Deep Cover

by Alana Matthews

  They found Matt about a block down the street. As he threw the door open and climbed into the Rambler’s backseat, he said, “Sorry, Imogene. You probably thought you were rid of us.”

  “Like I’ve got anything better to do.”

  “I’ll never be able to repay you for this. You’re taking a pretty big leap of faith, and I appreciate that.”

  Imogene dismissed him with a wave of the hand. “You don’t get to be as old as I am without taking a risk or two. Where to next?”

  “That’s a good question,” he said, sounding troubled.

  Tara turned, studied him. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “I couldn’t get through to Everhardt or Abernathy. They didn’t pick up.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “I wish I were.”

  “So what does that mean?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not sure. They must both know about the prison escape, but only one of them knows that The Brotherhood is on to me—and he undoubtedly thinks I’m dead. The other one probably assumes the operation is going forward as scheduled and has no idea I’m on the run.”

  “That doesn’t explain why they’re not answering.”

  “No kidding,” Matt said. “And I still don’t know which one to trust. I was hoping a surprise phone call would be enough to tip someone’s hand, but now I’ll just have to show up in person and hope for the best.”

  “Everhardt?”

  He shrugged. “It’s a coin toss at this point. But, yeah, my money’s still on him. Let’s just hope I’m right.” He looked at Imogene. “One last stop and you’re off the hook.”

  She returned the look in her rearview mirror. “So let me repeat,” she said. “Where to?”

  “Lakewood Village. Cop Country.”

  And at the sound of those words, Tara’s stomach tightened.

  Lakewood Village was an upper-middle-class housing tract in the center of the city.

  To Whitestone residents it was known as Cop Country, because so many people in law enforcement had homes in the area. As a child, Tara herself had lived in the neighborhood, but moved away shortly before her seventeenth birthday, when her mom and dad had divorced and sold the house.

  With Friday-night traffic, it took Imogene a good thirty minutes to get them there, but as they pulled into the neighborhood, Tara couldn’t help feeling a kind of claustrophobia closing in on her.

  Everhardt’s place was only three blocks and two streets over from her old haunting ground, and it carried the same modest single-story floor plan as her childhood home. It sat in the middle of a cul-de-sac—just like hers—and as Imogene pulled the Rambler to the curb out front, Tara felt as if she’d taken a headlong dive straight into the past.

  She halfway expected to see her father’s ghost standing in the driveway, glaring at her.

  The house itself was dark, but that didn’t really mean anything. It was past bedtime for a lot of people. Even FBI agents needed their sleep.

  Matt opened his door, then leaned over and patted Imogene’s shoulder. “You’ve just helped us save a lot of lives. Thanks again.”

  “Yes,” Tara said. “Thank you.”

  Imogene leaned toward the glove box and opened it, taking out an old service revolver. She handed it to Matt.

  “Just in case. You two be safe.”

  Matt took it, tucked it into his waistband and nodded. “You might want to stay away from that shack for a while. Carl and his crew can’t be too happy with you right now.”

  Imogene snickered. “I just wish I’d waited until they were under that pile of rocks before I let it loose. But don’t worry, I’ll bunk with my son tonight. He’ll want to hear all about my adventures in wonderland.”

  With another pat on the shoulder, Matt climbed out, then Tara popped her door open, gave Imogene a grateful smile and joined him on the sidewalk.

  As the old woman waved and pulled away, Tara and Matt turned their attention to Everhardt’s house.

  Moving to the top of the drive, they stepped onto a cobblestone walkway identical to the one Tara had taken every day for more than half her life, a hundred different memories now flooding her mind. There were plenty of good times during those years, a lot of laughs inside that house. So why did she always choose to remember the bad ones?

  Her conflict over her father was bordering on obsession these days and she knew she had to purge her mind of this self-absorbed nonsense.

  It wasn’t healthy.

  The more she wrestled with it, the more she realized that despite her protests to Matt that she was a grown-up who could take care of herself, deep down she was still just a child, hoping to find that one man in her life who would love her unconditionally. The void her father had left in her was wider and deeper than anyone could ever know.

  For God’s sake, Tara, get a grip.

  There are more important things in this world than your fragile self-esteem.

  As they approached the front porch, Matt came to a sudden stop and held a hand up, stepping protectively in front of her.

  “What? What is it?” she asked.

  He put a finger to his lips, then nodded to the front door.

  Without the porch light on, it was hard to see, and Tara had been too preoccupied to notice before now.

  The door was ajar.

  Normally, this wouldn’t be all that alarming, but with everything they’d gone through over the past few hours, about a million different red flags went up.

  Matt took the revolver from his waistband, keeping his voice low. “Stay here.”

  Tara shook her head. “Let’s not start that again. I go where you go.”

  Matt made a face, but didn’t protest. Probably knew by now that it was an argument he wouldn’t win.

  They listened a moment, hearing no sound of a disturbance, then moved together onto the porch. Matt reached forward and gently pushed the door open.

  It creaked faintly, opening onto a familiar-looking foyer. But where Tara’s foyer had been bordered by bookshelves, this one held a narrow table with a vase of dying sunflowers and couple of framed photographs atop it.

