“Speaking of throwing,” she said, sitting up on the edge of the bed, “sorry about the mess.”
Bradley waved a hand and bent over to lift the suitcase off the floor. “I hope you’re not still thinking of leaving.”
Lauren knelt beside him to help clean up. “I don’t know what to think, Nick. We’ve been here four days and we’ve got nothing to show for it. We’re no closer to finding Michael than we were before we got on the plane. How long should we stay here running into dead ends? A week, two weeks? Three weeks?”
“If that’s what it takes, yes. He’s here, in this town, Lauren. Do you really want to fly three thousand miles away from him?”
She looked away. “No. Of course not.”
“Then let’s do something constructive.” Bradley picked up the handheld PC from the nightstand and handed it to her. “You’ve got a direct link to Michael. Let’s use it.”
Lauren started the computer and opened her browser. She selected RETRIEVE AND READ MAIL and began tapping her fingers on the table while waiting for her little computer to download any messages she had received. Although she knew she should hope there would be one from Michael, her emotions were spent. She was numb. To her, it was a clear sign that, deep down, she had given up. She walked over to the window, leaned against the wall, and stared out at the parking lot.
Bradley sat down on the bed and hunched over the tiny computer screen. “Don’t you want to read your messages?”
Lauren kept her gaze on the landscape. “Please, Nick, I’m not in the mood for jokes.”
“I’m not kidding.”
Her head whipped over in his direction. “What?”
He nodded at the small device. “Come look.”
Lauren hurried over to the desk and saw the YOU HAVE 1 NEW MESSAGE prompt. She clicked OK and saw the “lost_in_virginia” moniker in her inbox. “Michael. We’ve got something from Michael!”
With Bradley leaning over her shoulder, she opened the message and began reading. “Thank God,” she said under her breath. Tears glazing her eyes, she glanced up at Bradley. “I don’t understand. The FBI was looking for him, right? So he could testify against Scarponi. They need him. Why would he be a fugitive?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t want to cooperate.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Wouldn’t he want to testify and put this guy back in jail?”
Bradley turned away and did not answer her.
Lauren sat there for a second, then shook her head. “Something’s very wrong.” She found the small gold key around her neck and squeezed it in her hand, then sank down onto the edge of the bed.
Bradley sat down next to her and put his arm around her shoulders, drew her body close to his. “I wish I could tell you this all makes sense. But I can’t, because it doesn’t. Right now, I think we need to keep focused on meeting up with him tomorrow. We can’t worry about what other people are doing. Let’s take things a day at a time. Hell, even an hour at a time. Okay?”
She sat there for a long moment before speaking. “You’ve become such a great friend, Nick. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
He handed her a tissue and gently rubbed her back. “I’m here for you, for as long as you need me to be. I promise.”
“You’re more than a friend, Nick. You’re kind of like the big brother I never had. I can tell you anything, whatever’s on my mind. I’ve never had that feeling about anyone ever, not even my therapist. Just Michael... and you.”
Bradley creased a corner of his mouth into a smile. “I’m honored.”
She could feel the tension leaving her muscles. “I’m sorry I doubted you.”
“Not a problem. But I’m worried about your health. With all you’ve been through, with all the stress you’ve been under, I think it’s important for you to get some sleep.”
“Now you’re acting like my doctor.”
Bradley laughed. “I’ve learned that in my line of work you’ve got to be a little of everything. Least of all what people expect you to be.” He brushed the hair back off her face, then stood up. “Get some rest.”
“But it’s the middle of the day; I can’t just go to sleep—”
“You can and you will. Meantime, I’ll snoop around and see if I can find out what Michael did to land himself on the FBI’s fugitive list. It might affect the way we handle your meeting with him tomorrow.”
She closed her eyes and he covered her with the blanket. “Think good thoughts about seeing Michael again. Before you know it, it’ll be five-thirty and you’ll be in his arms.”
“This whole thing will be over, right?”
“It sure will,” Bradley said with a smile. “It’ll all finally be over.”
The wind had picked up and was blasting everything and everyone in its path, slamming against the fifty U.S. flags flapping in the bright floodlights at the granite base of the Washington Monument.
