say? Something about Daryn?”
They walked down the hall to the living room. “Six people died at Chase, Sean, including a toddler. Nearly thirty were hurt.”
Faith lowered herself onto the couch. It was still warm from where Sean had lain. She pounded an arm-rest. “What the hell are you trying to pull? Be straight with me, Sean. No bullshit, I just want to know and I want to know right now.”
“Trying to…nothing. Christ, Faith, the guy told us he felt the Coalition had to get people’s attention, that speeches and demonstrations wouldn’t do it alone. Ask Daryn. Ask any of the Coalition people. Let’s find them-they all heard it. Thirteen people were standing there listening when he said that.”
“But still nothing from your Coalition. No claims of responsibility, no speeches, no demonstration following the bomb. Nothing. Zero.”
Sean came to the couch and sat down at arm’s length from his sister. “I don’t know…it’s real, Faith. This isn’t some bullshit fantasy, and it isn’t booze either. Daryn is real, the Coalition is real. Franklin Sanborn is real. For Christ’s sake, I lived at the house for a week. I didn’t just imagine that. I can tell you exactly where it is, every bump in the road up to it. And believe me, there are a lot of damn bumps on that road, way back in the country. Kat and Britt and I slept in the room upstairs at the end of the hall. Jesus, Faith, I had both of those women every night.”
Faith noticed he’d called her Kat, not Daryn. She looked at him carefully. “I don’t need to know about that.”
“No, my point is-I didn’t hallucinate all this. I haven’t imagined stuff like that since I was going through puberty, believe me.”
Faith was silent for a moment. She remembered a line from the movie Amadeus. Mozart was trying to convince the emperor to let him write a certain opera for the court, and the emperor had said, “Mozart, you are passionate…but you do not persuade.”
“Sean,” Faith said, softening her voice. “I think that girl’s got you tied up in knots, so you’re not even sure who you are, much less who she is.”
“Oh, bullshit.”
“I don’t know what you’d call her. Some kind of a sexual predator, maybe? I hadn’t been in the room alone with her five minutes before she was trying to hit on me, Sean.”
Sean sat back.
“Isn’t is just possible that you took this job to find Daryn, you found her, and she manipulated you? Instead of you convincing her to go home, back to Washington and her father and respectability, that she convinced you to find another way for her to escape her father forever? And I just happened to be close by?”
Sean shook his head. “No.”
“Sean, please.”
“Faith, I’m telling you, as your brother and as a law enforcement officer, for God’s sake…maybe I’m a screwed-up officer but I’ve still been one for seven years. This was a real conspiracy. We need to find the other members of the Coalition. We need to find Sanborn.”
Faith looked at him, at those sad blue-green eyes that had made him so popular with girls in high school. “I’m not sure what to believe,” she said. “But then, that’s my job, to find whatever truth is skulking around in all the lies in this world, and then decide if I have to make up a new set of lies to protect that truth.”
Sean smiled for the first time since Faith had come home. “Now that is a tough job.”
“Yeah,” Faith said. She didn’t return the smile. “It is.”
FAITH DIDN’T KNOW IF DARYN MCDERMOTT WAS A Department Thirty case or not. She knew her brother thought Daryn qualified for the program. In observing Daryn, Faith believed she was genuinely afraid of retribution from this Franklin Sanborn. But much depended on whether the Coalition was truly growing and spreading, scheduling other similar acts against banks across the country. Just talking about who the Coalition was and what they had already done wouldn’t meet the “vital national interest” criteria of the department. Preventing other acts of terrorism would.
Still, Faith knew better than to dismiss things out of hand. She sent the list of banks to Yorkton. She spent forty-eight hours questioning Daryn intensively, never leaving the Edmond house, sleeping in her own sleeping bag across the hall from Daryn’s room while the two silent deputy marshals rotated in their twelve-hour shifts.
Daryn was confusing. She was indeed a chameleon, shedding one mood and putting on another as quickly as an eyeblink: the revolutionary, the academic, the seductress, the victim, and many others. Faith recorded all their conversations on microcassette, then listened to the playbacks, straining to pick up nuances and subtleties in the way Daryn responded to her.
Daryn gave her the names of towns where the other Coalition cells were supposedly waiting to strike the next targets. They were places like Franktown, Colorado, near Denver; Rosemark, Tennessee, outside Memphis; Marine City, Michigan, near Detroit, on and on. She had a memory for details, and she recited it all, everything Faith asked her. She didn’t hesitate. In that respect it was one of the best sets of intake interviews Faith had ever done.
Now, she thought, if only there’s a case.
She sent the information to Yorkton. Three days after Daryn moved into the Edmond house, Faith announced that she had to leave for a few days. She’d put off Leon Bankston long enough. His transfer was approved, and everything was ready for him to become Benjamin Williams and begin his new life. His new life as a college graduate, Faith thought wryly.
She and Hal Simon packed up the few things Bankston was allowed to take with him. She called Sean at her house and told him she’d be away, and was taking her car. She’d managed to convince him that it was in his best interest to stay out of sight for the time being, until she’d had time to figure out what was going on. He was strangely silent.
Keep it together, Sean, she thought. He’d taken cabs from The Village to Edmond twice already, trying to see Daryn. She or the marshals had met him at the door and kept him from setting foot in the house. Only after Faith threatened to actually have him arrested and thrown in a federal holding cell did he seem to get it. She left strict instructions with both teams of deputies that Sean Kelly was under no circumstances to be admitted to the house.
“By God, Kelly, but you’re a hard-ass,” Deputy Marshal Hunnicutt of the night shift had told her.
So she drove to Manhattan, Kansas. Since Simon had been babysitting Bankston for over a week, she gave him a break and let Bankston ride with her in the Miata for the six-hour drive. Bankston chattered most of the way about what a model citizen he was going to be, asking if he could join the Y and swim at their pool, how long until he was allowed to go to bars and pick up women…Faith understood Simon’s frustration. After an hour in the car with Bankston, she wanted to shoot him just to shut him up.
Faith stayed in Kansas for two days, getting Bankston into his apartment, going over last-minute details. As was the usual procedure, field officer Simon stayed behind. He would live undercover near the new recruit for anywhere from two weeks to six months, depending on how well Bankston did in his transition to Williams.
“At least I don’t have to live with him,” Simon said to Faith as she drove away. “Thank God for small favors.”
Faith drove south from Manhattan on a Friday morning under blue skies with only a few puffy cumulus clouds floating overhead. She took a back road, State Highway 177, winding lazily through the Flint Hills. The day was cool for late spring, but it felt good. She drove with the windows down, letting the clean air wash over her like waves.
She took several detours, crossing back into Oklahoma at Newkirk and passing through the historic oil town of Ponca City before finally picking up Interstate 35 for the last leg south.
She’d avoided thinking about Daryn McDermott and Sean and Franklin Sanborn and the Coalition for Social Justice for most of the trip. Dealing with a high-maintenance individual like Leon Bankston tended to crowd out everything else. But now, with the prairieland of northern Oklahoma sliding by at seventy-five miles an hour, and only Lee Ritenour’s guitar on the CD player as company, she couldn’t help going back to the case.
A week had gone by. The date had passed for the Coalition’s alleged attack on the National Bank of Commerce in downtown Memphis. Nothing happened. Yorkton had called her to say there was no sign of any communal radical group anywhere near the place where Daryn had said they would be.
So who was fooling whom?
Had Franklin Sanborn, phantom extraordinaire, fooled everyone? Had he angered Daryn by going against her wishes and saying he was going to use violence to achieve the Coalition’s stated goals? Was it a gotcha on the senator’s daughter? If so, was Sanborn’s sole purpose to embarrass Daryn? Had he just faded into the ether?
Or was this part of Daryn’s grand design anyway? She was a spoiled political princess, to be sure, but one who had a radical, revolutionary agenda of her own. Had she engineered the scheme just to escape her father’s tyranny and his politics forever? To get a free ride from Department Thirty?
But there was a problem with that scenario. Department Thirty wasn’t public knowledge. Most of the general public had heard of the Marshals Service’s WITSEC, but not Thirty. There were even government officials, highly placed ones, who didn’t know of the department’s existence.
Sean.
