His face would be added back to the database soon, if it hadn’t been already. Clandestine operatives were kept out of the facial-recognition database, but enough time had elapsed that the bodies would certainly have been found. Grange had to assume someone would make the connection. He was now on the run.
He drove in silence. His eye wandered to the manila envelope resting on the passenger seat. It would do much of the heavy lifting. He looked behind him, through the delivery van’s small rear window and into the cargo compartment. The cargo appeared secure. The sight of it reassured him and gave him a feeling of satisfaction. The end was in sight.
Grange eyed the street signs as he passed through an intersection. He was on time. Things were on track. One final charade.
It would all be over soon.
55
It wasn’t operationally smart and it wasn’t tactically necessary, but Sam had reached the end of her wits, which made her choice both smart and necessary. You had to make allowances for your humanity; when you reached the end of your rope, your humanity sure as hell wasn’t going to make any allowances for you.
She didn’t just want to see Brock, she needed to see him. It had been more than three months since he had shipped out on his desert deployment. Even before the Sarah Beth McCulley tragedy, their relationship had subsisted on emails and short, strained conversations over sketchy phone connections. He was worried for her safety and weary of her work schedule and he wanted her to quit Homeland. He wanted kids and picket fences and barbecues on Saturday nights, and she wasn’t sure she was ready.
And then Sarah Beth was killed and the rest of Sam’s world shattered around her, and she hadn’t heard Brock’s voice since the day the CIA broke into their home. All the danger and disaster she’d endured in the ensuing week underscored Brock’s misgivings about her occupation.
Worse, nobody at Homeland—or anywhere else in the federal government—had stood up for her. Everything was on her shoulders, with only Hayward to share the burden with. She had fought hard to survive and get out from under the situation, but William Nichols’s murder had taken the last bit of wind out of her sails. She was done, out of gas, out of ideas, ready to surrender, ready to melt into Brock’s embrace and cast everything else aside, even if just for a moment.
She went home. She took Hayward with her. She did it as smartly as she could, fully expecting to have to contend with a police detail. She wasn’t wrong, but their cover was solid—a cable repair van, liberated far too easily from the cable company’s livery—and the bored cop in the squad car was much more interested in what was happening on his smartphone than whatever might have been happening in meatspace.
They took a bag of tools from inside the van and made their way around to the side of the house, out of sight from the street. If her surveillance system was still operating, she’d certainly be caught on video, but it was a risk she decided to take. She needed to feel Brock’s embrace, to hear him say he believed in her competence and her innocence, to feel him rally behind her, to lean on his fiery strength, to drink in his scent and return just for a moment to that place where everything in life was just right.
She shivered with anticipation as she snuck into her own home, Hayward a few paces behind, her earlier misgivings about his unknown loyalties all but forgotten after his midnight meltdown in the empty safe house.
It hit her as soon as she entered the home. Something was wrong. She could feel it. Brock wasn’t at home, but he had been there very recently. She knew because she saw a note written in his hand.
She picked it up, hope filling her heart, a smile growing on her face, warmth welling within her.
But as she read his words, her mouth opened in stunned disbelief. She slumped to the floor, the world blurry through sudden tears, a hole ripped in the center of her.
Hayward picked up the note.
I love you. I always have, and I always will, but I’m tired of living in fear of losing you. I can’t keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. I can’t do this any longer. Goodbye, Sam.
The world turned blurry and Sam’s mind shut down. Hayward said sympathetic things to her but they didn’t register. She sat slumped on the floor, wondering why she bothered to draw breath, wondering why her heart bothered to beat when her universe had just imploded. Hayward spoke again, urgency in his voice, but Sam ignored him. Over? Just like that? With a fucking note? She couldn’t believe it. Sure, Brock had threatened. The strain had been wearing him down for some time. Fault lines had appeared. She hadn’t ignored them, hadn’t ignored the importance of what he was saying, and had even come to agree with him. But she thought she had more time to figure everything out.
After a while she felt Hayward hoist her to her feet. “We’ve got to go,” he said. “We can’t stay here. The cop will get suspicious.”
She was unresponsive. He walked her toward the door. “Is there anything you need to pick up before we leave?” he asked.
She didn’t respond. Her bodyweight leaned against his. Her knees were weak and the room was spinning.
“Think, Sam!”
But she wasn’t processing anything. The stars had fallen from the firmament. The earth had been yanked from beneath her. Her world was shattered.
Hayward’s grip dug into her arm. “Now, Sam!” His voice was an urgent hiss in her ear. “Get it together! That cop is bound to come looking.”
She nodded but didn’t reply. He opened the door. Daylight spilled in.
She squinted, still disoriented. Hayward took off at a brisk walk toward the cable repair van. Sam trudged forward, dazed, her wits still scattered.
Hayward turned around and hooked his hand around her bicep. “You’ve got to walk, Sam,” he whispered. “The patrolman is watching us.”
I don’t give a damn, said a voice in her head. Jail. Suspension. Trial. Conviction. Murder. Whatever. I don’t give a damn. What was the point? It all suddenly seemed meaningless, fruitless, senseless. Her feet stopped moving.
“Sam, come on!” Hayward said.
