In lieu of direct proof that Mike Hargus had been working on specific orders from Bradley Chilcott on the kidnapping/assassination plot, Jack Sheridan would be in the same situation as the police, ironically: he would have suspicions but nothing else.
And if that were the case, Bradley decided he would probably be okay. He was lieutenant governor of Maryland, for Christ’s sake. It wasn’t like some psycho killer was going to just waltz up to him and blow him away, based on nothing more than a vague suspicion.
There was no reason to take chances, though, and the sudden lack of a security chief—at the exact time he most needed one—could represent a major problem. Bradley made a note on his desk blotter to call the Annapolis Police Department and request a temporary security detail until he could marshal something of a more permanent nature from the Maryland State Police.
There would be nothing suspicious about such a request, under the circumstances. Given the bloody and suspicious nature of Hargus’s death, no one would think it odd. It might also provide the added benefit of engendering additional public sympathy should the request “accidentally” be leaked to the press.
Bradley leaned back in his chair. He sipped his tea and then sighed softly. When faced with an unexpected event, he had always felt better after developing an action plan, and today was no exception.
It was ironic that Sheridan had killed Mike Hargus when that was exactly what Bradley had been trying to figure out a way to force him to do. He grinned. Maybe I should have a staffer research Jack Sheridan’s home address and send him a fruit basket as a thank you.
The grin faded away, and Bradley ran a hand over the stubble along his jawline. He hadn’t shaved yet and the skin felt like fine-gauge sandpaper. He would still eventually need to hire another chief of security, but that would have to wait until the furor over Hargus’s death died down. He could begin his search now, settle on a name, and then convince the man to take the job at the appropriate time.
It would definitely have to be someone with a little less…initiative…than Mike Hargus had displayed.
Bradley’s attention returned to the TV. CNN had gotten around to running another live report from the scene of the killing, but the same non-information was being rehashed. Bradley had turned the sound down so he could think, but superimposed along the bottom of the screen was a graphic trailing the words, Mike Hargus was employed as Chief of Security for Maryland Lieutenant Governor Bradley Chilcott. Was Hargus in New Hampshire on official business? Questions remain…
Bradley shook his head and forced his eyes away from the report. He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a blank sheet of writing paper. The graphic had served as a reminder that he would soon be answering some very pointed questions, and it would be to his benefit to prepare as thoroughly as possible.
He began writing bullet points, listing the items he intended to stress when the police—and the media—came calling later today. This wasn’t an ideal situation; that much was obvious. But he’d been in tough spots before. They came with the territory if you expected to earn a living in the political arena.
He was confident he could weather this storm as well.
33
Jack sat at his kitchen table sipping coffee. He was fighting an intense drowsiness and wanted nothing more than to fall into bed and sleep. The days when he could stay awake and alert for forty-eight-plus hours on a mission and then bounce back quickly were long gone.
But it didn’t matter because the point was moot. There was too much left to do to sleep right now.
So he sipped his coffee and closed his eyes.
Thought about Edie and Janie.
Jack had ushered both of them into his house after their tearful reunion in his driveway. He wondered how long they would have stayed where they were, locked in each other’s arms in the cab of his truck, had he not taken Edie by the elbow and guided her up the front walkway with Janie in her arms.
Maybe they’d still be out there. It’s only been three hours, after all. He smiled weakly and took another sip of coffee, still without opening his eyes.
When they’d gotten inside, Edie marched straight to the kitchen and plopped her little girl down at the table. She’d examined every inch of her, looking for injuries, shaking her head grimly when she encountered the bruise on Janie’s head but saying nothing.
Janie had resisted the impromptu medical exam, insisting all she needed was to get back to sleep, but Edie had taken her time. She seemed to need to touch her child and feel her presence and reassure herself that Janie really was here and really was safe and mostly unharmed.
Eventually she’d taken a washcloth and cleaned Janie up—more or less—before carrying her to Jack’s spare bedroom, where the little girl had fallen asleep almost immediately.
Jack tried to stay out of the way while Edie tended to Janie. He felt awkward, like he was intruding on an intimate family moment, and remained only too aware of the fact that he was the reason this emotional reunion had been necessary.
Edie studiously avoided meeting Jack’s eyes. She focused her attention on her child and ignored him. After putting Janie to bed she’d finally spoken to him, saying only that she was exhausted and was going to sleep with her child.
Then she’d disappeared. That was more than two-and-a-half hours ago.
He wondered how long the pair would be behind the closed door of his spare bedroom. Probably most of the day, and if that were the case he would be long gone by the time they emerged.
Maybe that would be for the best.
He lifted the coffee cup toward his lips. Before he could take his next sip, the door to the spare bedroom opened and a seven-year-old guided missile exited the room and blasted down the short hallway. He barely had time to set the cup down before she launched herself into his arms, nearly knocking them both out of the chair and onto the floor.
“Whoa, Nellie!” he said. He hugged the little girl tightly and ruffled her hair.
