Jack was aware of her scrutiny, both of him and the plane, and gave her a wave. “Welcome aboard. I’m Jack Cabot and you’re Agent Wittier.”
She nodded, licked her lips. “Yes, Cam Wittier. Nice to meet you. Where’s the pilot?”
“You’re looking at him. I guess that makes you the copilot.”
The greasy ball in her stomach took a bounce nearly to her throat, this time with a dash of nausea. “You’re flying us to Daniel Boone National Forest?”
Jack wasn’t deaf—he heard the touch of panic in her voice and he’d seen that look before from soldiers who could walk through gunfire without hesitation but turned white when they boarded a helicopter. He’d talk her down, let her see how competent he was. He nodded to her, checked his watch. “I’ve finished my preflight inspection. We’re good to go. Two hours unless we hit a lot of bumps. There’ll be some, since we’ll be over the Appalachians. Nothing to be concerned about.”
Cam looked at the six steps built into the door that led up into the belly of the little white death trap. She cleared her throat. “I’ve never flown in a single-engine before. It’s—very small. It’s got only one engine.”
“One good engine. Trust me, that makes all the difference. You get airsick?”
“Not on a reasonable-size plane, but this?” She looked at his beautiful baby and gave a convulsive swallow. “That one engine—good or not—it goes out and we’re toast.”
“Nah, I’m a glider pilot. I’d find somewhere flat to land. No worries. I was expecting you sooner. We have to move out now if we want to get to the national forest well before dark.” He saw her place one tentative foot on the bottom step, gulp, then take another slow step. He tried for a bit of distraction. “We’re dressed pretty much the same, partner. We could be twins if you weren’t a blonde.”
She looked him up and down. She wanted to ask him about his pilot’s license but decided he could take it the wrong way. She sucked it up, vaulted up the stairs, got right in his face, and tried for bravado. “Twins? Nah, I’d have kicked you out of our mom’s womb.”
He grinned. “I won’t crash us, I promise. I’ve been doing this a long time. Toss your backpack with mine in the back and come up front into the cockpit.” He pulled the clamshell door closed, secured it.
She wanted to tell him he wasn’t old enough to have that much experience. Was he counting flying toy planes when he was a kid? When she stuck her head in the cockpit, Jack pointed to the copilot’s seat. “Sit down, and I’ll seat-belt you in.” He handed her headphones. “Press this button and we can speak to each other.” He reached into the back again to make sure her backpack was secured.
Cam watched him ease into the pilot’s seat, a tight fit for a big man. He fastened his own harness and began flipping switches. She listened to him speak to the tower, a lot of numbers and letters, an alpha and a tango thrown in. The tower seemed okay with what he said, and answered back with some more garbled letters and numbers. Okay, he talked like he knew what he was doing, and the guy in the tower didn’t seem concerned. When they got clearance and began to taxi, Cam sucked in air and smoothed out her fists. He looked over at her, grinned. “You’ve got nothing to worry about, I promise; I’ll get you there without a problem.” Then he frowned. “Well, if we don’t get too much turbulence—just kidding, sorry,” he added, seeing her face go white.
They waited on the tarmac behind three small single-engine aircraft for their turn to shoot up into the sky in this oversize white coffin. Jack gave her another look, saw she was holding herself as stiff as a frozen pizza. “You’ll feel better once we’re airborne, trust me.” And then they were moving faster and faster on the runway, and the plane smoothly lifted into the sky. Cam’s breath whooshed out and he saw her lips move, imagined she was giving herself a pep talk. Or maybe she was praying.
As they slowly gained altitude, Jack said, “I guess if we get into trouble up here you won’t be taking over.”
“Trouble? What do you mean trouble? What kind of trouble?” Her voice came out in a croak, and she realized she sounded like a pathetic wuss. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Agent Cabot, it’s a perfect summer day, only an occasional billowy cloud in the sky to keep you from seeing where you’re going. So far I don’t see any SAM missiles below to shoot us down, no bows and arrows, either. So don’t disappoint my parents; get us there in one piece.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll do my pitiful best.”
