The Innocent

  damage on this already.”

  Robie turned and walked out of the room.

  He was going to see Julie. He had nothing really to tell her. And like Blue Man had said, no good could come from informing her of things her father might have done in the past. Robie was convinced that whatever the three soldiers had done more than twenty years ago was irrelevant to the present situation. They were just convenient pieces on the chessboard.

  This is about me, thought Robie. It started with me and it has to somehow end with me.

  CHAPTER

  74

  “SO, MR. BROOME AND RICK WIND served with my dad in the Army?” said Julie.

  Robie was sitting with her in the FBI safe house. How safe it was Robie wasn’t sure, but he had few options left. The FBI agents guarding Julie looked professional and alert, and yet he kept his hand near his Glock and was prepared to gun them down if they made a move to harm the girl.

  “They fought in Gulf One. They left the Army at separate times after that. Apparently, a number of soldiers in their squad got that tattoo on their arm.”

  “I still can’t believe my dad was like a hero.”

  “Believe it, Julie, he was.”

  She fingered the zipper on her jacket. “Did you find out anything else?”

  “Not really,” said Robie.

  “My dad must’ve been young when he left the military. I wonder why he didn’t stay in.”

  “No way to tell,” said Robie quietly. “Some guys do their stint and go on to other things.”

  “Maybe if he’d stayed in he might’ve, you know…”

  “Well, he might not have met your mother either, if he’d stayed in.”

  “That’s true,” said Julie slowly. She eyed Robie closely. “Why do I think you’re not telling me everything?” There was something in her look that Robie recognized. It was the same look he gave people who were simply telling him things they knew he wanted to hear.

  “Because you’re naturally suspicious, just like me.”

  “Are you holding something back from me?”

  “I hold lots of things back from lots of people. But always for a good reason, Julie.”

  “That’s not really an answer.”

  He locked his gaze on hers, figuring that not to look at her now would be simply an exclamation point on his underlying deceit. “It’s the only one I have to give. I’m sorry.”

  “So you haven’t figured out what’s going on, then, have you?”

  “Not really.”

  “Do you need my help? And don’t say you have to keep me safe. There’s no such place, not even here with super-duper FBI guys all over the place.”

  Robie was about to turn her offer down using this very safety issue, but stopped. Something had just occurred to him.

  “Your mother said that you didn’t know anything, right? When she was talking to the guy in your house?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “So that implies that your parents did know something. That your mother, in fact, probably knew why the guy was there. Why he wanted to kill them.”

  “I guess that’s right. But we’ve already covered this ground, Will.”

  “And Leo Broome, right before he died, implied that he knew something too.”

  Julie wicked a tear from her right eye. “I didn’t know him all that well, but he seemed like a nice guy. And I really liked Ida. She was always nice to me.”

  “I know. It’s a tragedy all around. Now, Cheryl Kosmann said that the day before your parents were killed they had dinner with the Broomes at the diner. She said they looked like they had seen a ghost.”

  “That’s right.”

  “When was the last time you talked to your parents before you went back to your house that night?”

  “Just before I was put back in foster care. I never got a chance to sneak over and see my mom at the diner.”

  “And how did your mom seem when you did see her last?”

  “Fine. Normal. We just talked about stuff.”

  “And then later a guy is at their home looking to kill them and your mother is not surprised by it?”

  Julie blinked. “You mean something had to happen after I last saw her and before the guy showed up at our house?”

  “No, it had to be between you seeing her last and your parents having dinner with the Broomes where they all looked like they had seen a ghost, according to Cheryl.”

  “But we don’t know what that something is.”

  “But narrowing it down to a specific time period helps. The way I see it, either something happened with your parents, they found out something and told the Broomes. Or the Broomes found out something and told your parents.”

  “What about the Winds?”

  “That’s sort of the wild card. They weren’t at the dinner, but they must be involved somehow too, otherwise why would they have ended up dead?”

  “Do you think it has something to do with their time in the military?”

