The Candidate (Romantic Suspense) (The Candidate Series)

by Josie Brown

  He prayed it wouldn’t.

  He also prayed the fact she hadn’t stirred from his arms was proof that she felt the same way about him. When she put her finger on his lips, his heart skipped a beat—

  Until she whispered in his ear, “Shhhhh! Did you hear that? Footsteps!”

  He strained his ears until they detected the slow crunch of winter’s dead leaves under the foot of the trespasser.

  No doubt, it was the killer who had been sent to find them.

  Or to torture them until they gave him the intel on Operation Flamingo.

  She rolled off, but held fast to his hand, lifting him up with her, pulling him along side of her.

  This time he had no problem keeping up.

  If he had to, he’d follow her to the end of the Earth.

  It was all coming back to her. The third left. Then the second right. Now that you’re at the three-way split, turn right again—

  Or should I take the middle path?

  Abby stopped short. Ben wasn’t expecting this, and almost pulled her arm out if its socket. She gave a small yelp.

  She didn’t mind at all when he pulled her close, or when he covered her mouth with his hand.

  With him at her side, she was no longer scared.

  She was determined to get out of this alive. She owed that to Maddy and Andy.

  She owed it to Ben, who was risking his life for her.

  “Which way do we go now,” he whispered.

  “Both paths lead to the same place—the Venus de Milo statue, in the middle of the maze.” To catch her breath, she gasped as she spoke. “But one of the paths was built over an old well. A few years ago the wooden boards covering the hole rotted away. It’s directly in the middle of the path. I found it the last time I was out here, a few years ago, in broad daylight, of course. I mentioned it to Aunt Lavinia, but I know for a fact she never had it fixed because she hasn’t walked through the maze in years, and thought it was a waste of money. She told me, ‘You and Andy can do it when you inherit this old place.’ It’s dangerous. One false step and you’ll drop at least thirty feet. But now I’m glad she held off, since it may save our lives.”

  “Or it might kill us first. How are we supposed to choose the best path, eenie meenie miney moe?”

  She closed her eyes, trying to envision that day in her mind’s eye. “It’s….it’s the one on the right.”

  Okay, then I’ll go right and you go left. Walk slowly, so that he doesn’t hear you. I’ll be doing the opposite because I want to make sure he follows me. That way, at least one of us will get out of this alive.”

  “Please don’t say that.” She choked on her words. The thought of losing him, too, was too much for her.

  “No matter what happens, get the file. Then get a hold of Fred. Call the CIA at Langley, and ask for him. His calls are being routed to a buddy. You’re supposed to say something to the effect that his nephew Teddy’s soccer game on Saturday has been postponed so no need to pick him up. Whoever answers will relay whatever you’ll need to know in order to reach him.”

  No matter what happens…?

  Of course, it mattered what happened to him! It mattered so much that her heart ached, just thinking about losing him—

  “Abby,” he hissed, “Did you get all that?”

  She didn’t say a word. Instead she lifted her head toward his and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

  Then she ran down the left path.

  Ben crawled up the path. For the most part he hugged the left side along the box hedge, as close as he could, but he swept his right hand out far along the ground, in search of the hole.

  Another twenty paces later, he found it. In fact, he almost fell into it when the palm of his hand found nothing to brace it. He righted himself just in time. He felt around the edge of the hole until he was on the opposite side of the path’s entryway.

  There he waited, forcing his eyes to adjust to what little light there was. The thick tall hedges created a void that drank in all the starlight, except for the little that came from directly above him.

  He coughed, and hoped whoever had followed them had good enough ears to hear it. As a precaution, he coughed again.

  The footsteps were slow and so quiet that they seemed to come on the heels of the wind whistling through the hedge. Finally he saw the dark shadow of a man, his arms held high and together, bent at the elbow, holding a gun.

  “Who the hell are you,” Ben growled.