She kept coming back to her brother. How long had he known she worked for the department? Had he really blundered into the whole situation, like he said? Or was there something deeper and darker about her brother’s involvement?
Faith sighed, clutching the steering wheel hard. This is what she and Sean had become. She didn’t trust her own brother.
There were too many questions, and she was getting a headache.
I’ll fit right in, then, she thought. Sean was always hung over, and Daryn had her migraines.
Driving south, lulled by the mindless interstate travel, she almost missed the sign, lost as she was in her own questions.
MULHALL-ORLANDO ROAD, 1 MILE.
She’d spent nearly an hour musing on the whole situation. She’d passed the two exits for the town of Perry and hadn’t even noticed them. She was around forty miles from Oklahoma City.
MULHALL-ORLANDO ROAD, 1 MILE.
Mulhall.
According to Daryn, that was where it had all started. The jumping-off point for the Coalition’s nationwide activities.
But there hadn’t been any nationwide activities.
The only activity had been in downtown Oklahoma City. Faith thought it said something about what American society had become when “only” six deaths were treated as a reason to be grateful.
And according to both Daryn and Sean, it had originated right here.
She punched in Sean’s cell number on her phone. When he answered, she said, “Are you sober?”
“Faith?”
“I said, are you sober?”
“Well, I walked to that liquor store down the street, and they had-”
“Goddammit, Sean, are you sober enough to give me directions to that house where you said you stayed?”
There was a silence. “You mean in Mulhall?”
“Yes, in Mulhall!”
“What are you going to do?”
“Directions. Now.”
MULHALL-ORLANDO ROAD. An arrow, an exit sign.
Faith left the highway and pointed the Miata toward Mulhall.
She got turned around twice. Quite an accomplishment, considering the size of Mulhall, Oklahoma, Faith thought. But Sean’s directions had been from the south, and her approach was from the east.
She finally righted the Miata, heading north on U.S. 77. At the north end of town was a sign made of white brick, with black letters that read YA’LL COME BACK SOON. Faith slowed the car, looking for the gravel road Sean had mentioned.
She didn’t let herself think. She’d become a more instinctive person in the last few years, as opposed to someone who used to think only in terms of facts and evidence. Department Thirty had changed her that way, and it had been so subtle that she hadn’t even realized it was happening.
Doing things by the book would dictate that she call the Marshals Service for backup before going into a potentially unfriendly situation. Technically, the Mulhall house could be considered a terrorist staging area. People with an extreme, revolutionary, and ultimately violent agenda had made this house their headquarters.
Let’s just take a look, Faith thought, ignoring the voices that told her to follow the book. Department Thirty had no book. Department Thirty was its own book.
Stay safe and don’t let any of your cases be compromised. That was Department Thirty protocol, as Yorkton had told her many times. The rest was up to the individual officer.
She found the rutted driveway and turned left. Orienting herself, Faith realized she’d turned south, back in the direction of town. Sean had told her the house sat about a hundred yards back from the road. When she estimated she’d gone about fifty yards, she pulled the car off the driveway into the grass.
She reached into the glove compartment, took out her new SIG Sauer, and double-checked its load. Then Faith got out of the car and began to move slowly forward.
She couldn’t see the house yet. Sean had said it sat at the top of a small rise. For the moment she thought it worked to her advantage. Her car would be out of sight of anyone who might conceivably be in the house.
On the down side, she would be in the open as she approached. There wasn’t much tree coverage here. She could see groves of trees in the distance, but in the immediate area the trees had been cleared. Evidently this had been working farmland at one point. She noticed barbed wire fencing along both sides of the driveway. Perhaps livestock had been run here as well.
She smiled to herself. Here I am, a kid from suburban Chicago, paying attention to things like barbed wire fences way out in the country. Just another way in which she’d come millions of miles away from the person she used to be.
She kept the SIG in her right hand, pointed at the ground, watching her path carefully, not wanting to step in a hole and twist her ankle. Something buzzed near her face. She waved away a dragonfly.
The trail began to incline slightly upward. Faith’s pulse quickened. She moved a little faster, almost at a jog, as if an unseen hand were tugging on her shirt, urging her forward.
A few trees were grouped to her right now, just outside the fence. She moved toward them, hugging them closely. The trail flattened out again and she saw the house.
It was completely ordinary, neither a hovel nor a mansion. She’d seen many houses just like it as she’d driven through rural Oklahoma over the last few years.
She emerged from the trees. The first thing that caught her attention was a rusting real estate sign staked to the ground in front of the house, just outside the fence that surrounded its small front yard. That it had a fence around it was unusual. Most farm and ranch homes in this part of the country didn’t have front yards per se. Perhaps a family with very young children had lived here at some point, and put in the fence to keep the little ones from wandering away.
Faith thought of a two-year-old toddler, going with his mother to the bank. Anger flared in her again.
She approached from the north side. Everything was quiet. There was no movement. No cars sat in the clearing before the fence. While the white house wasn’t in obvious disrepair, it didn’t look inhabited, either.
She moved closer, eyes darting everywhere, up, down, all sides, taking in everything. She passed in front of the gate. There were tire tracks in the red dirt, at a logical place where a car would have parked. Next to them was a second set of tracks.
Someone had been here, and recently. It had rained within the last couple of days, which meant the tracks were fairly new or the rain would have washed them away.
The house was listed for sale. It wasn’t inconceivable that the realtor had shown it in the last day or two. That would explain the two sets of tires. A mundane, ordinary explanation. No Coalition. No potential terrorists.
Faith opened the gate-it squeaked-and started toward the house. There was no sidewalk, only a trail of bricks flush with the ground. She took slow, deliberate steps, concentrating on both her own breathing and her surroundings, achieving that eerie sense of disconnectedness she often felt when her senses were on high alert.
A strong wind gust came up from the south, to her left. Above her, something crashed.
Faith whirled, placing her SIG in the two-handed firing stance.
She slowly let out a breath. The unlatched screen door had been standing open, and it had slammed in the breeze. She carefully put the SIG into the pocket of her windbreaker and started up the steps.
The second one creaked. She felt a loose board shift under her foot. A bird called from somewhere near. A blue jay or a cardinal, she thought, though she could never keep the two straight. This part of the country was filled with them.
Faith blinked. An empty Michelob can sat on the porch railing, the lettering on the can faded as if it had been in the sun for a long time. A Tostitos bag with a few chips trailing out of it blew across the porch in front of her like some kind of latter-day tumbleweed. An open package of Trojan condoms sat on the lip of one of the front windows.
The window was dusty. She drew a line in the dust with her index finger, then rubbed a circle, feeling the grit under her palm. She peered through the circle.
The front room was totally empty.
There was no furniture whatsoever. The wood floor looked as dusty as the window.
“I’ll be damned,” she whispered, unaware she’d spoken aloud.
According to Daryn and Sean, thirteen people had been living in this house scarcely more than a week ago. Could the Coalition have cleared out any sign of them in that amount of time, leaving no trace?
Of course, but to clear out furniture, there would have to be a lot of coming and going, trucks filled with the items being moved. Would a group like Daryn had described want the townspeople of Mulhall to see them moving things around? She doubted it. News traveled fast in small towns, and the people of Mulhall would have had to notice such an operation.
The other answer was that Daryn and Sean were both lying.
Faith’s throat tightened. She blinked as another burst of wind stirred up more of the dust on the porch.
She pulled on the screen door that had slammed a few minutes earlier. The frame door behind it was ajar. She took the SIG out of her pocket again, then pushed on the door and stepped over the threshold, her eyes immediately seeking out the trouble spots, the corners.
Nothing.
She sniffed the interior of the front room. It just smelled musty, with an underlying odor of cigarette smoke. That meant nothing-she knew smoke could linger in a room for months or even years.
She made a quick circuit of the downstairs. No appliances in the kitchen, empty cabinets and drawers. The wallpaper, which looked like it had come straight from the 1970s, was peeling. She stepped onto the back deck. Nothing.
Inside again, she decided to check the upstairs just for the sake of thoroughness. There was a single bathroom, the mirrored door to the medicine cabinet standing open. A nickel and a dime sat on the dirty sink.
She poked through bedrooms. There were several small ones and an empty linen closet. One of the windows in the front bedroom was broken. A good-size rock sat on the floor underneath the the window, surrounded by glass.
