I took one last look over my shoulder as I climbed into the truck and headed for civilization, wondering why the two angels had abandoned me….
I checked into a hotel in Cairo—after my credit card was approved and a call to Sarah in London convinced the front desk manager it hadn’t been stolen. I went to my room and soaked in a hot bath for more than an hour. I called room service and ordered a meal large enough to feed a family of four. I looked forward to sleeping in a soft bed again—though I didn’t look forward to being in that bed without my wife.
I had to find Lynne and Kiwi. I couldn’t conceive of the idea of sleeping alone any longer. I missed curling up with Lynne, holding her in my arms, dispelling all the loneliness I’d felt all those years before we found each other. I missed all the talks we’d had in the middle of the night. I missed her. I missed my son. I missed the love I found with them.
Kiwi would be almost two years old now, I thought as I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, trimming my beard. The last time I saw him, he wasn’t even two months old.
Where are you, Lynne? Why did you leave New Zealand? Why won’t they tell me where you are?
99
Caitlin
Jack and I were going over the files for our current case when Randy Baker found us. “Thought you’d want to know—Andrew Stewart’s been spotted again.”
That came as a surprise. “Where?” I asked.
“Cairo.”
"We thought he was dead," Jack said.
A thought occurred to me. “Do you remember that news story a few weeks ago—that freak storm in Egypt?”
Baker nodded. “The Egyptian military was on alert. Thought they were being attacked.”
I nodded. “Darcy told me a pretty outrageous story about how the men behind the child abductions believed Stewart was some kind of divine messenger.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “Right.”
“Sarah Stewart rescued the kids from GenTech’s London facility,” I went on. “How did she do it? She couldn’t have done it alone.”
“You think Andrew Stewart was there?” Baker asked.
“More than one of the kids reportedly told their parents that there had been a man with them when they escaped. Here’s the weird part. All of the kids claimed Sarah Stewart had been shot during the escape,” I said. “They said the man who was with them touched her chest wound and healed it.”
100
Darcy
“I still can’t believe it,” Alberta said as she and I walked through the gallery together, checking out the exhibit before the opening. “You, doing a one-man show.”
I laughed. “You can’t believe I’m good enough, or that I agreed to it?”
“I’ve always known you were good enough,” she assured me. “I just never thought of you as the type to do a gallery exhibit. You’re the man who wants to be on the front lines, in the midst of the action.”
“The past few years have given me a lot to think about,” I confided. “I’m not a young man anymore.”
She feigned shock. “You? No—you’re ageless!”
“Like Stonehenge,” I scoffed. “I’m actually happy to hang around for a while. My son and his wife are expecting—I’m going to be a grandfather.”
She was genuinely happy for me. “Congratulations, Gramps.”
My cell vibrated in my pocket. I checked the number and raised an eyebrow. “The FBI?”
She gave me a look. “What have you done now?”
“I guess I’ll have to find out. I’ll just be a minute.” I walked away as I put the phone to my ear. “Darcy. Talk.”
“Darcy, it’s Caitlin.”
“Caitlin? Just can’t stay away from me, huh?”
“Be serious,” she said impatiently. “Have you heard from your ex?”
“Do restraining orders count?”
“I don’t have time for this—”
“Come on, Cat. My exes all hate me,” I said. “You, of all people, should know that. After all, you’re the one who put everything I owned, including my boxer shorts, out for the Goodwill truck.”
There was silence on the other end.
“All right, I get it. To answer your question, no, I have not heard from Lynne. I sent her some photos I took of the Lord of the Geeks back when I saw them in Egypt—under the circumstances, I thought she might want them for her kid. But I sent them in care of her partner, Dr. O’Halloran.”
“Give me his number,” Caitlin said.
“Don’t have it with me. I’ll have to call you back with it when I get home.” I paused. “What’s this all about?”
“I need to locate her.”
“She’s a US citizen—why would Uncle Sam be keeping tabs on one of his own?” I asked.
“Citizen or not, she’s married to a man who can help us nail the cartel.” Caitlin paused. “And unfortunately, they're both wanted for questioning in a murder case.”
“In Italy.”
“Two words, Darcy. Extradition treaty,” Caitlin said impatiently.
“But isn’t this all after the fact?” I asked. “He’s been dead almost two years now.”
“Presumed dead,” Caitlin corrected me. “He’s not only not dead, I’ve got a NOTICE from Interpol indicating he’s on the move.”
“I’m not surprised he’s not dead. I’m the guy who always said he couldn’t be taken out without a silver bullet,” I reminded her. “I never did get what Duchess saw in him, but I’ll tell you this: if she and the boy are here, he will come for them. I’m surprised he’s waited this long.”
“Get back to me with that number, Darcy.” She ended the call abruptly.
I pushed my cell back into my pocket and rejoined Alberta in front of a large photograph that was the centerpiece of the exhibit: black and white, Mackenzie in the Sinai desert in the darkness of night, illuminated by a brilliant white light. There were two ghostly figures, almost transparent, flanking him.
