The Program

by Gregg Hurwitz

  Tom Altman steeled his neck a bit too dramatically. “I am ready.” TD rewarded him with a delighted grin. “Glad to have you on board.”

  “How do I get there?”

  “Oh, we don’t have people just drive to the ranch.” TD’s lip twitched at the vulgarity of the thought. “Randall will pick you up. Where do you live?”

  “I’ve been knocking around between friends’ guesthouses, actually.” Tim added in a whisper, “Divorce.”

  TD smiled understandingly. “Precipitated by your daughter’s death?” Tim affected more agitated body language. “Sort of. You could say so.”

  “Well, we’ll have plenty of time to explore that later.” TD bit his lip. “Randall can meet you here at the hotel Monday morning? Why don’t we call it eight o’clock?”

  Skate reappeared with Jason Struthers of Struthers Auto Mall, keeping him on deck near the curtain.

  Still light-headed and weak, Tim stood.

  TD shook his hand. “Welcome to the future.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Driving home in the sunrise, Tim struggled to keep from nodding off. He felt blurry and dissociated, and his body couldn’t comprehend that it was early morning. Unfortunately, his 5:00 A.M. wake-up call had made Will Henning no less animated. He’d gotten all blustery at the identification of Betters—at last a target. When Tim related his decision to abort the snatch, Will’s voice hardened, giving Tim an idea of what kind of tyrant it took to push a $100 million film through production.

  “How dare you flip the script on me. That wasn’t your goddamn call to make. I am the client here.”

  “I’m a deputy U.S. marshal, sir. The Service doesn’t have clients.”

  “You’re back in the Service because of me. One call to Marco, you’ll be driving a rent-a-cop cart at the Beverly Center.”

  “If you think that’s the most promising way to meet your objectives, go for it.”

  “You think you can hardball me? I dealt with Marlon fucking Brando in the seventies.” Tim laughed involuntarily. A gravelly exhale from Will. “You lying piece of shit.”

  “I promised I’d help Leah. Not kidnap her.”

  “We both know there’s no difference right now.”

  “The only legal justification for taking Leah into custody against her will is if she’s in imminent danger. She’s not. She’s in her right mind, there was no evidence of physical abuse—to be honest, I was impressed with her capabilities.”

  “You neglect to mention that her ‘capabilities’ landed her in a mind-control cult.”

  “And yours made you a Hollywood producer. I’m sure there are plenty of people who’d take issue with that choice.”

  “Don’t fuck with us, Deputy. Emma’s beside herself. We haven’t slept in—”

  “Sir, with all due respect, you are not the victims here.”

  “Now you’re a shrink.”

  “No. It’s just something I found helpful to remember in the wake of my daughter’s murder.” For once Will remained silent. Tim pulled into the garage and turned off the engine. His shoulders throbbed, sending pangs to the base of his skull. “Good-bye, Will.” He snapped the phone shut and pulled himself from the Hummer.

  Trudging through the kitchen, Tim swirled the punch cup he’d smuggled out of the Radisson, making the cherry beads of residue dance. He set the cup and an appropriated brownie on the table and moved to the living room, where Bear’s slumbering form occupied the couch. Boston lay on the floor beside Bear, matching his heavy breathing, and Tim felt a stab of appreciation for their dutiful waiting.

  In the bedroom Dray sat propped up on a wedge of pillows against the headboard, static-edged dialogue notched a few clicks too high on the TV Dead asleep.

  The face he caught looking back at him from the mounted mirror was as gray as the taste in his mouth. Acid no longer washed through his stomach—he’d gone past the point of hunger several hours ago. His heart jerked irregularly in his chest, still trying to recover its customary rhythm. Through bleary eyes, he watched his wife sleep, flooded with gratitude for the simple, familiar tableau.

  Slowly he felt his body mellow into bone-deep exhaustion.

  Dray’s lids parted slowly. Her smile was so effortless and uncomplicated it moved right through him. She held out her arms and said in a sleep-cracked voice, “You’re back.”