Faith shook her head. It was all too surreal. She didn’t understand the power this woman Daryn had over her brother, but somehow she convinced him to lie to Faith about all of this.
Sean wasn’t stupid. Troubled, maybe, but not stupid. He should have known Faith would investigate, that she wouldn’t just open her arms give Daryn McDermott a new life in Department Thirty because he asked her to. Two criteria had to be met to gain serious consideration for protection: that the person had committed a crime serious enough to warrant either prosecution and or retribution from others involved in the crime; and that the person possessed information deemed to be of vital national interest.
Daryn McDermott’s crime seemed to be conspiracy to commit an act of terror. But her “information”-the list of banks the Coalition was allegedly going to strike-hadn’t panned out. Daryn certainly seemed frightened of Franklin Sanborn, but other than Faith’s vague sense of knowing the name, there was no evidence that there was a Franklin Sanborn.
She’d come to the end of the hall, to the last little bedroom. Sean had said he and Daryn and the girl Britt had slept together in this room. There was a large gash in the wood of the door. The doorknob was missing.
Faith ducked her head inside. There was a large pile of blankets in the corner farthest from the window.
“Hmm,” she said, and took a couple of steps into the room.
With the toe of her sneaker, she pulled off the top blanket, SIG at the ready. More blankets, all ripped, the lining coming out of them. One was a quilt done in a beautiful Dutch-doll pattern that looked like someone’s grandmother had made it by hand. But it was filthy and the edges were torn. Three layers down, she found a few bottles of water, some packages of cheese and crackers, some stiff French fries in a yellow Wendy’s carton. A threadbare paperback copy of the Gospel of John, with a stain of something that smelled like excrement, was at the bottom.
“Don’t touch that!”
Faith wheeled around at the voice, snapping up her gun arm. Her gun settled with a chest-high aim at a man in the doorway.
“Hey!” he said. “Don’t point that at me. Leave me alone. I’m not hurting nobody.”
Faith couldn’t really tell his age, but she guessed mid-to late forties. He was mostly bald on top, with more than week’s scruffy growth of grayish beard on his face. His eyes were gray and wary. His body odor was overpowering, even from several feet away. His clothing consisted of ripped, baggy jeans, a filthy once-white dress shirt, a gray cardigan covered in grass stains, and mismatched shoes-one hiking boot, one tennis shoe with toes gaping out.
“I got squatter’s rights,” the man drawled. “Door was unlocked. I can stay here as long as I want. You can’t shoot me. If you shoot me it’s murder.”
Faith lowered the gun. “Who are you?”
“You first.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Neither do I,” the man said. “So there.”
“Mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”
“I got squatter’s rights. You can’t make me leave. This is my room. It’s my whole house. I moved out to the country, you know, for my health.”
Faith shook her head. “How long have you been here?”
“A while. I don’t know.” He scurried around Faith, giving her a wide berth, heading to his corner. “You didn’t tear up none of my stuff, did you? This is all my stuff.”
“Just looked at it, that’s all. This place looks pretty deserted except for this room.”
“Yeah, well,” the man said. “So what?”
“You just live in the one room, I guess?”
“Well, I go outside to take a dump. The plumbing ain’t on. But sometimes I like to pee out the window.”
Faith put the gun back in her jacket. “You see anyone else around here?”
“Anyone else who?”
“Like some sort of commune, bunch of people all living together like one big family.” Faith realized how ridiculous it sounded even as she said it.
“Nope,” the man said in a matter-of-fact tone. “I been here a long time.”
“No furniture?”
“You see any furniture?”
“No,” Faith said. “Any cars ever come out here?”
A shadow crossed the man’s face. “Couple of times. Kids in those cars with the noisy mufflers. They think they’re hotshots, come out here and throw rocks through the windows, drink beer, smoke dope. Shouldn’t drink or do drugs. That’s bad.”
Faith smiled. “So I hear.”
“I stay out of sight when they come around. But I still got the squatter’s rights. Not you and not the kids in the cars.”
Faith tapped her foot on the wood floor. “You think you’ve been here longer than a week?”
“I been here a long time. Prob’ly a month. It’s nice out here in the country. Quiet. I like quiet.”
“So do I. And no one else has lived here?”
The man sat down on top of the pile of blankets. “Just me. It’s my room and my house.”
Faith reached into the pocket of her jeans. The man tensed and flattened himself against the wall. “Don’t shoot me!”
Faith pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and handed it to him. He looked at it as if he’d never seen one before, then held it up by the window. “That’s one of them new ones. Jackson’s head is bigger.”
“Sure is,” Faith said.
“Not counterfeit, is it? You didn’t make it, did you? That’s illegal.”
“It’s real. I’m going now. You take care.”
“That’s right, you better go. You can’t make me leave. Not even with your gun. I know my rights.”
Faith quietly stepped out of the room and retreated to the stairs. She took them slowly, then let herself out of the house. The front porch step creaked under her feet again. The screen door banged behind her.
She took one look back. It was as if she’d never been there. The place looked the same.
In a moment she was over the rise. Ten minutes later the Miata was back on Interstate 35 heading south.
Alan Davenport watched her go. He craned his neck and watched the car. From the second floor of the house he could see the little gold sports car until it left the driveway and turned back onto the road.
When it was out of sight, he dug in the pocket of the filthy cardigan and pulled out a new cell phone.
He made his call. When it was answered, he said, “Contact.”
“Understood,” said the voice on the other end.
Davenport broke the connection. Then, just as he’d been instructed, he left the house by the back door and took the steps down from the deck. He checked underneath the wooden floor of the deck, looking at all the furniture where they’d shoved it, far back from the edge, wedged into the corner where the deck met the foundation of the house. Most of it was junk anyway, not worth stowing, but the object-so Sanborn had said-had been to ensure that the house did not look lived in, and not to attract attention by moving the stuff out onto the road. So under the deck it went.
Davenport had even embellished the look of the house, by transporting dirt from the field near the creek and scattering it around. He’d earned his money.
He had no clue who the woman was, although he could tell she resembled the man that Kat-or whatever Kat’s real name was-had brought to the house for that crazy week. All Sanborn had said was that he was sure a tall young woman with long red hair would come around. She hadn’t had long hair, but other than that, Sanborn was right.
He walked through the tall grass in the field behind the house until he came to the banks of Skeleton Creek. He took out the new cell phone-the one call was all that had ever been made on it-and threw it into the middle of the creek. Then he started walking, not back to the house, but cross-country toward the spot where he’d hidden his car, nearly a mile away.
Davenport had no clue what it all meant. He’d played a part and played it well. Sanborn had told him so. Now it was finished and he was ready to go home. If he drove straight through, he’d be home in Dallas by nightfall, where he could take a bath, have a good meal, throw away these filthy clothes, and sleep in his own bed.
Davenport gave no further thought to the woman with the red hair.
“DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?” DARYN ASKED THE heavyset deputy marshal with the curly hair.
“No,” Leneski said.
“My father is a United States senator.”
“I don’t care.”
“I’m also a whore. What do you think of that?”
“I don’t care,” Leneski said again, and left the living room of the safe house for the kitchen.
Daryn sat back in the uncomfortable armchair. None of the deputies assigned to her would talk about anything other than her immediate needs-did she want to eat, was she going to bed, did she need any Tylenol for her headache? It was a strange existence. She knew why she was here, she knew what she was doing, and still believed it would advance The Cause.
But she couldn’t talk to anyone. She’d been able to make people pay attention to her for her entire life, through her intellect and her looks and later, through her sexuality. This entire plan had been about getting people to pay attention.
But now, in this anonymous house with its sparse garage-sale furnishings, she sat in a bubble of nothingness, not quite Daryn but not Kat anymore, either.
She lit a cigarette, which was guaranteed to give her even more privacy. Neither Hagy nor Leneski smoked, and they both tended to move away from her when she lit up. Daryn found herself actually wanting the Kelly woman to come back. She was tired of this waiting.
Faith Kelly wouldn’t even let her brother come around. That had disappointed Daryn. She’d enjoyed playing with Sean Kelly, lived for the manipulation, but in another place, she actually liked the poor guy. She’d had a few moments, drifting outside herself in moments when she had a bad headache, when she fantasized about running away with him. Both of them would be new people. They’d hide in a cabin somewhere in the mountains where no one knew either of them. He would escape the bottle and his bitchy sister. She would forever escape her father’s name and his hypocrisy and the stupidity of everyday society. There would be no further need for The Cause, because they would simply rise above all the petty foolishness that made The Cause necessary.
