by L. T. Ryan
“You said something about a gun?”
He laughed softly. “Girl after my own heart. Come over here.”
She met him in the corner of the room. He flicked on the light. They stood in front of a gun cabinet, secured with a biometric lock. He placed his thumb on a pad. A second later a click signaled that the cabinet was unlocked. He opened it, revealing a small armory.
“If anyone finds us out here,” he said, “they’re likely to send a team. Go ahead and grab the MP7 and a spare magazine. That’ll give you sixty rounds, or twenty shots on three-round burst, which I’d recommend.”
Nodding, she reached for the H&K submachine gun. She ducked her head through the strap and let it rest against her chest. Beck handed her a spare magazine. She thanked him and turned and walked back to the room.
Sleep came easier than it should have. She was out before she knew whether Beck made it back to the cabin safely. Perhaps she didn’t care if it ended right then. At least in her sleep she wouldn’t have time to process what the end of her life would mean. And she wouldn’t have to come to grips with the fact that it’d mean nothing to almost everyone.
She woke to the sounds of birds outside her window. The sun’s rays blinded her at first. She covered her face with a pillow, easing it away and allowing her eyes to adjust. She had no phone or watch and was unable to tell what time it was. The scent of coffee filled her room. She assumed Beck made it back last night and was already up.
Exiting the room, she clutched the MP7’s grip tightly, aiming it loosely in front of her.
“Don’t shoot,” Beck jokingly said. He held both hands up, clutching a mug in each. “Coffee?”
She continued forward and reached for the earthy-green mug. The coffee smelled strong and looked blacker than any she had ever seen. The first sip straightened her spine and knocked any remaining sleep from her bones.
Beck laughed. “That’s West Virginia mountain coffee.”
“You’re from here?”
“Me? No. This property belonged to my late wife. She inherited it from a great-uncle before we met. That’s how no one knows about it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“About no one knowing about it?”
“Your late wife.”
“It’s been ten years.”
“Does that make it easier?”
Beck considered this for a moment. “No, it doesn’t.”
“Didn’t think so.”
They both were silent for a few minutes. Clarissa glanced around the room. It looked much as she expected it to. Old and dusty. She figured Beck didn’t spend much time here. Maybe once every year or two to check up on the place. And she doubted he cleaned when he did so. She couldn’t let that bother her. They were stuck here, together, for as long as it took. How long would that be, though? She had no idea, and she doubted that Beck did either. She decided to broach the topic with him.
“When do you think we’ll get out of here?”
He set his mug on the counter and placed his hand on either side of it. “Hard to say. I’d like to know something before we go. Getting any info is risky. I’ve got three clean phones here. They’re charging right now. I’ll start making some calls.”
“What if you call the wrong person?”
“The phones route through a few servers, all of which are off-grid as far as the people we know are concerned. And as far as who I’m calling, none of the people I’ll be reaching out to are going to have any involvement in what’s happened so far.” He picked up his mug and took a sip, then added, “I hope.”
She wasn’t sure whether to be encouraged by his words, or distraught over them. All that mattered is they were safe at that moment. That allowed her to think of other things.
“You don’t happen to have a shower here, do you?”
He gestured with his head. “Out back. It’s spring fed and freezing cold, so you might want to wait until it heats up a bit outside. Temps get into the nineties during the day here.”
She took a seat at the table while Beck fished out something from the cabinet over the sink. He cranked a handle and switched the device on. Turning a dial, he skipped past music and tuned into a news report.
“—no new updates are available on the condition of Vice President McCormick, or about the identity of the shooter, although this reporter has learned through confidential sources that the Secret Service and FBI are tracking down two potential suspects thought to have fled to Virginia or West Virginia.”
“How do they know we’re here?” she asked.
Beck shook his head. “They don’t. Just taking wild guesses, that’s all.”
She partly believed him. Perhaps they only had a general sense of where the two of them had gone, if it was them the reporter was referring to. It could have been anyone. She told herself this to calm down. The fact was, at that moment, she grew convinced that Sinclair had not acted alone. He’d been working with Banner and Polanski, maybe even Jordan, since the beginning. The plan all along had been to set her up for the assassination of McCormick.
Chapter 30
Later that day, when the temperature had climbed above ninety, Clarissa walked around the back of the cabin and entered the small enclosure surrounding the shower, which was engulfed in shadows. She stripped out of her clothes and stepped into the freezing spray of water. Beck had a few pairs of his late wife’s jeans and some t-shirts boxed up. Surprisingly, they were in mint condition, even if they smelled like mothballs. Clarissa had picked out a pair of faded blue jeans and a light blue t-shirt.
Without soap or shampoo, the only thing she could do was stand there and let the frigid water rinse the sweat and dirt off her body. She spent five minutes in the shower, thinking over the events of the previous two days. Her body grew numb to the cold, but it was too much for her to get comfortable and think things through.
