She didn’t waver in her stance as he slid into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and disappeared down her driveway.
When the growl of his engine faded, she took a few shaky steps forward, then sank onto the top porch step. The tension that had been stretching her nerves and muscles tight slowly relaxed, and her heartbeat approached normal.
Pegram waddled over to lick her hand. Out of habit, she scratched his little head, thankful for the calming effect he had on her.
How on earth had this happened? Considering her mother’s dire warnings and a visit to the hospital that had puzzled the doctors, Government Spook’s appearance on her doorstep hadn’t truly surprised her. But his mentioning her father certainly had. Until today, the government had always refused to even admit her father had ever worked for them.
Just thinking about Webster’s revelations made her stomach churn. How had he managed to see that tape? And so quickly? Had he been watching her, waiting for her to slip up? The sweat chilled on her skin. Who else had seen that video? Were teams of government scientists heading toward her even now?
The memory of her one and only trip to the hospital surfaced.
“Mrs. McCay, we need to run some more tests,” the doctor had said to her mother, who stood at the end of the emergency room bed.
“Tests?” The way she said it mirrored the fears racing through Jenna’s fifteen-year-old brain. Had they found something that would reveal her ability to make herself disappear?
“Yes, ma’am. We got some readings on the blood tests that we’ve never seen before.”
“She just broke her arm. She’s not been sick.”
“No, there’s no indication she’s sick. It’s just that—”
“Then I think she’s had enough turmoil for one day. We’ll check on those tests later on.”
Of course, they never had. Her mother had made sure another doctor removed the cast when the time came.
Despite her protest, Webster knew the truth. She possessed an ability perhaps no one else on the planet did. And yet, he hadn’t looked at her as if she were a freak of nature or a spawn of Satan, but had only exuded confidence in her presence. Why? Did he know the answer to the question Jenna had asked all her life — why did she have this ability?
Jenna glanced down and noticed the business card Webster had left. She reached for it, hesitated, then finally picked it up. Ten numbers stared up at her, nothing more. Neither Daniel’s name nor what agency he represented graced the simple white card. Just a black phone number with a 111 area code — no doubt the area code to hell.
Jenna shook her head and got to her feet. Restless and mind exploding with questions, she wandered through the house and out the back door. She tried sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs overlooking the native flower garden she’d planted. But even this normally serene spot offered her no peace.
Anxious and unable to sit still, she headed for her detached garage, needing wind in her hair and power at her fingertips. Within a minute, she roared out of the garage astride her Super Hawk motorcycle, trying to outrun what could never be escaped.
****
Three days passed without another peep from Daniel Webster, but Jenna still scrutinized the woods surrounding her yard as if she were a Secret Service agent clearing a path for the president. The creepy, being watched feeling assaulted her again as it had over and over since Webster’s visit. Even before she turned to look behind her, she knew she’d see nothing.
Great, on top of everything else, now I’m paranoid. Thanks a lot, Daniel Webster.
She fingered his card in her pocket as she walked back inside with her mail. She didn’t call the number but decided to pinpoint the area code to settle her curiosity. Had to be D.C. When her Internet browser gave her a selection of sites listing area codes, she hesitated, feeling like she teetered on the edge of a cliff about to jump off.
She opened her e-mail program instead, avoiding the cliff a few minutes more as she checked her messages. One offering “E-mail Fortune Cookies” caught her eye, reminding her of how she and her dad used to go to Chinese restaurants, just the two of them. Her mother and sisters didn’t like Chinese food, so it had been her and her dad’s special bonding time. He’d always given her his fortune cookie too.
“I have enough good fortune having a little girl like you,” he said.
Jenna’s eyes blurred.
She might not have needed the extra cookie then, but now she could use a little good fortune. She clicked “yes” and a fortune cookie appeared on her screen, then broke to reveal a fortune. “Explore life’s mysteries.”
She stared at the uncanny message and sighed. She closed the e-mail, switched back to her browser and clicked on the first search result. No match. After scanning the search engine’s top twenty selections, her hope that her fears were unfounded, that she had in fact grown paranoid, evaporated.
No site listed a 111 area code, but she didn’t doubt its existence. Most likely in some dark, impenetrable, underground fortress members of Congress didn’t even know existed.
Jenna switched off the computer and headed for work, hating Webster and his kind more with each mile marker she passed. She’d always worried about being discovered, but the fact that someone knew and wasn’t acting was almost worse than having to face down dozens of black-suited agents intent on probing the mysteries of her body and mind.
Ten minutes after hitting the streets in her patrol car, she got a call from dispatch. “The chief wants to see you.”
The chief? Had he seen the tape too?
She pulled into a parking lot and tried not to panic. Maybe this had nothing to do the bank video.
