Girl of Rage

  Adelina felt her eyes water with frustration as she finally gave in and physically pulled Jessica up, pulling her legs forward until they dangled off the edge of the bed.

  “Mmmmm, I’m okay,” Jessica mumbled.

  The exhaustion, if anything, was worse now than it had been the first few days after they’d arrived at the retreat. Sister Kiara had been clear about that. Ten to twenty days where Jessica would do very little other than sleep or eat. Six months where she would seem listless. Increased risk of heart trouble, strokes or brain aneurisms because of damage to the blood vessels.

  Most meth addicts relapse, Adelina. She’ll need a great deal of care and close attention.

  Right now Jessica just sagged in place. At least she didn’t curl up again. The sun would be up shortly, and she wanted to be out of here within the next few minutes. She couldn’t trust that the manager of the campsite would keep his promise. He might realize he had fugitives on the property. He might call the police figuring a reward might be in the offing. He might do anything, and she wasn’t willing to take a chance.

  At the same time, she wasn’t taking her daughter out looking like this. Jessica’s face was smudged with what looked like dirt. Her t-shirt was rumpled and dirty, which was probably fine—she was a teenager after all—but her hair was also a snake’s nest of tangles.

  “Hold still,” Adelina said. And in the dim light of the cabin in the northern California forest, she began to brush her daughters hair.

  “It’s okay … stop…” Jessica said, pushing Adelina’s hand and the brush away.

  “Hush,” Adelina responded. She brought the brush back up and began to brush. Jessica’s hair had always been lighter than her twin’s, brown like Alexandra’s—and Richard’s. .She could see his features clearly on Jessica’s face. The squarer than was entirely feminine jaw, the thick, almost luscious eyebrows. Richard had been a handsome bastard, after all.

  Of course, that was one of the saddest parts about their marriage. It’s not like Richard couldn’t have picked up a woman. For thirty years she’d seen a parade of unfortunate women throw themselves at her husband, though it had become less common as they’d grown older. She never cared. If he was busy with someone else, he was far less likely to bother her.

  Right now, Richard wasn’t her problem. Jessica, her eighteen-year-old daughter, was. Jessica was leaning forward now, her eyelids heavy, and Adelina said, “Come on, Jessica, sit up. We’ll be in the car soon.”

  A few more swipes with the brush brought Jessica’s hair into some kind of order. Not beautiful, because large amounts of it broke off every time it was disturbed. Her hair was far thinner than it had been a few months ago. Her whole body was far thinner. Once again, rage at her husband flooded through Adelina. He’d been with Jessica, in California, while Jessica fell apart from grief and addiction.

  While Jessica went to parties with guys from school, Richard had been busy in his office doing God-knows-what. Adelina had never trusted him. She’d never loved him. He’d never been her husband in any way that mattered. But she’d believed that he’d watch after his own daughter, while she stayed in Washington to deal with the aftermath of Ray’s murder and Sarah’s injuries.

  Instead, he’d just let her do whatever she wanted. She’d signed her own report card and erased messages from the home answering machine documenting her absences from school. While he stayed locked in his office, doing whatever the hell it was he did, Jessica had found their emergency cash fund—ten thousand dollars, sorted in a steel box in the attic—and spent all of it.

  While he stayed locked away in his office, Jessica had become a slave. All it took was one night at a party.

  Miriam said it was okay, Mom, Jessica had told her, tears running down her face. She said it wasn’t addictive. I didn’t know it was meth.

  It was too late. When Adelina returned home from San Francisco, she knew there were problems, but not how serious. She knew Jessica was losing a frightening amount of weight, but briefly, her grades returned to normal. January and February crawled by, with Jessica attending weekly therapy sessions. Adelina began to believe they were home free, until Jessica snuck out on a Friday night in April, two days after her eighteenth birthday. She came home with her clothing torn and dirty and a nasty bruise on her face.

  Emergency room. Waiting hours. Long discussions with the doctors and therapists.

