The Gatekeeper (23 page)

“Yes. I think so.” Her mother slumped into the other chair. “They know what they’re doing, Maddee. They’ll find him if…”

“If what?” Madison pressed.

“If he wants to be found.”

Madison processed that. Her mother was implying that maybe her father hadn’t been taken by the bad guys, maybe he’d left on his own. But he’d never leave without them. Her mother, maybe, but he’d take her and Bree along. Wouldn’t he?

“We should try to sleep for a bit,” her mother said. “The nurse said the bed in the next room is empty. Would you like to lie down?”

“I can’t sleep.”

“Well, I’m going to try.” Her mother used the arms of the chair to push herself up. “If you need anything one of the agents will get it, okay?”

“Okay.”

On her way out she placed her hand on Madison’s head, then bent and kissed her. It had been a long time since she’d done that, and Madison’s eyes filled with tears. “It’s going to be okay, honey, I promise,” she said in a low voice before leaving.

Madison sank deeply down in the chair. The only thing she was sure of was that nothing was going to be all right, ever again.

J
ake started awake. He had dozed off while leaning back in a desk chair with his feet propped on a conference table, and they’d slipped to the floor. He shook his head to clear it. Syd was sitting across the table smirking at him.

“Comfortable?”

“These chairs were designed by sadists,” Jake complained, trying to stretch out a kink in his back. George had appropriated office space from the Sacramento field office, and told the two of them to stay put while he dug up information on Randall Grant. Jake had tried to convince him to let them go to a motel, but George made it clear it was the office or a holding cell. And frankly the way his eyes lit up when he mentioned the cell gave Jake pause. “Did you get any sleep?”

“Yup.” Syd pointed down. “Stretched out on the floor.”

“Really?” Jake eyed it dubiously. The rug was of questionable vintage, covered with old coffee stains.

“It beats a cave in Pakistan where they’re burning dung for fuel.”

“I suppose.” He checked his watch: 5:00 a.m. They’d
been here for nearly twelve hours, and his stomach was rumbling. Even cafeteria food sounded good at this point. He should call Kelly back, too, now that things had settled down. It was 7:00 a.m. in Texas. She was probably already awake. But better to talk to her on a full stomach, he reasoned. “You up for a trip to the mess?”

“I got the sense we weren’t allowed to leave this room.” Syd raised an eyebrow.

“And that’s stopped you when?”

“Good point. Let’s go.”

George opened the door as they were about to step out. “Making a break for it?”

“Just heading down for some food,” Jake said. “We’re wasting away in here.”

“Doesn’t look like it would kill you to miss a meal,” George joked, eyeing Jake’s stomach. “Desk work has done you in, my man.”

“Bullshit. I’m still at my fighting weight,” Jake said defensively, trying not to be obvious about sucking in his gut.

“Not you, my dear, you’re perfect.” George winked at Syd. “Anyway, you might want to hold off on the prison break. I’ve got news about your boy.”

“Yeah?” Jake’s heart sank. George’s humor sounded forced.

Syd sensed it, too. “Bad news,” she said flatly.

“Yeah, I think so.” George opened a file and slid out a photo. “This your guy?”

Syd looked at it first. Without commenting, she simply nodded, then handed it to Jake. Typical morgue photo, the flat light made it look black-and-white even though it wasn’t. It was Randall Grant, all right. Someone had shot him at point-blank range near the temple. Death must have been mercifully quick, if there was such a thing.

“Crap.” Jake handed it back. “Where?”

“Texas. When I accessed his fingerprints from the lab, I saw that another field office had matched them this morning. Made a few calls, but they’re not releasing any information yet.”

“Meaning what? They don’t know who killed him?”

“Meaning, I get the sense they’re dealing with something big down there. Mobile units were called in, and they’re raising the threat advisory level to orange, maybe even red on the basis of this.”

“Just because a scientist was killed?” Syd asked, puzzled.

“This guy Randall was a physicist, right?” George asked. “And you think he might have been smuggling nuclear info to the wrong people?”

“Maybe.” Syd turned it over in her mind. “But how did he end up in Texas?”

“No sign of him on any of the plane manifests.”

“Maybe he didn’t fly commercial,” Jake said. “Was there anything that might clue us in to what he was doing?”

“Like I said, my compadres in the great state of Texas aren’t talking.” George glanced at Jake. “But I was thinking you might have an in.”

“Why would Jake have an in? He never worked there,” Syd said.

“No, but his fiancée is the one who found the body.”

“What?” Jake took the form back and scanned it. It was a basic FBI FD302 report. Kelly’s name popped out at him. He flashed back on what little she’d told him about the case, something about Jackson Burke and a strange blue powder. “Oh, shit,” he said.

