“It’s clear the attempts on your life began abroad, when you were in the field representing the United States government. Natalie, the State has no choice but to wrap you in the American flag and make you a homegrown heroine.”
“And there you have it, Nat,” the president said, “Washington at its finest. Arliss and her staff are right about the potential politics of this, though.” He paused for a moment, grinned at Natalie. “You’re a perfect heroine. Now, if you’re willing, we can help you prep for the press, the news networks, put you back in the spotlight on your own terms.”
Natalie wondered if Arliss would have changed her mind if Hooley weren’t lying in the hospital with a knife wound in his heart, if dozens of people hadn’t seen her in bloody pajamas in the ER. She said, “This is a lot to process, but you know I will do my best.”
“Your best will be superb, as always,” the president said. “Now, Agent Savich, what can I do to help you?”
“Actually, Mr. President, after the incident last night, Madame Secretary is providing ample security. Mrs. Black’s safety was always my primary concern.”
Arliss said, “That’s right. Our State Department agents are already at your house, Natalie, making the necessary assessments. You know, if you’d asked me, I’d have authorized the Diplomatic Security Service to protect you as soon as you arrived home.”
Natalie looked at Arliss and knew very well what her answer would have been if she had indeed asked.
“That’s done, then,” the president said. “Arliss, why don’t you show Natalie to our press office, get her started on her work with them.”
Minutes later, Natalie, Savich, and Arliss walked past Hainny’s office to see him tapping his pen on a beautiful mahogany desktop. Arliss said smoothly, “He’ll find out soon enough. There’s a private study up ahead, and I’d like a few moments alone with Natalie. Would you mind waiting for us in the hall, Agent Savich?”
When they were alone in a small staffer’s office, Arliss said, “I don’t think there’s much reason for me to take you all the way to the press office, Natalie. I’ve already made plans to have you speak at the UN on Monday. Ambassador Connor was scheduled to speak on global economic policy, and has graciously given up his time to you. I will be there with you, to introduce you.”
Natalie searched her friend’s, and her boss’s, face. “Why?”
“It’s substantial enough for your position, and it will give you a reason to agree to interviews with the press. We will announce your speech at the UN today. My staff will email you a suggested text of the speech, and I’ll have the press secretary send you along some talking points. You will, of course, put your own spin on things and adjust whatever you wish to your own words.”
Natalie nodded. “Why did you want to speak to me privately, Arliss?”
“To tell you I’m sorry for what’s happened to you and to Perry. Day said he sent her flowers, called her several times to see if she’s all right. I don’t think he’s particularly happy she’s now being guarded by that young FBI agent who was with you at my party. What was his name?”
“Special Agent Davis Sullivan. He’ll be with her until this is over, hopefully very soon now. He’s a fine young man, actually, smart of mouth and fast of brain. He matches up with Perry quite well.” She blinked, realizing the import of what she’d said to Day’s mother. She smiled. “Day and Perry have known each other forever, and there is deep caring between them.”
“Day told me he’s committed to marrying Perry.”
“Perry told me he proposed, but there’s simply so much turmoil right now, and who can make a decision about anything? Day is a fine young man. I’d welcome him as a son-in-law. Whatever they decide, of course, I’m fine with it. Aren’t you?”
“What’s right is right,” Arliss said. “Do you remember what Brundage always used to say?”
“Yes, but he said it in German,” Natalie said. “He never wanted Perry to hear him curse.”
“No, not that. He always told me he believed in karma. The only thing was that karma sometimes didn’t get it done, and that was when you had to give it a good shove.”
Natalie honestly couldn’t remember Brundage ever saying a sentence with the word karma in it. She could imagine the thick contempt in his voice if he had. Brundage always sat solid and pragmatic in the world and heaped scorn on those who didn’t, on those who believed in some sort of cosmic balancing of the scales. He knew where he was going, what he wanted, and he managed to get it even when he was twenty years old. And he’d wanted her, he’d told her, wanted her more than anything else in his life.
