Chapter 37
Near Manassas, Virginia
A
ugust Bowen located Garcia with little trouble amid the crowd of families, flirting teenagers, and screaming children at the outdoor water park. It was ironic that a woman who seemed bent on playing spy games should possess oh so many traits that made her do everything but blend in. She lounged up to her shoulders in a raised tile hot tub that was tucked in behind a gigantic, spaghetti-like yellow waterslide. Deeply bronzed and well-muscled, she was still supremely feminine. The parts of her that lay above the surface shouted for everyone in the park to guess what lay beneath the water.
Bowen walked barefoot across the concrete, smiling, happy to feel the heat against his toes. He’d changed into a pair of blue board shorts in the locker room and shut his clothes up with a combination lock that reminded him of his days back in junior-high gym class. Even a halfhearted thief would be able to defeat such a basic padlock in a manner of seconds, so he kept the dive watch on his wrist and submitted his wallet to fate. He congratulated himself for having the forethought to leave his gun locked in the center console of his Charger.
A blinding sun reflected and refracted off the rippling blue surface of the many small pools and rivers that made up the park. The warm Virginia air, heavy with the odor of chlorine and Coppertone, mingled with the must of oaks from the greenbelt that ran between Manassas and Centerville before sliding like a leafy delta into Battlefield Park.
Bowen worked his way through scattered deck chairs and gangs of barely dressed teenagers. Screaming toddlers ran by on stubby legs or washed back and forth with their mothers in the nearby wave pool.
With so many big-armed, khaki-clad federal lawdogs wearing all the latest gadgets, August Bowen strove for practical over
practi-cool,
both in gear and physique. Blue jeans and a T-shirt beat out khakis and polo shirts when the marshal didn’t force his hand at work. Like many boxers, he rarely lifted weights, feeling they slowed him down and gave him mirror-muscles instead of true, usable power. He worked hard to keep the body of a fighter, hardened by hours of skipping rope, long runs, and years of pounding the heavy bag.
Such a level of fitness brought with it a certain don’t-screw-with-me vibe that stopped most fights before they started—and garnered him stacks upon stacks of cocktail napkins with women’s phone numbers.
A bright scar, the size and shape of a football, stood out against the tan skin of the ribs on his right side. His blue board shorts covered a corresponding scar on his buttock and thigh, all from a long-forgotten Russian land mine near Mazar-i-Sharif. The mine put him in the hospital, but it had turned his interpreter into a red mist. Bowen thought about that good man each time he saw the scar in the mirror. Few people ever even noticed the scar at first, focusing instead on the full head of silver hair on a seemingly healthy man in his early thirties.
Garcia looked up when he approached and nodded him over with a wide smile that could have stopped a charging buffalo in its tracks. Bowen imagined she’d hooked Jericho Quinn with much the same look.
“Hey there,” she said, as he stepped into the cool water. “Thanks for meeting me.”
Though the water park was relatively crowded, the moms and kids that made up the bulk of the patrons were much more interested in the high-octane slides and wave pools than a simple whirlpool tub. Ronnie shared the ten-by-fifteen pool with only a couple of pimple-faced teenage boys who lounged along the wall opposite her, willing themselves to look ten years older. They cast expectant glances every few moments, just waiting for her to stand up so they could get a better look at her. The boys stared at Bowen with dagger eyes when he encroached on their territory, but cowered when he came closer—small dogs, brave only when safely behind their screen doors.
Bowen gave the boys a polite nod. He remembered all too well the mind-numbing rush of hormones he would have felt at their age in the pool with someone with the curves of Veronica Garcia. Pushing through the waist-deep water until he was beside her, he slid down the cool tile wall with his shoulders against the concrete lip of the pool.
Garcia rolled solid shoulders as if she was trying to relax. Bowen, whose army shrink had told him after the nonsense in Afghanistan that he should use his artistic talent to work though his issues, watched this woman and told himself he was thinking only of what fine art the lines of her body would produce. His artist’s eye picked up the slight unevenness in her collarbones—a car wreck, maybe. She had a tiny mole on the lobe of her left ear—something he would certainly highlight if he were drawing her face.
