She reached his face before he could knock her away, cutting his jaw with two of her black nails.
Asad flailed with both arms, but the abruptness of her attack had taken him off guard. He swiped thin air as she ducked under and away.
She brought her knee up into his gut and shoved him toward his friends, who were diving in for the kill.
Run, Katrina!
Running from seven boys who had blood in their faces was no act of cowardice. But this realization came too late. She should have tried to outrun them instead of trying to infuriate their leaderâa strategy that offered no advantage over the others.
She clawed at Asad's back, ripping his shirt and the skin beneath. And then she sprinted for the rear door.
A hand slammed into her back, shoving her forward. The flip-flops had dried, but they weren't made for running. She tripped over her own feet as she tried to catch herself, slammed to the floor, and rolled to avoid a vicious kick.
One of the boys fell on herâhis mistake, because he could have just as easily kept her down with his boots. But Kat was best close in, where her claws and teeth became effective weapons.
Screaming, she grabbed the boy by his hair and jerked his head closer. She got her teeth on his chin and bit hard.
He howled and rolled off, leaving a chunk of his skin behind. Kat spat it out and rolled to her feet, energized by her small victory.
“Is that all the power your God gave you?” she cried. “You can't lick one stinking witch!”
Five of them descended on her at once, and she knew that she was in real trouble now. A fist smashed into her back. Another struck the side of her head.
She kicked hard, felt her heel connect with a bone. Heard it snap.
“Enough!”
The voice rang through the rafters from behind her attackers. As one, the Muslims spun to face it. In the doorway stood a white-collared priest dressed in jeans, black boots, and jacket. Tall, blond, and at first glance Kat could see that he was well built under his loose-fitting clothes. He wore dark sunglasses despite the dim light.
“Get away from the girl.”
Asad clearly wasn't ready to release the woman who'd bloodied him, bitten off one friend's chin, and broken the bone of another, who was cradling his left arm.
“Trust me, son, you don't want me to tell you again. Get your hands off the girl and leave this building before I lose my patience.”
Asad released her shoulder.
“Leave,” the man said.
The boy nodded at his friends, then looked at Kat. “Hide behind his collar today. Tomorrow is a new day, witch.”
They left reluctantly out the back door, wearing scowls.
Kat walked toward him, mind swelling with the judge's words. “I'm sorry, Father, I swear I didn't start that. We can keep this to ourselves. Right?”
The man pulled off his white collar, turned, and left the room. What kind of priest would do such thing? She'd just been assaulted, for heaven's sake! Kat walked after him.
“Hey! Did you see what happened in there? You saw it, right?”
He walked down the hall.
“Listen to me!” she shouted.
The man reached for the door that led into the main atrium and turned back. “The whole world is listening, Katrina Kivi.”
Only then did she see the camera mounted in the corner above him. Of course, for legal reasons, every move in this publicly funded facility was captured on film. Including the violence she'd leveled at the Muslims, regardless of how justified.
“Then help me,” she said. “You're a priest, please help me.”
“I'm not a priest. But I do know your case, and I know that help is the last thing you want. A few months in prison might adjust your attitude.”
Kat stood trembling with rage. She had the right to defend herself from extremists like Asad. For that matter she'd had the right to break Leila's jaw. She would be completely within her rights to slap this fellow for his arrogance.
Her anger was pointless, she realized, and as soon as she did, it was replaced by thoughts of prison.
“Then why did you save me?”
“Because you need saving. But the judge will see the video feed and she will stay true to her word.”
“I had no choice!”
“You could have run.”
“I don't run.”
“No. You fight.” The man stared at her through his dark glasses, hand still on the door handle. “It's a pity.”
“You pity me standing up to them?”
“I pity you for standing up for your pitiful self.” He opened the door and started to step through.
“Wait. What's your name?”
The man in dark glasses turned his head back to her and hesitated like a man trying to decide if he should answer.
“Johnny,” he said.
“Then listen to me, Johnny, whoever you are. I'm begging you, I'll do anything. Please don't tell the judge.”
“I don't think you understand. This institution is managed by the church, but it's state owned. We have protocol. I've read the file. The court has ordered your service monitored.”
“Then you're saying that there's nothing you can do. Absolutely nothing, so help you God?”
He stared at her for a long moment.
“Please, Johnny. It's not like me to beg, surely you've gathered that much. But I'm begging you. Just give me one more chance. I'll do anything. Legal, that is.”
He hadn't moved for over a minute now. Finally he pulled a pen and slip of paper from his shirt pocket, scribbled something on it, and offered it to her. She hurried forward and plucked it from his hand.
“Be at this address at six o'clock tonight. We'll talk to you.”
She glanced at the address. “We?”
“Kelly and I.”
“Talk to me about what?”
“About if there's any hope for you.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. Darcy rode in the back of the black Lexus sport utility vehicle, trying to adjust herself after five hours of dead sleep. Billy sat to her right, still sacked out. Prior to leaving, Brian Kinnard had given her fifteen minutes to pull together what belongings she needed and promised that his people would secure the house until she returned. Someone would come for the body he'd laid out on a tarp in the garage.
How long until she returned, Kinnard refused to speculate. But he insisted there was no need to take any personal belongings that could be replaced. Money would not be an issue.
She'd gathered the clothes she felt most comfortable wearingâmostly jeans and cotton dresses often pegging her as a hippieâher vampire novels, journal, more novels, iPod containing her entire collection of audio-books and over a thousand albums. Her stuffed bunny, which she'd hugged every night for the last ten years, affectionately named . . . Bunny.
The rest of her life fit on one twenty-terabyte jump driveâlarge enough to fit a backup of her main drive and her entire HD3D movie collection.
