Shadow Woman: A Novel (34 page)

“During the meet and greets, a go-between would slip her a thumb drive during a handshake. On the thumb drive would be information about the latest deposit. They spread it around, to make a pattern harder to spot. She’d download the information to an off-site location, delete the information from her laptop, and destroy the thumb drive.”

“So I had to get the thumb drive she’d been given in San Francisco, copy the info, and get out.”

“And if anyone saw you, including the President, no one would think anything about it. You were dressed exactly as she was that day; your hair had been lightened and cut and done just like hers.”

Lizzy took a deep breath, closing her eyes and taking comfort from the closeness of his big body, the heat of his skin under her hand. “But something went wrong.”

“Fuckups always happen. Even when you plan for them, you’re hit by a different fuckup than the one you’d planned for.”

She swallowed. “Was I the fuckup?”

“No. We’d arranged for the First Lady to leave the suite—took some doing—so the other agents didn’t see her, but the heads of both details were working with us and we got it done. Then we slipped you in. The President was in his bedroom; he wasn’t even aware the First Lady had left. You went into her bedroom, started running the water in the bathroom as if you were in there, located the thumb drive in the purse she’d carried that day, and began copying it.”

She turned in his arms enough that she could look up at him. “So what happened?”

“We were sold out by another agent on her detail. He was working with us—we thought. Instead he was on the take with the Chinese, too. He panicked, told the First Lady what you were doing, and she went back up to the suite before you could get finished. He also gave her his weapon.”

Lizzy fell silent, desperately searching her brain for the pieces of the puzzle, but all she could find was blankness. She had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, a dawning horror that made her want to stick her fingers in her ears so she wouldn’t hear any more, yet what he was telling her was why all of this was happening now, why she was missing two years from her life. Even if she never truly remembered, she needed to know
why
.

“The President and First Lady together confronted you in her quarters,” he said. His tone went calm and remote. “She had the pistol, but she didn’t know who she was dealing with. From what you told us later, you jumped her, fought for the pistol, pulled the trigger, and Thorndike was hit.”

She knew there was a lot he wasn’t telling her; there were gaps and simplifications, details glossed over, yet there was no glossing over the biggest detail of all: she’d killed the President of the United States.

She didn’t move, stayed locked in his arms. She felt numb and sick at the same time. Later she’d analyze everything he’d told her, poke and prod at the details, but for now all she could do was try to handle the essential fact that she’d not only killed someone—even if it might have been self-defense—but that someone had been the most important person in the world. It went against everything she felt as an American, that no matter what, agree or disagree, the life of the President should be protected. The possibility that she might have been defending herself was cold and scant comfort, because she couldn’t remember, so she couldn’t say for certain what had happened. She might have panicked. She might have lied about tussling with the First Lady for possession of the pistol. She didn’t know and Xavier didn’t know; he was recounting what she’d told him—them—after the President was dead.

“What did I do? How did you get me out?”

“You banged the First Lady’s head against the wall, dazed
her, put the gun in her hand, and hid in the closet. Both the details broke into the suite. The First Lady saw us, probably figured they were caught—guessing, here, because no one knows for sure—and she started shooting. She shot two Secret Service agents, killed one, a good agent named Laurel Rose. I shot the First Lady.”

“How did you get me out of the closet, out of the suite?”

“For twelve minutes, we controlled everything: access to the suite, the weapons, the scene, everything. The senior agent of the First Lady’s detail was down. I took over. We’d planned on you being in disguise when you left the hotel, so thank God we had that ready. Change of clothes, a wig, glasses. We got you changed, and out of there through a connecting room, and set everything up to make it look as though the First Lady shot the President because she had proof he was sleeping with her sister—which he was, by the way.”

They’d gotten her changed, got her out. She didn’t miss the way he’d phrased that. She sounded as if she’d been more of a liability than a thinking, functioning part of the team.

