Fade (2005) (29 page)

Chapter
Thirty-Eight.

It was a beautiful spot a little more than an hour outside of D
. C
. an d not all that far from where he used to live. On the downside, becaus e of the dense foliage lining both sides of the narrow dirt road, it wa s impossible to avoid the deep ruts crisscrossing it. Isidro hadn'
t anticipated the Caddy ever leaving the asphalt and the finely tune d racing suspension was protesting loudly. Fade turned the polic e scanner off in favor of the intermittent drone of mosquitoes buzzin g around the open car and slid a little farther down in his seat , focusing more on the clear sky above him than the deserted road i n front of him.

Over the last twenty-four hours it seemed like everything had changed.

He wasn't ready to fully admit it yet, but Matt Egan was right. He'
d blown what was probably going to be his only chance at Hillel Strand.

Why hadn't he just aimed and taken the shot? Fifty-fifty chance tha t he'd have gotten a round off before Egan killed him. Then it woul d have all been over. Too many years of training for survival, h e supposed. It was turning out to be harder to overcome than he'
d expected.

Despite hours of driving around thinking, he didn't even know where t o start again with Strand. He was either at the hospital under heav y guard or he was at his office sitting behind half a billion dollars'
w orth of concrete, Plexiglas, and state-of-the-art security systems.

Which left only Matt. Fade could still picture him sitting ther e wit h Elise on his lap, but he couldn't decipher how he felt about tha t image. He was trying hard for outrage and jealousy but he couldn'
t seem to get it to burn. The more he thought about how much they looke d like they loved each other and their lives, the more tired an d disconnected he felt.

He shook his head violently and turned on the stereo, trying to driv e away the depression that was starting to grip him. He'd thrown out th e interminably cheerful Go-Gos CD in favor of the more appropriat e Ministry. In his experience, it was impossible not to be angry whe n listening to Ministry.

He slid still farther down in the seat, trying to relieve the sickenin g ache in his back. Deciding it was hopeless, he straightened an d instead concentrated on the pain, the music, and the memory of Hille l Strand lying there helpless only a few feet away.

The road dead-ended in a small clearing that contained a single empt y car Karen Manning's. If there was a second drawback to the Caddy, i t was that it was a little too flashy to effectively tail someone in.

He'd had to hang way back and had almost missed her turning off th e highway. Based on the tank top and shorts she was wearing, he assume d she was going for a run, but had expected her to head for a town par k or school track not to drive fifty miles to the middle of nowhere.

He eased to a stop and stepped out of the car, going around to th e front and leaning backward across the hood as far as he could. Th e quiet crunching sound coming from his spine was mildly alarming, bu t the muscles around it reacted to the position and warmth of the engine , relaxing a bit.

When he was satisfied that he was as loose as he was going to get, h e crossed the clearing to an obvious trailhead and began jogging up th e narrow path. He started slowly, increasing his speed every minute o r so until his lungs began to burn and the sweat stung his eyes.

It took almost half an hour for him to catch his first glimpse of Kare n Manning, cresting a depressingly distant hill. There had been a tim e when he'd known exactly how hard he could push himself and exactly ho w the effort would affect him. Now, though, he had no idea. Despite th e fact that he was holding a pace that was probably only half of wha t he'd been able to sustain before, his heart felt like it was going t o burst through his chest. And worse, he was losing coordination in hi s right leg.

When he saw her next, it was only for a moment a brief flash of pin k and yellow that was clearly starting to pull away.

Karen Manning glanced behind her when she came briefly out of the tree s and saw that the runner behind her had lost some time. Based on hi s stumbling gait, though, he was doing everything he could to gain i t back.

She shook her head and jumped over a tree that had fallen across th e trail, dodging through the limbs scattered on the other side. Sometime s she was more than happy to hook up with somebody on the trail a littl e interesting conversation could help pass the miles. But not here.

When she drove all the way out to this trail, it was for solitude.

Besides, anyone trying that hard to catch her was doing it for a reason. She'd end up spending the next hour listening to choked-of f pick up lines and watching the guy drool on himself.

"See ya," she said out loud and lengthened her stride, starting up a steep incline at a pace almost no one in Virginia could match. Te n minutes later, when she reached the top of a ridge and looked back, he r pursuer was nowhere in sight.

It felt good to run hard, to block everything out. But that wasn't wh y she'd come there. She needed some time to think. Satisfied that sh e wasn't going to be caught, she slowed to a pace that would allow her t o concentrate on more complex issues than where her feet were falling.

According to John Wakefield, the investigation into Fade was more o r less stalled. They were reasonably certain that he was still in th e country but couldn't narrow it down much more than that. Inquirie s into his background had ended in the conclusion that he'd left his pas t almost completely behind.

As the fortunes of her former colleagues waned, though, her situatio n just kept getting better. She'd aced the Bill O'Reilly interview an d Pickering had gone into hiding after his meeting with her father'
s legal team a group of men and women who considered Genghis Khan soft.

And, on an even brighter note, the media had become bored wit h interviewing her men's widows and were looking for a new angle. Her PR
p eople were busy making certain that angle would be her own saintly an d tireless devotion to protecting the American people, helping he r church, and baking cookies for the local orphanage.

