by Eric Bernt
“You got me there.” His tone of voice made it clear how much he enjoyed her brinksmanship.
She paused to emphasize the sincerity of what she was about to say. “The American Heritage Foundation was founded on a set of principles that require an inordinate amount of self-discipline to maintain. I know because my father was one of the founders. When Stenson started deviating from those principles, I couldn’t let that continue.”
Jessup massaged his chin between his thumb and forefinger as he nodded slightly. Now it all made sense. This was about protecting her father’s legacy, as well as her own future. And if there was one thing Jessup Fields understood, it was the importance of family. “Which of the founders was your father?”
She hesitated momentarily. “Lawrence Walters. My name is Caitlin.”
Jessup chortled, shaking his head. Of course! “I should have been able to guess you were his kin.”
“And why is that?”
“From the first moment you called, I’ve been trying to figure out where someone of your gender and youth got the unique combination of intellect, charm, bravado, and fortitude you seem to possess. The only other person I ever met with a similar combination was your father. I was only a young man at the time when I met him, and to tell you the truth, he intimidated the shit out of me.”
“He had that effect on a lot of people.”
“And I admired the hell out of him for it.” His fondness and respect for Lawrence immediately gave him an even stronger emotional connection to Caitlin, which he knew was precisely the reason she had revealed her identity. Damn, she’s good. At least as good as her old man, and possibly even better. If she survives, that is. “To state the obvious, this is one hell of a risk you’re taking.”
“I appreciate your understatement,” she said wryly. “But I have taken every possible precaution. This is something I had to do. If I’m going to win, I need a powerful ally, so I turned to you.”
He respected the positioning of her argument. She needed his help, which was why she called him, offering her assistance in return. It was a move he’d made many times in his career. He responded with his best Humphrey Bogart impersonation. “Caitlin, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
“Let’s hope it’s a long and prosperous one.”
“So tell me, how can we help each other?”
CHAPTER 73
DAVID’S PLACE
WOODSDALE, MARYLAND
June 2, 10:11 a.m.
Eddie sat next to Lolo, staring at the floor. He thought very carefully, like what he was about to ask was a big deal for him. And most certainly it was. This was clearly something he’d thought about for a very long time. It took him a moment to muster his courage. “Lolo?”
“Yes.”
He glanced at her briefly. “Would you teach me how to use your phone?”
Lolo had expected him to ask something else. “Of course I would. Yes-yes.”
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
“Why would you think I don’t want to?”
He closed his eyes for a moment to focus completely on what she had just said. “It is not that I think you are lying, but I also don’t think you are telling the truth. Not one hundred percent truth. I think this is what Skylar meant about most statements being in the middle of the true–false spectrum.”
“I thought you were going to ask me something different,” she said somewhat reluctantly.
“What did you think I was going to ask you?”
“Don’t want to say.” Now it was her turn to stare at the floor.
“Your cheeks are red.”
She nodded. “Sorry.”
“Why are you sorry, Lolo?”
“Don’t know.”
Eddie made his BUZZER sound. “Not true.”
“Confusing.”
“What is confusing?”
“Don’t know.”
Eddie made his BUZZER sound again. “Lolo, do you say ‘Don’t know’ when there is something you don’t want to talk about but you are not sure what else to say?”
She nodded again.
“Okay. I understand now.” He paused, then asked, “Are we still friends?”
“Yes, of course. We are. Friends are friends through thick and thin. This is only thin.”
Eddie nodded, not quite sure what she meant, but he liked the way it sounded. “Only thin.” Ordinarily he would have asked her to further explain, but he was preoccupied with her phone. It seemed to have a magical draw for him, as if it were a sacred chalice.
He carefully picked up the device, not sure how to hold it. “Please teach me.”
CHAPTER 74
AMERICAN HERITAGE FOUNDATION
ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA
June 2, 10:16 a.m.
Sixty-nine miles south of David’s Place, Daryl Trotter climbed onto his desktop. He was not trying to fix an overhead light or swipe away an annoying cobweb dangling from the ceiling. He stood on top of his desk with his hands in his pockets and stared out the window.
Greers was stupefied. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Getting a fresh perspective.” He glanced down at his peer as if he was doing nothing out of the ordinary.
“If you say so.” Greers couldn’t decide if he wanted Stenson to enter their office at this exact moment or not. If their boss poked his head in, Trotter would look like an idiot. Unless, of course, he had developed a new approach to their current mission of locating Dr. Skylar Drummond or Edward Parks. Then he would look daring, or possibly even brilliant.
The fact was that neither had made any progress in several hours. It was frustrating. Greers wasn’t about to join Trotter and stand on his own desk, but he instead paced back and forth. “This shouldn’t be so difficult.”
Trotter stared down at him. “Yes, it should. We’re trying to locate people who have already demonstrated an uncanny knack for eluding capture. And this time, we don’t have the entire New York office of Homeland Security at our disposal.”
