In the Grey (53 page)

Neev nodded.

“
I only ever had Jack,”
Neev looked at the Mister with sorrow-filled eyes. “Now he’s
dead.”

The Mister leaned back in
his chair and watched her. She wasn’t what he’d expected; yet, she
was exactly what Tom Drayson said she was – a tired, middle-aged
grandmother who had wrapped herself in a cloak of the loneliness
and despair.

“
How do you know Jack is
dead?” the Mister asked.

“
I failed.”

“
No one knows that,” the
Mister said. “In fact, all that’s known is that a bunch of people
are in the hospital. Think about it. The Hargreaves have enough
clout and money to keep this story under wraps.”

He took a copy of the
Denver Post from his briefcase and tossed it on the table. The
headline read: “Bad reaction to Thanksgiving.” The sub-headline
says, “After a night of drinking, family erupts in violence,
sending seven to the hospital.”

Neev pulled the paper to
her and read the beginning of the article.

“
This is a trick,” Neev
said.

“
Think it through,” the
Mister said. “Prominent, well-liked family involved in highly
classified government work. What’s the likelihood that they have an
arrangement with the press regarding what happens to
them?”

Neev gave him a long
look.

“
All you know is that Jack
was taken and that you were asked or forced or
programmed . . .” The Mister let his words linger to
see how she responded to the idea of being programmed. She scowled.
“You see what happened to you. I see something much bigger, like a
giant sinkhole that you and Jack happened to fall into. Help me,
and I
will
help
you, or die trying.”

“
Even if Jack’s alive,
I’ll spend my life . . . ,” Neev gestured
around her. “I should.”

The Mister didn’t
respond.

“
Right?” Neev
asked.

“
Quite possibly,” the
Mister said. “And . . . quite possibly not. No one
wants you to suffer more than you have.”

“
I
should
suffer for what I’ve done,”
Neev said.

“
It seems like you’re
suffering quite a bit,” the Mister shrugged.

“
How will you get him
back?” Neev asked. “How will you find my Jack?”

“
I probably won’t,” the
Mister said.

“
Then . . .”

“
The person who will find
your Jack, and bring him back safely, I might add, was stabbed a
few days ago,” the Mister said.

“
Alex?” Neev looked
surprised. “But she’s a soldier who does . . . some
secret something. I don’t remember what Johnny said. Um
. . . maps! She draws maps, deciphers
codes.”

“
She finds people who are
being held hostage and arranges for their rescue,” the Mister said.
“She works all over the world. Perhaps you’ll remember John’s
father had a daughter?”

“
Aednat,” Neev
said.

“
Do you remember when she
disappeared for a while?” the Mister asked.

“
Emigrated to the US, I
heard,” Neev said. “She was gone a while. Why?”

“
She was taken. Used in
the sex trade as payback against her father. Alex found her and
returned her to her family.”

“
Poor lass,” Neev
said.

“
But you’re right, Alex
also draws maps and does a few other things.”

“
She’d find my Jackie?”
Neev asked. “For me? After all of this?”

“
It’s my understanding
that they’ve already started to work on it,” the Mister
said.

“
For me?”

“
For you,” the Mister
said.

“
And Wyatt? Samantha? Are
they . . . ?” Neev asked.

“
I think you’ll have to
apologize,” the Mister said. “They don’t blame you. They know
something bigger is going on.”

“
What about Max and Art?
They were injured.”

“
They know something
bigger is going on,” the Mister said.

For the first time in
their conversation, Neev’s entire being was present.

“
Turns out you’re not the
boss,” the Mister said.

Neev’s mouth dropped open
with surprise. Her eyes welled with tears.

“
How . . . ?” Neev whispered.

“
Eoin told me that Jack
says that to you all the time,” the Mister smiled. “Eoin’s here, by
the way.”

“
Eoin?”

“
To help you get clear,”
the Mister said. “Are you ready?”

“
Ready?”

“
I want to know every
detail, every smell, every color, every word, everything that makes
up the cascade of this event for you,” the Mister said. “We’re
going to go over and over it to make sure we don’t miss a thing.
It’s not going to be fun. We’re going to work hard all day and
probably most of the night. I’ll make a tape and a video recording
so we can keep track of every word. Eoin is going to do his thing
to see if we can jog the details loose.”

Neev nodded and looked
away.

“
Are you willing to work?”
the Mister asked.

“
I am,” Neev nodded.
“But . . .”

“
But what?” the Mister
asked.

“
I kept recordings – video
and audio – of everything that happened,” Neev said. “Every phone
call, personal interaction, note, letter – everything.”

“
You did?” the Mister
leaned forward.

“
I’m a Kelly, sir,” Neev
said. “I even kept his ear and finger.”

“
Where are
they?”

“
I hid them before I
left,” Neev said.

“
You’ll tell me where they
are?” the Mister asked.

Neev nodded. The Mister
gave her a genuine smile.

“
I’d still like to do the
debriefing,” Neev said. “Just to make sure.”

“
Make sure?”

“
Make sure I don’t have a
split,” Neev said. “You saw one, didn’t you?”

The Mister
nodded.

“
Fiddledeedee,” Neev
said.

“
It’s a standard
induction,” the Mister said.

Neev nodded.

“
I’ll get Eoin,” the
Mister said. “We’ll move to a room that’s more
comfortable.”

The Mister got up and went
to the door. He turned back to the table.

“
Any idea what ‘The joke’s
on you’ means?” the Mister asked.

She didn’t respond. In
fact, she didn’t move.

“
Neev?” the Mister asked.
“Mrs. Mac Kinney?”

