He hurriedly typed another encrypted message:
KIRBY FED CLASSIFIED FILES TO REILLY. FIND WHICH. REED CORRIGAN + COLIN REILLY NAMECHECKED.
He pressed send, pulled out the earbuds, placed the scope, mic and buds on the passenger seat and climbed out of the car, pocketing his handset as he straightened. He’d already thought out how to deal with Reilly while having Kirby at their mercy until they’d found out everything they needed to know. At that point, Stan Kirby would meet a tragic, but entirely accidental end.
Sandman walked toward the open garage.
I watched as Kirby racked his brains as he knelt down and picked the bouquet of flowers off the garage floor.
“I don’t remember seeing any mention of him.”
“It was only his initials, CR.” I said it louder than I meant to, my frustration boiling over.
“Pipe down, will you? She’ll hear us.” He set the flowers on his car.
I could hear the desperation in his voice and see the dread in his face as he pictured everything he thought he’d resolved about to unravel. I was in no mood to cut him any slack.
“Same exercise, different name,” I told him. “Get me everything on file about my dad and we’re done.”
He scoffed. “Why am I having a déjà vu here?”
There was the faintest sound behind me. I spun to find a gun pointed right at me. The man holding it wore a black unbadged baseball cap, which along with the thick-framed glasses he had on pretty much obscured his eyes. A short, but full dark beard covered the lower half of his face and his hands were sheathed by black leather gloves.
The guy was a pro.
I watched as he took in the entire situation in one sweep, then raised his left hand and pulled on a red plastic T-bar suspended from the garage door by a short rope, thus disengaging the door from the motor and ensuring he couldn’t be shut inside.
I glanced over at Kirby. He seemed thoroughly spooked. He didn’t know him.
The bearded man finally spoke, addressing me first and waving his gun as a conductor’s stick.
“Reilly, take out your gun and put it on the ground. Easy.”
So he knew who I was. That told me most of what I needed to know right now. I paused for a couple of seconds, assessing the immediate situation, then slowly took out my Glock and placed it carefully on the garage floor.
“Stan, bring it over to me. Pick it up from its barrel. Two fingers. Gently.”
Kirby complied and handed it over to him. The bearded man took it carefully, also from the edge of its barrel, then he moved his hand so he gripped it the right way around, but by the tip of his gloved fingers.
Like he didn’t want to wipe my prints off it.
“Stan, do you have a gun in the house?”
“Yes. In the bedroom. It’s in a lockbox.”
The man thought about it for a second. “Not very convenient, Stan. Not when the guy who’s blackmailed you before comes back to threaten you again. Comes to your own house and asks you to break the law and commit high treason. This armed motherfucker walks into your garage without invitation and waves his gun in your face to make you betray your country. What do you do, Stan? Do you just sit back and watch? Or do you do something about it?”
Kirby just stood there, nailed to his spot, like a silent pressure cooker on the verge of blowing.
“I’ll tell you what you do, Stan.”
The bearded man aimed my own gun at me.
“You jump the bastard and you kill him.”
12
“Makes sense, doesn’t it, Stan? Besides, I don’t see how you have a choice here. You’ve got a family to protect. You don’t want to spend the rest of your life in a supermax prison, do you?”
Kirby looked like he was about to have a full-blown heart attack. The bearded man kept my gun pointed directly at me, clearly having decided that Kirby represented zero threat.
“Take a breath and answer me, Stan, because in about ten seconds I’ll just shoot you both where you stand and let your friends at Langley worry about cleaning up this mess. The mess you put them in.”
Kirby’s eyes lit up. I could see him processing: the agency knew about everything. Somehow, they knew that he’d leaked the files to me, and there was something in them so dangerous that the leak had to be plugged indefinitely. But they were offering him a way out. A way to keep his job and his pension. All he had to do was kill me.
“They’ll kill you too,” I told him. “He’s already got the narrative they’re going with.”
Kirby glared at me. “What the fuck am I supposed to do? You see many choices here?”
