by Low, Gennita
“Well, I, uh…I decided I could do more for Americans by working in politics.”
“Then your decision had nothing to do with an operation in Basrah that went terribly wrong?”
The glint entering his gimlet eyes had an instant cooling effect on her body as he took a closer look at her, perhaps just now realizing that she wasn’t your average, everyday reporter. He shook his head, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“August of 2002,” Ophelia prompted, laying a hand on her cheek as if searching her memory. “You’d been put in charge of an assassination attempt on Gabir al Baldawi, a radical Islamic leader believed to have dealings with Osama bin Laden. He was supposed to be holed up in a private home on the west side of Basrah. You were working with a small group of Navy SEALs. You raided the building, only al Baldawi wasn’t there, just five or so civilians, including a boy and his mother who ended up dead.”
Jay Rawlings had stiffened with every word coming out of her mouth. “Who told you this?” he growled, fighting to keep his expression pleasant.
Ophelia shrugged. “Like I said, I live in a military community, and that’s the rumor that’s circulating. Can you confirm or deny the story? Maybe you could clarify what went wrong?”
The lieutenant governor’s expression grew subtly harder. “There’s not an ounce of truth to that story. I never headed up an operation like that in Iraq. I don’t know where you get your information, but I’d advise you not to listen to rumors that aren’t true.”
“I see,” Ophelia said, with false sympathy. “So, this is just another attempt to discredit you in the eyes of the public. After all, you’re being considered for the vice presidency.” She raised her eyebrows at him. “It’s amazing what stories the opposition will come up with in the hopes of ruining your reputation.”
“That’s true,” he conceded, seizing on to her excuse. “The opposing party will do whatever it takes to bring me down. I assure you, I have never taken part in any military operation that I wasn’t proud of. Of course, I’m not at liberty to talk about it these days, but my conscience is clear. I don’t believe in keeping secrets.”
“I didn’t think so,” Ophelia said with a reassuring smile. She signaled to Bella to stop filming and uncrossed her legs. “It’s been a pleasure talking to you, sir. I hope we can do it again sometime,” she added, holding out her hand to him. His palm, she thought, felt distinctly clammy as he squeezed her fingers briefly. The next time they spoke, she vowed she would have the proof to call him a liar. Any man that lied about his past had no business becoming the vice president of the United States. “Enjoy your lunch with the mayor,” she added, pushing to her feet.
“Thank you,” Jay Rawlings muttered, following her lead more slowly.
Gesturing with her head for Bella to start for the door, Ophelia retrieved her coat from the chair and threaded her arms quickly through it. “Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, gentlemen,” she said. “We’ll see ourselves out.”
The staff member looked to the lieutenant governor, who nodded his agreement. Obviously, he wanted his man to stay behind so he could talk to him.
Ophelia’s grin broke free as she and Bella stepped into the hall. Bella headed for the stairs, but Ophelia caught her by the arm, shook her head, and dragged her down the hall and around a corner. “Let’s wait here,” she hissed, tucking them both out of sight.
The look Bella shot her reminded her so much of Vinny that she could almost hear him saying, Are you crazy?
“I want to hear what they’re saying on the way out,” Ophelia explained.
“What if they catch us?” Bella’s wide eyes shone with worry.
“We’ll say that you had to use the ladies room.”
“Me?”
“You’re an intern. Interns do stupid things,” Ophelia reasoned.
Bella rolled her eyes and huffed out a breath.
Down the hall, the office door clicked open. Ophelia peeked around the corner and snatched her head back. The lieutenant governor was stepping out of the room with David Collum on his heels, looking distinctly red-faced. Rawlings had taken his wrath out on the hapless man.
“I want to know who’s talking to her.” Jay Rawlings’ distinctive voice echoed down the hallway. “Another one of those goddamn SEALs has broken the code of silence.”
“I thought we already took care of the leak,” his staff member muttered.
“Quiet!” Rawlings grated. “Nobody needs to know about that. Maybe they’re all talking. I don’t know.” Their heels echoed on the stairs, the door clanged shut behind them, and then they were gone.