Yeah, right.
She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the steering wheel. How was she going to explain the unexplainable?
CHAPTER TWO
Jenna made it to her appointment with Chief Watson without having a nervous breakdown — yet.
“Hey, Jenna, have a seat,” Chief Watson said when she knocked on his open door.
She examined his face but didn’t see anything that indicated she was about to endure the third degree. Once seated, she forced herself not to squirm.
Chief Watson leaned back in his chair. “I got a call from Homeland Security this morning. They’re starting an aggressive training program for police at the street level because they’re short-handed. They need more officers who can spot potential terrorist threats and know how to deal with them until the suits show up. They got wind of the arms shipment you stopped a couple of months ago and insisted we send you.”
The Feds…requested her? This stank of Daniel Webster.
“Sir—”
“The first training session starts day after tomorrow. We were scheduled for the second session, but they had a drop-out and can fit you in the first one.”
“Surely there is someone else better suited.”
“They didn’t state any qualifications beyond the officer had to be on active patrol. Plus, you’re single and it’ll be easier for you to spend the time away than some of the married officers.”
Thanks for the reminder.
She could refuse, walk away from her job, but then what would she do?
Flipping burgers held about as much appeal as answering the billion questions from her mother if she suddenly didn’t have a job. And the thought of her mother trying to seize the opportunity to press her into a “more suitable job for a young woman” made her head throb.
“Sir, who from Homeland Security called?”
“You know someone up there?”
“No, just wondering who I need to contact.”
He consulted a piece of paper on the top of his stack of file folders. “Martin Tompkins. He said someone would be in touch with you about travel arrangements.”
She wondered if Martin Tompkins looked a heck of a lot like Daniel Webster. Which was his real name? Was either?
The chief’s phone rang. He answered the call and made a hand motion
indicating they were done with their meeting.
Dismissed, Jenna rose and made her way through the office to the parking lot. She was about to get in her car when Frank yelled at her from several spaces down. She was not in a talking mood, but she couldn’t avoid Frank.
When he reached the back of her car, he raised his eyebrows. “Dang, who peed in your Wheaties?”
She gave him the run-down on her meeting with the chief.
“That doesn’t sound so bad. I bet the class is interesting.”
If there was an actual anti-terrorism class, she’d sing naked at the Lincoln Memorial. More likely Webster had concocted the story and gotten the chief to buy it, but she couldn’t tell Frank that. They might be close, but he didn’t know about her ability.
Daniel Webster had found a way to force her to Washington, but she’d be damned if she’d make it easy for him once she got there. And she was getting any information he had about her father if she had to beat it out of him.
“Will you take care of my animals while I’m gone?”
“Sure. The grandkids will love it.”
That taken care of, she retreated to the familiarity of her job.“You figure out who the bank robber was?”
“Parolee from Clarksville. Good thing he conked out or we’d be outta luck. Stupid bank surveillance camera didn’t have a tape in it.”
Jenna’s heart skipped a beat. The tape was probably riding shotgun in a little red sports car.
****
When she pulled up in front of her house after her shift, Jenna wasn’t surprised to see Webster already there. The smug bastard sat at the top of her steps with his back against a porch post and Pegram curled up in his lap.
What was wrong with that dog? She’d pegged him as bright, but curling up with the enemy wasn’t all that smart. Maybe he was more of a Bucksnort than a Pegram.
“What, no ‘Honey, I’m home’?” Webster said with a crooked grin.
“Let’s get this straight,” Jenna said with icy preciseness. “I don’t like Feds. You don’t give a flying crap about anyone who lives outside your little world.”
“But you do. This need to help people, did your father instill that in you? I seriously doubt it was your mother.”
“I’d advise you to shut up since you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sgt. James McCay, U.S. Army, covert special ops. Missing since May 11, 1984.”
She moved close to Webster, her hands clenched into fists.
“Who are you? What do you want? What do you know about my father? And what can I do to make you go away?”
He held up one finger. “One, as I’ve already said, I’m Daniel Webster.” He raised a second finger. “We need you to go undercover on a mission that is a matter of life and death. Three, you lost your father when you were fourteen, and the government you so revile never told you why. And, four, I’m afraid there’s nothing you can do to make me go away. And that’s actually a good thing. Take my word for it. You want me as a friend right now.”
“What does that mean?”
“That your fears are not unfounded.”
Her spine froze. She wanted to turn and run, to keep running until she could no longer see civilization, couldn’t hear the hum of voices or the thud of footsteps chasing her. But she knew there wasn’t a place on Earth where the men in Daniel’s world couldn’t find her. If she drove to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, Daniel Webster would likely already be there waiting with a cup of coffee, a parka, and a sleek red snowmobile.
