Keep You Close

by Karen Cleveland

  “Yeah.” I avert my eyes, though slightly too late. An awkward silence hangs between us. I need to tell him about Mom. I need to tell him his grandmother’s dead.

  He sinks down on the loveseat, stretches his long legs out. “What happened tonight?”

  It’s impossible to concentrate. I want to cry for my mother, for myself. But I have to think, to focus on the danger at hand. Zachary’s all I have left. I have to protect my son, and then I can mourn my mother. “What have you heard?”

  “There was an attack.”

  I nod.

  “Some VIP died—that’s what the news kept saying.”

  “Three people were murdered.”

  “Three?” He blinks. “I went to bed before I heard the details.” He reaches for the remote, turns on the television. It’s tuned to a local station, and it’s breathless coverage of the attack, even more frantic all these hours later.

  There’s video footage of the exterior of the hotel, the flashing lights of dozens of first responders. I force myself to watch. The screen switches to cellphone pictures pulled from social media: a sobbing woman in a ruffled gown, terrified men in tuxedos, a sheet-draped stretcher being loaded into an ambulance. Director Lee’s picture pops up on the screen, beside Halliday’s.

  Zachary’s gaze is locked on the screen. His face is pale and stricken.

  He didn’t know Halliday was one of the victims.

  Shit.

  Halliday’s his father, monster or not. He was in my son’s life, however briefly, and now he’s gone. He’s lost his grandmother and his father on the same day.

  “Zachary—”

  “How did they die?” He’s still staring at the screen, in shock.

  “Some kind of poison.”

  Zachary lifts the remote again, changes the channel. More praise of Lee’s career, then an ad for antacids.

  “Must have happened right after I got there, huh?”

  That’s why he thinks I made him leave. He has no idea I put the pieces together just before it happened, that he was a key part of the puzzle. “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Terrible,” he murmurs.

  The station replays the vice president’s remarks vowing there would be no attack. There’s a profile on what little is known about the Freedom Solidarity Movement. Repeated mentions of missing CCTV footage. Dylan Taylor’s picture pops up on the screen. An old one—his hair’s buzzed short, and he’s grinning broadly. Possible Terrorist? reads the caption.

  The screen switches to a live shot outside the hotel, a sea of cameras and reporters, floodlights illuminating the area. The reporter on the scene launches into a spiel on the investigation into Dylan Taylor, the hunt for accomplices. FSM associates are being rounded up and questioned. No arrests yet.

  Noon tomorrow.

  “Jesus, Mom, what is it?”

  I shake my head, because I can’t get words to form. “I’m sorry,” I stammer.

  Fear flares in his eyes. “Do they think it was me?”

  Not yet. I shake my head.

  “Then what?” Confusion clouds his features.

  “Just…everything.”

  “Mom, dammit, for once, tell me what’s going on!”

  His fury startles me.

  His features soften. “Oh my God—is it Grandma?”

  My throat grows so tight I don’t know if I’ll be able to respond. Grandma. In my mind’s eye I see the big bear hugs she used to give him. The smile that lit her face whenever she saw him. God, she loved my son.

  “She passed away, Zachary. She had a heart attack. They couldn’t save her.” I say the words, but in my mind I’m picturing her at the top of those stairs, a faceless man behind her, pushing. They tried to kill her. Did they succeed in the hospital?

  Does it matter? Either way, they murdered her.

  Guilt washes over me. Tears burn in my eyes.

  “She died?” His voice is a whisper.

  “She loved you very much, Zachary.” A tear spills down my cheek.

  “I loved her, too.”

  “I know, sweetheart. And she knew that, too.”

  He buries his face in his hands, and his shoulders begin to heave. I have this urge to hug him, to comfort him, but I stay seated. Mom would have hugged him.

  “She was always there for me,” he weeps, lifting his tear-stained face.

  Mom’s accusation rings in my head. Your work is your life. Zachary comes second. He always has.

  I stare at the picture on the television screen, the anchor’s mouth moving. And then my eyes drift down to the overturned chessboard. A game, just a game. Trying to protect the king, above all else. But it’s my son who’s the vulnerable piece, and the danger he’s in is real.

  The television screen goes abruptly blank. The Breaking News screen appears, those big bold letters, the distinctive chimes.

  The anchor appears. “We’re going live to the Naval Observatory,” she intones, “where the vice president is about to speak.”

  The screen changes again, a close-up of an empty podium in a nondescript room. The vice president walks up to the podium, head bowed, his wife by his side, his hand in hers. He looks up at the cameras. There are dark circles under his eyes, which are wet with unshed tears.

  “My fellow Americans,” he begins. “Tonight…tonight a horrific terrorist attack took the lives of two great patriots. I stood before you last week and pledged that no such attack would take place, and for that I am truly sorry.”

  His voice falters. He pauses and wipes a tear away. “I’ve decided I can no longer in good faith serve as your vice president. I am heeding calls to step down. I have submitted a letter of resignation to the president. And he has accepted it.”

  There are audible gasps from the pool of reporters.

