by TJ O'Connor
I was in deep trouble.
“Sorry about that, Mallory.” She sniffed the air. “Your hair’s singed. You were real close.”
“No kidding.”
She grinned. “So, this shooter blows up the truck?”
“He ran at me, tossed a flash-bang, and whoosh. I smelled gas when I was on the ground just before.”
“On the ground ducking gunfire.” She glanced at the truck. “Did you see the body in there before it went up?”
I shook my head.
“Okay. So, you found Kevin, got his gun, and fired back?”
“Yes. Dammit, yes. There’ll be GSR all over me mixed with his blood. Aren’t you going to do a gunshot analysis? Get some lasers out here and start pinpointing the shooter’s moves. Once you find out where the shots were fired from maybe you’ll find some evidence.”
“You know about gunshot residue and crime scenes?” Bond asked. “I didn’t think alarm consultants handled that.”
“TV.”
Agent Bacarro stepped a little closer. “Kevin said some odd things to you and then gave you the address and more gibberish?”
“I couldn’t make most of it out.”
“Huh.” She continued to watch me close. Danger close. “What about this Maya in Baltimore. Any idea who that is?”
“No. For Christ’s sake, no. No, I don’t know anything. I don’t understand anything. I don’t know what any of what he said meant. Enough already. Please.”
“I get it, I do.” Bacarro’s cell phone rang, and she stepped away.
“All right, Mallory.” Bond checked his watch. “You have to go to the office to sign a statement. Then we’re through. One of my men will drive you to a hotel when we’re done. We’re keeping your rental car for processing. Not that it’s drivable. Oh, and don’t plan on checking out anytime soon.” He started to turn away but stopped and faced me again. His voice lowered and I heard a side of him that eluded me thus far. “You’re an asshole, Mallory. But I’m sorry about Kevin. We were friends.”
I grunted a “thanks” and stared at the spot where Kevin had died. A wave of nausea swept through me, and I retched bile beside the cruiser. Death, I was accustomed to. Giving a damn, I wasn’t.
Bond waited for me to get my feet under me again. “You know, I have this theory about you and the burned-up guy.”
Of course he did. “Enlighten me.”
“Sure.” Bond let slip a dry grin. “Maybe the burned guy is the shooter and you shot him.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I shook my head and tried to keep cool as another plainclothes cop, Detective Perry, walked up. He nodded to me and guided Bond a few steps away, where he spoke quietly, but I could still hear them.
“This is weird, Dave,” Perry said. “Before your boy got here, some college kids were down along the river. They came across the pickup truck and the body and then left to call 911. They never saw Kevin. I guess he came after. Somehow, things got fouled up and dispatch sent the Clarke County sheriff’s patrol to the Route 50 Bridge instead of this one. It was an hour before they realized they got it wrong. Kevin must have stumbled into something between the time the kids left and the patrol arrived. The killer must have returned.”
Bond eyed me. “Or never left.”
“Give it a rest, Bond,” I snapped. “Even you can’t believe I killed my own brother.”
Bond ignored me and gestured to the old pickup where the crime scene techs were working away. Alongside the smoldering left front tire was the top of a stainless-steel case smeared with soot and charred debris. He focused his flashlight on it. “Figure that out, Perry?”
“No, but let me show you.” Perry walked over to the crime scene technician taking photographs. After snapping three or four more photographs, the tech maneuvered the piece of case into a large, clear plastic evidence bag. He handed it to Perry, who then delivered it to Bond.
The case top had a strange inner cavity made of thick gray foam with cutouts. The hinges were torn and twisted as though someone had shot them off. Next to the handle was a modular, digital keypad.
Bond played the flashlight around it. “What’s this?”
“A pneumatically sealed case.” My brain couldn’t stop my lips.
“A what?” Perry asked.
“It pneumatically seals.” It was too late anyway. “Air, Bond. It seals the air in and out.”
“I know what pneumatically means.” Bond was lying, of course. Still, he beckoned me over and I obeyed. “For what?”
I shrugged. “How would I know? Whatever it was, though, they didn’t want it breathing out in the moonlight.”
