“Next time you turn down half a million, can I have a witness?”
Paul shared the elevator with Sam the next morning and gladly accepted the extra coffee he had picked up.
“Late night, boss?”
Paul rolled his eyes, and Sam laughed.
“I’m going to be late starting the morning update. Warn people for me. I’ll give you a heads up on when.”
“Will do.”
Paul stopped off at his office before heading upstairs to the conference room. A tall stack of travel requests sat on his chair. If they were back in a day, he’d made a mistake and the entire lot had been rejected. He picked up the stack and scanned the top one. Approved. He looked deeper into the pile. It was approved. He flipped to the back and found it approved.
He stepped to the door. “Rita.”
“Yes, boss?”
“Count these. I submitted a hundred twenty-three.”
She took the stack and started counting in sets of ten. “One hundred twenty-three. All your travel requests were approved in less than a day. What’s going on?”
“That’s what I’m wondering. See if you can get an answer from whoever you normally work with in budgeting.”
He sorted the travel requests into order by murder while she worked the phone and the computer, moving through the finance department budget screens.
“Paul,” she called over, “according to Shelly, your budget line has the dollars, so the travel requests went right through the system without needing anyone else to allocate money and sign off.”
“The team doesn’t have this large of a budget.”
“Apparently someone changed the budget line, because you do now. I’ve got the screen up. These travel requests are approved and cash is reserved against them. You’ve still got a sizeable unallocated amount of cash in your budget line. A partial year of funding is still there.”
“Can you find out who changed the budget line?”
“Maybe. Hold on.”
Paul suddenly had a pretty good idea where it was going to lead. How had Ann Silver managed to move her award money to his FBI budget line overnight? He’d told her about the award at ten o’clock last night. She had declined it. And now his account had a lot of cash. He didn’t believe in coincidences.
“Boss, you’re going to want to see this.”
Rita turned the screen and pointed to the authorization on the transfer.
He closed the door to his office before he made the call.
“Ann, it’s Paul.”
“Hey, Paul. Be fast. I’m about to be in the air.” He could hear the engines being throttled back.
“When I got to the office this morning I found all my travel requests had been approved because my budget line had been fully funded. I was wondering if I might have you to thank for that.”
“I thought the money should do some good.”
“It was a very nice thing to do, Ann.”
“But . . .”
“I just wondered if you knew the Treasury secretary had personally moved the award money.”
“Gannett probably asked him to.” The airplane engines revved. “Sorry, Paul, I’m cleared, gotta go. I’ll be on the ground in about ten hours, give or take. Catch me then if you need to.”
She dropped off the call.
Gannett. That would be former Vice President Jim Gannett. Ann called him last night to decline the award?
Paul found himself down one of the deep tunnels Dave had mentioned that defined Ann. He didn’t know if he was impressed or stunned as the emotions flowed through him. He could almost get his mind around her reason for declining the award and her generous act of sending it to him. And he could understand that kind of influence—his father did it as a matter of course. But he hadn’t seen this coming, that Ann had this kind of influence and connections. Who are you, Ann Silver?
He looked at the time. Ten hours. He had no idea where she was heading. He tried to decide if he wanted to have the next conversation on the phone or in person. At a minimum he wanted her someplace she could make a secure conference call, and he could see her as they talked. So late tonight, when there would be some time for an uninterrupted conversation.
Paul set aside the puzzle because there was nothing he could do to get answers at the moment. He called Sam to get the team together and headed upstairs with the stack of travel forms. Those who enjoyed traveling and collecting airline mileage points were going to be able to choose their own destinations for the next couple of months. For the first time since this began, Paul began to feel real hope that at least some of the murders on the board could be cleared.
8
At home that evening, Paul set his watch alarm for ten p.m. to call Ann and then fixed himself a meal. He debated picking up a file of Falcon business to work on but felt too restless to concentrate. The box of books Dave had sent over was almost empty. Paul picked up another of Ann’s novels, choosing one of the military ones. He took it with him into the den and settled into a comfortable chair with the White Sox game muted on the TV. He opened to chapter one.
Shelton, North Dakota
There was a bounty on Darcy St. James’s life, and in the world where she had once worked, having someone come after her was still more likely than not.
He read the first sentence and had to smile. Ann could grab your attention. This story was going somewhere. He settled in to see where she was going to take him.
The disquiet started in his gut after the first fifty pages, then turned into a baffled sense of confusion the further he read. When he finished the story, he checked the front of the book to see when the book had been published.
Dave had said all the books were based on people Ann knew, friends of hers, and had been written by request.
In the books he had read so far, the first name of the character matched the first name of the real person. The last names had been changed, and the descriptions were a bit different, but if you knew the connection was there, you could see it. Dave and Kate, characters in a book, were based on Dave and Kate in real life. Lisa and Quinn were based on the Lisa and Quinn in real life. If that pattern held, the Darcy St. James in this book was based on a lady with the first name Darcy.
