The Hit wr-2

by David Baldacci

  “How about a shower?”

  “You can use the one here. We have it designated for cabin renters. Or you can just use the sink in the cabin for a quick one. Most folks renting cabins don’t have personal hygiene high on their priority list. Hell, I never see most of the folks. They come and go as they please.”

  “Other than Cabin 17, any others rented?”

  “No.”

  “Anyone in Cabin 17 now?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Like I said, they come and go.”

  “They. Two people?”

  “Well, aren’t you the curious one?”

  “Always have been. Gets me in more trouble, so I’ll just stop right now.” Robie gave her another grin, which he hoped was disarming. He had the sense he had just pushed too hard. He hoped he didn’t regret it.

  She eyed him. “Look, honey, you want to trade in your room for a cabin? Number 14 is all ready to go. It’s got a nice view and a new toilet. Well, new in the sense that it’s less than five years old and works more often than not.”

  “Hey, why not?” said Robie. “I like communing with nature as much as the next person. How do I get there?”

  “About a quarter-mile walk from here. The cabins are spread out in the woods, but there’re signs posted telling you where each one is. You can leave your car in the lot out front and walk back there. The trail starts right behind the center of the motel.”

  A few minutes later Robie was walking on the trail toward Cabin 14 with his knapsack over his left shoulder.

  And his Glock in his right hand.

  Chapter 55

  Cabin 14 was exactly as Gwen had described it. Rustic. He set his knapsack down on the bed that was barely more than a cot. It was shorter than Robie was tall.

  Woodstove in the corner. A table. A chair. A toilet and sink behind a makeshift enclosure. Two windows on opposite walls. He went to one window and looked out.

  There was no cabin in sight, just trees. People who rented them must want their privacy. He would have to do a walk around to get the lay of the land.

  He had seen the sign for Cabin 17. It was to his left. He just didn’t know how far. He was so deep in the woods now that he could hear no cars, no people talking. No TVs or radios.

  He could be alone with nature.

  Only maybe he wasn’t alone.

  He sat in the one chair, facing the door, his Glock in his right hand. With his left hand he slid the book on World War II out of his knapsack. It was the last unsolved clue.

  Everything she did had a purpose.

  She was linear.

  I like to begin at the beginning and end at the end.

  He opened the book. He had looked through it before, but not all that carefully. It was a long book and he just hadn’t had the time.

  Now he felt like he had to make the time.

  The light was rapidly diminishing and the cabin was not wired for electricity. As he slowly turned the pages and it drew darker, he put his gun aside and used a small flashlight to illuminate the page.

  However, he kept glancing at the door and windows. The latter had curtains, but he was aware that his light made him a target. He had moved the chair to a point in the room where he was in no direct sight line from outside.

  He had pushed the table in front of the door after locking it. He figured if someone burst in he would have enough time to douse the light, grab his weapon, aim, and fire. At least he hoped so.

  He slowly turned the pages, taking in every word. When he came to the middle of chapter sixteen he stopped.

  The section was entitled simply “The White Rose.”

  Robie read swiftly. The White Rose was the name taken by a resistance group of mostly college students in Munich during World War II who worked against the tyranny of the Nazis. The group had taken its name from a novel about peasant exploitation in Mexico. Most of the members of the White Rose were executed by the Nazis. But pamphlets they had printed were smuggled out of Germany and dropped by the millions from Allied bombers. After the war the members of the White Rose had been hailed as heroes.

  Robie slowly closed the book and set it aside.

  Once more adopting Reel’s obsession with order and logic, he went through the ordeal of the White Rose and tried to graft those elements onto her situation.

  The White Rose had fought against Nazi tyranny.

  They had felt betrayed.

  They hadn’t killed anyone, but they had attempted to stoke anger against the Nazis in order to see them stopped.

  They had been killed for their troubles.

  Robie slowly turned this over in his mind and then moved forward in time.

  Reel had been fighting against something.

  She had felt betrayed.

  She had taken action to stop whoever was against her, and that included killing. But that’s what she did. The woman was no college student writing pamphlets.

  The jury was still out on whether she would sacrifice her life or not.

  Then Robie thought back to DiCarlo’s words.

  Personnel missing.

  Equipment moved.

  Missions that never should have been.

  And Blue Man. According to him a different dynamic seemed to be in place.

  DiCarlo had been distrustful of people within her own agency. She’d had only two bodyguards with her because of this. And she’d been both proved right and paid the price for such limited protection.

  Allegedly, Reel had gone off the grid and murdered two members of her own agency. If she’d done so, again according to Blue Man, it might have been because they were on the wrong side and Reel was on the side of right.

  If all that was true, then the agency was full of traitors, and they went very high in the pecking order. At least as high as Gelder and maybe higher.

  And then there was the matter of Roy West.

  He had been with the agency. He had written some sort of apocalypse paper. He had joined a militia. He was now dead.

  Robie picked up his gun and checked his watch. He had not come here simply to read a book.

  It would soon be dark, and darker still where he was, with no source of light other than the stars, which were now hidden behind a gauzy veil of clouds.

