Jake’s body reacted before his brain could tell him to stop. Even as Irene and the senator dove for cover, he charged at Frankel and hit him with all his driving force, propelling him backward toward Eddie’s lectern. Despite the impact, Frankel wouldn’t go down. He backpedaled quickly, little staccato steps that kept him from losing his balance, as Jake focused every ounce of his strength on the attacker’s gun hand. For just an instant, the muzzle crossed in front of his face, but Frankel missed his opportunity for a sure kill.
Jake shoved his adversary hard into the corner molding of the archway to the dining room, and the impact triggered a grunt. He thought for sure that he heard something break in Frankel’s back, but the man still stayed on his feet. The gun discharged just inches from Jake’s face; a deafening blast that punched a hole in the plaster ceiling. Half a second later it went off again, disintegrating a crystal globe on the chandelier. Jake winced as grains of burning gunpowder bit into the flesh of his cheeks.
He had both hands on the gun now, struggling to loosen Frankel’s grip, and as he reached across the other man’s face, he howled in pain as Frankel’s teeth burrowed into the flesh of his upper arm. The pain was unspeakable as an incisor found a nerve, but he still hung on. To let go now was to die.
In his peripheral vision, Jake thought he saw Irene dash past.
She’s running away!
he thought. Then he knew better.
The gun drawers!
Irene knew she needed to do something. Jake was losing his fight, but she worried that if she interfered, Frankel might somehow work his hand free. If that happened, they were all dead. If only she had her weapon!
Leaving the senator to fend for himself, she dashed through the dining room and out into the hallway, praying the whole time that Eddie hadn’t locked the drawers. There were eight of them altogether, and she pulled on the one she thought housed her black S&W. Sure enough, the drawer opened, and there it was.
Snatching the weapon into both hands, she drew down on the second most powerful man in American law enforcement. “I got him, Jake!” she yelled. “Break away!”
Frankel was a vampire! Once he got his teeth locked onto Jake’s arm, he just wouldn’t let go. The pain was exquisite, shooting lightning bolts into Jake’s fingertips. As he lost the feeling in his hand, his grip started to slip.
The instant he heard Irene’s command to get down, he just let his legs fold, collapsing onto the floor and leaving Frankel suddenly exposed.
Irene saw Jake drop and knew she had her shot. “Don’t move, goddammit!” she yelled, and in that instant, the world exploded in gunfire, as Paul blasted the door lock from the outside. Irene whirled instinctively at the sound, breaking her aim on Frankel, then instantly realized her mistake. She dropped to one knee and tried to bring her weapon back around on target, but she was too late.
The first bullet hit her high on her right arm, knocking the air out of her lungs and sending her pistol airborne. The second shot, fired less than a second later, caught her just above her left ear, but she never felt a thing.
Paul looked away as he fired, shielding his eyes from the flying bits of splintered wood and steel. Five slugs pulverized the doorjamb, where the dead bolt joined the keeper, and with a single powerful kick, he sent the solid-core door exploding inward.
All he saw were muzzle flashes as a man in a suit threw an arsenal of lead at him. Paul dropped to the concrete and scrambled for cover as a plate-glass window on the opposite side of Connecticut Avenue shattered and collapsed into itself.
He randomly returned fire, scrambling to find shelter behind the brick wall of the town house. He never aimed a shot; to expose himself would have been suicide. Instead, he exposed only his hand and his weapon as he fired over and over, hoping that the random spray of bullets would keep the shooter at bay.
He felt the slide lock open as the last round exited his weapon, and the instant he withdrew his gun to reload, the brick facade began to pulsate behind his back. The gunman had found his aim, but the bullets couldn’t penetrate the masonry shield. Just as he’d been trained through endless hours at the FBI range, he dropped the spent magazine out of his weapon as he fished for a spare from his belt and slapped it in place. The slide jammed the next round home, and he was ready to go again. Total elapsed time: less than five seconds.
Out on the street, the panic had just begun. He heard the heavy impact of colliding vehicles behind him, but he ignored it. As rush-hour commuters dashed for cover, he swung his arm back into harm’s way and started pulling the trigger.
Jake never saw Irene fall. He just saw the pistol on the floor, amid a wild, unfocused cacophony of gunfire, and he scrambled for it. He lost track of the number of shots Frankel had fired, but each trigger pull seemed to drive an ice pick into Jake’s eardrums. It wasn’t until he cleared the archway into the center hall that he heard the return fire coming from the front door. Just random gunplay, really. A hand extended through the open door, spraying bullets through the center of the house as fast as its owner could pull the trigger.
