Any Minute Now (40 page)

Blood welled up, streaking his face. His chest was heaving violently, his mouth working. But only a series of grunts issued from it; he looked to be in agony beyond imagining. Then, with what seemed an extraordinary effort, his gaze went from her to the Glock lying on the floor between them. His gaze rose again. He was as grave as a judge about to pronounce sentence, and she knew what he was asking of her.

“I can't.” She tried to back away, but the kitchen counter was in her way. She tried to brush past him, but he clutched her leg with one hand. “I can't.”

But his nails dug into her as they had his own flesh, making her cry out, pulling her downward until she was on her knees in front of him. She stared into his agonized face. She picked up the revolver. At once, his mouth ceased its twitching. It hung open, a dark cave, waiting. His hand left her leg, guided her hand until the short barrel was where he wanted it.

“I can't,” she said, and pulled the trigger.

 

45

“You might think the dragon tattoo a symbol of initiation,” Whitman said, “but it isn't.” He looked past Charlie's shoulder to make certain no one else was listening or even in earshot. Flix was sound asleep, snoring softly, and the putative Edmond Dantès was eating a meal up front. Whitman had given him plenty of incentive not to converse with any of the crew.

“What is it, then?” Charlie said, prompting him.

“A graduation present.” Whitman rubbed the head of the dragon, as if reacquainting himself with the beast. “From a man I hope never to meet again.”

Charlie opened her mouth, but before she could speak, all the color drained from her face.

“Charlie…”

“It's okay.”

She fumbled in her backpack, shook out two Imuran tabs. Whitman called the flight attendant for water, but Charlie swallowed them dry. Cold sweat had broken out at her hairline, and her face looked wan and drawn. The water arrived and Whitman made her drink some. Then she laid her head against the seat back and closed her eyes.

“It's okay, Whit,” she whispered. “I'll be fine.”

“You haven't been taking the Imuran regularly.”

“In that fucking hellhole? Who had the time?”

“You've got to make the time,” he said. “You've got to take the Takayasu's more seriously.”

“What did I ever do without you, Whit?” she said with a bite in her voice.

“The color's coming back to your face.”

“I'm feeling more myself.” She nodded. “Now, about that man…”

“Relentless doesn't even begin to cover it.”

She opened her eyes and smiled at him. “That's why you love me.”

He grunted. “He called himself Preach, and for him we have to go back a long way.”

Whitman was nineteen when his mother and younger sister vanished. He had already been overseas twice in Special Forces, having lied about his age and altered documents that proved he was older. His father was already dead of a cerebral aneurism incurred while building a corral. He returned from Iraq to find their apartment empty, dirty dishes in the sink, tea and cakes set out on the kitchen table. No clothes were missing. It was as if they had been plucked from the apartment in the space of a heartbeat. How was that possible?

The authorities were of no use, so Whitman set out to find them. He spent the next eighteen months in monomaniacal pursuit, after which he had to admit to himself that he was no closer to finding out where they had gone or what had happened to them. It was as if they had fallen off the face of the earth.

He was of no further use to Special Forces, so when his tour of duty ended he left. “I joined the FBI, became a profiler, as you know. What I never told you was that I had met a man named Preach. It was Preach who told me he could find my mother and sister. Little did I know then that the reason he could find them was because they were dead.”

*   *   *

“It's safe now. You can come out.”

Julie waited for Orrin to appear, but when he did not, she went down the hallway and into the bedroom. He was standing, his back to one of the two windows. Outside, the muffled sounds of passing vehicles; across the street a building loomed with floors filled with empty eyes. There was a baseball bat in his hands. She wanted to laugh, but he quailed away from her, and she looked down.

Orrin stared from her face to the revolver she still held and back again. “What … what happened out there?”

“He's dead. Suicide. We're safe.”

“I'm afraid not.”

She whirled to see Luther St. Vincent. He was aiming a silenced handgun in his good hand at a space equidistant between the two of them.