The bearded man told Kirby, “So we’re good with how this is going to play out—?”
In the split second that his eyes flicked across to Kirby, in the heightened intensity of that instant that consumed everything else just before a kill, I launched myself at him.
No choice. I wasn’t going to just stand there and let them kill me at their leisure before polishing up their storyline and figured if I was going to get a bullet either way, anywhere in my torso would be preferable to my brain.
I had two guns to contend with, and aimed each of my hands at one of them. My right hand locked on his gun, my left hand on my Glock, my torso slamming into him in tandem with my head butting into his skull.
A shot exploded from his gun as he reeled back, my hands still locked on his. The noise jolted us both for a nanosecond, and I had no idea where it landed. We struggled as I tried to knee him, but he blocked it with his own leg and shoved me back, regaining the momentum. I had to keep him close, I couldn’t let him free himself and back away, not even with one gun, so I kept my hands firmly gripped around his and I tried to wrangle my gun out of his hand—
Which is when the second shot burst out, this one from my gun, and then it all went haywire. I managed to twist his wrist enough to loosen his grip on my Glock, and as it fell out, I heard Kirby grunt and thud down to the ground just as a scream of “Stan?” came from somewhere inside the house, a woman’s scream. In that frenzied moment, the distraction was just enough to allow the bearded man to pummel me across the temple with the grip of his own gun.
The blow hit me hard—real hard. I felt my teeth rattle against my jawbone as the blow connected. I struggled to stay on my feet, but I was weakened. We struggled some more, with me trying to muster any strength I had left to keep my grip locked on his gun hand and keep it aimed away from me. Then an alarm started blaring, the house’s alarm, I figured—Stan’s wife, hitting the panic button. It was like a tiny burst of smelling salts to my battered senses, and I used it to counter-attack and tried to headbutt him, only he saw it coming and avoided it. It was a gamble that left me exposed and he made full use of it, pounding me with a hook that connected squarely against my jaw. I blacked out for a second as my legs gave way under me and regained some partial sight just as I hit the ground, my unprotected skull cracking against the hard floor. I was at the edge of consciousness. I could feel the blood seeping out down my forehead from the first blow, and through foggy eyes, I caught sight of Kirby lying on the floor, a few feet away from me. The bullet had hit him through the cheekbone, and from the bloody mess at the back of his head, I could tell that it had gone straight through his brain.
I looked up and saw the bearded man pointing his gun down at me.
Then the woman yelled “Stan!” again.
Sandman heard it too and figured he had only seconds to get out.
His mind moved lightning-fast. He’d wanted Reilly dead, but he couldn’t shoot him with his own gun. He quickly scanned the floor around them looking for Reilly’s Glock, but before he could find it, his eyes locked on the casing from the shell fired from his own gun. The woman yelled ‘Stan’ again, her voice much closer this time. He had a second or two to get out of there if he wasn’t going to have to kill her too, an option he quickly discarded as too messy. He bent down and retrieved the casing. It wasn’t as clean as he wanted it—he didn’t have time
to recover the stray bullet—but under the circumstances, it would have to do.
He then ducked through the open garage door and slipped away briskly, heading toward his car.
As the wail of the house alarm egged me back to consciousness, I felt my head. My beanie was soaked through on one side, courtesy of a fast-spreading patch of fresh blood. As I dragged myself onto my knees, the internal door to the house swung open and Kirby’s wife stepped into the garage, a handgun clutched in her hand. She screamed “Stan!” as she saw her husband lying dead on the floor, then looked at me and swung the gun at me, her hands shaking.
“What have you done? Stan! Oh my God, Stan?”
I was still on my knees, getting up slowly, my vision blurred, my head pounding, but I raised both hands as defensively as I could.
“Please, don’t shoot. It’s not what it looks like. Please, listen to me. I’m with the FBI.”
Sobs were heaving through her body as her face contorted and went from confusion and fear into wild rage—and I could see she was about to pull the trigger.