“Okay, Mallory, impress me. What’s a case like this used for?”
“Pharmaceuticals or biological stuff.” Then I raised Bond’s pucker factor into the red zone. “That’s not the big question.”
“What’s the big question?”
“Where’s the stuff that was in it?”
CHAPTER 4
Day 2: May 16, 0600 Hours, Daylight Saving Time
Winchester, Virginia
BY EARLY MORNING, I’d given up on sleep. After lying in my bed contemplating the last twelve hours, I decided I couldn’t avoid what lay ahead. I climbed out of the lumpy hotel bed and showered. I let cold water wake me and chase the anger and angst from my thoughts, at least for a little while. When I opened my eyes after a long, chilly few moments lost in thought, I realized I had more problems than hunting Kevin’s killer. I had a big, complicated problem.
Oscar LaRue.
As I’ve explained, I was supposed to be in Doha on vacation. Doha is nowhere near Winchester. Like seven thousand miles nowhere near Winchester. There’s a funny rule about being a consultant for the CIA. You don’t disappear from an assignment without permission. There was another sticky rule to my situation. You don’t do anything to piss off my friend, mentor, and omnipotent master, Oscar LaRue.
Boy, had I violated the rules.
LaRue was a legend in the intelligence community and had been my mentor for years. It was because of him that I’d visited places like Kabul, Mogadishu, and Damascus while he had tea and crumpets in Washington supper clubs. He dreamed up wild operations, and I carried them out. Most of the time, anyway. Sometimes he dreamed up the operations, and I got all twisted up carrying them out. Strange, LaRue often misplaced my phone number.
Oscar LaRue was my hero.
Sooner or later—probably sooner—old Oscar would find out I wasn’t drinking and carousing in the Doha nightlife, and he would be a teensy-weensy bit angry. When LaRue got angry, the world stopped spinning and those around him looked for an exit. But for now, until I was able to find Kevin’s killer, LaRue would have to wait. Finding Kevin’s killer was my new mission. To do that, I’d have to stay below the radar the best I could. That meant anonymity from LaRue, and that meant anonymity from the cops, too. That might be too late already. LaRue might not be looking for Jon Hunter. I might just have a few days before the men in black came calling to drag me before him for a flogging.
Maybe.
As I dressed, I shook off the thought of the wrath that LaRue would rain on me, and focused on the bile and trepidation building in my guts. Before leaving the hotel room for the waiting cab, I steeled myself for what would be the hardest meeting I’d had to do in my life.
The Frederick County Medical Center campus sits on the west side of Winchester, Virginia, some seventy-six miles west of Washington, DC. Winchester, I learned, was the home of the late Kevin Mallory and had been for ten years. It is small as cities go, perhaps twenty-five thousand residents, give or take. When we were kids, Kevin and I had often visited it when staying at our dad’s mountain cabin an hour’s drive west of town. The cabin was our retreat away from our Washington suburban home. Back then, Winchester was little more than a rural farm community. Now, commuters and developers reigned.
I made the trip from my hotel to the hospital in ten minutes by cab. By the time I stood in front of the hospital�
�s main entrance, my face was tight and my mouth dry. My hands trembled. An intense battle raged inside me. My brain claimed that too many years had passed. I no longer knew Kevin. We were blood, sure. But that was just a biological connection long ago void as family. My gut, on the other hand, disagreed and threatened to vomit.
Ops-mode was nowhere to be found.
In my reflection in the hospital windows, I tucked in my rumpled cotton golf shirt, straightened my hair with a few finger combs, and pulled on the lapels of my leather jacket, trying to look passable. My reflection didn’t hide my terror, but at least I didn’t look like the mess that I felt like. Inside the lobby, I found a kiosk for some breath mints—a feigned stall—before going to the reception desk.
“Excuse me,” I said to an elderly volunteer across the counter. “My name is … er, Jon Mallory.” It felt like a lie. “I’m here about Kevin.”
