First Family

by David Baldacci

  “You’re right. You’re sure right about that.”

  “So is it about him?”

  “I’m not gonna answer that. Sorry.”

  Willa raised the sleeve on her shirt, showing a Band-Aid near the crook of her elbow. “Then tell me what’s this for?”

  “I guess you got cut.”

  “I looked. It’s just a little pinprick.”

  He eyed her bowl and spoon again. “You done with these?”

  “Is this about my uncle?” she snapped.

  “Let’s get something straight right now, Willa. I don’t want to hurt you. It’s true I broke the law and brought you here, but I’d much prefer to see you walk right out that door and get on back home. But while you’re here, it’d be real good if we can just try to get along as best we can. I know it’s hard, but that’s just the way it’s got to be. Better for me.” He stared intensely at her. “And better for you.”

  He scooped up the spoon and bowl, cradling them against his chest, and walked toward the door.

  “Will you tell my mom and dad I’m okay?” she said in a softer tone.

  He turned around. “I sure will.”

  This statement made his growing anger harden intractably.

  After he left, Willa sat back down on a cot set up in one corner and slowly gazed around the room. She had spoken bravely to the man, but she didn’t feel very courageous. She was scared and she wanted to see her family. She curled and uncurled her hands in anxiety. The tears began to slide down her cheeks as she considered one horrible scenario after another. She prayed and spoke out loud to her mom and dad. She told her brother and sister that she loved them very much, even if they did come in her room unannounced and mess with her stuff.

  She wiped the tears away and tried to stay focused. She didn’t believe the man about the gloves and the eczema or the mark on her arm. She believed it had to do with her aunt and uncle. What other reason could there be? Her family was pretty ordinary otherwise. She began walking around the room, singing softly to herself; it was something she often did when she was worried or scared.

  “It’ll be okay,” she said to herself over and over after she couldn’t sing anymore. She lay back down and covered herself with the blanket. But before she turned the light off, she looked over at the door. She rose, crossed the room, and stared at the lock.

  It was a sturdy dead bolt, she noted for the first time.

  And because of that, fear was suddenly replaced with a tiny spark of hope.

  CHAPTER 9

  QUARRY WALKED DOWN the mineshaft, one hand idly playing over the black rock of the walls where the remains of old bituminous coal seams were still visible. He unlocked the door to another room. Inside he sat at a table and lifted out the vials of blood from his knapsack and labeled each with different numbers. On a shelf hung on the wall he pulled off a box and opened it. Inside were more vials of blood. Some belonged to Pam Dutton, who now lay in a morgue in Virginia, he knew. Others were blood he’d taken from Willa while she had been unconscious.

  He labeled Pam’s and Willa Dutton’s vials with numbers and placed them all in a cooler filled with ice packs. Next, he slid Willa’s bowl and spoon in a plastic baggie and put this inside another box.

  Okay, the busy work’s done. I got to get on with things.

  He rose, unlocked a freestanding metal gun safe that he’d brought here on his truck. Inside were automatic and semiautomatic pistols, shotguns, rifles, scopes, two MP5s, and a couple of AKs and rounds of ammo for all of them. The cache represented several generations of the affection Quarry men held for the Second Amendment. He looked carefully over the selection and settled on a.45 Cobra Enterprises Patriot. His hand gripped the polymer frame as he slapped in an extended seven-round magazine filled with standard 1911 ordnance. It was a light gun, though with plenty of power, and took twelve pounds of force to pull the trigger. Because of its imbalance with a twenty-ounce frame and a.45 round, it wasn’t the most fun pistol to shoot. But it was light to carry around and whatever you hit with it at close range dropped on the spot.

  It was a nice, compact weapon for personal protection. But that’s not what he’d be using it for. As his hand gripped the loaded pistol it began to sweat.

  His magazine carried seven rounds, but in truth he only would need two. And it would give him no pleasure. Not one damn bit.

  He trudged down the rock corridor preparing mentally for what needed to be done. His daddy and granddaddy had hunted down humans before, though he knew they hardly considered black folks human. Killed’em probably without much thought, like they would a cottonmouth or a pesky mole. Yet that’s where the son and grandson parted company with his male relations. He would do what needed to be done, but he also knew the scars would be deep and he would relive the killing moment over and over for the rest of his life.

  He came to the spot and shone his light through the prison bars set in the opening of a large alcove in the wall. These were the same bars that had held back scores of Union soldiers, although Quarry had refinished the rusting metal and reseated the bars back into the rock.

  Against the back wall two men crouched. They were dressed in Army fatigues, their hands cuffed behind them. Quarry looked over at the small, wiry man who stood next to him on the free side of the bars.

  “Let’s get this done, Carlos.”