Britt even wandered her way into Daryn’s fantasy. She missed the girl’s absolute, unwavering devotion, and in the fantasy she let the girl serve Sean and her, and she would happily fulfill anything they asked of her.
Oh, stop it, she would tell herself. It would never happen.
It never could happen, for more reasons than Daryn could count. She would simply put a cold wet cloth on her face and lie still in the dark, and the fantasy would break apart until she was left with nothing but darkness and silence.
Come on, Faith Kelly, she would say in her mind. Let’s get this over with.
Faith arrived in the early evening, carrying a black soft-sided briefcase. She looked harried, her short hair tangled and windblown. The deputies’ shifts had just changed, and Daryn and Deputy Carson of the night shift were watching Antiques Roadshow on PBS. There was no cable service to the safe house, and the local PBS affiliate had the strongest signal of any of the over-the-air TV stations.
Faith came in the front door and nodded to Carson. Hunnicutt came in from the back of the house. “Hi, guys,” Faith said. “You’re relieved. The detail’s over. Go on home.”
“Tired?” Hunnicutt said.
“Busy, busy,” Faith said, nodding.
The two deputy marshals gathered their things and left. Faith snapped off the TV set, dropped the briefcase, and lowered herself heavily into the armchair across from Daryn.
“I was beginning to wonder,” Daryn said, “if you were coming back, or if I was cursed to a life of watching TV and eating microwave dinners with those deputies.”
“You can send out for food,” Faith said. “I told you that before I left.”
Daryn shrugged.
Faith unzipped the side pocket of the briefcase, took out a few papers, shuffled them, and looked directly at Daryn.
Daryn felt uncomfortable. She was always the one who gazed directly at someone else, daring them to drop their eyes from hers. But Faith Kelly’s green eyes blazed at her, never wavering, never moving.
“I guess two women like us shouldn’t get into a staring contest,” Daryn finally said, and blinked.
“ ‘Two women like us?’ ” Faith echoed.
Daryn shrugged again. “We do what needs to be done.” She thought about saying more, but let it go at that.
“Do we?” Faith said.
They stared at each other again, and this time Faith looked away first, to the papers in her lap.
“You have something to say to me?” Daryn said.
Faith cleared her throat. “Daryn, I’ve already told you the criteria for entry into Department Thirty protection. I won’t go over that again. But I’ve been investigating the things you…and Sean…told me. The Coalition for Social Justice, this Franklin Sanborn character, all of it.”
“And the list of targets?”
“Yes, the targets. I sent that list on up the line, so we could try to prevent anything else from happening.”
Daryn nodded.
“Do you have any other evidence?” Faith asked.
Daryn cocked her head slightly. “Excuse me?”
“Anything else that could prove what you’ve told me? About your fear of Sanborn, about the Coalition’s future plans, that sort of thing.”
“No, I’ve given you everything there is. Why?”
Faith thumped the papers against her leg. Her face took on a resigned look. “I haven’t been able to find one single bit of corroborating evidence for anything you told me. Franklin Sanborn is a phantom. There’s no evidence he exists.”
“But-”
Faith held up a hand. “There were no Coalition cells in any of the towns you mentioned. The dates for the next two ‘strikes’ on your list have passed. Nothing has happened in either Memphis or Denver.”
Daryn stared at her.
“I even went to Mulhall. Sean gave me directions to the house you said you lived in for that week. Except for a homeless man who’s been squatting there for several weeks, it’s empty. No furniture, nothing. It looks like no one has lived there for a long time.”
Daryn shook her head.
“Aside from what you did in Oklahoma City, there is no evidence of the Coalition for Social Justice ever existing, nor this Sanborn.”
Daryn went totally still. She’d been headache-free for more than twenty-four hours, and could feel her heart beating, faster and faster. “I don’t understand,” she said, very slowly.
Faith dropped the papers on the floor and leaned forward, elbows on knees. “I don’t know who’s lying, whether it’s you and my brother, or someone else. And right now, I just don’t care anymore. None of the information you provided me checked out.” She leaned back again. “We can’t protect you. I can’t give you a new identity and a new life. You can go.”
Daryn’s heart raced. She felt sweat beading on her lip. “Go? Go where? What do you mean, go? What about Sanborn? What about…what about the FBI?”
“What about Sanborn? I can’t find any evidence of him. As for the FBI, I’m obligated to turn you over to them at least as a material witness in the bombing. For what it’s worth, I believe you when you say you didn’t know the group was planning to use violence. But you still have to understand that six people died at Chase Tower.”
“But Sanborn sent those guys to my apartment! They chased us on the highway! There’s your evidence!”
“All I know is that someone using the name of Franklin Sanborn sent two thugs to your apartment. I don’t know why. I do know that you and my brother got away from them. I admit that the name of Franklin Sanborn sounds familiar to me, but I don’t know why, and my boss and his boss aren’t going to admit you to the department because you know my brother and I think I recognize a name. It just doesn’t work that way.”
Daryn closed her eyes, squeezing them shut until they hurt. “You…” She almost choked on the words. “You fucking bitch. You sorry, worthless Irish bitch.” She picked up the lamp from the end table beside her, and with a strength betrayed by her small frame, ripped the plug out of the wall and heaved it at Faith.
Faith dodged it easily and the lamp bounced off the arm of her chair. It crashed to the ground, lightbulb and lamp base shattering simultaneously. Faith stayed where she was.
“Don’t you get it?” Daryn screamed, on her feet, between her chair and Faith’s. “Don’t you fucking get it, you stupid wench? It’s Sanborn…he’s trying to make you think I’m crazy, make you think I’m lying. You let me go and he’ll come after me. He’ll kill me, and the Coalition-everything I’ve fought for-will die. How can you be that stupid, Kelly? You’re smarter than your brother, you should know…”
Faith stood up slowly, towering over her. “You leave Sean out of it. I’ll deal with him. And once you leave here, you stay away from my brother. He’s sick, and all you’ve done is feed his sickness.”
“I haven’t lied to you, and your brother hasn’t lied to you! It’s like a big circle. We lied to each other about who we were, but not to you, not about the Coalition. What about Sanborn? When he comes after me, what then? If he kills me, what do you do then?”
Faith winced. Daryn felt flushed-she’d just poked a hole in Faith Kelly’s armor.
“Yeah, you’ve thought about that,” Daryn said, starting to circle around the room. She maneuvered around the broken glass from the lamp. “You have your doubts, you’re not one hundred percent sure about this, and deep down, you’re afraid to let me walk out of here, because there’s a little tiny voice that says I’m not lying, and your brother’s not lying, and you know it could happen. You know Sanborn could get to me, and you know he could go on and blow up all those banks.”
Faith stayed in place, but followed Daryn around the room with her eyes, never letting the smaller woman get behind her. “I have no evidence-”
“Fuck the evidence!” Daryn screamed. “What do your insides tell you? Way down, under all the pompous federal nonsense they’ve been feeding you, way down past all your own pathetic defenses, what do you see there?”
Daryn put her hands to both sides of her head and wailed at the top of her lungs. “I’ve done so much, I’ve come so far.” Her eyes zeroed in on Faith’s again. “I’ve used others and I’ve been used, Faith. And when I try to do right, when I try to throw off the world of the ruling classes and save the lives of innocent people, real people, you say you have no evidence.”
“I think-”
“What if he kills me?”
The words rippled off the walls and toppled over each other. Then the silence came, a living, breathing thing, larger than both women in the room.
Daryn was breathing hard, gripping the back of the chair she’d been sitting in before she threw the lamp. Her head was splitting, but it wasn’t her usual headache. For the first time in all this-the first time since she’d met Sanborn, since they’d conceived the plan and created the Coalition-she was afraid. Fear rolled over her like a cloud across the sun.
“I think,” Faith said, “that you’re troubled. You’re brilliant and passionate and troubled, and I’m sorry. But I can’t offer you protection. I have no basis to do that.” She folded her hands together.