  “My gut tells me that it should. But all the facts don’t point to that. Namely, my involvement in all this. If I’m right and I’m the reason why this whole thing has been orchestrated, why involve your parents, the Broomes, and the Winds? I didn’t know any of them.”

  “So you really think all of this is tied to you somehow?”

  Robie could sense the question left unspoken.

  Was I the reason her parents were killed?

  “Yes, I think it does. Too many coincidences otherwise.”

  Julie pondered this. “So either the Winds, my parents, or the Broomes found something out. Because they were in the military together the guys might have told each other about it. The bad guys found out and they had to kill them.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Yeah, I guess it does,” Julie said, looking away from Robie.

  He let a few tense moments pass by before he spoke. “Julie, I don’t know what’s going on. If this is really all about me and your parents and the others were caught up in it, I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not blaming you for what happened to my parents, Will,” she said, though her voice held no conviction.

  Robie stood and paced. “Well, maybe you should,” he said over his shoulder.

  “Blaming you isn’t going to bring them back. And what I want hasn’t changed. I want to get whoever did this. All of them.”

  Robie sat back down and looked at her. “I think there was no more than a twenty-four-hour window when whatever got your parents killed was communicated among Wind, Broome, and your dad. If we can trace a call, or a movement, or any type of communication among that group, we might be able to get a better handle on all this.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “We can at least give it a hell of a shot. The problem is, so far nothing in their background suggests they were involved in anything that could have been the catalyst for all this.”

  “Well, they weren’t the only ones in the squad, right? A squad consists of nine or ten soldiers, with a staff sergeant in command.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “American history class. We’re studying World War II. So my dad, Wind, and Broome are three guys. That means you have six or seven more to track down.”

  Robie shook his head, wondering how he’d missed something that obvious. Then he looked down at Julie’s chest.

  The laser dot was centered right over her heart.

  CHAPTER

  75

  ROBIE MADE NO visible reaction to the laser dot. He knew it was from a sniper rifle. He didn’t look to the window, where he knew the blinds must be partially open. The rifle and the shooter were out there somewhere, probably within a thousand yards of a house that had just become as unsafe as it was possible to be.

  He inwardly chastised himself for not earlier noting the open blinds.

  He put his hands under the table separating him and her. He smiled.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked quizzically.

&
nbsp; “You ever play a game called Whac-A-Mole?”

  “Uh, are you feeling okay, Will?”

  He felt along the underside of the table. Solid wood, not cheap composite. That was good. About an inch thick. That might be good enough. It would have to be good enough. He would have to perform two movements, one with each hand. He drew a breath and his smile deepened, because if Julie made any sudden movements it would be over.

  “I was just thinking about something that happened to me a long time ago—”

  He flipped up the table with one hand so it was shielding Julie from the sniper, and drew his Glock with his other hand.

  Julie screamed as Robie fired, killing the overhead light. The rifle shot shattered the window and drove into the wood and passed through it, but the barrier had served to throw off the line of fire. It struck the wall to the left of Julie.

  “Get down,” snapped Robie. Julie immediately went to her belly. Robie heard footsteps rushing down the hall.

  Robie moved behind the table.

  He turned to Julie, who lay flat on the floor with her hands over her head.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” she said in a trembling voice.

  “Did you open the window blinds?”

  She peered up at him. “No, they were like that when I got here.”

  The door started to open. A voice called out, “Robie,” you okay?”

  Robie recognized the voice as belonging to one of the agents guarding them. He called out, “Put your gun down on the floor and slide it in the room with your foot.”

  One of the men yelled, “What the hell is going on, Robie?”

  “Just what I was about to ask you. Who opened the blinds in this room?”

  “The blinds?”

  “Yeah, the blinds. Because a sniper just took a shot right through that opening. So unless you have an answer I’ll shoot the first person that comes through the door. I don’t care if it’s you or anybody else.”

  “Robie, we’re the FBI.”