  The man licked his lips nervously and said, “Mr. Sam, all due respect, I don’t think we got to go down this road, sir.”

  Quarry wheeled around on him, towering over the little man. “Only one damn leader of this band, Carlos, and that’s me. You got a chain of command here and that’s just the way it’s got to be. You’re an Army man and you know that’s the truth, son. Trust me, this is hurting me a helluva lot more than it’ll ever hurt you. And it’s leaving me shorthanded for what I got to do. A real pisser all around.”

  The cowed man looked down, opened the door, and with a hesitant wave of his hand motioned the two men to step out. Their legs were shackled together too, so they hobbled forward. When they came into the wash of light from Carlos’s flashlight, the perspiration shone clear on their faces.

  One of the men said, “I’m sorry. Jesus, sir, I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry too, Daryl. This doesn’t give me any pleasure at all. None.”

  While Daryl was thickset the man behind him was tall and reedy. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down in his terror. “We didn’t mean to do it, Mr. Quarry. But after we got the kid knocked out she came in and started screaming and fighting. Hell, look at Daryl’s face, she damn near scratched it off. It was just self-defense. We were trying to knock her out too and get her with the syringe, but the lady just went nuts.”

  “What’d you expect a momma to do when you’re taking her baby? We went over that scenario a hundred times and what you were supposed to do in every damn situation. Killing was not an option. Now I got a little girl who’s never gonna see her momma again and it never should’ve happened.”

  Daryl’s voice was pleading. “But the daddy was home. And he wasn’t supposed to be.”

  “Don’t matter. Planned for that too.”

  Daryl was not giving up. “She scratched me up good, dug a finger in my eye. I got real pissed. Lost my head. I just swung with the knife. Caught her right in the neck. I didn’t mean for it to happen. She just died. We tried to save her. Nothing we could do. I’m sorry.”

  “You already told me all this. And if that had made a difference you wouldn’t be standing here right now and neither would I.”

  Daryl nervously eyed the Patriot. “We always been there for you. You know that. And we got the little girl for you. Not a bruise on her.”

  “One exception breaks the rule. When you agreed to help me do this, I told you there weren’t many rules, but you broke the most important one. You swore me an oath and I accepted that oath. Now here we are.”

  He nodded at Carlos, who reluctantly gripped the men by their wrists and pulled them down to their knees.

/>   Quarry stood over them. “Speak to your God, men, if you got one. I’ll give you time to do that.”

  Daryl started mumbling what sounded like the fragments of a prayer. The thin man just started to cry.

  Sixty seconds later Quarry said, “Done? Okay.”

  He placed the Patriot against the base of Daryl’s skull.

  “Oh, Jesus. Sweet Jesus,” wailed Daryl.

  “Please,” screamed the other man.

  Quarry’s finger slipped from the metal guard onto the trigger. Yet he ended up pulling away the Patriot. He didn’t exactly know why, he just did.

  “Get up!”

  Daryl looked at him in astonishment. “What?”

  “I said get up.”

  Daryl stood on shaky legs. Quarry stared at the man’s scratched-up face and the blood red right eye, then he ripped open the front of Daryl’s shirt. A large purplish bruise was revealed between the man’s muscled pecs.

  “You say it was a woman who shot you?”

  “Yes sir. It was dark, but I could still see it was a girl.”

  “That girl was a damn good shot. By all rights you ought to be dead anyway, boy.”

  “Wore the armor like you told us,” Daryl gasped. “I’m sorry she got killed. I didn’t mean for it to happen. I’m sorry.”

  “And you say you think you left a vial behind?”

  “Just the one. It was all rushed like after what happened, especially when the other folks showed up. We counted the vials up on the way back. But they gonna know we took the woman’s blood anyway, when they cut her open and stuff.”

  Quarry looked uncertain for a moment. “Get the hell on, then.”

  “What?”

  Quarry nodded at a relieved Carlos, who quickly unshackled Daryl. The man rubbed his raw wrists and looked at the thin man still on his knees. “What about Kurt?”

  Quarry shoved the muzzle against Daryl’s chest. “No more talking. Now get on before I change my mind. Kurt’s not your concern.”

  Daryl staggered off, fell, picked himself back up, and stumbled onward into the dark.

  Quarry turned back to Kurt.

  “Please, Mr. Quarry,” the condemned man mumbled.

  “I’m sorry about this, Kurt. But what we got here is an eye for an eye, boy.”

  “But Daryl’s the one what killed the lady, sir.”

  “He’s also my son. I don’t have much, but I got him.”

  He pointed the pistol at Kurt’s head.

  “But you’re like a daddy to me, Mr. Quarry,” said Kurt, the tears lapping down his cheeks.