“Drop the Glock, Ms. Regan.” The muzzle of his gun moved toward her. “Really. I mean it.”

She allowed the revolver to slip from her icy fingers. This is the end, she thought. No one here gets out alive.

The handgun swung back slightly. “And now you, Mr. Jameson.”

Orrin let go of the bat. What was he going to do with it anyway?

“How did you find out?” Julie said. She found that, at the end, she was intensely curious about every detail that had led to this moment.

“We have a contact inside the AG's office.” His gaze swiveled toward Orrin. “You were careful, Mr. Jameson, just not careful enough. This is the NSA you're dealing with, Directorate N you're trying to fuck with.” He shook his head. “That won't do. Not at all.”

“What … what are you going to do?” Orrin said, his voice breathy, as if he'd been running a marathon.

“What do you think I'm going to do, Mr. Jameson?”

“He's going to kill us, Orrin,” Julie said. “He's going to shoot us dead.”

St. Vincent turned to her. “You're smart for a woman. Maybe too smart for your own good.”

“Smart enough for you to recruit me into Directorate N?”

This raised St. Vincent's eyebrows. He seemed genuinely startled. “Is that a joke?”

“Not at all. There's so much I could tell you about Omar Hemingway's shop.”

“Like what?”

“Like he hates your guts.”

“I already know that,” St. Vincent said dismissively.

“No, he
really
hates your guts. So much so that he's actively working to publicly humiliate you.”

St. Vincent laughed. “He wouldn't; he hasn't got the balls. He couldn't; he doesn't have the juice.”

Julie wisely held her tongue, but her gaze remained steadily on St. Vincent's face, until he was forced to ask, “How? How the fuck does he think he's going to do it?”

“That's a question for after my recruitment.”

St. Vincent's eyes narrowed. “I don't believe a word of this. You're just delaying the inevitable. But your little playlet bought you a bit of time.” The gun moved back to Orrin. “Him first, then you.”

His finger tightened on the trigger. The smell of hot urine invaded the bedroom as Orrin lost control. They both heard the shot at once. The window glass shattered, St. Vincent arched backward as the hollowpoint bullet tore through his chest cavity, disintegrating like a pipe bomb.

As if by a giant fist, he was hurled across the room, against the inner wall, where he bounced, collapsed, and fell dead, bleeding out onto the carpet.

Julie ran to the ruined window, looked to the armored sniper framed in the open window of the building across from them. Seeing her, he gave a half salute.

Moments later, Omar Hemingway was in the room, looking from one occupant to another. He smiled at Julie. “I trust the contact mic wasn't too uncomfortable.”

“I didn't feel it at all.”

“Good. We've got it all on tape.” His smile broadened. “You're one brave field operative. I'm goddamned proud of you.”

For a moment, Julie thought he was going to embrace her. Instead, he held out his hand. She didn't even glance at it, let alone take it. “This was your plan all along, wasn't it?”

Hemingway's face darkened. “I don't know what—”

“Oh, don't give me that shit. From the moment you dropped Sydny's name into my lap as an extracurricular assignment your hope was that it would end like this.” She pointed to St. Vincent's corpse. “You knew he had bugged your office—you knew all along, and you fed him the bits of disinformation that he wanted.” She shook her head. “No, no, that he
needed
.”

“That's some imagination you've developed, Julie.”

“Too bad for you, Omar. You couldn't get to St. Vincent via normal channels—you said so yourself that day in your office. So you recruited me. Why? Because you knew I'd be too proud to question the assignment. Because any one of your field personnel would have smelled the rat that I missed. This was a personal vendetta—don't even bother to deny it. I've seen it all the way through and I know. You set Sydny up as bait—you didn't care if she lived or died.”

“Her death was an unfortunate—” He sighed. “She was collateral damage.”

“Oh, please.” Julie shot him a poisonous look before she left the room.

“Wait,” Hemingway said. “Where are you going?”

