The Way Back to Us

by Jamie Howard

  I tried picturing what he was telling me but the memory wasn’t there.

  “The gun was recovered from a Dumpster three blocks over. Ballistics confirmed this same gun was used in seven different murders. Fingerprints tied the gun to your father, though he’s gone by dozens of names prior to that and since.”

  From another folder, he slid a printout of a grainy photo of my father. The quality was terrible, his face barely recognizable. “David Sorley, aka The Left Hand of God. Your father. Former Navy Seal Lieutenant, one of the most lethal hitmen-for-hire in the entire world.”

  “No.” I shoved the picture back at him. “You’re lying to me.”

  “Syracuse—Elijah Martin, an undercover CIA operative, his throat slit in his home office.” Another folder hit the table. “Chicago—Nicholas Clarke, former Marine, garroted in his car.” A waterfall of sickening pictures fell out before me, seemingly never-ending. “Just last week, right here in NYC—Rebecca Wallace, mother of two and an NSA analyst, sliced open with—”

  I burst to my feet, back to the corner, where I proceeded to throw up my entire breakfast. Even when my stomach was completely empty, dry heaves wracked my body. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. How? How was this possible?

  I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and quietly shuffled back to my chair. I couldn’t quite look Anderson in the face as I asked him the question that was circling my mind like a vulture. “You think I was involved with this?”

  “The gun you had in your possession? The 9mm? We’ve tied it to another murder in Austin.” He leaned his elbows on the table, finger tapping his chin. “Then there’s Chicago. Nicholas Clarke wasn’t the only casualty there. I want you to tell me about what happened there.”

  I folded my arms across my chest. What if the evidence didn’t prove it was self-defense? What if they were trying to prove I was his accomplice? His willing accomplice? That I’d known all along. That maybe, just maybe, he’d be spending this whole time trying to train me.

  “Autumn. Look at me.” Soft brown eyes tried to cajole me. “I believe you didn’t know what was going on. It’s obvious everything here is coming as quite the shock to you. I get that. Trust me, I get that. Now, if you helped us out, I’d be willing to speak to the District Attorney on your behalf. See if we can’t cut you a deal.”

  He was sweet-talking me, his words practically candy-coated. My father might not have been any person’s version of a role model, except maybe Charles Manson, but if nothing else, he’d given me the tricks I needed to survive.

  I caught Anderson’s gaze as I leaned forward. “I think I need to speak to my lawyer now.”

  Chapter 39: Gavin

  Bianca’s Mercedes was like a silver bullet racing down the highway. I slammed my hands against the roof of the car as we zoomed around a tractor trailer truck. “Urgency is important, but—” I flinched as we cut in front of a minivan. “—I’d also really like to make it there alive.”

  In the front seat, Ian sat with eyes closed, lips moving though I couldn’t hear what he was saying. It was probably the rosary or something similar in case we all died in a fiery explosion.

  Daphne was in back with me, arms spread and pressed against the backseat, her eyes bugging out.

  “Regretting leaving Concord, yet?”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Brakes!” I shouted as the red lights flashed from the taillights in front of us.

  We cut right.

  “I saw them.” I caught Bianca rolling her eyes at me in the rearview mirror.

  The car started ringing like it was a giant cell phone.

  “What is that?” Daphne’s eyes went impossibly wider.

  “Relax, it’s only my phone.” She pressed a button on the steering wheel. “Bianca Easton.”

  “Ms. Easton, I am so sorry to bother you. I know you’re at a wedding this weekend and you said—”

  “Get to the point, Gia.” My assistant, she turned to mouth over her shoulder, which ignited a fresh wave of panic in me and almost had me jumping for the wheel. “Please,” she added as an afterthought.

  “Well, you said to call in case of an emergency. And I think this really is one. I’m not really sure why, given that this is a non-profit, but—”

  “Gia, please. What is the emergency?”