Ophelia rounded on Bella “Did you hear that?” she cried, resisting the urge to jump for joy. “He just admitted to his involvement. I heard him!” But she had yet to find the proof. That would involve twisting the arms of some of Vinny’s teammates, who had a tendency to clam up whenever she came around.
“We gotta get out of here,” Bella told her with a tremor in her voice.
“Yeah, yeah. In ten minutes, so we know that they’re good and gone.”
Bella turned her eyes toward the ceiling and the discreet, domed camera overhead. “There’s gotta be security in this place, even on holidays,” she agonized aloud. “I can’t afford to get arrested. I’ll be thrown out of school.”
Doubt pricked Ophelia briefly. “You’re the one who insisted on tagging along,” she said, turning the blame back on her sister-in-law. “Fine, we’ll leave right now,” she conceded as Bella started wringing her hands. “The secret is to act like you belong. Shoulders back, head up. Let’s go.”
Together they marched down the hall toward the stairs that the men had taken, but two silhouettes remained visible through the glass inset on the other side of the door. With a gasp, the women retraced their steps.
“Let’s find another way out,” Ophelia suggested, pulling Bella behind her as they searched the maze of hallways for another set of stairs. At the back of the building, they discovered an interior fire exit and took it to the lower level. Ophelia’s gaze alighted on a sign that warned that an alarm would go off if the door were opened, and her confidence wavered.
Bella whirled on her. “Great! What do we do now?”
“We’ll make a run for it,” Ophelia decided. “The streets are crawling with people. Who’s going to see us if we blend into the crowd?”
“Fine,” Bella conceded, but her face paled with worry.
“Listen, we had every right to be in the building, and now we’re leaving,” Ophelia assured her. “It’s no big deal. Come on. Just follow my lead. Act casual.” Throwing her weight into the door, she pulled Bella out into the cold with her. They made a beeline toward the street that was teeming with people. For several seconds, only the sound of voices, traffic, and a flute being played by a homeless woman filled the air. But then the door clicked shut behind them, and a high-pitched wail floated from the building, alerting the world to a breach.
Ophelia snatched up Vinny’s sister’s hand and guided her briskly along with the throng heading toward the Philadelphia Art Museum.
Bella’s fingernails dug into Ophelia’s palm, but no one pursued them. No one shouted, “Hey, wait!”
“See, I told you we’d be fine,” Ophelia said, freeing herself from Bella’s death grip as they picked their way across the steps toward the opposite side of the museum. It was there that they had parked Bella’s car, in the hotel parking garage where her boyfriend worked as a valet.
Bella searched the faces in the crowd before glancing sharply at Ophelia. “Let me guess,” she drawled. “You don’t want Vinny knowing anything about this.”
“Right. And if you tell him,” Ophelia warned, “then I won’t give you the iPad I bought you for Christmas.”
“What?” Bella cried, startling to a halt. “You bought me an iPad?”
Well, she hadn’t done it yet, but she intended to. “Yes.”
“Oh, my God, you are such a great sister-in-law. Craz
y but great,” Bella amended, throwing an arm around her as they proceeded to their destination. Her expression grew reflective. “And, by the way, that guy was totally lying about that op, wasn’t he?”
“He admitted it on the way out,” Ophelia reminded her. “Now all I have to do is prove it.”
“You hear that?” Jay Rawlings paused at the point of climbing into his chauffeured Town Car to look up at the high-rise building they’d just come from.
“It sounds like the alarm’s going off,” said his assistant, looking nonplussed.
“Why would the alarm be going off? It never did that before.”
Dave Collum stared back at the building, looking flummoxed.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” Jay snapped. “Go shut it off.”
“Sir,” the man protested, turning back to him, “the alarm goes off when the fire door at the back of the building is opened.”
“But that’s impossible. The women left out the front, ahead of us.”