He banked the small plane, perhaps at a steeper angle than he could have, saw her jaw clench, straightened out again, and headed due west. Washington soon disappeared behind them, and suburbs sprawled out below them, surrounded by the beautiful rolling green hills of Virginia.
The small plane hummed smoothly, no kicks, or lurches, no flashing red warning lights. Cam breathed more easily and thanked heaven her nausea went away.
She pressed the comms button again. “I guess I was expecting to meet up with a guy with Spec Ops tattooed on his arm, maybe a skull with a bullet in its mouth on his neck.”
He shot her a grin. “My mama made me promise no tattoos until I’m forty-five. I guess she figured I wouldn’t be tempted, even drunk, to want a tattoo by that age.”
“At that age, your wife would probably shoot you. Now, I’m told you’re an expert at survival and all, but my boss, Agent Dillon Savich, didn’t say whether you leap tall buildings.”
He laughed. “Hey, Wittier, I’m proud of you. It’s hard to crack jokes when you’re terrified. You doing better?”
“No, but I’m sucking it up, and insulting you helps.”
“You’ll be fine once your brain accepts you’re in expert hands, namely mine. Yes, give me a bottle of water and the sun, and I can find an anthill. Leap tall buildings? Three stories is my personal best. But the truth is, I’m not nearly as tough as my ex-mother-in-law.”
“I’ve never had a mother-in-law, but yours sounds iconic.”
He laughed, checked his compass, his altimeter, his airspeed. All okay. Lucky for Agent Wittier it was a beautiful day to fly. She was still on the pale side, time to take her mind elsewhere. “Tell me what you bring to the table.”
Cam was quiet a moment, shrugged. “Not much, I’m afraid, except for a decent brain, for what that’s worth. I’ve been in the outdoors a fair amount of time, mainly when I was a kid, but in college, too, groups of us, hiking, white-water rafting. I know my way around a campsite. I’ve never been in the Daniel Boone National Forest, though.”
“They tell me you’ve got more than a decent brain, did some strong work in L.A.”
She perked up, preened for a second, then shrugged again. “That was a team effort.”
“Yeah, it always is, but you were the lead. I hear you nearly got your head blown off but managed to save your partner’s life. Tell me about it.”
Was he really interested? The small plane gave a bump, sending her heart into her throat. Who cared if he was interested or passing the time? She started talking, giving him the highlights of the Starlet Slasher case, from her first meeting with the LAPD detectives to the night she tracked down the serial killer with her partner, Detective Daniel Montoya. She told him about her parents, the actors.
Her story gave Jack a good idea what she was about—competent, able to think outside the box, maybe a bit too fearless. Telling him what happened had the added benefit of bringing color to her cheeks. “A good win. Okay, Wittier, so you’ve got a brain, you can hike, you wore the right clothes. Do you have any other useful skills?”
He didn’t sound hopeful, and that sent her chin up and thinned her lips. Good. Having her pissed off at him was better than having her scared.
“My friends in college called me a ninja camper—in and out of a campsite faster than well, the Flash, no muss, no fuss.”
“Ninja camping? Is that a military term?”
“It sounds like it should be—but I guess it isn’t manly enough. I can shoot straight. And I’m good at fixing mechanical problems, like
busted fuel pumps on cars. I could help overhaul the engine on this plane if we got knocked out of the sky by a pissed-off goose. If you’re wounded, I can stitch you up without hurling on you.”
They hit some bumps, making the plane lurch and bounce. Cam looked down and wished she hadn’t. She saw nothing but tree-covered hills below those billowy clouds. Jack said, “We’ll be through this hit of air in a moment. Close your eyes, sit back, and hum James Bay’s ‘Let It Go.’ ”
She spurted out a laugh and closed her eyes and heard the song play in her head whether she liked it or not. They were through the turbulence soon enough. Jack checked his cruise speed—145 knots—and made minor adjustments to the elevator and rudder trim. “Okay, you can open your eyes. I guess I saved us. It’s time to talk about what’s going to happen when we land. I already spoke to Wayne Duke, the Cumberland District park ranger who will be our guide in the national forest. Chief Harbinger of the Pennington Gap PD will be meeting us when we land at London-Corbin Magee Field.”
“I hope he’ll have all the gear we’ll need with him, like bivvy bags, a portable stove.”