  She embraced him around the waist, and he ran his fingers deep through her hair, scratching, a sensation she loved when she felt tired or lazy. “Let me look at you.” She pulled back. “Jesus Christ. You didn’t look this bad when you held recon in a Bosnian tree fort for six days. What did they put you through?”

  He managed to bumble out an incoherent summary. He was circling back through the Guy-Meds for maybe the third time when Dray nodded. “I get it.”

  “You waited up?”

  “Tried. We thought you’d be home yesterday afternoon. I got stressed, and so I called Bear, and we sat up and pretended to watch a couple John Waynes.”

  “I couldn’t call. There weren’t phones.”

  She threw back the sheets. “Get in here.” As he slid into bed, she leaned forward, swallowing hard. “I don’t feel so hot. I trusted Bear with take-out sushi.”

  “Big mistake.”

  “Maybe my last.” She watched him closely, brushing the hair off his forehead, the relief in her eyes palpable.

  He lay back on his pillow, which felt inordinately lush. “It’s a whole thing out there. A factory.”

  “I’m glad you decided to walk away. No matter what she’s gotten herself into, she doesn’t deserve getting duffeled to the curb and waking up daddy’s little captive. We’ll figure out the money. We always do.” She kept smoothing his hair off his face. “Timothy, are you all right?”

  “I don’t want to leave her in there. I can’t.”

  Dray’s eyes flared a bit. She seemed to need a moment to tamp down her reaction. “She’s lucky to have you. Leah.”

  “She doesn’t have me. You have me.”

  Her voice kept its edge. “You know what I mean.”

  “There are dozens of people being controlled.”

  “Willingly.”

  “It’s not willing, Dray.”

  “Calm down a bit. Let’s talk this through. Going up to the ranch puts you in even greater danger.”

  “That’s the job. We put ourselves on the line to protect people. That’s what we do. Not just when it’s convenient.”

  Dray pushed herself up so she was sitting cross-legged. “No, we put ourselves on the line to uphold the law.”

  He stared at the floor.

  “There’s no crime here,” she said.

  “I’ll find one.”

  “Bill of Rights be damned.” She softened her voice. “You went down this road before, Timothy. If you pursue this and there is no crime...” Tim turned away from her.

  “... you’ll end up on the outside again.”

  Now that he’d returned to a place where he could expect safety and sanity, his frustrations were welling up. “This guy’s pulling in money hand over fist, and he’s hell-bent on expansion. I’m not gonna let it happen.”

  “Are you sure that’s what this is about?”

  His eyeballs ached with fatigue. “Huh?”

  Dray tilted her head at the hall, a gesture that had come to indicate Ginny and the loss of her. He flashed on his taking on Kindell’s voice at the colloquium and a chill moved through his insides.

  “Come on, Dray.”

  “You don’t feel protective of Leah?”

  “I do now, that’s for sure. She covered for me and took some vicious punishment for it. That kind of thing is built in to a person. A kid like that deserves something better.”

  “Every kid deserves something better—but they don’t receive it from the federal authorities. Thank God.”

  “She’s brainwashed, Dray.”

  “Right. So she could betray you whenever—maybe she already has. You really want to put your life i
n this kid’s hands? They could be waiting for you up there, tying the noose as we speak.”

  “She wouldn’t.”

  “Oh, right. Because she has such good judgment? Either she’s controlled, in which case you can’t count on her, or she’s not controlled, in which case she’s there by fully exercised choice and you have to back off and leave her be.”

  Tim was tempted to acknowledge the sense of that statement. Instead he offered, “If she rolled on me now, she’d be punished even worse for not telling earlier.”

  “To this lay observer, she seems like a glutton for punishment.” Dray bit the inside of her lip and rolled it between her teeth. “What’s she look like? In person?”

  “She’s taller than I thought. Sort of a willowy build—”

  “Willowy?” Dray’s tone was a sure indication that he’d misstepped. “She’s willowy?”

  “Well, kind of slender, yeah.”

  Dray moved her book from her lap to the nightstand. The lamp rocked a bit on its base. “Okay, willowy. What else? Does she have flaxen hair, too?”

