You Can Run

by Karen Cleveland

“You do, don’t you? Those boys in the picture.” She nods toward the bedroom.

  Natalia’s jawline tightens.

  “Can you try to imagine what it would be like if they were taken from you?”

  There’s a beat of silence, of hesitation, before she answers. “I suppose I would do absolutely anything to be reunited with them.”

  “Please, I’m begging you. Tell me who’s behind this.”

  She gives her head a firm shake.

  “I need to know,” Jill says.

  “I’m not giving you a name.”

  “My children’s lives are on the line.”

  “There’s far more than that on the line.” She looks over at me. “If you don’t publish this story, you’ll have blood on your hands.”

  “Natalia—”

  “You need to leave,” she says again. More firmly this time.

  “I’m not leaving,” Jill says. “Not without names.”

  “Then I’ll leave,” Natalia says. She turns toward the door. “And I’ll tell the concierge—”

  Jill lunges forward, grabs her by the upper arm, spins her back around. Shoves her against the wall. “You’re not leaving.”

  Now I see emotion on Natalia’s face. Shock. And fear.

  “You’re a Russian spy, in the U.S.,” Jill says. Her demeanor has completely changed. There’s fire in her eyes. “Do you know what happens to Russian spies in the U.S.?”

  “Jill, stop,” I say. She can’t shove my source. She can’t threaten my source.

  “You get locked away,” she says to Natalia, ignoring me. “And you don’t get out.”

  “I’m aware,” Natalia says coolly.

  “Stop,” I say again.

  “She knows who has my kids,” Jill says.

  “She’s my source,” I say.

  “And these are my kids’ lives we’re talking about!”

  “I’m not giving you a name,” Natalia says.

  Jill shoves her against the wall again, harder this time.

  I move toward Jill, reach for her arm—

  She draws a gun from her waistband, steps back—

  And aims it directly at me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Alex

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  I’m staring down the barrel of a gun. And it’s terrifying. With all the shit I’ve gotten myself into over the years, I’ve never had a gun pointed at me.

  “This is what they told me to do, you know,” Jill says. “They told me to kill you.”

  What? “Why?”

  “To prevent the story from getting out. To save my kids—”

  “You can’t really believe that.”

  Her expression falters, just the slightest bit.

  “Don’t do this,” I say. Because I know she’d do damn near anything to get her kids back.

  She keeps the gun trained on me. I look from the barrel to her face and back. She looks wild.

  Oh my God. What have I gotten myself into? “Jill—”

  “Of course I’m not going to do that,” she says. “But you”—she swings the gun toward Natalia—“you’re a different story. You know who has my kids.”

  Natalia doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. And I don’t see any of the fear I felt. Hell, I’m shaking.

  “Tell me who has them.”

  Natalia stays silent.

  “You think I won’t do this? Think again.” Jill takes a step closer. The barrel of the gun is level with Natalia’s chest. And close. If Jill shoots, she’s not going to miss.

  “Never underestimate what a mother will do for her children,” Jill says.

  “Oh, I don’t,” Natalia says. She’s still too calm.

  “Give me a name.”

  “I have no intention of helping your country—”

  “Give me a name.”

  “I’d sooner have you kill me.”

  What?

  “What’s the alternative?” she says. “You turn me in? The government makes some bogus claim about how I’m stealing secrets? I’m not about to spend the rest of my life in prison.”

  Jill’s fury reaches a boiling point. I can’t blame her, really. Natalia knows.

  The two of them stare at each other. I can see Jill’s finger start to curl around the trigger—

  “Jill, look at what you’re doing,” I say.

  She doesn’t turn toward me. Her finger doesn’t loosen on the trigger. No one even breathes.

  The gun shakes ever so slightly—

  And then it drops to her side.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Jill

  I can’t do it.

  I look at the woman in front of me, this person who has the information I so desperately need, the one who holds the key to finding my children, who’s staying silent. I hate her. I hate her so much I want to kill her.

  But I won’t.

  Killing her won’t help me find Owen and Mia.

  It would be revenge, nothing more.

  I tuck the gun back into my waistband.

  This is the end, isn’t it? The best hope I have of finding my children, now quashed.

  “You contacted me because you wanted to do what’s right,” Alex says to Natalia. I almost forgot she was there. “Because you had a moral obligation.”

  “Are you going to lecture me on morality right after your friend almost kills me?”

  Alex seems to be at a loss for words.

  “Come on,” I say to her. “Let’s go.”

  I want to get out of here, away from that woman. To call Drew, because it really does seem hopeless at this point.

  I walk to the door—

  “You’re asking me to turn on my country,” Natalia says.

  I swing around. “No. I’m begging you to do the right thing.”

  I look at her a moment longer, but she doesn’t say a word, and I’m not in the mood to be toyed with. I unlock the deadbolt, reach for the handle—

  “I’m not the enemy, you know.”

