The Kill List

by Nichole Christoff

  And a workman from Franklin Contracting ran a roller loaded with Housing White over the patched holes in her wall.

  Beth held a brimming coffee mug in her hand. So did her guest, the Franklin Contracting supervisor, Steve Sago. He offered me a polite hello, thanked Beth for the coffee, and made himself scarce so she and I could talk.

  Tony, Beth told me, was doing well in treatment. She didn’t know what the future would hold for his military career. But for their family life, she had high hopes.

  “Did Tony ever request a reassignment from Colonel Thorp?” I asked.

  “You mean instead of going into combat with the Thirty-third?” Beth’s brow creased. “No.”

  “Do you know of anyone who transferred at the last minute?”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

  I was sorry, too.

  I took my leave, wished her well. And spotted Steve Sago in the driveway, making notes on a clipboard. To my surprise, he fell into step beside me as I headed to my car.

  He loped along, his stride uneven. The toe of his boot struck the pavement, but his heel didn’t quite touch down. He said, “I hear you did the right thing for Miz Padilla in there. And for the soldier she loves, too.”

  “I just made a phone call or two.”

  “Well, it was the right thing. Not enough people do the right thing, ma’am. I know. I used to be one of them.”

  The light Texas twang peppering his speech put me in mind of Brandy. “Do you always do the right thing now, Steve?”

  He smiled, charmingly bashful. “Well, ma’am, I try.”

  I grinned. “Some days, trying is all we can do.”

  “Well, before I enlisted, I didn’t try very hard. I surely wasn’t the best kid.”

  “You probably weren’t the worst.”

  “Maybe not. Growing up in West Texas, everyone does his share of drinking and fighting. Not everyone gets his girl pregnant and runs out on her, though.”

  “Ah.”

  “I’d been working after school for a landscaper, so I had a little money—three hundred dollars. I gave it all to her. I told her to go to the clinic and get rid of the baby.” We’d reached his truck by then. Steve tossed his clipboard onto the seat, then stared after it as if he saw his past in there. He grimaced. “It wasn’t my finest hour.”

  “And you ran off to join the army.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I glanced down at his prosthetic leg. The tan work boot Steve wore on his false foot wasn’t quite as scuffed as its mate. Still, from the look of things, his loss hadn’t slowed him down much. He’d overcome his history to become a soldier. And he’d overcome his disability to become an accomplished man.

  “You might’ve had a rough start,” I told him, “but it looks like you’ve done all right.”

  As if he were a boy again, Steve blushed bright red.

  My BlackBerry vibrated. Worried it would be Barrett calling before I was ready to talk to him, I peered cautiously at the caller ID. But it wasn’t Barrett.

  It was my father’s assistant.

  When I slipped away from Steve to answer the call, Marta said, “Jamie, I’ve come up with a list of Fort Leeds soldiers killed in action and I cross-referenced it with relatives who have access to the post now.”

  “Can you email your findings to my BlackBerry?”

  “I can,” Marta said, “or I can read the list to you. It’s only six names.”

  So she did. And when she said the fourth name, I had to have her repeat it. Because it was a name I’d heard often these last few days.

  I dialed Barrett’s number. When he answered, I asked, “Where’s Tim?”

  “The Feds let the Colonel go last night. What’s wrong?”

  I told Barrett what Marta had told me.

  Seven minutes later, I found Barrett, a dozen MPs, and half a dozen Feds strapping on Kevlar when I pulled into the parking lot of the Fort Leeds administration building. I parked the Taurus beside Barrett’s cruiser. Agent Wolczek didn’t look happy to see me.

  “You’re not going in there.”

  “Who’s going to stop me?”

  “I am.”

  Barrett stepped between the agent and me.

  I didn’t like how his eye flicked over the ragged row of sutures along my hairline.

  Still, he said, “She tipped us, Wolczek. She’s in.”

  Even though he had to help me into my borrowed bulletproof vest.

  Outside Tim’s office we found the two FBI agents who’d been there the other day. Derrick Larkin wasn’t at his desk. I wasn’t sure if his absence was a blessing or a curse.

