“Why did she go over the side of the balcony? That was a stupid stunt out of the movies.”
Dylan shrugged. “Isn’t it better to die trying to survive? Instead of rolling over and letting them take you out?”
Kelly nodded, his expression showing a trace of approval. The boss lady from the IRS didn’t like that.
She leaned forward and said, “Where did the money come from in the first place?”
Dylan shrugged. “I don’t know. Not long before the attack, Andrea called me in and showed it to me. She was confused—she said it was in the same closet she’d gone in that morning. Which meant someone planted the stuff during the day.”
“Where was she that day?” Smith demanded.
Dylan closed his eyes and thought back through events. He’d been in class in New York when Alex urgently texted him that Andrea had been kidnapped. They left for Washington that night. The attack in Bethesda later that week. Adelina’s phone call. The assault on the condo. The hideous hotel they’d stayed in, and the days of running after.
He shook his head. “It’s all a blur. Too much has happened in the last week, I honestly don’t have a clue.”
Kelly spoke. “Take me through the events of that night. Starting with the money and the drugs.”
Dylan closed his eyes. He tried to remember the details. How the room looked. How it smelled. The fear on Andrea’s face.
Dylan? Can you come here a second?
He’d walked down the hall and into the bedroom she’d been using. In the closet, underneath a pile of clothes was a cardboard box. Full of drugs and money.
Those weren’t in here yesterday, or this morning. I know—I went through the closet before I left to get the blood test this morning. Who was in here?
After he finished telling that part of the story, he said, “Then the phone rang. The house phone.”
“Who was it?” Smith asked.
“The girls’ mom. Adelina Thompson. She said … she said that Andrea was in danger. She told me to get her out of the building. The shooting started seconds later.”
Smith and Kelly looked at each other, then back at him. Kelly said, “Did you know the attackers?”
Dylan shook his head. Then he said, “I didn’t get a chance to see them really. Lot of shooting. A lot. Andrea went over the side of the balcony, and I hid behind the door. Leah was shooting at the attackers, but then she went down. I had a couple of knives and…”
He closed his eyes. He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to see it.
Smith asked in a harsh tone, “You had a couple of knives and what?”
“Take it easy, Smith,” Kelly responded. “He’s talking. Let him talk.”
Dylan said, “I had a big heavy meat cleaver and a long kitchen knife. The first guy came in dumb and fast, not paying enough attention. I got his gun hand with the meat cleaver. The other one came in right behind him … he was disoriented, and I stabbed him in the back. I’m pretty sure it severed his spine, he went down instantly.”
Kelly nodded and said, “I understand you’re a veteran. Afghanistan? Iraq?”
“Afghanistan.”
“Purple heart? How bad was it?”
Dylan grimaced. “I nearly lost my leg. It took a long time before I was able to walk again.”
“PTSD?” Kelly asked.
Dylan leaned forward and said, “Are you suggesting my mental state somehow made me hunt down these guys and kill them? I assure you I was fully conscious of what I was doing.”
Kelly’s mouth twitched up slightly on one side. “What exactly were you doing?”
“Defending my home and my sister-in-law. I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.”
Kelly said, “All right. Let’s move on—”
“Wait,” Smith ordered.
“What?” Kelly asked.
“You killed them both. What was next? Is that when you left?”
Dylan shook his head. “No. First I grabbed as much of the money as I could fit in a bag. My meds and phone and wallet and stuff. Then I ran. The balcony door was still open, and I could hear sirens coming.”
Smith moved to Kelly’s side and leaned on the table with two hands, forcing Dylan to look up at her. “What about the drugs? Did you take any of those?”
Dylan recoiled. “Hell, no.”
“Come on, Dylan,” Kelly said. “You can tell us. We know the VA had you heavily medicated for a long time. You weren’t even tempted?”
Dylan leaned forward and spoke slowly and clearly. “No. I did not take any of the drugs.”
“All right,” Kelly said. “Which way did you go out?”