“Oh yes, Mr. Mallory.” She gestured to a row of couches in the atrium waiting area. “Detective Bond said you’d be here. Please wait over there with your family.”
My family? Bond?
It took me a moment to find “my family.” When I did, it knocked me a step back. Across the atrium on the far row of couches sat a beautiful woman in her late thirties. She had dark, wavy hair and an exotic, Middle Eastern complexion. Her face was pretty but awash in tears and grief. She was five-eight with a curvy, healthy figure. She wore tan slacks and a loose white blouse beneath a shawl. She wiped her eyes and looked at a tall, thin, young man—not quite a man but not quite a teenager—next to her. He, too, had dark, Middle Eastern features, but if they were mother and son, they didn’t share any deeper resemblance.
The woman was stunning, and, for a second, that thought bathed me in guilt.
Bond told me their names … Noreen and Sam? They sure weren’t … Noreen and Samuel. It was clear to me now that she was Noor—Arab for “light”—and he was Sameh, Arab for oh hell, I didn’t know. One thing I did know though. They weren’t from Winchester. Not the Winchester I remember from twenty years ago.
“Mr. Mallory, they’ve been waiting,” the volunteer scolded. “Go comfort them, for Pete’s sake.”
Unsteady legs took me across the lobby. When I reached them, Noor looked up at me. Her eyes were red and raining, but had they not been, they would be a heart-stealing green. She never blinked. Her unfamiliarity penetrated and singed me like no bullet ever had. Her eyes were inside me, searching for any semblance of recognition. Perhaps a story she’d been told. Perhaps a photograph she’d seen. Perhaps.
My lips wouldn’t part for more than a stutter until I looked away. “I’m Jon. Kevin’s—”
“Oh, my God.” She stood and studied my face again, my frame, and locked on to my eyes. Somewhere, she found what she was looking for. “You came. Thank God, you came.”
Before I could answer, Noor Mallory stepped close and crushed into me. Tears poured from her. Her body quivered. I had never before seen this woman and, until just hours ago, I didn’t know she existed. Terror struck me when I realized that, at that moment, we were family.
Steady, Hunter. Steady.
At first, my arms didn’t know what to do. Noor’s sobs broke through, and I found an unfamiliar urge to hold her. I couldn’t remember the last time those feelings invaded me. When my arms closed around her shoulders, the calm that descended on me scared me to death.
Shouldn’t I be toppling a tyrant or invading an ISIS stronghold somewhere?
“Ah, Noor. I didn’t know about you.”
“What did you expect? Mrs. Brady or Mrs. Cleaver, perhaps?” Beneath tears, the slightest of smiles parted her lips. Her words were soft and comforting, with a touch of mirth perhaps, and delivered with only the slightest hint of an accent. “It is fine, Jon Mallory. No one expects Sam and me. We are a surprise. Even to Kevin. That is why we fell in love. At least, that is what I believed.”
I looked over her shoulder at the young man glaring at me. “I’m so sorry, Noor. I didn’t know Kev was married. I didn’t know about Sameh.”
“It’s Sam,” he corrected with a harsh snap. “Sam.”
I said nothing. I didn’t know what to say.
“No, no.” She squeezed me harder. “I know. You two. I do not know where to begin.”
“I, well, me either. I’m so sorry.”
Noor eased from me and turned to Sam as he stood up from his chair with a slow, exaggerated movement. If he wanted me to know he was unhappy with me, his message was clear. His hands were in his pockets and his head cocked to one side. His stare was cool and brooding. Anger. Bitterness. Indifference.
“Jon,” Noor said, “this is Sam, our son.”
Sam’s response was thick and icy. “I didn’t know Dad had a brother.” He stepped forward and put a hand on Noor’s shoulder. “Where you been?”
“Sam.” Noor’s eyes flared. “Enough.”
I extended my hand and his eyes rejected it. “I’m sorry, Sameh.”
“Sam.” His eyes cut me. “What’s wrong with Sam?”
Damn. “Nothing. I was just, well, I’ve lived in the Middle East.”
“Good for you.”
“Sam!” Noor turned to him with a scowl. “Do not be rude.”