There was no response. He did not go after her, nor did he call out again. Instead, he turned back to Orrin. “Jesus, what a mess,” he said. “But not to worry. I've called for our cleaning service. God knows the apartment needs it.”

 

46

“I'm so sorry, Whit,” Charlie said. “I had no idea. You never even mentioned your family.”

“Now you know why.”

She nodded. “So it was this man Preach who gave you the tattoo?”

Whitman nodded. “I stayed with him far longer than Luther St. Vincent, a member of the Alchemists, would have wanted me to. Preach saw in me a kindred spirit. Even more, he realized that I possessed something he had thought only he had.”

“What was that?”

“A doorway to … somewhere else.”

Charlie frowned. “I don't understand.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Join the club.”

“Wait a minute. Are you talking about what you did to Flix? How you saved him?”

Whitman nodded. “That's part of it, but only a part.”

Charlie swallowed. “Now you're scaring me.”

“That's precisely why I never told you.” He leaned over, kissed her cheek. “I knew I had already frightened you enough.”

“I don't frighten easily.” She have him a tentative smile. “Only by things I see that defy explanation.”

“You don't ever want to meet Preach then.” Whitman's gaze turned inward, as memories continued to come to the fore. “Everyone was frightened of Preach. He never said much, but then he didn't have to. People came to him for help, and he gave it.”

“What kind of help?”

“Cures, spells, the advice of angels and demons.” Whitman nodded. “I knew that would make you smile.” He put his head against the seatback. “Then there was the kind of help I asked him for. He can see across the divide, from life to death, or, as he refers to it, from this life to the next.” His head bobbed. “Yeah, I don't think I believed it either, although I have to admit that from the moment I met him some part of me knew he wasn't full of shit. That was the part he recognized, the part that came to connect us, the part he chose to nurture, teach, allow to grow in strength and knowledge.”

“I imagine the other Alchemists were frightened of your power. Did they kick you out?”

“No. I left them.”

“Why?”

When no answer was forthcoming, Charlie changed direction. “Did Preach tell you what happened to your mother and sister?”

“They told him, he said, from the other side.”

“And you believed him?”

He could read the skepticism on her face. “The people I had been targeting in Iraq were very powerful. They had ties all across the globe, more than I or anyone in Special Forces knew. But Preach knew because my family told him. Sympathizers here in the States, acting on orders from Iraq, abducted my mother and sister, took them into the countryside, and slit their throats.”

“Retribution.”

“That. And a warning.”

“What did you do after you found out?”

“Before I could do anything I got a call from King Cutler. I joined Universal Security Associates, assembled Red Rover, and took the team to Iraq.”

“USA is a military contractor. Cutler allowed you to do that on your own?”

“It was part of our initial negotiation. I wouldn't have come aboard without that assurance.”

“And what happened over there?”

“We stayed there for six weeks. In that time, we killed twenty-seven members of the cadre that had ordered my family slaughtered. The twenty-eighth—the leader—I saved for myself.”

The plane had started its descent, and they both buckled up. They were almost home.

“You used your dark arts on him,” Charlie said.

Whitman's eyes cleared as he looked at her, but there was no point in him answering her; she knew.

Charlie leaned in toward him. “The Well,” she whispered, “why in God's name did you take me there? Why did you expose me to that horror? The blood, broken bodies, the
stench
. Christ, Whit, it almost killed me. It's why I hit you that night, afterward. I couldn't believe…” Her eyes searched his; she needed an answer. “Why did you want me to see what you were capable of? What were you thinking when you exposed me to that … living hell? Was it forgiveness you were looking for? Did you think I'd absolve you of your sins? Or were you just trying to drive me away, kill my love for you?”

Love
. It was the first time she had intimated in any way that she had loved him. Did she love him still? Like her, he needed an answer. “It was none of those things. Charlie. Charlie.” His voice was as dry as a reed at summer's death. “I wanted you to know everything there was about me, I wanted to let you in—the only person I would ever trust in that way. You made me feel … different. Better. You made me realize that I didn't want to be alone anymore.”