Doc had to pull a few strings to get Sarah out of the hospital, including agreeing to have a traveling nurse accompany us. She was young and pretty and nice to Sarah and the kids. I told her I didn't need any attention. She looked me up and down with a quizzical eye, but agreed to leave me alone.
I fell asleep in less than five minutes after takeoff and didn't wake up until we touched down outside of D.C.
Frank was the first to greet me when I stepped off the plane.
"We're going to blow the doors off this," he said.
I nodded, scanning the lot to see if there were any waiting parents.
"Working on a warrant for Burnett's office and his house and his car and anything else we can get our hands on."
"He's dead," I said.
Frank nodded. "C'mon, Jack, we'll discuss that later."
"What about the kids? Where're their parents?"
"We're taking them back to headquarters first."
Two black SUVs waited at the edge of the runway. The kids rode in one, me, Frank, and Sarah in the other. The nurse tagged along with us.
"Can you take me home?" Sarah asked.
"No," Frank said. "We're dropping the nurse at Dulles, then taking you back to our office. You go home when Doc clears you."
And what he didn't say was when we cleared her, she had to be debriefed and she had to sign a ton of forms that essentially made it illegal for her to talk about anything that had happened since she'd met us.
It took two-and-a-half hours to reach the office. Traffic was a bitch. But it gave us time to get a couple FBI special agents to our office.
Special Agents Duncan and Bishop met us in the lobby. I'd worked with Duncan on a few occasions. He'd been around the block a few times, to say the least. When he saw the kids come through the door, he smiled.
"Almost thirty years in," he said. "Never get tired of a happy ending."
Bishop was new and young and looked to be fresh out of law school. He smiled nervously and asked where he should take the kids to begin the process of reuniting them with their parents.
Frank led them to an interrogation room.
"The boy stays with us," I said.
Duncan frowned. "You know that's not how this works, Noble."
"We know his mother. It'd be better if we did this in person. You can come with us. In fact, I'd like you to be there. A cop, too."
He cocked his head and so did Frank.
"What's going on, Jack?" Frank said.
"Why don't we go now?" I said.
The men agreed. Duncan checked with Bishop and made sure his younger partner could handle the kids by himself.
Traffic had thinned, and it took less than half an hour to reach Tammy Nockowitz's townhouse. Frank pulled into the driveway. We waited two more minutes for a local cop to arrive. We met the cop at the bottom of the driveway and I asked him to watch the boy for a few minutes while we spoke with the mother.
Frank knocked on the door and took a step back. Tammy pulled the door open, looked at the three of us standing there and then looked like she was going to cry.
"What's happened?" she said.
"Tammy," I said. "Christopher's OK."
She fell to her knees and cried.
"His father's dead," I said.
She rocked back on her heels and looked up at us. She bit her bottom lip. Mascara stained her face. She wiped her cheeks with her palms and then brushed strands of loose hair behind her ears.
"How?" she said.
"Some of that's classified," Frank said. "And until it passes through the proper channels, we can't discuss it."
She lifted herself off the floor. "Where's my son? When can I see him?"
"In a minute," Frank said. "Jack, you want to get this going?"
I cleared my throat stepped forward so I was right in front of her. I wanted to look into her eyes. I had to see the look on her face.
"Why'd you agree to it, Tammy?"
A confused look crossed her face and she shook her head. "What?"
"This is your chance," I said. "Tell us now and we'll see what we can do for you."
"I don't know what you're talking about, Mr. Noble."
I took a step back, feigning shock. "How do you know my name?" I looked at Frank. "Our names were never given out, were they?"
"No," Frank said with a confused look.
"Tammy?" I said.
Frank placed his hand on my shoulder and leaned in toward me. "What are you getting at?"
"Tammy and Burnett never stopped seeing each other. Isn't that right, Tammy?"
It didn't occur to me until we'd reached the plane that Tammy had been involved with this from day one. She thought Burnett was coming back for her, but in reality, he was trying to have her killed once he realized she'd told us too much.
