Stronghold | Book 1 | Minute Zero

by Jayne, Chris

  “What was I supposed to do? Tell her not to come?”

  “You were supposed to tell your husband. The second I got home on Monday. At that point we might have been able to figure out a way to help her that didn’t involve her bringing trouble to our doorstep.”

  Deacon heard a clanging bang, and surmised that his brother had kicked something, probably a bucket from the sound of it.

  “Roger, don’t.” Louise’s voice was heavy with unshed tears. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what? Don’t be mad? Damn it, Lou. You should have told me right away.”

  There was a pause so long that Deacon started to wonder if, somehow, they had gone out a back door that he didn’t know about, but just as he was thinking of entering the barn to check, Louise’s voice came again. “Roger, don’t tell Deacon.”

  “What? Why wouldn’t I tell Deacon?”

  “I don’t think they like each other.”

  “Deacon and your sister? How do they even know each other?”

  “They met at our wedding.”

  “So? That was six years ago.”

  “Just don’t tell him.”

  “Louise, if some shit is coming up our driveway, he’s the first person I’m telling. I don’t give a damn whether they like each other or not.”

  “Roger, Deacon can’t know…”

  Deacon stepped into the barn, and looked at his brother and sister-in-law. Roger’s face was flushed and angry, Louise’s was tear-streaked and sad. They both swiveled towards him, jaws dropping open. It would have been comical if it weren’t so serious. “End of conversation,” he said. “Deacon knows.”

  Her face horrified, Louise ran from the barn sobbing.

  Twenty minutes later, Deacon and Roger sat on the hill overlooking the farm. Roger fished a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and wordlessly offered one to Deacon.

  Deacon shook his head and slanted a glance towards his brother. “I didn’t know you smoked.”

  “Officially, I don’t.” Belying his words, Roger took one out of the pack and stuck it in his mouth, lit it with a lighter, took a drag. “So how much did you hear?”

  “Pretty much everything. I came up to the barn looking for Lou. You guys had just started talking. Sorry about the eavesdropping, but once I realized it was serious I wasn’t going to walk away.” Once I heard Lori’s name, he added to himself, but he didn’t say that to his brother.

  “Even about the senator, and all that?”

  “Yup.”

  “This stinks, Deke. The whole thing stinks. Louise has barely spoken to Lori in five years. Ten-minute phone calls with nothing but polite chitchat on their birthdays and that’s about it. She must really be in some sort of jam if she’s coming here.”

  Deacon remembered that Lori and Louise’s mother had been killed in a terrorist attack in Europe when the girls were small. “What about their dad?”

  “He lives in Hawaii with his new wife. If she can’t use her ID to get on an airplane, I guess she’s got no way to get to him.”

  Although it really wasn’t important in that moment, Deacon was genuinely curious about something and had to ask. “Why did they stop talking? What caused the falling out?”

  Roger snorted. “I assume Lou knows. But whatever the reason, let’s just say I suspect she’s never been entirely honest with me.”

  “What do you think?”

  In the yard below, the group of five children, led by Sandy’s oldest daughter Beth tumbled out into the yard. For just a few moments, the men watched them play. Then out of nowhere, Roger offered, “Because Lori is a bitch?”

  Deacon adjusted his position on the cold ground and stretched out his long legs. “That’s not a helpful answer, Rog.”

  “The truth is I’m not entirely sure. All I know is that when Lou and I decided to move to Bowenville, Lou tried to get Lori to move there too. Her husband had been dead a year, or more at that point, and she had a baby and a five-year-old she was raising by herself. And Lori had the money from the life insurance policy. But Lori not only wouldn’t discuss it, she had a complete fit that we were moving there. It’s one of the reasons I got so pissed when you called it a commune. Lori always called it the same thing. She kept acting like it was one of those Mormon compounds where guys have nine wives, and women disappear and you never see them again.” Roger lifted his hand and waved it randomly. “But enough about Bowenville. We’ve got to figure out what’s going on with Lori and what we can do about it.”