Daryn looked at her, at the way her hands gripped each other. She looked at her face, at the white line scar beside her nose. Daryn blinked at her and sagged against the chair. She blinked again, several times in rapid succession. Even without the light of the lamp, it suddenly seemed very bright in the living room.
“Your brother believed me,” Daryn said.
Faith nodded. “I know.”
They were both silent a while longer.
“I can drop you off somewhere,” Faith said. “I don’t have the authority to arrest you, or to hold you as a material witness.”
“I want to see Sean.”
“I told you, leave my brother alone.”
“Are you his keeper?”
“Maybe I should be.”
Daryn nodded. She actually smiled a little. Faith Kelly looked confused.
“My apartment,” Daryn said. “Could you take me there?”
“You mean the one you lived in as Kat Hall?”
“I suppose I’m Kat again. And I have nowhere else to go.”
Faith looked at her for a long moment. “I’ll drop you off a couple of blocks from there. Close enough?”
“Of course. I understand.”
Faith turned off all the lights and locked the house. The evening was cool and clear. It was the first time Daryn had been outside in nearly a week. She stood for a moment and breathed in the air. A grackle called from one of the nearby trees.
Faith appeared to shudder.
Daryn smiled in the dark.
They got in the Miata. “He’ll kill me, you know,” Daryn said as Faith started the car.
Faith was silent. She pulled the car out of the driveway and pointed it south. She didn’t speak to Daryn for the entire trip.
MARGARET HOLZBAUER HADN’T BEEN SLEEPING well, ever since poor Katherine was kidnapped.
She knew the police weren’t necessarily calling it a kidnapping, just a standard missing persons case, but Holzbauer knew. She’d known it the same way she knew what was happening when her Jewish neighbors began disappearing sixty-five years ago in Munich. She’d known they were dead, and she’d known that her beloved Deutschland was in the grip of a madman, and that she and Ernst and their babies would have to leave.
These days Ernst sat watching television, trying to read the lips of the news reporters and the actors. He caught a few words now and then, but the old fool missed almost everything. Refused to wear his hearing aids because they were for “old people.”
We are old, you fool! She’d shouted at him.
What? He said back.
So she walked the floor, watching the windows. A police car came by now and then to check on things, and sometimes reporters still showed up. She always talked to them, anything to keep alive the search for the poor girl. It was a little past nine o’clock and it had been fifteen minutes since she’d last looked outside. She raised the curtains, and her heart almost stopped.
Katherine walked into the parking lot from the direction of the street. She was alone, her clothes were dirty…she had nothing but the clothes on her back.
“Ernst!” she shouted. “She’s back!”
“What?” her husband bellowed.
She ignored him, grabbed the phone, and called 911.
The door to her apartment had been repaired, and Daryn had to wonder for a moment if they’d put a new lock on it. But no, her key still worked. She let herself in and walked down the hall to where it opened onto the small living room. Things didn’t look much amiss. There was still a tiny bloodstain on the TV from where Sean Kelly had shot one of the guys who broke in.
She sat on the couch, closed her eyes, and waited.
She didn’t have to wait long. She knew she could count on Mrs. Holzbauer, and within ten minutes the cops were at her door. There were two uniformed officers, a detective, and Mrs. Holzbauer, ever-present, hovering in the background.
The detective introduced himself as Rob Cain. He was a handsome man, very alert, wearing a white ribbon on his wine-colored shirt. Daryn felt a deep stirring, and resisted the urge to reach for his crotch.
“Ms. Hall,” he said. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, thank you.” She smiled.
“May I ask where you’ve been the last two weeks?”
“I had to go away.”
“Did that going away have anything to do with the two men who broke into your apartment?”
Daryn looked at him but said nothing.
“Did you leave voluntarily?” he asked.
“Yes,” Daryn said.
Cain seemed to think for a moment. “Did you return voluntarily?”
“Yes.”
“You understand that you’ve been listed as a missing person?”
Daryn crossed her legs at the knee, just wanting the police to be gone. She knew this was necessary, but she had other things to do, other tasks yet to perform. “I’m sorry for any inconvenience I’ve caused anyone.”
Cain tapped a legal pad against his knee. “Inconvenience.” He leaned forward. “Ms. Hall, where were you?”
Daryn folded her hands in her lap. “I was pretty shaken up when those men broke in here. I needed some time away.”
“Have you ever heard the name Franklin Sanborn?”
“I don’t think so. Why?”
Cain acted as if he hadn’t heard her. “Did you falsify your references on your rental application for this apartment?”
“Detective, am I under suspicion of something? If so, please tell me now so I can contact a lawyer.”
“What do you think I might suspect you of?” Cain asked.
“You tell me.”
“What about those references?”
“I paid cash in advance for my lease. The apartment manager didn’t seem to mind. Maybe you should check with him.”
“I have,” Cain said. “Are you running from someone, Ms. Hall?”
If only you knew, Daryn thought. She made herself fidget on the couch. “Yes.”
“An abusive husband or boyfriend, maybe?”
Daryn closed her eyes. “Yes.”
“Franklin Sanborn.”
Daryn nodded, eyes still closed.
“From Indiana,” Cain said, looking at his notes.
“Yes. He’s a professor.” She opened her eyes and looked directly at Cain. “But it’s all right now. He won’t bother me anymore. He understands now.”
Cain met her gaze, then slowly dropped his eyes. He was really a very good-looking man.
“Your neighbor was very worried about you,” he said. He waved toward Margaret Holzbauer, who stood near the doorway.
“I’m sorry,” Daryn said.
Cain was quiet for a long moment. “You’re back safe, and that’s the important thing.” He stood up and handed her a card. “If you think of anything we might need to know, please call me.”
“Anything you might need to know? Like what, Detective Cain?”
“You tell me.”
They exchanged wary smiles. “I can’t think of anything,” Daryn said. “But I’ll keep your card.”
Cain nodded to her, beckoned to the two uniforms, and they left the apartment. Mrs. Holzbauer stayed for a few minutes, fluttering over her. Daryn talked to her mindlessly, not remembering what she’d said only seconds after saying it. It was shortly after ten before the old woman left and Daryn was alone. She breathed out quietly and sat motionless on the couch. Her head was pounding.
Rob Cain had been at his ten-year-old son’s baseball game at Woodson Park in south Oklahoma City when dispatch called him. Dylan wasn’t a particularly athletic kid, but he loved the game of baseball, and Cain was proud to bursting that the boy kept trying, regardless of what he did on the field during the games.
He called his wife’s cell. “Game over?” he said.
“Yep,” she said. “Nearly half an hour ago.”
“Damn,” Cain said. “Sorry.”
He pictured his wife’s shrug. She was the wife of a detective, after all.
“Was it her?” his wife asked. “The missing girl.”
“It was.”
“She’s okay?”
“Physically she’s fine. She’s also lying to me through her teeth.”
“What?”
“Never mind. It may be a while before I get home.”
After he hung up, he headed toward his office downtown. Inside the Detective Division of the Oklahoma City Police Department, he found his desk and started sifting through piles of paper. After a moment he had the phone number he wanted. He didn’t look at the time before he called.
“Scott Hendler,” said a voice a moment later.
“Scott, it’s Rob Cain,” he said. “Sorry to call so late. But I think you and I need to talk.”
Daryn sat in silence for a few minutes, then took her cell and made a call.
Sean Kelly answered after four rings. “Yeah?”
“Hello, Sean.”
There was a long silence. “Where are you?”
“I’m at home. I mean, at Kat’s apartment. She cut me loose, Sean. Your sister turned me away.”
“But Sanborn-”
“No evidence, she said. I-I’m not quite sure what to do right now.” She lowered her voice. “But I know I don’t want to be alone.”
“I-”
“Please, Sean. Please. I need you. I need you beside me, I need to see you and hear your voice and taste you and smell you. I need you inside me, Sean. Please.”
“But I can’t-”
“I’ll be waiting for you.”
She broke the connection. Then she went upstairs, stepping around the little boombox Sean had thrown at one of the attackers. In the bedroom, she lit a couple of candles, took off her clothes, and lay down on the bed to wait.
Sean was electrified by Daryn’s words. It was too much to digest. He didn’t understand how Faith could have turned her loose. Faith had come home about an hour before, saw that he was drunk, and stalked down the hall to her room. She’d come out a few minutes later in fresh clothes, carrying her little overnight bag.