Her life had barely fit together before, but it was in shambles now.
“Move, dammit!” Hayward said. “I’m not going out like this.”
But her feet wouldn’t move. She looked off in the distance, eyes unfocused. She felt Hayward’s grip tighten around her arm, felt him pulling her forward. Still, she couldn’t muster the concern to move. Throw me in a cage. Shoot me between the eyes. I don’t fucking care.
The squad car door opened. The patrolman stepped out with glistening black shoes, dark blue trouser legs, a high-and-tight hairdo, and mirrored sunglasses straight out of the cliché. He walked toward them, speaking into the radio mic clipped to his lapel.
* * *
Sam didn’t move. Her face was slack. There wasn’t any fight left in her. If she registered the import of the cop’s interest, Hayward certainly didn’t see it.
Thirty yards separated them from the cop. It was ten paces to the van. Hayward made a decision. He bent his knees and hoisted Sam over his shoulder.
“Stop!” the policeman shouted.
Hayward ran.
“Police!”
He accelerated toward the van, his gait awkward under Sam’s weight.
“Stop!”
Hayward heaved open the cargo doors, dropped Sam into the darkness, and slammed the doors shut. He wheeled and sprinted to the driver’s door, catching sight of the patrolman, who was now at a dead sprint, his giant belt a blur of jiggling nightstick and gun and Taser and handcuffs and whatever the hell else they strapped to themselves.
“Stay right where you are!”
Right. Custody wouldn’t do Hayward any favors, and even if there was the smallest chance he could talk his way out of the predicament—which, by now, there certainly wasn’t—he couldn’t spare the time.
He leapt into the driver’s seat and twisted the ignition.
“Get out of the vehicle, now!”
Hayward saw the patrolman reach for his handgun. A h
undred dead unarmed citizens every year, but they never fucking learn, he thought. He jerked the van into gear and stomped on the gas, accelerating past the gun-wielding patrolman.
A car chase in a cable van? Those odds were lower than the Cubs winning the World Series, so Hayward decided to even things out. He wheeled the big van in a tight circle, hopping the curb on the opposite side of the street from Sam’s house, and straightened the wheel so the patrol car was in front of them. He refined his aim, then slammed on the gas, plunging forward.
The force of the collision surprised him. The van struck the cop car at an angle and caromed off. Hayward fought with the wheel, overcorrected, then got the van under control. He mashed the gas pedal. The engine seemed fine and the van accelerated. The hood was folded a bit and the quarter-panel might never be the same, but the thing seemed drivable.
A look in the rearview mirror told him the same was not likely true for the patrol car. The left front wheel was a long way from true; it pointed at a crazy angle and the tire was flat. It wasn’t going anywhere without a tow truck.
Hayward turned right at the first cross street and accelerated. “Now what?” he said to no one in particular.
56
Hayward parked the cable repair van on a residential street and commandeered another vehicle, another large sedan, relying on lessons he’d learned in the Agency’s cloak-and-dagger training program. The theft added to their list of felonies, which had an inverse effect on their likelihood of evading capture. But they weren’t playing the long game; they were scratching and clawing to buy extra minutes. Extra years were laughably out of the question.
Hayward parked at an unattended above-ground lot on the outskirts of the city near a nouveau-kitsch shopping center full of chain restaurants trying to pass as authentic.
Sam remained silent and unmoving in the passenger seat.
Hayward broke the pained silence. “Now what?”
Sam shook her head a fraction of an inch.
“Grange doesn’t answer his phone,” Hayward said. “There’s no blockbuster story to bring the Agency to their knees. You’re still wanted. Katrin and Joao are going to die like dogs. I’ll be next.”
Sam said nothing.
“The CIA must have a hundred safe houses around here, maybe two hundred, all hidden in plain sight,” Hayward said.
Sam stared straight ahead. If she was listening, she gave no outward sign.
“I don’t understand it,” Hayward said. “They want the files. The whole operation in Spain and Singapore was all about getting those damned files. Why the hell won’t they close the deal?”
Sam said nothing.
Hayward grew sullen. Katrin was suffering unimaginable atrocities somewhere nearby, yet there he sat, idle and impotent.
Some time passed as they sat in silence. Consumers came and went, exchanging money and life energy for mediocre food and bags full of shiny objects to add to their houses full of shiny objects. What’s the fucking point of any of this? he wondered. No one would notice if I opted out. He glanced over at Sam sitting catatonic with a gun in her lap. He wasn’t having suicidal thoughts per se; he just wondered what it might be like to stop living. It seemed damned appealing right about now.
Just then, Sam returned to the living and said, “Of course,” in a small, quiet voice.
Hayward looked at her. “Huh?”
She shook her head. “Couldn’t be simpler.” There was a little bit of idle wonderment in her voice.
“What are you talking about?”
Sam didn’t respond for a while. “You’re living proof,” she finally said.
“Dammit,” he said. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“A house divided.”
Hayward threw up his hands in exasperation.
She opened her car door and got out. “Trade places and give me the keys,” she said, the light suddenly back on behind her eyes. “We need to talk to Frank McCulley.”
