by Lauren Carr
“Dallas, tell me you’re okay.”
“I’m fine.” Kneeling down in front of it, Dallas checked the lip around its edges to make sure that there weren’t any wires or explosive connections. The lid fell aside and revealed that the box was filled with newspaper and magazine clippings, a stenographer’s notebook filled with notes, and a typewritten manuscript.
“Dallas.” Archie sounded more annoyed by the minute. “What’s going on there?”
“It worked,” Dallas said with a grin.
“What worked?”
Dallas turned the phone onto speaker and dropped it into the box. Then, carrying it inside, she said, “Montgomery was just here, and he left us everything.”
“Everything?”
“It looks like it’s Sandy Burr’s research.” Dallas dipped her hand into the box and shuffled through the thick stack of papers. “There’s a whole box of it here.”
“I’ll be right there!”
Click!
Chapter Twenty-Five
Old Towne Alexandria, Virginia
“Pull over here,” Murphy said, telling Jessica to park diagonally in the historic district of Old Town Alexandria.
Newt Wallace lived in a colonial brownstone on a cobblestone street only three blocks from the Potomac River. After insisting that Murphy not shut her out of the case, especially since things were really happening, Jessica had appointed herself to be the lookout. For his part, Gnarly moved from window to window in the back of their SUV, peering out into the darkness.
Late in the summer evening, there were some dog owners walking pets who had been cooped up inside all day. The occasional tourist could be spotted roaming out of the historic marketplaces to take in the upscale town homes lining the cobblestone streets lit up by chic streetlamps reminiscent of those of colonial times.
Jessica turned off the engine and waited while Murphy checked the assortment of weapons that he wore strapped and hidden on various parts of his body. He wore a gun on each hip and another in an ankle holster. He also had a knife strapped to his thigh and a backup in a sheath on the other ankle. As if all of that weaponry weren’t enough, Murphy was also concealing a small handgun in his jacket pocket.
He stored the rest of the equipment for the mission in a backpack, and he removed two earbuds from its front compartment. He handed one to her. “Do you know how to use this?” He stuck his own in his right ear.
“Yes, I do.” She pulled down the visor and lifted the flap so that she could use the mirror when she tucked it into her ear. “Where’s the communications control center?”
“I’m right here, Jessica,” Nigel said over the speakers.
“Our communications are directly tied into Nigel,” Murphy said.
“Everything is tied into Nigel,” Jessica said with disgust. “When we decide to have a baby, is Nigel going to deliver it?”
“Now that question is just plain silly, Jessica,” Nigel said. “I would need arms in order to deliver a baby. But I would be able to give you instructions on how to breathe, and I could override the department of highways’ computer system to give you green lights all the way to the hospital.”
“The earbuds also include a GPS.” Murphy pressed a series of buttons on the computer monitor built into the SUVs dashboard. A street map appeared on the screen. “This is our car,” he said, pointing to an arrow and a red dot. There was a blue dot almost on top of the red one. “I’m the blue dot.” He held up his cell phone to show her a nearly identical map that had two dots on it. “You’re the red dot. If you have to move the car for some reason, I’ll be able to find you on my phone.”
He placed his hand under her chin and turned her head, forcing her to look into his eyes. “Repeat for me what I told you before we left the house.”
With a roll of her eyes, she said, “No matter what happens, do not go near Wallace’s place. If anything happens to you, order Nigel to call CO, then go home and wait for her to contact me.”
Murphy was having second thoughts about allowing her to accompany him, even if only to act as a lookout several blocks from Newt Wallace’s home. He let out a deep shuddering breath.
“Where’s Gnarly on this GPS?” she asked.
“He’s in the back.” Murphy tucked his cell phone into his jacket.
Jessica looked over her shoulder to where Gnarly was sitting in the back seat. “He’s not going with you?”
“No!” he said.
“Then why’d you bring him?”
“I didn’t bring him,” Murphy said. “You brought him.”
