“I have no idea. You broke the screen,” I lament, showing him the battered device.
“Is the FBI monitoring your phone?” Louisiana asks as the phone makes another garbled ring.
“No, I don’t think so.” At least I can’t think of why they would be. I already told them I’d cooperate.
“Answer it.”
“Hello?”
“Maryland, it’s me,” the voice informs me.
“Boston? Where are you calling from?”
“Is that him? Put it on speaker, bro,” Louisiana demands. I oblige by pushing the speaker button, hoping it still works.
“Louisiana’s there?” the garbled voice comes over the tattered speaker.
“Yeah, I’m here. Where are you, bro?”
“I just left the sleep lab in Steven’s car.”
“Who’s Steven?” I ask Louisiana. He just shakes his head.
“To go where, bro? You have half the FBI and every cop in D.C. lookin’ for you.”
“I know who the mole is.”
“What?” we both exclaim simultaneously.
“Who?” I continue to probe.
“It’s Gina.”
I’m floored. My mouth literally hangs open as Boston goes on to explain the dream he had and how he’s sure of it. Louisiana just listens, showing no reaction. This is just another day at the office for him apparently.
“What are you going to do?” I ask him when he finishes the explanation, still not believing what I just heard.
“Go home and confront her.”
“Wait for me, bro,” Louisiana demands.
“No, you guys have done enough. I need to do this on my own. I wanted to thank you both. For everything.”
“Boston, don’t do this …” I plead before hearing the click and realizing he hung up.
“He’s gone.”
“Call him back.”
“How? I don’t know what number he called from,” I advise, showing him the broken display. He tells me the number to the burner phone from memory and I dial it.
“It went to voice mail,” I relay to Louisiana.
“He turned it off. Damn. Oh, well. What do you have to eat in this place?”
“Hey, man, we have to go after him.”
“Look at you, all eager to jump into the fray for once. He doesn’t want us involved, bro. I’m gonna respect his wishes. I don’t get myself messed up in domestic issues.”
“He’s not going to just confront her. He’s going to kill her.”
“Is that supposed to be a bad thing?”
His suddenly flippant attitude about this annoys me. He came here demanding information to help Boston, and now when he really needs our assistance, he wants a damn sandwich. I swear I’ll never understand him.
“Despite everything that’s happened, he’s still my best friend,” I argue. “And yours. Do you want to see it end like this when you can dream up a much more eloquent way to bump her off?”
“Good point. Where does he live? I’ll drive,” he says after reflecting on things for a moment. That was far easier than I expected.
“Like hell you will. We’re going to end up with the FBI at some point. I don’t want to add being in possession of a stolen vehicle to my rap sheet when we do.” I walk over to the small table at the door and grab my keys, jingling them.
“Bro, you drive a Malibu. The car I stole at least has balls.”
“We can argue about this, or we can go.”
“Fine, I’ll drive your car.”
I love my car. When it was time to buy, I showed up at the dealership and bought it right off the lot. They had the blue one I wanted, but I went with the light gray one that had the options I was looking for. There’s no way I’m letting one of the swamp people drive it.
“I don’t think so. If you’re in, you’re a passenger.”
“Seriously, bro, you drive like my grandmother. I want to get there before tomorrow.”
“Don’t make me kick your ass again,” he says, walking towards the door.
“Kick my ass?” I question as he passes me. “Wait. We need to do something first.”
“What? Do you need to fix your hair or something? We’re wasting time.”
I pull the card I was handed earlier tonight out of my pants pocket. I pinch it between my fingers and hold it in the air. I was going to ditch it, but now I’m glad I didn’t.
“Get some help.”
.
~ Chapter 68 ~
fbi AGENT zach BRUHTE
Remsen pulls up outside of the glass building and slams the beast of a car into park. I survey the street and then the façade of the building. Not a bad place to hide out.
“This is the place?”
“The only number dialed from Andrea Davis’s house was to a cell phone belonging to a Steven Riggs. He’s an employee at the Sölvason Sleep Disorders Center.”
“An employee there confirmed she was here?”
“Roger that. She was told Tara Winters was spending the day as part of a job interview or something.”
“Then she’s still here,” I add, studying the façade of the glass building.
“Do you want to wait for a tactical team?” he asks me.
“No.”
“He’s armed, Zach. You know that better than anyone.”
“And if he wanted me dead, he already had his opportunity. No, we play this one on our own. Just be cautious. If he’s in there, he’s not going anywhere.”
We enter the building, flash our badges to the guard, and take the elevator up to the floor the sleep center occupies. When the doors open, we step into the reception area. In the waiting area to the right, a woman is crying, being comforted by a scrawny man. Knowing people are here, I draw my weapon and Remsen follows suit.
“Who the hell are you?” the scarecrow barks, immediately recoiling at the sight of my weapon.
“Agent Zach Bruhte, and this is Agent Remsen. We’re with the FBI. Who are you?”
“I’m Steven Riggs, I work here.”
