“You have to hand me over,” I told him. “There’s no other way.”
I couldn’t compromise him just for a few more hours of freedom. For his sake, I’d face incarceration and the very real risk that the judicial deck would be stacked against me. Because I didn’t want to reduce Barrett to less than the honorable man he was by scheming to outfox him or pressuring him to let me go.
But Barrett didn’t shout for McIlvoy. He didn’t release me, either. Instead, his right hand drifted from my left wrist. He touched cool fingertips to my cheek. And his lips trailed down my neck to trace my fluttering pulse.
“Tell me about the setup,” he murmured against my skin. “Tell me how to clear you.”
My heart beat in triplicate.
Barrett believed me.
He believed in my innocence. He knew I wasn’t a killer. He knew I wasn’t a liar.
The relief of that—quick and deep—caught me by surprise. It shuddered through me hard. So hard, I choked back a sob.
“Shh, honey.” Barrett nuzzled my temple. “Don’t cry.”
But such comfort was bittersweet. I slipped my free hand beneath Barrett’s coat, ran the flat of my palm along the taut muscles of his back. I held him close to me.
“Every time I win you,” Barrett whispered, “I lose you.”
Sorrow threatened to rip out my throat.
“You’ve never lost me, Adam.”
He was the one person I didn’t want to live without. Whenever, however: I wanted to be with him. It had taken me months to realize the simplicity of it.
But it took only a second to tell him.
“You’ll never lose me,” I pledged.
Except now, because of me, Madeline Donahue, a stolen CubeSat, and a murdered soldier caught in the middle of some power play I didn’t understand, Barrett just might.
“Jamie…”
He was too aware that we stood on the brink of permanent separation. But Barrett was going to make the most of these few moments we had together. With hands sure and steady, he touched me, roused me, loved me.
“Maybe…” I breathed, wrapping trembling arms around Barrett’s neck. “Maybe you could call McIlvoy…in the morning.”
Barrett kissed me then, hard and fast.
But Barrett and I couldn’t get carried away in this little shack. McIlvoy’s agents were searching for me. They could discover us in this potting shed at any moment.
And as soon as that thought filtered through my brain, the rustic door swung open.
Barrett shifted. He shielded me from the shadow coming through the doorway. But the silhouette belonged to a woman—with wild curls that refused to be tamed.
“With all due respect,” Jenna Shelby whispered, “can you two kiss and make up later? We’ve got four unknowns coming up the alley. I don’t think they’re feds.”
Barrett reacted in an instant.
He nudged me deeper into the shed, boosted me onto a stack of bagged grass seed.
“Can you reach the cupola?” he asked. “Crawl out through the vent?”
Above, starlight filtered through the belvedere’s slats. I could brush them with my fingertips. But I wasn’t about to leave him behind.
“Incoming,” Shelby warned.
She shut the shed door tight, fumbled for a slide bolt, and shot it home.
For me, that settled it.
“Everybody up and out.”
I laced my fingers together, made a step in the hollow of my hands. Barrett helped me and together we hefted Shelby high. The sound of splitting wood signaled she’d made quick work of the ventilation louvers.
She wiggled through the opening, onto the little shed’s roof. And a moment later, her head blotted out the sky. She leaned down, extended an arm to help the next person up.
“Your turn,” Barrett told me.
He seized me around the waist, lifted me from the ground.
I grasped the vent’s framework, dragged myself through as Shelby tugged on any part of me she could get.
She and I had a nice little vantage point from the shed’s shake roof. My father’s backyard lay before us, striped with every shade of gray. And every room in his house was ablaze with light as McIlvoy’s agents swept them.
I whirled around, snatched a decent view of the skinny cobblestone street on the backside of the block. A dark form flitted along the walkway approaching the gate. And the gate itself vibrated with unusual force.
With a snip and a clang, the gate swung inward. At least two men darted into the yard. They didn’t move in formation.
They weren’t federal agents or law enforcement officers of any kind.
Three more fellas joined the first two. They fanned out, ducking behind a weeping spruce and slipping around the corner of the house. One guy ditched a double-handled tool in a mulch bed. It had to be a set of bolt cutters. With them, these goons had hacked their way into my father’s garden—and I was willing to bet that wasn’t the only hardware they were hauling.
Shelby recognized this, I was sure.
I saw it in the way she flashed hand signs at Barrett as he scraped through the cupola himself.
He crouched on the shakes beside me, pointed to the gate. I caught his meaning. It stood open and unprotected.
It was our way out.
Shelby dropped to the lawn with a muffled thud. I hopped down to land beside her. One of the interlopers popped up in front of us like a duck in a shooting gallery.
With a well-aimed punch, I laid him out on the grass.
My hand screamed with the force of it.
I shook out my fingers to ward off the pain. But there was nothing wrong with my feet. When Shelby crouched low, when she darted toward the gateway, I was right on her tail.
Barrett followed close behind. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure of it. And that’s when the dancing red dot of a laser sight bounced across Barrett’s forehead.
“No!” I shouted and turned to shove him aside.
Pop, pop!