Dylan sighed. “Down the hall toward the elevators. Leah was out there—I thought she was dead. Along with two other guys.”
“Did you know Ralph Myers?”
Dylan shook his head. “No.”
“Did you know any of the people outside?”
“Leah, of course. I thought she was dead. The guy about halfway down the hall, I didn’t know. And the one closest to the elevators was part of the guard detail.”
“Did you take the elevator down?”
Dylan shook his head. “No. Stairs. I figured the cops would be coming up through the lobby and elevators, and the stairwell opens out to the alley instead of the lobby.”
Smith and Kelly looked at each other. “How did you know that?” Smith asked.
“When Ray was still alive, we used to sneak out that way when there were reporters out front.”
Kelly said, “Okay. That clears up some things. What happened—”
Dylan interrupted. “How long am I going to be in here?”
“As long as it takes,” Smith responded.
“Look. I want to help you. I want to nail whoever it is hurting my family. But keeping me locked up isn’t—”
“We’ll decide when to let you go,” Kelly said. “And it’s not right now. Tell me what you know about Richard Thompson.”
Dylan shifted uncomfortably. Then he said, “He’s a complete bastard.”
For the first time in the interview, Emma Smith half-smiled. She said, “Go on. When was the first time you met him?”
Dylan leaned back in his chair. “I guess … about four years ago. Before I joined the Army. Alex and I had met on a foreign exchange program my senior year in high school. Richard had a background check run on me. He called me into his office to make sure I knew how worthless I was. Then later on, when I was recovering in the hospital, he sent me an email. Told me to stay away from his daughter. To let her believe I’d died in Afghanistan.”
Dylan thought back to those days. Recovering in the hospital, sometimes wishing he were dead, the pain was so bad. He’d gotten through it, but just barely. He said, “Without Alex I wouldn’t be anything, you know. She was with me through most of my recovery. Running with me. Helping me train. She … she means everything to me. Her dad didn’t give a flying fuck about any of that.”
“What else?” Smith said. “What else do you know about him?”
“What? You mean like his career? I don’t know shit about that. I watched the hearings on TV while I was cooped up in the Embassy, so I know he was really CIA. That’s about it.”
“What about Julia and Crank Wilson? How well do you know them?”
Dylan sighed. “Pretty well. They’re family. I mean, they’re always on the road, but for the last couple years it’s been holidays … and disasters. When Ray was in the hospital Julia basically took charge, got everything managed. She helped organized my wedding too. Crank’s a great guy. They stop by and have dinner with us every time they’re in New York.”
“What about money? Do you think she was hiding anything?”
“Hell, no,” Dylan said. “Why would she need to? Every single album Crank’s put out went platinum. They’re rock stars. And she’s invested the money from that all over the world. But it’s not like … not like being friends with a rock star. He’s just my brother-in-law. We hang out and smoke an
d talk bullshit.”
Kelly said, “All right. We’re going to break and grab some lunch. We’ll be back later to ask you some more questions.”
Dylan sighed in relief. The two agents left, and he was escorted back to his cell.
George-Phillip. May 8.
“And you just turned him over to the US authorities?” George-Phillip shouted. “Why? And why wasn’t I informed?”
Ambassador Stephen Easton backed up a step toward his desk. The corpulent old fool had spots of color on his cheeks as he said, “Your Highness, I am the Ambassador here. Not you. You don’t determine what happens—”
“I made a promise, Ambassador. There was no reason at all for you to do that.”
“Other than the law and for our relationship with the United States. If the boy is innocent then they’ll let him go.”
George-Phillip leaned closer to the Ambassador. “Don’t you understand that the person orchestrating these attacks is a senior official in their government?”
Easton licked his upper lip. Then he turned away, without answering, and sat in the heavy leather chair behind his desk. He wheezed a little as he sat.
“Please have a seat, Your Highness. I understand you are upset, but there are things we must discuss. And the Prime Minister is expecting our call in less than five minutes.”