“No, I didn’t. He was already in the car when I got in. I assumed you put him in here.”
The two of them looked at each other. In unison, they turned to look back at the hundred-pound dog staring at them from over the center console.
“Who put you in the car?” Murphy asked.
“I did,” Nigel said.
“How did you put Gnarly in the car?” Jessica asked.
“I activated the vehicle’s automatic door opener,” Nigel said. “You had approved Gnarly for the friends and family list, which includes pets. A scratch at the door communicates the request for me to open the door. Gnarly requested that I open the door for him to access the SUV, so I complied.”
“Obviously,” Murphy said in a low, “Nigel still has a few glitches.”
“Do you think?” Jessica said with sarcasm. “He’s definitely not delivering our baby. As long as Gnarly is here, you might as well take him with you.”
“I’m going to be interrogating a suspect.”
“Gnarly is a highly trained canine,” she said. “He can be very persuasive.”
Looking over his shoulder at Gnarly’s intimidating face and size, Murphy said, “I want the guy to tell me why a high-level CIA executive is visiting an agent whose cover got blown—not to pee his pants.”
After giving her a kiss on the cheek, Murphy threw open the door and climbed out of the car. He reached back inside for his backpack only to have Gnarly jump into the front of the SUV and leap out of it.
“Gnarly,” Murphy said. “You’re not going. Come here.” He gestured for the dog to go back inside. Instead, Gnarly sat down and gazed up at him. “I’m the alpha. Do what I say. Get in the car.” The dog continued to stare up at him. “Now!” To add force to his order, he reached out to grab Gnarly by the collar only for the dog to dodge his reach and gallop off down the street.
“Get back here!” As he took off after the dog, Murphy could hear Jessica laughing behind him.
At the end of the block, Gnarly stopped to look over his shoulder and back to Murphy as if to ask which way to go. Seeing that there was no way to capture the dog without drawing attention to him, Murphy gestured to the left. Looking both ways for traffic, Gnarly trotted across the road and waited for Murphy to catch up.
“Okay, you can come, but remember who’s in charge.”
Halfway down the next block, Murphy made a right into an alleyway that ran down the middle of the block. A row of eight-foot-tall redbrick privacy fences ran down the length of the block. “Are you reading me, buttercup?” he asked to check that his earbud was working.
“I’m reading both of you,” she said.
“Both of us?”
“I tapped into the GPS that the army had installed in Gnarly’s microchip,” Nigel said.
“He’s the dog biscuit on the map,” Jessica said with a giggle.
Murphy slipped the phone out of his pocket to check the map. Sure enough, he saw a small dog biscuit next to the blue dot. Tucking it back into his pocket, he stepped up his pace. Gnarly did the same, galloping in tandem with Murphy, who could feel the dog’s shoulder against his leg.
Near the end of the block, Murphy came to a halt and pressed his body up against a brick wall, careful to stay in the dark shadows. After looking both ways to e
nsure that no one was in the alley, Murphy held out his hand in a “stop” signal to Gnarly.
“Okay, I’m going in. You stay here, and act as lookout. If anything goes wrong, run back to the car. You understand?”
Gnarly cocked his head at him.
“Stay.” Jogging across the alley, Murphy sucked in a deep breath and then jumped up onto the wall. Grasping the top of it, he pulled himself up and scrambled over it. After hitting the ground on the other side, he peered into the darkness of the small, neatly landscaped courtyard and the brick patio behind the colonial town house.
Searching and listening for any sign that Newt Wallace might have overheard him, Murphy rose to his feet. His sigh of relief over getting into the yard undetected was interrupted by the sound of claws digging into the brick wall behind him. Bits of cinder dust rained down onto him before Gnarly leaped down to the ground beside him, landing gracefully on all fours.
“I told you to stay,” he said.
Ignoring Murphy, Gnarly trotted up to the patio door and looked back at him as if to say, “Let’s get a move on.”