  Deacon dug his cell phone out of his pocket. His carrier did not have service at Roger’s house, but by hooking into the WiFi he could still use all the smart phone features. He brought up the map program. “Oklahoma City, right?” Quickly his fingers typed a query. “So that’s about 1,300 miles from here. Two days driving for sure for a woman with kids.” In silence, Deacon played with the map, looking at the route.

  Finally, Roger interrupted. “What are you thinking?”

  Deacon set the phone on his jeans-clad knee and blew his lips out. “That I should jump on a plane and fly to Denver. Get a rental and pray that she calls again. That way,” he showed the map to Roger, “no matter where she is, if we’re both driving, we won’t be more than a couple hours apart.”

  Roger handed the phone back with a final glance at the map. “It’s your decision, brother. You’d be willing to do that?” He paused. “And why did Louise not want me to tell you?”

  Deacon shot Roger a quick look, ignoring the final question. “She’s your wife’s sister and she’s in trouble. You think I shouldn’t offer to help?”

  “I’m not saying that. Not at all. It just surprised me a bit, but hear me out. There are three or four flights a day to Denver from Billings and at least two a day from Bozeman, and both of those airports are no more than three hours from here. Let’s say - right now - you fly to Denver and, then, she doesn’t call again, and two, three days from now, she just shows up here. Now, I’m here alone with three women and what? Seven kids and you in Denver. No,” he corrected himself. “Four women. Apparently, she’s got some sort of nanny with her. And God knows what coming after her. That’s the last thing I want.”

  Deacon continued the thought train. “If we wait and she calls, then we can tell her to stay put. If she calls again, you tell Louise she has to get a phone number. I heard her say Lori called from a pay phone, but she has a burner phone?”

  “That’s what she said,” Roger agreed.

  “Well, we need a number. We figure out where she is and tell her just to stay there. Hell, I can check her into a hotel on my credit card. Then I fly down to her and if she’s in as much danger as Lou seems to think she is, we don’t even bring her here.”

  “That’s a good plan, but…” Roger repeated his earlier question. “Why would you do that for a woman you barely know? Someone you met one time?”

  Deacon hesitated, not quite sure how to answer. “Well, I’m doing it for you as much as for her…” His voice trailed off.

  A silence grew between the two men, broken only by the children’s high piping voices, who, against all odds, actually were playing together nicely in the yard below. Finally, Roger spoke again. “Why do I get the feeling there’s something no one’s telling me?”

  “Yeah, you called it, brother.” Deacon picked a twig off his trousers and threw it away angrily. “Lori and I hooked up. I wasn’t sure, but obviously Louise knows.”

  “What?” Roger breathed. “What?” he asked more forcefully. “When?”

  “When do you think?” Deacon replied sarcastically. “Your wedding. Best man bangs the maid of honor. Oldest cliché in the book, I guess. It was just that in this case, I had really thought there might be something more than just a quickie at a wedding.”

  Roger’s voice was confused. “But wasn’t she pregnant at the wedding?” He paused, then answered his own question. “No, that’s right. She didn’t know at the wedding. I remember her telling Lou about it after we got home from our honeymoon.” Ro
ger took a deep breath. “Oh, shit.”

  “Oh, shit is right.”

  “What happened?”

  Deacon hated the vulnerable tone in his voice, but he couldn’t completely suppress it. “I don’t know what the hell happened. She wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t even return my emails. I guess she thought the fact that she screwed me so soon after her husband died turned her into a slut or something and once she found out she was pregnant, she didn’t want to be reminded of it? For a while I thought maybe she’d met someone else, but…” He opened his hands in a “who knows” gesture. “Then about a month and a half later we got deployed out to some pretty nasty shit in Afghanistan. I went three, maybe even four months with almost no communication ability. By the time we got back, her baby was almost ready to be born, and obviously by then there was no point.”