“Call your girl,” George said, nodding toward the phone on the desk. “And let’s see if we can figure out what the hell is going on.”

Dante watched as the lead-lined barrel holding the bomb was lowered into the center of the float. There had been a screwup with the one meant for San Antonio—the yokels in charge of the warehouse got snared in some FBI sting. He shook his head. Man, it was hard to find people you could trust these days. And he hated that their failure reflected poorly on him, at least in Jackson’s eyes. He needed to make sure that from here on out, everything went smoothly.

Dante still couldn’t believe the FBI had found the Laredo warehouses. Now he’d have to come up with a fresh crop of illegals to man the float. That was one thing Jackson was absolutely adamant about—there had to be immigrants, especially Mexicans, tied to the initial blast. Not a serious problem, Dante still had Minutemen willing to serve as coyotes. The trick was getting another float ready in time. Thank God he’d kept the construction materials in a separate warehouse.

Dante watched as his guys wrapped white, red and green streamers around a wire-mesh frame. He had to grin at the incongruity of it. Who knew the arts and crafts program at Corcoran would come in so handy one day?

His phone buzzed. Dante checked the number, then snapped it open. “Do you have them?”

“Sir, this is Curtis Clay.”

Dante frowned, searching his mind. Remembered a beady-eyed little guy, sidekick to one of his boys in California. “You’re not supposed to have this number.”

“Yeah, I know, but…Jonas told me to call if something went wrong.”

Dante’s lip curled. Sure, everyone did each other in prison, but the ones who kept it up on the outside—he
could hardly stomach the thought. The only reason he’d tolerated Jonas was that he was smart and took orders without giving him shit. “So?”

“So—” Curtis cleared his throat. “Jonas never came home last night, then I saw something on the news about a big bust over in Winters. Buncha bikers, and it was right near where you sent him.” There was a note of accusation in his voice. “He said he’d be home by dark.”

Dante could have sworn he heard sniffles. “Yeah, well, maybe he got smart and threw you over for some pussy.”

A pause, then Curtis whined, “They said some of them were dead, too. But they’re not saying who.”

“What about the bitches?”

“What bitches?”

“The ones Jonas was supposed to pick up.” Dante closed his eyes and fought the urge to hurl the phone against a wall. Shit, if this was true, he was down more men. And Jonas had been part of the next phase of the plan. He didn’t have anyone else in the area he could trust with it. He should have known better than to call in the Rogues. Dante had never been keen on using bikers, they were too loosely organized, too likely to narc when they got caught. They were probably singing right now. He went over what they knew, trying to remember if any of it pointed to him, or worse, to Jackson.

“They didn’t say anything about that on the news.”

“Fuck the news. I want you to call around, find out what the fuck is going on. I want to know where they were taken, and what happened to the women in the house.” Dante started composing a list in his mind. He needed to get in touch with one of his soldiers on the inside, make sure the biker pricks got the message that anyone who talked would suffer. Winters P.D. probably didn’t have their own jail, and even if they did, wouldn’t want to risk
locals overrunning it. So that meant they’d be stowed in either Vacaville or Davis: Vacaville if he was lucky, he still had a good network there. Worst-case scenario they would have been driven to the federal pen in Sacramento. It would be harder to get to them there, but not impossible.

If the news was covering this, the Feds probably stashed the girls in a safe house somewhere. Weighing what had happened, Dante decided bothering with them was no longer worth it. They’d been bad luck, ever since the girl was snatched shit started rolling downhill. And they were so close now, he couldn’t risk fucking things up any worse. Plus, with Grant dead, the only reason to mess with his family would be to exact revenge on his corpse. And for that he could wait. Feds wouldn’t be watching them forever.

Creeper came out of the office, motioning for his attention. Dante held up a hand to indicate he needed one more minute.

“You got that, Curtis? I want to hear back from you in an hour, max, and I want a fucking hell of a lot more than what you saw on CNN.” He clicked off without saying goodbye and looked at Creeper. “What?”

“They found the guy.”

“What guy?”
I’m surrounded by a bunch of fucking morons,
he thought.

“The scientist guy, you know…” Creeper shuffled his feet.

“What, in Houston?”

“Yeah. Feds are all over it. Thought you’d want to know.” He beat a retreat back to the office, clearly spooked by the expression on Dante’s face.

Dante still clenched the cell phone in one hand, squeezing it hard. He barely saw the progress on the float.
He recognized this feeling, it was the one you got when a job was about to go really, really wrong. He’d had it that day in the bank, right before the off-duty cop pulled his piece and he wound up in Corcoran as an accessory to murder. If the Feds had the warehouse, the minute they saw the powder they’d know something big was in the works. And then they’d be shutting down every interstate, every bridge. He shook his head. One day away. They were so close.