Afraid that Gnarly would give them away, Murphy ran up to the white French door and peered through the window to check for a security monitor. After placing his gloved hand on the doorknob, he twisted it and found that it was unlocked. He pressed on the door. It swung inward.
Before Murphy could reach out to stop him, Gnarly slipped inside.
“We’re in luck,” he said to Gnarly and Jessica, who was listening in. “The door’s unlocked.” Careful to stay in the shadows, Murphy slid in through the doorway and pressed up against the wall. He peered into the darkened home to see where Gnarly had run off to.
“Damn dog,” he said. “No wonder Mac keeps threatening to sell him on eBay.”
“Did you say something, hon?” Jessica asked.
“Nothing.” Remembering Gnarly’s GPS, Murphy took out his cell phone and zoomed in on their location to search for the dog biscuit that would tell him where Gnarly was.
“She’s a traitor to our country!”
Murphy almost dropped the phone when he heard Newt Wallace yelling on the upper floor of the town house. His tone was filled with an equal mixture of panic and anger.
Grabbing one of his guns from his holster, Murphy made his way across the dining room and through the kitchen to the stairs going upward.
The other voice was so quiet that Murphy was unable to make out what it was saying.
There was a glow of light at the top of the stairs. A silhouette resembling that of Batman came into view before Gnarly appeared at the top of the stairs. He peered down at Murphy as if to tell him to hurry up.
Sensing that the coast was clear, Murphy broke into a trot to follow Gnarly up to the second floor, which contained two master suites. The door of the one at the far end of the short hallway was open.
“She’s not going to get away with this,” Newt Wallace, who was in the bedroom, said.
Flattening himself against the wall, Murphy peered in through the doorway and saw that Newt Wallace was standing on top of a chair in the middle of the room with a noose around his neck. His hands were bound behind his back. His button-down shirt was hanging open, and his clothes were disheveled.
While the intelligence agent was arguing for his life, a man in dark clothing was staging what would appear to be the scene of a suicide. He set an almost-empty bottle of scotch on the nightstand next to a used drinking glass.
“She already has,” the man in black said. “If you haven’t realized that already, you’re a bigger fool than I thought you were.” He crossed the bedroom in front of Wallace to place a suicide note on the dresser. “Camille Jurvetson is our DO. She’s on the brink of becoming our next DCI. If you had just left well enough alone, you’d be going up to the top with her and those who’ve been loyal to her. But no, you had to screw things up for yourself.”
“By asking questions when critical operations and valuable agents were getting killed in the field! Said and his partner were one of our best teams!”
“Jurvetson got us the location of ISIS’s number-three guy!”
“By trading the names, locations, and missions of human resources?”
The man in black stood under Wallace. “There’s really no point in arguing about this, Wallace. It’s plain to see that we have different viewpoints on this matter. Unfortunately for you, in the end, you lose!”
“No!” Murphy kicked open the door and charged in with a gun in each hand aimed at the intruder. “You lose.”
Simultaneously, the intruder kicked the chair out from under Wallace’s feet and reached behind his back for his gun. Murphy fired off three rounds from both guns, striking the assassin in the midsection. The force of the shots sent him backward and down to the floor.
Holstering both of his guns, Murphy ran to where Newt Wallace was kicking and fighting for his life. Grabbing the man’s flailing legs, he lifted him up so that he could breathe.
“I have you!” Murphy reached up with one hand to try to release the Velcro strap that the assassin had used to bind Wallace’s arms.
He hadn’t realized that he had forgotten about Gnarly until the room was seemingly filled with the dog’s roar. In a black-and-tan flash, the canine raced across the room to slam into the assassin, who screamed out in anguish when Gnarly plunged him down to the floor with his jaws clamped on the killer’s arm. The gun he was wielding in an attempt to shoot Murphy tumbled out of his hand.