  “There’s a . . . hold on.” Papers rustled. “An Autumn Parker who . . . one second.”

  “Oh my God!” Daphne threw her hands up in front of her face as a slow-moving car meandered into our lane like it had no regard for its life.

  Bianca slammed on the brakes and we all jerked forward, then left as she swung into the middle lane and gunned it. Through the car’s speakers the ever-loquacious Gia was still stuttering through her haphazard notes on the emergent call.

  My phone started ringing. I had to remove one of my hands from the ceiling to fish it out. Sandwiching it between my shoulder and ear, I said, “Hello?”

  “Gav, it’s Rachel. I think I’ve got something.”

  “What? How?” There was no way on God’s green earth that they’d managed to get back to the city ahead of us unless they’d frickin’ teleported.

  “The search. I got something on the search.”

  “You have Wi-Fi in the car?”

  There was a beat of silence in my ear and I managed to catch Gia’s next lovely tidbit. “She’s calling from a police station. I swear I wrote down which precinct she’s at.”

  “Do you seriously want to hear about how I access the Internet in the car?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then why did you ask,” she practically screeched in my ear.

  “Sorry. I’m a little frazzled over here, fearing for my life.”

  “Gavin, does the name Autumn Parker mean anything to you?”

  My mouth hung open. “Autumn Parker?”

  Bianca turned around. “What? Who’s Autumn Parker?”

  “Good Lord woman, turn around!”

  Then Gia on the car phone. “Me? Why? There’s nothing behind me.”

  Rachel was shouting in my ear. “What’s happening?”

  “Everybody, please chill out for just one second.”

  Everything went completely silent. I blew out a breath. “Rach, Bianca’s assistant just called saying an Autumn Parker was calling from the police station asking for her.”

  I flipped her over to speakerphone so Bianca could hear her response. “That’s the name that popped up in my search. Autumn Olivia Parker. She’s the right age.” Some tapping on her keyboard filtered through. “I don’t have any pictures of her other than a blurry picture on this missing poster. But . . . it could be her.”

  “Missing poster?” Ian asked, eyes still closed.

  Rachel sucked in a breath. “Gavin, I’m not sure you’re going to like what I have to say.”

  “The twenty-fifth precinct!” Gia’s voice blared through the speakers.

  “That’s gotta be her,” Daphne said, still clinging to the seat for dear life.

  “Rach, tell us what we need to know.” I cringed before I even said it. “Bianca, you get us to the twenty-fifth precinct as fast you can. Preferably in one piece.”

  Chapter 40: Dani

  Bianca took my hands in hers. “You’re doing the right thing, you know.”

  “I know. Trust me, I know.” My dad deserved to be behind bars. He was a professional assassin who’d killed dozens of people. At least that we knew of. Who knew how many more there might be that he’d actually bothered to cover up. I didn’t feel any pity for him or like I was doing the wrong thing, but there was a part of me, a tiny, teensy part that balked at turning against the man who’d spent his life protecting me.

  Protecting me, right. Since he was the one who put me in danger in the first place.

  I ran my fingers through my hair, fingernails scraping my scalp, and was surprised when I came up short. With everything that’d happened today, I’d completely forgotten I’d cut it. “You’re going to have to ha
ndle Gavin.”

  “I can handle him,” she assured me.

  “If he knows what I’m doing—”

  “I don’t plan on telling him.” She lifted her chin a notch, like she was waiting for me to fight her on it.

  As much as I hated lying to him, he didn’t need the whole truth right now. It wouldn’t do anyone any good if he got in the middle of this. And telling him that I was helping the FBI trap my father? Well, he’d be going crazier than he already was.

  A disgruntled Anderson hustled back into the room. He slapped a sheet of paper on the table. “You’ve got your deal.”