She swallowed as her choices shriveled and blew away.
“What do I get out of this — other than not mysteriously disappearing like my father?”
“In exchange for your services, we are willing to give you information regarding his disappearance.”
“Who’s we?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
He ignored her sarcasm. “We’ll set up a certain progression of events. At each stage you complete, another portion of the information regarding your father will be given to you.”
Jenna narrowed her eyes. Was he feeding her a line? “What does this assignment involve?”
“I can’t tell you that either, not here.”
“Meaning not until you have me trapped in your underground bunker. Well, no thanks.”
“I’m not the only one who knows about you, and let’s just say there are those who are interested in more than how your ability can help us complete our mission.”
How was she supposed to maintain the upper hand if all she could envision was herself strapped to a metal table with trays of scalpels and syringes surrounding her? She shivered despite the muggy August heat.
“As long as you cooperate, you’ll be safe. You’re much more valuable intact.”
She stared into Webster’s eyes, trying to discern if he was friend or foe or a confusing mixture. Was he playing the good cop to the others’ bad cop? She’d go along for now, hoping the devil she vaguely knew was better than the one she didn’t. And maybe she’d find out once and for all what had happened to her father.
Her heart constricted. Even after all these years, she missed him. When she thought of how much they were alike and how much she’d not been able to share with him, she still ached with a fourteen-year-old’s pain.
“I want the first crumb.”
“What?”
“The first snippet of information you’d planned to give me about my father. I want it now or I’ll take my chances here.” She still didn’t trust that he knew anything beyond what he’d already told her. Maybe he figured it was enough to get her on that plane and into his clutches.
Pegram nuzzled against Jenna’s leg, but she ignored him. She refused to break eye contact with Webster, and in the moment before he spoke she saw what looked like a glimpse of admiration in his eyes.
“What do you know about what he did?” he asked.
“He was in the Army, overseas a lot.”
“Your father was a sniper, a very good one.”
“Did he assassinate someone?” Jenna couldn’t imagine the man who’d been her hero — who’d always had time for sledding down the hill in front of their house each winter or flying a kite out by the lake in the spring — killing a person in cold blood.
Webster didn’t respond. He didn’t have to. If she wanted the next crumb on the trail to the truth, she’d have to go to the nation’s capital to get it.
****
Jenna tried not to gawk like a tourist as the taxi sped away from Ronald Reagan National Airport and through the streets of Washington, D.C. They passed the towering white obelisk of the Washington Monument, the distinctive dome of the Capitol, little clusters of protestors with signs declaring their opposition to everything from war to abortion to organized government in general.
She’d awakened that morning resigned that this trip was inevitable, that she would make the best of it instead of torturing herself with the toxic ball of anger and fear that had eaten away at her all night. Those feelings weren’t going away, but she had to keep them under control, put on a front that made her appear calmer that she actually felt.
“Never been here before?”
Daniel’s question made her lean back in the seat and pull her gaze away from the window.
“Once, a long time ago, but you probably already knew that.” She still remembered being awed by the drum and bugle corps at the Iwo Jima Memorial. How her father, who never cried, had gotten teary at the sight of the endless rows of white crosses stretching in all directions at Arlington National Cemetery.
If she ever found him and her worst fears were confirmed, would she be able to lay her father to rest there? Would her mother even allow it?
“If you keep thinking that hard, you’ll give yourself a headache.”
“Thank you, Dr. Webster.”
“Are your sisters as incurably witty as you?”
She tried to ignore yet another reminder that he
knew a great deal more about her than she’d ever know about him.
“No, I’m afraid I got it all. Lucky you.”
“Yeah, lucky me.” Something about the way he said it made Jenna look at him. The intensity in the way he stared back at her made her want to squirm. After staring back long enough that he couldn’t accuse her of being intimidated by him, she returned her gaze to the window. They jolted to a stop in front of Union Station.
“Are we meeting someone here?”
“No, we’re catching a train.”
“Where to?”
He gave her that familiar look.
“Let me guess. You can’t tell me.”
Jenna stood in the bustle of travelers as Daniel bought their tickets. He kept hers, not allowing her to see the destination. Even so, it only took a few minutes for her to get her answer. The first stop out of Union Station, they exited the train at New Carrolton, Maryland.
Daniel led her across a parking lot to a black SUV.
“Now this is a spook car. Maybe a spook planning to drive up Pikes Peak, but a spook car nonetheless.”
“Why don’t you buy a megaphone and announce it to the world? I’m not sure the people in Virginia heard you.”
Daniel maneuvered through the traffic like the native he was. It didn’t take long for Jenna to realize they were heading back into D.C. “You sure you know where you’re going? Because I’m fairly certain we were just here.”
Out of Sight (Project Athena) Page 2