George-Phillip wanted to shake the old fool. Instead, he calmly sat down in the chair.
“That’s a serious accusation,” Easton said.
“It’s a serious situation.”
“Please explain Oswald O’Leary’s part in all of this.”
George-Phillip sighed. “I’m not entirely clear on it. Apparently Adelina Thompson—”
“The woman you had an illicit affair with. The wife of an American diplomat.”
George-Phillip starred back at Easton. Then he said, simply, “Yes.”
Easton blinked several times. “Go on.”
“Apparently O’Leary was opposed to my involvement with her…”
“No wonder,” muttered Easton.
“Shall I continue without interruption?”
Easton frowned. Then he casually waved a hand. “Continue.”
George-Phillip told the Ambassador what he had learned of the mysterious Oz. “I don’t know what his motivation was.”
The phone on Easton’s desk rang, interrupting George-Phillip’s narrative.
Easton pursed his lips. “It’s the Prime Minister.” He reached out and pressed a button on the phone.
“Hullo!” he nearly shouted. “Prime Minister? Ambassador Easton and Prince George-Phillip here, sir.”
George-Phillip exchanged greetings with Duncan Howard, the Prime Minister of England. He’d never liked the man, a career politician who had climbed his way into his chair over the backs of his friends. But George-Phillip didn’t have to like the Prime Minister. All he had to do was tolerate him and for now, work with him.
“George-Phillip, I was incredibly relieved to learn you survived the plane crash.”
“Thank you, Prime Minister. Though I should correct you on a minor issue—it wasn’t a crash. We were shot down, and lucky to survive.”
On the other end of the line, the Prime Minister coughed. “I understood that is not firmly established as of yet.”
“Prime Minister, believe me. It was a surface to air missile of some kind.”
“It’s quite interesting,” the Prime Minister said. “I spoke with the Home Secretary not long ago. The National Crime Agency identified who fired at your home last week.”
George-Phillip jerked forward in his seat, his attention suddenly riveted. The NCA, or National Crime Agency, was the national policing agency responsible for border policing, among other things. “I’m listening, Prime Minister.”
“It seems that a Saudi national named … let’s see … Hakim Silsilah. Odd name, that. The border police discovered a weapon secreted away in the trunk of his vehicle during a random inspection as he was heading to the Chunnel. The weapon matches the ballistics of the bullets we found in your house. So Silsilah was brought in and questioned. And you’re going to be intrigued by what we found.”
George-Phillip said, “Please, sir. My daughter’s safety is at stake here. What have you learned?”
“Your Highness, Silsilah worked for the Saudi Intelligence Agency. In exchange for an asylum and immunity offer, he’s divulged that he was ordered to assassinate you.”
“By whom?”
“Prince Roshan of Saudi Arabia.”
Dylan. May 8.
After the lights were switched off, all Dylan could see was the faint emergency light down the hall, flooding through the square, barred hole in the door.
Dylan had once, as a teenager, spent a memorable night in a holding cell in the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta as a result of a series of stupid decisions by him and his friends. No charges had been filed. A few years later, he spent a nightmarish night in the New York City jail. In that case charges were filed: after a drunken ex-boyfriend sexually assaulted Alex, Dylan had attacked him.
In both cases, the jails were old. They smelled of oil and grease and sweat. The odor of men who paced like caged animals, mixed with urine and vomit.
This was different. For one thing it was clean. Before the lights had gone out, he’d seen clearly that the concrete floor and steel walls were without blemish, the walls painted a grayish white, and the floor dark grey. The bed actually had linens, though the blanket was rough wool, something close to an Army blanket. He could live with that.
At least he was alone and he’d been able to call Alex. They’d given him that. Predictably she’d been distraught, and he’d only had a few minutes to speak before he was told to get off the phone. He supposed that was better than nothing.