  The man lowered the barrel of the gun and pointed it directly at Ben. “Step forward, hands held high.” The man’s command was accompanied by the click of the gun’s trigger. “You and the woman. Where is she, by the way?”

  Ben shrugged. “She went on ahead. I lost her.”

  “Maybe she’ll find her way back if she hears you squealing like a piggy.” Slowly the man walked forward.

  Ben counted the steps—three…four…five…six…seven—until the killer was just two feet in front of the hole. Could he see it? Ben wondered. Stall…just stall… “Who are you? What do you want?”

  The killer smirked. “Don’t play dumb. We know you’ve got the envelope. I can make this very painful for you—and for the bimbo. Go ahead and call to—”

  His last word—“her”—echoed against the walls of the well as he fell to the bottom of it. Hearing the crunch of bone against brick drew Ben’s eyes downward.

  There were no other sounds.

  When Ben looked up again, Abby was there, across from him, where the killer had once stood. “You…shoved him?”

  “No. I gave him a sidekick. I have a black belt in kickboxing. Andy saw enough women get molested while he was in the service to insist I learn to protect myself.” She stared down into the well, but saw nothing through the darkness.

  “Abby, what you did was foolish! If he’d heard you come up behind him, he might have shot you—”

  “If he’d heard me, you would have tried to save me. And maybe I’d be scolding you right now, instead of the other way around. Am I right?” She skirted around the hole and took Ben’s hand. “We still aren’t safe. The tables will turn again very soon, and you’ll once again get my undying thanks. Until then, we’d better keep moving. Venus is waiting for us right around the corner.” She nudged him forward. “I only wish we could have grabbed his gun before he fell.”

  He was thinking the exact same thing. Except he suspected that, of the two of them, she was a better shot.

  Chapter 47

  Asquith Hall’s Venus de Milo was an exact replica of the original one, inside the Louvre. The center of the maze was also large enough to hold four benches, each facing the statue.

  The statue’s base was three-feet-square and made out of marble. Ben watched as Abby moved to the back of the statue. She crouched down beside the base’s ornate moulding and tapped it hard, in the center.

  The moulding popped off, revealing a space about two feet wide but the same height as the moulding—a mere three inches. Abby slid her hand into the space. With a slight smile, she pulled out what they were looking for:

  An unlabeled manila envelope.

  But the pages inside the envelope contained some undecipherable code. However, Fred taped a tiny computer memory stick to one of them.

  “Fred must have the password to open the files on this thumb drive,” Abby murmured.

  Ben nodded. “Halfway between here and DC, we’ll do as he instructed and find someone to call Langley from a pay phone.”

  Abby shook her head. “We don’t need to implicate anyone else who they might gun down. I’ll make the call.”

  “No can do. The Ghost Squad may be monitoring calls to his extension, which I presume means it’ll be put through some voice recognition software.”

  “Darlin’, you jaist don’t unnerstah-ann! Ah can disguise mah voice,” she answered, in a syrupy Southern accent. Then in her own voice, she added, “Whenever his constituents were around, Andy laid it on thick. I guess it rubbed off.”

&nbs
p; He had to smile. “Okay, you’re hired. Let’s see if a phone booth still exists between here and DC.”

  They found one outside of a gas station, where Routes 29 and 55 intersected. He punched in the number, then handed her the receiver, which she held between them, so that he could listen in on the conversation.

  Fred’s line seemed to ring forever before someone picked up. It was a woman. After Abby asked for Fred Hanover, they heard a series of clicks before someone else came on the line. This time it was a man. “You wish to talk to Mr. Hanover.”

  “Yes, thank you,” Abby drawled sweetly.

  “I’m sorry to be the one to inform you. Mr. Hanover died in an accident last night. His car skidded on some black ice, and jackknifed into the Potomac. They’re dragging the river now. If you care to leave your name and number I can have someone call you with updates—”

  Ben pulled the phone out of Abby’s hand and hung it up.