  Then the ugly news. No available beds for three more weeks.

  Finally Adelina decided. She made the arrangements to take Jessica to a private Catholic retreat tucked amidst the redwoods, and hired a doctor and nurse to attend to Jessica during the worst of the withdrawals.

  “Almost done,” Adelina whispered, as she finished brushing Jessica’s hair. She hadn’t realized tears were flowing down her face. Almost angry with herself, she swiped at the tears and pulled Jessica to her.

  “Can we get some breakfast?” slurred Jessica.

  “Yes. Let’s go,” Adelina said.

  She took her daughter’s hand and they left the cabin. The sun wasn’t quite up yet, but it was close, the sky a vivid rose and orange shimmering through the trees. Adelina led Jessica to the car, then walked around to the driver’s side and got in. Once they were both buckled up, she slowly drove out of the campsite.

  Adelina shivered when she saw the old man who managed the site. He was standing outside the cabin near the entrance, in a grubby t-shirt, with a suspicious expression on his face. She was grateful he’d let them stay, but it worried her for the future. She thought about his expression as she drove away from the campsite, pondering his suspicious demeanor, then abruptly pulled the car over.

  “Whas wrong?” Jessica slurred. She was holding a hand up to her forehead, a pained expression on her face.

  “Don’t worry,” Adelina said. Only she was worried. She got out of the car and walked in a circle around it. It was a green Dodge Caravan and looked little different than a million other minivans on the road. Mud splatters on the bottom showed they’d been near the campsite. Adelina walked over beside the road. Thick mud. She leaned over and picked up two fistfuls, then threw a mud clod at the license plate, obscuring three of the letters. It wasn’t enough, but any more might look obvious. She shook as much of the mud off her hands as she could and walked back to the car.

  Of course, now her hands were covered in mud. She ran her hands along the hood, getting them wet, then reached inside, searching for a napkin or paper towel. Jessica’s eyes were wide, but she passed her mother a small stack of napkins.

  Adelina wiped her hands as best she could, then got in and started driving. She switched on the radio, switching the satellite radio to the all-news channel. She needed to know what was going on, and if there was any kind of search happening.

  Voices. She listened, the voices washing over, something irrelevant. A joint Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service investigation into—

  She jerked in her seat just as Jessica muttered, “What? Turn it up.”

  Adelina reached for the dial.

  “We’re returning to Jim Bowers with WNN News, currently at the Justice Department. Jim, what can you tell us?”

  “Hi Bill. Well, what we know so far is that the Justice Department apparently opened an investigation in response to tips received when Acting Secretary Thompson was nominated as the Defense Department head. According to Rory Armitage, this has been—”

  “That’s the Special Counsel?”

  “Yes, Rory Armitage was appointed as an independent counsel by the Attorney General. He’s in charge of the investigation.”

  “Okay. And Armitage felt there was enough information to bring in the IRS?”

  “That’s right. We don’t know the details of their evidence, but the accusations are clear. They’re accusing Richard Thompson of outright corruption, documenting bribes and money laundering activities as far back as the 1980s.”

  “And this somehow involved Crank and Julia Wilson?”

  “That’s wh
at the IRS believes. And the most bizarre part, Bill, is the involvement of the children. There’s speculation that Thompson got into a conflict with a drug cartel, because the family homes in San Francisco and in Bethesda, Maryland were attacked last night. His wife and two of his daughters are missing right now, and the rest are in protective custody.”

  “Can you tell us something about the search?”

  Adelina sucked in a breath. She looked over at Jessica, who sat, eyes wide, confusion on her face.

  “I don’t have many details, Bill. I know nationwide alerts have been sent out, and an AMBER alert for Andrea Thompson, since she’s sixteen years old. I don’t think the FBI is holding out much hope of finding them.”

  Adelina sighed. Nationwide alert. She’d have to be very careful. The police would be looking everywhere for her. She needed to stop. Get hair dye or bleach, do everything she could to change their appearance before the alerts went out far enough that people started to recognize her.