He reached across the
table to touch her, and she fell into a grand mal
seizure
.

F

One day later

Sunday
mid-morning

November 28 – 10:41 a.m.
MST (9:41 a.m. CST)

Denver Health, Denver,
CO

“
Did they find the ear
and . . . what was it?” Alex asked.

She was standing near the
back windows of their hospital room. Max was in the bed near one
wall, and Steve lay in the bed on the opposite wall. Raz’s bed was
between Steve and Alex’s empty bed. Troy had gone home on Friday
afternoon. Samantha and Wyatt went home on Saturday.

Because she had such
significant hip injuries, she had to be up and walking for at least
fifteen minutes of every hour. Fearing she’d use her arm, John
refused to remove the tape from her right arm. She walked in her
cocoon of gauze and tape.

“
Finger,” Matthew said. He
glanced at Joseph, who nodded. They had come to give Alex a report
on the team’s progress. “Yes, her youngest daughter found
everything at the very bottom of their chest freezer. The files
were in plastic bags at the underneath her casseroles. The audio
and video tapes were in the middle of a frozen stew. But get this;
the finger and ear were in a loaf of bread.”

“
How did she find that?”
Raz asked.

“
I guess Neev makes a
wonderful loaf of bread,” Matthew shrugged. “‘Beautiful,’ her
daughter said. This loaf wasn’t as beautiful. Once she found the
loaf, she started looking.”

“
Did she bake the finger
into the bread?” Alex asked. “So gross.”

“
No,” Matthew said. “She
cut a hole in the top. They were in a bag.”

“
Forensics?” Steve
asked.

“
Not yet,” Matthew said.
“We might get them tomorrow. Preliminary tests indicate that they
are Jack Mac Kinney’s. The Irish Police,
uh . . . the Gardaí, I guess they’re called, are
working with the G2, the Irish intelligence agency, and
the . . . how do you say it?”

“
Fee-an-o-gla-sh,” Max
said. “Fiannóglach, part of the Irish Defense Force, and the finest
hostage rescue team the world knows about.”

“
Them,” Matthew said.
“They want to talk to you, by the way.”

Alex nodded.

“
Aren’t you supposed to be
walking?” Joseph asked.

Alex sneered at him. He
raised his eyebrows in a command, and she returned to pacing along
the back of the room.

“
How is Neev?” Steve
asked.

“
She’s all right,” Joseph
said. “Tough as hell, my God. She had that seizure, didn’t remember
the Mister at all, of course, and still went through fourteen hours
of debriefing.”

“
She’s a Kelly,” Max
said.

“
She actually said she was
her mother’s daughter,” Joseph said. “Tough to the
core.”

“
Can you ask the G2 to
test more than just the ends?” Alex asked. “I know they are very
good, but . . .”

“
But what?” Matthew looked
disgusted.

“
It’s not uncommon to dip
tissue from another source in the blood of the hostage,” Steve
said. “It’s not enough to fool thorough forensics, but they were
dealing with a grandmother. We may get lucky.”

“
You get a false positive
when the person’s dead or not even in their possession,” Alex said.
“Are we sure he’s missing?”

“
Other than Neev’s
statement?” Joseph asked. “His children haven’t seen him in months.
Their mom told them he’d taken a trip, but never specified where.
When she came here, they assumed he must have come to see
Eoin.”

“
No one in town’s seen
him,” Matthew said. “He had a very stable routine – get up, milk
the cows, tend the farm, stop by the pub for lunch, home by three.
He’d be easy to pick up.”

“
Then how’d they get him
at night?” Raz asked. “That’s what gets me. How’d they get him out
of bed?”

“
Not sure,” Joseph said.
“His oldest son said he had a habit of getting up at night to sit
in his recliner. He had a bad back. He liked to wake with Neev, so
he usually went back to bed around three.”

“
I wonder why she didn’t
mention that he moved around at night,” Steve said.

“
She probably didn’t think
of it,” Joseph said. “According to the son, Jack’s always done
that.”

“
Neev’s never been with
anyone else,” Matthew said. “She may think that men get up like
that at night.”

“
Either way,” Alex said.
“We need to ask her.”

Alex had a coughing
fit.

“
Done,” Joseph said when
she stopped coughing. “Anything else?”

Alex walked back to her
bed to get a drink of water.

“
What I don’t get is
this . . . ,” Alex paused for a moment to get
into bed. Joseph helped her. “How he did he get out of
Ireland?”

Exhausted, Alex closed her
eyes.

“
Sorry, I’m very tired,”
Alex said.

“
What do you mean?”
Matthew asked.

“
Ireland is an island.
It’s almost impossible to get off the island without someone seeing
you,” Alex said. “Every port is monitored. Every ferry has
surveillance. Every railroad, major highway, shipping route,
everything has some kind of surveillance. Even the fishing boats
have GPS tracking. It’s part of their national security plan. When
I was looking for Aednat, Jesse and I looked through a year’s worth
of video from every boat, train station, ferry, everything. She’s a
small woman. By all accounts, Jack is a towering figure of a man.
You’d see him on a video.”

“
That’s a good point,”
Joseph said.

“
Where’d you find her?”
Matthew asked.

“
Dublin,” Alex said.
“There’s quite a sex trade there.”

“
She was strung out and in
bad shape,” Joseph said. “Jesse and Alex got her back, cleaned her
up; the Fiannóglach did the official pick up.”

“
Get lost on the island,
sure,” Alex said. “But get off it?”

She shook her
head.

“
If the finger is truly
his, he’s there, somewhere,” Alex said. “Can you bring me a
map?”