“You hadn’t finished copying the thumb drive. You brought the original out with you, too. The evidence nailed him. He was selling not just technology details, but military secrets as well. After we had the situation handled, we talked it over and agreed to leave things as they were. A cheating husband was better than a traitor.”

Oh, God, this hurt so much. She ached inside, as if she were being torn apart. Not only had she done something awful, but she’d dragged him and everyone else on their team into this with her. “You took an oath—”

“I took an oath to uphold the Constitution, to protect the country from its enemies, both domestic and foreign. In this case, the enemy was domestic.”

Their own President.

“I was a loose end.” She understood now why her memory
had been wiped, why her face had been changed. Not only was it best that she no longer resembled the deceased First Lady, but changing her appearance would keep people from commenting on it, perhaps triggering a memory.

“We’re all loose ends. All of us. But you kind of unraveled afterward, had a hard time dealing with it—”

“Ya think?” she shot at him, then shook her head at the anger in her tone. “Sorry. I made things impossible for the rest of you, didn’t I?”

“I knew you’d come through it. You’d had a shock, we all had, but you’re tough, and I knew you’d deal with the facts when you’d had enough time. But the others thought you were a liability, one that would get us all lined up in front of a firing squad.”

“So … the brain wipe.”

“Yes.”

“What about the agent who was working for the Chinese, the one who gave Mrs. Thorndike his weapon? That’s a huge loose end.”

“He’s the other one whose brain was wiped.”

“Is he still alive?”

Xavier got that cold, remote expression on his face again. “What do you think?”

Felice wandered restlessly through her house, staying away from the windows even though all the curtains were drawn. She could feel the darkness pressing against the glass, hiding the living ghosts who slipped unseen through the shadows. She didn’t want to make a target of herself by letting her silhouette show, however briefly, against the curtains.

According to her contact, the specialist he’d called in was out there somewhere, watching, but no matter how good he was he was still just one man, and he couldn’t watch all four sides of the house at once. Her contact had given her a name—Evan Clark—by which the specialist would identify himself if necessary, but she couldn’t think of any reason why she should ever meet him face-to-face. That wasn’t his real name, of course, but under no circumstances did she want that information.

What had been set in motion five years ago was rolling downhill to its inevitable conclusion, as unstoppable as an avalanche. She didn’t feel good about it; this was the one contingency that they hadn’t prepared for, hadn’t anticipated—that the team
members would, by necessity, have to eliminate each other in order to hold the secret safe. It was too big, otherwise. In the end, only one person could know.

Xavier and Lizzy had to die. Dankins, Heyes, Al Forge—they all had to die. If there was to be only one survivor, she intended to be that one. She had Ashley to think about. Dankins and Heyes had families, too, but she wasn’t worried about their families, she was worried about her own. Wasn’t that the way the human race was wired?

Once they’d all been so close, linked by the importance of the mission; she’d never respected a group of people more. Not one of them had taken the job lightly, but even so, going in, none of them had realized how steep the price they’d paid would be. How had it come to this?

Survival of the fittest. That was what they’d failed to take into account, the primal instinct to protect oneself and family.

In hindsight, this was something she should have done years ago, immediately after the mission had been completed, when no one was expecting it. The body count would have attracted too much attention, though, and now here they were. She had to eliminate all of them—do it herself, or have it done.

Xavier should have been first. He was by far the most dangerous, had been even before the bungled attempt on his life. Al was almost as bad, but he’d grudgingly agreed that taking out Xavier was the only thing they could do now, so she’d bought some time there. The main thing with Al was to act before he got his guard up.

The specialist would have to handle Xavier. There was nothing she could do herself; she’d have to be insane to even consider the idea of trying to handle Xavier. He
would
be coming for her, Al was completely right about that, and the best place to get her was her own home. When she was at work, she was untouchable. Xavier would expect her to take evasive actions going to and from work. He might think she would go to
ground somewhere, but she couldn’t live her entire life hiding from him and he’d know that. He’d also expect her to think she had everything handled, that her ego would blind her to her vulnerabilities.

