Life of Secrets (6 page)

Alyssa got back
on the Metro and rode back to K Street. The doors slid open, she stepped off, and
almost fell flat on her face.

A man in a dark
suit with a flesh-colored microphone hanging off his ear was interviewing the
girl from whom she’d stolen the phone.

Backup agents
surrounded the pair. They tried to blend into the surroundings, but the
"men in black" image of federal agents made it almost impossible.

Their leader
was showing the cell-phone’s owner a picture of Alyssa.

Fortunately, it
was a picture of a woman with beautiful long black hair, not a dirty blonde
jaw-length bob.

Chambers stared
straight ahead with the practiced disinterest of a city-dweller. She walked
right past the agents without so much as a second glance.

Her peripheral
vision caught one of the agents watching her walk by.

Her heart
skipped a beat. Was this it? Her grand effort to clear her name was over after
less than eight hours? Could she fight three federal agents in a crowded Metro
station and get away?

His gaze
slipped down, and kept sliding down, until his eyes had slid far enough down
that she could be certain he was not concerned about duty at the moment. Alyssa
rolled her eyes.
Pervert!
She kept walking.

Even when she
was safely out of range, she didn’t breathe the sigh of relief that wanted to
come out.

There might be
more of them watching.

The only way
out was forward. Resolutely, she strode away from the Metro station and down K
Street, on the way to the headquarters of the Hicks for President campaign.

Getting into
places where you don’t belong isn't really that hard. More than half the battle
is simply looking like you're supposed to be there. In the business suit she
bought earlier, Alyssa looked more than professional enough for a Presidential
campaign headquarters.

At the Hicks
headquarters, she rode an elevator up to the ninth floor. There, she was told
by the receptionist that Tom Wheeler was unavailable at the moment.

Of course he
is,
she thought.
He's
on three different conference calls at once, trying to make sure none of what’s
coming splatters on him.

"Well, my
name is Alice
Cobler
. I'm a research assistant for
Ben Richards," was what she said aloud.

Richards wrote
one of the high-profile political opinion columns in the
Post.
Alyssa
had met him once, courtesy of an invitation from Matt to an office party.
Someone like Wheeler – who was a spin doctor at heart, whatever actual title he
might use –
always
found time for reporters, especially well-known types
like Richards. Alyssa knew she'd get in.

She took a
chair in the lobby, waiting for Wheeler. Remaining calm was the hardest thing
she had ever done.

Part of her
agitation came from being in a public place while law enforcement was hunting
for her. But a bigger part was having her face all over the TV screen.

Most campaign
offices keep a TV set running constantly to monitor the latest news. 
Since this was a presidential campaign, there were four sets—one on each
wall—all tuned to 24-hour cable news networks.  And they were all taking
advantage of closed captioning to avoid the cacophony of four TVs blaring at
once.

Every screen
had Alyssa’s face on it. Each photo or video clip came with a tag line like
"Person of interest" or "Suspect?" or her favorite,
"Professor by day, assassin by night?" The closed captioning showed
the anchors saying things like, "Chambers is known to hold a black belt in
two martial arts and to be a competitive shooter."

They showed her
driver’s license photo, the photo from her personnel file at the university,
and publicity shots of her that the university had taken at various events. And
of course, there were the clips from interview shows on these very networks.

Really the
whole thing was ironic. She had never intended to wind up in the spotlight at
all.  Far from it.  But after she’d supplied little bits of analysis
for Matt’s stories here and there, she started getting calls from the rest of
the media.  Such exposure had made her life awkward and only increased the
level of paranoia she felt when meeting new people, though she hid it
well. 

She chuckled to
herself as she realized the dilemma each news host was probably wrestling
with.  Just a short time ago they had called upon her, even fawned over
her, as a respected political analyst.  Now they were showing sound bites
from some of those same interviews – obviously with a different goal in mind –
but the end result was still embarrassment for them.  No wonder they
appeared to be a bit flustered!

The
receptionist saw her looking at the TV and said, "Pretty wild, huh? She
was just on that show last week giving some analysis about how we’re the only
campaign that has any chance of derailing Rich West. ‘Had,’ I should say. Now
they’re saying she killed him."

