Life of Secrets (12 page)

"I punched
him right in the face, Father!"

"That’s
nice, Alyssa. Go tell your mother."

His hand came
down over the child’s shoulder. He pushed her gently but firmly away.

The girl walked
back off the front porch and stood still for a second. She knew better than to
go inside while she was covered with mud, but that’s where her mother was.

She went around
the side of the house, passing the neatly trimmed hedge and the fountain in the
shape of a porpoise. She found the kitchen window and waved both hands
frantically as high as she could above her head, trying to get them into view
from the window.

"I had a
fight, Mommy!" she shouted.

Before long the
side door opened. A slender, waif-like black-haired woman came out, holding a
tumbler of amber liquid with ice cubes. Alyssa smelled it right away. It was an
odor she learned was rum, and that it was only for grown-ups.

She held her
closed fist up to her mother’s face for her to look at the scrapes.

"I punched
him and I won!"

The older woman
drew back instinctively, and then eased down to sit on the steps at her
daughter’s level. She took a long sip from her glass. "You have to learn
to control that temper, Alyssa. You let anger rule you. You need to be strong.
You need to rule your anger. Don’t let anger rule you. You’re a slave to
whatever rules you.

"But
still, if you’re going to have a fight, it’s good you won. Tell me about
it."

Pouting, the
young Alyssa Chambers sat down beside her mother.

"I saw
that one boy picking on Matt so I went up and told him to stop and he told me a
little girl couldn’t do anything about it, so I pushed him and he pushed me
back and said to go away, so I got really mad and I just punched him right in
the nose and he cried and ran away."

Mrs. Chambers
smiled at her daughter, drank deeply from her glass, and listened.

"Matt said
his father says girls shouldn’t hit, but I think Matt should be glad I
did."

Sarah Chambers
sighed.

"Matt’s
father just has some very firm beliefs, that’s all. It’s not really good for
anyone to hit people but if it has to be done, you can do it just as well as
anyone else."

As the older
woman drank more rum, draining it down to the ice cubes, the two men from the
front patio walked around to the side. Her father’s gray suit was unbuttoned,
and his tie fluttered a bit in the light breeze. He knocked ash off his cigar,
and then said, "Give us a moment with your mother please, Alyssa."

"But you
said I could come and tell her about my fight!"

"Run along
inside, child. Your mother will be in soon."

The man patted
her on the head and gave her a gentle push toward the door. Alyssa’s mother
knelt down to look her daughter in the eye.

"I’ll come
soon, dear," she said.

Alyssa stomped
inside, angry, and wanting to cry. Winning your first fight was a big deal, and
she couldn’t get anyone to listen to her about it.

As she went
through the door she heard, "Sarah, I’d like you to meet a friend and
colleague. Lance, this is my wife Sarah."

The Buchanan
Club was in the capitol area of Washington, a couple blocks off Pennsylvania
Avenue, not far from the National Mall. The buildings here were more modern,
rather than the brick townhouses in her neighborhood. But they were like all
D.C. architecture: pressed together on the sides.

The Buchanan
Club sat on a corner. In the shadows across the street from their front door,
Alyssa lurked and pondered her strategy.

In the pre-dawn
gloom, the club wasn't open yet, of course, which meant the front doors were
locked – with a keycard. Not a problem for her when she had all her toys
available but at the moment, getting past it was a challenge.

Matt was asleep
back in the hotel. It had taken all of her will power to waste time until she
could go raid the Buchanan Club without him knowing, but she didn’t want him to
realize she had talked his secret out of him.

Alyssa casually
walked across the street, as if she had nothing in the world to hide. She
sauntered down the walk, past the front door of the club, and turned into a narrow
service alley. She walked down the alley toward the back of the club.

As a lifelong
member and a frequent guest, she knew some details about the club that an
ordinary thief wouldn’t know. For example, in the ladies room was a small privacy
window about six feet off the floor. Years of poor maintenance combined with
Washington D.C. humidity had swollen the wood frame of the window until it
would no longer shut fully. As entrances went, it wasn’t super. But for a very
small woman in prime physical condition, it would do.

She stood on
the ground beneath the window, ready to leap up and grab the sill, when she
heard the sound of a vehicle on the street. She froze and smashed herself flat
against the wall, grateful she still had her black stolen FBI fatigues. A black
and white patrol car rolled by on the street.

Chambers held
her breath until it passed. Then she leapt up to grab the sill, pushed the
window up, and began to worm her way in. It was a tight fit, even for her, but
after a few scrapes she made it.