In a tangle, Barrett and I rolled across the lawn. A man’s hands seized me. He tore me away from Barrett.
Shouts rose from the house. Floodlights lit up the yard like a dog day afternoon. McIlvoy’s agents charged from the house.
“Stop!” one of them ordered, leveling his firearm at me. “Federal agent!”
The goon who’d grabbed me wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t a DC cop, either. With a shaved head and baggy sweatshirt, he was nothing more than a hired hood.
Somebody’s button man.
I ignored the agent’s caution, twisted in the grip of the hired gun. A quick knock with the crown of my head shattered his nose. He howled with the hurt of it.
But he didn’t let me go.
He clutched my collar with one hand, stepped back to swing a fist that would break my face. I saw the opening between us and I took it. I stomped his knee, forced it sideways, and wiped out his ligaments.
The hood collapsed in a heap.
I left him writhing, ran to Barrett. The gunshot had missed its mark. But we weren’t out of danger.
“Face down!” an agent shouted. “On the ground!”
“Keep your hands in view!” demanded another.
I glanced past her to see McIlvoy, sweeping across my father’s patio like a vampire dreaming of his next snack.
I could’ve sworn he salivated when his gaze settled on me.
But past McIlvoy, Bobbi fidgeted, wringing her hands in the spill of light flowing over the mudroom’s step. She called to my father inside. At that instant, the garden was plunged in darkness.
And I knew my father had thrown the breaker box’s master switch.
Pandemonium broke out. Barrett seized my hand. He towed me through the gate, slugging anyone who got in our way.
&n
bsp; “Shelby!” he bellowed in the black.
“Sir!” came her answering call.
She caught up with us on the run. We barreled between townhomes set too close together. And when we reached the sidewalk, the streetscape felt too wide open.
“This way,” Barrett said, jerking me to the right.
But I dug in my heels. My Denali was waiting to the left. Several blocks away, it was still my best bet—and Barrett’s, too.
Because the men who’d broken through my father’s gate weren’t going to differentiate between harming him or Shelby or me.
We were all a means to an end.
And now I knew why.
“I’m not going with you,” I said.
“What’re you talking about?” Barrett demanded.
“Those button men. They drew a bead on you.”
“Wasn’t the first time.” Barrett tried to tow me down the street. “Won’t be the last.”
“I know,” I told him. “But this is different.”
Beside us, Shelby bounced on the balls of her feet. She shot a nervous look at the way we’d come. I heard shouts in the near distance and gunfire.
And the whoop of sirens not far off.
“Sir?”
“I’m on it, Shelby.”
But I wasn’t going to go with them, no matter what Barrett said. Not now. Not when doing so would risk their lives for no good reason.
“Go on,” I ordered, slipping my hand from Barrett’s.
“Get moving,” he countered.
And that’s when Shelby intervened.
Stepping close to me, she said, “Ma’am, I hope you won’t hold this against me.”
“What do you—”
By the time I saw the blue arc of energy sizzling between two electrodes, it was too late. Shelby hit me full in the gut with the stun gun cupped in her hand. I convulsed, every muscle in my body contracting.
The result was pain on pain on pain.
I couldn’t control myself. Couldn’t even keep to my feet. And right before I passed out, Barrett’s arm cradled me and his voice feathered across my ear.
“I’m not losing you now.”
Chapter 31
I woke up good and angry in the backseat of a fast-moving car. The cloth upholstery beneath my cheek was a charcoal-gray chenille. It was soft, stain resistant, and smelled of the cleaning chemicals car rental companies use to erase evidence of the last patron’s trip before they fork over the keys to you.
Thinking of keys, the fob to the Denali poked into my hip like a stone in my side. I found it in my pants pocket, relocated it to my coat. I’d have loved to have dumped it in my backpack, but I’d lost that in the scuffle in my father’s potting shed.
By now, Special Agent McIlvoy had probably torn it apart.
And that notion didn’t do anything to improve my mood.
The nerve endings behind my eyes felt pretty frayed, too. I ached all over, but still, I struggled into a sitting position. Barrett was behind the wheel, and the urban scenery bordering some freeway or other flashed by my window.
“Where’s Shelby?” I croaked.
“She’s gone back to the house. She apologizes, by the way. How do you feel?”
“Back to the house? My father’s house? McIlvoy saw her with me.”
“Maybe he did, and maybe he didn’t.”
“Barrett, he did.”
“But that doesn’t mean she was up to no good.”
When I didn’t reply, Barrett grinned at me.
His smile was a supernova.
“What?” he deadpanned. “You’re a general’s daughter and you’ve never heard of the fog of war?”
I’d heard of it. The phrase referred to uncertainties that couldn’t be truly known because of the heat of battle. In other words, in the middle of a conflict, a soldier couldn’t always be sure he had accurate information—even if he’d gathered it for himself.
However, chances were McIlvoy had heard of the fog of war, too.
He wouldn’t accept Shelby’s spin.
“He’ll hang her out to dry,” I grumbled, “and then he’ll come after you.”
“Me? I’m tracking a fugitive even as we speak. Her name’s Jamie Sinclair. Besides, someone’s got to point out to McIlvoy that there were too many players on the field tonight. Shelby’ll do that.”