  I spun the paper so I could read it. Bianca had been brilliant. Anderson wanted to plead me down to some lesser crime, I wasn’t sure which, but it would’ve still meant jail time. Even though I’d been in the dark, they’d thought I should shoulder some of the blame. Bianca, on the other hand, had calmly explained that if they had any hope of catching someone at the very top of their most wanted list, I was their only hope.

  They’d caved and given me a full pardon for my cooperation.

  Anderson placed an almost microscopic earpiece in my palm. “You need to keep that in at all times.”

  I nodded. “What time is it?”

  He glanced down at his fancy silver watch. “Half past twelve.”

  “I’m late, so he already knows something’s wrong.” My hand landed on my empty pocket. “When I don’t show he’ll move on to a secondary location.”

  “Which is?”

  “A Holiday Inn right across the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee.”

  I wiggled the earpiece into my ear, working my jaw to make sure the stupid little thing wouldn’t fall out.

  “What room will he be in?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “He’ll have left a key for me at the front desk.”

  “And how will you get it?”

  “I’ll tell the front desk I’m there to take my father to his doctor’s appointment. That I believe he left a key for me and they’ll fall all over themselves trying to help me.” I pushed the earpiece in a little deeper. “I know what I’m doing.”

  “We’ll be the judge of that.” He tapped his fist against the wall, impatient. “You ready yet?”

  “As soon as you give me back my bag, I’ll be on my way.”

  Grabbing it from the floor, he tossed it to me. “Obviously, we didn’t give you back the gun.” He followed me out the door, making a signal as he passed a room.

  A second later a voice sounded in my ear. “Testing, can you confirm audio on your end?”

  “Confirmed.”

  “Great, we’re all good here. Just pretend like we’re not even tagging along for the ride.”

  Anderson held the back door open for me and together, we stepped out into the hot afternoon, Bianca trailing behind us. She pulled me into a quick hug, squeezing me tight. “Please be careful.”

  “I will.” I turned back to Anderson. “You know my father, so I’m begging you to be careful with your tails. He’ll be watching from the hotel room, so if you guys are right on top of me he’ll see you and be gone before I get anywhere near him.”

  “You can count on our discretion.”

  “I certainly hope so.” I ran through a mental checklist—I had my bag, the earpiece was in my ear and functioning, and Bianca was going to keep tabs on Gavin. There was only one more thing I needed. I held out my hand. “Cab fare.”

  Anderson scowled as he fished out a pile of bills and shoved them into my hand.

  Taking a deep breath, I blended into the sidewalk traffic and walked a full block before stepping to the curb and signaling for a cab. A yellow taxi screeched to a halt in front of me and I hopped in the back.

  “Where to, miss?” A voice drawled with the hint of a Southern twang.

  “The Holiday Inn, Fort Lee.”

  He whistled. “That’s quite the fare.”

  “I’m good for it.” I glanced through the divider to meet his gaze in the rearview. Mirrored sunglasses stared back at me.

  We pulled out into traffic. “You visiting our great city?”

  “Just passing through.” I kept my gaze trained out the window. When we passed the street I knew we needed to turn on, the first hint of unease settled in my gut.

  “You here with family?”

  “My father, actually.”

  “How about that.” His accent disappeared. “You planning on seeing a movie tonight, Doodle?”

  That nickname, our emergency phrase. My heart felt like it’d been injected with a full dose of adrenaline, racing so fast I thought it might come beating out of my chest. “Autumn?” The voice in my ear called. “Is everything alright? What’s going on?”

  The earpiece let out a shriek, fuzzing out. I cursed and yanked it from my ear and it fell to the floor. When I looked up, Dad was setting a small, black box on the dashboard. “It’s harmless. I’m just jamming the frequency so we can talk in private.”

  I sat back until the seat was firmly against my back. “Where are you taking me?”

  “For a drive.” He sighed. “If you’ve got questions you should ask them now.”

  Surprisingly, the first question that came wasn’t any of the hundred that should have been at the front of my mind. “Did Mom take me to the beach?”