It took every
ounce of Alyssa's willpower to calmly make eye contact with the young woman,
smile broadly, and reply, "I know. Mr. Richards does shows with her sometimes.
Pretty crazy."

As soon as she
possibly could without looking evasive, she turned her face away to look back
at the TV screen. Her heart hammered so hard in her chest that she feared for
her health.

One screen
shifted to another interview with Congressman Vincent. The host explained that
Vincent was a senior advisor to the West campaign and asked him again about
Lance Reeder.

Vincent gave
his best smile.

"People
keep asking me that. I don't know the answer. I was in this for Rich. He was a
great man – maybe the first truly great man we've had in politics in
decades."

Finally, the
receptionist’s intercom buzzed, and Chambers was told to go down the hall to
the last door on the left. That, she knew, would be a penthouse office. Pausing
in the hall to collect herself after the nerve-wracking conversation in the
lobby, she was struck by the eerie similarity to the location where she'd been
the previous night. In fact, the West headquarters was only a few blocks up K
Street.

She walked down
the hall. Wheeler was going to answer some questions for her, but they wouldn't
be the kind of questions he'd expect from a supposed reporter.

She opened the
door to see Wheeler hanging up his cell phone. When they originally met, Alyssa
had taken the same precautions she always did with clients. They met at night,
and she approached him from behind. Although he had hired her as a thief, Tom
Wheeler had never seen her. Of course, he had seen plenty of pictures of her on
the news since then. She took a moment to congratulate herself on her disguise
– neither the receptionist nor this man had any idea who she was.

"Miss...
Cobler
, was it? Come on in. You must be new with Ben; he
didn't tell me he had a new assistant. Heck of a time to start work, huh?
Biggest news story of the new century."

While he was
talking, Chambers opened the backpack that was all that remained of her
previous life. She drew out her handgun. Its six-inch long barrel was fatter
than most pistol barrels because sound suppression – a silencer, to most people
– was built directly in. The angular handle held a removable magazine loaded
with ten rounds of subsonic .22 caliber ammunition loaded. An eleventh round
was already in the chamber.

She pointed it
straight at Wheeler's forehead so that the fat barrel almost touched him right
between the eyebrows.

"Who did
you tell that I would be in West's headquarters last night, Wheeler?"

His eyes went
wide, and for a moment Alyssa thought the man might actually pee his pants.
Staring at the gun barrel, his eyes were almost crossed. Then he came to his
senses a bit, and focused on her face.

"Chambers?
Alyssa Chambers?" His voice rose, building to a shout. "
Secur
..."

"Shut up
or die."

"...
ity
," he finished in a hoarse whisper.

They spent a moment
in silence, staring at each other. Finally Wheeler said, "You
killed
Rich
West!"

"Wrong. I
didn't kill him, but whoever you told that I would be going in there did kill
him. So tell me who, and I'll go deal with them myself."

"You’re the
woman I hired to…" he stopped, suddenly unwilling to say it aloud.

"That’s
right. But I am
not
the woman who killed Rich West. I suspect you told
someone that I was going in there, and I suspect that someone killed him."

"Can it,
Chambers! You can try convincing the jury you didn't kill him, but you can't
convince me. I know for a
fact
that you were there. At least talk to me
honestly."

"I am. Try
thinking about it for a moment. What possible reason could I have for coming
here if I killed him? The FBI already knows about me, so it's not like I could
stop you from giving them any information about me by coming here to kill you.
No, if I were the assassin, I would already be sitting on a Caribbean beach
sipping something with a plastic sword in it. We both know that. So tell me who
you told, so I can go beat the truth out of them."

"You're
crazy."

"You keep
saying words, but not the ones I want to hear. That's an unwise position to
take with someone pointing a gun at your head. Who did you tell?"

"I didn't
tell
anyone
, OK? No one!"

"One more
chance, then you die."

Chambers made a
show of tightening her grip on the trigger. It was enough.