He was restless, raging that he wasn’t out there to protect his wife and her sisters. By the end of the interviews, he had been sure that they were going to let him go. Kelly had become more and more friendly, his body language clear that he believed Dylan. Smith seemed to stay more on the fence, but even she didn’t seem as menacing by the end of the interrogation.
He needed to get out of here. Dylan had paced the room. He’d walked back and forth until his feet were exhausted, then lay on the bed, tossing and turning.
It wasn’t the jail on his mind, or even the danger.
Instead, his mind kept turning back to the conversation he’d had with Alex days ago.
Maybe you should consider AA like your mom?
I can’t do all that God stuff. You know that.
He couldn’t. Because Dylan wanted nothing to do with a God who would allow children to be slaughtered. A God who allowed war, who allowed terrorists to destroy buildings and kill thousands of people. Dylan didn’t want the God of his parents. Capricious. Sometimes overly harsh, sometimes overly permissive. They were drunks, until his mom cleaned up her act. She’d thrown Dylan’s dad out and never saw him again.
Occasionally—especially when he was recovering from his injuries after the war—Dylan wondered what had happened to his father. But he’d never wondered enough to do anything about it. He’d never sought him out. He’d never done much of anything to change it, because he knew that his dad was still sick.
As was Dylan.
He couldn’t hide it anymore. He couldn’t hide from it. Since Ray’s death he had been slowly sliding off into oblivion. At first it was one drink, then two, then two weeks later he was drinking to quell his anxiety and pain. He didn’t get drunk. He didn’t lose his capacity or ability to function. But after six months, he’d started drinking occasionally even in the morning.
Dylan knew what that meant. He’d turned into a drunk. He’d turned into his father.
Maybe you should consider AA like your mom?
It wasn’t that simple. He knew a little about AA. After all, his mother had joined when he was still a teenager. They’d gone to war more than once after she cleaned up—she knew he was still drinking then and pushed him hard to
quit. Eventually he had. But he never joined AA. Their emphasis on spiritual development and belief in God seemed little more than a cult to Dylan. His mother and father—drunk and erratic as they were—had at one time regularly dragged Dylan to church, before they fell apart completely. He didn’t remember much from those days—he’d been very young. But he did remember the talk about hell. Lots of talk about hell. You’ll go to hell for this and go to hell for that. You’ll go to hell if you don’t believe, you’ll go to hell if you don’t believe enough, you’ll go to hell if you lie or cheat or steal or have sex or touch yourself or drink or dance too much or vote Democrat or make friends with people with brown skin.
Dylan wasn’t interested in that kind of a God, and when his mother started harping about love and how her “Higher Power” had set her free from the bondage of drink, he’d just turned away. He didn’t want to hear it.
But Dylan was beginning to wonder. Because in recent weeks he’d found himself more and more often staring into the bottom of a bottle. And for the last two weeks, ever since he and Alex had boarded a train for Washington, he’d found himself constantly craving a drink. Or four. It wasn’t the tension and stress. He’d learned how to handle that in the Army. You just buckle down and keep going, no matter how much it hurts.
No. It was something more. He’d spent his whole life wrestling with feelings that he wasn’t worth anything. That he’d never amount to anything. Every time he came into contact with Alex’s family, it underscored that inferiority. Her sisters were scientists and ran their own companies and even the youngest was brilliantly talented. No wonder Alex’s parents looked down their noses at him.
His old therapist at the VA had taught him mindfulness exercises, meditations he could do when he sat still and focused inward. Dylan had struggled with that for months. He’d get deeper and deeper, last longer and longer, but finally he felt like he pierced through and saw right into his center.
He didn’t like what he saw. Inside Dylan Paris was a gaping wound, a hole. He’d once filled that hole with alcohol, then with overwork when he went back to school. He’d filled it with his concentration on being a soldier. And, unfortunately, he’d filled it with another person. With Alex. When he lost her, or thought he had, while he was in Afghanistan, it felt like his world had ended.
Girl of Vengeance Page 28