  He opened his knapsack and pulled out his night optics. He put them on and fired them up. They worked fine, turning the invisible to visible.

  Robie’s plan was simple.

  He was going to visit Cabin 17.

  The darkness would be both a benefit and danger to him.

  If it wasn’t occupied, Robie would find what he could. If the cabin yielded no clues he would have wasted a lot of time and come away with nothing.

  He wondered what his next step would be if that turned out to be the case. Go back to D.C.? Go back on the grid? After what he suspected? That his agency was compromised and corrupted?

  His last text exchange with Reel had without doubt been picked up by others. They would want to know what Robie had deduced. They would want to know where he had gone. They might want him dead, depending on his answers.

  Well, then I just won’t give them any answers until I know which side folks are really on.

  He had relied on a moral compass that by some miracle he still had inside him, despite what he did for a living. That meant he couldn’t walk away from this one. That meant he had to confront it at some point.

  He waited until after two in the morning before setting out. He opened the door of Cabin 14 and stepped out into the pitch black.

  Next stop, Cabin 17.

  Chapter 56

  It looked just like Cabin 14, except there was a flowerpot out front on the porch with a single drooping flower. The first frost would kill it off. The flowerpot also had a cat painted on it.

  Robie was standing back at the tree line. His gaze went to the door of the cabin, to the flower, and then to the surrounding darkness.

  Through his night optics, the world was presented in sharp relief. But it couldn’t show him everything.
There could be something else out there that he didn’t see.

  So he studied that flowerpot for a long time, wondering why it was there. Just one droopy flower. And it was one that needed sun, as many flowers did. Yet there was no sun here. Which meant there was no reason to plant it in a pot and put it on the steps.

  It made no sense. And thus it made perfect sense. Everything Reel did had a purpose.

  He went back over the Eastern Shore fiasco frame by frame in his head. He had fired at the door and the porch, trying to set off booby traps from a safe distance.

  He twirled a suppressor onto the muzzle of his Glock, aimed, and fired twice. The pot cracked, and dirt and flower parts flew up into the air.

  There was no explosion.

  But through his night optics Robie did see the remains of some device whirling off into the darkness.

  He moved closer and examined some of this debris: the shattered parts of a surveillance camera. He picked up a piece of the clay pot. A hole had been bored into it and then hidden by the picture of the cat.

  The pot had been Reel’s eyes.

  And Robie had just blinded her.

  It felt good.

  And he also now had confirmation that the renter of Cabin 17 was indeed Jessica Reel. She had given him the clues to get here.

  But that didn’t make him trust her.

  He slipped his thermal imager out of his knapsack, fired it up, and pointed it at the cabin. Nothing living inside registered on its screen.

  But that had happened last time and still Robie had almost fried.

  Ultimately, he decided he just had to get it done. He moved stealthily toward the cabin, knelt, and fired at the door and the porch floor.

  Nothing happened other than metal ripping through old wood.

  He waited, listening for sounds.

  A scampering in the trees was a squirrel or deer. Humans couldn’t move like that.

  He crab-walked forward some more, squatted, and studied the structure.

  There wasn’t much remaining to deduce from the outside. He hoped the inside would be a lot more informative.

  He moved toward the porch and hurried up the steps to the door. One kick and the wooden door flew back. Robie was in the room in the next second and had cleared it five seconds after that. He shut the door behind him, pulled his flashlight, and shined it around.

  What he saw was not what he had been expecting. There was no SORRY stenciled on the wall.

  There could be a firebomb in here somewhere, but he didn’t focus on that. There was a woodstove, a table, chairs, and a bed. And a small toilet and sink. Just like his cabin. On the table was a battery-powered lantern. He examined it for booby traps, found none, turned it on, and the room became dimly illuminated.

  Also on the table were two pictures set in frames.

  One was of Doug Jacobs.

  The other was of Jim Gelder.

  Black slashes had been drawn across the pictures of the dead men.

  There were three other frames lined up next to them. There were no pictures in them. In front of the frames was a single white rose.

  He picked up the pictures of Jacobs and Gelder and checked to see if anything was hidden behind them. There was nothing. He did the same with the three other frames.

  Robie wondered whose pictures Reel intended to insert in these when and if the time came. And he still didn’t know why, other than that for some reason she thought these men were traitors to their country.

  Robie still had no proof of that.

  But what had happened to Janet DiCarlo made him realize that something was off. He touched the white rose. It felt moist. Perhaps it had recently been placed here.

  He whipped around so fast, he heard her gasp at the speed of his reflexes.

  His gun was pointed right at her head, his finger past the trigger guard and near the trigger itself. One twitch of his finger and she was dead from a third eye between her other two.

  But it wasn’t Jessica Reel.

  It was Gwen from behind the counter at the Bull’s-Eye Inn who stared back at him.

  Chapter 57

  “What are you doing here?” demanded Robie.

  He did not lower his pistol. She was old but she could still be a threat.

  She said calmly, “I could ask you the same question, young man. This is not Cabin 14. This is Cabin 17. As I told you, it’s already rented.”