“My name’s not Nellie, silly. It’s Janie!”
“Oh, that’s right.” He slapped his forehead. “I don’t know why I can’t seem to remember that.”
“It’s probably because you call me Tiger now,” she said seriously.
He pretended to think, stroking his chin and then nodding. “I’ll bet that’s it,” he agreed.
He set her down on the chair and stood to get her a glass of juice and some cereal. “Is your mom awake?”
“Yup. She said to tell you she’ll be right out.”
“Okay.” He took one step in the direction of the refrigerator and then pivoted back toward Janie. “Is her name Nellie, by any chance?”
Janie dissolved in giggles and Jack’s heart broke for the thousandth time since her kidnapping. He was going to miss this little girl.
***
He was just sitting down across the table from Janie when the door to the spare bedroom opened again and Edie stepped into the hallway. She was dressed in jeans and a sweater, and although Jack knew she hadn’t showered—the bathroom door was just a few feet away and no one had gone into or out of it—she looked like the most desirable thing he’d ever seen.
Her hair was mussed from tossing and turning, and worry lines that hadn’t been there three days ago surrounded her eyes, but he didn’t care about any of that.
He watched her approach and swallowed heavily. He didn’t know what was about to happen but doubted it would be pleasant.
She sat in the third chair without speaking and waited for Janie to finish her cereal. Then she sent her to the bathroom to shower off the grime of the last three days.
“And I’m going to check when you’ve finished,” she told her. “So do a good job.”
The bathroom door closed and at last Edie raised her eyes to meet Jack’s.
“Apparently you’re quite the hero,” she said softly. “Janie can’t decide whether you’re Superman or Batman the way you swooped in and beat up the bad guys before saving her and bringing her home.”
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“Batman has a darker history. Seems more appropriate, I guess.”
Edie ignored the comment.
“I think you’ve gained a fan for life,” she said. “Not that Janie didn’t adore you before.”
“I’m just glad she still has a life. Hopefully it will be a good, long, healthy one and the last few days will fade in her memory into the obscurity they deserve.”
Edie reached across the table, hesitantly, as if uncertain she wanted to fully commit to the act. She took Jack’s hands into her own and lowered her gaze. “I can never repay you for getting my baby back, alive and unharmed. I’m going to be in your debt for the rest of my life.”
Jack shook his head.
“You owe me nothing, Edie. In fact, the reality is just the opposite. I can never make up for being the reason Janie was put in harm’s way in the first place. I was the reason she was taken and for that I’ll never forgive myself.”
She released his hands and looked up. Her eyes were wet and red-rimmed, her face filled with anguish.
That was his fault, too.
She cleared her throat and opened her mouth to speak.
Closed it.
Sighed.
Opened it again. “Jack, I know you would never intentionally put me or Janie at risk. I know how you feel about me and I know you’re every bit as fond of Janie.”
“’Fond’ doesn’t do justice to what I feel, about either of you.”
She nodded. “I know. If I had the slightest doubt about your feelings I wouldn’t be sitting here right now after all that’s happened.”
There didn’t seem to be anything to say, so Jack said nothing and waited for Edie to continue.
Eventually she did. “The problem I have is not just with what you do for a living, although I don’t understand it and it terrifies me. But even more of an issue than that is the fact that you hid such a major part of yourself from me. I understand it’s not the sort of thing you can spread around town, but once we got together and started to become close, didn’t you feel you owed it to me to come clean? To give me the opportunity to make up my own mind about whether I wanted to be with you or not?”
“Of course,” he said without hesitation. “And if I could go back and change anything about my past, I would start there. I haven’t allowed myself to get close to anyone for a very long time, and once it started happening with you I was terrified that I would drive you away, that if you learned who—and what—I really am, you’d run screaming for the hills and I’d never see you again.
“The obvious irony,” he added wistfully, “is that by hiding my background from you, I’ve done exactly what I was afraid was going to happen from the beginning: driven you away.”
“I’m still sitting here. I haven’t gone anywhere.”
“Yet.”
“I’m very confused, Jack. But if it weren’t for your…unusual talents…Janie would have disappeared forever once she was taken, so I can’t completely condemn you. She’s everything to me, and she’s alive to grumble about taking a shower right now because of you. At the same time, I just don’t know how to reconcile your…career...with my values and what I want to teach my girl about how to live her life.”
“So where does that leave us?” Jack again met Edie’s eyes, marveling as he always did at their luminous green.
She shrugged.
Shook her head.
“I honestly don’t know. I can’t deny what my heart tells me, and I know you as a kind, gentle and compassionate man, not as some cold-blooded assassin.”
“But…”
“But…I just don’t know.”
34
Edie packed her things while Janie was finishing up in the shower. She hadn’t brought much to Jack’s and it only took a few minutes. Less than half an hour later Edie and Janie were ready to go home.
Edie threw her things into the trunk of her car and then everyone stood awkwardly—and quietly—in the driveway.