The placard beneath the photo read The Deliverer.
“Ever figure out what that is?” Alberta asked, pointing to the figure on the left.
I shook my head. "They do look human, don’t they?”
“I think that’s why this particular photograph’s garnered you so much recognition,” she said, her fingertips tracing the ghostly outline. “There are some, including religious leaders, who believe you managed to photograph two angels.”
“With him?” I laughed at the thought.
101
Caitlin
I put the telephone back on its base and looked up at Jack. “He left Cairo yesterday,” I said. “He’s got a stopover in Paris. Flight 1103, due in at Reagan National at 10:45 this morning.”
“We'd have to intercept him at Dulles,” Jack said. “We may have to hand him over to Rome in the Marshall case. What’s he thinking?”
“He's not,” I said.
He munched a handful of chips. He offered the bag to me, but I shook my head, wrinkling my nose in disdain. “Blondie, I worry about you. Ever since you started dating that French chef, you’ve become a food snob,” he said. “As for Mackenzie—Stewart—whoever he is this week, if it were me, I’d risk it and come for my wife and kid.”
“Not surprised,” I said. “I’ve always known you were nuts.”
“Think about it,” he urged. “Why wouldn’t he come for them?”
“Why wouldn’t he send for them?”
“His wife thinks he’s dead. Not something he can break to her over the phone.” He looked up at the clock on the wall. “Well,” he said, “if we have to bust him, we’d better get a move on. That flight’s on time, according to Dulles. It’ll be arriving soon.”
“I don’t believe this,” I said.
We were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the bridge over the Potomac. It was at a standstill. “I wonder what the problem is?”
“I’ll go find out,” Jack volunteered. He got out of the car and picked his way through the sea of vehicles. I took out my cell phone to call
the airport, but the phone was dead. I checked it over, recalling I’d just charged the battery that morning. Frustrated, I shoved it back into my bag.
Jack returned a few minutes later. “There’s a truckload of pigs jackknifed up at the other end of the bridge—they had some escapees, I was told,” he explained, amused.
“What the hell are pigs doing in DC?” I asked.
Jack didn’t miss a beat. “Running for Congress.”
I looked at him, impatient, unamused.
He looked over the side of the bridge. “Can pigs swim?” he wondered aloud.
“Give me your cell, Goober,” I ordered.
“Sure.” He pulled it from his belt clip and tossed it to me. “What’s wrong with yours?”
“Dead.” I looked at the phone in my hand. “So’s yours.”
“You sure?” He took it from me. “That’s funny. It was working ten minutes ago.”
I looked up. There was a plane flying low, making its approach to the airport. As it passed over, I watched it for a moment, then turned to Jack.
“If I were a betting man—and I am—I’d say that’s Flight 1103, right on schedule,” he said.
“He’s been flagged,” I said. “He’ll be detained in Customs.”
“They said it was a satellite disruption,” the Customs agent told me. “We lost phones, computers, the whole enchilada, for almost five minutes just before Flight 1103 landed. The place was in chaos.”
“But it was back up before the plane was on the ground?” I asked.
The agent nodded. “He was on that plane. Not only that, he was given VIP clearance—they walked him through security to his connecting flight.”
“His passport was flagged,” I insisted.
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?” I asked. “The FBI flagged him. I’m FBI.”
“See for yourself.” The Customs agent pulled it up on the monitor. I looked at the display. There was nothing to indicate he was to be detained upon entry. How had this happened?
Jack rejoined me. “I know where he’s headed. His wife and son are at her family’s home near St. Louis.”
“Let's go.”
“Let him go,” Jack said in a quiet voice.
“We can’t.”
“Let him go,” he repeated firmly. “Do you remember the things he told us in London?”
I rolled my eyes. “You didn’t believe that crap, did you?”
“I didn’t at the time,” he said, “but look at everything that’s happened today.”
“Like what?” I challenged.
“The pigs. Our phones. The satellite disruption just before the plane landed that brought the whole place to a screeching halt. He’s a wanted fugitive, but his passport’s clean. Not only that, he was given a VIP escort through Customs. What would you call it?”
“Incompetence.”
I started to walk away, but he grabbed my arm and spoke in a low voice. “Let him go. Please.”
“Why do you care?” I demanded.
“He’s got a kid, Blondie. I’d give anything if my old man had cared that much about me,” he admitted.
102
Connor
The Harley Davidson roared along the open highway, headed southwest. It was early afternoon, and I had the interstate pretty much to myself. I stopped at a pancake house for lunch, but I barely touched the food. The server had tried to make conversation, but I found I wasn’t hungry after all and had no interest in exchanging pleasantries. I was anxious to get back on the road as quickly as possible.
I’d waited long enough.
103
Lynne
“Are you sure about this, Lynne?” Tim asked.
I shoved my hands down into the pockets of my jeans. I wasn't sure about anything. “I can’t live here. I thought I could, but I can’t. I've decided to go back to New Zealand.”
