by Leigh Adams
Tom rocked back on his heels.
“Ah,” he said.
“Listen to me,” Kate said desperately. “Ozgo didn’t kill Rafael and he didn’t cause his death accidentally, either. If all the stuff you’ve been doing has been to get some kind of revenge, you’re picking on the wrong man, and you’re doing just what his killer wants you to do. He screwed up. He was supposed to make sure that everybody on that raid was dead in the attack. Everybody. But everybody wasn’t. One of the people who escaped alive didn’t matter. That was an Afghani, and even if he told people what he saw, nobody would listen to him. But the other person who escaped alive was Ozgo. And Ozgo was too messed up to know what he’d seen, but he’d seen it, and if he started talking about it, it wouldn’t take long until somebody figured out what happened.”
“I’ve got to go in to my office now,” Chan said. “If you’re not in your car and on your way out of the campus by the time I get to my phone, I’m going to have security detain you.”
“The person who killed Rafael was Paterson,” Kate said. “And he did it because Rafael wasn’t killed in the drone strike that had just taken place.”
At the sound of Jed Paterson’s name, Chan had gone completely still.
The silence went on and on. Kate almost started to babble. She held herself back. Then Chan said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I do know what I’m talking about,” Kate said. “The raid happened on the outskirts of Kabul, and it wasn’t just a bunch of soldiers striking at what they mistook for an enemy patrol. There was a drone, and it hit four small buildings that were being used to house computer equipment and to stockpile supplies. The drone hit that, and when it was over and the buildings were destroyed, Paterson led a group of men who were supposed to clean up anybody who was still alive. Rafael wasn’t supposed to be there. Rafael’s people weren’t supposed to be there. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And therefore they all had to die.”
Chan had relaxed. “They had to die because a drone went off course and hit the wrong target? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“They had to die because one of them might have figured out that the drone wasn’t off target,” Kate said. “It wasn’t a mistake. It wasn’t a friendly fire accident. That drone hit those buildings because that was what it had been directed to hit. You can make a lot of money in a war, hiring yourself out to the United States to reconstruct facilities that have been bombed or damaged. That’s what General Solutions does. You can make more if you can make sure there are a lot of facilities that need reconstruction.”
“You’re insane,” Chan said. She didn’t sound as if she believed it.
“I think close to half of all the reconstructions General Solutions has done have been setups. Drones programmed to hit targets essential to US operations. Paterson and his cleanup crew were sent in to make sure there wasn’t a trail that could get back to the people in the Department of Defense. They wouldn’t have touched that target that night if they’d known Turner was anywhere near it, but they did. So they had to kill every single member of the group Turner had brought with him, and they failed. Ozgo was left alive. They were never going to be safe as long as Ozgo was alive.”
“My God,” Chan said.
“I think the idea was to kill Ozgo when he got back to the states,” Kate said. “Paterson seems to have come back into the country at the same time. But then Ozgo came to you, and you let him live on the property, and that was too close to your father. If Ozgo had just gone out and wandered around, Paterson could have staged something. But Ozgo stayed on your property all the time. He never went anywhere. They’d have been stuck if you hadn’t decided to fake your own kidnapping.”
“I didn’t fake my own kidnapping.”
“Then Paterson faked it for you,” Kate said, “because it was faked, and you know it, and I know it, and Ozgo is sitting in a cell right now guilty of nothing but being in the wrong place at the wrong time and coming out of it with a royal case of PTSD. There’s a picture that was up on the Internet and in the papers of all of you standing outside the house while it was burning, and if you look at Ozgo’s shoes, he was wearing high-top sneakers. If you look closely, there is an indention in the ankle parts of them, like somebody had tied him up. And somebody did, because the two of you couldn’t let him wander around while he was supposed to be kidnapping you. And if you don’t tell the truth and get him out of there, it’s only a matter of time. They’ll find somebody on the inside to get rid of him for good.”
