by Marc Cameron
Quinn, Thibodaux, and Garcia had arrived at roughly the same time. Peregrine had met them at the driveway and ushered them up her steps, insisting Special Agent Doyle hear the news from the comfort of her front porch. She personally brought him a glass of lemonade and a box of tissues.
He hardly even blinked at the news. His angular jaw tensed; he stared a thousand-yard stare.
“Tell us about her theories,” Quinn said.
“That’s the thing. I don’t know. She was acting crazy, but I didn’t know why. She started sleeping with a gun under her pillow, said she didn’t know who to trust.” Doyle rubbed a hand over a thick head of black hair. “I told her she needed to get some help and she went off on me.”
Quinn’s eyes shot to Garcia, then back to the stoic young agent. “But you have no idea who might have wanted to kill her?”
They’d agreed before leaving Rockville he’d lead the discussion. An interview would work better than a dog-pile interrogation—and Nancy Hughes would likely peck the eyes out of anyone she thought was bullying one of her agents.
Doyle gazed out over the hedges and flower beds of the manicured lawn. “Nadia was an agent and all, but she just did intel... . Paranoid or not, nobody should have wanted to hurt her.” A single tear, the first sign of real emotion, pooled in the corner of Doyle’s eye. He sniffed, using the back of his forearm to dab at his nose.
Quinn nodded to himself. One of the first rules of an interview was not to believe in tears unless the snot was flowing.
Garcia slid forward in her chair, leaning in slightly. “Do you remember what you talked about last?”
Doyle shrugged. “No ...”
Good answer, Quinn thought. People who remembered too much were rehearsed—and lying.
“You know a man named Tom Haddad?”
“No,” Doyle said. “Do you think he killed her?”
“We can’t give you details at this point,” Quinn said. “But whoever killed her probably killed him as well.”
Doyle suddenly sat up and straightened his tie. “I need to get back to work. My boss wants to see me after this.”
Mrs. Hughes cleared her throat and peered over the top of gold reading glasses, a clear sign that the interview should wind down.
Quinn got to his feet and stuck out his hand. “I’m sorry for your loss, Agent Doyle.” He never carried business cards, so he handed his Moleskine notebook to Garcia so she could write down her contact numbers. When she was finished, she tore out the page and handed it to Doyle, who shuffled off toward the detached security office as if he was walking to the gallows.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A stone’s throw from the Secret Service motorcade that was always staged and ready to go in the event of an emergency, Ronnie Garcia leaned on the open door of her Impala. Thibodaux stood beside his motorcycle, fiddling with the strap on his helmet. Quinn had hung back to make a quick call from the Secret Service office landline.
“Can I ask you something?” Garcia said to Thibodaux, chin resting on the back of her hand.
The hulking Marine glanced up, nodding slightly before turning his attention back to the inside of his helmet. A robin hopped in the grassy shadows behind him.
“Knock yourself out.”
“Director Ross told me you and Quinn haven’t been working together much more than a couple of months. Seems to me like you’ve been friends forever... .”
“I assume you’ve never been in the military?”
“That’s true.” Ronnie felt a pang of regret for having to answer that way.
“Well, beb, you get a different sort of relationship with someone who you know you can count on—someone who’s spilled blood to save your life... .”
Quinn came down the hill a moment later. Garcia found herself happy to see him, but disappointed that her conversation about him had come to a stop.
“Palmer wants us to get together in the morning and compare notes without the Bureau and Agency big dogs in the mix.” Quinn looked at Garcia. “He’d like you there as well.”
“Sounds good.” She looked at her watch. “Not much more to do this evening. You guys ever eat?”
Thibodaux slid into his black leather jacket and checked his watch. “Well, hell, but don’t a kidnap attempt and a double bloody murder make the day just zip by,” he said. “I got a Lamaze class with my child bride in an hour and a half... .”
“Are you kidding me?” Quinn turned to Garcia, chuckling under his breath. “The guy’s got six sons and he still has to go to classes... .”