  A man and a woman, smiling for the camera. Everhardt and his wife, no doubt.

  Beyond it was a modestly furnished living room with a fireplace in the corner. Couch, two easy chairs. An outdated knotted pile carpet.

  No sign of a disturbance, so far. Nothing looked out of place.

  Not that this meant anything.

  It wasn’t until they were standing on the carpet that Tara heard a television playing faintly in another room. A newscast in progress.

  She and Matt exchanged a look, then moved to a hallway to their left and saw light flickering in the doorway at the end of the hall.

  Her doorway, Tara thought.

  Leading to her bedroom.

  As she fought off a feeling of déjà vu, Matt put himself in front of her again, then brought the pistol up.

  They worked their way down the hall and turned into the doorway to find not a bedroom, but a simple study with bookshelves, a small desk, an armchair and a television tuned to Gilligan’s Island.

  And slumped in the armchair, facing the TV, was the man from the photograph in the foyer.

  Special Agent Everhardt.

  But he wasn’t smiling now.

  He had a bullet hole in his right temple.

  Fifteen

  “Oh my God…”

  Tara felt her knees go weak. Despite all the running and shooting and violence she’d been part of, this was the last thing she’d expected to see.

  Everhardt sat with his chin to his chest, his right arm dangling over the arm of the chair, nearly touching the floor.

  A Glock 9 mm lay on the carpet within his grasp.

  Matt felt Everhardt’s neck for a pulse.

  From the look on his face, he wasn’t getting one.

  “Still warm,” he said. Then his gaze dropped to Everhardt’s lap, where the dead man’s left hand rested, clutchi
ng a touch-screen cell phone.

  Matt snatched a pencil out of a cup on the desk, then returned to Everhardt and stabbed the cell phone’s display with the eraser end.

  Tara’s legs were still trembling, but she moved over beside Matt and looked down at the phone.

  On the screen was a text message that Everhardt had typed out but hadn’t sent. The intended recipient was someone name Janice.

  “His wife?” Tara asked.

  Matt nodded somberly. The message on-screen was only two words: Forgive me.

  “What do you think this is about?” Tara asked. “Why would he do this?”

  Matt stared down at the body, a faraway look in his eyes.

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “I know he and Janice were having problems. And judging by those flowers in the foyer, I’d say she’s been gone a few days.” He tried to hide it, but she could see that the sight of his dead colleague was just short of devastating for him. “But I’m thinking this doesn’t have anything to do with his marriage.”

  “What then?”

  “Maybe I got it wrong. Maybe Abernathy isn’t the turncoat. Maybe it was Everhardt.”

  “And what? His conscience got the better of him?”

  “That would be my guess. Frank was always a by-the-book kind of guy. A strong believer in God and Country. If he strayed in a moment of weakness and fell in with The Brotherhood, the guilt might’ve been too much for him.”

  “So he kills himself? Why not just pick up the phone and turn them in? Do the right thing?”

  Matt stared down at the body again, the faraway look returning to his eyes. “I guess we’ll never know the answer to that one.”

  Then, as if shaking a heavy weight from his shoulders, he moved back to the desk, reaching for the landline atop it.

  “Who are you calling? The police?”

  “Not likely. I figure I’d better try Abernathy again.”

  He quickly punched in a number, waited. Tara could hear the line ringing.

  After about seven rings, Matt shook his head. “Still no answer.” He hit the hook switch, waited for a dial tone, then punched in another number.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “FBI automated checkpoint. Before I went deep cover, Everhardt gave me a six-digit emergency code, just in case I encountered a situation like this one. I was about to try this at the convenience store when your friend in uniform decided to get curious.”

  The line rang twice, then was picked up. A recorded voice murmured something into Matt’s ear and he said, “Agent Matt Hathaway. Code Blue. One, seven, three, three, two, six.”

  The voice murmured again, and Matt frowned.

  “One, seven, three, three, two, six,” he repeated, emphasizing each number.

  The voice murmured a third time, and Matt listened, then hung up, his whole face going slack.

  Something was seriously amiss.

  “What is it?” Tara asked.

  “The system didn’t recognize my code.” He glanced at the body. “Everhardt must have canceled it.”

  Tara’s gut tightened. “Then that means unless you can get hold of Abernathy…”

  Matt nodded. “I’ve been hung out to dry.”

  Before they could contemplate this turn of events, the squawk of a police radio echoed in the street outside.

  They both turned sharply, exchanged a look.

  “Neighbor must’ve spotted us,” Matt whispered. “We need to get out of here.”

  They quickly started down the hallway, stopping at the edge of the living room, where they had a clear view of the foyer and the street beyond.

  Outside, two uniformed deputies, flashlights in hand, were exiting their patrol car and about to head up the cobblestone walkway.

  Tara felt panic rising.

  She knew the layout of the house, and the only other way out of here was through the kitchen in the rear. But there was no way to get to the kitchen without passing through the living room and being seen.

  “Window,” Matt said, and they stepped back into Everhardt’s study, moving past the body.