“It’s time to start throwing out bad ideas. The very worst ones we can think of. Once those are out of the way, then we stand a chance of finding a decent one.”
Trotter nodded, thinking this was a good approach—one that he remembered reading about recently in a self-help book, though he couldn’t remember which one. “Contact Homeland. Get whatever personnel we need from the DC office.”
“After last week, Stenson wouldn’t dare risk any more public exposure.”
“Agreed. You’ve got to admit: that was pretty bad.”
“No disagreement there. You’re up, one–zero,” Greers said, announcing the score of their “bad idea” game.
“Tee it up, hotshot. Let’s see what kind of bad you’ve got.” Trotter bent down to wipe off a layer of dust that had collected on top of his computer monitor.
Greers said the first thing that came to his mind. “Local cops? We could call in a missing-persons report.”
“Only if we wanted to get Homeland involved. They monitor local radio traffic. Anything involving recent federal fugitives would certainly be brought to their attention.”
“Which means that was a really bad idea. One–one.”
“Does one of them have a particular favorite food?” asked Trotter.
“Unknown. But we do know Parks won’t eat anything purple.”
“What he won’t eat is of no help.”
“None whatsoever.” Greers nodded in agreement, looking smug. “Damn, I’m good. I’m up two–one.”
Trotter didn’t like losing at anything. “Have we gone through her boyfriend’s apartment?”
“With a fine-tooth comb. We know which side of the bed she slept on, what type of milk she drank, and which channels she got her news from.”
“We might have missed something.”
“Our guys? Fat chance.”
“No disagreement there. Which means we’re all tied up again, two–two.”
Greers disagree
d. “That wasn’t bad enough. It was only somewhat bad. Even the best teams sometimes miss something.”
“Our guys?” Trotter replied sardonically. Then he had another idea. “You know what a complete waste of time would be?”
“Personally walking every street in Maryland?”
“Checking social media.”
Greers shook his head. “I have to give you credit, that is fantastically bad.”
“Unless they ran into someone who didn’t know any better.”
“Which is exactly why I checked Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram last night for every possible combination of their names.”
“And?” Trotter asked after jumping down from his desk.
“Individually, their names returned over eleven thousand mentions. Way too many to be useful. Who knew there were so many Skylars, Butlers, and Eddies.”
Trotter sat down in front of his computer. “What about combinations of their names?”
“Zero. That’s why I didn’t mention it.”
“What time was it when you ran your search?”
Greers checked his computer. “Ten seventeen.”
“And you haven’t run another one since?” He was already typing commands into his keyboard.
“It was a stretch even the first time.”
“It’s still a stretch, but if they did find some Good Samaritan to help them, this person would have acted first, then thought about it later. Eddie Parks needed emergency medical treatment. Who knows how long it might have taken. They needed supplies, a location to treat him, a place for him to recover, and a vehicle to transport him out of the area as soon as he was capable of travel. Perhaps this person jumped in to assist, and then only after the crisis had passed decided to share their heroics.”
“Like I said, it was a stretch the first time.”
Continuing to multitask, Trotter typed as he talked. “The more I think about it, the odds are pretty good that they’re getting help from someone out there. Caitlin didn’t have time to reach out through established channels, so who knows what she might have told some Good Samaritan.”
“Have we exhausted every one of them, by the way? Traditional channels.”
“No one in our network would risk being disloyal. Even if only vaguely, they’re aware of the potential consequences.” Trotter started furiously typing a series of commands into his computer. “Unless our trio stumbled upon an abandoned house chock-full of supplies, which is highly unlikely, somebody is giving them aid.”
“Somebody who probably has no idea who they are,” added Greers.
Trotter initiated a search covering all social media platforms and major cell phone carriers for six names during the last twelve hours: Skylar, Drummond, Butler, McHenry, Edward, and Parks. He then added a seventh: Eddie. The search returned 11,673 mentions, far too many to be useful.
Greers shook his head. “That’s about the same number I got last night. It’s useless.”
“I was only being thorough. It’s the combination of names that might yield a different result.”
CHAPTER 75
TROTTER AND GREERS’S OFFICE
AMERICAN HERITAGE FOUNDATION
June 2, 10:21 a.m.
Trotter revised his search to include various combinations of two names: Skylar and Eddie; Skylar and Butler; Butler and Skylar; and so forth. The search returned three mentions. All from the same Instagram account: @LoloLikesToCook.
“Who the hell is @LoloLikesToCook?”
“Apparently someone who likes to cook breakfast.” He pointed to three photographs of various breakfast plates, with a description: Breakfast for my new friends Butler, Skylar, and Eddie.
Greers stood behind him, patting both his shoulders. “I could honestly kiss you right now.”
“Please don’t,” Trotter responded without looking away from his screen.
“Tell me you’ve got a location.”
Trotter pointed to coordinates that appeared in the map of Maryland on his screen: N 39.4621°, W 76.3052°. He zoomed in to the location until the street address became visible. “Woodsdale, Maryland.”