“I know. Don’t rub it in.” Thibodaux hung his head like a dejected schoolboy. “I expect it’s her way of making sure I come home for more than just the fun part of the process.”
“Sounds like a smart girl,” Garcia said. “How about you, Agent Quinn?”
“I could eat,” he said. “But lose the Agent stuff. Plain old Quinn is just fine—or Jericho.”
“Bueno.” She smiled broadly, showing a mouthful of gorgeous teeth, startlingly white in contrast to her coffee-and-cream complexion. “If you like Cuban, I know a great place in Silver Springs. Best moros y cristianos this side of Havana. It’s not too far from here.”
“I suppose I’m game.” Quinn shrugged, remembering what Kim had told him: We’re divorced. Start acting like it.
Garcia nodded at his BMW. “I assume that’s got a GPS.”
Quinn tapped his helmet with an open palm. “I’ll keep up.”
“Cubano’s. Tucked in just off Georgia Ave.” She gave him the address. “I’ll go ahead and get us a table.” Apparently not one to futz around once a decision was made, Garcia shut her door and tore down the circle drive, leaving a whirlwind of fall leaves in the wake of her tires.
Thibodaux sauntered over to Quinn like an uncle bearing advice. He rested a broad hand on the smaller man’s shoulder. “You mind yourself now, bro,” he said as both men gazed down the road after the departing Veronica Garcia. “Take it from me—and I’m an expert on such things—that gal will suck a hickey on your soul before you can say batshit.”
Quinn raised a wary eye. He wanted to change the subject so he reminded the big Marine of the tight rein Mrs. Thibodaux had on his language. “We’re getting near the end of the month, Jacques—Camille only gives you five non-Bible curse words every thirty days. I’m no religious scholar, but I’m pretty sure batshit doesn’t make the cut for the Good Book.”
“You just watch yourself, l’ami.” Thibodaux threw a thick leg across his bike. He turned the key, paused a moment to let the electronics run through their cycle. “I have to go meet Cornmeal at that baby-birthin’ class, but you listen to me. I know a thing or two about bad women. I’m tellin’ you, that sexpot Cuban is one bad jolie fille.”
“Don’t be such a pessimist, Jacques,” Quinn said.
Helmet visor flipped skyward, Thibodaux looked Quinn square in the eye. “Oh, I’m being optimistic, brother. A bad woman can be a mighty good find.” He pressed the start button and the GS growled to life. The opposing cylinders ripped happily as he gunned the throttle with a toothy grin. “I’m just not sure you’re ready for such heady doin’s.”
Four blocks away, Nona Schmidt slouched behind the wheel of a faded maroon Nissan Sentra parked under a row of trees. She watched in disgust as a pompous-looking blond man in a herringbone jacket came down the white concrete side steps of the Norwegian Embassy to let his little fuzz-ball dog take a dump across the sidewalk, next to the street. Bastard. All that sovereign ground of Norway just inside the ivy-covered wall and he had to let his stupid dog tootle over to crap in America. Schmidt thought about getting out and hitting him in the head with the ball-peen hammer on the floorboard but decided against it, reminding herself that she had more important duties across the street. Her blue eyes homed in on the twin gates leading out of the Naval Observatory.
A shiny black Impala made the slow S turns around the concrete exit bollards, then stopped, waiting for traffic. The dark woman whom they’d seen ea
rlier with Quinn was driving. To Nona’s horror, she came straight across Massachusetts Avenue.
The sight of the woman brought on a wave of instant panic. No one had expected they would come out this way. They’d gone into the Observatory grounds on the Georgetown side. That’s the way they were supposed to leave.
Nona picked up the radio from the seat between her legs. She wore extra-short cutoff jeans everyone called Daisy Dukes. Her pale thighs were bare—and now covered in gooseflesh that made the wispy blond hairs on her skin stand on end from worry. She turned the radio speaker-side up but kept it low in her lap and out of sight the way her boyfriend Scott had taught her. He was in the National Guard and knew everything about tactics. Her daddy liked him for that at least.