Inside, she
tiptoed down the hall from the back where the restrooms were located to the
front where visitors were received. A podium stood in front of the main
entrance, and Alyssa knew it was where the wait staff would stand to greet members
and their guests and walk them in.

On the angled
face of the podium sat a black leather binder. In it, Alyssa knew, would be the
names of everyone who had reserved a table here for the past few weeks.

She started on
Friday, the day that Wheeler said he’d gotten the call from the reporter. And
she didn’t have to look far. There on the line for an 11:30 lunch was a name
she recognized from her past. It was the name of the only person she had ever
voluntarily trusted, other than Matt.

Representative
Michael Vincent.

Alyssa was
about to casually walk out the front door, as if she had every right in the
world to be here, when she barely heard the sound of a footstep.

At once she
whirled, dropping into a guard stance, just barely in time to see someone's leg
kicking the air in the exact spot where her temple had been less than a second
ago. She threw up a block and dodged to the side, sending her own kick straight
at the groin of the man who had sneaked up on her.

He blocked,
dodged, and shuffled back, and they faced each other at guard. When she saw him
full on, everything fell into place.

"Harris!
You shot Gunter! You killed Rich West!"

His
slicked-back hair was only the tiniest bit out of place from the exertion of
their first blows. His scar was hard to see in the nearly complete darkness,
but his grin was readily apparent.

"In my
defense, your friend Mr. Hauptmann was only an accident. I was aiming for
you."

"How would
that help you? The whole plan was for me to be blamed as the assassin. If I’m
dead, there's no one to take the blame."

He smirked.
"That’s the danger of need-to-know planning. No one ever told me they had
a plan for a patsy. I just discovered the signature little spy software you
left behind on West’s computer. Oh yes, Chambers. I know you always leave that
little key logger behind on a victim’s computer. When I found it on West’s I
realized you must have been in there, too. I figured there was a risk you had
seen me and acted out of self-protection. I trailed you from your home down to
the waterfront and took the shot. Just Hauptmann’s bad luck he died instead of
you. Boy, was the client ever angry when he found out, too."

Chambers used
her back foot to push the podium to the side, giving her a little more space if
she had to fight. Then she replied, "The client?"

Harris just
laughed at her.

"Yeah,
right."

She tried
again.

"Mike
Vincent?"

Harris laughed
even harder.

"That guy?
He was always a Dudley Do-Right, and he’s only gotten worse since he got
married. Him hire a plumber? He’d sooner shoot West himself, and he loved West
like a father."

"Lance
Reeder?"

The only reply
was a sudden lightning charge and a hail of fists.

Block, dodge,
block, block. She tried to fight back with a hook aimed at the jaw, only to
have it blocked and to meet a kick in reply. Alyssa barely blocked that,
shuffling backward to buy space and time.

Harris wouldn’t
give her any. A flying front kick launched as she was moving, and Alyssa had to
dodge to the left to avoid it.

But as he
passed her, Harris threw an elbow strike. It connected squarely and solidly
with her temple. She fell to the floor, groggy and moaning. She tried but
couldn’t make her limbs work to push herself up.

"I’ve been
trying to leave you unconscious for the police for four years," Harris
said. "Third time’s the bloody charm, isn't it?"

As he casually
exited the building via the front door, he pulled the fire alarm. That was the
last thing Alyssa remembered before she passed out.

♦

The next thing she
saw was the small of someone’s back. She tried to ask, "What’s going
on," but all that came out was a moan.

"
Shh
," was the reply.

She faded into
unconsciousness again, and when she once again woke her first sensation was a
terrible smell. Her eyes didn’t want to come open and when they did, the light
made matters worse. A bright rising sun hurt painfully, and she squeezed them
shut again. Alyssa tried to rise to her feet, but her body wasn’t quite ready
to cooperate yet. Legs and arms would move, but they had almost no strength.

"Just rest
for a second, but not for too long. We don’t have much time."

A sip of water.
A cool, wet sensation on her forehead. The voice was Matt Barr’s.

"What are
you doing here?"

"Later. We’ve
got to get you ready to walk again and then clear out. We’re only about six
blocks from where the police are swarming all over the Buchanan Club."

That acted like
a shot of espresso to Alyssa. She rose to her feet and said, "Let’s
go."

"We’ve got
a seven-block walk from here to the nearest Metro station," Matt replied.
"That seems like the fastest way to get far away from the scene of the
crime."

She shook her
head. "Too obvious. Agents will be all over the subway right now. If they
realize they’re close to catching me, they’ll probably stop the trains and
buses running, so I can’t use them to get away."

