Blood Trust (24 page)

Several times she had tried calling Jack back, but either he wasn’t answering or he wasn’t in range of a cell tower. He hadn’t said what he was doing with Dennis Paull and she knew better than to ask. Still, she wished she could talk with him, wished even harder that he was here with her, because she knew that he was the one person who could unravel the mysteries that confronted her. In order not to think about Jack—about how she really felt about him—she flooded her mind with anger toward Pete McKinsey. Armored in her anger, she felt safe from emotions that would otherwise swamp her, emotions she’d rather not examine too closely.

But then she heard Rachel’s voice in her head:
“You make a fetish of not feeling anything for anyone. You think you’re incapable of feeling deeply, but it’s not true. You’re just terrified; you think you’ll be crushed.”
She had shaken her head.
“You’re too strong for that, Nomi. You’re a tank.”

To her horror, Naomi discovered that she had begun to weep.
Oh, God, no,
she thought. But she knew that the heart wanted what the heart wanted. It was simply that what her heart wanted was unattainable.

Wiping her eyes, she shook her head.
Grow up,
she berated herself.
Just grow the fuck up.

Was that her voice, or her brother’s? The oldest of the three siblings, Damon had had an iron personality, a volatile temper, and a great love for his sisters. But his idea of love was to be even tougher on them than he knew the world would be.

“Girls get shafted,”
he’d tell them,
“and here’s why: Girls are weak, they knuckle under to men all the time, they can’t take the hard knocks of life. Bottom line: They’re not tough enough.”
Rachel had told him to go to hell, but, entirely without knowing it, Naomi had swallowed his philosophy whole.

“That’s why you get into trouble,”
Rachel had told her once.
“That’s why you’re alone.”

By that time, Damon was dead, the body shipped home from Afghanistan. Their mother had collapsed in grief and had never recovered, dying thirteen months later. The doctor said it was a stroke, but Naomi knew it was a broken heart.

Naomi thought of her brother often, and when she did, he increased in stature, until he was larger than life. Every month she went to Arlington Cemetery to lay a wreath at his grave and to talk to him. She missed him in the way a child misses her father. Her sorrow was bitter and unending.

The night was growing thin. The gray sky, as fragile-looking as an eggshell, wavered as it tilted toward dawn. Cathedral Avenue, where McKinsey’s huge Art Deco apartment building rose like the prow of the
Titanic,
was coming alive with traffic. A light rain fell and then, as abruptly as it started, ceased, leaving the road and sidewalks as slick as the surface of a skating rink. McKinsey’s Ford was still parked down the block, cold and deserted, mocking her.

A gust of wind swept trash up into the air, sudden movement on a lonely, deserted street, and she shivered again. She was deathly tired; even her bones ached with exhaustion. She had been working nonstop for the last two days without even an hour of sleep. Unconsciously, her head tilted back, her eyelids closed, and she slid from awareness, only to snap herself awake. She glanced at herself in the rearview mirror, which reflected a face as pale and sunken as a corpse’s.

Damn,
she thought,
I need a vacation.

At that precise moment, her gaze was drawn to a metallic flash as the door to McKinsey’s building opened. A young woman in a broad-brimmed hat, stiletto-heeled boots, and stylish reflective raincoat stepped out. In one arm, she cradled one of those tiny teacup poodles with a rhinestone-studded collar. She put the dog down on the sidewalk and attached the leash. As she and the poodle trotted down the broad stone steps, McKinsey emerged and scanned the immediate vicinity. Naomi froze, scarcely daring to breathe.

Apparently satisfied, he went down the steps and headed for his car. She leaned forward, her hand on the ignition key, her right foot on the brake. The idea was to start her car when he did, so he wouldn’t hear it. Her eyes followed McKinsey as he got into his car and slid behind the wheel. The instant he leaned forward to slot the key, she fired her ignition. A moment later, he pulled out. She counted silently to ten, then followed him into the traffic of Cathedral Avenue.