  “It has been the honor of my life to serve you.” He puts a hand over his heart and looks directly into the camera. “Thank you, and God bless America.”

  He reaches for his wife’s hand and steps away from the podium. His face has aged decades in a week, and I understand it perfectly. I see my own emotions reflected in his expression. I see the tremendous, overpowering, all-encompassing guilt.

  The anchor begins stammering, struggling to figure out what to say. A panelist jumps in, speculates that this only would have happened if the president requested it, attributes it to the majority leader’s influence.

  I tune out. All I can think about is that look on the vice president’s face. He didn’t see a threat, and he told the truth. I didn’t see it either, because it wasn’t real. It wasn’t a threat from an anarchist group. It was a threat from the Russians. Using extremists as cover.

  The threat didn’t exist. He spoke the truth, and now he’s forever disgraced, his career in ruins.

  “I didn’t even get to tell Grandma the good news,” Zachary says.

  It takes me a moment to realize he has spoken. “What good news?”

  “I got in. First-choice school.”

  An overwhelming sorrow fills me. But I force a smile at him. No matter what happens next, we don’t have much more time together. And suddenly I desperately want things to be as normal as possible. I want to sear every detail of every precious moment with him into my memory.

  “Berkeley,” I say softly. To think I was once worried about how far away he’d be. Now I’m worried about his freedom, about his life.

  “Georgetown,” he says.

  “Georgetown?”

  He looks sheepish. “I want to be closer to home.”

  I want to be closer to home. I’m not sure he’s ever said words that mean more. God, how much I would have loved to hear him say that a week ago.

  I join him on the loveseat and wrap him in a hug. It’s an instinct really, and one that seems to catch both of us by surprise. He’s tense at first,
but then he puts his arms around me and hugs me back tightly, and I sink my face into his shoulder.

  “My job,” I confess, because I need to tell him what’s going on, but I don’t even know where to start. “I never thought it would affect you the way it has.”

  “What your job did was prove that there are good people in the world. People who do what’s right. That the good guys always win. Isn’t that what Grandma always says?”

  Tears blind me. “You’re more important to me than anything in the world,” I tell him, loving him for his innocence. “And I’d do anything to protect you. You know that, right?”

  He gives me a smile, a sweetly wistful one. “I’d do anything to protect you, too, Mom.” He stands up, stoops to kiss the top of my head. “I know you don’t believe it, but I would.”

  I watch him head toward the stairs, disappear from my sight. He doesn’t look back. And I sit alone in miserable silence, overcome with grief and guilt.

  Make the call, agree to work for the Russians. Protect my son, betray my country. Betray everything I believe in, everything I stand for.

  Or tell the truth. Assume that no one will believe me, not without proof. That Zachary and I will both end up in jail. Assume there’s a very good chance he’ll never make it out alive.

  I take out the phone, the one Jackson gave me. All I have to do is call the number programmed in it, and Zachary will have a future. It’s the only way Zachary will have a future.

  I’ve never felt more hopeless in my life.

  And then I hear the knock at the door.

  * * *

  —

  It’s them, isn’t it? The police. Coming to arrest my son.

  I’m supposed to have until noon tomorrow. Jackson told me I’d have until noon tomorrow.

  They can’t be here now.

  If they’re here, time’s up.

  More knocking, more insistent this time.

  I drop the phone, force myself to stand, to walk to the front door.

  I look through the peephole, and the sight shocks me.

  I turn off the alarm, unlock the door, open it. I stare at the woman there for several moments. Then Vivian speaks.

  “Can we talk?”

  Chapter 60

  Wordlessly, I usher her inside, close and lock the door behind her. As I reset the alarm, she takes two steps into the foyer.

  “What’s going on?” I demand. In my mind I’m back in those woods, watching the man with the tattoo. Snapping that photograph of her husband. He’s part of this. Is she?

  She glances around the room at the scattered chess pieces, then at me. Her face is drawn, dark circles under her eyes. She looks haunted, scared. “Could we step out back?”

  I grab a jacket from the coat rack and lead her out to the back deck.

  It’s frigid out, and it’s that eerily still sort of night, where there’s no breeze, no traffic. Everything’s hushed and motionless.

  “After you left my house,” Vivian begins, once we sit across from each other at the patio table, “I couldn’t stop thinking about what you said. What it all means…” She shakes her head, like she’s banishing an unpleasant thought. “You mentioned Marta….Well, I talked to her.”

  “You did?” My thoughts are spinning, unable to process this. Where is she? Is she okay?

  Is Marta working for the Russians?

  “She’s out of the country,” Vivian says, like she can read my mind. “No access to her cellphone. She said—”

  She glances around, then leans forward. “She said that if you have suspicions about Jackson, they’re justified. That she trusts you, that it doesn’t matter if we don’t have proof. That we need to look into it, fully. So I did.”

  She believes me.

  “We have an asset,” she continues quietly. “Someone highly placed in the Russian government, highly reliable.”

  Justice Ranger. I flash back to sitting in O’Neill’s with Marta, hearing her mention a new asset, an important one.

  “He’s in the U.S. right now. I went to see him. I showed him a series of pictures, and I included Jackson.”