“I think they may be coming this way,” she hissed, trying to keep her lips as still as she could, looking like a bad ventriloquist. “The spic lady in the Impala just drove by me, going”—she consulted the map in the seat beside her—“north.”
“Sit tight and wait for the motorcycles,” her brother, Bobby, came back. He was set up with Scott in the parking lot of the Whole Foods Market on the opposite side of the circle, a half mile away. “If you see them, sing out and we’ll come runnin’. You stick close, but don’t let ’em see you. Remember what those bastards did to Uncle Walt.”
Nona nodded into the radio, then, remembering she had to speak out loud said: “okay ... roger ...” She was every inch the patriot but this tactical stuff gave her the heebie-jeebies.
Sitting off Embassy Row, where every other building belonged to some country besides America, filled her with righteous indignation. The Embassy of Finland was a half a block to her left. Azerbaijan was behind her. Nona didn’t know if Azerbaijan was the good guys or the bad guys, but it pissed her off that they had their own little piece of sovereign real estate smack in the middle of the U.S.A. Iraq, Iran, Belgium, and even the papist Vatican had little cancerous toeholds. It made her sick.
American to the bone, she even hated driving the Jap car, but Scott had reminded her of the need for operational security. They had to blend in driving around D.C. She thought it an awful thing how in the nation’s capital, you had to drive a foreign job not to stick out. Her brother’s 1981 Ford Bronco, designed and built in the good old U.S.A.—now that was a truck. She drummed both hands on the wheel, wishing she was in the Bronco—
The unmistakable roar of an approaching motorcycle made her wish she was back at the safety of their little compound in Martinsburg. An instant later, she watched a slender man in a black leather suit straddling a silver-gray BMW wind his way through the zigzag exit barricades from the Observatory grounds. The man wore a gunmetal helmet and rode the bike in the easy, self-assured manner that could only belong to Jericho Quinn.
Nona sat transfixed for a moment, eyes marveling at the fluid grace of the menacing bike as it leaned this way and that going around the concrete blocks. It reminded her of a dancing horse she’d seen once at a rodeo.
She’d seen a photograph of Quinn. The man’s gaunt looks and that dark, unshaven face made her go all melty inside. She’d read of IRA women running honey traps—luring young British soldiers into their homes for sex so they could be ambushed and have holes drilled into their knees by other faithful Irishmen. Nona had earned a slap from her daddy at suggesting she might try such a thing with Quinn.
And now he was riding his motorcycle directly toward her.
Her brother beat her to the radio.
“We got the big guy coming out of the gate now on our side. Looks like he’s alone.”
Nona chewed on her bottom lip, twisting and tugging at a curl of honey-colored hair. She knew she would have to follow until the others caught up.
“Qu ... the other one just came out this way.” She cussed herself for almost using Quinn’s name over the radio. Scott had warned against that.
“Got it.” Bobby’s voice twanged with excitement.
“We’re on our way. Don’t let that son of a bitch outta your sight.”
Nona sank back in her seat trying her best to look invisible as the bike rumbled past her. When it was almost to the end of the next block, she made a quick, three-point turn like Scott had taught her and fell in behind. It was up to her, and though the thought made her shake so badly she could hardly keep a grip on the wheel, her face flushed with the pride of being a part of something so important. This time wouldn’t turn out like the screwup at the gas station. If they couldn’t capture Jericho Quinn, they would kill him.
Hunky or not, the country could use one less traitor.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Nancy Hughes couldn’t help thinking that the quicker she got Jolene married to Garrett Filson, the quicker the two lovebirds could get around to the business of giving her grandbabies. She often said she was born to be a grandmother. Her naturally red hair had gone snow white about the time she turned fifty. And she certainly preferred the honesty of children over the adults in Washington. Jolene had come along late in life as it was, when the Hugheses had been married almost ten years. Then she’d taken a sabbatical from college for a three-year stint in the Peace Corps. At twenty-seven, the girl had waited long enough—and so had Nancy.