She felt the bittersweet memory fill her, felt tears sting her eyes. They’d had a lot of years together, but they should have had so many more. She said easily, “Well, possibly so, but what does karma have to do with Perry and Day, Arliss?”
Arliss lightly laid her hand on Natalie’s arm. “What I mean is that what is right will overcome, that’s all. Brundage believed that, too, if I remember correctly.” She turned away, then paused, said over her shoulder, “Isn’t it odd how life turns out?”
Perry Black’s condo
Saturday evening
You’re making too much noise out there. I can’t sleep.”
Davis was lying quietly, wrapped up in his two blankets, watching the dying fireplace embers fade from orange to black. He’d barely been breathing, he thought, listening, always listening, for any stray sound that shouldn’t be there. He smiled into the dim firelight, called out, “I was thinking the same thing about you, but I was too polite to troop into your bedroom and announce it. You know, I’d probably have had to crawl in beside you, shake your shoulder, tell you you’re snoring and to turn on your back. I might have even had to wake you up.”
“Oh, shut up. You weren’t asleep, were you?”
“Nah, I was lying here thinking and listening, and wondering why you wrote your last blog on Russell Wilson. You know no one outside the Beltway gives a crap about anyone but the Redskins, unless they’re a threat.”
He watched Perry come in wearing her ancient blue robe. He saw she was barefoot, her toes painted a pretty coral color. Her hair was all over her head in wild tangles, her face clean of makeup. He had to admit he really liked looking at her.
She yawned. “Well, there’s Tebow, and he’ll be front and center until he’s an old man with no teeth. What with my finding out about Tebow’s girlfriend, Bennett is so pleased with me I can write what I want for a week. And that’s why I wrote about Wilson. He really came into his own this past season, and his dad dying young, it was a real tragedy.” Like her dad, she thought, and maybe that was the real reason she’d wanted to write about him.
She walked to stand over him. “So you can’t sleep? Why? Hooley looked great today with Connie hovering all over him.”
“Nice to see Beef has an admirer, and Connie, of all women. I think they make a great couple.”
“And Mom had a great day, meeting with the president, getting his support and all the security she needs. Even Arliss came around.”
“So why don’t I see you sleeping, either?”
She began to pace in front of him, then turned. “I don’t know. There’s lots to think about.”
And it’s finally getting to you. He watched her meander around her living room, pause here and there to straighten a book, a picture. “Do you know when I first saw you on your hog in my driveway, when was it—five days ago—with your punk girl boots, that space-age helmet and all the black leather, I thought, Dear Lord, what wonderful gift have you landed in my driveway?”
“What?” She turned so fast she hit her shin against the coffee table, yelped, and bent over, rubbing furiously.
“You heard me. Those black boots with their kick-ass little chains. You nearly stopped my heart.”
“You’re a pitiful liar.”
“Not altogether. If you’d been humming, say, ‘Time Bomb’ by Rancid, I would have expired right there on the concrete with my
neighbor Mr. Mulroney looking on, shaking his head, wondering if you had tattoos beneath all that black leather.”
“Only one tattoo.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Where? What?”
“None of your business. It didn’t hurt very much. No worse than childbirth, I’m told.”
“I hadn’t heard that, though I doubt any guy would know what to make of that comparison.”
“Guys don’t like to admit they feel pain of any kind. Take Hooley today, lying there all stoic, trying to smile when you called him Beef and told him you were considering becoming a vegetarian.”
“He couldn’t wimp out in front of Connie, could he?”
Perry paused, looked at him still lying on the sofa, relaxed and calm, watching her. “Have you ever been hurt in the FBI? Not at Quantico, I mean, on the job?”