She cut the shower, toweled off and slipped into the jeans. The woman had been the same size and probably within half an inch of Clarissa’s height. She wondered what the woman had been like. What had Beck been like ten years ago? How had his wife’s passing affected him? She’d wandered around the house with an eye for finding a picture or two, but there hadn’t been any. She wasn’t sure why it mattered so much. It was probably best to let it go for now.
The sun hovered on the other side of the roofline, leaving most of the yard darkened. She escaped the structure’s long shadow, climbing up the slope to the barn. There, Clarissa leaned against warm, weathered boards and soaked in the rays. Within minutes the sweltering heat forced a thin sheen of sweat on her brow.
Beck had left the lock off the barn door. She took this as a sign that she could enter. She pulled back the wide door and stepped inside. Windows along the top of the building allowed in enough light for her to see everything in the room, which consisted of one wide main area on the left, and four stalls on the right. At one time they may have been used for horses or other livestock. But now they housed two ATVs and two dirt bikes. Occupying the main area was the Jeep they drove from D.C., and a late nineties Land Rover.
Rounding the back of a dark green Discovery, she noted that the license plates looked legit. Who were they registered to? She doubted Beck registered them under his name. Perhaps he had set up a company in order to keep the property and the vehicle out of his name. Of course, his employer could find that out, so the name behind the company would have to be different from his own.
She realized, based on the age of the vehicle, that it, too, must have belonged to Beck’s wife. Perhaps it had all been registered under her maiden name, or that of some family member’s. It did little to ease Clarissa’s concern. The people she dealt with could get any information they wanted. Perhaps they’d never had a reason to dig this deep into Beck’s life. Now they did.
She exited the garage and jogged down the gravel path to the house. The front door was open to allow a slight breeze inside. There was no air conditioning, though each room had several fans running.
Beck leaned over the
kitchen counter. He held up a hand as she entered and finished a phone call. Clarissa walked over to the bedroom door and dropped her dirty clothes and the damp towel on the floor, then she joined Beck in the kitchen.
“Good news?” she asked, knowing by the look on his face it was anything but that.
He shook his head and looked away. “We’re the suspects.”
“I figured.”
“I just don’t know who is pushing this agenda, and who might be willing to help us.”
“Who was that you were talking to?”
“I think it’s better that you don’t know, Clarissa. The fewer names you know the better. It’s for your own good, and theirs.”
“You mean in case I’m caught.”
“Or I am,” he replied, pausing. “Or they are.”
“So what’s the plan? We can’t stay here forever.”
“We can’t?”
“Sooner or later they’ll figure it out if they haven’t already.” She walked up to the counter where he stood and leaned against it. “Won’t they?”
Beck shrugged. “I’ve been pretty careful with everything here. None of it is in my name. They’d have to go through several records to find a correlation.”
“But that’s what they do, right? Take these random strings of information and tie them together until they have the answer they want. They might not figure it out today or tomorrow. Hell, we could be safe here a week from now. But eventually these people are going to figure it out.”
“I know, I know. I’m trying to buy us some time until we can get this sorted out. I’ve got someone looking for Jordan. I think that if we find him, we’re clear.”
“Then maybe we should find him.”
Beck straightened up. “Are you suggesting we go back to D.C.?”
“We’re not accomplishing anything out here. Or am I mistaken and you’ve got a server farm going in there working to hone in on Jordan’s location, and figuring out what the hell Sinclair was doing across the street with a rifle aimed at my head?”
“Don’t you think if it was aimed at your head you’d be dead right now?”
“Being a sniper was never his specialty.”
“Then why was he out there?”
Clarissa shrugged. She had no answer for that question.
Beck said, “How much do you really know about the man?”
She thought back to the various things he and others had told her. “He was an officer in the Army, PSYOPs. Did six years in the mid-eighties, you know, Granada and Panama, then he went into the CIA. There he continued with covert psychological operations during Gulf One.”
“All the leaflets and then bombings when the troops didn’t surrender?”
“I don’t know the details of that. From there he was involved in Bosnia and Kosovo. Not sure what he did there. He moved into interrogation at some point, or maybe he was always there and the other stuff was a lie just to make me feel better.”
Beck smiled, said nothing.
“I know he worked with Jack at some point—”
“Who?”
She looked away. “An old friend of mine. He was a Marine and worked as a Fed for a while.”
Beck nodded, seemingly fine with her answer.
“Then things with Sinclair get murky. He headed a team that had worked everywhere, and respected no borders.”
“When you say no borders?”
“Here in the States.”
“How?”
“He controlled a team of assets, contractors, people like me.”
“So all black ops?”
Clarissa shrugged and offered no reply.
“What else?”
“The only other thing I can tell you is that he freelanced for crime bosses.”
“Doing what?”
“Interrogation.”
Beck leaned forward. “Why would he tell you that?”
“He didn’t.”
“Then how do you know?”
“Because he interrogated me once.”