“Good. Have a seat,” I command before nodding to my partner. “Check the back.”
He returns the gesture and goes through the doors. His weapon is out and up, eyes searching for any movement that would indicate a threat. Leaving him to his business, I walk over to the couple in the waiting area.
“Doctor Winters?”
“Yes,” she sobs, with an affirmative nod.
“Where’s Hollinger? Is he here?”
“No,” she sniffles, “he’s gone now.”
“Where did he go?”
“I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Doctor Winters, he’s in a lot of trouble. Now’s not a good time to lie abou―”
“I told you, I don’t know! He didn’t tell me. If he did, I would tell you, but he didn’t.”
“She’s telling the truth, agent,” Steven adds, rushing to her defense.
“The back is clear,” Remsen says, returning from the hall while holstering his weapon. Knowing that our quarry isn’t here, I follow suit.
“Where is everyone?” I ask Steven.
“The staff has tonight off. It’s compensation for working weekends.”
“What about last night?”
“They were off last night, too.” That makes sense.
“Doctor Winters, where is Hollinger?” I press one last time, trying to catch her in a lie.
“I told you, I don’t know.” I don’t like the answer, but I believe her.
I sit in the chair next to her, on the opposite side of Steven. Whatever it was must have been very upsetting. Her eyes are red and puffy like she has been crying for some time. Steven’s consolations don’t look like they are helping ease her pain any.
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“He had another memory. He didn’t say what it was about.”
“Whatever it was, he was pretty rattled before he left,” Steven adds. It makes me wonder if this Steven guy is somehow coveri
ng for Tara.
“Steven, these memories Boston is having. Are they real?”
“I don’t know. You can never get in the mind of someone experiencing something like this, but I can tell you that I’ve never witnessed anything like it. From what I’ve seen, Doctor Winters’s diagnosis is a sound one. We just can’t figure out how it works. I can show you the EEG if you like.”
I don’t see the point of looking at wavy lines on a screen. The mission is to find Hollinger, not prove or disprove his diagnosis. I look at Remsen who shrugs. I get out of the chair and walk over to him.
“Are you thinking he saw the mole?” he asks me.
“Maybe, but let’s say he did. If you were him, who would you call first?”
“That friend of his. What’s his name? Louisiana? The one that helped him flee Colby Washington’s place.” Yeah, he would be on my list, too.
“What about telling your fiancée?”
“Yeah, he’d absolutely call her. We have agents outside her house. Do you want them to question her?”
“Send word to headquarters. Tell them what’s going on and have them get those agents to bring her in. Leave instructions for the agents to convince her to bring her phone.”
“You got it,” he tells me, pulling out his cell.
“Is there anything else you can tell me, Tara?” I ask, walking back over to the two of them.
“He kissed me,” she whispers, subconsciously touching her lips with her hand.
“He kissed you?” I repeat, confirming what I just heard.
“He kissed you?” Steven echoes. That was news to him too, I guess. “You didn’t tell me that.”
He’s engaged and his fiancée is beautiful. I can’t speak for the integrity of Hollinger’s character, but he doesn’t strike me as the type that messes around on his woman. Now I know something is seriously wrong. I sit back down next to her.
“I think you need to start again from the beginning, Doctor Winters.”
.
~ chapter 69 ~
eugene “Boston” hollinger
Georgia Avenue in Washington is a major artery that runs north-south and alongside the campus of Howard University. I could take a thousand different routes to get home, but at half past one in the morning, I figured this would be the quickest. It offers few cars, fewer lights, and leads me straight to where I want to go. I’m tempted to floor it but don’t want to risk getting stopped for speeding by a cop bored out of his mind on third shift.
I’ll take this road until it intersects Florida Avenue, then cut down Sixth Street to New York Avenue before picking up Interstate 395 south. Ironically, I will be passing the spot where we dumped our cell phones that night. It’s amazing how life sometimes comes full circle.
My mind races to understand what I saw tonight. Could I have misinterpreted what I saw? Could I be mistaken about the whole thing? I mean, Gina was the love of my life. Despite the friction we had in our relationship, she was always the one. How could she possibly have been the one who betrayed me?
Despite there being so many individual agencies, the intelligence community is very small. We all have friends, acquaintances, and contacts in our sister organizations, and we often end up comingling at happy hours across the city.
I almost didn’t go out the night we met. A colleague pleaded with me to go, and it was a last minute decision to take him up on it. His friend who met us there brought a girlfriend who happened to work on Capitol Hill. She, in turn, brought two of her girlfriends who happened to be dateless that night. One of them was a raven-haired beauty named Gina Attison.
I fell in love with Gina almost the moment I met her. We hit it off immediately, and the whirlwind romance that followed could rival the best Hollywood love stories. She has been everything a man could want in a woman. Could the whole thing be a cruel fraud, or is there some external factor that I’m missing?
Tara warned me that the drug Steven gave me could interfere with dreams. Could they alter the memory as well? Could this just be a chemical reaction that is making me believe that the woman I love is a traitor to the country I love just as much?
