Close Call (24 page)

“But—”

Her mother hung up. Sydney slid down the wall to her haunches, putting a fist against her mouth. Her mother blamed her. For her father's death, and for Reese's condition. A single sob escaped before she bit down savagely on her inner cheek, determined to keep the tears back. If she gave in now, she would lose it, be no use to Reese or anyone. Pushing through her heels, she forced herself back up. Clothes. She had to have real clothes. Clutching her phone in her fist, willing it to ring with good news from Connie, she grabbed her purse and fumbled with the deadbolt. When it slid back, she hurried toward the elevator, not even thinking to lock West's door.

Paul

Paul emerged from the
bank in Chevy Chase with his new identity safely stowed in his wallet a
nd what he liked to think of as an insurance file tucked under his arm.
His safety deposit boxes
came in handy for securing more than cash, weapons, and the elements of clean identities
.

With the Lionel Ross identity compromised by his visit to the ER, he couldn't risk returning to his room or retrieving his rental car. The cops might even now be sniffing around, lifting fingerprints. Inconvenient but not fatal. His prints would lead to the Army and the Army would pull up the bland file of a soldier killed at Ia Drang. The military bureaucracy had long ago erased any trace of his real identity when he became part of Operation Phoenix. There was nothing to tie him to Nygaard's murder since he'd ditched that gun at the Ellison woman's place, and nothing to tie him to today's fiasco. Except the sniper pistol in his gym bag, wherever the hell it was.

Crossing the street to a mall where he intended to replace his lost gym bag and purchase some clothes, toiletries, and a new laptop, he pondered the duffel's fate. With any luck the EMTs had overlooked it sitting on the sidewalk when they'd carted him off to the ER, and someone had stolen it. He regretted the loss of his laptop, though all his data was stored on the flash drive safely hooked to his key chain. He jiggled it in his pocket. A slight smile stretched his lips as he thought about the crackhead or petty thief getting arrested. The cops would find his gun, run ballistics, and tie the thief to Reese Linn's shooting if they recovered the bullet. Justice of a sort.

With the essentials packed in a new black backpack, Paul bought a sub sandwich in the mall's noisy food court and called home. No answer. He left a brief message for Moira and returned his cell phone to his pocket. A mother with twins in a stroller and a toddler lagging behind dumped her shopping bags on the table next to Paul's. One of the twins began squalling and the three-year-old demanded “fwen fwy.” The harassed mother picked up the screaming baby, sat, and unbuttoned her blouse, draping a yellow blanket over her shoulder.

Time to go. Paul averted his eyes from the suckling baby and carried his tray to a nearby trash can where he dumped the remains of his meal. He felt tired and his shoulder ached, but the fever that had been clouding his head really was gone. Over dinner he had come up with a new plan for taking out Montoya, and it was time to set the plan in motion. Congressman Fidel Montoya wasn't going to care whether or not the voters thought he'd make a good senator.

Sydney

Outside West's condominium complex,
Sydney looked up, past the pitted brick walls of the building and its neighbors, surprised by the sky's blueness. On some unconscious level she'd expected darkness, even though it was only early evening and the light would linger till past nine.

She turned automatically toward the nearest Metro stop. The sun soaked into her pink top, trapping heat against her body. Feelings of overwhelming loss smothered her like cling wrap; she could see through the clear film, but nothing from outside permeated the barrier. People strode purposefully toward meetings or loitered outside shops; Sydney steered around them as if they were pylons, not hearing their conversations or their laughter, not smelling the warmth of too many bodies jammed together like logs floating toward a sawmill. Images of Jason sprawled on the floor, his blood pooled around his head, played in her mind, mixing with snapshots of Reese on the sidewalk. She felt Jason's terror as a stranger thrust a gun at him and fired, his pain as the bullet bored into his flesh, tearing skin and muscle, shattering bone. When the solid metal lump came to rest, had he felt it? Had Reese felt the bullet plowing into her intestines? Had it been cold and alien, lodged near her liver? Or had it been burning hot after its expulsion from the gun, searing her organs?