  Tim’s inner office door stood closed. I could hear the rumble of conversation behind it. At a nod from Barrett, I knocked.

  “Enter,” Tim called.

  I did so. Cautiously. Wolczek and Barrett followed.

  Tim sat at his desk, a twisted expression on his face. Pearce sat across from him, one leg crossed over the other. After ticking him off on the phone, I couldn’t tell if he was displeased to see me or not, but his knuckles were white where they gripped the arms of the chair.

  “Jamie.” Tim frowned. “This isn’t the best time to talk.”

  But I hadn’t come to chitchat. “I’ve got good news for you. We believe we know who kidnapped Brooke.”

  Tim and Pearce exchanged a look. It meant something. But I couldn’t read the meaning in it.

  “Unfortunately,” I continued, “it’s someone you know. Someone you trust. Someone who lost an older half-brother because you took a bribe from someone else, reassigned that soldier, and sent the brother overseas.”

  Tim paled. “Jamie—”

  “The mother got remarried and took her husband’s name, so the brothers have different last names. That’s why you never made the connection. None of us did. And you’ve been trusting him completely. But the brother who died was Donnie Mullany.”

  “Yes, ma’am, it was.” Derrick Larkin stepped from behind the bookcase at Tim’s back.

  Derrick’s eyes were glassy with unshed tears. And he held a gun in his hand. But it wasn’t his nine-millimeter service weapon. I’d have said it was an old German model. A Luger, maybe. Exactly the kind of firearm that would take the shell casings found near Tim’s house and probably the kind of handgun that had fired rounds at me and Barrett in the woods. Now Derrick was clearly ready to use it again.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “remove your weapons. Slowly. Drop them on the carpet. You, too, Ms. Sinclair.”

  Wolczek, Barrett, and I did as we were told. At the sound of three guns thudding on the rug, an FBI agent entered the room swift and low. Derrick shot him in the chest before the man could blink.

  “Shut the door!” Derrick yelled. “Shut it!”

  Wolczek reached for it slowly and pushed it closed with the palm of his hand. Then he tore off his own shirtsleeves, pressed them to the hole in his fallen agent’s chest. “Let’s end this now, Derrick. Before anyone else gets hurt.”

  But that was the wrong thing to say.

  “Hurt? Do you think I’m worried about people getting hurt?” Derrick shoved the barrel of his weapon against Tim’s temple. “What do you say, sir? Have you been worried about people getting hurt?”

  “Brooke is a baby.” Tim ground out the words between his clenched teeth. “She hasn’t hurt anybody.”

  “But you have,” Derrick whispered.

  On the floor, beside Wolczek, the wounded agent choked and burbled.

  “This man is hurt,” Wolczek spat. “He will die unless we get him to a hospital.”

  “Hear that, Colonel?” Derrick prodded Tim with the barrel of his gun. “He’s going to die. Just like Donnie.”

  I said, “Your brother’s not the only soldier who died thanks to Tim.”

  Tim’s eyes flashed wide.

  “If you kill him,” I asked Derrick, “how will the other families get their justice?”

  The gun in Derrick’s hand began to tremble. “Justice?
”

  “You want justice.” Pearce spoke in the placating tones of a chaplain. “If Colonel Thorp is court-martialed for his crimes, humiliated so everyone will know, that would be justice. But his daughter shouldn’t be punished for his sins.”

  “The way I see it,” Derrick said, “she’s collateral damage. But it doesn’t matter. I didn’t take her.”

  Derrick’s eyes glittered as if he were burning with a fever and there was no cure. I squared my shoulders. Barrett’s gaze locked onto me, concerned.

  “I don’t believe you,” I said.

  Derrick stiffened, offended. “I’ve never lied to you, ma’am. Not even when you lied to me.”

  “I haven’t lied to you.”

  “You did! You swore you were only in this to help the girl. You swore! I gave you copies of all that hate mail so you could help her, but that wasn’t good enough for you. You hunted and hunted ’til you found more mail—the mail I’d written—then you went to my mom’s. You went to Webster’s Trench! You went to protect the Colonel from what he deserves.” He cocked the hammer of the revolver with a stroke of his thumb. “This is what he deserves.”