“Not a problem—he’ll provide whatever we need. We’re going to keep the team small—the two of us, Wayne Duke, the park ranger, and Chief Harbinger. The other park rangers will help us as lookouts. The chief is assigning four of his deputies to cover major exit points from the forest, and he’s coordinating with other local law enforcement to patrol outside the forest, both west and east, on the lookout for anyone who doesn’t belong there. Hey, look down. Is that beautiful, or what?”
Cam looked out the small window again, saw the endless chain of rolling tree-covered Appalachian hills below the thinning clouds, the occasional small town, and homesteads set far apart on the rich green land. A single road cut through them straight as a knife.
Jack checked his watch. “The field is just inside Kentucky, about thirty miles from the entrance we’ll be using into the national forest.”
Jack had already been slowly descending. “There’s Magee Field coming up.”
Magee was a large expanse of tarmac cut into the land in front of a row of flat-roofed white single-story buildings and a pair of hangars. A trio of single-engine planes was lined up in front of the largest building. Cam saw a couple of guys in overalls talking, paying them no mind. Other than that, the place looked deserted. One of the men with a rooster tail of white hair finally looked up, shaded his eyes, and gave them a little wave.
Jack had his flaps up, and Cam’s stomach did a flip as the ground came up to meet them. She decided to be heroic and keep her eyes open. The Skylane angled smoothly downward, already lined up with the end of the runway, bumped once, twice, and settled, its wheels solid on the tarmac. Jack turned and taxied to a stop beside the other three aircraft, cut the engine.
She was quiet for a moment, settling like the plane, taking big easy breaths until her heart stopped kettle-drumming in her chest. She turned to Jack as she took off her headphones. “We’re on the ground, and we’re in one piece. Good job, Cabot. I forgot to ask, do we have parachutes on board?”
He laughed. “The FBI could only afford one so we’d have piggybacked.”
She rolled her eyes, watched him go through his shutdown checklist.
“We made good time. No particular headwind. You did good, too, Wittier.”
“I’ll admit to some white knuckles. I was wondering if I’d make it to heaven if we crashed into one of those cloud-covered hills.”
“Lots of people are jumpy about small planes their first time out. You’ll be fine when we fly back. You ready to dance with the devil when we catch him?”
“Looking forward to it.”
Jack opened the door, grabbed his backpack, and walked down the airstairs, Cam behind him. She stood a moment, content to breathe in the clean warm air and feel the gentle breeze ruffle her hair and dry the sweat from her forehead. It was so quiet, so peaceful with the engine off, and only trees around them, enough to build a city.
Jack pulled out his cell, then slid it back into his shirt pocket. “No need to call, that’s Chief Harbinger there, in that big honker black SUV coming toward us. Amazing timing.”
“I texted him as soon as we had a signal.”
He hadn’t seen her do that. They watched a big man dressed for the woods climb out of the SUV. He shouted, “Welcome to Magee, outpost of the brave.” A very pretty young girl scooted out the passenger door and stepped around to stand at his side. His daughter, Kim Harbinger? Why had the chief brought his teenage daughter with him?
6
WASHINGTON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL
WASHINGTON, D.C.
MONDAY AFTERNOON
Savich stood beside Dr. Grace Wordsworth, a tall, thin black woman with white wings in her hair and glasses over intelligent eyes, looking down at the young man lying on his back. A single blanket was pulled up to his bandaged shoulder and an adhesive strip covered the scalp wound where Savich’s bullet had grazed his left temple. He was bone-white and lay utterly still, the slow rise and fall of his chest his only obvious sign of life. Savich saw his uninjured arm was handcuffed to the metal bed frame, an IV line in his wrist.
Dr. Wordsworth checked his pulse, put her stethoscope over his heart, and straightened. “At least our John Doe is breathing easily on his own. But he hasn’t helped us much in figuring out why he’s in a coma. His CT scan was perfectly normal—no evidence of hematoma or brain contusion. We’ve looked at his cerebrospinal fluid with a lumbar puncture, and again, there was no evidence of bleeding, or of infection. By the way, Dr. Avery, the consulting neurologist, said John Doe’s irrational behavior yesterday sounded like delirium to him, not a psychiatric illness. Something else—a metabolic problem or something toxic—may be to blame. He has some abnormal central reflexes that point to something affecting his entire nervous system. So you can relax if you were worried his head wound put him in this condition. The bullet probably concussed him, sure, but this is something else entirely.” She glanced down at her watch and its large digital readout. “We may know more after they fit him in for his MRI in a couple of hours.”