I was now on my feet and I faltered back a step, then another, hesitantly, my hands still way up and wide apart.
“Listen to me—”
She looked completely terrified, but one thing I knew was that an adrenalized shot with no aim at all was potentially far more lethal than a considered shot with a wayward aim.
She fired.
The bullet whizzed past my cheek, so close I was sure it took a few skin cells with it.
I wasn’t going to risk a second one. I turned and ducked as I bolted through the garage door, willing my legs back to life.
I staggered toward my car, but quickly had to stop—a neighbor had stepped out of his house and had a phone in his hand. Then I heard the first police siren—coming from the direction I’d parked my rental. The neighbor must have called 911.
I lurched right and changed tack.
I veered off the street and ducked up the driveway of a neighboring house, cutting through to its back yard. I crashed through some bushes and over a patch of grass, heading across two back gardens toward another house at the end of the street, all the windows of which were dark. Within minutes, there’d be a police chopper in the air above me with a search beam sweeping the neighborhood.
I had to get far from here, fast.
I remembered the apartment buildings behind the Lee Highway and the parking lot for the residents beside them. No gates or fences. By now, most of the residents would be home and not going anywhere until morning.
Left hand clutched to my head in a vain attempt to staunch the bleeding, I swerved around the house, hoping there weren’t any motion sensors on the property.
At the side of the house, I clambered over a fence, crashing to the ground on the other side as my legs gave way. My vision was still blurring from the concussion and there was blood running into my left eye. I rolled down a steep bank, plowing through seemingly endless lines of bushes as I careened downwards over a thick layer of wood chips, finally coming to a stop against a tree.
My recollection had been accurate. I was lying about a hundred yards from the unsecured parking lot beside the low apartment buildings behind the Lee Highway.
More sirens sounded, no more than a quarter mile away. I shook my head, pulled myself upright and staggered like a wounded animal toward the small lot, already scanning the vehicles for one old enough to be hot-wired.
13
Washington, DC
“Sean. Me again. Just a little heads up, baby—the car’s picking us up in ten minutes. Ten. Minutes. You do remember why we’re here, don’t you? That casual pizza evening at your buddy’s pad on Pennsylvania Avenue? At the . . . where was it, exactly? Oh, yes. I remember now. The White House!” The last three words were more yelled than said. Then, mock-cheerfully: “Call me, sweetie. This better be good. Historically good. Bye.”
She clicked off, stabbing the iPhone so hard to end the call that she almost cracked the screen with her nail.
It was the third message she’d left him.
She stared at herself in the hotel room mirror yet again, scrutinizing every inch of her appearance: the hair, the makeup, the jewelry, every fold of her dress, her shoes, right down to the pedicure on her toes.
Perfect. Immaculate. In her humble opinion.
Just one thing missing: her date for the big night.
It had happened before, sure. Maybe not on such a huge occasion. But he’d done a few no-shows. His job was like that. The unexpected had to be expected sometimes. She knew that.
But this felt different. Ever since the summer, ever since that whole affair in California and Mexico, he’d been keeping things from her. She knew that too. And it had worried her. She’d asked him about it, not too often, just when it felt like the right time to do so, when she felt he was a bit of a softer target than normal. And she’d failed. He’d kept insisting there was nothing going on. And now, this.
She was worried. There was no way to convince herself otherwise. You developed an instinct about these things; about the person you loved and were sharing your life with. And right now, her instincts were on the boil.
Where are you, Sean?
I saw my phone light up with Tess’s call, but I couldn’t bring himself to take it. I was still groggy, my brain still frazzled by the frenzy I’d just survived—and escaped.
I didn’t know what to say without worrying her, scaring her, implicating her—I had to think things through.
I knew she was probably already beyond worried. No call, on a night like this—she’d have gone through frustration, through fury, and on to worry.
I hated putting her through this. But I couldn’t do any better. Right now, I had to keep moving, and think.