He took her south and then west into Georgetown. Turning left off M Street, he drove down to the water and parked. For some time, he sat in the car with the driver’s side window down, smoking. In no hurry, he appeared to be staring out at the water.

At precisely 6:14, he got out of the Ford and strolled down to the water. Elbows on the railing, he leaned out over the water and stared down. Naomi stepped out onto the sidewalk and followed his path to the east side of the Sequoia Center. As she did so, McKinsey did a strange thing. He straddled the railing, then dropped over the water side.

Naomi broke into a run. A motor coughed to life. She arrived at the railing just in time to see McKinsey standing beside a man driving a small motorboat. They were heading out to Theodore Roosevelt Island. Naomi caught a glimpse of the man McKinsey had gone to meet. He was in his mid to late thirties, athletic in build, with thick, dark hair, curling at his neck. He sported a full beard. There was a flash of dark predator’s eyes, set deep in his skull, before the boat swept away in a white spray of wake.

Naomi slammed her fists into the top rail and wondered what the hell her partner was up to.

*   *   *

T
HEY WERE
already high in the foothills of the Korab mountains by the time the talons of dawn scraped the eastern horizon. At first, there was just a thin line of red, then, in the space of a heartbeat, the terrain was flooded with a golden light so dazzling they were forced to don sunglasses.

Alli walked between Paull on point and Jack at the rear. The trio wore climbing boots, jeans, and camouflage microfiber windbreakers. They carried ArmaLite AR 25 assault rifles, featherweight backpacks stuffed with food, water, and the DARPA weapons Paull had procured.

The ground’s pitch steepened, the dips more shallow and, at the same time, the way became more rugged. The switchback path was strewn with larger and larger rocks, and clots of loose earth that skittered and slid out from under their boot soles, tumbling backward down the slope. Trees were bent as old men, twisted by the high winds of storms, and the scrub took on the lackluster color of clay, looking more dead than alive. High above them, hawks circled and dipped on the thermals, searching for prey.

With daylight full blown, Paull called a halt and they made temporary camp in the shadow of an enormous boulder, leaning like a giant’s tooth knocked off true. They drank and ate a little, then took turns at lookout while the others dozed. When it was Alli’s turn to stand guard, Jack rose and picked his way to stand beside her.

“Did you find anything interesting on Uncle Hank’s cell?”

Her voice was soft and hushed, her eyes moving across the terrain, searching for any movement, anything out of place.

“Yes and no,” Jack said. “There are only two numbers on that phone, odd enough in and of itself, but to make matters more mysterious both are assigned a single letter—A and D—rather than a name. The designations could be the first letter of names, or some code of your uncle’s devising.” He gestured. “Out here, there’s no way of connecting with these numbers, so I’ll have to wait to check them out.”

Alli gave him a swift glance. “You think this means he knows about the Stem? About Dardan?”

“This cell, these coded numbers, may concern something altogether different, Alli. It’s too soon to tell.” Discussing Henry Holt Carson brought home to Jack a duty he had been reluctant to perform. There was no time like the present, he thought. Still, the trauma Alli had so recently sustained made this difficult task even more so.

“Alli, there’s something I need to tell you. I know your uncle neglected to tell you.” He took a breath, let it out. “The night Billy was murdered … your mother passed away.”

Alli said nothing. She stared out at the unfamiliar terrain, blindingly outlined against a sky so blue that without sunglasses it made your eyes hurt. Hardwood, pines, miles of granite, split and jagged. Not a hint of human habitation anywhere.

Jack could hear her breathing. “I’m so sorry. I’ll miss her.”

“Uncle Hank knew?”

“Of course. He was called to the hospital, as were Dennis and I. They tried to contact you, but by then Fearington was in lockdown.”

Alli’s breathing seemed to shorten, to quicken. “Why didn’t he tell me?” She turned to Jack, tears glittering in the corners of her eyes. “When I was at his house, when he locked me into his study, why didn’t Uncle Hank tell me?”