She descended into the darkness of the subway station, knowing she was responsible. The knowledge she'd been ducking since Jason's death clobbered her. If she hadn't been such a coward, if she'd taken the phone immediately to the police, Jason would be alive. She'd killed him, just like she'd killed her father. Like she'd maybe killed Reese by asking for her help. She boarded a train like an automaton, grabbing a strap to steady herself in the press of rush hour commuters. She rocked to the train's rhythm, bumping shoulders with a youth in a hoodie wearing pungent hair gel and a suited man who smelled vaguely like cat pee. Despite the wall of flesh around her, Sydney felt utterly alone. She became part of the flow surging toward the up escalator when the train stopped and threaded her way toward the exit. She couldn't stop herself from cycling through a litany of the injuries she'd done to people she loved.

The stroke her father suffered when the Manley scandal broke had killed him, even though he hadn't died for almost twenty more years. He'd been trapped in a body whose right side was locked up. He'd needed assistance with eating and bathing. He'd worn adult diapers. Worse, his spirit was imprisoned by a brain that could no longer access language except randomly. For a man celebrated for his oratory, his cogent arguments before the Supreme Court, it was a fate worse than being buried alive. Only Connie Linn seemed to know what he was trying to communicate, and then only occasionally. “For better or for worse” had turned into a twenty-year sentence for her mom. That was her fault, too. The thought that Reese might end up the same way …

She stepped off a curb and two cars and a bus squealed to a stop as she crossed against the light. Angry honking brought her head up. She stared at the driver of a green Saturn as he stuck his head out the window and raved at her. Not hearing a single word, she continued across the street, instinctively headed for home.

“You okay? Miss?” The tentative voice, words slurred through missing teeth, broke through Sydney's grief. She focused on the man and his dog standing in front of her. Eli, that was it. His bloodshot eyes held an anxious expression and the dog nosed her hand. She felt the wetness on her face and mopped the tears with the hem of her shirt.

“Yes. No.” She floundered for words, undone by the real concern in the homeless man's voice. The dog sat and bit along the length of his tail. “Oh, I've got something for him.” She fumbled with her purse and unearthed the flea collar she'd stuck in it days before. Before Jason died. She bent to buckle it around the dog's neck, grateful for the opportunity to hide her face. “What's his name?”

“Duke. After Ellington.” The man shuffled his feet.

“Do you like jazz?”

“I played with Ellington once. Before the alcohol took away the music.” He edged away, and Sydney understood he was regretting the impulse that led him to talk to her.

“I played clarinet in middle school,” she offered. “I wasn't very good.”

“Piano.” He played a few notes in the air, his large, dusky hands unbearably graceful. Sydney didn't know much jazz, but she felt the music hovering in the air around them.

“You were good.”

He nodded and let his hands drop to his side. “Still am.” Summoning Duke with a slap on his thigh, he turned away.

“Thank you,” Sydney called after them. She started homeward again, thinking about Eli and the other homeless people in DC. They were almost invisible, she thought, even though they lived out in the open, completely without physical privacy. Exposed, yet invisible at the same time. While she, able to afford fences and gates and a house with doors that locked, had not been able to escape total exposure in the newspapers and on TV. How utterly ironic. The knowledge that she wouldn't trade places with Eli for anything, not even anonymity, smote her.

Something about the encounter had freed her mind and she could think clearly again. The sadness still tugged at her, but she felt a new sense of resolve as she approached her townhouse, swept along by the sound of the Marine band practicing at the barracks. She'd found a purpose in life after the scandal, her dad's illness, and Dirk's betrayal by starting Winning Ways. Right now, her priority had to be finding the man who killed Jason and hurt Reese. Not just the man who'd pulled the trigger, but the one who put him up to it. West was on the case now, but she'd been investigating longer, and had the advantage of being the target.

Her mind assessing and discarding various plans for luring the killer into the open and getting him to implicate his employer, she swung open the gate to her tiny front yard. No sign of Indy. At least they'd dropped Earl at Connie's. Drooping feathers of salvia begging for water in their pots on either side of the door reminded her she'd neglected many home duties since Jason's death. She uncoiled the hose and turned on the faucet, rinsing the faint scent of flea collar chemicals off her hands before filling a watering can. As she was trickling the last of the water onto the grateful salvia, she noticed the corner of an envelope peeking from beneath her front door. Setting down the can, she bent to tug at the envelope. The corner tore off in her hand.

Damn. She fumbled for her keys and unlocked the door. Retrieving the envelope, she carried it upstairs and set it on the dresser while she stripped. She dug a clean bra out of her lingerie drawer and donned the first T-shirt that came to hand. With a crisp movement, she slid the closet door open to yank a pair of slacks off a hangar. A box on the top shelf caught her eye.

