by Meg O'Brien
She also remembered sharing this information with Alicia.
Looking through the folders on Alicia’s computer, she found one titled Travel, which seemed appropriate but too obvious. It was empty. Another, titled Dogs, drew her attention next, since she had never known Alicia to have a dog.
She hit the plus sign next to it and almost laughed when the subfolders came up and she saw that Alicia had adopted her idea. Under dogs was cats, then fish, then birds, and so on—a virtual Noah’s ark of files. Finally a subfolder named Coyote appeared. Remembering again that the coyote was known to be a trickster, Abby opened that folder. Inside it were several travel confirmations and receipts for airline tickets.
None of them included itineraries, though—no information other than “from” and “to.” There were flights once every month to various cities, but no notes about how to reach Alicia in any of them—where she was staying, phone and fax numbers, business contacts.
Abby made one more try, going back over the list of e-mail messages again. There was one that had struck her eye as she’d scanned down them before. On the subject line was one word: Lily. Something about that had nagged at her.
She clicked on the e-mail, thinking it might just be a gardening article, as Alicia had always been an avid gardener. But the only thing on the screen was a photograph of a lily—an Easter lily, if she remembered her Easter Sundays in church as a kid. The pot was wrapped in yellow foil, and imprinted on that was a gold cross.
Abby stared, wondering if the cross meant anything specific. Then, music began in the background. The voice sounded like Glen Campbell’s, or possibly the kind of sound-alike singer that e-cards often used. She missed the first words but heard “…sea winds blowing…” What the—
Galveston. The song Glen Campbell used to sing. She remembered it well.
Odd, though—a song like that with a picture of an Easter lily.
Going online, she typed “Easter lily” into Google. Any number of sites came up, but except for the fact that Easter lilies were native to Japan and poisonous to cats, this was all simply information about gardening. One noted that ninety-five percent of all Easter lily bulbs in the world were grown along the California-Oregon border, and Abby rummaged around in her brain to come up with some connection between that area and any of the trips Alicia had taken.
Nothing came, but she made a note to keep it in mind until she could share it with Ben and ask him for his thoughts on it.
That stopped her in her tracks. Share it with Ben? Maybe before, but now? An ache grew in her collarbones, along with a sense of emptiness and loss. There hadn’t been time to think much about Ben these past few days, other than to keep one step ahead of him. Instead of backing her up, he seemed to have aligned himself with the “other side” now. She felt completely distanced from him, as if a limb had been cut off.
Shaking her head at herself, she almost closed the Google page, wanting to go home and crawl under her covers and sleep. She could be here all night looking for some kind of clue on all these sites.
Unwilling to give up, though, she decided on one more try. Typing “Encyclopedia Britannica” into Google, she waited while the online version came up. Then she typed “Easter lily” into the search space. What she saw there made her blink in disbelief.
Out of eighty-some references, the first one listed was “Easter Rising—1916. Republican insurrection in Ireland against the British, which began on Easter Monday, April 24.”
Abby lost all sense of time as she dug further into the bowels of the Internet, bringing up article after article about the IRA. One of the things she found was that the Easter lily was the symbol of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin.
From her Catholic upbringing, she recalled that the Easter lily, used for years to decorate churches on Easter Sunday, was a symbol of resurrection—new life. But she’d had no idea that IRA members wore the lily in remembrance of those who gave their lives for the cause of Irish independence.
Okay…The lily began to make sense, given what she’d been told about Alicia’s father and his connection to the IRA. But “Galveston”? Where did the song fit in?
She ran through the words in her head, recalling that it was about a man in a war, afraid of dying, as he remembered his girl in Galveston. It was a sad song about him missing her and longing to see her again.
Was Alicia’s father telling her that he and her mother missed her and that she could find them in Galveston? One of those tickets a month ago had been to Houston, which was only an hour or so north of Galveston.
Could be a stretch, Abby thought, but it seemed worth following up on until something else came to mind.