Collum’s eyes widened as he stared over the top of Jay’s car. “Oh, no, they didn’t. Look.” He pointed to the crowd moving across the steps of the art museum. “There she is, right there.”
Jay turned and searched the crowd. Within seconds, he spied the woman’s coppery head as she sought to put distance between herself and the building, flanked by her dark-haired intern. Jay’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. The conniving bitch! She only pretended to empathize with him about the rumor now circulating. She fully believed those rumors. What’s more, she hung around after the interview, hoping to overhear something incriminating. He cast his thoughts back to the words he might have said on his way out.
Oh, Christ, he’d been mentioning the leak he’d already taken care of. He’d even brought up the possibility of another leak.
“Shit,” he hissed. “Don’t take your eyes off her!” Shoving his staff member in the right direction, he leapt into his car. “Follow her on foot and call my cell when you know which way she’s headed. Mason,” he said to his elderly African-American chauffeur, “drive straight ahead, slowly, and await my orders.”
Leaving off his seatbelt to retain a hundred-and-eighty degree visual, Jay gripped the seat in front of him as they eased into traffic. Not thirty seconds later, his cell phone buzzed. “Which way?” he demanded, recognizing his assistant’s number.
“They’re crossing Pennsylvania Avenue, heading toward Fairmount,” Collum relayed, huffing to keep up.
Jay issued Mason the order to hang a right. “Slower,” he added, unnecessarily. The roads were jammed with cars leaving the area. They couldn’t do more than creep forward one yard at a time. “Stay on the line with me,” he ordered Collum. “Don’t fucking let them get away. I want to know where that reporter’s staying.”
“Maybe at the Best Western. She’s headed right toward it. Or, maybe not,” Dave added a minute later. “They’re going into the parking garage.”
Jay raked an eye over the façade of the monstrous hotel in front of him. “Where’s that?”
“Right side of the hotel.” Collum panted into the phone with the effort it took to keep up.
“We’ll wait outside on the street until she exits,” Jay decided. He ordered Mason to pull into a handicapped parking space. Collum would blow it for him if he showed his face. “Don’t let her see you,” he warned into his phone. “If she drives by you, duck behind a car. I’ll be right there to pick you up.”
“Don’t worry, sir. They haven’t seen me yet. Looks like they’re getting into a lime green Escort. You can’t miss them when they pull out.”
“Back off and wait at the opening of the parking garage. We’ll get you on our way by.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jay put his phone away. Blood thrummed through his arteries; a muscle ticked in his cheek. Operation Lights Out had haunted him from the night it totally backfired. He didn’t know if he’d trusted the wrong sources or if the assets he’d courted for six months prior to the operation had betrayed him, but either way, he’d fucked up. Gabir al Baldawi hadn’t been in the apartment building surrounded by his closest advisors. Instead the place had been occupied by nothing but civilians. In his outrage he’d shot some kid who wouldn’t stop wailing. The bullet had gone straight through him killing his mother, too—so what? Shit happened. He’d talked the SEALs he’d worked with into reporting the incident as an accident—either that or it’d be his word against theirs. They’d only agreed to keep silent if he agreed to leave the Agency.
He’d done what they wanted, so why the hell were they betraying him now? Jealousy, no doubt. Maybe they didn’t want him being their vice president one day.
The vision of a lime green Escort snapped him out of his cold sweat. “Follow that car, Mason,” he said, pointing it out.
As his chauffeur pulled away from the curb, Jay spared a glance at Collum, who stood near the parking garage expecting to be picked up. “Leave him,” Jay ordered as the Escort gained speed, threatening to slip out of sight. Ignoring Collum’s look of dismay, Jay focused his attention on keeping the smaller car in sight.
Two intersections away, the women’s car bore right on Arch Street and disappeared. “Drive faster,” he bit out. They turned the corner just in time to see the Escort veering toward South Broad. When they caught sight of it again, it was turning left onto Christian Street, making its way into the old, Italian neighborhood of Bella Vista.
A block ahead of them, it parallel parked in front of a series of row homes. “Pull over,” Jay hissed at Mason. “Don’t let them see us.”