Hughes sat in a wicker chair on the long front porch of the vice-presidential residence, sipping her sweet tea and looking over the park-like lawns of the Naval Observatory. The house was nice enough, but it was a bit of a step down from their home back in Dallas.
Nancy Hughes had made a solemn vow to herself that—except for the mandated security detail—Jolene’s wedding would not cost the American taxpayers a dime. Besides, she’d told her daughter, the taxpayer couldn’t afford the kind of wedding she wanted. That had to come from their considerable family war chest.
She leaned back and put her feet up on a wicker ottoman that matched her chair. This wedding had monopolized so much of her time for so long—and now it was almost on top of her. So, so much to get done, and there was so little time to do it. This wedding was a gift to her daughter—and herself. It was the wedding she’d never gotten.
Ginormous, Garrett called it... .
The door opened behind her and she heard the heavy footfalls of her personal secretary, Gail Peterson. Nancy found it amazing that a woman barely five feet tall and the weight of a postage stamp could shake the entire house when she walked.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Gail said in her syrupy East Texas drawl. She waited to go further until given leave to do so.
Apart from her stomping around and overly timid nature, Gail was a fabulous secretary. Frumpy polyester suits and hair dyed a faded shade of blond, she’d worked for the family in one capacity or another for over thirty years.
“Have a seat, Gail,” Nancy said. “I need someone to talk to anyhow.”
“Oh, no, ma’am,” Gail said, a little catch in her throat.
It was then Nancy looked up to see her red eyes. She’d been crying. Nancy moved to the ottoman and patted the seat where she’d been sitting. “Please. I insist.”
Gail complied. “I just talked to her earlier this week... .” She broke into a series of ragged sobs, drawing a crumpled tissue from the cuff of her blouse to dab her eyes. “The poor thing’s background clearance just came through and I was just fixin’ to call her in when I heard... .”
More sobs.
Nancy bit her tongue. She patted Gail’s knee. “Heard what? Whose background?”
“I’m so sorry.” Gail dabbed at her nose with the tissue. “I saw those agents here and I thought they told you. I thought you knew already... .”
Nancy closed her eyes, praying for patience. “Told me what, dear?”
“The assistant ... we hired to help with the last ... minute ... wedding stuff ...” Gail began to weep as if a dam had broken inside her. Her words were punctuated by tremulous gasps for air. “Grace Smallwood ... got stung by a bee ... and now she’s dead... .”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Quinn was all too familiar with the r
oad between the Naval Observatory and Silver Springs. The Army’s Military Amputee Training Center was located off the same road at Walter Reed Hospital. He’d visited far too many of his friends there during their rehab. Riding down the quiet, park-like streets, he could smell the odors of antiseptic and adhesive tape common to amputee wards.
The night before his first deployment, Kim had rolled over in their bed to face him, tears streaking her face. They’d had dinner with a classmate from the Air Force Special Operations Indoc class. The poor guy had just come back from Iraq with a stump instead of a left hand. In hindsight, the dinner had probably been a mistake, but what do you say? Hey, bud, we can’t go out to eat with you because I’m about to deploy and your hook would scare the crap out of my wife... .
Nobody deserved that.
The Bluetooth inside his helmet gave a soft chirp, barely audible over the wind whirring through his half-open face shield. He tapped the side of his helmet.
“Quinn.”
“Daddy ...” It was Mattie. Her voice was drawn, tired like a frayed cord.
Quinn suddenly felt dizzy. He let off the throttle and coasted into a parking area along Rock Creek littered with fall leaves.
Two blocks behind Quinn, Nona Schmidt’s chest tightened. She tapped the brakes on the maroon Nissan. “He’s stopping!” she barked into the radio, forgetting to keep it in her lap and out of sight. “I’m almost on top of him. What should I do?”
“Just drive on by and find a place up the road to stop,” her brother said. “Play it cool and pull over at the next parking area. We’re less than three miles back.”
Nona found it impossible to keep her eyes off Quinn as she sped by, faster than she probably should have.
“He’s all by himself at the turnout,” she spoke into the radio.