She sighed and rubbed her face, looking up from the computer. Sunlight was pouring through the windows of the cathedral ceiling, and she was astonished to realize how long she had been standing there. Looking at her watch she saw that it was after 7:00 a.m. Three hours? Her back hurt and her feet felt like she’d been hiking uphill on razor blades.
Stretching, she did a few yoga exercises to get her limbs moving again. Then, straightening, she headed toward the office door, only to jerk to a stop as a noise sounded in another part of the house. The sound was like that of door hinges that needed oiling. A squeak, then an abrupt halt, as if the person opening the door didn’t want to be heard.
Abby flattened her back against the wall just inside the office, listening.
Footsteps, hushed and quick. Something falling in the kitchen, thudding on the counter. A dish? A cup? Then the distinct sound of a refrigerator door opening, the little swish of suction it made.
Not Jancy. Not even Allie. This was all too quiet to be someone who belonged here, someone “rattling around” as she made her morning coffee.
Abby inched around the corner of the doorway into the hall, then along the hallway toward the great room and kitchen. Stopping just short of the great room, she paused to listen but heard nothing more. The entire house was now silent.
The hairs on the back of her arms and neck rose. Something was wrong. Nobody went into a kitchen and just stood there without making another move. Had he or she heard her in the hallway? Were they playing their own waiting game?
No longer able to take not knowing, she rounded the corner of the hallway in one swift move, hoping to startle whoever was there.
Instead, her heart jumped into her throat as the cold business end of a gun was jammed against her forehead.
“Stop right there,” a voice said coldly. “Don’t even breathe.”
25
Abby’s limbs were shaking. Part of that was from hunger and low blood sugar, she knew, but the rest was from having her life literally flash before her eyes.
She had all but collapsed into a chair at the dining table in the great room. The gun was still in the hand of its owner, who sat in a chair across from her. It was held loosely, but at the ready. Abby noted that the CIA agent’s hands were trembling and there were deep dark circles under her eyes. The usually smooth blond hair was disheveled, as if she hadn’t bothered to even look at it when she got up—if, indeed, she had slept at all.
Something was terribly wrong.
“Is Alicia Gerard here?” Kris Kelley demanded, her voice harsh.
“No.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“No.”
“I suppose you don’t know, either, that Ben’s out at the Prayer House looking for you?”
“I do now that you’ve told me,” Abby said. “So?”
“So, you’re in big trouble.”
“Wow. As you can see, I’m shaking.”
“Abby,” Kris said sharply, “do you understand the kind of trouble you’re in?”
“Not exactly. Are you taking me in now, locking me up under the Patriot Act or some other un-American law, the way you’d like to do with Alicia?”
“On the contrary. I’m trying to figure out how the hell to keep you from getting locked up.”
“Golly, how nice of you. I did
n’t know the CIA had a heart.”
“Believe me, we don’t. Now, will you please shut up and listen to me?”
Given the other woman’s jumpy state, Abby decided to stop baiting her. “What’s going on?” she said.
“Agent Lessing is getting desperate,” Kris said. “He wants Alicia Gerard, and he wants her now. If he gets his hands on you, he’ll do whatever’s necessary to make you tell him where she is.”
“Whatever’s necessary…” Abby hid a sudden surge of fear. “Are we talking torture? Truth-telling drugs? What?”
“I didn’t say that. But, as long as you’re imagining, imagine something much, much worse.”
“Well, before I’m lashed to a rack and stretched till I’m nine feet tall, would you like to tell me how Alicia Gerard is involved in this terrorist attack Ben told me about?”
Kris’s trembling had stopped, but she was obviously still at a breaking point. “I’ll tell you, but only because I’ve got to trust you, Abby. You can’t tell anyone about this.”
“We’ll see,” Abby said, “when I hear what it is.”