  “Doesn’t seem to be anyone here. Doesn’t look lived in at all. Just photos and a white rose on the table.”

  Gwen looked past him to the photos and flower then drew her gaze back to him. “Doesn’t matter. They paid, and it’s theirs to do with what they want.”

  “Who exactly are ‘they’?”

  “Like I said before, confidential.”

  “I think we’re well past confidences, Gwen. I think you need to tell me right now.”

  “She won’t but I will.”

  Robie swung his pistol around to take aim at the newcomer.

  Jessica Reel was standing in front of him.

  What surprised him was that she had no gun. Her arms were down by her sides. Robie ran his gaze quickly over her.

  Reel said, “No weapons, Will. No throwing knife. No tricks.”

  Robie remained silent as she took another deliberate step into the room. He kept swiveling his gaze between both women.

  Reel had said she was unarmed, something he didn’t believe. But she hadn’t said the old woman wasn’t packing. And at this short distance even an eighty-year-old could shoot and kill him.

  “You two know each other?” he asked at last.

  “You could say that,” replied Reel. “She was my security blanket.”

  Robie cocked his head questioningly at her.

  “I thought if she was here you wouldn’t put a bullet in my head.”

  “I didn’t in Arkansas.”

  “I appreciate that more than you’ll ever know. But circumstances change.”

  “Yes, they do. But why would you think her being here would stop me from killing you now?”

  “Because if you kill me, you’d have to kill her. And you don’t kill innocent people. It’s not how you’re wired.”

  Robie shook his head. “How do I know she’s innocent? She doesn’t seem surprised by any of this.”

  Gwen said, “But I was. Didn’t think you could move that fast. Scared me.”

  “He always did move fast,” said Reel. “But no unnecessary movement. Everything calculated for maximum efficiency. I saw that in Arkansas vividly. A one-man army.”

  “So where does that leave us?”

  “With you pointing a gun at me. Like back in Arkansas.”

  “Doesn’t really answer the question.”

  “What do you want the answer to be?”

  “You killed two members of the agency in cold blood. Under normal circumstances that would be enough of an answer for me. That’s what I told you in Arkansas, and that’s what I’m telling you now. Back there I asked for an explanation. I’m asking again.”

  She took another step forward. “Under normal circumstances?” she said.

  Robie let his finger slide past the trigger guard and close in on the trigger. Reel noted this and stopped moving. They both knew he was close to the point of no return.

  Gwen hovered in the background looking tense, her gaze focused on Reel.

  Robie said, “DiCarlo? She made it clear to me that the situation was not normal.” Robie gestured over his shoulder to the table. “White Rose? Resistance group in World War II. Fought against what they considered the traitorous Nazis.”

  “I was afraid they’d police the roses I left.”

  “They did, only they missed a couple of petals. Probably the only reason they left the book in your locker for me to look at. They didn’t think I’d have any evidence of the flower.”

  “Good to know they make mistakes.”

  “My problem, though, is that maybe you’re the traitor and all this is a smokescreen.”r />
  “Maybe I am.”

  “Jess!” snapped Gwen. “You know that’s not true.”

  Robie let his gaze flicker over the old woman. He had already noted she was fully dressed, though the hour was very late.

  This was all planned.

  Robie asked Gwen, “Who exactly are you?”

  Gwen looked at Reel but said nothing. Reel slowly turned to look at her. Robie thought he saw her smile, though it was hard to tell in the poor light.

  Reel said, “An old friend of mine. A very old friend. Family, actually.”

  “I didn’t think you had any. Your mom’s dead. Your old man’s in prison for life.”

  “Gwen was the only decent foster parent I had.”

  “When they took you away…” Gwen began, but her voice faltered.

  “If you were a good foster parent, why was she taken away?”

  Reel answered, “There is no logic in foster care. What happens happens.”

  “Okay, but that doesn’t explain why she’s here.”

  Reel said, “I bought this place four years ago. Under an alias, of course. I brought Gwen up to run it.”

  “You own the motor court?” said Robie in surprise.

  “I had to put my money somewhere. And while I wasn’t that concerned about turning a profit, I did want a place where I could get away.”

  “Literally get away?” said Robie.

  She glanced past him to the photos on the table. “Aren’t you going to ask me about them?”

  “I thought I already did. I don’t remember hearing an answer other than they were traitors but you had no proof.”

  “I walked in here with no weapon. What does that tell you?”

  “That you want to talk, so talk. I especially want to hear about the apocalypse.”

  “It’s a very long story.”

  “My calendar is clear for the rest of the year.”

  “Can you lower your weapon?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  She held out her hands. “You can cuff me if it’ll make you feel better.”

  “Tell me what you need to tell me. Explain to me why you put a bullet in Doug Jacobs when you were supposed to be planting a round between the eyes of a man who has sworn to destroy our country. Tell me why Jim Gelder had to die. And tell me why you killed an analyst turned militia freak. I’m really looking forward to the answers. It might save your life. Might,” he added.