Paul had an inkling he knew who the actual person was, but this time her true first name was not Darcy.
He turned to chapter thirty and scanned the pages again, pulling out the passages that had him wondering and debating and baffled that what he was thinking might be the case.
Shelton, North Dakota
It was good to be home. Darcy leaned against the triple-rail fence she had painted the day before and watched as Sam and Tom tried to figure out what to do with the evergreen that threatened to collapse onto her garage. She was glad it was them and not her.
She watched the tree sway and heard the sharp cracks as wood gave way. The tree came down on the garage roof. There were only so many miracles two SEALs could work. Cutting out a tall dead evergreen safely apparently wasn’t one of them.
“Gabe, let me call you back in about ten minutes, okay?”
“Sure.”
“Thanks.” She hung up the phone and headed over to join the guys.
She stopped beside Sam and folded her arms across her chest to match the way he stood just looking at the tree. She tilted her head, studying the way the tree had crashed. They had done a great job. The crown line of the roof had been broken.
“We decided you needed a new garage,” Sam remarked.
“That’s a good idea because as it turns out I do.”
Ignoring the time, Paul reached over, picked up the phone, and placed a secure call. His brother Boone answered.
“I would like your wife to take a call. Could you arrange that?”
“About?”
“Ann Silver.”
His brother said nothing, then softly sighed. “How?”
Paul relaxed for the first time since he had begun to sense something was there. His sister-in-law was former CIA,
awarded the Intelligence Star for Valor, and one of the most treasured people in the family. The book was different from her . . . except it rang true to her in real life. And not all of it was fiction. “I’ve heard the story about the evergreen a few times, and I park in front of that new garage every time I visit.”
“Ann was visiting the day we tried to drop the tree. She howled with laughter, right along with my wife.”
“It would have been a sight to behold. It is, in the book retelling.”
“How’d you stumble on to the novel?”
“Dave loaned me a whole set of them. Ann Silver had dropped by my office to tell me a story and hand me a case.”
“Sounds like Ann.” Paul could hear his brother’s voice soften as he smiled. “There are reasons we didn’t tell you about the book.”
“No harm, no foul. I know there were reasons. But I need to have a conversation with your wife.”
“She won’t tell you much. And she’ll tell Ann whatever you say.”
“I expected as much. I need an hour of her time. Let me know when’s convenient.”
“I’ll call and be back with you in a minute.”
Paul hung up the phone.
Ann had captured his sister-in-law so well on paper he could see the real person in the fiction. He marked the page and closed the book. What was he going to do with a woman who wrote this kind of special fiction and did it in her spare time?
He pondered that question while he waited for his brother to call back. Vicky Falcon, formerly Vicky Bassett, had retired from the CIA after a long career overseas. She’d retired to marry Boone. Her career was still so classified that even with his security clearance, what he could see about her in documents was only a mostly blacked-out page.
How had Ann become a writer of biographies wrapped in fiction about cops and soldiers and spies? How did she know the former VP? There was something so large sitting just behind what he could see that he could feel its shape and sense its form.
The phone rang.
“Vicky will call you in twenty minutes,” Boone told him. “She can’t spare an hour right now, but she can in a couple of days when she gets back home.”
“Thanks, Boone.”
“Can I ask a question?”
“Sure.”
“What did you think of Ann, the day she dropped by your office to tell you a story?”
Paul smiled. “I thought she was, well, cute.”
“Ann?”
“You had to be there. I thought she was cute. I thought she was enjoying herself. And then I thought—she’s caught my shooter.”
Boone laughed.
“Ann being cute got dropped in the flurry of action as the lady shooter case turned red hot, but I’m circling back around to rectify that.”
“Good luck with that. I’m just not sure Ann’s a quarry that can be caught.”
“I’m wondering about that too.”
Twenty minutes later, the phone rang. Vicky prided herself on being prompt. Paul was smiling as he answered. “Hello, Darcy St. James.”
“Hello, Paul.” He could hear the answering smile in her voice.
“How did you choose the name?”
“The name is Ann’s doing, and I fell in love with it, just reading the opening page.”
“She captured your heart on paper, along with your love for my brother.”
“That she did now, didn’t she? She has a nice touch with a word.”
Paul thought about where to start and how to convince Vicky to help him. “I am trying very hard to get to know her, and planning how to help her get to know me.”
“Boone called me back to mention you were smitten with her.”
“I said I thought she was cute.”
She laughed. “Same thing to my way of thinking. She caught your eye and caught your attention.”
“She did, Vicky.”
“And you are starting with your deeply ingrained habit of information collecting before you make the first move.”
“I like to know where I am heading before I start. You should admire that, Vicky. I believe it was your entire advice to me on dating.”
She laughed. “Indeed it was.”
“So help me avoid a few blunders with Ann. You’ve got information I need, and I’m of a mind to ask for help. You have to admit, I found the right source to ask.”