DeSantos stood in darkness outside the ring of flags, surveying the general area. After the latest tour bus had pulled out of the parking lot five minutes ago, he had nodded to the park ranger, whose four-to-midnight shift was over.
A moment later, Archer completed his walk around the perimeter and nodded. “Clear.”
“Good, then all we’re missing is our host.”
Another blast of wind hit them head-on, and they turned their backs to shield their faces. “I wish he’d get here already. It’s fucking cold out here,” DeSantos said. “I don’t know why we couldn’t just meet in a car, or at my house or something.” He rubbed his gloved hands together.
“It’s Knox. You never know what the guy’s thinking. And we’re in his good graces. Imagine everyone else.”
“My toes are starting to go numb.” DeSantos stomped his feet. “Must be twenty-five below with the wind. I’m leaving in ten minutes if I can still walk.”
“Want some gum?” Archer asked, chomping away on his Juicy Fruit.
“No, I don’t want some gum. Gum ain’t gonna make my body warm.”
“The cold is all in your head, Hector. Just ignore it.”
“This isn’t more of that mind-body bullshit, is it?”
“As a matter of fact, it is. You can bring blood to your extremities—”
“I know how to get blood to one of my extremities. Does that count?”
Archer shook his head. “I can’t believe we asked you to be Presley’s godfather.”
“Hey, I warned you, bro. I y’am what I y’am.” DeSantos began to jump up and down. “So much for mind-body bullshit. I’m still freaking cold.”
“Then take your mind off it. Guess how many people visit the monument each year.”
“I don’t want to guess.”
“Just go with me on this, will you?”
DeSantos rubbernecked his head into the darkness, then checked his watch. “Fine. Eight hundred thousand.”
Archer looked at him, his eyebrows bunched together. “You’re so damn lucky, you know that?”
“What I don’t understand is why so many people are fascinated by a big stone dick sticking up from the ground.”
Archer glanced sideways at his partner, then shivered as another blast of air wormed around his pants.
“Don’t tell me you’re cold, too. It’s all in your head, Brian. Remember?”
Archer started moving his legs, dancing without music, and said, “Trish and I took a tour about four years ago. You wouldn’t believe how many granite blocks—”
“Gentlemen.”
Archer and DeSantos spun, their hands instinctively moving to their weapons.
Douglas Knox was standing in a black wool overcoat, his collar turned up above the level of his ears. “This is how my elite intelligence masters protect themselves?”
“Brian’s fault,” DeSantos said. “He was complaining about how cold he was. I was trying to distract him, take his mind off it.”
Archer threw DeSantos a nasty look, then turned to Knox. “You said it was urgent.”
The director nodded, then shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat. “Payne is going to be in Fredericksburg tomorrow night, five-thirty, Princess Anne Building. He’s set up a rendezvous with his wife.”
DeSantos was itching to ask how Knox had gotten hold of that information, but in the intelligence community, such details were unimportant. When a job was bearing down on you, what mattered was the here and now, and what lay ahead. The past was old news. If you knew and trusted your sources, how certain data came across your desk was generally of little importance.
“Does Payne know we’re going to be there?” Archer asked.
“As far as he’s concerned, he’s going there to meet his wife. We’re not part of the equation. If he senses we’re there, he’ll take off. We’re not his favorite people right now.”
“Obviously you don’t need us to be chaperones,” DeSantos said wryly.
“Scarponi is going to be there, too.”
A shrill gust kicked up a swirl of loose soil and slapped it against their coats. Archer shrugged it off and took a step closer to Knox, who was rubbing some grains of dirt from his eyes. “Are you sure?”
“The news leak on Payne’s amnesia,” Knox said. “I had it back-traced and found its source. Not the person, but the pathway. I planted a dummy message and sent it back along the same channels. I’m betting our mole forwards it on to Scarponi.”
“This the same mole who was feeding Scarponi six years ago, after his trial?”
“I’m sure of it,” Knox said.
“A bit risky, isn’t it?” Archer asked.
Knox squinted angrily, then hung his head and began to pace. After moving a handful of steps in each direction, he zeroed in on Archer’s face. DeSantos moved closer as well, and the three of them now formed a tight triad. If nothing else, their proximity generated heat.