  “Where the hell is all this coming from, Dray?”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask Leah and her willowy build?” The triangle of skin above the stretched collar of her T-shirt had flushed. “Why are you so impassioned about this case?”

  “Seeing this event...” He looked down at his hands, which rested meekly on the turned-back sheets. He dozed off for an instant but caught his head as it dipped.

  Dray’s eyebrows lost themselves beneath her bangs; the heat had gone right out of her. After a moment she pushed two fingers into the ring of his fist, and he squeezed them. He took longer and longer blinks until he could no longer keep his eyes open. The last thing he sensed before drifting off was the caress of Dray’s lips on his cheek.

  A paw covered his entire shoulder, shaking him awake. Tim rolled over, sliding an arm across his eyes. “What time is it?”

  Bear’s voice—”High noon, podnah. The old man wants to see you.” Tim groaned and leaned forward, his joints aching. Evidently Will hadn’t waited long to air his grievances to Tannino. “At home?”

  “At the barn. He’s been running the show through Saturdays for a while now. Taking advantage of availability pay. Some of us have already put in a half day.”

  Tim blinked into the light. Bear was contentedly munching a brownie.

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “Kitchen table. Why?”

  “It’s evidence, you dolt.”

  Bear stopped midchew and angled the brownie to reveal the near-perfect missing semicircle. “Hahng ohn.” He scurried to the bathroom. Tim heard a plop, then the flush of the toilet. Bear reentered, using the inside of his shirt collar to wipe his mouth. “Okay,” he said. “So no one ever has to know about that.”

  “Where’s Dray?”

  “I talked her into driving by the clinic on the way to the station. She was still feeling pretty nauseous from the sushi.”

  “Maybe she ate a bad brownie.”

  Bear did not return his smile.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I have an agenda. Senator Feinstein has an agenda. Will Henning has an agenda. You don’t get to have an agenda.” Tannino exhaled irritably, puffing up his white-dusted hair in the front. He cocked back in his chair, twirling the point of a silver letter opener against his thumb. “There’s no room.”

  “This isn’t an agenda. It’s an obligation.”

  “Goddamnit, Rackley. I told you not to fuck around. I told you just to get the girl.”

  “Why? So he can do it to others? You can’t save one person and leave the machinery functioning. What’s the point?” Tim gestured at the framed confirmation photo behind Tannino. “You want your niece going off to college with—?”

  “Don’t personalize, Rackley. It’s vulgar.”

  Tim sank back in the couch and did his best to ignore the fatigue headache that six hours of sleep hadn’t quite vanquished. “You’re right. I apologize. I just—”

  “You just what?”

  “I want to take the prick down.”

  Tannino’s thick eyebrows rose. “You’re more emotional these days, Rackley.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s nothing to apologize for. Emotion. Just don’t let it interfere with the job.” Tannino tapped the letter opener on the edge of his knuckles. “I guess it’ll sidestep the more sensitive issues involved with taking the girl into custody if you talk her out. You think you can?”

  “I have a shot at it. Or I’ll dig up evidence so we can disrupt the cult. If the cult disintegrates around her, she’ll have to seek new options.” Tim watched Tannino, but his narrow stare didn’t give anything up. “Look, I’m not asking for something that benefits me here. I’ve got nothing to gain and less to lose.”

  “I’m not questioning your motives, Rackley. I’m saying you’re a pain in the ass. And I am questioning your zeal. In view of last year’s events, I’d be irresponsible not to.”

  “I promise you, Marshal, this is a threat we’d better pay attention to before it gets out of hand.”

  “I’ve got a loudmouth Hollywood producer crawling up my ass, calling you a diva.” Tannino’s lips twitched, and he looked away until the incipient grin no longer threatened. “You’ve dipped into the honey pot pretty good already, driving Hummers, wearing Cavaricci pants.” Tim sensed Tannino’s shift from pissed-off manager to long-suffering Italian paterfamilias. He was about to cave.

  “Versace.”

  “Whatever. You have Thomas and Freed bloodhounding finances. Now you want more undercover at a secret location. This was not intended to be a balls-to-the-wall operation.”