He reviewed the list in his mind. He needed to get the other drivers on the phone and check their status. If it came down to it, he’d revise the plans. That was what separated a great general from a mediocre one, according to Jackson: the ability to adjust to changing circumstances on the battlefield. Dante took a deep breath. In the end, it would all be okay. He’d make sure of it, even if he had to drive a fucking float himself.

K
elly awoke to the sound of pounding on her door. Blearily, she rolled over and checked the time: 8:00 a.m. She’d finally dropped off to sleep well past midnight. Her laptop sat open beside her on the bed, screen saver pulsating green. Next to it was the motel notepad on which she’d scrawled notes about Jackson Burke.

“What the hell, Jones. Are you alive in there?”

It was Rodriguez. She sat up slowly, straightening her blouse, wishing she’d changed out of it before falling asleep. It had been her last clean one, and now it was a wrinkled mess. “One minute.” Kelly checked herself in the mirror on the way to the door and frowned.

“Jesus, I was about to get a battering ram.” He looked her over. “Finally got some sleep, huh?”

“Not enough. What’s up?”

“They got an ID on our guy.”

“Yeah?” Kelly quickly skimmed the faxes he handed her. The dead guy was a nuclear physicist from a DoD research lab. That was a far cry from the extremists they’d been rounding up so far. But it didn’t bode well for the powder.

Rodriguez read her thoughts. “I talked to someone on the Hazmat team. He said we should get checked for exposure. McLarty set something up at the hospital downtown, and we’re supposed to head there ASAP. But since we were only in contact for a few minutes, and they got us out of our clothes and shoes, chances are it wasn’t too bad.”

“Meaning what, we lose all our hair?” Kelly tried to sound flippant, but the gravity of what had happened suddenly struck her. She thought of Jake, how he’d handle the news. A small, cold part of her wondered if he’d even care.

Rodriguez tried to match her tone. “That happens, I’m filing for full disability.” He ran a hand through his buzz cut. “People would kill for this head of hair. And I want compensation for those shoes. This case has been hell on my wardrobe.”

“Did Leonard have any theories on why they killed this guy Grant?” Kelly asked.

“Not for his clothes, that’s for sure.” She raised an eyebrow, and he dropped the tone. “Oh, we’re being serious now. Leonard still isn’t telling me jack-shit. But after we swing by the hospital, I’m thinking we head back to the warehouse, see what we can rustle up.”

“You’re that eager to expose yourself again?”

“I just want to find out what the hell is going on,” Rodriguez said. “This is our case, it was our lead that got the ball rolling. I say we fight to get back in there. Can you get McLarty to back us?”

“I can try, but you’re his golden boy.”

“Please, Jones.” Rodriguez shook his head and grinned. “Everyone knows you’re his favorite.”

Kelly flushed. “He has a funny way of showing it. Give me a minute to get ready.”

“Sure. Might want to run a brush through that hair, too,” he said pointedly, eyeing her scalp.

An hour later Kelly shifted in a chair as a technician drew her blood. “I didn’t realize you could test for radiation exposure this way.”

The technician focused on the syringe. “It’s a relatively new procedure, but probably the quickest.”

“And what if I received a serious dose?” Kelly asked.

“The doctor will be with you in a minute to explain,” the technician said. She avoided eye contact on the way back to the waiting room, which Kelly took as a bad sign.

Rodriguez was already slumped in a chair drinking a can of apple juice. His raised his hand in a halfhearted wave. “Did they give you some juice? It’s free.”

“They didn’t.” Kelly turned back to the technician. “Was I supposed to get some juice?”

“We usually only give it to people who might pass out, but if you want some…”

“No, that’s fine.” Kelly sat in the chair next to Rodriguez. “Fear of needles?”

He flushed. The bruises on his face were finally fading, although his nose remained noticeably off-center. “The week I’ve had, I can’t really afford to lose more blood. They tell you it’ll be at least twenty-four hours until the results come back?”

Kelly nodded. “The doctor is supposed to come discuss our options.”

“Antibiotics, antiemetics and potassium iodide. Worst-case scenario, we’ll need a bone marrow transplant.”

“Who told you that?” Kelly raised her eyebrows.

“Read all about it on the Internet last night. That pill they gave you before was potassium iodide. Keeps your thyroid from absorbing radioiodine. ’Course, if we were
exposed to a different kind of radiation, we’re screwed. Until they get the results back, they can’t do anything.” He stood. “So let’s go.”

Kelly looked at him. His jaw was set, and he seemed determined. He was probably right. The doctor would tell them to wait for the test results, and they’d deal with the consequences then. She nodded. “Let’s go.”

“You talk to McLarty yet?” Rodriguez asked as they strolled back to their car.