Vicky was quiet a moment. “We have an agreement, Ann and I, that curiosity is good for a guy,” she finally said. “She and I are good friends, Paul. We plan to grow old together and reminisce about stories and be friends for a good long time. So I’m inclined to leave you in the dark for the sake of friendship. But I like the idea of you and Ann together. So ask your questions, and I will answer maybe one or two, then defer the rest to a longer conversation at another time.”
“You’re not making this easy.”
“Ann’s worth the effort.”
“Something happened today I need to ask you about, Vicky. The Treasury Department offered a half-a-million-dollar bounty for information leading to the capture of a currency thief. They wanted to give the award to Ann, and she turned them down. Instead, Ann had the money moved to my FBI budget line so I could use it to help catch my lady shooter.”
“What a lovely thing for her to do.” He could hear the pleasure in Vicky’s voice. “Ann wouldn’t have wanted the award for herself, Paul. And if she accepted the cash on behalf of her department, the town would have reversed their plan to transfer policing to the county, and that would have been in the long term a disadvantage to the safety of the residents. So she sent the cash where it could do some good. That would be Ann’s logic. You didn’t know she was going to do it?”
“No. She probably wanted it to be a pleasant surprise, and it was. Then I learned the Treasury secretary was the one who did the transfer. I can sort of get my mind around the reason she gave the gift, and I can understand that kind of influence, but I just didn’t see it coming, Vicky. That Ann has that kind of influence.
“She doesn’t come across as who she really is,” he said after a pause. “She’s the MHI and she never said a word. She knows spies and soldiers and U.S. Marshals, has written books about them. She’s friends with the VP. A good enough friend the VP doesn’t think twice about calling the Treasury secretary late at night to do her a favor.”
“Paul—she’s just Ann. She introduces herself as a cop, because that’s who she is. She’s also an author, has good friends, some of whom would make people do a double take, and was voted in as the MHI. But why would she mention those things? To try to impress you? She’d be annoyed if they mattered to you. They don’t change who she is.”
“You know it’s not that simple.”
“I know it’s not that simple. But Ann would like it to be.”
“How did she get to know the VP? How did her world become what it is? Something big is back there. I can all but feel it. Who is she, Vicky?”
She hesitated. “She’s one of the VP six,” she finally replied. “After he lost the presidential election, Jim Gannett retired to Illinois. His résumé reads intelligence community—FBI director, U.S. attorney general, vice president, presidential candidate. He was working on his autobiography and he wanted to include some of his cases from when he was the state attorney general. Ann got assigned to find them and keep him happy. Not being an idiot, Gannett soon figured out she was a good writer.
“The next thing I know, they’re doing a background check on Ann. It goes so deep even I’m wondering what she’s done, and suddenly she’s on the VP six list—the six people he reads into the original classified material that form the basis for his book. She’s a twenty-something cop, and she’s helping ghostwrite the VP’s autobiography in her spare time.
“He’s releasing it in three volumes, and from what I’ve read of the first two they’re actually not half bad. He’s had an interesting life. The third one is due out this year or the next. There are maybe fifteen people in total who know she’s helping
on the book, Paul, so be careful with that information.”
“I will, Vicky.”
“She’s the one who’s kept it quiet. The VP wanted to put Ann’s name on the cover as coauthor, wanted to carve off a percentage of royalties for her, and she turned him down. She said it would kill her chance to learn to be a good author if people knew her name before she had enough written to have learned to write well. She’s listed, unnamed, in the front of the books on the acknowledgments page as the writer who made his words crisp and smooth and flowing, and he thanks her for her assistance. That’s classic Ann, even decades ago. She doesn’t accept the spotlight even when it is earned.”
“I’m learning that,” Paul said. “So she’s met some of her friends through her work on his autobiography.”
“I think it’s more like the VP introduces her to people occasionally. Paul, the VP was the one who introduced me to Ann. I’ve never told anyone that before. That day changed my life and hers in more ways than I can say. I ended up with a really good friend. There’s not much I wouldn’t do for Ann, or that she wouldn’t do for me. Don’t mess this up, okay? Ann matters.”
“I’ll be careful,” Paul reassured. He knew his time on this call was running out. “Has she ever been in love, Vicky?”
“Twice. Both times broke her heart. Both were before she became a cop.”
“Can you tell me something about her you think I should know?”
Vicky hesitated. “I will tell you of one thing you must know. And I’m only doing so because I know of no other way to protect her. She dreams, Paul, terrible dreams, of writing and watching blood drip on the page—so dark a dream that I wonder at times how she can keep on writing. She wakes to a gunshot.”
Paul closed his eyes. Everyone had secrets. It was one of the reasons he was going to her friends first, so he didn’t stumble around blind to what was there.
“How long has she been having that nightmare?”
“I’ve known her for nine years.”
“And she works from ten p.m. to two a.m. every night, to avoid the dream.”
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