Mason swung the front of the Town Car into the nearest alley, leaving the back end sticking out. Jay craned his neck and watched the two women get out of their vehicle and hurry into the one brick house that had been painted pale yellow. He waited another five minutes to see if they would emerge again. When they didn’t, he instructed Mason to drive past the house.
The number on the door made it easy to find again—769. Now he knew where the reporter was staying.
“Sorry for the detour, Mason,” he apologized, sitting back in his seat. “We can return for Collum now.”
With his jaw muscles jumping, Jay considered what to do about the journalist. If he let her live, she could ruin his bid for the vice presidency. He would have to silence her the way he’d silenced the first Navy SEAL to betray him. And what about the intern? She would have to disappear, as well. He winced at the financial implication. Getting rid of people in ways that couldn’t be traced back to him cost a lot of money. Damn it!
As they slowed at a stop sign, Jay roused from his dark thoughts and glanced at his watch. “Aw, hell,” he growled. “Now I’m late for lunch with the mayor!”
Chapter Three
‡
Vinny stepped out of the basement, intent on washing up for the Thanksgiving meal when the words “former Navy SEAL” had him turning toward the tiny television perched on one end of the counter. Ophelia, Bella, and his mother heard it, too. The kitchen, which had been bustling with activity resulting in the mixed aromas of roasting turkey, boiling potatoes, and simmering cranberries, fell quiet as they all turned to hear the news story.
“…The rash of break-ins attributed to a gang of teens resulted in his death. John Staskiewicz left the Navy SEALs six years ago, returning to Fishtown, the neighborhood he grew up in.” The photograph of a handsome man in fatigues appeared on the upper right side of the screen. “This is the first time that the break-ins have resulted in murder. Staskiewicz was shot in the head while sleeping. Anyone with information pertaining to his death is requested to call the police. Back to you, Chris.”
As the anchorman moved on to a new topic, Ophelia turned three quarters to send Vinny a searching look. “Did you know him, honey?” she asked, probably noticing his incredulity.
He shook his head. “No, not personally.” But he could have sworn he’d just seen that distinct name written somewhere. And then it came to him. It’d been scribbled onto one corner of a rect
angular brown box sitting on the corner of his commander’s desk. He’d seen it there two days ago when he’d dropped by to pick up his letter of recommendation for medical school. Having a photographic memory, Vinny was confident that the name was the same. And now the man was dead. But if the police thought some young petty thieves had shot a trained Navy SEAL in his sleep, they were seriously misled. He filed the incident away in his head to discuss with his commander later.
“Food’s almost ready, figlio. Go wash.” His mama shooed him out of the kitchen.
Ophelia trailed him into the empty hallway. “Did you manage to fix it?” she asked about the washing machine.
“Not yet.” He made a face and showed her the grease under his nails. “I gotta get a new part tomorrow when the stores reopen, but at least I know what’s wrong with it.” He massaged the kink he’d gotten in his neck from craning to see up inside the bowels of the old appliance. “It needs a new tub bearing. Then the cylinder won’t wobble like it’s demon-possessed.”
“You’re so clever,” Ophelia praised. Stepping closer, she whispered, “Did she confide in you about her health?”
Fixing the machine had been easy. Getting his mother to admit that she needed to see a doctor wasn’t. Vinny grimaced. “Not really. She said she was afraid the doc would tell her the cancer was back.” His chest tightened at the possibility. “I made her promise to make an appointment next week. How was the parade?”
“Great,” she said a tad too brightly.
Something about the way she said it roused the suspicion that she was hiding something, but he couldn’t imagine what. “Okay,” he said searching her turquoise eyes for clues.
But she turned away, going back to help his mama before he could query her further. With a shrug, Vinny hurried upstairs to shower and change.
By the time he rejoined the women, the kitchen table had been set with a lace tablecloth and his mama’s finest china. The food lay along the counter like a buffet.
“Cut the turkey, figlio,” Mama ordered. “S’time to eat!”