She had an ego, but not where work was concerned. When it came to the job, her motto was simple: do it. No matter what, do the job. That was where they all underestimated her, but then she’d deliberately built that image. Winning was easier when the opposition didn’t know what you were capable of doing.

If she knew Xavier, he wouldn’t wait long. He’d hit fast and hard. She’d truly expected him before now; what had delayed him? Was he trying to find Lizzy? When Lizzy had left her car behind in the restaurant parking lot, they’d lost any way of tracking her. That didn’t mean
Xavier
had lost her, though. The sneaky bastard probably had his own trackers planted on her. She had no way of knowing for certain, but she trusted when her gut told her something, and it was saying she was on the right track.

In that case, Xavier had gone after Lizzy, and was probably making certain she was in a safe place. That would make locating her more difficult, but she’d surface sooner or later. And every hour Xavier delayed was an extra hour in which she layered in another story, another false trail, another document that proved he was unstable and descending into insanity. Let all of his trip wires be sprung; he’d be just another nut-job conspiracy theorist. The evidence in the deaths of President and First Lady Thorndike was ironclad, right down to the DNA. Despite the unexpected circumstances, the plan had held.

This one would, too. The most worrisome factor for her was the time limit. This couldn’t stretch on for too long.

Ashley was furious at being taken from college, of course. She so enjoyed stretching her wings, and now abruptly her feathers had been clipped. She was very much Felice’s daughter,
fiercely determined in everything she did. Felice could make the fiction she’d concocted—that the NSA had picked up on chatter that could indicate a domestic terrorist attack on Ashley’s college—hold for a couple of days, but after that Ashley wouldn’t buy it.

She didn’t mind battling with Ashley, but she didn’t want to alienate her forever. Being too heavy-handed would definitely push her daughter away. She would, if necessary, do anything to protect Ashley, but she’d do everything she could to make certain it didn’t come to that.

On cue, her cell phone rang. It was Ashley’s ring tone, the one she herself had picked out so Felice would know it was her and answer the call. She only hoped the men guarding Ashley had placed the call, instead of letting her call whomever she wanted. Sighing, she took the call.

“Hello, Ashley. No, nothing has been settled, one way or the other.” She put weariness in her tone.

“Mom, this is ridiculous.”

“Protecting you isn’t ridiculous.”

“Then why didn’t you have the entire college evacuated?”

“Because if there is a legitimate threat, doing so would alert the perpetrators and we wouldn’t catch them.”

“So you’d just let people die?”

“Of course not. Investigators are working around the clock to make certain that doesn’t happen, and I might add they’re risking their own lives in doing so.”

“Only if there’s a real threat, and you don’t know that for certain.”

“No, I don’t.” Arguing with Ashley was like trying to nail gelatin to a wall. Her girl was slippery.

“So you intend to have me kidnapped and guarded every time you
think
there
might
be a threat?”

“Have I done this before?” Felice demanded.

A pause, then she heard a sulky, “No.”

“Then give me a little credit. I evaluated the intelligence, and even though I personally think nothing will come of it, it’s still credible enough that I don’t want to risk your life. You’ll understand when you’re a mother.”

Ashley made an exasperated sound. She would have continued arguing, but Felice said briskly, “I assume Mr. Johnson is there with you. Please hand the phone to him.” Johnson was the name they’d chosen for Ashley’s guard. Again, Felice had no idea what his real name was, nor did it matter.

“This is Johnson.” The man’s voice was calm. She was glad; whether or not he was a nice person didn’t matter, so long as he
acted
nice in front of Ashley.

“Be careful with her cell phone. Don’t let her have it again until this situation is resolved.”

“Yes, ma’am. She won’t like it, but you’re the boss.”

In the background, Felice heard Ashley demanding, “What did she say?”

“You may tell her exactly what I said. Keep her buttoned down tight.”