She shook her head. "No, you got that wrong. Yeah, we had an affair, but that was ten years ago, a onetime thing. I got pregnant and told him, and he wanted nothing to do with me and Christopher."
The look was there. Deception. Burnett wasn't talking about reuniting with Christopher. They'd never been together, thus nullifying the opportunity at a reunion. He meant Tammy. And still, he didn't really mean a reunion. The fact was that they'd never stopped seeing each other. Sure, he wasn't involved in Christopher's life, but the affair he'd had with the boy's mother had stretched on for a decade.
"No, he didn't want the public to find out about you and Christopher, but he still wanted something to do with you. See, being married while having a child with another woman would have been political suicide for Burnett. Continuing to see that woman while remaining married, well he could kiss away any chance he had of being anything other than a mayor in a town with a population of three people. And he wasn't willing to risk that until now."
"No, no, no," she said. "You got it all wrong."
"Why'd you do it?" I said.
She shook her head. "I didn't do anything."
My voice escalated to a scream. "Why'd you let him take your son?"
"I didn't."
"You staged it so that Pablo hit you on the head. Hell, you even got a little cut out of it, didn't you? Pablo didn't work for the guys in the house. He worked for Burnett. I saw him down in Miami." I stopped and stared at her. When she didn't speak, I continued. "You let Burnett take your son, and then after we'd rescued him, you let him take him again."
"No," she said. "I didn't let him take him again. That's why he had me run off the road. I said I wouldn't do it again."
"Again," I repeated. "You left the dinner with Christopher, but when the paramedics arrived, he wasn't in the car. They even said if he had been, he'd have died."
She covered her face with her hands and sobbed heavily.
"Duncan," Frank said. "Why don't you take her to the car for us?"
Duncan entered the house and eased Tammy's hands to her side and then in front of her. He placed handcuffs around her wrists and guided her by her elbow.
She stopped and looked over her shoulder at me.
"I wanted to be a family, Jack. He said Christopher would be OK the first time. They'd treat him well."
"They didn't," I said. "I found him in a dirt pit dug out in a basement."
"And I didn't want this to happen again," she said. "That's why I was trying to talk to you at the dinner. You could have prevented all this."
I shook my head, said nothing. I was done with her. The FBI could take it from there.
Frank told Duncan to wait while he spoke with the police officer. The officer agreed to take Christopher and me back to SIS headquarters, while Frank and Duncan escorted Tammy Nockowitz to jail.
They gave me a week off to rest my body and clear my head. I spent most of the first day in bed, sleeping for close to sixteen hours, then getting up and going back to bed after only four alcohol-fueled hours. I don't remember what I dreamed about, but I woke up every few hours that night, soaked in sweat, with the overwhelming feeling I'd been drowning. The thought that I'd started suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder crossed my mind, but I brushed it aside. I'd seen and been through far worse than the events of the past week.
The next day I took a drive into northern Virginia and stopped at Sarah's firehouse. The guys there told me that she was off for a couple weeks. I convinced one of them to give me her home address.
I drove to her apartment building and parked in front of the main entrance to the building her unit was located in. I took my time walking up the three flights of stairs that led to her door. I thought about what to say to her. Twenty or so opening lines went from winners to losers in the span of two minutes. In the end, I settled on
hi
. I figured she'd understand.
I knocked on the door. A minute passed with no answer. I hadn't bothered watching the peephole, so I wasn't sure if no one was home, or someone looked through, saw me standing there, and decided not to answer. After another round of knocking, a woman I didn't recognize opened the door.
"Sarah here?"
She shook her head.
"Know when she'll be back?"
"She left yesterday. Said she was going home to see her parents."
"Where's that?"
The woman looked at me like I was crazy and started to close the door.
"Wait," I said.
She stopped and arched her eyebrows with a slight shake of her head.
"Can you tell her Jack came by?"
"Oh," she said. "You're Jack Noble?"