Beck’s expression changed as he digested the information. She could see him trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Why would Sinclair have interrogated her at the request of a crime boss? The answer was far from menacing, but no one would believe the story. To delve any further would bring up names of people she wanted to protect, so even if he asked, she’d refuse to answer.
“There’s a lot I don’t know about you, isn’t there?” He paused to allow her time to answer, but she remained quiet. “I’ll ask you one more question, and I’d appreciate as honest an answer as you can muster.”
“Okay.”
“Is there any reason for Sinclair to want you dead?”
Clarissa crossed the room and stopped in front of the front window. She peeled back the curtain. The sun hovered just behind the tops of the trees. Hundreds of rays filtered through the leaves. The house had begun to cool, but there she felt warmed by the penetrating light.
Beck approached from behind. The old floorboards creaked under his weight. She felt slight vibrations with every step he took.
“Clarissa?”
“No, Beck, I can’t think of a single reason why. If he wanted me dead, he’d have had it carried out. Hell, he could have phoned in an anonymous tip to the asshole I was staying with in London and told them I was an agent. I’d have never left the compound dead or alive. Or he could have had me killed when I got back here. The first time we met, that’s what I thought you were there for.”
She looked back to see his reaction. If he had one, Beck didn’t let it show on his face. He’d stopped a couple feet behind her. As she turned her head back toward the window, he reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder.
“I could handle him having me killed.” She reached up and wiped a tear from her cheek. “But to disgrace me like this? To make those that know me think I had something to do with an attempted assassination of the vice president?”
He squeezed her shoulder and pulled her toward him. She turned and allowed him to wrap both arms around her. It was the first time in months that she felt safe.
“We’re going to get to the bottom of this,” Beck said. “I’m not going to leave your side until we do.”
She pulled away and leaned against the warm windowpanes. “Why are you willing to risk it all to help me? For all you know, I was involved in this.”
“If I hadn’t been at your apartment and saw Amy shot down, and then another shot meant for one or both of us, I might not. I’d probably be out there looking for you. But that, and then being shot at again, perhaps by Jordan, it’s obvious someone is setting you up.” He leaned his head back and took a deep breath, then added, “Setting us both up.”
She pushed past Beck and returned to the kitchen. She searched the cabinets for something suitable for dinner. A box of unopened spaghetti offered the safest option.
“There’s also the fact that you remind me so much of Victoria.”
She hadn’t heard Beck approach. There were no vibrations in the floor. His words caught her by surprise. She could only imagine who he had referred to.
“Your wife?” she said, turning to face him.
He nodded. “Especially with your hair short and dark. She was around your age when she passed. We’d been married four years, together another five before that. We met in college. Hit it off right away.”
“What did she do?”
“She was a lawyer. Got a job in the D.A.’s office right out of Georgetown Law School. A rising superstar, they’d said. Despite that, she was going to put it all on hold after finding out she was pregnant with our first child.”
Clarissa feared the direction the story was headed.
“Never made it out of the first trimester, though.”
She clutched the cardboard box full of spaghetti, squishing it. “What happened?”
“Her car went over a bridge. Plunged into the Potomac. There were people nearby, but it was January and the water was frigid and no one went in
to help her.”
“Jesus, Beck, I’m…” She didn’t want to say sorry, but nothing else came to mind.
He shook his head. “You’d think with the time that’s passed it would get easier. In some ways, it does. But I’ve never been able to shake the feeling that it wasn’t an accident.”
“You think someone killed her?”
He nodded.
“Who? Why?”
Beck hiked his shoulders an inch. “Could have been a case she was involved in. Could have been because of me. Hell, could have been the D.A., pissed that she was leaving.” He smiled slightly after making the statement. “Kidding there, of course. I don’t know, and I guess I’ll always have to live with that.”
Clarissa had nothing to offer, and saying sorry didn’t feel right.
“Anyway,” Beck said, “go ahead and start dinner, and I’m going to get the Land Rover ready for tomorrow.”
“What’s tomorrow?”
“We’re heading back to D.C.”
Chapter 31
They ate dinner in silence under the dim light that hung over the kitchen table. The spaghetti was stale and there was no sauce or butter to mix with it. But they needed food and both Clarissa and Beck ate it without complaining.
After they were finished, Clarissa rinsed the plates off in cool water. Beck took a cell phone into the bedroom and shut the door. She wondered who he was calling, and why it had to be done in private. The first assumption that came to mind had to do with him setting her up. She pushed that aside, though, and recalled an earlier explanation. It was better that uninvolved parties knew little about each other.
She left the plates in the sink to dry and went outside. The temperature had dropped close to forty degrees. Her skin prickled in the cool breeze. Thousands of stars twinkled overhead. To the north, clouds gathered. She wondered if they’d head her way, or were they remnants of the storm that had passed?
A dog barked in the distance. She couldn’t tell from how far away. They were some distance up the mountain. The sound could have originated from the valley and rose up to her position. She heard it again. This time another dog responded.