“Sober up, Sean,” she said. “We need to talk.”
Then she’d gone out again, slamming the front door behind her. She paced the front yard for fifteen minutes while he watched from the window. He wasn’t going to run after her, that was for sure. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.
Just who the hell did she think she was?
Scott Hendler’s Toyota appeared in a few minutes and Faith got in, casting one look back at the house. Sean let the curtains fall back over the window.
Sean got up and wandered around the house, gripping the neck of his bottle, even though it was empty. He thought about Daryn’s words. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her, whether sober, drunk, or somewhere between. Her touch, her body, her acute sensuality, her outrage, her raw and powerful lust. They beckoned to him, and in sober moments over the last week he’d wondered if this was how the sailors in the old folk tales felt when they heard the mermaid singing to them.
He kept gripping the bottle, even using it to brace himself against the wall a couple of times. He was more drunk than he’d been the entire week, and hadn’t much cared before Daryn called.
She wanted him. She wanted him now.
And he wanted her.
But I’m so shit-faced I probably can’t even get it up, he thought, which then struck him as funny. He laughed uncontrollably, then blinked it away, wondering why he was laughing.
He thumbed through Faith’s bookshelves again. Books on the Zodiac killer, Jack the Ripper…how could his sister read this crap? Then there was the strange one, something about the Civil War. More crap. He paged through it, then it suddenly felt slippery and fell from his fingers.
Screw it, he thought. If Faith is going to be a bitch, then she can pick up her own goddamn book from the floor.
He jammed a hand, not the one holding the bottle, into his pants pocket. He felt his keys-fat lot of good they did him, since his Jeep was long gone-some coins, and…
Another key.
By itself. Not on his key ring.
His hand closed on it, and he remembered. The morning he’d asked Faith to provide a safe house for Daryn, he’d had her car. He’d stopped and had a copy made of her car key.
Just in case, he’d thought at the time.
Just in case had just arrived, he thought now.
He dropped the bottle. It shattered on the wood floor.
You can clean that up too, Faith.
He found his wallet, though he stumbled on the coffee table to get to it, and almost went sprawling. But he had to have it. Wouldn’t want to drive without a license. The thought cracked him up, and he laughed again.
He thought of Daryn’s body, of her warmth, her wetness, her lust…just for him.
So what if there was no fucking evidence of Franklin Sanborn or the Coalition or of anything else?
He made it to the door, then outside. He slammed it behind him. The gold Miata was in the driveway.
Sean smiled.
WHAT THE HELL WAS TAKING HIM SO LONG?
Daryn’s patience wore thin, and she had to remind herself that Sean was probably drunk, and probably hadn’t climbed very far out of the bottle for the entire week. She knew that he had come to the safe house in Edmond twice, and that the marshals had turned him away at the door. She’d heard him shouting her name.
All of which would only inflame him further, make him desire her more. He would do anything to be next to her.
It took him nearly half an hour. Goddamn fool’s probably so drunk he got lost, she thought. But he pounded on her door at ten minutes before eleven o’clock. She didn’t get out of bed to see if it was him, but she called “Come in!” at the top of her lungs, hoping he was coherent enough to hear her.
She heard the door open. “Daryn?” he whispered.
“In the bedroom,” she said. “Come up here, now.”
She heard his steps on the stairs. She positioned herself on the bed and opened her legs. She moved her hands to her breasts and began massaging her nipples. Her breathing grew heavy.
He entered the room.
“Daryn,” he breathed. “My God, Daryn.”
“Come to me, Sean,” she whispered.
He fumbled with his clothes, almost falling over twice. She continued putting on a show for him until he joined her on the bed. He thrust his tongue into her mouth. She tasted the whiskey, tasted the danger. But sex was life.
She snaked a hand between his legs, found him, held him, manipulated him.
“Roll over,” she ordered.
He rolled onto his back. She positioned herself over him.
“But I didn’t…” he slurred. “No condoms.”
She had always provided condoms every time before, and with all the other men she’d seen as Kat Hall. She smiled at him, straddling him, lowering herself inch by inch.
“No,” she said. “I want to feel you. Nothing else, just you, Sean. I’m not an escort anymore. This is just the two of us.”
She engulfed him. He moaned. They moved together.
She rode him for a few minutes. He clutched the sheets. Then she felt him begin to lose his erection inside her.
“Oh, shit,” he said. “Daryn, I-”
“Goddammit,” she whispered. “I need you. I need you all the way, Sean.”
“Maybe I’m too shit-faced. Maybe we could just-”
“No, we won’t just!” She slid off him, worked her way down, used her mouth.
It took nearly an hour, and before they were finished, he’d lost his erection twice more. But each time she brought him back. By the time he climaxed inside her, his grunt of release sounded almost like relief instead of pleasure.
She’d been on top of him again, and she rolled away. His eyes were closed, his body bathed in sweat. The sheets were as wet as if they’d been left on a clothesline in the rain.
“My God,” Sean said. “My God, Daryn.”
She rolled on her side and slapped his face.
“What the fuck…” he grunted.
She curled her lip savagely. “Guess you got what you wanted, didn’t you?”
“Daryn? What…I don’t understand.”
“No, you don’t fucking understand, Sean. Get your clothes on and get out of here.”
“But I didn’t-”
“We’re done! We had a last tumble and now we’re done! You can tell your bitch sister all about it.” Her voice rose steadily. “Get out! Get out, get out, do you hear me? Get out of here!”
She rolled off the bed, picked up a clump of his clothing, and threw it at him. Much to her own surprise, tears began rolling down her cheeks. She couldn’t think, couldn’t focus. Raw emotion built behind her eyes like floodwaters behind a cracking dam. Everything she had said and done in her life, in her entire miserable existence, had led to this moment, standing naked in a room that wasn’t really hers, screaming at a man who wasn’t really hers, either.
“Shhh!” Sean said. He put out a hand.
“Go!” she screamed.
He gathered his clothes and clumsily began dressing himself. “Daryn, I-”
All of her pain, all of her grief, all of her outrage, was right there, right then. Later, after he was gone, she would be calm again, she would accept everything and do what had to be done. But now…
She rushed him, beating his chest with both fists. She raked his chest with her nails. She slapped both sides of his face. She screamed like an animal descending onto its prey.
Sean pulled up his pants, staggering away from her. He got his shirt on, but didn’t button it. He kept his shoes in his hand and made for the stairs. He turned one last time.
“Who are you?” he said in a raw, wounded voice.
She wailed again, beyond words. Daryn vaguely remembered the fantasy, she and Sean escaping the world, moving to the mountains, to be completely different people. She would be neither Daryn nor Kat, and he would be neither Sean nor Michael. They would emerge anew with each other.
“No,” she whispered. The fantasy wouldn’t come all the way into focus, and then it was gone altogether.
She met Sean’s eyes; then he turned the corner and was gone. She heard him shambling down the stairs. She heard the door open and close. In a little while she heard a car engine start, then fade away.
Daryn collapsed onto the bed and wept bitterly.
Very gradually, over the course of the last year, Faith had come to feel comfortable in Scott Hendler’s Edmond condo. It was just off Danforth Road, not far from the safe house. It had a lived-in feel to it, but was still neat and tidy, like Hendler himself. He had a thing for windmills and old train stations, and there were numerous photos and paintings of both throughout the place, even over the bed.
She was propped up under the sheets, wearing only a long blue T-shirt and reading yesterday’s newspaper. She’d listened to Hendler’s end of the brief phone call, and realized with resignation that she still wasn’t finished dealing with Daryn McDermott. Even though Department Thirty had officially rejected her, there was still going to be cleanup duty. The call from Rob Cain confirmed it.
After Hendler hung up, she said, “He talked to her, is pretty sure she’s lying, and he wants to know what the hell is going on.”
Hendler settled back into the bed. “Not in those words, but that’s pretty much it.” He looked at her. “Faith, what the hell is going on?”
She put down the newspaper. “I’m not really sure, and that’s the truth. I just know Thirty couldn’t work with the girl.” It was as close as she ever came to giving him actual details of one of her cases. “None of her information was right.”
“And Sean?”