"A
reporter! This reporter called! He said he'd heard we hired a private
investigator and was asking about it for a story! I didn't tell him anything! I
hung up on him! But he knew somehow. It wasn't me. Please, it wasn't me who
told him!"

"Now we're
getting somewhere. What was his name?"

"Matt
Barr."

The bottom
dropped out of Alyssa’s stomach. The emotional shock was so great that her
gun-hand wavered.

Wheeler's
intercom picked that moment to go off.

"Tom, some
men from the FBI are here to see you. I tried to tell them you were with
someone at the moment, but they're on their way back."

Alyssa and
Wheeler stared at each other in horror. She recovered first and immediately
began seeking a way out.

Tom tried to
put his poker face back on and said, "OK, now you're caught, right? So no
sense adding a second murder to make your case worse. You can't kill me
now."

She paid no attention.
Instead, she quickly ran through her options. Yes, whoever could tell the FBI
her name could also point them at Wheeler as someone likely involved with her.
Any of her previous clients could identify the senior staff of an opposing
campaign as likely to be involved if Chambers was involved.

All of which
meant the FBI would treat Wheeler as a possible suspect. Which would mean
they'd be here with a full team of agents for an arrest of this magnitude.

In other words,
think what she might of her own abilities, even
she
could not hope to
fight her way out through the front door.

But she didn't
even know if the Hicks campaign headquarters had a back door. And if it did,
the FBI was probably guarding it anyway.

So the only way
out was...

She said a
quick word of thanks for the pretentiousness of politics - it meant Wheeler had
a corner penthouse office.

Out the front
windows there was nothing but a nearly-hundred-foot drop to the pavement below.

But out the side
window she could see the roof of the next building over. It appeared to be not
far below where she was currently standing.

She shoved Tom
out of the way and began firing her pistol at the window.

Wheeler shouted
when she pushed him. The metallic racking back and forth of the slide on her
silenced semi-auto was the only sound from the gun. But as the repeated impacts
of small-caliber rounds cracked the glass, the room became very noisy. When he
realized she was firing an actual real-life handgun in his office, Wheeler's
eyes went wide, and he gave out a high-pitched scream.

Alyssa didn't
care. She kicked off her high heels and ran toward the cracked glass.

She heard
someone throw open the door behind her - heard the doorknob hit the wall too
hard.

"Mr.
Whee
... what the... Freeze!"

Whoever was
speaking was too late. Alyssa leapt out the window.

She felt shards
of broken glass as she flew but she barely cared. So much adrenaline coursed
through her body, she didn't even feel the pain.

The fall was a
bit farther than she had expected—she'd been deceived by perspective—and she
landed harder than she planned.

The part of
Alyssa that still remembered her days as a gymnast winced at the ugly landing.

She was
off-balance when she hit but made up for it by pitching forward and letting
herself roll through a somersault. The gravel on the roof hurt her back, but
she came up running for the far side.

Behind her she
heard someone yell, "Federal agents! Freeze!" She ignored the order
and kept running. On her left she heard a “zing” and saw a small cloud of dust
rise.

They were
shooting at her.

Frantically,
she began random, zigzagging turns as she ran, hoping to make it harder for the
shooter to get a clean shot at her. Little fountains of gravel and dust rose in
front of her, behind her, and to both sides, but each time she swerved just
right to avoid getting hit.

Alyssa caught
sight of the service entrance to the roof and turned that way, only to see the
little puffs of debris that indicated gunfire drawing ever closer. It was too
obvious - they'd been waiting for her to turn that way.

She turned back
and dashed for the far side of the roof.

The problem
was, she couldn't see anything past the edge of the roof.

There was
nothing for it but to run and hope.

Just as she heard
the thud of someone else jumping down from Wheeler's office to join her on the
roof, she reached the parapet.

The next
building was one story down.

She was more
prepared for the distance of the jump this time. She landed on her feet and
took off immediately, glad to be at least temporarily out of the line of fire.
Besides, the distance between her and Wheeler's office was growing too great
for accurate pistol shots. And to make matters even better, she could see that
she had three buildings of roughly equal height in a row here. That gave her
some time to figure out what she was going to do when she reached the end of
the block.