Three Jack McClure Missions Box Set (106 page)

“What will you tell Aaron?”

“The truth, so far as I know it.” She took a sip of coffee, then put her cup down. “One thing I’ve learned out of all this pain, Dad, is the importance of the truth. I strive to raise Aaron with that in mind.”

Paull studied his daughter. He didn’t know whether to pity or admire her. Perhaps it was both. That’s how life was, anyway, he thought, always a series of choices, always a series of contradictions, some of which could be untangled, others not. It was learning to distinguish one from the other that proved to be a bitch.

But, he thought now, just the fact that he felt pity toward her was a prime example of how long he had lived in the shadows, because one couldn’t survive there without learning to lie. Where he toiled, lies were a necessity. And very soon—so soon, in fact, it was disorienting—lies became the norm. That was where he was at when he began manipulating the man Claire wanted to marry. The result? She had told him to go fuck himself when she found out, married the man without Paull knowing, and then divorced him. In the meantime, his wife got old and sick, and he just lost interest in everything.

That’s what had happened to him, he reflected, and to so many of his compatriots. The ones who it hadn’t happened to were dead. So, too, his wife, but he had been given a second chance with Claire and with Aaron, and he meant to make the most of it.

He couldn’t take his eyes off Claire. She was so beautiful he had difficulty believing that he’d had a hand in creating her. She didn’t look like either him or Louise. Maybe like one of Louise’s aunts, or possibly a little like his own grandmother, his father’s mother, who was definitely a looker. Despite her looks, she had no one. She’d left her idiot husband and now wanted nothing to do with him. Aaron despised him, so happily there was nothing more to say on the subject.

“Are you seeing anyone new?” he said.

“Oh, Dad…”

“Just asking.”

She considered for a moment, turning her cup around in its saucer. “Okay, there is someone.” She held up a hand. “Before you start the inquisition, I’m putting the subject off-limits. We just started dating and … Well, there’s nothing more to tell.”

“Okay.”

She cocked her head, her deep gray eyes inquisitive. “Really?”

He nodded, smiling. “You’re a grown woman, Claire. You can make your own choices.”

She put a hand over his again. “Thank you, Dad.”

Sad commentary on their past relationship, he thought, that she felt she had to thank him for considering her an individual. He sighed internally. More muddy water under the bridge, one more sin to atone for.

He rose. She looked as if she were about to say, Leaving already? but instead she bit her lip and, rising as well, produced a bittersweet smile and kissed him on the cheek.

“Be safe,” she whispered.

He headed for the door. “Tell Aaron I love him.” He turned back to her. “You, too.”

That bittersweet smile was still in place as he walked out the door.

*   *   *

“What the fuck happened here?”

McKinsey said it, but Naomi felt it. They had arrived at almost the same time as the first state police responders, having done their best to follow Jack’s reckless driving. On their obligatory tour around Henry Holt Carson’s country estate, Naomi was gripped by trepidation. The place was crawling with state police investigators and forensic personnel. A veritable armada of official vehicles, including SWAT armored trucks, filled the driveway, overflowing onto the immaculate lawns. Surely an overreaction, she thought, until she saw the havoc wreaked: the cook and gardener recovering from being knocked out cold by person or persons unknown, one guard’s chest burned to a crisp and a second one with a broken nose, and the third …

“I have a bad feeling about all of this,” she said as she stared down at the corpse of Rudy Laine.

“Join the club.” McKinsey, glancing up, got rainwater in his eye. “Once again in the fucking trees.”

“The fun never stops.” Naomi knelt down beside the body. “As advertised, dead as a doorpost.”

“And twice as ugly.”

She sighed, rising. “Does anyone know what the hell went on here?”

“Not the cops, but a million bucks says McClure does.”

She checked her phone, frowning. “He’s not answering his cell. No one knows where he is.”

“Ditto the First Daughter.” McKinsey put his hands on his hips. “Odds are they’re together.”

Naomi said nothing, but she knew that he was probably right. Jack had a habit of going off the reservation, but this was a particularly bad time for it. The Virginia State Police were howling to question Alli—at the very least. She was the prime suspect in Laine’s death.