“I can’t answer that,” Jack said softly. “But it’s possible that being angry at him isn’t the way to go at this moment.”

She didn’t respond.

“Alli?”

She shook her head fiercely. “I can’t think about them—either of them.”

“You will, sometime.” His voice was both soft and gentle. “The longer you wait—”

“Shit,” she said, and walked away.

Jack watched her for a time, a tiny, lone sentinel. Her back was ramrod straight, her stance as fiercely battle-ready as any soldier.

A stirring at his side alerted him.

“She’s an enigma, isn’t she, Dad?”

“That she is, Emma.”

“Even to herself.”

*   *   *

N
AOMI SPENT
a very frustrating day with Pete, collating all the information they had amassed, including the forensics on the knife found behind Alli’s room in Fearington, which indicated that it was, indeed, Billy’s blood on the blade. However, the handle had been wiped clean, which was consistent with both a premeditated murder and a conspiracy to set up Alli.

“The bloody knife is such a clumsy attempt to frame Alli,” she said. They sat at facing desks, close enough for easy conversation. “I don’t get it.”

He picked his head up from his paperwork. He looked neat and tidy. He was freshly shaved. It looked as if his nails had been waxed. “What do you mean?”

“First the vial of roofies with Alli’s fingerprints is found under her bed. Pretty damning, no? But then this bloody knife. Who in their right mind would dump a murder weapon behind where they live?”

“You forget, Naomi. She’s not in her right mind. Hasn’t been, apparently, since she was abducted.”

She stared at him in disbelief. “You’re missing the point.”

“Which is?”

He seemed peculiarly disinterested, she thought, or unusually distracted. Maybe that amounted to the same thing.

“It’s as if she was set up, then given this loophole.”

“I don’t agree.” He shook out a cigarette, then, remembering he couldn’t smoke in the office, shoved it back into the pack. “Why should she care about us finding the murder weapon if her prints aren’t on it?”

She ran a hand distractedly through her hair. She was suddenly sick of him.

“What have you found out about Qershi Holdings, the company that rented out the space where the Stem was transacting their business?”

“Exactly zippo.” Naomi was aware of how flat her voice sounded. She bitterly hated failure. Whoever said that you can’t handle success until you’ve failed was full of shit. “It’s a shell corporation, doing business out of the Cayman Islands.”

“Which local bank does it use? The Cayman banks are more helpful to us nowadays.”

Naomi sighed. “If only. No, all I could pick up was a PO box.”

“So,” he said, “another dead end.”

She nodded. “For the moment, at least.”

They burned the rest of the afternoon writing their first report for Henry Holt Carson, not an easy assignment, considering both the lack of hard information and the one bit of news sure to bring out their ad hoc employer’s ire.

The more they worked on the draft, the more anxious Naomi became. “Let’s emphasize the increasingly cloudy picture the evidence is providing,” she said. “That’s sure to please him.” After a grunt from McKinsey, she plowed on. “And maybe we should omit the part about Alli being with Jack.”

“What?” McKinsey’s head snapped up. “Are you nuts? That’s about the only solid news we have for him. She isn’t lost and she isn’t on her own.”

“She’s with Jack; just what he doesn’t want. He’ll have a shit fit.”

McKinsey brushed away her words. “Not our concern. It goes in the report. End of story.”

Naomi brought her eyes back down to the draft. He was right—of course he was. But she couldn’t help thinking that the news would put Jack at the top of Henry Holt Carson’s enemy list. She tried to continue typing on her computer keyboard, but found that her fingers wouldn’t work. She sat brooding for a moment, aware that McKinsey was eyeing her. Then she pushed her chair back and went and got some coffee from the office machine. Its bitterness matched her mood. She said to hell with it, dumped in some half-and-half instead of two-percent milk, added three teaspoons of real sugar instead of Splenda, and knocked back half a cup before she got back to her desk. God forbid it should be hot, rather than lukewarm.