“They’re good at cleaning up,” Tom said. “They killed Flanagan, the head of homicide. Remember him?”
“And what was he to anybody?” Chan asked.
“They took me off the case because I asked the wrong kinds of questions,” Tom said. “They put him on the case because he was willing to do things they knew I wouldn’t. Like suppress forensic evidence. And not investigate the anomalies that made me think you hadn’t been kidnapped to begin with. I think they told him that everybody knew Ozgo was guilty and your father was determined to see that the man who harmed his daughter was put away. But he was the head of homicide. Flanagan might have been a drunken asshole, but he wasn’t a complete idiot. The more time he spent with that evidence, the more likely he was to find something. And as soon as he did, he started blackmailing the hell out your father and Evans. I don’t see him buying a new house without a little help.”
Chan looked from one to the other. Kate found it impossible to read the expression on her face. Then Chan straightened up and straightened her suit jacket.
“Wait here,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
“Do you believe us?” Tom asked.
Chan looked contemptuous.
She said, “I’m not sure.” Then she turned on her heel and walked away, up the steps and to the front door.
Chan came back less than five minutes later, still looking cool and expensive and completely professional. Tom and Kate had spent the time since she’d left making uneasy comments about everything and anything.
“I’ve cleared my calendar,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Where are we going?” Tom asked.
“I’m not sure where we’re going in the long run,” Chan said, “but right this minute, we’re going to a car rental. My car’s bugged, and I’d be willing to bet yours is, too.”
Twenty-One
The car ride started tense and got tenser. They were only minutes out of the Hamilton Charitable Trust’s long driveway when Chan insisted that they pull over. She got out of the car, opened her purse, took out her own cell phone, and dropped it to the ground. Then she lifted her right foot in its elegant stiletto heel and brought that heel right down on the phone’s screen. Kate thought the crack could be heard all the way to California.
Chan got back into the car and said, “Go now. Get out of here as fast as possible.”
“You think your phone is bugged?” Kate asked.
“He’s been bugging my phones and my rooms and my car and anything else he could get his hands on since I was sixteen years old. And maybe earlier. He had my dorm rooms bugged, Miss Porter’s and Vassar’s both. The man can’t stand to be out of control for a minute.”
“And you think he has Tom’s car bugged?” Kate asked. “Because if you don’t, then I don’t understand why we’re getting you a rental car.”
“We’re getting us a rental car,” Chan said. “You and me. Mr. Abbott can go do whatever he wants. I need a place to think.”
“To think about what?” Kate asked.
“To think about whether he played me,” Chan said. “He almost certainly did, because he’s my father, and that’s the way my father thinks.”
“You need to do something about Ozgo,” Kate said. “You know he didn’t kidnap you and you know he didn’t start that fire. If he goes to prison, he’ll die.”
“That was the idea,” Chan said. “Except that he was supposed to die in that fire.”
>
***
Everything at Enterprise Rent-a-Car went almost without a hitch, except that Chan insisted they use Kate’s or Tom’s credit card to rent the vehicle.
“He keeps tabs on my credit cards,” she kept insisting until Kate was ready to strangle her.
Kate used her card, signed the papers, and took the keys.
“Now what?” she asked Chan.
“We need to find a place where I can work this out,” Chan said. “Someplace where you can tell me this whole idea you’ve got.”
Tom and Kate looked at each other.
“We’ve got the perfect place,” Kate said. “It’s up in the mountains. There isn’t any cell service.”
“Fine,” Chan said. “Let’s go.”
While Tom seemed entertained, Kate fumed all the way back up into the mountains. Talk about behaving like an entitled jerk. Chan might not be as obviously obnoxious as Brayde, but she was obnoxious enough.
She also didn’t give a damn.
“Is this your purse?” Chan asked. She didn’t wait for an answer. She upended the contents onto her lap and then went looking through the bag for anything that might be left inside. She found Kate’s cell phone, opened the window next to her, and threw it out into the road.