  “That’s what makes this so damn hard.”

  “This is crazy, Mr. Quarry. You crazy,” he screamed.

  “Damn right I’m crazy, boy!” Quarry shouted right back. “Crazy as a mad hatter on crack. It’s in my blood. No way to shake it.”

  Kurt threw himself sideways and tried to wriggle away, his clunky boots throwing up little clouds of coal dust. His screams swept down the shaft, like the Union soldiers before.

  “Hold the damn light closer, Carlos,” ordered Quarry. “I don’t want him to suffer one second more than he’s got to.”

  The Patriot barked and Kurt stopped trying to get away.

  Quarry let the gun drop and swing next to his side. He mumbled something incomprehensible while Carlos crossed himself.

  “You know how pissed off I am about this?” said Quarry. “You understand my level of rage and disappointment?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Carlos.

  Quarry nudged dead Kyle with his boot, stuck the heated Patriot in his waistband.

  He turned and marched on down the shaft. To daylight.

  He was tired of the dark.

  He just wanted to fly.

  CHAPTER 10

  MICHELLE LEFT HER PISTOL in her locked safe box in the SUV. She had no desire to sit in a federal prison for the next several years contemplating the error of her ways for trying to waltz into the White House with a loaded weapon.

  They had lost the reporters hanging outside their office, although the effort had cost some rubber off Michelle’s truck tires and one of the journalist’s cars had banged into a parked van during the abbreviated chase. She had not stopped to assist.

  They passed through the visitor’s entrance. They expected to be led into the White House but were surprised when after they’d been wanded and searched one of the agents stationed there said, “Come on.”

  They were hustled into a Town Car waiting outside the entrance. It sped off as soon as the door closed.

  Sean said to the driver, “Where the hell are we going?”

  The man didn’t answer. The guy next to him didn’t even turn around.

  Michelle whispered, “SS doesn’t look too happy right now.”

  “Blame game’s started,” Sean whispered back. “And they might know why the First Lady has asked us here. And they probably don’t like outsiders snooping around.”

  “But we used to be one of them.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t exactly leave on the best terms. And neither did you.”

  “So the FBI hates us and so do our own guys. You know, what we need is a union.”

  “No, what we need is to know where we’re going.” He was about to ask the question again when the car slowed and stopped.

  “Out here, in the church,” the driver said.

  “What?”

  “Get your ass in the church. The lady’s waiting.”

  As soon as they stepped out of the car they realized their trip had been very short. They were on the other side of Lafayette Park from the White House. The church was St. John’s. The door was open. They walked inside as the Town Car drove off.

  She was seated in the front pew. Sean and Michelle sensed rather than saw the presence of the security detail around the room. When Sean sat next to Jane Cox, he couldn’t tell whether she had been crying or not. He suspected she had, but he also knew she was not the sort of woman who showed her emotions easily. Perhaps not even to her husband. He had seen the woman become emotional before, but only once. He had never expected to witness another such episode.

  Under her black overcoat she wore a knee-length blue dress, along with sensible pumps and little jewelry. Her hair, though covered in a scarf, was in its trademark upsweep that many had compared, mostly favorably, to Jackie Kennedy. The woman had never been flash, Sean knew, just classy. Elegant. She never tried to be something she wasn’t. Well, that wasn’t exactly true, he concluded. A First Lady had to be many things to many people, and there was no way any single personality could accommodate so many different requests. So some role-playing was inevitable.

  “This is Michelle Maxwell, Mrs. … Jane.”

  Jane smiled graciously at Michelle and then turned back to Sean. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me so quickly.”

  “We thought it was going to take place at the White House.”

  “I thought so too, but then reconsidered. The church is a little more private. And… peaceful.”

  He leaned back in the pew and studied the altar for a moment before saying, “What can we do for you?”

  “You really were there when it happened?”

  “Yes. I was bringing a present for Willa.” He went on to fill in the details of the night’s events, withholding the more graphic elements.

  “Tuck doesn’t remember much,” she said. “They said he’ll be fine, no internal bleeding or anything, but his short-term memory appears to be impaired.”

  “That often happens with blows to the head,” Michelle remarked. “But it might come back.”

  “The Secret Service is undertaking protection of the… extended First Family now,” she said.

  “Smart move,” said Sean.

  “The Achilles’ heel finally exposed,” noted Jane quietly.

  Sean said, “The FBI is investigating. I’m not sure there’s anything we can do that they can’t.”

  “I threw a birthday party for Willa at Camp David. Pam was there, W
illa’s friends, her brother and sister. It was a very special day for a very special girl.”

  “She is special,” Sean agreed.

  “To think that on the same day of that wonderful celebration this… this horror would have happened.” She suddenly stared at Sean. “I want