Keeping my eyes on the road, I pulled the cover off the back of my phone and dug its battery out.
And kept heading north.
“Tess, it’s so lovely to meet you,” the First Lady said as an aide introduced them.
Tess shook hands with her before turning to President Yorke, who asked, “So where is that barnstorming man of yours then? We were expecting the two of you?”
She felt immensely awkward standing there, an awkwardness that had started long before she’d reached the Southeast Entrance. The setting alone was intimidating enough, in the best of circumstances: Christmas dinner at the White House, hosted by the most powerful man on the planet and his wife. Not exactly a casual cocktail party, by any means. Throw in the fact that you were turning up alone, without your partner—who was the reason for the invitation in the first place—and without being able to give any convincing answer for why he wasn’t there, and we’re talking Richter-scale jitters of unease.
Henry “Hank” Yorke was coming up to the end of his first term, but the prospect of a whole year of monster campaigning that was about to kick off within weeks didn’t seem to faze him. Tall and charismatic, he had just turned seventy-one, which, if he were re-elected, would make him the oldest person ever to be elected president. Still, he was in fine physical shape, his charisma and his energy intact, and with the country enjoying a period of economic stability and no bruising foreign wars, he seemed reasonably assured of a second term.
President Yorke and his wife Megan typically hosted a whole series of social events in the month that led to Christmas. Their social secretaries and their staff had been busy for weeks, planning the cocktail parties and dinners, cutting and pasting their way through the lists of donors, lobbyists, bloggers and reporters, government staffers and foreign diplomats and all kinds of supporters or notable achievers of every kind, making sure the guests lists were well balanced and well matched, vetting them again and again to make sure no personal slights or diplomatic faux pas would ensue. Tonight’s event, though, was no six hundred-guest whirlwind tour of the White House’s various reception rooms. This was a more intimate seated dinner in the State Dining Room—intimate, as in eighty people seated at eight tables of ten. Not as easy to get lost
in the crowd or hide the embarrassing, empty seat at the table.
“Yes, where is he?” the First Lady asked.
Tess just smiled uncomfortably, and all she could think of saying was simply, “I honestly couldn’t tell you,” with an embarrassed, half-laugh.
I’m making excuses for Sean with the president! She shuddered inwardly.
“I was so looking forward to meeting him,” Megan Yorke said. “Hank’s told me so much about him, and we owe him so much, of course. I haven’t had the chance to thank him.” She turned to her husband. “I still can’t believe you didn’t tell me what really happened that night or that you’d met with him until after Agent Reilly was back home in New York. I mean, I was there, too, wasn’t I?”
Yorke gave her a practiced smile and nodded, expertly hiding any reaction to her gripe. “Sweetheart, we needed to make sure the threat was fully contained. I didn’t want you worrying unnecessarily.”
They both owed their lives to Reilly. No one could argue that. As Tess flicked a quick glance around the room, she wondered how many of the people around her had been there that night earlier this year, at the White House Correspondents Dinner at the Hilton hotel in Washington, the night a rogue Russian agent came close to causing a historic bloodbath. Yorke and his wife, along with most of their senior staffers and a star-studded list of guests, were saved from a horrific death, which was why Reilly had been invited to this dinner. Tess had debated not coming at all if he didn’t show up, but she’d decided one of them showing up was marginally less rude than both.
“You know how it is,” Tess said, forcing a smile to crack her tensely locked facial muscles. “He’s probably out there chasing down some psycho while we’re sitting here enjoying this very lovely Merlot.”
“I don’t know how you can take it in your stride like that,” the First Lady said. “It’s so admirable of you, not even knowing where he is half the time, I imagine. At least when Hank here was still at the Agency, I gave up making any kind of social plans knowing how many times he’d stood me up, but at least I knew where he was and I knew he wasn’t in danger since he was a desk jockey,” she added with a small laugh and a sideways, playful glance at her husband. “Your life must be—well, I don’t envy you. It can’t be easy.”
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