"Then
what?" Matt asked.

"The Mall.
We’re not far. And it’s a lot harder to pull one guy and girl out for special
questioning when the entire place is crawling with tourists who want to see the
Washington Monument at dawn."

The walk to the
mall itself was hair-raising. Eight different patrol cars drove by, plus
several unmarked sedans of the kind used by federal agents. Somehow or other,
Harris had clearly made it known that the alarm at the Buchanan was connected
to the assassin.

Each time a car
went by, Alyssa reached out to grab Matt’s hand and pull him close, walking
like any other man and a woman enjoying their nation’s Capitol in the summer.
She held him close, keeping an arm around his waist, turning to walk into shops
every time a law enforcement presence came too close.

As they walked,
Alyssa could not keep herself from thinking about her relationship with this
man. He had just saved her life, but it was more than that. In the silence of
self-reflection, she could be honest. She had spent her life looking down on
Matt. He wasn’t as strong as she was, he wasn’t as rich as she was, and he
wasn’t as sophisticated as she was. He didn’t come from a family with
connections to presidents and senators. He came from a family that consisted
mainly of a bible-thumping minister with an attitude. She had always thought of
him as a charity case.

But today, her
strength wasn’t enough. It was Matt Barr who got the job done. She failed. She
lost the fight. But Matt had known enough to be where she needed him. Matt had
been strong enough to carry her out of danger.

She looked
sidelong at him and wondered,
What if I’ve been wrong? What if I’ve been
wrong my whole life?

They stopped at
the first tourist-oriented kiosk they saw, and bought replacement clothing.
Ball caps and sunglasses for each, Shorts with "Capitol" written on
the butt, and t-shirts aplenty. Matt gave Alyssa a weird look as she bought
small, medium, and large versions of "It’s Monumental" t-shirts, so
she explained after they paid and walked away.

"Makes me
look bulkier," she said. "If the feds are putting out a description
of a very fit woman, three shirts make me look less skinny."

Then they found
public restrooms to change in, and then proceeded with the plan of losing
themselves in the crowd of summer tourists.

At last, they
reached the relative safety of the mall. They found a few square feet of grass
among all the other tourists laying out picnic blankets there and settled down
to sit for a while. Matt tried to ask her how her head was and got a shake of
the head in reply. This close to other people, even a whispered conversation
was too great a risk.

Gradually, the
law enforcement presence died down. The two of them felt safe to move around
again and went looking for as much privacy as they could get. Eventually, they
found a poorly-lit bar and grill with deep booths where Alyssa could feel like
she was out of sight. The wood-paneled walls and brass railings gave the place
a clubby air.

Chambers
ordered a beer as a poor man’s painkiller for her headache, and they began to
talk.

"So where
do we start?" Matt asked.

She hung her
head. Matt had saved her life. She wanted to hear the whole story, but she knew
enough before the conversation even started. Harris had left her unconscious
for the police to find and then pulled the alarm. He had also done something to
make sure they knew the burglar alarm was connected to the assassination,
though she didn’t know how.
He probably just called in an anonymous tip.

If nothing had
intervened, the cops would have picked her up, there would have been a very
swift, very public trial, and eventually she would have had a lethal injection.

But instead, the
next thing she saw was Matt’s butt – a viewpoint made possible only if he was
carrying her over his shoulder. And then he had given her water, revived her,
and helped her escape the dragnet.

Matt Barr
saved my life.

The conclusion
was inescapable, as was the overwhelming guilt over how little she deserved it.

She had ruined
his first confidential source.

She had set
fire to his office and his biggest story.

She had tricked
him into revealing something that he said he had serious reasons not to reveal.

She gave him
nothing but pain. And in return, he saved her life.

"I should
start by saying I’m sorry."

He had asked
her just to drop it. He had told her there was more going on than she
understood. And yet, she had gotten a hint out of him anyway, and then gone
after the full story. He had to be angry.

"It’s past
Alyssa. Forget about it. It’s gone. Forgiven."

Alyssa did a
double take. She stared at him.

"Gone?
Matt, it can’t be gone. I deliberately sniffed out what you asked me to leave
alone."

He smiled at
her.

"Alyssa,
please. You’re feeling guilty because you didn’t do as I asked and let it be.
Well, here’s your chance to make up for it; here’s what I’m asking now: forget
it. Don’t feel guilty. It’s gone. I forgive you."

She sat
silently.
Matt has been in love with me since he was old enough to know what
it meant to want a girl to like you. All my life, he’s followed me around like
a puppy. So I guess I should have expected this.