I nodded.
"Wait here."
I waited.
She returned with an envelope. "This is for you."
As soon as I grabbed the cream-colored envelope, she slammed the door shut. I waited outside the apartment for a few minutes, listening for voices inside. I didn't hear any and decided to leave.
I sat in my car for five minutes, staring at the envelope that had my name written across the front. I opened it and pulled out a single folded piece of notebook paper. I carefully read the words Sarah had written for me.
Jack,
I've never met a man who excited me the way you did. When I was around you, I felt that I could do anything. Accomplish anything. Be anything. At first, I felt like I was in an action movie. You were the hero, and I was the woman who got mixed up in your dangerous world.
But, like all smart heroines, I came to my senses. I can't be with a man like you. The job you have, and the risks you take, it's all too much for me. No matter how hard I try, I can't envision a future with you as a part of my life.
Please don't try to find me, Jack. Don't search for my parents. Don't return to my apartment. Don't go back to the firehouse. I think it's best if you simply forgot about me.
-S
I half expected it, in a way. Sarah had gone through a lot, and it was my fault. I believed that even if we had started seeing each other, she'd have held some resentment toward me for what happened to her in Miami. Part of me had wanted to make these same points to her, but in the end, my desire for her had won out. And now I'd never know if there could have been a future for us together.
I opened the car door and swung my legs over and set them down on the pavement. I pulled a lighter out of my pocket and ignited it. The flame hovered below the letter for a moment, then the paper burst into flames. I held it in front of me until the fire grazed the tips of my fingers and I let the ball of flames fall to the ground and watched it until it was nothing more than black ash. I stomped it out for good measure, then said, "Goodbye, Sarah."
Alcohol got me through the night. I managed seven hours of uninterrupted sleep. The next day I drove to SIS headquarters. Frank came out of his office when he saw me step into the lobby.
"Jack?" he said. "What the hell are you doing here? You're supposed to be off."
"Got bored," I said.
"Come on, let's sit in my office for a few."
I followed him into his office. He closed the door and then walked around the desk where he took a seat across from me.
"Burnett wasn't just involved in this thing," he said.
"Oh yeah?"
"Son of a bitch masterminded it. We got everything. Records of every shipment. Names of the kids. Names of suppliers and purchasers. I got back from setting up the biggest damn operation you ever heard of. FBI and local law enforcement all across the U.S. The CIA is helping globally. We even got Special Forces joining in, from all branches. We're bringing them home, Jack. All of the kids are coming home."
"That's a lot of happy phone calls," I said.
Frank leaned forward. He narrowed his eyes and said, "What's going on? I thought you'd be excited."
"I am," I said.
"Then what is it?"
"I can't get past the fact that Sarah almost died, and it was all my fault."
Frank shook his head. "You can't blame yourself. Plus, she made it through OK. Some would argue that if you hadn't been there, she'd have died."
"She wouldn't have been there if it weren't for me."
Frank shrugged.
"She won't talk to me."
He nodded. "Sometimes that happens."
I nodded back.
"Hey," Frank said. "Why don't you head this operation up? You did so much to bring it down, it only makes sense that-"
"I'm done, Frank."
His body straightened, like he'd been taken a knife to the lower back. "What?"
I pulled my ID and badge out and placed them on his desk. His eyes followed my outstretched arms and settled on the items I'd put in front of him. I pulled my pistol from its holster and sat it next to my ID.
"Jack," he said. "Why don't you think this over for a while? You don't have to take over the operation. Take a vacation instead. Hell, you've been with me for over two years and these last few days are the only time you've had off."
I shook my head. "I'm done." I grabbed the arms of the chair and pushed myself up, then pulled the door open and stepped into the lobby. I crossed the room and stopped halfway. Turned and looked back, first at my office, empty and dark, and then at Frank, who stood in his open doorway. The expression on his face was one of pain and confusion. I'd seen that look several times, usually when I left somewhere or someone. In this case, I was doing both.