  They stared at each other for a few moments, Tim letting the silence work on him. Finally Tannino snatched up the phone and dialed. He slid down the receiver and spoke over it. “Mention my niece again, I’ll cut your eyes out.” He snapped the phone back up. “Tannino for Winston Smith.”

  The hard-nosed assistant U.S. attorney was a vital ally to the Service. In the federal system, AUSAs make the world go round.

  “I got a deputy going UC up on a ranch, scouting out a cult. I need to know if I can send him in with some transmitters... . No, we don’t have enough for a wiretap warrant.” Tannino’s dark brown eyes fixed on Tim. “We don’t have anything... . No charges brought.” A sigh. “I know.” He listened for a while, then said to Tim, “You were asked as a guest, correct?” Tim nodded.

  “What’s that buy us?... Uh-huh... . Uh-huh... . Uh-huh. Thanks for nothing, Win.” Tannino racked the phone. “Okay, here it is: Since you were invited up, you can bring sound and image, but you have to keep it on your person.”

  “I can’t wear a wire in. They could have me doing jumping jacks in the nude for all we know. Plus, these guys are too paranoid to do anything in front of me—a wire won’t pick up what we need.”

  “Anything more, some defense attorney’s gonna drop-kick out of court.” Off Tim’s expression Tannino said, “No one’s gonna spank you for doing some extracurricular snooping, but running over a red flag from the AUSA”—he shrugged—”that could sink a case. You know this.” Tim’s hands rose, clapped to his knees. “Looks like I’m going up naked.”

  “Looks that way.”

  Phone to his ear, Bear sat on Tim’s desk, his feet in the bucket of the chair. The wood groaned as he jotted in the notepad pressed open on his knee. Holding engorged files, Thomas and Freed waited on him. All three turned as Tim approached.

  Across the squad room, Denley and Palton rose from their chairs to steal a peek at him, Denley’s lips moving as he supplied side-of-mouth commentary.

  Tim Rackley, in-house novelty act.

  Bear set down the phone and gathered up a scattering of printouts. “We’d better get upstairs.”

  Thomas and Freed didn’t acknowledge Tim on the elevator ride up or as they passed through the bare offices vacated by the Secret Service. Thomas in particular gave off a smoldering resent
ment. Packing peanuts littered the floor like swollen confetti. Bear put a shoulder into the conference-room door to get it open, and they arranged themselves at one end of the oversize table.

  Bear laid out his notepad, a variety of printed docs, and a few sheets dark with scribbled writing. Across the table, Thomas and Freed exhibited an equally impressive array of paperwork. Stuck pressing flesh at a Head Feds dinner, Tannino had kept Tim waiting nearly an hour for their face-to-face. The deputies had spent the time well.

  “I appreciate your jumping on this for us,” Tim said.

  “Let’s get something straight right off the bat,” Thomas said. “We’ll work with you and we’ll work well with you, but you can save your Boy Scout routine. Don’t forget I pulled a fucking shotgun on you in an alley last March.”

  Bear held up his hands placatingly. “It’s okay—”

  “Not with me. I didn’t like doing that. Not one bit. There was a moment where...” He stopped, his voice shaky, his jowly face flushed. Thomas’s distress caught Tim by surprise, undercutting his anger.

  “We deal with enough shit on the job,” Freed said in a more tempered voice. “You don’t put a fellow deputy—let alone a friend—in a position where he might have to shoot you. It doesn’t make for dreamless nights.”

  “You’re right,” Tim said as evenly as he could.

  But Thomas wasn’t done. “You don’t think we all want to kick a little ass on the side sometimes? What you did, you embarrassed the Service. I was embarrassed to know you. I was embarrassed to have been your friend.”

  “His fucking daughter got killed.” Bear was on his feet, hands spread on the table. More intimately involved in Tim’s trespasses, he’d already had the benefit of dealing with his anger and coming out the other side. He was no good at holding a grudge, and his loyalty, once renewed, had played revisionist historian with his own heated outlook during last year’s tribulations. “He went through the wringer already, you smug fuck— court, media, jail. What gives you the right—”