  She slumped against the gas station’s cinderblock wall. “There must be someone else we can trust!”

  Ben shook his head then stopped. Suddenly he grabbed the receiver and started dialing again. “Hey, Digits, it’s me. Fred’s dead, and I’ve got what he was looking for. At least, that’s what they told me at Langley. Can we meet?…No, I’m calling from a phone booth. Yes, it’s the same one….Oh, shit! I wasn’t thinking…Where? Okay I—”

  He stared at the dead receiver in his hand.

  “What just happened?” Abby asked.

  “I may have compromised the one guy who can decipher this message on this thumb drive.”

  She blinked away her tears. “So, now he won’t meet with us?”

  “He will, but we just can’t walk into his place. And we’ve got to get out of here fast, in case the call was traced. In ten minutes, he’ll be calling a phone booth at a convenience store, a mile down the road.”

  “Isn’t he being a little paranoid?”

  “He’s got every right. Like Andy and Maddy, his father was a victim of Talbot’s spy wars. Frankly, we couldn’t have a better go-to guy. Even as we were talking, Digits pulled our location via the GPS tracker he tethered to his Caller ID, so whoever got to Fred could do the same to us.” Ben looked over his shoulder. “All the more reason to get the hell out of here.”

  They walked back to the car in silence. He didn’t have to tell her what they both already knew:

  Their chances of staying alive were dwindling.

  Chapter 48

  They both had their ears to the pay phone as Digits explained his plan, which was this:

  With cash only, they were to buy sun glasses, hats, scarves, jackets, magazines—whatever they needed in order to hide their faces from DC’s many security cams.

  Then they were to ditch the car in any free parking lot within walking distance to the Fort Totten Metro Rail Station. One would carry the thumb drive, while the other would hold onto the paper file. On the way to the station, they were to walk there on separate sides of the street, never acknowledging each other.

  In fact, they were to enter the station from different sides, and buy their tickets separately. Abby would jump on the Red Line, and Ben would get on the Green/Yellow line, both southbound. The lines hooked up again at the Gallery Plaza/Chinatown Station.

  “Why is he making us split up?” Abby asked.

  “That’s in case we’re followed,” Ben supposed. “They’ll be looking for a man and a woman traveling together. If we separate and cover over our hair and eyes, they may not be able to ID us. And as it turns out, Fort Totten is the only station in which those three metro lines converge. If either of us picks up a tail, it’ll be easier to lose them in there. As for Gallery Plaza, both the lines he suggested stop there as well, so eventually we end up in the same place.”

  Digits’s directions then explained that they were to find the panhandling violinist who played in Gallery Plaza’s ticketing lobby. If he played Waltzing Matilda, they should keep walking, and swap their train lines—he’d then jump on the Blue, while Abby would ride the Orange line—back to the direction they just came from, hook up again at L’Enfant, and get the hell out of dodge. However, if the violinist was playing The Shadow of Your Smile, Maddy should reach into the tip hat and leave a five dollar bill, and at the same time she’d pull out the tiny folded orange note, which would contain the directions to Digits’s place.

  If all went well, they were to rendezvous outside, across the street at the all night diner, taking the booth next to the back exit.

  Should for any reason they get separated or feel they were being followed, they were to stay on the train beyond Gallery Place, to Metro Center, where they’d have the best chance of losing the tail, since it was the largest stop and serviced all four Metro lines. After losing their tail, they were to meet up again on the rooftop of the Momiji Lounge, on H at Fifth. A waitress named Laurel would give them a small envelope. They were to tip her well.

  “Looks like he’s thought of everything,” Abby murmured.

  Ben frowned. “Let’s hope so. All our lives depend on it.”

  The Metro ride was uneventful. Ben was wearing cheaters and a baseball cap. He had exchanged his overcoat for a leather bomber jacket he bought at a Goodwill store next door for ten bucks.