“I intend to recapture Scarponi,” Knox said firmly. “I won’t—I can’t—tell the president he’s escaped. And I sure as hell can’t tell him that Payne also took leave of our company either, now, can I? The buck stops on my desk, gentlemen. So if I have a chance to capture both of them in one operation, I’m going to take that stone and kill the two birds.” He paused for a long second, then said, “To make this happen, I need your help.”
DeSantos looked at Archer and instantly knew what his partner was thinking: How much of what Knox was saying was the truth, and how much was bullshit, laid out for the purpose of using them to get Scarponi back for his group? In the split second that this all bounced around in his mind, he decided not to broach the topic, and he hoped that Archer would feel the same way. With all they had seen so far, he did not feel they could fully trust Knox. At least, not yet.
“I need one of you to hover on the perimeter, the other on the inside. Grab Scarponi and take him safely into custody.” Knox said it matter-of-factly, as if he were asking them to go shopping for groceries. “Once you have him in your vehicle, you will proceed to the safe house on Mission. And I don’t have to tell you to exercise extreme caution with him at all times.”
“What kind of backup will we have?” DeSantos asked, already knowing the answer.
“None. No one can know we’re expecting Scarponi to be there. All other available agents will be focused on identifying and safely securing Payne.” Knox pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Archer, who opened it. “A map of historic Fredericksburg. The
X’s
show where all my agents will be. You two are the
Y’s.
We can only guess where Scarponi will be, but I’ve denoted his possible locations with
Z’s.”
“This is gonna be one hell of a fucked-up operation,” DeSantos said, shaking his head. The logistics of it all were fraught with problems, a fact he was sure Knox was aware of.
The director’s face hardened suddenly, and with barren trees swaying in the wind against the park’s streetlights, shadows cut angrily across his features. “No, this will not be a fucked-up operation, Hector. If it is, we lose Scarponi, maybe for good. No matter how much he wants Payne, at some point he may decide it’s not worth it. In which case we’ll never see his sorry ass again.” Knox pulled a cigarette lighter from his pocket and ignited the corner of the map Archer was holding. The paper began to burn, the flames flickering in the wind, reducing the map to carbon.
As the ashes floated away on the breeze, a blast of wind caught DeSantos’s wool coat and ruffled the bottom, sending tendrils of cold air up his back. They skipped across the gooseflesh that was covering his arms and legs, causing him to shiver.
DeSantos thought about what Knox was proposing and was uneasy. He had studied Scarponi’s file in depth. Like a dog trained to sniff ordnance, he felt he understood his adversary well. And he knew that Scarponi would never give up. Not until his target had successfully been neutralized. No, either Harper Payne or Anthony Scarponi was going to end up dead in Fredericksburg.
And it was becoming increasingly clear that if Knox had his way, the one carted away in the meat wagon was going to be Harper Payne.
When Harper Payne awoke in the small, cheap Fredericksburg motel room, he rubbed his eyes, wondering if the dreams he’d had last night were authentic memories of times with Lauren or fabrications of what he imagined their lives to have been like.
They were so real... they had to be real.
He sat on the edge of the mattress, grinding his teeth, angry at himself for having lost his memory, at having lost his connection to a life that he was beginning to think must have been enormously satisfying and fulfilling.
He thought of Lauren, of what he remembered—or imagined—her to be like. More memories began to crackle in his mind like the flash of lightning against a clouded night sky...
The time they got lost in Tahoe while hiking in the mountains, spending the evening wrapped in each other’s arms.
The white splash of stars across the night sky, the sound of coyotes howling in the distance. What had begun as an intensely frightening experience became a fiercely romantic one...
Feelings, emotions, isolated images. They had to be real.
Sitting there on the bed, he thought of what it would be like seeing her face again, smelling her hair, holding her.
He could feel her now. Her soft skin, the shape of her toned arms, the sloping curve of her back as it swooped down into her waist. How wonderful it felt to be able to see her again, to be able to remember. It was like being liberated from solitary confinement. In some ways, it was worse... unlike a jailed felon, he had done nothing wrong—he was a victim of a mind trapped within itself, unable to find a way out.