Who the hell is that?
That explained why Frankel hadn’t turned back to fire at Jake. He had a far more threatening target to eliminate. Pressing himself as flat against the floor as possible, Jake made his final lunge for Irene’s weapon. He brought it around just as Frankel stole a spare magazine from Eddie Bartholomew’s corpse and jammed it home.
“Don’t do it, Frankel,” Jake shrieked, but he couldn’t even hear himself.
Frankel didn’t hesitate in bringing his weapon to bear.
Neither did Jake. He felt the big S&W buck in his hand before he realized he’d pulled the trigger. Frankel hesitated but didn’t fall. Jake’s gun bucked again. And again. And one by one, each round found its mark. Belly. Belly. Right arm. Chest. The chest shot dropped him. Frankel sagged to his knees, his face a mask of terror. He knew he was dead, and he knew who’d killed him.
A final shot, this one coming from the cowboy behind the door, ripped Frankel’s lower jaw clean off his body. The impact spun him a quarter-turn, then dropped him like a tree onto the carpet.
“Freeze, goddammit!”
The gun at the door had a voice now, and Jake knew instantly, just from the tone, that it belonged to yet another FBI agent.
Jake froze, just as he was instructed, as the man at the door scampered quickly up the hallway and jammed Jake face-first onto the fioor, kicking the pistol free from his hand.
“Jesus Christ, what did you do?” the man panted.
“For one thing,” Senator Albricht said, rising from behind his table shield, “he saved my life from that madman on the floor.”
Paul looked confused. In all the noise and the flying wood and glass, he’d never gotten a good look at the man who’d been shooting at him. When he did look, recognition was instant. “Oh, my God,” he whispered.
“He shot your partner,” Jake said. “She needs an ambulance.” He struggled under the agent’s weight to find a spot to rest his face that wouldn’t hurt so much.
Paul looked even more stunned as he fully recognized the cast of characters in the room. “Jake Donovan!” he said.
“Help your friend,” Jake said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Clearly, that’s what Paul wanted to do, but first, he had a prisoner to take care of. As he reached for his handcuffs, Senator Clayton Albricht placed a hand gently on his shoulder. “Please don’t do that,” he said gently. “It really isn’t necessary.”
C
HAPTER
F
IFTY
Travis pulled at his shirt collar, hoping the fabric might stretch and give him some room to move. He hated ties.
“Stop fidgeting,” Carolyn whispered. “And sit up straight.” She couldn’t count the number of times she’d said those words over the years, in that same order, but for some reason, they seemed fresh, unused. The fact that she was able to say them at all was a miracle she’d never again take for granted.
After five weeks of therapy, her neck was better, though not completely. Doctors still weren’t sure that she’d ever get full range of motion back, but given the nature of the injury, and progress she’d made so far, there was plenty of reason to hope.
Travis stopped squirming, but he didn’t straighten his shoulders. They were his shoulders, after all, and he could keep them slouched if he wanted to. “How come Dad gets to pace around?” he asked.
Jake turned away from the window and its view of Old Town, Alexandria, to face his son. “Because pacing keeps me from exploding,” he answered, honestly enough.
Travis leaned heavily on the ancient oak conference table and took a deep, exasperated breath. It caught in his throat and triggered a heavy cough.
“You okay?” both parents asked as one. It was a sound that would forever live in their nightmares.
“Jesus Christ, I’m not allowed to cough anymore?” Ever since Travis had gotten out of the hospital, his folks had been like this, on edge about everything he did; every sound he made. It was like living under a microscope. God only knew what was going to happen next time he caught the flu.
Carolyn closed her eyes and shook her head. For the time being, she’d given up correcting his language. His voice had only recently taken on a husky, smoky quality that was fascinating to listen to, no matter what he had to say. Whether it was the remaining traces of his injury or the onset of adolescence, she wasn’t sure, but as long as the words were coming, she couldn’t bring herself to interfere.
Jake was the one she worried about. Clearly, they’d won their war, yet Jake still wouldn’t allow himself to celebrate. The final details had taken a while to work out, and in the end, he’d had to spend two nights in jail, but then it was officially over.
They were celebrities now, with every talk show host in the country dogging them for interviews. Book publishers, movie producers, and magazine editors fell all over themselves trying to scoop their competition in what was turning out to be the biggest story of the year—at least until the next biggest story came around—and a growing gaggle of celebrity lawyers pandered every day for the opportunity to represent them.