Kris’s mouth tightened. “You are the most—” But she broke off her retort and went on. “We have credible intel that Alicia’s father is working with a splinter group of the IRA called The Candlelights. Without going into all the history, Pat Devlin—Alicia’s father—is making a doomsday bomb for them, and if we don’t get to him fast, millions of lives will be lost.”
Abby hid her shock. “This is real? My God. Ben said the attack was planned for a few days from now. And you still don’t know where this is supposed to happen?”
“No. Also, Ben wasn’t being exact when he said a few days. We have less than three days left now. It’s imperative that we get to Alicia’s father, arrest him and make him turn that bomb over to us.”
Abby looked at her skeptically. “He couldn’t just destroy it, huh? Our government wants to study it, right? Back engineer it?”
Kris paused, swallowed, and when she spoke her voice was shaking again. “I don’t know, Abby. For God’s sake, what does it matter? The point is, we have to find Alicia Gerard. She can lead us to her father, and once we have him, the attack can be averted, at least for now. God only knows how long it’ll take them to find someone else to do their dirty work.”
Abby narrowed her eyes. “Okay, let me get this straight. You’re CIA. The CIA and FBI have been after me because they think I know where Alicia is. But now that you’ve got me, you aren’t taking me in? You’re trusting me with all this information because we’re such great pals?”
“Of course not,” Kris snapped. “I’m trusting you because I don’t have a choice. I need you.”
“Aah. So, get on with it, then. Obviously, I don’t know where Alicia is, or I’d tell you, now that I know what’s at stake. Given that, what else could you possibly want from me?”
Kris’s voice shook badly now, and Abby was startled to see that her eyes filled with tears. “They’ve got my son, Abby. My little boy, Danny. He’s seven years old, and they’ve got him!”
Her entire sleek facade crumbled as she burst into tears.
“Who?” Abby demanded, shocked. “Who’s got him?”
Kris grabbed a paper napkin from the middle of the table and blew her nose. “The IRA. The Candlelights. They’ve threatened to kill Danny if I don’t keep Pat Devlin from being found and stopped.”
“Good God, Kris!” Abby’s first instinct was empathy for Kris as a mother. Her second was to wonder if what the CIA agent said was the truth. “Why you? Why your son?”
The agent shook her head. “They must know I’m a key player in this case. Abby, it doesn’t matter! What matters is that they’ve got my boy!”
Abby’s hand went out to her. “I’m sorry. I truly am.”
Kris’s voice went from shaky to grim. “They grabbed him from our backyard in San Francisco. Sara, his nanny, turned away from the kitchen window to answer the phone, and when she turned back he was gone. Just like that. Abby, the yard was completely fenced.”
She paused, swallowed and began again. “The lock on the gate wasn’t even broken. They must have gotten a key somehow.”
“The nanny?”
Kris shook her head. “Sara’s been with us since Danny was born, and I’d trust her with my life. She’s almost as devastated as I am.” Kris dug into a pocket of her black jacket and slid a piece of green paper over to Abby. “They left this, stuck between boards in the gate.”
Abby reached for the page. Drawn in gold ink on the top left side was a lily. She read the note and studied Kris Kelley. “It says they’ve taken your son out of the country, and if Pat Devlin is found and his work is stopped, Danny dies. It says if you keep Devlin from being found, they’ll let Danny live.”
Abby shook her head. “Kris, this is crazy! Let’s say you could actually find a way to botch the search for Pat Devlin, you can’t honestly believe these people will release Danny when this is all over.”
“No. No, of course I don’t believe it. But I’m half out of my mind, trying to think what to do. If Devlin isn’t stopped, half the people in this country are almost certainly dead. If he is caught and stopped—” She wiped tears from her eyes. “I can’t even think what they’ll do to Danny…what they might even be doing to him now.”
Abby read the note again. “There’s something weird about this. In the first place, what makes them think you can do anything about this? Even if you, personally, were to try to keep Pat Devlin from getting arrested, you’d be up against the FBI, the CIA and swarms of other agents who must already be all over this case. There’s no way you could get them to back off, not with the lives of millions of people at stake.”