  Damn it.

  “Mom?” Jessica said, her voice shaking.

  “Yes, sweetie?”

  “What the hell is going on?”

  Adelina sighed. It was a long, painful story. It was a story none of her children knew. It was an ugly story. Everything about their lives had been lies. But wasn’t it time to start telling the truth?

  Carrie. May 2. 10:45 am.

  Bear squeezed the steering wheel and said, “Have you met Senator Rainsley?” His expression was severe. Before they’d left the safe house, he’d drunk three cups of coffee, explaining that he had been up all night. Earlier he’d said he was going home, but after a brief phone call he’d changed his mind.

  Carrie, who wore a simple, but elegant suit, said, “I don’t think so. He and my father were political enemies for many years. I remember hearing his name spoken like a curse.”

  “Interesting,” Bear said. “It would tend to back up the idea that he’s your birth father. That’s an incredibly long running affair, though. You were born, when, 1988?”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere. I was born in January ’85.”

  “Okay. So this affair was going on from at least, what, March or April ‘84 up through … 1996?”

  “It had to have been on again and off again. My parents were posted to different cities during those years. Washington, Brussels, Beijing.”

  Bear nodded. “That makes a little more sense. So, she meets Rainsley in DC sometime in ’84. They have an affair. You’re born. Then she runs into him again years later. Where were your parents in ‘96?”

  “China.”

  “Rainsley was in the Senate then. It’ll be simple enough to check if he was in China at any point then.”

  “My dad said so … shit!” Tears suddenly welled up in Carrie’s eyes. Her dad. She sometimes felt like someone had punched her in the face when the knowledge hit that the man she’d always believed was her father wasn’t. And not just that he wasn’t—but that both of her parents had lied about it.

  Why? If her mother didn’t love Richard Thompson, why didn’t she leave him? Why the pretense? It was clear her mother had never been happy. She’d suffered from depression and anxiety and God only knew what else, and she’d taken that out on her daughters for years.

  She sighed. “Julia said she had some news related to all this that she found in San Francisco. But she didn’t want to talk about it on the phone and asked to wait until we could meet in person.”

  “She’s on her way to DC?”

  “Yes. Last we talked she was stuck in traffic near Fredericksburg.”

  “Christ,” Bear said. “So we’ll meet back up with her later.”

  Carrie sighed. “No news about Andrea? Or my mother?”

  Bear shook his head. “No. We’ve got alerts out for both. Police in both states have pictures, details. But nothing for sure yet.”

  “And what do you know about Rory Armitage?”

  “Armitage? He’s the special prosecutor investigating your father—the Secretary of Defense.”

  “It seems like all of this is happening very quickly. I mean—you know a little about what happened with my husband, Ray, right?”

  “A little. I read about it in the papers.”

  Mention of the newspapers made her stomach twitch. She and Ray had been smeared in the news. “Everything in the papers was wrong,” she replied sharply.

  “Okay, so tell me what happened.”

  Carrie swallowed. “Army platoon went off the deep end. They took a lot of casualties, then the platoon sergeant went crazy and shot a civilian kid. Ray reported it several months later, and his sergeant leveled counter charges saying Ray had pulled the trigger. They put him on trial.”

  “And he was murdered,” Bear said.

  The word always hurt. It was ugly, and bare, and truthful. It said nothing and it said everything. “That’s right,” she said. “By one of his fellow soldiers.”

  “Jesus,” Bear said.

  “Anyway,” she said. “You’ve got to understand. I’ve already lost my soul mate. My husband. And … all I have is my family. My sisters. My daughter. You understand? I can tell you this much: Andrea’s not mixed up with money laundering or drugs or anything else. Neither is Julia. Whatever’s going on with this prosecutor and investigation stinks.”

  Bear didn’t answer. He kept his eyes on the highway as they got closer to the city.

  “Why aren’t you answering?” she asked. “You think they’re guilty?”