When all was said and done, Darcy felt humbled by the fact that her whole world fit so easily inside two rolling duffel bags.
Kinnard had made Billy park the Porsche next to the electric Chevy in Darcy's garage. She watched him quickly transfer his possessions into the back of the Lexus, taking some comfort in the realization that his whole world fit into one duffel bag.
He shrugged. “I'm not big on things.”
“Yeah,” she said.“Me either.”
They'd left Lewistown and headed south through Maryland toward Washington, the District of Columbia.
Kinnard spent the trip on the phone, setting up a meeting of what he was calling the council. It was clear that none of this so-called council was eager to drop whatever they had going tonight to meet about “something they couldn't afford to miss,” as Kinnard was putting it. Not even “something that could change the landscape of American politics.”
Darcy didn't share his conviction. She had no intention of changing anything but the current situation, which was dragging her away from a good life, thank you very much.
“Welcome to the Beltway,” Kinnard said as they neared their destination. “The home of politics. Abandon all hope, ye who enter.”
They drove along I-495, eighteen lanes of expressway that formed a loop around D.C., twenty miles across.“Falls Church is that way.”Kinnard jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “Bethesda is down south, and once we hit the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, you'll be over the Potomac and inside the Beltway proper. Make sure your soul is attached at all timesâthis town will steal it in a second, given the chance.”
“God help us all,” Billy said. Darcy turned to see that he was awake and staring at her. She had her glasses on, something she would be more careful about now.
“You're an attorney, I would think this town would sit well with you.”
“Don't mistake the profession for the person,” he said. “You mind clarifying a few things for me?” he asked Kinnard.
“Not at all. You're alive. Breathing. Is that clear enough?”
“Don't patronize us,” Darcy said.
“Look around. Tell me what you see.”
Darcy let her eyes wander over the traffic, the Potomac River ahead, the sea of towering office buildings in the skyline.
“A city,” she said.
“A city of almost a million by the 2017 census. We're finally ahead of Wyoming. There's a lot more, though. D.C. isn't just a city. It's a
culture.
You're looking at the seat of the nation, a political representation of us all. What happens here affects every living person in the world. Each policy decision made here echoes into the jungles of Indonesia. You know what we call that?”
“Power,” Billy said. “Absolute power.”
The man adjusted his shades as if he suspected Billy had read his mind. “Power. This small piece of real estate is home to all three branches of governmentânot to mention the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Enough political power to flatten the earth again. Definitely a war zone too; a political battlefield mined with special interest groups, think tanks, some of the nation's most . . . um . . .
ambitious
minds.”
“A good reason to stay away,” Billy said.
“Also a good reason to come, apparently. There are as many paid consultants and lobbyists in Washington as there are homeless people on its streets. Almost as though they attract each other.”
He merged onto George Washington Memorial Parkway, parallel to the Potomac.
“Here you can be homeless, and I mean hooked and doped, but you're never far from the political version of the same: a suit, a briefcase, and a congressional proposal. You can't politic if you can't beg.Washington is a collection of representatives who have learned to close the blinds and take the phone off the hook. Politically, the United States is bipolar. But then that's just my opinion.”
“So how does any of this help Billy and me understand what we're doing here?” Darcy asked.
“I asked you what you saw outside, you said a city. What I see is a world of cutthroats, more than a few of whom are determined to cut yours. Patronizing or not, my observation that you're alive is recognizing a rather astonishing fact. I don't think you can see just how fortunate you are to be breathing any more than you can truly see just how dangerous Washington is, not without surviving it yourself.”
Darcy glanced at Billy, who was trying to suppress a grin. Kinnard came across more like a seasoned litigator than a hired henchman.
Then again, he was from Washington. He was obviously more than he let on.
“Assuming, that is, you do survive it,” Kinnard said. “They won't stop coming for you.”
“But you can protect us,” Darcy said. “Right?”
“If you play ball.”
He was speaking in circles and Darcy was running out of patience. “And who exactly are you?”
“Me? I'm your best friend in the making,ma'am. I can be anything you need, anytime, for any reason. And that's a promise.”He paused. “Or you can just think of me as one of those highly paid consultants I mentioned.”
“And what does that make us?” Billy asked.
“Besides alive?”
“I think you've made your point.”
“For now just think of yourselves as two more highly paid consultants.” And then he added, “Unless this all works out.”
“In which case?”
“In which case you just might change the world.”
IT TOOK them another half hour to pull up to the secure glass-paneled building on Wilson Boulevard that housed dignitaries visiting the capitol. Kinnard had saved them, brought them to Washington in one piece as promised, and by all accounts Billy knew he should be relieved.
But it wasn't until he looked into Kinnard's eyes for the first time that he gained confidence in the man. Kinnard exited the car, spoke into a radiophone, and exchanged quiet words with two plain guards who stood by the door.
Billy caught one of the guard's eyes through the tinted window and heard his thoughts. The man's concern lay in his rules of engagement. No secrets on the surface.
Kinnard removed his glasses absently. Rubbed the bridge of his nose. Glanced at the car's tinted window. And for the first time, Billy knew what he was thinking. Which was nothing more than how best to facilitate their safety.
Kinnard replaced his glasses.
“Do you trust him?” Darcy had seen the connection.
“Crazy, huh?” He shook his head.
“You do trust him, or you don't?”
“I do, I think. But this reading thoughts . . .”
“Yeah,” she said. “Crazy.”
Kinnard hurried them from the car into a small atrium featuring a waterfall and two large brass sculptures that could be considered flowers with a little imagination. A security station stood between the front rotating doors and a bank of elevators. Three guards dressed in maroon and gray watched them from their stations behind the counter.