“The two guards said Alli Carson attacked Laine in the library, ran out, struck Conlon down as he was about to exit a bathroom, then she and Laine got into it for real. The fight spilled out to the rear of the house, he heard gunshots being fired. One guard was busy in the shower washing off the drain cleaner he said Alli threw at him, but by the time Conlon got here the other one was dead and the First Daughter was gone.”

“What if the guards are lying?”

McKinsey shot her a skeptical look. “I know you’ve got a soft spot for the girl, kiddo, but come on. First off, the guards’ stories corroborated one another.”

“They had time to concoct it before the police arrived,” Naomi pointed out.

“Secondly, they work for Fortress, one of the most highly regarded security firms in the country. The First Daughter’s uncle hired them to keep her safe and out of lockup.” He spread his hands. “Face it, everything’s against her.” He cast a glance back over his shoulder to where Henry Holt Carson and Harrison Jenkins stood conferring heatedly with a chief of the state police. “Murder, battery, violating a federal judge’s order of recognizance, I don’t know if even her uncle’s contacts or his famous lawyer’s legal tricks can save her from being locked up and indicted.”

Naomi was busy using her phone to go online.

McKinsey stared down at Rudy Laine’s corpse. “Man, for a little girl she packs some wallop.”

We can thank Jack for that,
Naomi thought distractedly. “You forget, she’s not a little girl.”

“Well, right now what she looks like is a murderer.” He squinted. “And if McClure has spirited her away, that makes him an accessory after the fact.”

*   *   *

Paull’s next stop was the VIR section of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The VIR section was where new weapons ready for the field but not yet in the distribution pipeline were available to Alpha-level personnel.

He tried to keep thoughts of what complications the death of one of the men guarding Alli Carson might cause him—meaning, very specifically, how badly the incident would distract Jack from their mission to track down and kill Arian Xhafa. He’d punched in Jack’s cell number several times, always canceling the call before it could be made. There was nothing he could do for either Jack or Alli at this point, and he preferred not to hear whatever lies Jack would tell him regarding his involvement.

Paull needed Jack, of that he had no doubt. Given what the president had told him about Xhafa’s capabilities, there was no point in going to Macedonia without Jack’s brilliant tactical sense and his uncanny ability to figure out how the enemy thinks and, therefore, what traps, disinformation, and the like he would toss into your path. No matter what, Paull needed Jack on that plane with him at midnight.

Meanwhile, he had to pick out the weaponry that was both portable enough for a difficult mountain trek in hostile territory and powerful enough to both counter Xhafa’s firepower and assure his annihilation.

Slowly and methodically, he walked up and down the aisles while his assigned DARPA sorcerer, as the engineers were called familiarly, explained the uses of each strange-looking item.

After a time, Paull began to hum “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” The president had been right—he wasn’t meant to be a desk jockey no matter how high up in the hierarchy that desk might be. He was back in his element, as happy as a pig in mud.

*   *   *

McKinsey and Naomi were about to leave the crime scene when Henry Holt Carson waved them over. His face was grave, by which Naomi deduced that his conversation with the state police chief hadn’t gone well.

“The police have issued a warrant for my niece’s arrest in connection with this disaster,” he said without preamble.

Jenkins looked like he’d just lost his beloved pet dog. “Hank—”

Carson held up a hand. “I want you two to find Alli before the police do.”

“Hank, this is inadvisable,” the attorney said. “Inserting yourself into a second—”

Carson glared at him. “What did I tell you?”

“You pay me to protect you.”

“I’m thinking of Alli now,” Carson snapped.

“When we find her,” Naomi said, “then what?”

“Call me,” Carson said. “I’ll tell you where to bring her.”

“Hank, I’m an officer of the court,” Jenkins protested. “I can’t be a part of what is most certainly a felony crime, and I can’t allow you to be part of it, either.”

“I can’t hear you, Counselor. You’re not here.” Carson cocked his head. “In fact, I’m quite certain I just heard you drive away.” He addressed the two Secret Service agents. “Harrison Jenkins isn’t here, is he?”

“No, sir,” Naomi said.

McKinsey shook his head.

“Christ on a crutch.” Shaking his head, Jenkins took his leave, picking his way back to where his car was parked.