  He was the first to come upon the violinist in the Foggy Bottom station. Noting a security camera, he stood off to one side and pretended to read a copy of the Washington Post, which he’d salvaged from a bench.

  He should have waited for Abby at the diner, but he already felt guilty for having left her unaccompanied since Fort Totten. He prayed she would make an appearance soon.

  Six very long minutes later her train pulled into the station. She had purchased a navy raincoat, and had draped a black scarf over her head and shoulders. Her hair was tucked under it, so that no one could detect the color. She sauntered slowly, as if she didn’t have a care in the world. When she reached the violinist, she stopped, as if entranced. When she dropped her five dollar bill, she bent slightly at the knee, which allowed her hand to disappear in the big bowler tip hat. He didn’t see her pocket a note, but she put her hand in her pocket, so he guessed she had been successful.

  Their eyes met for only a second. It seemed as though he’d learned to read the faintest glimmer of hope or shadow of fear that crossed her face.

  He could tell she was feeling triumphant.

  Ben waited a good five minutes after she was out of the station and had entered the diner before following her in.

  It would be hard to keep from hugging her and never letting her go again, but he contained himself. In time, maybe she’d realize what she meant to him.

  If they lived that long.

  “Well, well, well, talk about the new year starting off with a bang.” Digits’s declaration was accompanied by a frown and a low whistle.

  “Why? What are you looking at?”

  “The biggest political hoax of all time.” Digits looked up from his computer screen, where the file contained on the thumb drive was visible.

  The directions on the orange note led Ben and Abby to a Chinese restaurant, where, as instructed, they ordered pot stickers, broccoli beef, and shrimp chow fun. With their order they were given a key. Further instructions, included in the bag, led them to an alley in back of the restaurant.

  The key opened the back door. They took the rickety elevator to the fourth floor.

  It opened up to a hallway containing just one door.

  “Delivery,” Abby shouted.

  “About damn time,” Digits said, as he opened the door. “Did they give you extra sweet and sour sauce?”

  Abby didn’t know what to say, but Ben did. “We’re starved, so this better be for us.”

  Digits let them in. The room was immense. It took up the whole floor over the restaurant, but was also practically empty, except for a desk, a counter with a hot plate, a refrigerator, and a futon. The only light came from a dim desk lamp beside a laptop. Blackout curtains lined the windows that w
ere on every side of the room.

  He tossed Ben two sets of chopsticks. “Dig in while I break this puppy.”

  It had taken him about fifteen minutes to crack the password, but half an hour to break the encryption.

  Abby was reading over his shoulder. “My God! Talbot will be faking a terrorist plot—on New Year’s Eve?” She shook her head. “That’s only seventy-two hours from now!”

  “This gives us everything we need to take them down: schematics, even photos of the Venezuelan hostages who will be used as the human time bombs—”

  “Aw, hell! The file contained a worm.” Digits grabbed another memory stick and slid it into his computer. It was attached to a keychain fob with a Lara Croft image on it.

  “A what?” Abby asked. “What does that mean?”

  “It means you’ll have to eat and run. Unfortunately the thumb drive contains some sort of tracker.” He waited a moment, until the light on Lara Croft memory stick blinked green. He pulled it out and handed it to Ben. “I’ve scrubbed the intel and put it on this drive. Take it, along with the deciphered files, which are printing now.”

  As Abby reached over and pulled out the pages in the laser printer, Digits glanced out the window. “Aw, hell! Three cars just pulled up outside. Guess who’s coming to dinner?”

  With lightning speed, he ran to the refrigerator. Inside were a couple of cell phones and tall stacks of twenty-dollar bills, wrapped in cellophane.

  He tossed Abby the cell phones and eight stacks of the cash, then grabbed a backpack and stuffed his computer into it before turning out the light. "This should be enough to get you out of DC. There’s the fire escape on the back window. From there, you can jump onto the roof of the store next door. I’ll be right behind you."

  She was still cramming the stash into her purse as Ben pulled her out the window with him.