  The fallen agent moaned. Wolczek cursed. He hadn’t stopped trying to stanch the man’s blood with his wadded-up shirtsleeves—and his hands were red to the wrists with his efforts.

  “Derrick,” I said, “put the gun down. This agent doesn’t deserve to die on the floor. Colonel Thorp doesn’t deserve a bullet through the brain.”

  “That’s a lie. Don’t lie, ma’am. I’ve never lied to you. Not even when you found the kill list on the Colonel’s desk at home.”

  “Kill list?”

  I racked my memory, pictured every scrap of paper on that ugly slab of glass. There’d been lists of soldiers headed overseas. Lists of the missing. Lists of the dead. And a handwritten list. Its heading had read—

  “Change of Assignment,” Derrick mocked. “Colonel Thorp’s kill list. He picked those soldiers to die. They’re going to die and it’s real!”

  Derrick raised his gun, aimed it at my face. Its black bore stared me in the eye.

  “My brother is dead,” he told me. “This bastard took him from me. He put Donnie on his kill list in place of a soldier who could pay thousands of dollars to stay safe at home.”

  A coldness I’d never known rippled from Derrick Larkin. It was the cold of the dead. As if he were already dead inside. I knew he would kill me. I knew my death would make no difference to him.

  Barrett eased a hand onto my shoulder. The move wouldn’t be practical if Derrick fired on me. Barrett and I would both get shot.

  But Barrett’s move was a message. Tim had had no right to kill someone Derrick cared about. And Derrick had no right to kill me.

  In a heartbeat, he understood. In a blink, Derrick swung his weapon away from me. He pressed it again to Tim’s temple.

  “I tried to make this easy,” Derrick told him. “I followed you to the graveyard as soon as my radio picked up that ransom call. You’ll wish I’d had a clean shot at you that night, because now it’s going to get messy.”

  “Please,” Tim breathed.

  “Wait,” Pearce pleaded.

  “Stop!” Barrett ordered.

  “How does it feel,” Derrick asked Tim, “to be on my kill list?”

  His hand flexed. His finger tightened on the trigger. Pearce lunged from his chair. Tim yelled. Barrett and Wolczek dove for Derrick.

  I dropped to one knee.

  I whipped the Bobcat from its ankle holster. And fired. The .22-caliber round hit Derrick Larkin just below the left ear.

  By the time he fell to the floor, he was already dead.

  Chapter 35

  In spite of Derrick Larkin’s denial, the FBI searched his condo for Brooke Thorp. They searched his car. They even tore apart his gym locker.

  They didn’t find any trace of her.

  They didn’t find any connection between Derrick and Charles Chapman Brown, either.

  As soon as they were allowed to leave the administration building, Pearce took Tim home. Reportedly, Fort Leeds’s commanding officer locked himself in his study and refused to come out, even to talk to the FBI. Tim refused to say a word about his cash-for-reassignment scheme—and his kill list—no matter how often Wolczek asked about Derrick’s brother and the 256 messages saved on Derrick’s flash drive.

  But then, I hadn’t expected the Colonel to say anything.

  Pearce thought it best to tell Brandy about her husband’s extra funds and Derrick’s explanation of them. He told her, too, what had happened in Tim’s office that morning and how I’d shot an executive officer before he could kill Tim. Apparently, she took the news of almost losing her husband pretty well.

  Even though I’d shot Derrick Larkin in a room full of witnesses, I had to spend the rest of the morning in the Military Police building. I had to give a statement to the FBI. First and foremost, though, I had to fork over my little Bobcat.

  Not because I’d fired the weapon on an army post.

  Rather, because I’d killed a man with it.

  My only consolation was Derrick Larkin hadn’t managed to kill anybody. Not even the FBI agent he’d shot in the chest. In the early afternoon, Wolczek had been kind enough to tell me EMTs rushed the man to the hospital in time.

  Still, by the time Wolczek gave the green light to let me go, I had a raging headache behind my eyes, a nervous dread from the shock of ending a man’s life, and a deep-seated desire for comfort food. I went to Bertie’s, where I could take care of at least one of those issues with a slice of Bertie’s finest cake. I’d just ordered a second piece of Double Dutch Chocolate and another glass of milk when a man walked up to my table.