He blinked to clear his thoughts, covering with a smile. “How have you been?” he asked.
She glanced back and forth, dark eyes scanning the crowds. The last six inches of her black hair pooled in the water around her neck, mopping bronze shoulders when she moved.
“I’m good,” she said, her voice detached, distant. She scooted closer so her thigh brushed his under the water.
Bowen knew it was just so their conversation would be more private, but it still made him catch his breath. He hid it with a cough, he hoped.
“Did anyone try to follow you?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” he said honestly. It hadn’t really occurred to him to look for a tail, but he was pretty sure he would have noticed one had it existed.
“Okay,” Garcia said, lips pursed as if mulling over one last time how much she wanted to tell him. “I need your help,” she finally said, “but I have to warn you again. It could get you in a lot of trouble.”
“Trouble is my middle name.” Bowen smiled, hoping to tamp down the drama.
“It’s ‘danger,’ Mango.” She smiled. “
Danger
is your middle name.”
“Are you sure?” Bowen said. “Because I get in a hell of a lot of trouble.” He leaned back, draping his arms along the pool deck. They were close enough it was impossible to avoid touching one another and his fingers brushed the moist skin of her shoulders. “Anyway, I’m used to it. Trouble, I mean.” He coughed, clearing his thoughts. “So, what can I help you with?”
Garcia leaned in close and let her head tilt sideways. Her damp hair slid across his arm. “Are you familiar with the IDTF?”
Bowen gave a thoughtful nod. “Who isn’t?” he said. Mention of that agency alone was enough to sour anything positive about sitting in a hot tub with a beautiful woman. “President Drake’s new department of Internal Defense. Rooting out the bad apples in government and safeguarding the freedoms of all Americans . . . if you believe their press.” He turned to look her in the eye. “Which, as far as I can see, no one in the government does.”
“Well,” Garcia said, eyes still flicking nervously around the crowded water park. “A couple of their goons did a black bag job on my house. The bastards even put a camera in my bathroom.”
“Yeah,” Bowen chuckled. “I saw that. It’s already up on the Internet at Ronnieshowers.com.”
She slammed a sharp elbow into his ribs. “Shut up.”
“I apologize,” he said. “I shouldn’t joke. That’s a bad deal.”
“Anyway . . .” Garcia’s chastening glare faded slowly. “They followed me to a gas station, so I knocked one of them out with a two-by-four and broke the other guy’s leg with his car door—”
Bowen sat up straighter. Grimacing, he showed her the flat of his open hand. “I don’t think you should tell me stuff like that.”
“If you’re going to help me, there are things you need to know.”
“My drill sergeant used to tell us that some things are
nice to know
and some are
nuts to know
. Any alleged assaults against federal agents . . .” Bowen shook his head. “That’s just nuts for us to talk about.”
“Gus.” She ignored him, big eyes blinking as she gazed across the water. “If you knew half the things I’ve done, you wouldn’t even bother to read me my rights before you carted me off to the electric chair. Jericho trusts you, so I trust you. I may as well come clean and confess. If you have to arrest me, so be it.” She glanced at him from downcast lashes, watching for a reaction. “Did you hear they got Virginia Ross last night?”
Bowen gave her a slow nod as if he was still making up his mind on what to do. “It was all over the news,” he said.
“I’ll bet.” Garcia quit talking as a blond man in his late twenties walked down the steps to enter the whirlpool. He was alone, in good shape, with a couple of scars on his right shoulder that looked like shrapnel wounds. Conventional wisdom said that if an IDTF agent had war wounds, they were likely to be in the back from running away or getting shot by his own guys.
Garcia stood up, unwilling to take any chances. “Let’s swim,” she said.
Water ran in silver rivulets down her body, following the swells and dips of her skin. Bowen had drawn dozens of different women and wasn’t the type to be easily overwhelmed by a girl in a bathing suit, but Veronica Garcia’s purple one-piece made it hard for him to swallow. It was as modest as humanly possible on a body like hers, but no wet fabric capable of being sewn into clothing was truly able to contain the parts of her that needed containing.