  I go still. I want to hear what she has to say, but I don’t want to give her the satisfaction of my attention when it’s clear she’s not going to give me the information I need.

  “I reached out,” she says. “To Alex. I volunteered information. I didn’t have to do that.”

  I know what she’s saying is true. But it doesn’t change the fact that she won’t tell me what I need to know.

  “You Americans think all Russians are the enemy.”

  At this, I turn. “No we don’t. I don’t.” But even as I say it, I wonder if it’s true. It’s ingrained in us, as intelligence officers, not to trust. Russia is not to be trusted.

  But the Russians that give us information, our sources, as few and far between as they may be, obviously we trust them.

  And she’s right. She came to us. I wouldn’t have this lead to chase if she hadn’t reached out in the first place.

  “The Russians aren’t the enemy here,” she says. “The Americans are.”

  “Why can’t you tell me who’s behind this?” I ask.

  “I can’t explain why. But I just can’t.”

  I remember what she said a few minutes ago. You’re asking me to turn on my country. “You think you’d be betraying your country—”

  “I wouldn’t just be betraying my country. I’d be betraying my family. That’s a line I can’t cross.”

  “What about mine?” I don’t know what her family has to do with this, and frankly right now I don’t care. I care about my family. My kids.

  “I feel for you. I do. But this is a bridge too far.”

  I think of that paperweight on the desk. What is right is not always easy, and what is easy is not always right. “It would be the right thing to do.”

>   She stares off into the bedroom. At the picture on the bedside table? “If I do this, there’s no turning back.”

  She’s considering it, isn’t she? “Please, Natalia.”

  The room is absolutely silent. She’s still staring at that picture.

  “The two people who died at the Farm. They were involved.”

  She’s talking. She’s giving us something.

  What does that mean? That it was our anthrax, that they were moving it, handling it, and there was a mishap?

  “They changed their minds, wanted out. Another person…he didn’t want that to happen.”

  “Who’s the other person?”

  “I can’t give you that name.”

  “Who are the two?” Alex asks. “The ones who died?”

  “I’ve said too much already. I just wanted you to find the truth.”

  “We will find the truth. Eventually. Just give us the information that will save two innocent kids.”

  “I can’t.”

  Why can’t she? I don’t think I’ve ever felt more desperate than I do in this moment. We’re so close.

  Alex’s phone buzzes. Out of the corner of my eye I see her reach for her phone, check the screen.

  “Jill, you gotta see this,” she says. She holds the phone out.

  It’s a CNN news alert. Breaking News.

  CIA reports that two senior officers, Rosemarie Harris and Gladys Chen, died at a CIA facility in an unidentified incident.

  Rosemarie Harris and Gladys Chen.

  Harris and Chen. The heads of two directorates. Analysis, and Science and Technology. Two of the Gang of Three—

  Natalia’s voice rings in my head:

  They were involved….

  They changed their minds, wanted out. Another person…he didn’t want that to happen.

  At that moment the pieces fall into place, and I know who has my kids.

  “Come on,” I say to Alex. “We need to go.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Alex

  “It’s Langston West,” Jill says when we’re inside the stairwell, heading down. “The third member of the Gang of Three.”

  I take the stairs as fast as I can, trying to keep up. Damn, she’s fast.

  Fast on the stairs, fast with connecting those dots. I still don’t know how the hell she knows it’s Langston West.

  She’s at the bottom now. She pushes open the door. Slows her pace as she walks into the lobby.

  I’m close behind. I try to look as normal as possible. Try not to look at the people around me. Don’t want to draw attention.

  I’m still trying to process how she knows it’s West. That it’s the Gang of Three.

  The sliding doors open and Jill walks through, out onto the sidewalk. I’m just behind—

  And then it clicks. “Those op-eds,” I say.

  She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t look back. Heads right, down the sidewalk. I have to almost jog to keep up.

  That’s it, the op-eds. Penned by the Gang of Three. They complained about being hamstrung by a need to attribute everything to a specific source. About budget cuts—

  “Exactly,” Jill finally says. “The three of them thought they didn’t have the intelligence they needed. So they created their own.”

  A car whizzes past us on the street, and a horn sounds in the distance.

  What she just said couldn’t be more far-fetched—and, strangely, couldn’t be more obvious at the same time.

  They didn’t think they could do their jobs, because they didn’t have the intelligence they needed. The specific intelligence. It wasn’t enough to make judgments. Analytic assessments. Policymakers wanted cold, hard facts. Statements direct from the source.

  But those didn’t exist, because good sources are hard to find. And expensive to maintain.

  So they created those sources.

  “It probably started out innocently enough—” Jill says.

  “You call that innocent?”