“Dammit, don’t you think I know that?” Kris’s face flamed. “Sorry. I’m just about over the edge, Abby. That’s why I need your help.”
“My help?”
Kris began to pace, and Abby had a feeling of foreboding. Kris was too desperate, too panicked by Danny’s kidnapping. Could she possibly be thinking straight? Could she be trusted?
“The thing is,” Kris said, “I can con them. The Candlelights, Lessing, everybody. I’m good at conning people. I’ve been doing it all my life. And you know what? You are, too, Abby. I knew that the minute I met you.”
She waved off Abby’s protest. “Don’t even bother. Now, look, here’s the way it goes down. Let’s say I get conveniently sick all of a sudden. Some weird summer virus. I can pretend I’m too sick to work and have to stay in bed. I’ll tell them I’m going home to San Francisco for a few days.”
“But you’ll really be…?”
“Looking for Danny.”
“Looking for…But Kris, it says here they’ve taken him out of the country. How would you even know where to begin?”
“Leave that to me. I’ll work it out. Will you do it?”
“Will I do what? You haven’t even told me what you want me to do.”
“You—” Kris took a deep breath. “You just have to keep looking for Alicia and get to her and Pat Devlin before the feds. You stop Devlin from finishing that bomb, or if he is finished, and, God willing, he hasn’t already turned it over to The Candlelights—then stop him from doing that. When I find Danny and have him safe in my hands, I’ll call you. That’s when you turn Devlin in.”
“That’s all?” Abby said. “Well, then, I can’t tell you how relieved I am. I just have to find Pat Devlin before the FBI, the CIA, all seventeen or so of the new security agencies, various police departments and God knows who else…and then all I have to do is chain and padlock him to a chair, throw away the key and hold him hostage till I hear from you.” She would have laughed, if the situation hadn’t been so serious. “Gee, Kris, not a problem.”
She sat staring at Kris until the woman stopped pacing and realized what she’d said. Her voice softened. “I know it’s a lot. But think of it, Abby. You’ll be a hero.”
“My life’s dream,” Abby said, “to die a hero. Do they have Purple
Hearts for citizens?”
Kris’s voice caught on a sob. “Please, Abby! Don’t think I don’t know what I’m asking of you. I just don’t know where else to turn. I thought maybe Ben, but he…well, you know….”
“Ben is a stickler for the rules,” Abby agreed. “He’d tell Lessing and they’d probably lock you up to keep you from running off in search of Danny and possibly botching the case.”
Kris took one of her hands. “I can’t promise you, Abby, that the FBI won’t find you and lock you up. Or that The Candlelights won’t grab you and try to finish you off this time—”
“Wait, this time? They’re the ones who put me in that car in the junkyard? But that house in Phoenix belonged to the CIA. What were The Candlelights doing there?”
“Following you, most likely,” Kris said. “It was more than just a warning, Abby. You have to start watching your back better.”
Abby stared down at the note. It was handwritten in block letters, which wouldn’t be easy to identify, even for a handwriting expert. As for fingerprints, she couldn’t ask Arnie or Ben to check for them. They’d ask too many questions, and that would defeat the whole purpose.
“I’m just not sure I can do this,” she said. “Kris, I think maybe you’ve got me all wrong. Sure, I help women who are on the run, but I don’t work the streets to do it. There are other people who do that, while I sit behind my desk in my nice little Prayer House ivory tower and write checks, talk to people, provide the moms and kids with a bed for the night. I don’t have any special skills in tracking people down.”
Kris took her by the shoulders. “For God’s sake, Abby, look at yourself! And take a second look while you’re at it. You were one step ahead of us all the way, till you showed up at that house in Phoenix.”
“Yeah, that went well,” Abby said.
“Not your fault. The agents there should have been expecting trouble. If they didn’t see The Candlelights grab you, I don’t see how you could have, either.”