  “May I join you?”

  “Sure.” I hadn’t seen Barrett since the authorities had rolled Derrick Larkin’s lifeless body away. But I had no doubt he’d been privy to every word I’d said in one of his interview rooms. “Are you getting a hamburger to go? For the dog?”

  Barrett settled into the chair across from me. “He’s got to be behind on his vitamins and minerals, so I plan to start him on dog chow. A burger would ease the transition, though.”

  “What will you name him?”

  “I’m thinking Shadow.”

  I signaled the waitress. She brought Barrett a menu. “That’s not a good name. How about Lionel?”

  “Lionel?”

  “Or Harold.”

  “Who in their right mind would name a dog Harold?”

  “Okay. Name him Rupert,” I suggested.

  Barrett shook his head, tried to fight fire with fire. “Rover.”

  “Please. You’re not even trying.”

  “Okay. Ranger. Rascal. Riley?”

  “Theodore. You should name him Theodore the Labrador.”

  Barrett didn’t comment. He just sat back in his chair and shoved the menu away. “Are you all right?”

  I closed my eyes, saw Derrick’s body jerk with the .22-caliber round I’d pumped into him. “You should try Bertie’s cake. Sometimes I order cake from the Chinese takeout in my neighborhood, but it can’t hold a candle to this.”

  “You order chocolate cake from a Chinese restaurant in Washington, DC?”

  “Of course not. I live in Alexandria.”

  The waitress returned and arranged a glass of water and some flatware on the table for Barrett. She’d touched up her lipstick since the last time she’d stopped by our table. I doubted it was for my benefit.

  When she left, Barrett said, “I scared you last night.”

  “I scared myself.”

  “You want to explain that to me?”

  I smiled. It felt like the first time all week. “For a second, I forgot I’m not what you’re looking for.”

  “Don’t you think I should be the judge of that?”

  I drew a ragged breath. I’d known this conversation would be hard. But I hadn’t imagined it would feel this hard. It was difficult because I liked Barrett a little too much f
or my own good. And definitely for his.

  I said, “You want what I can’t give you.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Kids, Barrett.” It tore me up to say it. “You want kids.”

  He rose, signaled to the waitress for my check. “I want to take you to the house. You think you feel bad from killing a man now, but wait until the cake wears off.”

  “Barrett—”

  He pulled his wallet from one of the cargo pockets running down the leg of his ACUs and threw a few bills on the table. “I’ll call Elise, ask her to come over and sit with you.”

  “Barrett, that isn’t necessary—”

  His dark chocolate eyes locked onto mine. “Charles Chapman Brown is still looking for you. I’d prefer he didn’t find you.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  “Now, be honest,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  All right? I was a mess. I couldn’t find my ex-husband’s missing diabetic daughter dead or alive, and a psychotic ex-soldier was hunting me down. I had a line of stitches that made my scalp so sore, I could hardly raise my eyebrows. An aggravating but all-too-human FBI agent lay in an ICU bed because he’d been caught at my hotel, and another had nearly died during a confrontation I’d created. I’d met an amazing man who made my heart flutter like a caged bird suddenly set free, but I knew a brief present with him wouldn’t be enough for me, and I wasn’t able to have a future with him thanks to my past. To round out the list, I’d shot a grieving soldier to death.

  Consequently, I’d had about all I could take.

  “No,” I whispered fiercely. “I am not all right. But I will be.”

  —

  Barrett had been right about one thing. By the time we got to his house, any adrenaline, any endorphins, and any rationalization that had come with shooting Derrick Larkin had fled. The magic of Bertie’s cake had faded, too.

  Now I hurt all the way to the bottom of my heart.

  Barrett ordered me upstairs, suggested I try to rest. Which was fine with me. In my opinion, killing a man was more than enough for one day’s work.

  He followed me up the treads, though at a distance, as if he couldn’t quite trust me to lie down. He remained in the doorway as I arranged the pillows on his bed. But then he spotted the hard-sided case Matty had given me on the dresser.