  “I mean it was probably plugging gaps, holes in our reporting,” she says. “I’m not saying it’s right. But I know how things work. If they had almost enough to take some sort of action, or reach some sort of conclusion, and they just needed a little more…”

  “It’s wrong.” It’s black and white. I can’t believe she’s trying to defend this.

  Another car speeds past.

  “Harris and Chen probably came to that conclusion, too,” Jill says.

  Natalia’s words ring in my mind. They changed their minds, wanted out.

  Maybe Jill’s right. Maybe it did start out innocently enough—

  “West was probably the one controlling Falcon’s COVCOM,” she says. “West started sending in that sensational reporting.”

  “What’s the end goal? War in the Middle East?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Something Harris and Chen didn’t agree with. And they saw what was happening, and they wanted out.”

  “But there’s no way out at that point, is there?” Not when they’ve been doing something so illegal. So wrong. They were trapped.

  And so was West.

  “He had them killed,” I say. It must have been the only way to protect what he had done. To continue what he was doing.

  This is crazy as hell. Langston West is responsible for the deaths of two senior CIA officers. He’s probably planning something even more nefarious. Marching us toward war, maybe. Fabricating untold amounts of intelligence.

  “He knows where my kids are, Alex. I can feel it.”

  “Anything from Drew yet?”

  “The police tracked them to an airport. They took off on a charter flight.”

  “Where to?”

  “Waiting to find out. They’re trying to track down the flight plans.”

  My phone vibrates in my back pocket, and I pull it out. Incoming call, through Stronghold.

  “It’s Beau,” I say to Jill, still almost jogging to keep up with her pace. I answer the call. “Hi.”

  “That accident,” he says. “Did you see the press release?”

  “Saw the victims’ names. Haven’t seen anything else.”

  “Nothing else to see. Agency’s being really tight-lipped. More so than usual. I don’t know what happened.”

  “Okay. Listen, Beau, I need another favor. Remember when we talked about someone on the inside running a fake source?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, I know who it is.”

  “Who?”

  “Langston West.”

  He laughs. He actually laughs. “I don’t think so, Alex.”

  “It is. And it’s worse than I thought. It’s not just about planting fake intelligence.”

  There’s a beat of silence on his end of the line. “Yeah?”

  “Beau, he’s behind something…terrible.”

  “Alex—”

  “And two kids were kidnapped.”

  He scoffs. “Langston West didn’t have anyone kidnapped.”

  Frustration is bubbling up inside me. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s not. “Can you just figure out where he is right now?”

  “Is this from your source?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to talk to her.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m doing an awful lot of favors for you…”

  “I know.” I’ll owe him. I know that. But right now we need this information.

  “I’m in my car. Let me head back to my desk. See if I can track him down.”

  “Thanks, Beau.”

  The line disconnects, and I turn to Jill. “He’s going to see if he can track down Langston West.”

  “Good.”

  There’s the fish and chips shop. Jill’s car, parked in front. She unlocks
the doors as we approach. I slide into the passenger seat. It’s hot as hell inside. Jill starts the ignition, cranks the air-conditioning. Then she just sits, makes no move to drive.

  “It’s the tip of the iceberg, isn’t it?” she asks.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Langston West. Falcon. This is just one source. But there are others, aren’t there?”

  I hadn’t considered that possibility. But now that she says it, it makes sense. Why just stop at one fake source?

  “He’s ambitious. He’s going places. And right now he’s laying the groundwork. If he moves up the chain, he’s going to produce whatever intelligence he wants.”

  Maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s not just a march toward military conflict. Maybe there’s more. With power like this, with the ability to create intelligence, there’s no telling what he could do.

  “What do we do now?” I ask. A rhetorical question, really. I don’t think she has the answer any more than I do.

  “We can’t do anything. We don’t know who else is involved. It’s not just Langston West. It’s Falcon, too, whoever he is. Who else?”

  I don’t know who else. I don’t know how deep this goes. None of us do. And she’s right. Her kids aren’t safe until we figure that out.

  A few minutes later, my phone buzzes. The caller ID says 703, nothing more. I answer. “Hello?”

  “It’s me.” Beau’s voice.

  “Did you track him down?”

  “Yeah. He’s here, Alex. In the office.” He’s speaking quietly, barely more than a whisper. “There’s a messenger app, and he’s green. He’s logged on, at his desk.”

  He doesn’t say the rest, but I hear it in his tone. He didn’t do anything wrong.

  Jill’s phone rings, and I see her practically pounce on it. She answers with a panicked “Drew?”

  “Okay,” I say to Beau. “Thanks for checking.”

  “What the hell’s going on, Alex?” he asks.

  Jill’s listening intently to something on her own call.

  “I gotta go, Beau. I’ll fill you in later.”

  I end the call and lower the phone.

  “What is it?” I say to Jill.

  She covers the mouthpiece. “Plane landed at a private airport in rural Virginia.”