Tim, Isabella and I were in the front yard. The remnants of Kiwi’s second birthday party were everywhere, and all the kids still wore party hats. Multicolored balloons were tied to the white picket fence. In the house, my mother and sisters were cleaning up the mess in the kitchen. My father and brothers-in-law had retreated to the church under the pretense of doing urgent work in the sanctuary. They'd do anything to get away from the wild bunch in the front yard.
Kiwi ran up the steps to the wraparound front porch and climbed into the porch swing. Two of the older kids gently pushed the swing, eliciting giggles from him.
“He needs me right now,” I said with certainty. “We’ll be joining you in Israel next summer. I promise. I wouldn’t miss it. When he’s a little older, I’ll come back to full-time field work.”
“He seems perfectly happy, all things considered,” Isabella observed.
“He’s never even had a cold,” I said as we climbed the steps to the porch. I scooped Kiwi up in my arms and kissed his forehead. He gave me a hug.
Tim held the screen door open for Isabella and I as we entered the house, the rest of the kids darting in between us. “He’s so much like Connor it’s scary sometimes,” I went on. “He walked and talked by six months, he started to read at fourteen months. On the downside, he got a head start on the Terrible Twos.”
“I’ll bet he’s a real handful,” Tim said.
“He is,” I said with bittersweet pride. “He hates to sleep. He fights it every night. Connor never wanted to waste a minute. He slept only when he couldn’t fight it any longer.”
As we entered the house, Kiwi stroked my cheek affectionately. “Don’t cry, Mummy. Daddy’s coming.”
Tim gave me a disapproving look. “Have you been telling him that?”
I shook my head. “I talk to him about his father, but I don’t know where that comes from.”
“I’ll bet.”
“I don’t see anything of me in him, to be perfectly honest. I think I was just the incubator,” I went on. Kiwi had his father’s blue eyes and light brown hair. He’d also inherited Connor’s mischievous smile. “He’s going to be the worst nightmare of a lot of girls’ fathers by the time he’s sixteen,” I predicted.
Isabella, always the photographer, noticed the large framed photograph I had placed on the mantle. It was Connor, standing in the desert with two ghostly figures, looking at something only he could see. “Darcy got an award for that one, didn’t he?” Isabella asked.
I nodded. “I think he was being sarcastic when he titled it The Deliverer,” I said. “I never thought I’d ever be grateful for Darcy’s tenacity, but if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have even one photo of Connor to show his son.”
“How’d he manage that, anyway?” Isabella asked. “Connor never let anyone photograph him.”
“Darcy never quite made it into the twenty-first century,” I said, pouring tea for us. “He still uses film. He had one roll in his bag and one in the camera.”
“I wasn’t sure I should even forward that package to you when Darcy sent it,” Tim admitted, taking a drink.
“I’m glad you did,” I said. “He’s doing an exhibit in New York, you know.”
“He is?” Isabella was interested. “Somehow that sort of thing never seemed to be Darcy’s style.”
“It surprised me, too,” I said. “It’s a collection from all the photos he took in Egypt and Israel. They’re calling the exhibit Images of Hope.”
Kiwi climbed down from my lap. “Call Daddy!” he repeated.
“He keeps saying that he spoke to Connor,” I said. “He’s got such a vivid imagination.”
“What do you expect?” Tim asked. “You talk to him about Connor every day, you show him photos—”
“Kiwi is going to know his father,” I insisted.
“Honey, it’s been two years,” he said gently. “You have to let it go. They probably killed him within the first twenty-four hours. If he were still alive, he would have contacted you long before now. And even if by some miracle he is alive, they’ve had him for the past two years. He may not be the same man a
nymore.”
Isabella placed a hand on her husband’s forearm. “Tim,” she said softly.
“She needs to face facts, babe,” he insisted. “This isn’t healthy for either of them.” He turned to me again. “How long do you plan to go on waiting for him?”
I took a deep breath. “I know he’s gone, Tim, but I can’t stop loving him.”
“Still got the gun?” he asked.
I nodded. “My parents hate having it in the house, but I still can’t completely let my guard down,” she admitted. “There’s a part of me that still panics if someone is driving behind me for more than a few blocks, or if a stranger comes to the door. The other day, there was a Hummer behind me. I drove twenty miles out of the way to keep it from following us home. When Kiwi starts school, I’ll be a basket case. I worry every time he gets out of my sight.”
“This isn’t good for your son, Lynne,” Tim warned. “You’ve got him waiting for a father who’s never going to come. How do you think that’s going to affect him when he’s older? You know how tough it was for Connor, believing all those years his mother had abandoned him.”
“His father didn’t abandon him,” I said, annoyed.
Kiwi, bored, climbed up into the window seat to watch a dove that had landed on the porch railing and his curiosity was piqued. He got down and went to the door. I never saw him go outside…
104
Connor
I saw him at the front door as I was getting off the bike. Even though I hadn't seen my son in almost two years, I recognized him immediately. He came out onto the porch and stood at the top of the steps.
“Hello, there,” I called out to him.
Chasing the Wind Page 29