“Have a nice day,” the guy at the desk called out from behind him.
“You too,” he managed, not looking back.
Outside, he walked another block south, into the underground garage where he’d left his rental. He tossed the box onto the back seat, pulled the Glock from its holster and left it under a towel on the passenger seat.
He exited the garage and turned west. Around him the streets echoed with the wail of sirens. He drove cautiously, obeying all traffic rules, listening to the police scanner on the passenger floor, following his pre-planned, circuitous route to the chain hotel near Bailey’s Crossroads.
Back in his room, he turned on the television.
Only then did he learn that Roger Helm, though gravely wounded, was still clinging to life.
PART III
THIRTY-NINE
“What are you doing back here?”
Dan Adair stood in his doorway, hands on hips.
Cronin was tired. The long drive back here from Alexandria had begun at six a.m. Saturday was his day off, so he was off the clock and not getting paid for this, and he was in no mood for attitude.
“I have more questions.”
“Well, Detective, that’s too damned bad, because I have no more answers.” Adair started to close the door on him.
“It’s about your son, Will.”
Adair stopped in mid-motion.
“What about him?”
“Let me come in and I’ll tell you.”
Adair appraised him for a moment.
“All right.”
“If they’re here, you might want to have Will and your wife sit in on this.”
Adair summoned them, and they settled in again in the den, in the same seats as before. A cup of coffee and pages of a newspaper lay on a table next to Adair’s recliner, and the TV was on in the background, muted.
“You had something to tell us about Will,” Adair said, his voice stern. He didn’t lounge back in his recliner, but sat forward, sinewy arms folded across his chest.
Cronin glanced at the kid, whose eyes widened.
“Digging through files, I found notes I tracked back to a federal prosecutor who was investigating WildJustice. When I contacted her office, I found out they had questioned Will about his involvement with Boggs and his group. Which surprised me, since that connection never came out in any court filings or in the media. Turns out she was itching to prosecute your son here as an accessory to a criminal conspiracy. So you hired an attorney, and he cut a deal with her—that Will would tell the feds everything he knew about WildJustice, in exchange for immunity from prosecution. They also promised to keep it out of the papers.”
Nan Adair looked panicked. Will looked stricken.
Adair looked mad.
“What of it?” he snapped.
Cronin nodded toward the young man. “So on top of everything we discussed before, now I find out your kid was in up to his eyeballs with Boggs and his group—the very same people who were threatening you. But now the feds are protecting him. Seems to me that a lot more is going on here than you told me, Mr. Adair.”
“Then why don’t you go ask the feds about it?”
Cronin had come here to press hard and get answers, and now was the time.
“Look. Let’s stop playing games. You all know why I’m here. We just haven’t said it out loud. Dylan Hunter. Our task force has been investigating his possible involvement with the vigilante killing spree around D.C. since last year. Hunter was writing about the criminals who later turned up dead, and his articles were left at the crime scenes. Then he starts writing about Boggs and his gang. And he comes here and meets with you people, who Boggs was threatening. And you introduce him to the scientist who Boggs later blew up. Hunter attends the funeral—and then Boggs tries to blow him up. All of a sudden, Boggs and his pal are found murdered, too, and the tire prints out there match the same model ATV you own.”
He watched them exchange glances, and pushed on.
“Know what I think? I think you know all about him, and you’re covering for him. Dylan Hunter was here—you admitted that—and I think that to protect you, and to avenge that murdered scientist, he went after Boggs and Nash. I think he borrowed your ATV to go out in the woods and kill them. And I think you helped him—which makes you accessories to murder.”
“That’s crazy!” Adair shouted. “And you don’t have a lick of evidence to support your—”
“Here’s what I do have, Mr. Adair.” He pointed at Will. “I have access to files proving your son was conspiring with those terrorists and murderers. The feds promised to keep that stuff quiet and out of the papers. But I didn’t.”
Adair leaped to his feet.
“What kind of bastard are you? You barge in here and threaten us, and for what? Why aren’t you doing your job and chasing real killers?”
“That’s exactly what I’m doing. Chasing a real killer. And to protect him, you’ve been stonewalling me, lying to me. So if you don’t want me—”
He heard Nan Adair gasp. She was looking toward the TV screen, her hand raised to her mouth.
Cronin looked, too. Felt his own shock.
Adair grabbed the remote from the table beside his chair and turned up the volume.
2
They sat paralyzed for the next ten minutes, not moving or speaking, just watching and listening. Reporters described the chaos on the baseball field after shots were fired, striking candidate Roger Helm. He had been rushed away by ambulance, and early reports from the hospital weren’t good. They began to show cell phone videos of the chaos—the crowd panicking and stampeding, people falling and getting trampled, parents huddling protectively over kids, agents drawing weapons, reporters diving for cover.