  “Did he recognize him?” My heart is thumping in my throat.

  She nods. “Took a long hard look, said he’s seen him before. In Moscow, years ago. Sources have been telling us there’s a high-level plant in the U.S. government. But until now we haven’t known who it is.”

  Until now.

  “Jackson’s working for the Russians, Steph.”

  Oh, thank God. Vivian knows the truth, too.

  “It’s not proof that would hold up in court,” she cautions.

  “But it’s something.” It’s enough to make people listen. “So what now?”

  “An official debriefing. The source is on his way to a safe house. Director Drake’s headed there, too.”

  On his way. This is happening, and it’s happening now.

  “We need to figure out if this goes deeper than just Jackson,” Vivian continues. “How much leverage the Russians have, how many people on the inside.”

  “Yeah,” I murmur. In my mind I’m picturing the other intended victims. Drake, Shields. They’ve got people on the inside, in the Agency and the Senate. Of course this goes deeper than Jackson. A hell of a lot deeper. “They’ve got leverage all right.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.” Her dark circles look even more pronounced. I think of her husband, and for the first time I wonder if she’ll be completely surprised by the truth, or if she suspects he’s not loyal. “I want you in that debriefing, Stephanie. I need you to tell us everything you know. Will you come with me?”

  She believes me. But her husband’s entangled in this, and now she knows the truth about Jackson.

  She’s in danger. And I’m the one that caused it. I’m the one that dragged her back into this. What role does her husband play in this conspiracy? What kind of threat does he pose? To her? To her children?

  “Yes.” Of course I’ll go. I’ll tell them everything. And it’s going to change her life forever. “But I need my son to come with us. He’s part of this, too.”

  I want them to see the truth in his eyes. And I want him with me. I need to keep him safe.

  She nods like it doesn’t surprise her. “I’ll wait in the car.”

  Together, we walk back inside. She heads out the front door, and I walk up the stairs, into his bedroom.

  “Zachary,” I say. He stirs in his bed, but doesn’t wake.

  My mind flashes back to that day, years ago. The sleepy boy in the backseat, as we headed out of town.

  Mommy, are we safe?

  We left our home that day, never returned to it. All to escape an enemy. Did we ever really escape?

  And now. Now the enemy’s even deadlier. Mom and Scott are dead. Are we going to have to run again? Will we ever return?

  I head into his closet and look around. I spot the place on the lower shelf where I found that gun, an eternity ago, when all of this started. There’s a duffel bag on the floor. I’ll pack a few things for him, in case we can’t come back.

  I reach for the bag, and I have this vision of packing our bags, all those years ago.

  Mommy, are we safe?

  “Zachary,” I say again, louder this time.

  I grab a couple of pairs of jeans from the shelves, a couple of shirts.

  I can hear the rustle of his sheets. He’s waking up. Finally.

  I unzip the duffel, and a quick glance inside tells me it’s not empty; it needs to be cleared out before I start packing. I reach in and pull out a hooded sweatshirt, then a knit cap.

  There’s more underneath, at the bottom of the bag. An ATM card. Mom’s ATM card.

  He needed money, Stephanie. Her voice fills my head.

  Beside it, a scrap of paper, Zachary’s scrawled writing
. Walnut/Carver.

  In my mind I see that photo Jackson showed me, the stack of cash being exchanged on that street corner. Walnut and Carver.

  The apprehension has morphed into a sickening sense of dread.

  I hear Zachary’s voice in my mind. I’d do anything to protect you, too, Mom.

  He can’t get away with this. We should make him pay.

  No.

  “Mom?” His voice, right behind me. I turn, and there he is, towering above me. He looks from me to the bag, the items spread in front of me. Clothing, address, ATM card. He looks fragile, like a deer frozen in headlights. When his eyes land back on me, they’re naked with guilt.

  There’s a ringing in my ears. None of this is real, it can’t be. Because I see the look on my son’s face. I know the look.

  “Zachary,” I breathe. “What did you do?”

  Chapter 61

  “What did you do?” I say again.

  He reaches out for me, like he wants to be held.

  “It was you.” My heart feels like it’s clenched in someone’s fist. This isn’t happening. It can’t be. “I trusted you. I believed you.” I don’t even know why I’m saying it, why it matters.

  “Mom, I—”

  “People died.” I wait for him to deny it; I need him to deny it.

  “It was just supposed to be that bastard Halliday,” my son says.

  In my mind I hear my mom: You don’t know him the way you should.

  And Scott: You don’t know him as well as you think you do.

  The ringing is back in my ears. I think I’m going to faint.

  Zachary did this.

  My son is a killer.

  “Why, Zachary?”

  “He deserved it.”

  “It wasn’t just Halliday—” I whisper.

  “I don’t know what happened, Mom! Dylan—he must have screwed up.”

  In my mind I see those photos, the ones Jackson gave me. He knows Dylan. Knew Dylan. I picture the boy sprawled on the floor of that kitchen. “Tell me what happened. Tell me, Zachary.”

  “When I did that DNA test, I found…other family members. A half brother. Dylan.”