Her dad, who loved nothing more than manipulating the media an d crushing people he perceived to be his enemies, had informed her tha t he wouldn't be satisfied until everyone in the U
. S
. saw her as a cros s between Joan of Arc and Mother Teresa. There was little doubt that h e would succeed he'd never failed at anything in his life. But even wit h her reputation reconstructed, it seemed unlikely that she would ever b e a cop again. Or that she would ever want to be. No matter what wa y public opinion swung, her men were dead and she bore a lot of th e responsibility for that. She doubted a week would go by for the res t of her life that she didn't wake up seeing their faces.

So what now? If she bought into her mother's recent "you can d o anything you put your mind to" speech, things looked pretty wide open.

Movie star? President? Brain surgeon? Not likely.

The idea of becoming a prosecuting attorney had crossed her mind, bu t the mere thought of law school made her want to shoot herself. Colleg e track coach? Maybe .. .

She sped up again, not yet ready to make any decisions about the res t of her life. It was only another ten minutes to her turnaround poin t and then it was downhill the rest of the way.

Karen was about two miles from her car when she came around a shar p bend and saw a man lying on a boulder next to the trail. Her pac e faltered as she got closer and recognized his clothes as the ones wor n by the man who had been running behind her.

He looked dead.

She finally stopped a few feet away and stared down at him. Could h e have had a heart attack trying to catch her? No way. Her luck jus t couldn't be that bad.

"Sir? Excuse me. Sir?" she said, taking a hesitant step toward him.

"Are you all right?"

She let out the breath she hadn't been aware she was holding whe n I.
h is head lolled over in her direction and he opened his eyes. "You'r e either really fast or I've gotten really slow." "I'm pretty fast."

He smiled and looked back up at the sky muttering something under hi s breath. She couldn't be sure, but she thought it was "How the might y have fallen."

"So you're okay?"

"I can see why you run here," he said. "It feels like you're a millio n miles away from everything."

She leaned forward a bit, squinting at what was visible of his fac e behind the sunglasses he wore. There was something familiar there.

"Have a nice afternoon," she said finally and stepped back onto th e trail. "Enjoy the view."

"Hold on. I have something for you." 2 "Excuse me?"

I He reached for something beside him on the rock and tossed it t o her.

! She caught it and immediately recognized her wallet. When she raise d her head again, the man had pushed his sunglasses up on his head an d was I looking right at her. With his eyes exposed, there was littl e question as to f where she'd seen him before.

I The jolt of adrenaline hit her hard and she bolted down the trail , | getting a good fifteen feet before looking back. He hadn't moved.

She eased off, letting her momentum carry her another five feet befor e she stopped and turned back toward him. He was just lying there , staring a t the sky.

Under normal circumstances, when faced with a cop killer, she'd b e trying to devise a way to capture him. Even unarmed, her one hundre d and forty-five pounds of muscle and her brown belt in jujitsu made he r fairly confident against men much larger than she was. These weren'
t normal circumstances, though. Last time they'd met, he'd gone throug h her like she wasn't even there. Besides, he probably had a gun and sh e was armed with nothing nylon shorts, a tank top, and a pair o f Adidas.

That left plan B, which was to run and call the police when she go t back to her car. There was no way he was going to catch her on foot.

No way.

When he pushed himself to a sitting position, she backed away anothe r five feet and watched him light a cigarette.

"You should quit," she said when he began coughing violently.

"Quit? I just started."

She remained planted when he swung his legs off the boulder an d stood.

"What are you doing here, Mr. al Fayed? What do you want?"

He pointed to the wallet in her hand.

"You could have mailed it."

He shrugged. "My killing spree isn't turning out to be as fun as I'
d hoped. Every morning lately I get up more tired than I was when I wen t to bed. I'm having a hard time remembering things that last week wer e really important to me ..."

Her first impression of him had been badly tainted by fear, sh e realized. Certainly he was well above average looking even with th e Billy Idol hair but that wasn't what struck her. It was his sadness.

When he started toward her, she realized that she wasn't afraid of him.

Though she knew that she probably should be.

"You're finally going to tell me your story," she said, as he passed b y and continued down the trail.

"Am I?"

"I figure it's that or you're here to turn yourself in," she said , catching up and walking alongside him.

"I might be here to kill you," he suggested.

"You might.. ."

They'd been walking in silence for what seemed like a long time whe n they finally reached the clearing where she'd parked. Her head ha d been spinning the entire time.

She'd known about his military background, but the fact that th e company he'd left the navy to join was a CIA front was definitely news.

And based on the amount of trouble that the police were having gettin g information on that now defunct company, it was probably true. Th e fact that he'd been a highly successful assassin working primarily i n the Middle Eas t also jibed nicely with his ethnic background and the fact that he'
d single | handedly wiped out an entire SWAT team. The details of hi s back injur y and subsequent work with the Colombians rang depressingly true , too.

Even more startling, though, was the involvement of Homelan d Security and Hillel Strand the man who had stupidly caused all this an d was undoubtedly working very hard to keeping his role hidden.

When they reached the middle of the clearing, she stopped an d grabbed his shoulder. "Why tell me this, Fade? Do you want me to g o t o the police with it? The press?"

He shook his head and for a moment she thought that was the onl y answer she was going to get.

"It's hard .. ." he started, speaking slowly and seeming t o concentrat e on every word. "It's hard to do everything I've done, to giv e everything i I've given, and to know you're going to be remembered a s nothing more than some pathetic psychopath. I mean, I don't want a medal or anything I don't deserve one. But for some reason I wanted a t least one person to know the truth after I'm gone."

"Gone where?"

He smiled and started toward an immaculate old convertible.

"Why me?" she called after him.