“Something else? Could he have overdosed on a drug?”
“Our usual toxicology panel showed a trace of Haldol in his system—that’s an old antipsychotic drug—but nothing else he shouldn’t have taken. As I said, there was only a trace, which means he hadn’t taken any therapeutic dose for upward of three or four days. But there are a lot of drugs and supplements out there we haven’t tested for yet that can cause neurotoxicity. We’ve sent a sample of his blood to a facility with a specialized mass spectroscopy unit to try to identify any drugs we might have missed. We’ll have to wait for the results. Some kind of drug effect is a real possibility. His blood tests show his bone marrow is suppressed, and his liver shows signs of injury for some reason. So I have a medical mystery on my hands, and no history to work with. Have you made any progress identifying him?”
“Not yet.”
“Take a look at this.” Dr. Wordsworth carefully lifted John Doe’s handcuffed wrist and pulled at a loose plastic wristband. “It looks almost like a conventional hospital ID band, but it’s not ours. I’ve never seen a psychiatric facility put such a bizarre tag on a patient, though. It doesn’t make sense. Even at a private institution, there ought to be some sort of comprehensible patient identification on it, the name of the facility, much more than this. There’s a handwritten date on it—also strange. It’s Saturday, two days ago, perhaps the day he escaped? His last treatment date?” She looked up at Savich, shook her head. “Perhaps they changed out his wristband each time he had a treatment. And look here, in small letters, E 2. Nothing else.”
Savich stared at the wide pale yellow plastic strip. Saturday most likely wasn’t the date he entered the facility, so Dr. Wordsworth was probably right, it was the date of his last treatment. But for what? And what could E 2 mean? Savich felt a tug of memory, and then it was gone. “Can’t help with that,” he said. “I
’ve checked with Metro. They’ve had no inquiries from any psychiatric facility about our Mr. Doe. Nor does Metro know who he is. His fingerprints aren’t in the system.”
Dr. Wordsworth checked the IV infusion set, made a minor adjustment. “Isn’t that unusual? Your not being able to identify someone?”
“It only means he’s never worked for the government, been in the military, or been arrested. I tried the facial recognition program, missing persons countrywide, but without any luck.” Savich wondered if Mayer had done the same.
Dr. Wordsworth said, “Our staff have been contacting all the medical facilities and psychiatric hospitals in the District, in Maryland, and in Virginia. None of them have claimed him so far. If he was in a small facility or with his family, we’d expect them to be all over this. And then I ask myself, why would a family—especially a family—put a wristband like this on him?”
Savich said slowly, “It could be he escaped from somewhere, Doctor. He thought he had a mission, and it involved a woman who’s just given birth upstairs. Why her in particular, I don’t know yet.”
“Everyone here knows you saved Ms. Moody from John Doe.”
He said nothing, only shook his head.
“There’s something else you have to see.” She pulled back the thin blanket that covered John Doe’s arms. “Look at the needle tracks on his arms. You might think he was a big-time drug addict, but those scars aren’t anything like the scars of a drug addict. They’re carefully placed and well cared for, with no sign they were ever infected. There’s no way a drug addict could do that himself. And look up here at his neck and under his collarbone. He’s had large-bore catheters placed there, such as we use for people who need long-term venous access for their treatments, or for dialysis. These scars are the result of medical care, though for what I have no idea yet.”
The hospital loudspeaker paged Dr. Wordsworth to the ER, stat. Savich quickly gave her his card. She tucked it in her pocket, shook his hand, held it a moment. “Agent Savich, I’ll let you know if the head MRI shows anything unusual, and I trust you’ll call me if you find anything that can help me. I can see you care about him. You want to know who he is and what all this is about as much as I do.” She looked again toward John Doe, shook her head, and was out the door.