The ballistic vest under the assassin’s shirt had protected him from the gunshots. But he wasn’t so well protected from Gnarly’s teeth.
Stripped of his gun, the killer struggled to reach for the knife that he had strapped to his ankle. By then, Gnarly’s teeth had torn through the flesh of his right arm down to the bone. Wailing in anguish, he extracted the knife and held it up, ready to plunge it into Gnarly’s side. But the knife was shot out of his grasp when a bullet from Murphy’s gun flew through the inside of his wrist and out the other side before plunging into the floor behind him.
“Gnarly! Release!”
Dropping his grip on the killer, Gnarly scurried around and lay down by Murphy’s side. With both of his arms bloody and useless, the assassin dropped back down onto the floor.
“Backup and cleanup are on the way,” Nigel said.
“Murphy! Murphy, are you okay?” Jessica asked through the earbud. She was breathless with worry. “I heard gunshots! Is Gnarly okay?”
“We’re both fine.” Murphy bent over to pet Gnarly on the head. His mouth hanging open, the German shepherd wagged his tail. “Don’t get cocky.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
It was late in the evening when Sheriff Turow pulled his cruiser through the front gates of the Braxtons’ estate. A black Cadillac was parked near the front porch.
David and Mac waited with the sheriff for a very long time after ringing the doorbell—long enough to suspect that no one was home—and then saw Erin Devereux running down the stairs with her long silk bathrobe flapping behind her. After scurrying across the foyer in her slippers, she pressed her face up against the cut glass of the front door to see who was there. Upon seeing the sheriff and the police chief in their uniforms and Mac Faraday, her mouth dropped open. After quickly checking to make sure that her robe was properly closed, she opened the door.
Her tone oozed with innocence. “Sheriff Turow, what are you doing here? I was just about to go to bed.”
“I can see that.” Without invitation, the sheriff stepped inside, and David and Mac filed in behind him. “We’ve had some developments in our investigation of Nancy Braxton’s murder—”
“I saw Cassandra Clark being taken out of the Spencer Inn in handcuffs,” Erin said. “Did she kill Ms. Braxton to help her husband win the election?”
“We don’t think so,” the sheriff said.
“She
had an alibi for the time of the murder,” Mac said. “We have a few more questions, and Nathan thought that you might be able to help us.”
Seeing that they were going to be a while, Erin led them across the foyer in the direction of the study, where she had been shot by an intruder only a few days before.
On their way into the study, Mac yelled up the stairs. “You may want to join us, George!”
Erin stopped—frozen with uncertainty about how to proceed.
Mac, David, and the sheriff stared up the stairway, awaiting George Ward’s appearance. Finally, he emerged from the upstairs hallway and made his way down the stairs with the demeanor of a guilty child who’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He waited until he reached the last step before asking, “How did you know?”
With a shrug of his shoulders, Mac said, “There are only so many motives for corruption. Sex, money, and power. This evening, after seeing that you’d replaced Nancy Braxton with Erin instead of with a better-qualified candidate who had run for mayor in the primary, I had to ask myself why you’d done that. She has no actual governing experience. She doesn’t have money. She can’t give you power. All that leaves us with is…sex.”
George’s face turned bright red. Erin looked down at her feet.
“There’s also blackmail,” Mac said.
“Blackmail for what?” George said.
“The obvious next question is, when did you two hatch this plot to replace Nancy Braxton on the ballot? Before or after her murder?” Mac said.
“After!” George yelled.
“We had nothing to do with Ms. Braxton’s murder,” Erin said.
“Are you sure about that?” David asked.
“She was losing it,” Erin said. “I saw it happening. Since I was with her all the time, I saw things going on with her. I think she was getting Alzheimer’s. I’d been covering for her for months, but it was getting more difficult.” She waved at David. “You saw her at the Italian restaurant. She was totally paranoid.” She grasped the arm that had been shot days before. “When she shot me, I realized that she was truly unfit to hold an office like that of mayor.”