57
Sam pulled into the driveway at a large home in Seven Corners. The neighborhood was aging but well cared for. The location was too near Capitol Hill to be a bargain yet too far away for an easy commute. Frank McCulley had chosen the worst of both worlds, Sam thought.
The yard was a bit overgrown and the house needed a coat of paint, but the home’s aristocratic bones still shined. Several of Sarah Beth’s toys were strewn about the yard. The McCulleys hadn’t yet brought themselves to clean them up after her death.
Sam rang the doorbell. Hayward rocked on his heels at her side, hands in his jacket pockets, undoubtedly with his hand wrapped around the grip of his pistol.
The door opened to reveal a gaunt woman with exhausted eyes and a dangerous frailty about her. She was in her late thirties but had aged a decade in the past week.
“You,” Elizabeth McCulley said. Sam hadn’t expected a warm welcome, but the rancor in the woman’s voice caught her off guard. It came from a place of profound pain, focused and sharpened by blame. “I’m calling the police,” Elizabeth McCulley said, swinging the door toward closed.
Sam reached out and stopped the door. “Mrs. McCulley,” she said. “Please don’t do that. Not yet.”
“Why not?” Elizabeth said. “You are responsible for my daughter’s death.”
Damn, those words stung. Sam’s eyes welled up. She couldn’t help it. Even after all she had endured since that day in the park, it was all still very raw and painful. She felt a lump form in her throat and she found herself nodding in agreement. “Maybe I am,” she said. “I don’t really know anymore. All I know is that I’m heartbroken for your loss.”
Elizabeth reached into her pocket and pulled out a cell phone. “You’re going to get what’s coming to you,” she said. There was real hatred in her eyes. Sam could tell it felt good to hate, to feel something with energy behind it, something other than the stifling, suffocating abyss of grief.
Sam put a gentle hand on Elizabeth’s arm. “You can do that in a minute,” she said, “but will you give me a moment first?”
Elizabeth studied Sam’s face. Sam suddenly felt self-conscious and vulnerable but she didn’t avert her eyes. After a long moment, Elizabeth opened the door and Sam and Hayward followed her inside.
The house was opulent and expensive. The air was heavy and oppressive, as if grief had invaded in force, driving the good air out.
Frank McCulley appeared. “What is this?” he asked.
His wife put her hand on his arm. “Ms. Jameson, honey,” she said.
“I know who she is, but I don’t know why you let her in—”
Elizabeth silenced her husband with a look and a squeeze of his arm. “I want to hear what she has to say.”
McCulley sized Sam up, then looked at Hayward, then again at Sam. “I have the Metro PD on speed dial. They’ll respond immediately.”
“May we sit down?” Sam asked.
McCulley motioned toward a sitting room. There was an awkward moment when they tried to figure out who should sit where. Elizabeth disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a tray full of coffee. Sam was grateful for the gesture and even more grateful for the caffeine.
When they were settled, McCulley made a motion with his hands as if to say, “What’s this all about?”
Hayward looked down at his shoes.
Sam took a deep breath. “It’s been running over and over in my mind, that day in the park, and I’ve been trying to figure out what went wrong ever since.”
The McCulleys said nothing.
The lump settled in Sam’s throat again. She couldn’t stop the tears from welling in her eyes. Several escaped and wandered down her cheeks. She wiped them away and took another deep breath. “I am sorry. More than words can express. More than I can grasp right now. Maybe it was my fault, maybe it wasn’t. I don’t really know. But I do know that your daughter’s death has broken me in a way I’ve never been broken before.”
McCulley rose. “You want absolution, go see a priest. There’s a
warrant for your arrest and I’m calling the police.”
“Wait,” Sam said. “Not yet. You can call the police in a minute, if you want. But there are a few things I need to know first.”
McCulley glared at her. There was hardness and resolve on his face. He shook his head and turned to leave.
“Please,” Sam said. “It may be important to a lot of people. Then you can do whatever you want.”
McCulley stopped. He looked to his wife, who nodded ever so slightly. He looked back at Sam for a long moment. “Okay,” he finally said.
He sat back down on the sofa, but he didn’t touch his wife. She didn’t touch him. They weren’t doing well with Sarah Beth’s death, Sam surmised. Losing a child was often the death knell for a marriage, and it struck Sam that the pall over the McCulley house might have had more than one source. She felt for them. She could certainly relate to relationship troubles.
She cleared her throat. “If you’ll indulge me for just a couple of questions.”
The couple nodded. The tiredness and pain in both of their eyes was difficult to look at. Sam thought her own face probably wasn’t much cheerier. She forged ahead. “I’m curious about how long you’ve worked for Senator Stanley.”
“Fifteen years,” McCulley said. “Maybe sixteen.”
“You’ve been his chief of staff for that entire time?”
He shook his head. “I took over that job around nine years ago.”
“You run his calendar, right?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m curious, who does the senator meet with?”
McCulley chuckled without humor. “A senior senator on the Defense and Intelligence committees? It would take me a month to list all the ass kissers.”
“I mean, does he ever ask for meetings with anyone?”
“You mean, as opposed to accepting meeting requests from other people?”
The Blowback Protocol: A Sam Jameson Thriller Page 26