“Not recently. Well, I gotta say that a couple of weeks ago I flew the sister of a new agent in the unit back to Washington from Maestro, Virginia. She was studying at the Stanislaus School of Music, got herself into a fix. By the end of the flight she was trying to kick me out of the plane because we disagreed on the music.” Davis shook his head, picked up a glass of water from the coffee table and took a drink. “Women who can’t accept good music can be unforgiving.”
She wanted to laugh, maybe throw something at him, or maybe drag him onto the carpet and rip his white undershirt over his head.
Whoa.
“I’m going to bed. Alone.”
A dark brow went up, but unfortunately the effect was lost in the dim light. Davis said, “I don’t recall inviting myself in to spoon with you. I don’t snore, by the way. Good night.”
“Great to hear, Davis. Good night.” She left the living room, went down the short hall, and snapped her bedroom door shut. Davis lay back down, his head cradled in his arms, and smiled at the ceiling, but for only a moment. He had a lot to think about, too.
Savich’s house
Saturday night, near midnight
They thought they were so smart, so sneaky, kneeling behind the thick bushes at the side of their house, pressed in close. They were waiting for him to show himself, waiting to kill him. They had no idea he’d been watching them since they’d hunkered down in those bushes. Nearly two hours now.
Blessed looked through the window of their neighbor’s darkened living room, sipping a cup of hot chocolate. They had to be cold and miserable out there, as he had been the night before, standing in the shadows away from the pole lights in the hospital parking lot, pacing between the cars, watching and waiting.
He’d come back last night to this house in time to see them rush out. He’d followed them to the hospital, watched them pull up under one of the lights and hurry in, Sherlock’s red hair an incredible flame under that fierce beaming light. Her face was pale, pinched. He’d never seen her look so grim. Savich showed no expression, always the hard man, no give in him at all. Blessed hated himself for the fear he felt, and that made him hate Savich more.
Somebody was hurt, somebody important to them, had to be, to bring them to the hospital so late. Blessed wondered who, but he didn’t really care. It was too cold to worry about it, waiting there in the parking lot all that time. All he’d seen was half a dozen people leaving the hospital for the night, looking exhausted. There was a steadier flow of people showing up to the ER, some of them limping, moaning, crying. People had no guts anymore. Pinch them on the arm and they’d go off screaming and complaining. Damn gutless worms.
As he drank his chocolate, Blessed thought of his brother Grace, as cold as the winter ground outside, dead and buried in the wilderness. Grace had always been stronger, known what to do and how to do it. But Grace was dead, gone. For a long time now. And these FBI agents were trying to kill him dead, like his mama was, and Father. Everyone he loved was dead, except Autumn, and she wanted no part of him. Even the old bum whose coat kept him warm was dead and gone.
He wondered what had become of his mama’s house—no, more a shrine, really. He sometimes wondered if his mama hadn’t loved that house more than him or Grace, maybe even more than Father. He shook it away; it was disloyal. No, Mama had loved them both.
He mourned them all, and wished somehow they could know he was mourning. He didn’t think there would be anyone to mourn him when his own time came. Mama wanted him to find himself a wife, but he didn’t think that was going to happen.
He knew his brain was looping back and forth, had been for days now, between what he’d lost and what he had to do. Couldn’t be a good thing, but what else was there? This was what his life was for now, and there was no changing it. Mama asked him for revenge, and that meant the deaths of these two agents in the bushes who’d brought his family down.
He looked out again through the winter dead branches of an oak tree, and beyond to the yew bushes. That was the right spot. He could see them moving, trying to stay warm in their dark parkas and their winter gloves. They were waiting for him to come, only he wouldn’t, because two hours ago, he’d knocked on Mr. MacPherson’s kitchen door. When the old man had opened it the width of the chain, he’d looked into his old rheumy eyes and told him to invite him in. Like a vampire, he thought, and wasn’t that a kick? It smelled like an old guy’s house, like he’d been alone for some time, but still it was nice, filled with mementos of his long-dead wife and what seemed like dozens of his grandkids, photos all over the place. His mama hadn’t kept a lot of photos, preferred showing off her antiques, and Grace’s soul-black paintings.
