Angel Killer (36 page)

“My family?” The word sounds unusual to me.

“Your father and your uncle. They’re staying at a hotel. I’m not sure how things are with you and them, but I thought it best for them to be close by.”

I’m not ready to deal with my father just yet. Maybe when I have a little more strength. But I’m glad he came. Maybe ten years a little too late. But he came.

“What about the pilot?” I ask.

“He didn’t make it.”

“Damn.” If we could have gotten him to talk, who knows what he could tell us. “What about Haywood?”

“Still sitting there. Not saying anything. If the pilot had survived, we might have been able to play them off of each other.” Ailes’s eyes dart away for a moment as he hesitates.

I’m still cleaning the cobwebs from my head. “What?”

“If there’s one accomplice . . .”

I get it. “You think there might be more.”

“A cult. We still don’t really know what he was going to do in Colorado or Texas.”

“If he’s in custody he’s going to need help to pull it off,” I reply.

“Our mystery shooter who took out the pilot may have been doing Haywood a favor after all.”

I shake my head. I know it was Damian. I can’t come out and say that to Ailes—although I’m sure he knows. Damian tracked me down somehow and took out the pilot before he could kill me. Once again, his protecting me puts his actions under suspicion.

I sit up in my bed. There’s a bouquet of orchids on my nightstand. Orchids . . . a favorite I’ve only told a few people. I reach for the card.

“It’ll take some unconventional thinking to get them,” says Ailes.

I open the card.

I hand the card to Ailes. He reads it and gives it back to me. “What does he mean?”

“He’s going to try to find them before we do. Before they have a chance to get to me,” I reply.

“And do what?”

“Kill them. Kill them all.”

“One man?” asks Ailes.

“How many guards are here?”

“Two on the door. Another two watching the lobby. I’ve been here for a few hours. I dozed off for a bit. Why?”

“Did you see anyone place the flowers here?”

Ailes stares at the bouquet. His mouth opens to say something, but he’s speechless. He runs to the hallway to talk to the policemen guarding the door. Damian was in my room proving my point. Ailes runs to the hallway to talk to the police officers guarding the door.

I lie back and stare at the ceiling.

Damian’s kiss is still warm on my cheek. I’m bothered by how much it comforts me.

If I don’t stop him he’ll get them. I don’t doubt that for a moment. I can sit here and let that happen. Everyone will tell me I’ve done everything I could. I’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty. The Warlock is in jail. Maybe we haven’t proved it’s him, but I know.

Meanwhile, my obsessive sociopath is out there trying to protect me. He wants revenge, not justice.

Maybe it would be better if I let him do that. But I made an oath to uphold the law. I can’t let Damian fight my battles. I don’t need a protector.

I pull the IV from my arm. The floor is cold. It’s better than feeling numb.

I put on my clothes and go into the hallway. Ailes is dressing down a local police officer. “Jessica?” he says as he sees me standing, still a little unsteady.

“We have to stop them. We have to stop them all. It ends.”

“I know that. There’s nothing more we can do right now.” He gently grabs my arm.

“Yes there is.” I feel my knees beginning to buckle.

“We don’t know how many are out there. They’re fanatics. They think this man is God.”

My fingers dig into his forearm, more for balance than emphasis. “Then we kill their god.”

He relaxes his own grip. “I don’t suppose putting you in restraints will work . . .”

I fight back the urge to just lie down and let things wash over me. Things are clearer to me now. I see an end to this game. “Not a chance.”

T
HE MAN WE BELIEVE
is the Warlock is sitting in a small room watching the television on the other side of a wire grid. The only sign of movement is his eyes flickering across the images on the news. His bound wrists rest on the metal table where they’re handcuffed.

A guard unlocks the door and lets me inside. Haywood, whatever his name, sees my reflection in the television. His spine snaps straight for a moment before he relaxes into his normal posture.

It’s the little reactions like this that tell me who he is. As a cop and a make-believe mind reader, you look for how people react when they don’t think they’re being observed. This shows you their true nature. I unsettle Haywood behind his mask.

We still don’t know his real identity, but in consulting with the DEA, we suspect he may have been someone on their radar for a while under another name. In the last ten years several new synthetic drugs appeared on the market, they suspect designed by the same person. Coming up with new drugs can be extremely lucrative. The designer never has to meet face-to-face with his clients. He never has to produce them in large quantities either. He gives them a formula and a process in exchange for a percentage of the profits. If they screw him over on the money, he takes the next new thing somewhere else.

As I walk around the table to the chair opposite of him, his gaze follows me. There’s the faintest of smiles at his lips. I sit down and stare back at him.

“This is a pleasure,” he says as he uses the remote to lower the volume.

“Is it?” We’d kept my disappearance out of the news. This is the first time he knows that I’m alive.

“Very much so,” he insists. “I was afraid . . .” There’s a hesitation in his voice. “I was afraid you weren’t worthy.”

“Worthy of what?”

He gives me a slim reptilian grin. I can tell he’s trying to compose himself. He wants everyone to think things are going the way he intended. He’s still processing the realization that I’m alive, and that his attempt on my life through his accomplice was botched.

“Have you been traveling much?” he asks.

I ignore the question and ask my own. “Why?”

“Exactly.” He says it as a statement.

“I have to call the parents and loved ones of the people you killed. They’re all going to ask me why. What should I tell them? That nobody paid attention to you when you were little? Girls wouldn’t talk to you? That you have such low self-esteem that you decided that the only way to feel anything was make people think you were special? Any words I should pass on to them when I tell them I met with the person that murdered Chloe, Denise, Claire and Jeff?”