Through it all, Jake had become more and more withdrawn, his outward sense of dread in many ways stronger now than it had ever been while they were on the run. He refused to talk about any of it, but Carolyn knew in her heart that it had something to do with his days alone with Thorne. Something awful had happened, and Jake was either too afraid or too ashamed to discuss it. In their quiet times together, in the hotel rooms provided by the FBI, Carolyn had tried to probe it out of her husband, but he’d have none of it.
In time,
she supposed.
All things happen in time.
When the phone call came two days ago for this morning’s meeting at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, she watched her husband panic. After five weeks of interviews and debriefings by Paul Boersky, something about this one call to report in person had left him a wreck. Last night he even talked about not coming in—about going on the run again.
“What for, Jake?” Carolyn had asked. “What are you so worried about?”
He let it drop without answering; stopped talking altogether. Today he’d said barely a word all morning, and as the rest of the family was getting dressed in the hotel, she watched him out the window as he paced the parking lot, staring at the trees and sucking in the November air like it was his last time.
And here he stood at the window, lost in his thoughts again, floating in his mind somewhere out there over the rooftops.
When the door to their conference room opened, Jake jumped a foot. The cockiness he once possessed was all gone, replaced with a kind of timidness that left Carolyn feeling frightened. As her husband smoothed out his suit coat, she strolled around the end of the table to join him.
Paul Boersky led the procession into the room, followed close behind by Senator Albricht; by a woman who looked vaguely familiar but whose face Jake couldn’t quite place; and, finally, by Irene Rivers.
The sight of his old nemesis brought a broad smile to Jake’s face, even as Carolyn withdrew. “Hello, Agent Rivers,” he said. In deference to Irene’s heavily bandaged right arm, he extended his left hand as a greeting. “How are you feeling?”
She accepted his grasp with a warm smile. “They tell me it helps when the bullet doesn’t penetrate the brain,” she deadpanned. “As for the shoulder, we’ll have to see.”
The group burned up a minute or so with introductions and pleasantries. Neither Carolyn nor Travis had ever met the senator, who in turn introduced the final guest.
“Donovan family, I’d like you to meet Ms. Emma Sanders, attorney general of the United States.”
With short, gray hair and a tiny frame, Ms. Sanders stood about five-three and could have been anybody’s grandmother, or maybe even the local librarian, but her piercing, humorless emerald-green eyes left no doubt that she was one tough lady. She shook hands politely, then ushered everyone into their seats.
“Do you have any idea why you’re here this afternoon?” Ms. Sanders asked.
Jake and Carolyn exchanged glances, then Jake spoke for the family. “No, ma’am, we don’t.”
“That’s good,” Sanders said. “That’s very good, in fact. With the level of media coverage you’re receiving these days, I didn’t want anything leaking out before we had a deal.”
Jake shot a look to Paul—his primary point of contact these past weeks—who raised a finger, urging him to be patient.
“Excuse me,” Senator Albricht interrupted. “Perhaps it would be best if the boy waited out in the hall.”
Travis’s eyes grew huge as he shot a glance to his mom and dad. “I’m not going anywhere!”
Jake looked to Boersky, who answered his silent question with a nod. “It’ll just be for a few minutes,” he said.
Jake turned to face his son. “Go ahead, Trav.”
“No!”
Jake stood and gently pulled the boy’s chair away from the table. “Please,” he said. “They wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
Travis looked to everyone in the room for support but couldn’t find any. Clearly, he didn’t know what to do next.
“Please,” Jake urged again.
“It’ll only be a few minutes,” Carolyn added.
Haltingly, the boy rose from his chair and allowed himself to be escorted to the big wooden door with smoked glass in the top. Jake opened it and pointed to the wooden bench against the wall. “Just wait for us there.”
Travis looked terrified; he knew that something was horribly wrong. “Dad?”
Jake winked at his son and struggled to keep his lip from trembling. “It’ll be okay, Trav,” he promised. “We’ll be out in just a few minutes.”
Travis started to say something but then looked as if the words had just dried up. Jake watched the boy drag himself to the bench, then turned back around to face the music for all that he’d done.
“You have some powerful friends in this town, Mr. Donovan,” Sanders began as Jake returned to his seat. “These people seem to think that you’ve gotten a raw deal these past few years.”
“You have a gift for understatement, Emma,” the senator piped in with a smile.
Ms. Sanders ignored him. “In any case,” she went on, “these things can become messy. I know, for example, through conversations with Mr. Boersky and through news reports that you have been approached by a number of parties to vent your spleen, as it were, in very public ways.”