“How far away is our closest search team?”
Trotter called up the location of each of the five teams in the area. Two were over thirty miles away. One was twenty-one miles and another twelve. However, one team was less than three miles away in a town called Edgewood. “Team Five is two point eight miles away. They can be there in nine minutes.”
“Who is Five?”
“Guthrie and Nance.”
“I will never again complain about you standing on your desk.”
“That is all I’ve ever wanted in life.” Trotter texted all five teams the details, ending the message with the instruction: GO!
The text was also received by the other two parties in the group, Charlie Johnson and Enola Meyers, who were just down the hall. They immediately rushed into the office. “How the hell did you find them?” she asked.
“God bless social media,” Greers responded. “But I can’t take any of the credit. It was all him.” He motioned to Trotter, who nodded his appreciation. He had fully expected Jason to take the credit.
Enola couldn’t believe it. “You’re kidding.”
Charlie was also in disbelief. He moved to look over Daryl’s shoulder at his screen. “How could they have been so dumb?”
“They weren’t. It was somebody who made them breakfast. She clearly has no idea who they are.” Now Trotter looked up at Enola and Charlie. “You two want the credit?”
“Are you serious?” Charlie asked with disbelief.
“I’m not one to joke around very often.”
Enola stepped toward him, answering for both of them. “Hell, yes.”
Trotter turned around in his chair to address them both. “Then it’s yours. Go down the hall and tell Stenson you realized Parks had to be getting help. Your search for various combinations of their names yielded three results—all from the same account.”
Neither needed to be told twice. They raced out the door. Charlie glanced back, saying, “Thanks, man. We owe you.”
“That’s correct.” Trotter grinned slyly as they exited.
Greers shook his head, applauding quietly. “Well played.”
“I thought you would appreciate it.”
“And here I thought you didn’t understand shit about people.”
“I don’t, really. I just realized it’s what you would have done, so I did it before you could. Now they owe me and not you.”
Greers moved over and leaned on Trotter’s desk. “You don’t really think that’s how this is going to play out, do you?”
Enola and Charlie walked briskly down the hall to Bob Stenson’s office. The two of them could count on one hand the number of times they had set foot in this space. The first time for each was their final interview before being hired, during which he had made it clear that working at the AHF wasn’t just a job. It was a way of life. A calling. A mission.
Each of those meetings was perfunctory. Stenson trusted the opinions of his lieutenants and wanted to sign off on their picks. It was also one last opportunity for these young would-be world changers to embarrass themselves as well as their sponsors. Such a disaster had only happened once before during Stenson’s tenure, but that one time was enough to remind him never to take any decision for granted, particularly when it came to hiring.
Once officially on board, however, employees needed a reason to see him. A good one. Enola and Charlie were both confident that they had one. Enola knocked on Stenson’s open door.
He didn’t look up from his screens. “Only speak if you have good news. Otherwise, turn around and don’t come back until you have some.”
“We have located Edward Parks and his doctor.”
Stenson now looked up. “Have you now?”
Charlie jumped in. “He’s in a home for special-needs adults in Woodsdale, Maryland. Five search teams are en route. One will be there in less than ten minutes.”
“Which team?”
“Guthrie and Nance. They happened to be closest.”
“I like those two. Good choice to have them work together.”
“Thank you, sir.” Charlie resisted the temptation to smile. He knew the importance of restraint with their boss.
Stenson directed his next question to Enola. “How did you find them?”
“Social media,” she answered. “One of the residents in the facility made them breakfast and posted about it on social media.”
“Thank you, Facebook.”
“It was Instagram, actually.”
“It’s all the same to me,” Stenson said, turning back to his screens. “Nice work. Let me know when we are in possession of Parks and the device.”
CHAPTER 76
HOLIDAY INN EXPRESS
EDGEWOOD, MARYLAND
June 2, 10:25 a.m.
Guthrie and Nance only had to walk across the parking lot of the Red Roof Inn to reach the next hotel in the area, where they were in the middle of the same routine, presenting the same fake ICE identification to the owner of the establishment, when they simultaneously received Trotter’s text.
The two men paused, glancing at each other. “That’s less than three miles from here,” Guthrie said, looking at the location on Waze.
Nance responded, “Time to put your new ride to good use.”
As they bolted out the door, the owner, who was white and originally from Texas, turned back toward his office and said in fluent Spanish, “Puedes salir ahora. Se fueron.” You can come out now. They’re gone.
As the door cracked open, three terrified women of Mexican descent poked their heads out. Each wore a maid’s uniform. “No me parecían agentes reales,” one woman said. They did not look like real agents to me.
“Yo tampoco,” the owner responded—Me either—as he reached for a sawed-off shotgun he kept beneath the counter for just such situations. “Por eso estaba a punto de presentarles a mi pequeño amigo aquí.” Which is why I was about to introduce them to my little friend here.