I remember the day I told her what happened to me in Iraq. We were in a quaint coffee shop in Georgetown when I first explained it to her. She sat and listened as I recalled the details of the moment that changed my life. Then she grabbed my hand, looked me in the eyes, and told me that she would be as supportive as she could.
Was she lying the whole time? How is it possible to share that moment and all the while know you were the person responsible for the attack that cost my friends’ lives? How heartless would you have to be to do that and then continue to hold that secret for so long afterwards? Was she only with me to keep me close to her knowing I could be the one who eventually finds her out?
So many question and so few answers. I’m trying to talk myself out of doing what I have to do. I know I’m trying to rationalize away what I know I saw. This memory was clear. It wasn’t something made up in a crazy, chemically altered state. The first part of the memory was exactly how I remembered the conversation with her. There’s no reason to believe that the second part wasn’t equally true.
I make the turn onto Florida Avenue and then a quick right onto Sixth Street. I look at the LED clock glowing on the dash. With every second that ticks by, every foot of asphalt I travel in my borrowed grey Chevy sedan, I get a little closer to the answers I crave and the one I have been searching for the longest.
I can’t stop my mind from racing. My thoughts are bouncing from question to question without waiting for answers. Perhaps it’s because there are none. Maybe it’s not something that can ever be understood. It doesn’t stop me from asking them though. Why? Why would she betray her country? Why would she betray me? Why would she accept my proposal for marriage knowing that she almost killed me in Iraq? What kind of person is capable of that?
Two years of searching all comes down to what happens in the next hour. The end of my journey is near, but not near enough. I press the gas pedal a little harder.
.
~ chapter 70 ~
Gina attison
The loud rap at the door announces I have company before the booming baritone voice calls out. “Miss Attison? It’s the FBI. Open up.”
Damn. It’s too soon. I can’t leave them out there forever, but looking at my two packed bags on the bed, I can’t afford to let them in, either. And I certainly can’t give them a reason to suspect anything. Running out of options, I walk down the hall and through the living room to open the door.
“Good evening, Miss Attison. May we come in?”
“It’s one thirty in the morning. Does the FBI always make a habit of showing up in the middle of the night?”
“May we come in, ma’am?” This guy isn’t going to let me guilt him into coming back tomorrow.
“I guess.” I make a spectacle of looking inconvenienced by running my hand through my hair as I step aside and let them in. “You guys are making a habit of intruding on me like this.”
“We apologize for that, but I’m afraid we have to impose on you once more. We need you to come with us, ma’am.”
“Go with you where?”
“Back to headquarters.”
“What for?” I ask, being sure to look puzzled.
“Your fiancé has a warrant out for his arrest on espionage charges and is on the run. We believe he may be reaching out to you and we really need to speak with him.”
“What makes you think―”
“We know all about the burner phone, Miss Attison. Now, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
How do they know that? A shiver runs up my spine. I hate being in the dark about what they know. Did they hear the call in the bathroom? Did they get to Maryland or Louisiana?
“What is that supposed to mean?” I stall.
“It means we would like your cooperation in this matter, but if you refuse, we will arrest you for obstruction of justice and do it that way.”
/>
“Either way, you’re coming with us,” his partner finishes.
“Fine, let’s go then,” I surrender.
“There’s one more thing, Miss Attison. We know you have the phone you talk to your fiancé on close by. It’s here on the premises somewhere. You need to bring it.” They’re bluffing.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“We think you do. We know it for a fact,” the first agent replies.
“Oh yeah? And how do you think you know that?”
“We’re not at liberty to say,” the second agent answers for him.
These guys answer for each other so much, it’s like they share a brain. Watching a tennis match involves less head movement than talking to these guys does. It’s infuriating.
“Then it must be true. Look, if you want to go, let’s go.”
“The phone first, Miss Attison.”
“Are you deaf? I told you I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The hard way it is,” the first agent says, pulling out a set of handcuffs.
Handcuffs limit my options. It would take them hours of searching to find the hiding place, but with enough effort, they certainly will. The moment they put me in cuffs, my options become seriously limited. I have to appear to cooperate or that’s exactly what’s going to happen.
“Okay … okay. You win. I’ll get it for you.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s in my purse on the kitchen counter. Do you want to get it or do you want me to?”
“Go ahead,” the second agent answers with an arm gesture that invites me into my own kitchen. I stalk over to the counter with the two agents following me close behind. I open my purse and make a show of rummaging through the oversized Michael Kors bag.
“I’d really love to know how you figured out how I had this …”
I pull the suppressed Sig Sauer out, aim, and squeeze the trigger, hitting the first agent right in the chest. His pal can’t react fast enough to do anything about what’s going to happen next. I shift the weapon to the left and fire again, the weapon making a satisfying chirp as the “silencer” muffles the sound of the shot. In the span of five seconds, both men are hemorrhaging blood onto my kitchen floor. I never did like the tile work in here.
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