He’d walked the old man to his couch in a living room that smelled like faded violets. He didn’t tie him up, no need. He’d stay there until Blessed told him otherwise. He even laid a big, soft quilt over his lap, just like his mama used to do for him in the cold months. He scooped up the yapping little mutt and tossed him in the bedroom closet. He gave the old man his ancient revolver and told him to shoot anyone who came in.
He smiled now, realizing those two had to be tired, growing careless. Unlike them, he’d slept most of the day to stay out of sight of the cops. On his way here, he’d stopped for two hamburgers at a burger place over in Foggy Bottom.
It was time for him to stop sitting and waiting. It was time to get up close and personal, from behind them, close enough to put that Glock three inches from their heads, if he could, and end this. Then he could leave this cold, ugly city with its crackheads and gangs and homeless bums roaming the streets and sleeping in the alleys, and this was the nation’s capital? Marble buildings and granite monuments and thousands of worker bees and the underbelly he’d stayed in that nobody gave a crap about.
He eased quickly out of the back door of the house, bent low and started working his way through the backyards, down past a couple houses, then he’d get on his hands and knees and quietly work in behind them.
Sherlock had a cramp in her calf. Dillon rubbed it for her, but she had to stand up, no choice. She eased up onto her knees, looked through the bushes. All was quiet, all the houses were dark, neighbors in bed. It was cold, but the night still, with little wind. She heard the sound of an engine and tensed. She smiled when she saw an old Mustang she recognized come cruising to a halt at the curb of the Morgans’ house, three houses down across the street. No wonder it was coming back late—it was Saturday night and the Morgans had three very pretty teenage girls. The boy cut his engine and coasted up to the house, lights off. Was he hoping for a little necking time? An instant later, the Morgans’ living room light went on, then the porch light. The front door opened and Todd Morgan came out, pulling his robe belt tight around his waist. Six foot four inches of firefighter dad stood with his arms crossed over his chest, sending the hairy eyeball toward the Mustang.
She heard a muffled yapping sound—a dog’s bark?
An instant later, in the reflected light from the Morgans’ front porch, Sherlock saw movement in the bushes next to Mr. MacPherson’s house, low and moving away from them. She whispered, “Dillon, there’s someone bent low, in Mr. MacPherson??
?s backyard, going or coming, I can’t tell. It’s got to be Blessed. I hope Mr. MacPherson’s all right.”
He came up on his knees and looked across the street, using his night-vision goggles. He saw perfect stillness. There was another yap—a puppy’s yap—and they both realized it was Gladys, Mr. MacPherson’s new puppy. “If he’s backing away, it’s probably because of Gladys’s barking.”
Gladys was barking louder now, short, high, piercing yaps. Savich said, “Blessed has either made it inside the house or he’s holding perfectly still. I’ll bet he was about to make his move, but with Gladys yapping her head off, he doesn’t know what to do. Can you run with that cramp in your leg?”
She rubbed her knotted muscle furiously and nodded.
Suddenly, Mr. Morgan shouted at the top of his lungs, “Lindy, you get in here now!” and the Mustang door opened and the interior light flashed on to spotlight Lindy looking mad and her date looking embarrassed. The car light flashed on Blessed, pressed frozen against the wall of MacPherson’s house, looking wildly around him and back to where they crouched behind the bushes. He raised a gun quickly, lowered it again, and took off around the back of the house.
Savich jumped to his feet, tossed aside his night-vision goggles, and ran toward him, shouting over his shoulder, “Stay put, get that cramp out.” He juked around to the back of Mr. MacPherson’s house.
When he reached the backyard, he paused, crouched low, still and listening, but he didn’t hear anything. He found the back door open and pushed it slowly open. The kitchen was dark. As far as he could tell, the whole house was dark. He heard Gladys, but she wasn’t running at him—no, she was in another part of the house.