His eyes drift to the floor and the expression vanishes. “Yes. I feel for them. I don’t expect them to see the shape of things. But I took no pleasure in their deaths. They are very much loved.”

“They may not quite understand what you mean by love.”

“Love is sacrifice. Isn’t it, Jessica? It’s dealing with inconsistencies and hypocrisies. It’s seeing the good among all the bad. It’s why somewhere deep down you’re capable of love, even though you’ve been surrounded by, shall we say, some very complicated men?”

“I don’t think you know the meaning of love.”

“Maybe not. Maybe not. But I’ll leave you with this question. What was I feeling in my heart when I watched you sitting there in the darkness all alone in my warehouse in Michigan? Why did my finger never waver over the button that could have cratered you in an instant, wiping away every sad thought from your face?”

I don’t know what to say. We never told him we found the Michigan warehouse. All this time he knew? He saw me sitting there and never set off the explosion? It has to be a trick. Why else wouldn’t he?

“Did I strike a nerve?” he asks. “Tell you what, if you can answer me one question honestly, I’ll do the same.”

I give him a cold stare.

“It looked like you were staring at something in the dark back in that warehouse, Jessica. For the life of me I couldn’t remember what was there. Then I realized it must have been something that wasn’t there. A person. Who were you looking at? In the darkness, who do you see?”

My mouth opens but I don’t have an answer.

“Their lives served a greater purpose. Where others had doubt, they now have certainty. We live in an age of miracles.”

“All you did was construct elaborate lies.”

“Isn’t that the root of all faith? The belief in something that isn’t true—at least something you have no reason to believe is true? And what do you know? Maybe I am a god.”

I raise an eyebrow at the holding cell. “So you’re here by choice?”

“Jesus could have escaped his Roman prison cell if it was necessary.”

I roll my eyes. The television is playing behind me at a low volume. He shifts his gaze from me to the screen for a moment.

“It doesn’t matter if you believe me. It only takes a few.” The last words come out slowly. He’s distracted.

“There’s a gift shop next to his cell in Jerusalem,” I tell him. “Do you think he planned on that? Think things got a little off-message after he died?”

Haywood is pretending to not watch the television set. “His disciples . . . they spread the word . . . they . . .” His words trail off as he tries to focus on the television. His fingers twitch as he thinks about turning the volume up.

I stare straight back at him and don’t acknowledge the television. Behind me the pilot, the man who tried to kill me on the Warlock’s order, is talking to a camera. Diagrams of the Empire State Building and medical reports flash on the screen. He’s exposing the charade.

“. . . I began to suspect it was all a lie . . . but I was too afraid . . .” says the pilot.

I give Haywood a thin smile of my own. “When Jesus died, Peter didn’t go running around calling him a fraud. Did he? That’s the real problem in being a god; you don’t get to control the message.”

Haywood’s facial muscles slacken for an instant, then grow tense. His wrists pull at the handcuffs fastened to the table.

Behind me the pilot continues the exposé, calling Haywood a charlatan; the whole thing a lie. Haywood is furious. His most trusted confidant is revealing everything. His Peter has become a Judas.

We don’t know what the pilot really knew. It doesn’t matter. Like any other magician, Haywood knows his weakest link is the people he trusts with his secrets. Right now he’s watching his most devout disciple call him a fake.

It’s a trick, of course. Eventually he’ll realize it was his own trick. It’s Gerald on the tape using his computer program to mimic the pilot. We pulled enough audio and video from the camera on the plane to make it work.

The whole thing was done on the sly without official approval. Ailes ran it by Chisholm over drinks in a Georgetown bar. Both understand the game is deeper than just arresting people. This is psy-ops. Going after cults is sticky business. The only effective way is to destroy them from within.

We don’t know who else he has out there. But I’m sure when they see this they’ll have some soul-searching to do. If they’re smart, they’ll come to us before Damian finds them.

I stand. Haywood stares up at me and tries to say something. He wants to sound confident. Words fail him.

“You don’t know the whole plan!” he shouts as I head toward the door.

“I don’t care. Nobody cares. All you are is a liar now. A liar and a murderer.” I let the door slam behind me, leaving him alone in the cell. Without an audience.

To: Alan Parkworth, Assistant Director, FBI Cyber Division

From: Dr. Trey Goode, Director, NSA Intra-Agency Cryptographic Working Group

Special thanks to my father, a federal agent, whose cases and incredible experiences inspired me and whose unwavering support encouraged me. Thanks to my brother, an FBI agent, for providing me with helpful information and forgiveness for the dramatic license I took. Justin Robert Young for his essential help at every stage of this book. My literary agents, Erica Spellman Silverman and Robert Gottlieb. My editor, Hannah Wood, for her dedication to this book. James Randi, a great mentor who taught me how we’re deceived, and more importantly, why we need to believe. Ken Montgomery, Mary Jaras, Gerry Ohrstrom, Matt Ridley, Dr. Paul Zak, Joke & Biagio, Brian Brushwood, the Weird Things podcast listeners, Diamond Club <> and the Mayniacs.

ANDREW MAYNE
is the star of A&E’s magic reality show
Don’t Trust Andrew Mayne
, and has worked for David Copperfield, Penn & Teller, and David Blaine. With the support of Johnny Carson, Mayne founded a program that uses magic to teach critical thinking skills in public schools for the James Randi Educational Foundation, and his “Wizard School” segments aired nationwide on public television. He lives in Los Angeles.