“About those players,” I said. “They’re just pawns in the game. And so are you.”
Barrett’s chocolate-brown eyes met mine in the rearview mirror.
“One of those goons was going to shoot you, Adam. Right between the eyes.”
“Honey, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time—”
“No, you were a means to an end.” I sat back, let my weary head loll against the seat. “Killing you would’ve slowed me down.”
The corner of Barrett’s delicious mouth quirked. “Good to know.”
“Slowing me down would’ve gotten me arrested.”
“And what does your arrest get?”
He was kidding.
But I was serious.
“My arrest scratches my father from the presidential primary ballot.”
Now I’d piqued the interest of the natural-born detective in Barrett.
“Tell me more,” he said.
“Barrett, I think I’m caught in a kill chain.”
A kill chain is a targeting process that’s long been in use within some branches of the armed forces. Not unlike a grand master’s successive moves during a chess match, it’s a series of events executed to reach an ultimate goal: the disabling of an opponent. Killing Barrett tonight would’ve certainly disabled me. And my resulting arrest would’ve disabled my father’s ability to court voters.
“There’s just one problem with your theory,” Barrett said, playing devil’s advocate.
“What is it?”
“This didn’t start tonight. It started when Madeline Donahue walked into your office.”
I turned that one over in my mind.
And the deduction I came up with electrified me.
“It didn’t start in my office!” I exclaimed, aches and pains all but forgotten. “It started when Madeline hired on at Stellar Unlimited—and when she first reached out to Robert Fraley.”
Barrett took a handy off-ramp, pulled to the side of the road. He turned to face me over the back of his seat.
He said, “You’re a hell of an investigator, Jamie. You know that, right?”
I wasn’t so sure about that.
But I was positive about one thing: Just because I hadn’t been able to find Madeline Donahue didn’t mean I couldn’t find Robert Fraley. Especially now that I had Barrett on my team.
I gave up the backseat to ride shotgun with him. At my suggestion, we hit the road for Fairfax. And for the third time in five days, I headed into the NoVa suburb in search of answers.
Despite the brutal murder of Dylan Pruitt in a home right down the way, little had changed on the quiet street where Fraley rented his converted garage. At this hour, kids were tucked up in their beds, and Mom and Dad’s time had become their own. As a result, the blue cast of many a TV warmed up the windows of several houses, and nearly everyone was indoors.
The cantilevered ranch in front of Fraley’s place still looked as deserted as ever. The newspapers hadn’t moved from the doormat, but this time, the radio deep in the house was silent and the timer-controlled lamp in the front window was out. Likewise, no lights glowed from Fraley’s kitchen window—but that didn’t always mean a whole lot.
Barrett parked across from Fraley’s driveway, exactly where Matty had left his Bronco the ill-fated evening we’d pushed our way into the little cottage. Barrett told me he’d visited Matty three days ago. And I was relieved to hear my old friend was on the mend,
since I hadn’t been able to reach out to him.
“He made me swear I’d look out for you,” Barrett said.
The revelation practically made me melt. But that was Matty. He’d always been less like an employee and more like a Dutch uncle.
I said, “I’m sorry Matty put you on the spot.”
“I’m not. In fact, he told me if I know what’s good for me, I’ll marry you.”
“Matty told you this?”
“He did. Do you think he meant it as a suggestion or an ultimatum?”
Barrett grinned like the Cheshire Cat.
I frowned in reply. I wanted Barrett and only Barrett in my life. But marriage was still an entirely different matter.
My expression or my mind, Barrett read one or the other, and without another word we got out of the car.
We kept our eyes open as we crossed the street. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, I was still a wanted criminal. And getting picked up within spittin’ distance of Fraley’s place wouldn’t do much to help my case.
On Fraley’s front door, built into the side of the garage, Barrett knocked loudly.
“Military police. Mr. Fraley? I’d like a word.”
But Fraley didn’t answer.
And I was fairly sure he’d scarpered.
I circled his abode, listening carefully for his television, the ring or bling of his cellphone, or even the thump of an uneven load in his dryer coming from inside. I looked for signs of activity. A window sash that didn’t quite meet the sill could indicate Fraley had been coming and going without benefit of the front door, but I found nothing to suggest he’d been here at all.
In the alley behind his rental, where the asphalt had crumbled to tarry gravel, the dilapidated Toyota Corolla was gone. That wasn’t a red flag in and of itself. Maybe the car had belonged to Pruitt. Maybe his bereaved family had hauled it away. But maybe it belonged to Pruitt’s assailant, an attacker who’d injured Matty and framed me.
Energized by that notion, I plucked my little black notebook from my jacket pocket, flipped to a certain page. And there in black and white was the car’s vehicle identification number. Because I’d scribbled it down that night.
Of course, given my circumstances, my contacts at the Department of Motor Vehicles wouldn’t be happy to hear from me. Logging into investigators’ select subscription databases might raise eyebrows, too. So, I crossed the cracked blacktop to Barrett, who’d crouched to examine a tire track, and flashed the page at him.
The Kill Chain Page 19