“Now then,” Carson said, taking a deep breath.

“Sir, with all due respect,” McKinsey interjected, “we’re Secret Service.”

“My niece is still Edward Carson’s daughter, all that’s left of the former First Family,” Carson said shortly. Then he waved a hand dismissively. “Besides, I cleared it with your boss. For the time being, you report to me and to me alone. Is that clear?”

“Yessir,” they said more or less simultaneously.

“Then what are you still doing here? Get to it.”

*   *   *

Alli, cocooned in a blanket Jack kept in the trunk of his car, smiled up at him, then fell back to sleep. Jack bent over her, kissed her lightly on the forehead, adjusted the blanket slighty, then tiptoed out of the room.

He found Thatë down the hall, listening to Kid Cudi on his iPod, a pair of cheap earbuds cutting him off from the rest of the world. Jack pulled the cord and as the buds popped out of the teenager’s ear, said, “Everything’s going to sound like crap with those.”

Thatë shrugged. “It’s supposed to sound like crap. That’s the point.”

Jack wanted to tell him how ignorant he sounded, but instead, sat down in a chair opposite the kid and said, “Take a listen with these.” He handed him the Monster Copper earbuds he had bought to listen to the music on Emma’s iPod, an essential part of her he was never without.

Thatë shrugged, supremely indifferent, as he plugged in the earbuds and fit them into his ears. Three seconds after he pressed Play, his eyes opened wide, and he turned to Jack and mouthed, “Fuck me!”

Jack watched him listening to music he’d never really heard before. They were in a kitchen-cum–living room, tattered and gloomy in an all too authentic way that would make most young Goths cream in their tight black trousers.

Thatë lived in a bombed-out building in a section of Southeast Washington that could have been Beirut. The neighborhood was as desolate as a creaking old tree in winter. Out on the pocked and pitted street, trash held a special position of reverence. It was used as clothing, housing, shelter from a storm. The endless inventiveness of the destitute was forever on display. Inside, bare bulbs hung from lengths of wire, though at any given moment the electricity might or might not work. In one corner, the ceiling plaster was distended like a pregnant woman’s nine-month belly, sopping with moisture, as if she had just broken her water. In the tiny, airless bathroom, there was a plastic bucket of water beside the toilet to ensure flushing. The apartment smelled of old pizza and pot. Forget dust; soot was everywhere, greasily ingrained on every horizontal surface. Occasionally, small sounds came from inside the walls, as if creatures were scuttling through the tenement’s arteries and veins.

As for Thatë, he seemed perfectly at home in a place that had the impermanence of an army tent or an Alaskan house. He was one of those people who wore grime like a tattoo or a piercing, a rebel yell that very deliberately gave the finger to society.

Jack got him to listen to Howlin’ Wolf from a playlist on Emma’s iPod. His eyes lost their focus as he sank deeper and deeper into the music. Thatë might be a teenager, but he had the eyes of an adult who had already been witness to too many despicable acts. It was likely he had committed some of those acts himself.

At length, the playlist came to an end and Thatë pulled off the earbuds. His face seemed transformed.

“Shit,” he said.

“Yeah.” Jack gestured to the refrigerator. “Beer?”

The kid nodded, still half in a trance.

Jack rose and opened the refrigerator, which wheezed like an asthmatic. Beer, Coke, a couple of half-eaten slices of congealed pizza, and not much else. At least the beer was imported.

“That girl’s too young for you,” Thatë observed.

Jack handed him a bottle, then twisted off the cap of his own bottle and took a slug. “She’s my daughter.”

Thatë looked away and picked at a scab on the point of his elbow.

“Where are your parents?”

Thatë took a swig of beer. “Don’t have parents.”

“You mean you don’t talk to them.”

“I mean I never met ’em.” The kid rolled the bottle around on the table, making a pattern of wet circles. “Good thing, too. I’d probably kill them.”

“Maybe they’re already dead.”

“Christ, I hope so.”

“No school for you, I see.”

“I’m in school. I don’t want trouble with the law.”

“So who’s subbing for you?”

“Fuck if I know,” Thatë said with a sly grin. “Twenty bucks a day does it.”

“I doubt that,” Jack said.

“Okay, an eighth a week.”