I patted the air. “No, it’s all right.”
Sam turned away, and I reached out and touched his shoulder. “If it’s any consolation, I was with your dad last night.”
“It’s not.” He strode away.
Silence hung, and Noor’s tears returned. I tried to console her but failed. More silence. As I looked around, the room morphed into the waiting room from twenty-six-year-old memories. The morning Kevin and I waited in that room outside Washington, DC. Nothing was different except Noor and Sam. Not the antiseptic smell. Not the murmurs from passing visitors. Not the elderly volunteers with their forced smiles. Not even the anticipation that welled up each time a doctor walked near. It was now as it had been then. Except twenty-six years ago, it was just Kevin and me. We were alone and numb. We’d been silent, reminiscing about Mom and Dad. My thoughts had exploded between sorrow and anger in slow, churning cycles until they told us our parents were gone.
I was back reliving it again. The anger and pain began to well in my eyes, but I shook it off. No. It didn’t matter. I knew tears would not come. They never came. Not anymore. Not for twentysix years.
When Sam reappeared and crossed the lobby, my heart stopped. He walked toward us behind Detective David Bond. Bond’s eyes locked onto me like a stinger missile. He looked like a bulldog strutting into the ring for a title match.
“Oh, no. Him?” I said.
Noor watched them approach. “It is Dave. He said he would meet us. Yes, of course, you met last night.”
We sure did.
Bond and Sam stopped a few feet away. Sam ignored me. Bond shot icy bullets through me.
“Noor, are you doing okay?” Bond reached out and took her shoulder. “We’re ready for you downstairs. I’ll be with you the whole way.”
“I am not ready,” Noor whispered. “But I must.”
Bond threw a thumb over his shoulder. “Follow us, Mallory.”
When Bond led them toward the elevators, I fell in behind obediently. Two floors down in the basement mortuary wing, the four of us—Bond, my less-than-new best pal; me; and the two strangers who were suddenly family—filed into the stark room.
The duty nurse waited until we were positioned near a table and asked Noor’s permission to proceed. When she nodded, the nurse folded the sheet back to reveal a face of dark, gray death.
The face may have been Kevin Mallory, but the man was gone.
“Take your time.” The nurse vanished.
Bond took a step closer and put one hand on Noor’s shoulder and the other on Sam’s. Sam pulled away and moved around the table. Noor touched Bond’s hand, and that sent a lightning bolt into my head.
Friendship? Compassion? Something.
Stop, Hunter. What’s wrong with you?
; Bond was impassive. Noor and Sam were frozen. They were not ready for the pale, pasty mask hiding husband and father. I doubted either had ever seen death up close. Now, neither seemed able to connect it with the man they loved.
Perhaps that was good.
I moved closer to the table, stepped around Bond, and took hold of Kevin’s shoulder. While it was not for me to identify the body, it was hard to find my brother on the table. Closing my eyes helped … a little …
* * *
… Twenty years ago.
The Alexandria bar was packed, and we had to yell across the table.
“Come on,” Kevin growled at me. “Enough of the BS. I spent four years working two jobs and then you dropped out of college and ran away with the circus.”
“The Army, Kev. It was the Army.”
“Same thing. Your tour is up. It’s time to come on home.”
“No. I know I promised to finish college, but, well, something else has come up.”
Our parents had died when I was still in junior high school. It had been a tragic car accident one night when “last call” came too late at a popular Fairfax club. Kevin was older and took his new role seriously. He’d had a college scholarship and quit his freshman year in order to see me through high school and put me into college later. He never complained. While he wouldn’t say it, I owed him. I made him a promise that I’d broken.
“Something else?” He grunted.
“I’ve left Special Forces, Kev. I’m with another outfit.”
“Another outfit?”
“The Agency.”
Kevin shook his head as though the words weren’t making sense. “What agency?”
All I could do was grin.
“The CIA?” He slammed back in his seat. “You joined the CIA? Are you insane? You’ll get yourself killed. You’ll never make any money that way.”
I sipped my beer. “I’m not worried about money.”