The network news anchor narrated the reports coming in.
“After the first shot hit the candidate, the next three apparently were aimed at members of the media. Multiple eyewitnesses report that those shots seemed to strike near the third-base dugout, where reporters had gathered. We have an unconfirmed report that the shots narrowly missed one journalist, tentatively identified as Dylan Hunter of the Capitol Inquirer . . .”
The Adairs gasped. Nan whimpered, “Oh no!”
Cronin could only stare.
“. . . appears to be unharmed. Incredibly, despite injuries arising from people being trampled in the panic, we have no reports so far that the shots hit anyone other than Roger Helm . . .”
Cronin finally spoke.
“Excuse me. I know this timing is terrible. But I have a long drive ahead of me. We need to finish our conversation.”
Adair looked at him. “You’re right. We do need to finish this. Nan, Will, would you excuse us, please? Maybe continue watching this in another room?”
They got up without a word and left, seeming eager to.
Adair muted the TV again and rocked back in the recliner. He hooked a thumb toward the screen.
“You want the truth about that guy? The whole truth?” His gaze tracked around the den. “All right. I’m a pretty good judge of character. I sense you are a fair man, Detective. My gut tells me justice matters to you. So I’m going to gamble on your character. I’m going to take the risk that after you hear me, you’re going to do the right thing. Let me tell you the truth about Dylan Hunter.”
And he did.
Twenty minutes later, Adair finished.
“So there you have it, Detective. Right here, in this room, this so-called murderer you’ve been hunting risked his life to save my family and me. We all came within seconds of being blown up. He and Annie, both of them, almost died saving us. They put it all on the line for us, when the entire goddamned government was out to get us, and when nobody in law enforcement did a goddamned thing to help us.
“But here you are, still trying to nail him. And for what? Because this man who saved our lives killed a terrorist—and maybe some other cold-blooded murderers, too.”
He snorted, shaking his head with contempt.
“You want to persecute us now for our loyalty to him? You want to threaten to expose Will if we don’t turn against him? You think you can get any jury to find Dylan Hunter guilty of anything he’s done? Go ahead and try.”
Adair pulled himself to his feet. His voice lost its harshness.
“But looking at you, I don’t take you for a complete fool. In fact, I think you are basically a good guy, Detective. So I have a sincere piece of advice for you.”
Cronin stood, too.
“And what’s that?” he asked, quietly.
“Stop chasing other good guys.”
3
Back in Bethesda, Hunter disguised himself and took the stairwell down to “Wayne Grayson’s” apartment. There he fetched an encrypted sat phone from the hidden vault and, standing near the window, used it to reach Garrett on his own special device. Then told him about his presence at the shooting.
“You saw the whole thing go down, then?”
“Not just that. Grant, nobody knows this except me, yet, but Helm wasn’t the only one targeted today. So was I.”
“You?”
“After the first shot hit him, the next three missed me by inches—and only because I was moving erratically. There was no question the shooter had singled me out and was trying to nail me, too. Which means he almost certainly had to be Lasher.”
“Well, well. That puts everything in a whole new light, doesn’t it.”
“Not really. If you accept that the CAP bombing was instigated by the Russians, then I see them behind this, too, using Lasher.”
He heard Garrett’s long, low whistle.
“I didn’t want to believe that, you know. But I’ve gotten some background on the Chechen from our foreign partners. It turns out that an MI6 asset in the FSB says Shishani was on their payroll as a confidential informant burrowed in the Chechen Islamist movement. The source claims he even had a hand in the Moscow apartment bombings. Which, if true, explains why he was tapped to coordinate the bombing here in D.C.”
“It keeps coming back to the Kremlin, doesn’t it? The only thing I wonder about Lasher is when he’s doing a job for his Moscow handler, and when he’s off the leash, doing things on his own. Like today. The hit on Helm—that had to be ordered up and paid for by his handler. But nobody except my editor and Helm’s people knew I’d be there today, so he had no time to work me into the plan.”
“You’re saying you were just a target of opportunity?”
“Nothing else makes sense. The shooter must have spotted me, then decided on the spot to kill two birds with one stone—so to speak. Which confirms to me it was Lasher. I can’t imagine anyone else recognizing me, or being so eager to take me out that he’d fire three times at me.”
“I see your point. But think about what that means, Dylan. Leaving aside his personal hatred for you, and assuming his shooting Helm wasn’t also just some kind of ego trip, it looks like the Russians are still resorting to desperate measures to affect the election outcome.”
Hunter stared bleakly at an empty wall. “From the news reports, it appears they succeeded. On the way home, I heard the Helm campaign has been suspended.”
“As unbelievable as it is that Moscow would dare be behind all this, I’m starting to believe you.”
“The fastest way to prove it is to find Lasher—then, through him, his handler.”