“I don’t know what to think about Sean. When I got home, he was so drunk he could barely move. I was so pissed off at him, that’s when I called you.” She tilted her head back until it was touching the frame. “I don’t know what to do with him.”
“I’m sorry, Faith,” Hendler said. “All the weirdness with your case aside, I know this business with your brother has been tearing you up.”
She leaned toward him. “Yeah,” she said.
They held each other. Faith savored the unspoken connection between them. They could just be together, nothing else required. For a few moments she felt safe, the last two weeks falling away. It was a frail feeling, and Faith was afraid that if she dwelled on it too much, it would be gone, and so would Scott.
Hendler turned off the light, keeping one arm around her. “He wants to see us in the morning,” he said sleepily.
“Who?” Faith said. She’d been far away from the FBI and Department Thirty and her brother and the bizarre events of the last two weeks.
“Cain,” Hendler said. “He wants to talk to us about the case. He specifically mentioned he wanted me to bring you.”
Faith nodded. “In the morning,” she said.
It took Daryn more than two hours to find the calm she needed for what came next. The whole gamut of emotions, some real and some imagined, had drained her. The exhaustion had been gaining on her, but she had more to do before she could rest.
It was nearly one thirty a.m. when she opened the dresser drawer that had come with the furnished apartment, and began to get dressed. She chose plain blue jeans, a pastel-pink T-shirt, and open-toed sandals with low heels. She stepped back and looked at herself in the mirror. It wasn’t Daryn McDermott, or even Kat Hall. The look was nothing like her. It appeared like something Faith Kelly would wear. Daryn smiled at that irony, but it faded quickly. She touched her short blond hair, wishing for a moment she could take time to wash the dye out and have her natural dark color back. But there was no time. She also missed the long braid she’d worn for most of her life-it was part of her.
It occurred to her that this was a strange way to be thinking now. She’d wanted to become someone else, and had actually done it for a while. Yet here she was, feeling nostalgic for something that had physically defined her as Daryn McDermott. She blinked, feeling sudden tears welling. The tears were decidedly different from those that she’d wept upon throwing Sean Kelly out of the apartment. Now she cried silently, letting the tears run straight down while she looked at the image in the mirror.
She stood there for a long time, until the tears ran dry and her mind began to clear. She applied some light makeup, took one last glance at the mirror, and went downstairs.
She booted up her laptop on the cheap coffee table, then logged in to her Web-based e-mail account on the Hubopag server. She turned off all the lights, letting the only light in the apartment come from the glow of the computer screen.
In some ways, this was the most difficult part of the plan, yet ultimately would be the most satisfactory. She loathed everything her father stood for, hated what he had done to her mother, hated the unspeakable atrocity he had committed on her. Her father had used her as a prop for all her life. Now she would do the same with him.
She typed in the address: mcdermott@senate.gov.
She typed Dear Dad, then stopped.
Daryn closed her eyes.
Anything for The Cause. Anything for The Cause.
Anything.
She swallowed hard, and this time she warded away the tears before they came. The time for crying was past now.
I know I’ve been out of touch, she wrote. Daryn smiled.
You know me. I’ve been busy, traveling a lot. I have to tell you something now. Even though you and I don’t talk much, something tells me I need to reach out to you now.
I’m scared, Daddy. I’m really, really afraid.
She thought the use of Daddy would really get to him. Daryn kept typing.
Sean had no clue where he was, nor how he got there. He knew he was still in Faith’s car, and that it was damnably uncomfortable. How could Faith have bought a car this small? he wondered.
Light played across his face as he slowly awoke. He blinked fiercely, trying to orient himself. It was still dark outside, but the car was parked at the periphery of a lot of bright lights. His hearing started to awaken. He heard traffic sounds. The picture came into focus: gas pumps, a high canopy overhead, bright blazing fluorescence. In the distance was a straight line of black, broken by occasional headlights.
A truck stop, somewhere along an interstate highway.
He remembered the sex, and he remembered that by the time he climaxed, he’d just wanted it to be over with. It had become work, and he’d just wanted to finish and go to sleep. But Daryn had been maniacal, doing everything to stimulate him, oblivious to herself, determined beyond reason that he should finish inside her.
He remembered her screaming, her rage as she hit him and scratched him. He’d stumbled out into the night until he found the car where he’d parked it around the corner.
That was all.
He didn’t recall driving, certainly didn’t remember getting on a major highway and coming to this truck stop.
His neck was sore from the contorted position he’d slept in behind the wheel, slumped slightly to the side. The gearshift of the Miata had poked into his ribs, and they were sore as well. He held up his arm to the light that spilled through the window. His watch read 3:56.
Nearly four o’clock in the morning, and he had no idea where he was.
He blinked again. He remembered snippets of other things. Faith had been angry at him…so what else was new? He’d dropped something or knocked something over in his house, but hadn’t cleaned it up. He felt vaguely ashamed about that.
Daryn…Daryn wasn’t going into Department Thirty protection.
He sat up straight. Faith hadn’t protected Daryn. Now Daryn was back in Kat’s apartment.
Sean closed his eyes again. It all seemed to be spinning around him. Daryn, Faith, Kat, Sanborn, Britt, Tobias Owens…
He wrenched open the car door and vomited onto the pavement, heaving until he had nothing left.
Even after he’d emptied his stomach, he still hung out the door, feeling the cool night air. After nearly five minutes, he swung his legs out and stood unsteadily. He slammed the car door, wincing at the sound, and went into the truck stop. He went to the bathroom, emptied his bladder, washed his face. He bought a bottle of water. The clerk, a young Middle Eastern man with a scraggly beard, eyed him strangely as he walked back out into the night.
He turned the corner at the edge of the building, back to where the Miata was parked haphazardly, taking up parts of two spaces.
Franklin Sanborn was leaning against it.
“Hello, Sean,” Sanborn said, in the same genial, easygoing voice he’d used the day Sean and Daryn first arrived at the Mulhall house. “At least I can call you by your real name now.”
Sean lengthened his strides.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Sanborn said. “You’ve done quite enough of that already, don’t you think? It’s all quite complicated, really, and you don’t know anything. Think twice about anything you may think you know, because chances are it’s not true.”
“What…” Sean’s mouth felt like he’d been chewing rocks, and his stomach was still queasy. “What do you want? Why are you here?”
Sanborn looked at his watch. “Well, it’s too late to save Daryn, but maybe if you hurry, you can catch the real killer.”
Sean dropped the bottle of water. It rolled away from him until it smacked into one of the Miata’s tires. Even as his stomach threatened to revolt again, he grabbed Sanborn by the throat and slammed him into the car.
“Go ahead,” Sanborn breathed. “Beat me to a pulp, Sean. You could even kill me and it wouldn’t matter. You’re too late. Way too late.”
“What have you done with her? What the fuck have you done with Daryn?”
“Weren’t you just with her? You probably should have stayed with her, Sean. Maybe she’d still be alive now if you had.”
Sean couldn’t mistake the taunt in his voice, a school bully picking on a weaker child. With all his strength, Sean took both hands and shoved Sanborn to the side. He rolled off the Miata’s hood and stumbled into the ice machine that stood on the sidewalk. Sean was on top of him in an instant, crashing his fist into Sanborn’s face.
“Where is she?” he panted.
“They’ll find her soon,” Sanborn said, his cheek starting to swell. “And then they’ll find you. In death, she’ll be Kat for a little while, but then she’ll be Daryn. She’ll die as the senator’s daughter. That’s rather ironic. Don’t you think that’s ironic?”
Sean grabbed his shoulders and slammed him repeatedly against the ground. “Tell me, you piece of shit! Tell me what you’ve done!”
“It wasn’t hard to follow you from her apartment, you know. The way you were driving, it was an easy trail. You’re just lucky you escaped the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. Now that might have been unpleasant.”
Sean slammed him to the pavement again.
Sanborn grunted in pain, but he didn’t stop. “They’ll find you, Sean. See, they’ll find your Jeep-remember it?-and it’ll have Daryn’s blood in it. And in the glove box, they’ll find your gun. You shouldn’t have left it at the Mulhall house. That was very unprofessional. In a day or two, when they do the ballistics tests, they’ll find that the gun that killed the senator’s daughter was registered to Sean Michael Kelly of Tucson, late of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”
Sean toppled to the side, his head spinning. “I don’t-”
“Then after the autopsy, they’ll find your semen inside her. As a federal law enforcement officer, your DNA is on file and it won’t take long for them to match it up.” Sanborn shook his head, blood trickling down one side of it, just as it had when his car crashed in Bricktown. For a moment Sean thought he was seeing things, time caught in an endless loop.