  “I remember that. The baby was born right before Christmas. Lou was even going to fly to Florida and be with her, but then the baby came two weeks early, and the birth was really fast, I guess. By the time Lou got the phone call, Brandon was already born. So that was that.”

  “Yeah, that was that.” Deacon sighed. “So now you know everything.” Deacon paused. His brother didn’t know everything, actually. What he wasn’t mentioning is that he, on a lark, had flown to Florida two months later, in February, with gifts for the baby, to surprise Lori - and she had refused to see him. That had hurt.

  He pushed the memory aside. Didn’t matter now. “Ancient history. I haven’t really thought about her in years. Now, the only thing that matters today is getting that woman and her kids somewhere safe, keeping your family safe, and figuring out what’s going on.” Deacon stood up, brushed the loose hay from his jeans. “And now, brother, I’m going to take your wife to the store and buy a couple hundred pounds of meat.” Without another word, Deacon walked back down the hill.

  Ancient history. Roger, standing in the cold fall air, watched his brother go, thinking about his last words: I haven’t really thought about her in years.

  It wasn’t only women who had intuition. Some very deep instinct on his part told him that that was most definitely not the case. His brother had just lied to him - big time. Roger wondered why.

  Chapter 27

  Angela

  Friday

  8:00 AM Eastern Time

  Miami, Florida

  * * *

  All she could do was keep her eyes open and her mouth shut. Angela told herself that as she rinsed her hair a final time in the high-end steam shower. Eyes open and mouth shut.

  The previous night she was shown directly to a well-appointed guest suite in a private home. The driver, who had her name on a sign as she came to baggage claim at the Miami airport, introduced himself as “Garth,” and then said very little more. Though his English was very good, even after just a few sentences, her trained ear recognized him instantly as native Albanian. Of course, she gave no sign and the few words they exchanged were all English.

  Why was she here? She wasn’t a prisoner, at least not in the traditional sense. Because she hadn’t flown to Miami “officially,” instead of carrying her sidearm on the plane, which technically she was required to do as an FBI agent, she’d declared it and put it in her checked baggage. No attempt had been made to take either her gun or her phone when she arrived. From the GPS on her phone, she could see exactly where she was, but the house’s owner was still a mystery. Garth had even gestured out the back doors briefly and said, “The switch for the pool lights is on the right. Swim if you want to, and the hot tub is just beyond.” Just to test things, she’d availed herself of the hot tub at 11:00 the previous night, and it appeared that no one had even known she’d gone outside.

  There was nothing that she could see that prevented her from just walking away. No, the chains that held her were the same as always: the family left behind in Albania, and her loyalty to them.

  One thing she’d figured for certain immediately: someone was running very scared indeed. She was an extremely valuable asset. To risk bringing her in on this, showing her publicly, they must need her very badly.

  Eyes open and mouth shut, she reminded herself again, as she dressed casually in khaki trousers and a collared shirt, overall a very “invisible” outfit. Would she be going out? Would she be meeting people? More to the point, would she be meeting other FBI who would know that she was FBI? She considered her options for a moment, and she decided to leave her gun. Taking a deep breath, Angela left her room.

  “I have something.” Angela swallowed hard, as the man who had been introduced to her as Raoul Saldata barely two hours earlier walked towards her. “I’m pretty sure I have the car.”

  With Raoul Saldata, the clues were even more subtle than they had been the previous night with “Garth,” but Angela had known at once that he was Albanian. His Hispanic name didn’t fool her for a second. Her reaction to him had been immediate and profound. He was an American version of the village chiefs she’d seen in Albania. Somewhere between fifty and sixty. Overweight. Sallow skin. Cruel eyes, dark black hair. The only difference was when he smiled: he had perfect teeth. Wonder how much that cost? she speculated.

  She felt like a frightened child again, and she hated it.