  Bear shrugged. “I don’t have enough evidence to have an opinion. I know your sister took out two experienced killers with her bare hands. I know they found drugs and money in her room. A lot of both. I know my ex-wife got shot down trying to protect her, but instead of turning herself in for safety, Andrea disappeared.”

  “Wouldn’t you? It’s not like she didn’t have reason to disappear. Three attacks, Bear. Three. In less than a week. The only conclusion is that you can’t protect her. Especially when at least one of your own people was involved.”

  Bear nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, good point. Which is why I’m taking you to see Senator Rainsley. Because everything about this makes exactly no sense at all.”

  Bear was driving too fast for the wet road conditions as he sped through Arlington on I-66. The speed felt like death to Carrie, and finally she said, “Slow down. My daughter already lost one parent.”

  He slowed.

  Traffic soon began to back up near the Roosevelt Bridge. Soon they were creeping along, cars all around. The Potomac River spread across before them; ahead, the Kennedy Center, the Lincoln Memorial, the US Institute of Peace.

  Carrie had avoided this part of town religiously. She remembered the last time—walking with Dylan down 23rd Street to the edge of the National Mall, just a few blocks from George Washington University Hospital, where her husband had been laying. Dying.

  It was still close sometimes. The moment the doctors told her she had to make a decision, that he was brain dead, that he would never recover, that there was nothing there but a husk, a body connected to life support.

  She looked down at the floor of the car and went silent. It was easier than seeing those places, which for her would always ache with his memory.

  Bear frowned and said, “Everything all right?”

  She shrugged. “Ray died a few blocks from here. This part of town always reminds me.”

  Bear sighed. “Sorry, Carrie. For what it’s worth, you both got a raw deal.”

  “You’ve got no idea.”

  She turned away from him, resting her chin on a fist and blocking her view of both Bear and the State Department building to their left.

  She knew what Ray would have said. Always optimistic, always hopeful. You just have to pick yourself back up, Carrie. I love you. You can do this.

  He would have encouraged her. To keep going. To do the right thing. To take care of herself and her sisters and especially her daughter. And she would. She’d do what he would have wanted, because that’s wha
t you do, right? You just pick up and keep going.

  “Almost there,” he said.

  The Capitol building was in view, the giant cast iron dome with its dozens of columns and ironwork statues stark against the ashen sky. This had once been Carrie’s favorite city. She remembered spending her first two years of high school here, before they left for Moscow. She’d come back briefly with Julia, Crank and Sean in 2003. Then finally, in 2013, she’d come here to live. The best and worst year of her life.

  She sighed. Right now, she needed to set all of that aside. She needed to remind herself that Ray Sherman wouldn’t have sat around sighing. And neither would she. Carrie Sherman was made of stronger stuff than that.

  She cleared her throat and muttered, “Sorry about that. I’m good to go now.”

  “Good,” he replied. “We’re going to park at Union Station and walk over. That all right?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  They didn’t talk as Bear negotiated the traffic near the Capitol building and then parked behind the large marble structure of Union Station. Twenty minutes later they were walking down the sidewalk to the Russell Senate Office Building, where Senator Rainsley had his office. All around them were people who felt at home here: Senate and House aides, lobbyists and lawyers, Senators and Congressmen. People from a thousand different walks of life—from the seven figure lobbyist-lawyers to the minimum wage deliverymen. It was overwhelming. She’d grown up around the Foreign Service; she knew the ins and outs of the government from an early age. There was something comforting about walking down a sidewalk filled with oblivious government functionaries, people who had a sense of purpose, people who believed their lives mattered.

  She stared up as they approached the stone and marble Beaux-Arts Russell Building. White columns reached to the upper stories, the windows between them lined up in a row down the block.

  It was almost intimidating, she thought, as they went through security and on to the elevators. Inside, past the interior rotunda, was a long marble hallway with twenty-five foot ceilings, imposing marble walls and floors. The entire structure was designed to make visitors feel small, insignificant. And perhaps they were, in the context of history. But she knew that right now, her focus needed to stay very solid.