Rather than walk to the steps at the other end of the whirlpool, Garcia put both hands on the concrete and pressed herself up, bringing one knee and then her entire body onto the pool deck in one smooth motion. It would have been easy for her to look like a wallowing seal, but she pulled it off like a dancer. Standing, she reached back to adjust the seat of her swimming suit, and then tilted her head to wring the water from her hair. Her movements carried an innocent allure that Bowen suspected she wasn’t even aware she possessed.
The new guy in the pool followed her with his eyes, but that was likely a function of watching her curves try to escape the bathing suit rather than any thought of seeing her arrested. Bowen’s Montana-born grandfather would have described her body as a litter of puppies trying to squirm their way out of a gunnysack.
Never turning to see if he was behind her, Ronnie stopped long enough to rent a yellow tube from a kid under a big umbrella. Oblivious to the other teenage boys with gaping mouths, she told the kid at the register to keep his change. Bowen found himself wondering where she’d gotten the money from to pay him in the first place.
A moment later, Garcia tossed the tube into the water and slipped smoothly into the long ribbon pool that wound its way through the entire water park. Known as the “Lazy River,” there was just enough current that swimmers could hang on to their big tubes and drift along without expending any energy.
Apparently satisfied it was safe to talk again, Garcia draped her arms over the tube, breasts mashed against the yellow plastic, and waited for Bowen to join her, which he did.
He pulled himself up across from her, legs trailing in the cool water, steering them so they moved sideways and neither had to drift backwards. If gunfighters swam in lazy rivers, this was the way they did it.
“Nice necklace.” She nodded at the black pearl hanging from the chain around his neck. “Looks real.”
“Hmmm,” Bowen grunted. “It is.”
“Doesn’t really fit the rest of your profile,” Ronnie said, half to herself. “There must be a story behind it.”
“So, what is it you need from me?” He repeated his question from the whirlpool, changing the subject. The last thing he was going to do was talk to this spy chick about his past.
She nodded and got down to business, obviously realizing they weren’t that close.
“Marshals usually end up with federal prisoners once they see a judge, right?”
“That’s right,” Bowen said. “But things are a little muddy on that front lately with the IDTF sticking their noses in everything. I’m assuming Director Ross will have some kind of in-camera hearing with only the ID agents and the judge in attendance. And that’s if they have a hearing at all. The stories about these guys would give you chills.”
“I’m sure,” Garcia said. She waved a hand under the water, toying, watching the trailing whirlpool as she spoke. “But you could find out where she’s being held, right?”
“I can try,” Bowen said. “For all the good it will do. I’m guessing you’ve lost your friends in high places if you’ve gone outlaw like Quinn.”
“That’s an understatement,” Ronnie said. “My friends in high places don’t have even have friends anymore. But you let me handle that end when the time comes. I’d appreciate it if you can just find out where she is. I’ll take it after that.”
“Of course, I’ll help you.” Bowen smiled. “If only for the chance to go swimming with you again.” Bowen had never been very good with gray areas. If someone needed their ass kicked, he kicked it. If they needed arresting, he arrested them and let the courts figure out the rest. But something was different here. He’d sensed a sea change the moment he’d set foot in Japan when he’d first been assigned the fugitive warrant for Quinn. Washington had always been full of powerful forces that could rip a person to pieces if they took a wrong turn. Bowen couldn’t put his finger on it, but sometimes, he wondered if he was still working for the good guys.
Ronnie looked back at him across the tube, seeming to realize he was coming to grips with the situation. He rubbed a wet hand across his face, resolving to march forward at full speed if he was going to march. “Who do you think is behind all this?” he said.
“The President,” Ronnie said without a moment’s hesitation. “And I don’t just think. I’m sure of it.”
“That’s a pretty bizarre thing to be sure of.” Bowen watched her eyes for any sign of doubt.
She stared back at him, lips trembling with the heat of pure conviction. “Doesn’t it strike you as odd that the Speaker of the House came within an inch of stepping into the presidency once before because of a bomb a year ago, and then both the President and VP are assassinated a short time later so he gets another chance? There has never in our history been another assassination of both a sitting president and VP—and now we have one near miss and a bull’s-eye during the same administration with exactly the same players.”