“Where is she?” Sean muttered, but the vehemence was draining out of his voice.
“She probably had sex with five hundred men in the last few years,” Sanborn said, “and almost as many women, for that matter. But she was careful. Remember how she always had condoms handy for you? What made her decide not to use them tonight?”
“Who are you?” Sean whispered, and then he remembered that those were the exact words he’d said to Daryn as he left her apartment a few hours ago.
“Why, I’m Franklin Sanborn. At least I am to you. Now that was a pointless question, Sean. You know, you might still catch the killer if you hurry. There’s a place in this city where people go to remember, where time stands still. You’ll find it, I think.”
The two men looked at each other. Sean couldn’t feel, couldn’t think. Daryn could not be dead. Sanborn was messing with his mind-that was what Sanborn did. He used that nice, easygoing, let’s-all-be-friends voice, but it was pure manipulation.
“You should go to her, Sean,” Sanborn said. “I think it’s the least you owe her.”
“If you…” Sean pulled himself up, holding to the hood of the car. “If she’s…I’ll find you. If she’s hurt or dead or…Jesus Christ, Sanborn, I will find you and I will kill you. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, Sean,” Sanborn said, and his voice took on an eerie chill. “I know that.”
A PLACE WHERE PEOPLE GO TO REMEMBER. A PLACEwhere time stands still.
Sean knew.
He had visited the memorial with Faith and Scott Hendler, on a sunny day when sightseeing seemed a perfectly normal thing to do. Back then, he’d been able to imagine that he was in town on vacation, visiting his sister, and they could go for a few hours and act like normal people, doing the things normal people do.
He first had to orient himself as to where he was. Blinking against the alcohol that was still in his system, along with the emotions raging through him, he figured out that the highway was Interstate 35, and that the truck stop was situated just off Northeast 122nd Street in far north Oklahoma City.
He roared onto the access road, then crossed the highway and merged onto the southbound interstate. He nudged the Miata up past eighty. He turned on the stereo. He knew his sister was into “smooth jazz,” whatever that meant, while he preferred old-time rock and roll, the Doobies, the Eagles, Kansas. He expected soft and flowing jazz on the CD, but to his surprise, it was a rock-jazz fusion led by an electric guitar. He turned it up as loud as he could. His head didn’t hurt anymore, and while his stomach still churned and he had moments of dizziness, his head was clearing. He let the guitar pound into him, absorbing the bass beats as if they were blows raining down on him.
“Daryn, I’m coming,” he said.
Some of Oklahoma City’s downtown streets were one-way, and he had to double back a couple of times before he found himself on Robinson Avenue, approaching the National Memorial from the north, on its east side.
The dashboard clock said the time was 4:43. There were few cars in the predawn downtown area. He could see traffic lights stretching all the way through downtown, past Bank of America Plaza and on toward the south side of the city.
He was unsure of parking around the memorial itself, so he swung into the lot of a church across the street. An open-air structure, rough-hewn with wooden pews, stood at the corner of Sixth and Robinson. A sign proclaimed it as Heartland Chapel. Sean stumbled through it, then across the street.
He entered from the east, through the “wall of time” that was stamped 9:01. Its counterpart at the far end read 9:03.
A place where time stands still, Sanborn had said.
“Daryn,” he whispered.
He saw movement on the far side, outside the wall, along the sidewalk. A single uniformed security man passed under a streetlight.
Directly before him was the reflecting pool. To the left was the knoll where the 168 empty chairs sat, each lighted from within at night. It was an eerie tableau, much different from the daytime one. To the right was the plaza where the Survivor Tree stood, above all else. Behind it was the old Journal Record Building, which now housed the memorial’s indoor museum.
Sean walked to the right, down one walkway and up another, toward the big old elm tree. When he turned the corner, he saw her.
“Holy Mother of God,” Sean whispered.
She was hanging in the tree, a rope looped around both her neck and a low branch. Her light-colored T-shirt was stained.
Sean’s knees buckled. He collapsed onto the flagstone walkway.
He forced himself to look up again. He scrabbled along the stones, then pulled himself to his feet.
“I’ll get you down, Daryn,” he said. “I’ll-”
He grabbed hold of her legs and lifted them up, trying to relieve the pressure around her neck.
“Come on,” he whispered.
He glanced out toward the west side. The security man had left the street and walked back onto the memorial grounds, heading this way, up past the children’s area.
“Daryn, please.” Still whispering.
She wasn’t heavy, barely a hundred pounds, and Sean had lifted his share of weights, but there was no “give” in Daryn’s body.
Dead weight.
He almost screamed. He put out a hand, touched her shirt. The blood was fresh and warm.
“Oh God. Oh dear God. Please.”
He looked up at her face. Her neck was twisted grotesquely by the rope, her eyes closed, lips slightly parted.
No breath.
Sean backed away as if burned. The watchman was closer, coming toward the edge of the building. When he came around it, he would be able to see Sean.
He remembered what Sanborn had said. They’d set him up for Daryn’s murder. Somehow…
The intensity of the sex-had that only been a few hours ago?-replayed itself in his mind. Daryn’s insistence that he not use a condom this time, her overwhelming desire to have him climax inside her, followed by her violent reaction to him after he had done so.
What the hell is going on here?
The watchman had disappeared behind the corner of the building. Sean estimated he had less than a minute.
He wrapped his arms around Daryn’s legs again. One of her sandals came off and fell to the pavement.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Sean turned and ran. He fled across the street, back toward the church parking lot. He didn’t look back. He made it to the Miata and pointed the little car east on Sixth. He came out on Broadway and turned north.
He came to a McDonald’s at Twenty-third and Broadway and pulled in. His hands were shaking so badly he could barely keep them on the wheel. His right hand was covered in Daryn’s blood from where he’d touched her chest.
His mind functioning on automatic, he got out of the car, jamming the bloody hand in his pocket. He went to the door of the McDonald’s, but it was locked. He peered at the hours listed on the sign-it didn’t open until six o’clock. He looked at his watch. Nearly an hour.
He went back to the Miata and got in, sitting in the car. His hands felt dirty, but his mouth could still taste Kat.
Kat. He wanted to think of her that way, rather than as Daryn. As Kat, his time with her had been uncomplicated and free. Her passion, her anger, her lust-they were real. Even though he knew intellectually that they weren’t real, that he really knew very little about the woman hanging in the tree back there, Daryn McDermott or Kat Hall or whoever she was.
When she’d been Kat, he’d been Michael Sullivan, a guy who lived here in this city and made furniture for a living.
All in all, if not for everything that had happened, that might not have been a bad life. Set up a woodworking shop and custom-design and build furniture. Live in this pleasant prairie city, with its distinct seasons and friendly people. Hang out with his sister now and then-get to know her again. As adults, they were pretty much strangers.
But no, he was about to be a fugitive, wanted for the murder of a woman that everyone would soon know was Senator Edward McDermott’s daughter.
God, I wish I had a drink.
Not now, he told himself. Maybe later, when he could stop. He would have to be far from here before that could happen.
He fidgeted in the car, watching the faint glow in the east. The Oklahoma State Capitol was only a few blocks away and he could see its dome from where he sat. The predawn light behind it was postcard-perfect. He looked at his watch and was surprised to see that more than an hour had passed.
Sean wanted to scream.
He turned on the radio, found the news station, listened. The early morning editions were already feasting on the “grisly discovery” at the National Memorial, reporting that “details were sketchy this morning,” but reporting details anyway. It wouldn’t be long before the missing girl Katherine Hall, who’d come home only last night, was identified as Daryn McDermott. And then the coverage would be national.
He put the bloody hand in his pocket again, went into McDonald’s, and used the restroom. He washed his hands and stuffed the bloody paper towel into his pocket. He bought a cup of coffee at the counter, then headed back out into the dawn.
“Sorry, Faith,” he said, starting his sister’s car. He swung onto the highway onramp that ran next to the McDonald’s, and then Sean was gone.