“If he’s as good as we think, he’s already in the wind.”
“Only if he’s finished, Grant. But I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because for him, I’m unfinished business.”
FORTY
She opened her door to him with a worried expression.
“You scared me on the phone when you told me you were there today. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m okay. Physically.”
He stepped in past her, not stopping for a kiss, and continued on, into the living room.
“‘Physically.’ What do you mean by that?”
He felt her eyes on his back as he stood there a moment. Gathering himself for this.
Always fearing it would come to this.
He took a deep breath and turned to face her.
“Please come over and sit down.”
She obeyed, looking scared. She wore casual clothes, pale blue blouse and slacks. Her face was pale, too, as if she had a premonition about this—perhaps from something in his voice when he phoned ahead, telling her he had been at the shooting, that he was okay, but needed to see her.
He’d decided he had to do this during the interminable moments he lay on the floor of the dugout, crushed tight against the cold cement steps to make himself a smaller target, waiting for the next bullet, the one that could take his life.
“Dylan, for God’s sake—what’s wrong?”
He sat on the edge of a chair, forearms on his knees.
“Annie . . . this can’t work. It can’t continue.”
She wrinkled her brows, confused.
“Dylan, what are you saying? What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about us. I’m talking about our future together.”
He saw numbed shock in those eyes now. Her lips parted, then closed, as she searched for words.
“But . . . why?”
“For the same reasons as before.”
“I . . . I thought we had already resolved everything!”
“I thought so, too. Back at the beginning, you were the one with the doubts. It took you a long time to make peace with my nature—with me being a ‘sheepdog,’ as Grant says. But when you started talking about a family, it forced me to think about what that would mean. About what a life with someone like me would really mean for you—and for our kids.”
“Dylan, wait! You need to—”
“No, please, let me talk. I have agonized about this a long time, and you have to hear me out. Think about it, Annie. In just the eight short months we’ve been together, I was nearly killed by Adrian Wulfe—and, because of me, he came within minutes of killing you, too. Then there was Boggs. He almost killed me, and except for you, he would have. But solely because of my involvement with him, he came within a split-second of killing you—and then his partner nearly killed you, too. Two months ago, a guy in Dixon’s gang almost nailed me with a shot that missed me by inches. Only three weeks ago, I was nearly blown up by terrorists. And just today, Lasher fired three times at me, and each bullet also missed me only by inches.”
“He almost shot you?”
He nodded. “Think about that, and all those other times. Think of how you nearly died three times. Think of how incredibly lucky I’ve been not to have been killed already. Or arrested, with Cronin trying to nail me for murder. Or simply exposed. Now everyone knows I’m not who I say I am, and because of that they’ll be hounding me forever, trying to find out about me. And hounding us, if we’re together.
“Ask yourself what we could look forward to. Having to hide, constantly looking over our shoulders for some new Lasher, or Boggs, or Wulfe, or even a Cronin. You want kids, but what could they look forward to? Annie, that is no way to live.”
“Damn it, Dylan! If you really feel this way, why don’t you just stop?”
He gazed at her stunning face, now ravaged by anguish and anger, hating that his words were causing her so much pain.
“Because I can’t, Annie.”
“You mean, won’t. You could if you wanted to. But you don’t want to. What
I want to know is why. Why do you want to do this?”
He lowered his eyes toward the floor, toward the tangled grain patterns in the wood.
“You’re wrong about that. About me wanting to do it. I hate doing these things. The only reason I do them, is that I would hate myself even more if I didn’t.”
He raised his head. Forced himself up into that cold, high place, where nothing mattered except what he had to do.
“Over a year ago, I thought about Muller and the damage he did to me, and to the good people who died because of him. It was intolerable that he was alive, and that the system would keep him alive. So I decided I had to do something about that. And after that—with Susie and Arthur, and the Jacksons, and Adam Silva, and the Adair family, and so many more—it was the same. They cried out for justice, but nobody was listening. And I couldn’t walk away.”
“I know. I understand that. And I accept that, and I love you for it. You are always going to react like a sheepdog.”
He shook his head. “But it’s become more than just reacting, Annie.”
“What do you mean, ‘more’?”
“Today I watched a great man take a bullet—precisely because he is a great man. Monsters wanted him dead, because he stood in their way. Not long ago, I watched two other monsters park a truck bomb yards from me, almost killing me and a room full of good people. But they did slaughter many others, including a lovely mother and her beautiful baby. I’d just met them on the street minutes earlier. And it only confirmed what I knew—that what I had been doing was not enough.
“It started to change for me when I realized Ashton Conn, and other powerful, politically connected people, were willing to do anything, including killing innocent people, to seize and keep power. People high up in our government—and in others. People who are protected. People who are untouchable.” He paused to stress his next words. “Or were untouchable—before I came along and decided to make war on them.”
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