“Speed up and keep moving,” Chan said. She pawed through the things on her lap. They didn’t amount to much. “You don’t have anything to record this conversation with. And I know this car isn’t bugged, because we rented it. It doesn’t matter what I tell you. If you tell anybody else, I can just deny it.”
“I don’t understand why you want Ozgo to go to jail,” Kate said. “He didn’t kill Rafael. I thought that was all you cared about. And Paterson is the one who concocted the whole kidnapping scheme. And I’m willing to bet you only know the man because your father introduced you to him.”
“He didn’t introduce us, exactly,” Chan said. “He recommended Jed for a job at the Trust.”
“I’d say that was introducing you,” Kate said.
“Jed was actually in Afghanistan,” Chan said. “He was there when Rafael died, or just after. He actually saw what happened.”
“Paterson was discharged from the Navy SEALs almost a full year before the attack that killed Turner,” Kate said. “He was in Afghanistan when Rafael died, but he wasn’t in the military.”
Chan went on staring straight ahead. She brushed off Kate’s things from her lap and let them thump to the car’s floor.
“Chan, listen to me,” Kate said. “It would kill Ozgo to go to prison. It would. And you have to know that once Ozgo is dead, once they don’t have anything else to worry about, they’re going to go right back to those phony drone raids and other people are going to end up dead, including other American soldiers. You can’t let it go on like this.”
Kate tried to think of something else to say but couldn’t. The narrow dirt road that led up to the cabin was just in front of her. She turned the car onto it and made it climb, complaining, toward the summit.
She was all the way to the top and in sight of the cabin itself before she noticed that things didn’t look right, things didn’t sound right. The cabin door was partway open and one of Frank’s rifles was lying out on the stoop.
She was just pulling into the cabin’s driveway when a bullet came through the windshield and lodged itself in the back seat.
Tom and Chan were faster than Kate was. They were out of the car and down on the ground before the car stopped moving.
Kate got out of the car as soon as it stopped and looked around frantically. There was no sign of Jack anywhere. But she spotted Frank. He had a camo coat on and was leaning against the spreading oak tree that stood right next to the cabin’s side door.
As Kate watched, Frank raised his rifle, sighted it careful, and let out a shot.
Kate made her way to him. “What are you doing?” she demanded. “Daddy, for God’s sake, what are you doing?”
Frank didn’t look at her. “Jack’s just like a deer, that’s what he is,” he said.
Just like a deer? Kate though furiously. Besides the rifle Frank held, there were two others at his feet. He had enough ammunition to take out the entire deer population of Northern Virginia.
“Don’t have an automatic up here,” Frank said. “Have to keep reloading.”
“Daddy,” Kate said. “Listen, please. Don’t reload. Just stop shooting for a minute. Where’s Jack? What’s happened to Jack?”
Frank aimed again, sighted again, fired again. Then there was another shot, coming at them instead of going away. Kate tried to see where the shot was coming from and got nowhere.
“Daddy?” she demanded. “Daddy, does Jack have a gun, too? Is that what this is?”
Kate tried to remember all the things people had told her about Alzheimer’s patients who got violent, who got delusional. That had to be what was happening here. That was the only reason Kate could think of why Frank would be shooting at Jack, shooting blindly into the woods, stacking up ammunition as if he were in a combat raid.
There had to be some way to stop him, to bring him under control.
“Daddy,” she said, putting out her hand.
It was the wrong move. Another shot came out of the woods, and this one hit her—not hard, and not in any vital place, but it hit her nonetheless. She felt the bullet graze against the skin of her arm and looked down to see blood dripping, making a wide, red blur that stained her shirt and jeans.
“Get out of here,” Frank yelled. “Get out of here.”
“You can’t do this. We’ve got to find Jack.”
“He doesn’t want Jack,” Frank screamed. “Don’t you get it? He only cares about Jack because he wants to get you.”