“I was going to call him on the way. I needed to power up, my phone died last night.” In the car she pulled it off the cradle. Almost immediately, it rang. She recognized Jake’s number and picked up. “Hi.”

“Jesus, Kelly, are you okay?”

Sure, now he was concerned,
she thought. “I’m fine. We’re leaving the hospital, they should have the test results in a few hours.”

“Okay. Are you heading to the warehouse now?”

“I am, actually,” Kelly said, puzzled.

“Great. I’ll meet you there.”

“What? Where are you?”

“In Houston. It’s a long story, but it looks like our cases overlap.”

“What are you talking about?” Kelly struggled to process what he was saying. How could a K&R case in California have anything to do with the Morris killing?

“Look, it’s a long story. I’ll see you soon.”

“What was that all about?” Rodriguez asked.

“I have no idea. But my fiancé is here, he said something about our cases overlapping.”

“Great. Can’t wait to see Jake again.” Rodriguez steered them onto the highway and gunned the engine. “Maybe he can tell us what the fuck is going on.”

Jackson Burke sat in front of a row of mirrors. This was an important appearance, an interview on a national political talk show the day after his Senate appointment. He needed to look just so, and with an eye to that had carefully chosen his wardrobe. The conservative blue suit—nice but not his finest, so he wouldn’t alienate his base. A red tie, no stripes, a little wider than was currently fashionable. And of course the ubiquitous American flag pin. He’d instructed the makeup girl to eliminate the pouches under his eyes and even out his skin tone, but not to make him look like a dandy. He knew exactly what people expected from their politicians, it was all about attention to detail. Look trustworthy, and they’ll trust you. Don’t come across as too slick, throw in a few folksy expressions, and they’d be eating out of your hand. He’d spent a lifetime crafting his image and building his position as both a major donor and tried-and-true standard-bearer for the state party. When it came to naming Duke’s successor, there was only one logical option. There had been a few hours of panic over rumors that the governor was considering some spic state senator. But one phone call reminded the governor who had buttered his bread through countless campaigns. Now it was finally time to reap the benefits of all he’d sown.

Of course, he could have run against Duke in the next election. But that raised the risk of splitting the party vote, not to mention alienating Duke and his supporters. No, this had been so much more elegant. This way Duke’s legacy lived on, he became a martyr to the cause, and his supporters were now Jackson’s. Everyone won. And after tomorrow, he’d not only be leading Arizona, but the nation, as well. Everything he’d said yesterday at the swearing-in ceremony would appear prescient: he, and only he, knew
how to protect the American people from the danger on their borders. He’d already crafted his speech for the aftermath, pointing out how the administration had failed to stop the flood of terrorists, criminals and prostitutes who were destroying the American way of life.

People would be afraid, probably even more frightened than on 9/11. And he was fully prepared to capitalize on that fear. Years’ worth of failed legislation could be pushed through Congress in a matter of weeks, if the Patriot Act was any indication. The president, already facing a disenchanted electorate, would find himself sliding in the polls as he was gearing up for reelection. And if everything went as planned, there would be an appropriate challenger confronting him, someone who had developed a reputation for steadfastness and strength when America needed it most. Sort of the Giuliani model, but without the tawdry affairs.

Jackson’s phone rang, and he frowned at Dante’s number. The man was turning out to be such a disappointment. Though Dante was infinitely more capable than the scum he ran with, and had mustered support in arenas that he could never have accessed otherwise, the string of recent failures proved what he had always suspected. Once trash, always trash.

Jackson answered on the fourth ring. “Yes.” He listened, and the frown deepened. A PA appeared at the door and held up five fingers. Jackson nodded to show that he understood, waiting until she was out of earshot to say, “This is very bad news. How did they find it?”

As he listened a red flush rose up his neck, tainting his makeup. “You’re right, under the circumstances we need to reconsider the targets. We’ll switch to the backup sites. Make it happen.”

Jackson hung up and drummed his fingers on the
armrest, blood pressure climbing. He fumbled in his jacket pocket for a bottle of pills, popping one in his mouth. As his pulse stabilized he focused on his breathing, eyes closed. It was going to be okay. He’d been very careful, and hopefully Dante had, too. Nothing tied him to that warehouse, and according to Dante it would take the FBI days to sort out the situation anyway. By then it would be too late.

The PA reappeared and Jackson hopped down from the chair, practicing his easy grin as he followed her down a long hallway to the set. In a way, this might be for the best. The new targets were not obvious ones, which meant he wouldn’t have to worry about last-minute security measures. And after all this was over, he’d send Dante on a well-deserved vacation—one he’d never return from.

Jackson rolled his shoulders once, waiting for the applause to begin before bounding onstage to shake the host’s hand.
No one can stop me now,
he thought, raising both arms to the crowd and letting their approval wash over him.