Albricht interrupted again. “She’s trying to tell you, Jake, that the president’s scared to death that you’re going to piss in his Wheaties. Get to the point, Emma.”
Sanders’s glare could have melted an iceberg, but Albricht clearly couldn’t have cared less. Across the table, Irene and Paul fought losing battles to hide their discomfort. A sitting attorney general could do amazing damage to a Justice Department career.
Sanders cut to the chase. “I come here today with a one-time-only offer for you.” She reached into the oversize purse on her shoulder and withdrew a folded document. “This is a Presidential Pardon, Mr. Donovan, and it’s yours, on three conditions. One, that you refrain from any overt effort to seek publicity from this episode in your lives for a period of five years . . .”
“You’ve got to be kidding!” Carolyn said, but the expression she got in return said otherwise. “Why on earth—”
“Only until after the next election season,” Albricht explained.
“Hear her out, Carolyn,” Irene said. “This is important.”
Ms. Sanders shot a look to Irene that was totally uninterpretable, then continued. “Second, you must agree never to pursue a civil claim against the United States government for any alleged damages incurred . . .”
Carolyn launched from her seat.
“Alleged
damages! My God, lady—”
Jake caught the panicked look from Paul and moved quickly to intervene. “Carolyn, please. Let’s at least hear the offer before we reject it.”
Sanders acknowledged Jake’s assistance with a nod. “Lastly, you are never to divulge the elements of this agreement to anyone.”
“Now?” Carolyn asked, still hovering above her seat. “Is it time to reject the offer now? It’s absurd! We’ve already been exonerated, for God’s sake! Why in the world would I agree to conditions for a pardon I already have?”
Irene answered for the attorney general. “Charges have been dropped only for the original terrorist business in Arkansas.”
“But not for our flight? That doesn’t make sense.”
Irene shook her head, then closed her eyes against the pain it caused. “No, of course not. Because you committed no crime, you can hardly be charged with evading prosecution. The pardon proposed by Ms. Sanders is for any other crimes that may have been committed while you were on the run.”
Carolyn still didn’t get it. “You want me to give up my right to sue you into outer space, just so we don’t get brought up on some bullshit forgery charge?”
It was Clayton’s turn now. “That’s one example,” he said. “But you know, there’s any number of other laws you might have broken inadvertently along the way.” His eyes narrowed as they focused in on Jake, but his tone remained friendly. “And you never know when some ambitious young prosecutor might stumble on a new piece of evidence and drag you back into the spotlight. With this pardon in your hand, that can’t happen. Ever. In fact, even if you’d
killed
someone, you couldn’t be prosecuted for it.”
The words hit Jake like a fist in the chest, and as he scanned the faces of the people in the room, he saw just how hard Albricht’s eyes had become.
“We’ve known about Nick Thomas’s involvement for a couple of weeks now, Jake,” Irene said softly. “His prints showed up among hundreds of other prints in the Cadillac. For what it’s worth, you might be happy to know that he refused to comment on any of this.”
“His wife, on the other hand,” Paul finished, “was an entirely different story. Once she started talking, she just wouldn’t shut up.”
Carolyn had no idea what any of this was about, but as she watched the color drain from Jake’s face, she sat back into her seat and squeezed his hand under the table.
Attorney General Sanders closed the loop. “A body was found last week in Shenandoah National Park. Badly decomposed and apparently dug up by predators.”
The room fell silent as Jake processed the words. His face hid nothing anymore; it was all right there for everyone to see. Carolyn raised his hand now, still clutched in her own, and kissed it.
“Relax, Jake,” Albricht said softly. “No one’s going to pursue the body’s identity. And no one is ever going to ask you the details of what happened to the mysterious Mr. Wiggins or how you were able to avoid capture for all of these years. Just sign the indemnification papers, and the pardon’s yours. This whole mess will be over forever.”
Jake looked stunned, and he glanced to Carolyn for advice. She smiled. “This is a no-brainer, honey.” She motioned for the document to be slid across the table, then gestured for a pen. Albricht produced a pricey rollerball and handed it to Jake, who lifted the necessary pages to expose the highlighted areas marked with an “X.” Signatures on three pages, initials on four. He slid the papers to Carolyn, and then they were done.
Sanders accepted the signed indemnification, then handed over the pardon and rose to leave. “There’s a check in there, too,” she said. “Three hundred thousand dollars. To compensate you for your trouble.” She walked to the door, then stopped. “It’s tax-free, by the way.” For an instant, a smile flashed across her face, and then it was time to leave. Paul Boersky followed her out, as Clayton helped Irene get out of her chair.