  He grunted. “Once. She thought she could take you away from me. The two of you weren’t hard to find.”

  “Why was she running?” My gaze dropped to my lap. I couldn’t possibly look at him when I asked my next question. “They told me there were reports of domestic disturbances at the apartment.”

  “Arguments. I know what you’re trying to ask, and the answer is no. I never laid a finger on that woman. I loved her more than life itself.” His hands circled the steering wheel as we made a right turn. “She knew who I was from the very beginning. What I was. She never cared until you came along, and then she thought she could steal my daughter from me.”

  “Is that why you killed her?” It came out sharper than I intended, but I didn’t want to take it back.

  “It was an accident.” His fingers flexed. “I’d caught her that morning with bus passes. We were arguing about you and she saw the gun. She tried to grab it from me, we struggled over it, and it went off.”

  “Even if I did believe you. What can you possibly say to explain away the rest of the blood on your hands? The guy in the CIA, the mom in the NSA, what about the—”

  “Things aren’t as black and white as you’re trying to make them out to be, Doodle.” We hit a pocket of traffic, so he stretched his arm out across the seat and turned around to look at me. “Did these lovely FBI agents tell you about the CIA agent?”

  “Are you trying to justify what you do?”

  “If you were walking home one night and you came upon a man holding a gun to a child’s head, would you consider yourself a murderer for killing him? Or would killing him be the right thing?” A horn blared and he was forced to turn around and pay attention to the road again. “You can make me out to be the monster if you want to. In some ways I probably am. But I’m the monster that kills monsters.”

  We switched lanes and the cab slowed to a stop at the curb. He shifted into park. This time when he turned around again, he took his sunglasses off and folded them in his hand. “I’m pretty sure I know what the answer’s going to be, but I’m going to ask it anyway. Are you coming with me or is this the end of the road for us?”

  “Whether you can justify what you do or not, I can’t go with you anymore. I’m not a killer. I’m never going to be that person.”

  “I never expected you to.” From the seat next to him, he picked up a baseball cap and slipped it on his head. “There’re two last things I need to tell you before we say goodbye.” He glanced back at me. “One: I’ve made my enemies and as much as you’re not at fault, they’re your enemies too. Be careful.”

  I knew I should be leaping for the cab door, running to the nearest phone to call the police. Or may
be I should be trying to subdue him, which was laughable, but I felt like I should be doing something other than just sitting there and listening to him.

  “Second: If you ever need me, your friend, Rachel, can help with that. There are places on the Dark Web where a message can find me.” He cracked his door open, the sound of a car whizzing by invading the quiet of the cab. “I know you’re probably questioning it now, but one day I hope you’ll believe it when I say I love you, Doodle. I’ve only ever done what I thought was best for you.”

  The driver’s door slammed closed behind him as he crossed the street. I exited on the passenger side, never losing sight of him. Keeping him in my periphery, I frantically searched for a landmark. Something to tell me where I was so when I got Anderson on the phone I could give him good information.

  I sprinted down the sidewalk, trying to simultaneously not run anyone over, keep my father in my sights, and figure out where the hell I was. The corner loomed in front of me, the sign flashing that it wasn’t safe to cross the street.

  There, right in front of my face, was the answer I was looking for.

  Half a block in front of me was the precinct.

  Right on top of their head.

  I darted into traffic, suffering a near miss with another taxi cab. In the mere seconds it’d taken me to make it across the street, my dad had disappeared. My feet pounded against the sidewalk as I rushed into the precinct.

  I ran straight to Anderson who was in the middle of throwing an epic hissy fit behind the front desk. “He’s right across the street.”

  Chapter 41: Gavin

  I was half asleep in the waiting room of the precinct when the door flew open, ricocheting off the wall with a crack. A woman with short black hair sped through it, coming up short as she ran into the front desk. “He’s right across the street,” she shouted at them, slightly out of breath.

  The officer she was talking to hesitated only a second. “What was he wearing?”