  But the window was painted shut.

  Matt flicked the lever and tried to pry it open, but it wouldn’t budge, and they didn’t have time to mess with it.

  Then it struck Tara.

  A third way out.

  “Follow me,” she said.

  Moving again to the hallway, she searched the ceiling until she saw a short rope dangling from it.

  When they were kids, she and Susan would hide in the attic whenever their parents fought. They had taken some of their dolls and their favorite books up there, and they’d sit on the rafters, playing quietly, trying not to listen to the angry voices below.

  Grabbing the rope, Tara yanked hard.

  A narrow hinged hatch opened in the ceiling, letting loose a retractable ladder.

  They heard footsteps on the porch now. The deputies were about to enter the foyer.

  “Hurry,” Matt said.

  Tara scrambled up the ladder, Matt following close behind her. As they cleared the threshold, she quickly grabbed a handle mounted inside the hatch and pulled. The ladder collapsed and the door swung shut, closing them inside.

  Plunging them into darkness.

  Tara let loose a barely audible sigh of relief. They’d made some noise, but she didn’t think they’d been heard.

  It was cramped up here, much smaller than she remembered, and as they waited in silence, she could feel Matt’s chest against her shoulder, rising and falling with each breath. His breathing seemed a bit more labored than it should, and she wondered how his wound was holding up.

  The only light came from a small window on the far side of the attic.

  Their ticket out.

  It would be only a matter of moments before the deputies found Everhardt’s body, and once that happened, this place would be crawling with deputies.

  It was now or never.

  Matt must have been reading her mind. “We’d better get going,” he whispered.

  They ducked low, moving at a crouch beneath the rafters, Tara wincing every time the wood beneath their shoes creaked as they crossed the attic and reached the window. The neighbor’s place was a two-story, and light from the upstairs bedroom was just enough to illuminate this side of Everhardt’s house, showing them a small patch of lawn below, bordered by a tangle of rose bushes.

  It wasn’t much of a jump, but it could be risky. If Everhardt’s house was indeed identical to Tara’s, there would be a gutter pipe to the left, running from the roof to the ground, just like the one Tara had shimmied down dozens of times as a kid.

  The way their luck was going, however, they’d never be able to get that far.

  This window was probably painted shut, too.

  But when Matt tried the lever, it turned easily, and a moment later he slid the window open, gesturing for Tara to climb out.

  She ducked and went through the opening, saw the familiar aluminum gutter pipe to her left. It looked solid enough, but she’d been a scrawny kid and had to wonder if it could handle the weight of a grown-up. The muffins she inhaled with her coffee every morning didn’t seem like such a good idea right now.

  Grabbing the pipe, she hoisted herself onto it and shimmied down, doing her best not to make any noise in the process. A moment later her shoes touched grass, then Matt was through the window and onto the pipe—anything but scrawny himself—and Tara had to wonder if the aluminum could handle the strain of his hard body.

  It groaned in protest, a sound just loud enough to worry Tara. But despite the wound in his arm, Matt moved quickly and gracefully and, seconds later, was standing beside her.

  Turning toward the rear of the house, they hustled into the backyard, vaulted a row of low bushes onto the neighbor’s property, then headed for the street.

  Sixteen

  Once they were clear of Cop Country, they caught a cab to Tara’s condo, and Matt waited with him as Tara ran upstairs to get some cash.


  The ride over had been gloriously uneventful. The cabbie, a middle-aged guy wearing a Colorado Rockies cap, seemed more interested in his sports talk radio than he did in a couple of exhausted, disheveled passengers. He had barely glanced at them in his rearview mirror when they climbed in.

  Even so, Matt had made sure to keep his head low. His face was plastered all over the news, and he could only hope that the cabbie hadn’t been near a television set recently.

  During the ride, Matt and Tara had barely said a word to each other. She had simply leaned into him and rested her head against his good shoulder, and he thought he could feel the tension in her body being released like a toxin, a slow but steady draining of the poisons.

  His entire body felt tight, and he found himself wishing he could release his own tension. But he knew he wouldn’t be able to relax until Jimmy Zane and his band of malcontents were put away.

  His months behind bars, sharing a cell with Rusty Zane, lifting weights in the prison yard with Carl Maddox, would not be time spent in vain. He had worked too hard to get them to accept him. Had sacrificed a life of freedom, had done things inside that he wasn’t particularly proud of, in order to get them to trust him.

  And it had all been destroyed by Everhardt’s betrayal.

  The sight of him slumped in that chair had been like a knife to the gut.

  But, in the end, Everhardt was no better than Carl or Rusty or Zane himself.

  Without meaning to, Matt was suddenly thinking of the men who had shot and killed Becky and Jennifer.

  Strangers. Even to this day.

  A witness in the grocery store’s parking lot had seen them enter just before the robbery and had described them to a police sketch artist.

  The night manager, who had just come on duty, forgot to put a fresh tape into the store’s antiquated video surveillance system, so the incident wasn’t recorded, and the drawings were all the police had to go on.

  Those drawings had been broadcast all over the local and state television news for a week straight, but nobody came forward to identify the two men.