  After a breakfast in a beautifully decorated dining room, served by a Spanish-speaking housekeeper, Angela had been shown to what appeared to be Saldata’s office. A cheap plastic table had been set up in a corner, and she knew instantly that this was her workspace. Then, in a very matter-of-fact way, Saldata had explained to Angela what they knew, what they had. They were trying to locate a woman named Lori Dovner. The Miami police were incompetent.

  He didn’t say why, and Angela didn’t ask, but the death of a United States senator was something an FBI agent paid attention to, even if it was in a different state and under the purview of a completely different department. Lori Dovner’s face had been on the news, and while Saldata talked, Angela tried to remember what had been said about the woman.

  They were looking for Dovner, no they weren’t.

  They didn’t know where Dovner was, yes they did.

  Dovner was Kyle Michaels’ lover, no she wasn’t.

  She’d abducted her children from school, no she hadn’t.

  If Dovner allegedly had something to do with Senator Michaels, and Saldata was looking for Dovner, Angela knew without a doubt that Saldata had killed Michaels and Dovner knew something about it.

  End of story.

  Angela kept her eyes on her notepad and her hand steady as she took brief notes, but she realized - again - that she would be lucky to get out of this alive.

  After just a brief explanation, Saldata had handed her a file containing a sheaf of papers, and quickly Angela had the basics: the woman they were looking for was thirty-four years old, single mother (though, a bit unusually she was a widow, not divorced.) She had two children, a girl, Grace who was ten and a boy, Brandon who was nearly six. There was a French nanny, Simone Moreau, twenty, who may or may not be with them. From what they had been able to find, it looked as if Dovner’s husband, dead six years, had been in the CIA. That fact, if true, was quite an interesting coincidence, but it appeared to be exactly that: a coincidence. Jack Dovner had been half Korean, and his area of the world had been Asia, Korea to be exact. His work appeared to have no connection to any area of the world where Saldata would have operated.

  Lori Dovner picked up her children at Sea View Elementary school just after 11:00 Monday morning, now four days earlier, only seconds before police had arrived, missing her by only the most narrow of margins. Within just a few hours, she pulled more than $4,000 out of the bank, already seeming to be wary enough to know she had to avoid the bank cameras. Of course, she couldn’t hide from the surveillance inside the branch, but she had not parked her car - whatever she was driving at that point - anywhere the bank cameras could find her. Then, she’d shown up trying to check into a hotel in Gainesville, Florida, almost 300 miles north of Miami, at 11:00 Monday night.

&nb
sp; And that was it.

  Angela had been provided with the video feed from the security camera at the school Dovner’s children attended, cell phone records, and not much else.

  In spite of the average person’s belief that “they can track you with your cell phone,” that was much easier said than done. Law enforcement could actively use someone’s cell phone location in real time to find a person, but only if they were already looking. Going back in time, the only data that was available was where the phone had been when a call was made or received. Where someone went after a call, for example, or what route they took between Call A and Call B, that information was not available. Still, in this case, just the call location data was a lot better than having nothing.

  The notes she’d made were spread out on the desk in front of her. In spite of the sparse information, the answer was here. It was just a matter of putting the puzzle pieces together in the right sequence. Angela reviewed her list again.

  #1. 9:20 AM on Monday: A phone call from Dovner to a number that had been tagged as belonging to Mr. Saldata’s housekeeper. They had the GPS location on the phones. Dovner had been at a veterinarian’s office near her house, the housekeeper in Orlando.

  #2. 9:45 AM on Monday: A phone call from Dovner to Michelle Krushke, her employee. By plotting Dovner’s vector from the vet to the location where she made the call, it was clear she was heading in the direction of Saldata’s house.

  It had been one of the few questions Angela had asked Saldata. She’d shown him the map with the GPS coordinates she was plotting in and asked point blank: “Was she coming here?”

  He’d responded with a curt, “Yes.”

  Angela had swallowed hard, not wanting to ask, but she had to know. “What time was she here?”

  “Just before 10:00.”

  So now Angela knew that whatever had happened, whatever Lori Dovner had seen, it had happened here, at this house. Where she currently sat.