Nothing made any sense. Nothing. Kate only knew that she had to stop Frank, she had to, and she made for the rifle he was holding in a sudden lurch that made the injured part of her arm hurt like hell. She tugged at the rifle one more time and got it loose, falling back onto the ground with it. The safety wasn’t on—of course it wasn’t on. The rifle discharged as soon as it hit the ground.
Tom approached and helped Frank get up.
“Where is he?” Tom demanded.
“Don’t know,” Frank said, “but he’s close. He’s not using a distance scope. He’s right fucking here.”
Another bullet came from out of the woods.
“I don’t have a weapon,” Tom said. “Give me the rifle.”
Of course he didn’t have a weapon. He was on suspension. He’d have had to hand in his weapon and his badge.
“Let me up,” Kate said, struggling. Her arm still hurt. Her whole body felt weak.
Then, out of nowhere, she heard Jack’s voice: “Mom! Get out of there!”
That voice was the only thing that could have stopped Kate in the middle of what she was doing. It stopped her cold, and she twisted around under Tom to get a glimpse of Jack.
Jack was standing in the cabin’s front doorway. There was the sound of another gunshot and Jack stepped back inside, quickly.
“Who’s out in the woods?” Kate screamed. “Who’s out in the woods?”
But the attacker wasn’t out in the woods anymore. He stepped into the clearing right next to the tree and raised a semiautomatic handgun and pointed it right at Kate’s head.
There he was, Jed Paterson, tall and lean and massive in the shoulders and thighs.
“I can clean up the rest of them later,” he said. “Right now, I’m just worried about you.”
Kate was still on the ground, finding it hard to move. Frank was caught in the middle of the scene and frozen in place. And Tom was unarmed.
Paterson was aiming his weapon at them when a bullet shot out of the front of his head and he dropped to the ground.
As his lifeless body fell, they saw Chan, in a professional wide-firing stance holding a Glock, her huge Coach bag lying on the ground in front of her.
Twenty-Two
The formal letter from Almador announcing that Kat
e Ford was officially fired came on the same day Chan Hamilton held her third press conference, and Kate didn’t know what she considered less of a surprise.
It didn’t help that the mail was late that day and that Jack, Frank, Tom, and even Mike Alexander were all in Kate’s kitchen discussing whether or not it would be sensible for Kate to get a hibachi for the back patio. Alexander looked like he’d swallowed a canary along with a bottle of Scotch. He was now absolutely positive that he was about to be in line for a Pulitzer.
“It’s not much of a patio,” Kate told them as she headed for the foyer at the sound of mail coming through the slot. “It’s more like a postage stamp.”
“You can make lots of healthy food,” Tom said as Kate came back into the kitchen, opening the envelope. He was unwrapping the ingredients for chili coleslaw dogs, including foot-long hot dogs and buns to go with them.
Kate dropped the letter on the table next to a two-quart tub of coleslaw from Hansom’s Deli. “I knew this was coming,” she said. “I’m going to have to start coming up with some way to make a living.”
“At least you’ll have a chance,” Frank said.
“Take a look at this,” Jack said.
It was Tom who had gotten them the small television set Kate now kept in the kitchen, because with so much on the news about what was happening in the cases of Ozgo, Paterson, and General Solutions, they all wanted to watch nonstop.
What Jack wanted them to watch was Chan, sitting at a long table with only her attorney beside her, a new attorney, not one bought and paid for by her father. There was no sign of Ozgo, who had been at the previous press conferences, looking absolutely awful and shaking like a leaf.
“I have talked to the new district attorney,” Chan said. “He has refused to call for an investigation into the role of my father in my kidnapping, in the deaths of Bill Flanagan and Reggie Evans, or in any other matter. I have therefore launched my own investigation into these matters, and I have filed suit against Richard Hamilton for stalking, invasion of privacy, and extreme emotional distress. I have also—”