Oh, God. Reese's letters. She stretched on tiptoe to dislodge the box. It tilted and slid toward her in a poof of dust. She sneezed. Carrying the box to her bed, she sat. Even as she was thinking she didn't have time for this, she was lifting the lid off the shoe box. The two business-sized envelopes, one postmarked from Chicago and the other from Israel, lay atop a collection of Nana Linn's embroidered hankies, a box of seashells collected on a long-ago beach vacation, a well-read copy of
The Prophet
, and a dried corsage from prom. Treasures.

She ran two fingers the length of the smooth envelope. The gesture reminded her of Emma Fewell making a similar movement to demonstrate how her husband had shined his grief. She drew her hand back as if stung. Oh my God. She'd been doing the same thing, hanging onto her anger at Reese, keeping it alive by ignoring these apologies—she's always known the letters were apologies, of course she had—dwelling on her hurt, her sense of betrayal, the hardship. The stupidity and futility of it struck her with staggering force. Fifteen years wasted. Well, thirteen or fourteen, at least. Surely a year's anger was justified? Decisively, she fitted the lid back on the box. She didn't need to read the words to know Reese was sorry, to forgive her sister … and maybe even herself? If—when—Reese recovered, maybe they'd talk about it. Or not.

Right now, she needed to figure out a way to smoke out the man who'd shot her sister. Her gaze fell on the other envelope, the one on the dresser. Her brows twitched together. It really didn't look like the junk flyer she'd assumed it was. Crossing to it, she inserted a finger into the torn corner and worked it open. She pulled out a folded photocopy of a newspaper photo. Flattening it against the dresser, she studied it. The picture was clearly taken at a funeral, and showed a solemn-faced Fidel Montoya headed away from an open grave, his arm around his wife. Three other mourners, two men and a woman, stood in the background, heads bent. There was no cutline or accompanying article.

Sydney knit her brows. Whose funeral was it? Who had shoved the photo under her door? Why? She couldn't tell if the photo was from last month or ten years ago. It was connected with Jason's death, though. It had to be.

The words from the phone call came back to her: “Time for round two.” She was convinced, down to her bones certain, that the photo had something to do with “round one.”

Without any clues to go by, any key words, finding the photo's provenance on the Internet was a lost cause. She wasn't going to waste her time on the computer when she knew someone who could tell at a glance where and when the photo had been taken. With any luck, he'd also know why someone had shoved it under her door.

Sydney punched a number into her cell phone and greeted Fidel Montoya when he answered.

“Your sister. Oh my God, Sydney, I heard about it on the news. What the hell happened?”

“It's a long story,” she said, not wanting to go into it on the phone. “We need to talk. I've got something to show you.”

“Really? Did you find something? Never mind. Tell me when you get here. I'm at the house.” He gave her the address. “I never have an election night party. It's a superstition of mine. The night of my first election, for city council, I got bronchitis and couldn't speak at the supporters' dinner like I was supposed to. I spent the evening drinking cough syrup and watching a 007 movie marathon. I won. Ever since, I always spend election night watching James Bond. I've never lost.”

“I'll bring the Robitussin,” Sydney said.

He laughed. “Plan to stay for dinner,” he added as he hung up.

The warmth in his voice gave her pause. Where was his wife? On the one hand, she didn't fancy another encounter with the hostile Ms. Katya Van Slyke. On the other, she didn't want to spend an evening alone with Montoya. Even if he didn't try anything, chances were some nosy reporter would make something of it. She hesitated a moment, then gave a fatalistic shrug. She'd ask him about the photograph and then leave. She'd be in and out in half an hour, tops.

She called Connie and learned that Reese was still in surgery, then hailed a taxi in the deepening twilight. Sliding onto the slick vinyl seat patched with duct tape in several places, she gave the cabbie the address, her eyes meeting his in the rearview mirror and daring him to complain about the semi-rural destination. With a grunt, he put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb, jerkily enough to bounce her against the door. She kept her mouth shut, figuring it would be worth it if she could finally get some answers. Almost to Montoya's, it occurred to her to call West, but she got his voicemail. She was cut off halfway through her explanation of finding the news clipping and where she was going with it. No matter—in all probability she'd be on her way back before he checked his messages.