The goodbyes were abbreviated. Janie leapt into Jack’s arms and gave him a tighter hug than a tiny seven-year-old should be able to manage. She didn’t understand the sadness but could obviously feel it. She had tears in her eyes as she scrambled into the passenger seat and pulled the door closed, and then it was just Edie and Jack.
She hugged him loosely. Leaned in and kissed him, but on the cheek rather than the lips.
She stretched on her tiptoes and whispered into his ear, “I’ll always love you for saving my baby. Goodbye, Jack.”
She turned away before he could respond. Then she slipped behind the wheel, slammed her door and started the engine. She backed down the driveway and into the road, accelerating away without a wave or a look back.
Jack stood in the driveway, hands jammed into his pockets, watching until the little car disappeared. He’d spent a lifetime by himself but had never felt this alone.
When it became clear she wasn’t going to return, he trudged up the walkway and into his house.
35
Jack wanted to hit the road for Maryland immediately. The desire to introduce himself to Mr. Bradley Chilcott was so strong he thought it might reasonably qualify as a compulsion.
But instead, he returned home and flipped on his television. Taking a little time to absorb as much as he could from the news reports about the Mike Hargus killing—especially as it related to Hargus’s boss, Bradley Chilcott—could potentially pay big dividends, and Jack was determined not just to see this disaster through to the end, but to do it the right way.
The authorities hadn’t wasted any time connecting Hargus to Chilcott, and as Jack sat alone in his living room, the face of Maryland’s lieutenant governor filled his TV screen. The man was doing his best to look sincere as he gazed into the cameras and pleaded with viewers for any information that would bring the murderer of his chief of security to justice.
The statement was ludicrous, of course, and Jack laughed out loud despite his rapidly building fury. The last thing in the world Chilcott wanted was for the killing to be solved, because if that happened, he would find himself behind bars for the rest of his life.
The reason for Chilcott’s press conference was obvious, and it had nothing to do with solving any murder. The lieutenant governor was doing what politicians always did, given the opportunity: grandstanding.
And Jack had to admit the man was smooth. He segued from the search for Hargus’s killer right into a solemn promise to bring every last resource of the lieutenant governor’s office to bear in order to provide for the widow and her two young sons.
Jack forced himself to ignore Chilcott’s words. He looked beyond the man speaking at the podium to focus his attention on the innocent young boys being shamelessly exhibited next to their teary-eyed mother. They didn’t look much older than Janie Tolliver.
Jack didn’t regret killing Mike Hargus. He’d vowed to do whatever it took to recover Janie unharmed and had done exactly that. No more and no less.
But the fact that the father of two children roughly Janie’s age could have been a party to the kidnapping and planned murder of a young girl only served to strengthen his already sincere belief that he’d done the right thing by eliminating the man.
The world was a better place with him gone.
Addition by subtraction.
And Bradley Chilcott had children approximately the same age as well.
Jack thumbed the remote to shut off his television. He sat for a long time staring at a blank screen. Then he stood and began gathering the supplies he would need for a road trip down to Maryland.
It took less than fifteen minutes and Jack was ready to roll. He was always prepared to move at a moment’s notice and had long ago learned the value of traveling light.
His skull throbbed from the gash he’d received when his head struck Mike Hargus’s cookstove, as well as from the pummeling he’d taken. He knew he needed sutures but wasn’t about to waste time going to the hospital. The bruising on his face from Hargus’s fists was steadily
darkening. His muscles ached and creaked in a constant reminder—not that he needed one—that he was an aging man employed in a young person’s occupation.
And even worse than the physical hurt was the mental anguish, the knowledge that he alone had been responsible for the near-ruination not just of one life but two. Because had Janie Tolliver been killed, Edie’s life would have been over just as surely as if she too had died at the hands of Mike Hargus.
Jack tossed his duffel bag in front of the door and picked up his phone. He punched in a series of numbers from memory and made the call he’d been considering for a very long time.
***
The driving route to Maryland would take Jack directly past Boston, exactly as it had when he traveled to Newark a few days ago. Normally he would bypass the city entirely, circling west of it on Interstate 495, adding a little mileage to the trip but saving time by avoiding the urban congestion.
Not today.
Today he drove straight into the city. Although he wanted to get to Maryland as soon as possible, he needed to spend a few minutes in the city.
He had business to discuss with Mr. Stanton.
Today’s meeting would take place in Boston Common. During all the time he’d been a contractor for The Organization—a period of several years—he’d had but one contact: Mr. Stanton. Jack didn’t think they’d ever met in the same place twice, and today was no exception.
He drove to the agreed-upon location near the northwest corner of the park, shut down his truck and started walking. Mr. Stanton would be somewhere nearby but would not reveal himself until he was ready.
The day was cool and overcast but humid, with the threat of thunderstorms looming.
The air felt heavy. Portentous.
Jack ambled along a pathway, moving slowly, hands in his pockets. With rain coming there was little in the way of pedestrian traffic. Jack assumed that was why Mr. Stanton had chosen this spot for their rendezvous.
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