  “Yeah, and I’m one seriously pissed-off guy with a Glock. Where does that get us?”

  “There’s a sniper outside?”

  “That’s what I said. Didn’t you hear the shot?”

  “Hang tight.”

  He heard the feet running away again.

  Robie looked down at Julie and back over at the window. He wasn’t hanging tight. He pulled out his phone, thumbed Vance’s number. She answered.

  He said, “Sniper at the safe house. Mole somewhere. Need backup. Now.”

  He clicked off took Julie’s hand. “Keep low,” he warned her.

  “Are we going to die?”

  “Just keep down and follow me.”

  He led her out of the room, cleared the hall, and they ran, not to the front or back doors, but to the opposite side of the house from where the shot had come. They crouched down in the room while Robie did a turkey peek out the window. There was no way he could do a clean sweep of the area with his naked eye, but he didn’t see a scope reflection, although the high-end equipment they had out there now wouldn’t necessarily have such a signature wink of light. He had no idea if the guy who had told him to hang tight was an ally or foe, and he didn’t think it was a good idea to wait and find out for certain.

  They would be expecting them to go out either the back door or the window on the side opposite from the sniper fire.

  So Robie planned to go out the front door.

  But first they had to get there.

  They moved back into the hall, and with Robie leading they made their way slowly toward the front of the house. The house was in a neighborhood with one road in or out. There were no houses close by. You had to really want to get to the place. Someone evidently had. And he had done so with help from the inside.

  When Robie looked around the corner into the front room he saw the body of one of the agents lying there, feet closest to the front door, blood around his neck. Not a bullet wound. Robie would have heard the shot, and only a shotgun would have made a gash that big. Had to have been a knife. Hand over the mouth, knife slash to the neck, not much sound. Death would come fast.

  Hand over the mouth. Killer would’ve had to get real close for that.

  Another traitor in the ranks.

  “Oh my God.”

  He looked back at Julie. She had just seen the body.

  “Look away,” said Robie.

  He thumbed his phone keypad again. Vance picked up. Robie could hear the sound of her engine. She must’ve had it revved to over a hundred.

  “Got one dead agent. Don’t know where the others are. Dead guy has up-close wound. Whoever nailed him he thought was a friend.”

  “Shit!” exclaimed Vance.

  “How far away are you?”

  “Three minutes.”

  He put away the phone and turned to Julie.

  “We’re going to go out that front door, but we need to draw attention somewhere else.”

  “Okay,” she said, her gaze darting between Robie and the dead man. “How?”

  Robie cleared the chamber on his pistol, popped the mag, pulled out the two top rounds, inserted the two rounds he’d taken from his jacket pocket, and smacked the clip back into place. He racked the slide, which pushed one of the new rounds into the chamber.

  He edged to the door and used his foot to move it open.

  “What are you going to do?” asked Julie. “Shoot your way out of here?”

  “Cover your ears.”

  “What?”

  “Cover your ears and look away from the door.”

  Robie waited while she did so. Then he aimed and fired.

  The first round hit the gas tank on the Bucar parked in the driveway. The incendiary round ignited the gasoline vapor and the explosion lifted the sedan right off the asphalt.

  His second shot was aimed at the second Bucar, parked next to the first. A second later it joined the fireball of the first.

  Robie grabbed Julie’s hand and they sprinted through the doorway. Keeping the wall of flames and smoke between them and, hopefully, whoever had just tried to kill Julie, they turned away from the house and ran down the street. Robie had debated trying to reach his car but decided that that would be akin to painting a target on their heads.

  A car turned onto the street and accelerated. Robie saw the blue grille lights. He flagged Vance down. She hit the brakes and the Beemer skidded to a stop. Robie threw open the door, pushed Julie into the back, and jumped into the front passenger seat.

  “Go, now!” he told Vance.

  She put the car in reverse and smoked her tire tread backing down the street. She hit a J-turn, and as soon as the hood of her car was pointing