The Archangel Project (6 page)

New Orleans: 4 June 8:05
P.M
. Central time

Tobie was spooning Pet Promise Wild Salmon Formula into
Beauregard's bowl in the kitchen when the doorbell rang.

For an instant she froze. Beauregard meowed, weaving impatiently in and out through her legs. Food was very important to Beauregard. He'd been a scrawny stray when she found him, and he was determined never to be hungry again. She set the cat's food on the floor and hurried across the two front rooms to the door.

Through the tall windows opening onto the gallery she could see dark shapes silhouetted against the light cast by the street lamp. She flipped on the outside light and the shadows became three men neatly dressed in well-tailored suits, with short hair and cleanly shaven faces. Tobie slipped the security chain in place and opened the door.

“Miss Guinness?” A tall dark-haired man in his late thirties held up a badge he flipped open to show the
ID beneath. “FBI. We're investigating the death of Dr. Henry Youngblood. May we come in? We'd like to ask you some questions.”

“Oh God,” Tobie whispered.
“Henry.”
She slipped off the chain and opened the door wider. “Are you sure he's dead?”

“I'm afraid so, miss.”

The FBI agents were big, powerful men, all well over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and the kind of flat stomachs that spoke of a lifetime of crunches and bench presses. They filled her small living room of cottage-sized furniture in a way that made them seem out of place and vaguely intimidating.

“We understand you were working with Dr. Youngblood on his research project,” said the man who had shown her his badge. Agent Lance Palmer, he said his name was.

“That's right. Since January. Why?”

It was one of the other agents who answered her, a lean, sandy-haired man with prominent cheekbones and wire-framed glasses. “We think this project he's been working on might have something to do with his death.”

Tobie sank into the slat-backed rocking chair she kept beside the fireplace, her splayed fingers gripping the rocker's worn wooden arms. “The firemen found his body?”

“As soon as they were able to get into the building.” Agent Palmer came to sit on the tattered camel-back sofa opposite her. “We're particularly interested in a session you did recently with Dr. Youngblood. A session that was used as a demonstration for a funding proposal.”

“I'm not sure I know exactly which session you're
talking about. Dr. Youngblood was applying all over the place for funding, but I don't remember him saying any of the sessions we did were directly related to a proposal. Usually he thought the less I knew about the targets, the better.”

Palmer leaned forward, his hands clasped loosely between his knees, his gaze hard on her face. “The target for this particular session was a room. An office, to be precise.”

Tobie glanced down at the empty hearth and tried to remember. But all that came to her was the image of exploding light and the stink of wet burning timber. She shook her head. “I'm sorry. I don't remember.”

The lean man with the glasses came to stand with one arm resting along the wooden mantel beside her. “During this particular session, you drew a picture of a plane. An old World War II transport called a Skytrooper.”

Tobie was about to say
I'm sorry
again, then paused. “Wait. I think maybe I do remember that session. Was that for a funding proposal?”

The men exchanged quick glances. The older one, Palmer, the one Tobie had come to think of as being in charge, said, “Did you discuss the session with anyone else besides Dr. Youngblood?”

It struck Tobie as a peculiar question. “No. Why would I?”

“Did Dr. Youngblood ever discuss your session with anyone?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Not with any of his colleagues? Or maybe a girlfriend?”

“No. I don't think he had one. Girlfriend, I mean.”

“How about a boyfriend?” asked the third man, smirking. He was the tallest of the three, his arms thick with muscle, his eyes small and dark in a full-cheeked face.

Palmer didn't even turn to look at him. He just said, “Lopez,” in a low, warning tone, and the big man closed his mouth.

Tobie glanced from one man to the next, and it was as if a canyon yawned in the pit of her stomach and ice water trickled slowly down her spine. For it had only just occurred to her to wonder how the FBI could have been brought into an investigation of Dr. Youngblood's death so quickly.

When she left Freret Street, the fire had still been smoldering. According to the policewoman, it would be hours before the firemen would be able to retrieve Youngblood's body. It would take more time still for anyone to decide his death was both suspicious and of a nature to require bringing in the FBI. She remembered Henry's quick, breathless message.
They came here, to my office…These people are dangerous…

“We understand Dr. Youngblood called you tonight,” said Palmer. “Right before he was shot.”

Tobie opened her mouth to ask how he could possibly know so quickly that Henry had been shot. Then her instinct for self-preservation kicked in and she said instead, “That's right. He called about six-thirty and left a message.” She stood up, her legs shaking so badly she wondered if she could walk. “Would you like to hear it? I think I left my phone in the kitchen. I'll get it.”

Her hopes that the men would simply let her leave the
room were dashed when Palmer nodded to the scholarly-looking agent with the wire-framed glasses. “Go with her.”

The agent at her side, she led the way through the darkened dining room to the kitchen. Her messenger bag lay where she had left it, on the counter beside the half-emptied grocery sack. “It's in my bag,” she said, maneuvering to put some distance between herself and the man behind her as she reached for the bag's strap.

Tobie might not be able to run or shoot well enough to please the Navy, but she'd been only sixteen years old when she earned a black belt in tae kwon do. She'd blown out her knee working on her second degree while in college, but up until that fateful night in the deserts of Iraq, she had continued to train privately. Her love of martial arts was one of the things she had preferred the Navy not know about her.

Now, drawing a deep breath, she collected herself. Then she let out her breath in an explosive burst of energy and spun around, her left foot coming up in a high roundhouse kick that caught the man behind her on the side of the head.

Grunting, he dropped to his hands and knees. She kicked him again, her heel slamming into his forehead. He fell back, whacking his shoulders and head against the cabinet with a bang. As he slid to the floor, she heard Palmer shout, “Hadley?”

Someone at some time had added a utility porch onto the side of Tobie's kitchen, a small space just a few feet square, barely big enough for a washer and dryer and a door that opened into the side yard. Throwing her bag over one shoulder, she leaped for the door. With a howl,
Beauregard threaded himself through her legs as she fumbled with the dead bolt. “Hush, baby,” she whispered, scooping him up under one arm.

The cat kicked and mewed. The lock was old and stiff, Tobie's fingers slippery with sweat. Panic rose thick and choking in her throat. Then the bolt shot back. She yanked the side door open, the night air cool against her hot face.

The wooden floorboards in the dining room creaked. Someone shouted, “Hey!” She heard the suppressed crack of a pistol shot as the window in the upper part of the door beside her exploded.

Tobie dove through the door. She heard a second shot, smelled the familiar stench of cordite as a bullet chewed through the wooden door frame beside her. Beauregard let out a howl and leaped from her arms.

Tobie jumped off the small concrete stoop and ran.

Tobie tore through the darkened, wind-tossed side garden.

She heard the big man behind her shout, “She's outside, headed for the street. Stop her!”

The front door banged open. Heavy feet thumped across the wooden gallery. “What the fuck?” Palmer's angry voice cut through the night. “Where is she?”

Her heart pounding, Tobie veered toward the corrugated iron fence separating her yard from the florist on the corner. The fence was a good eight feet high and thickly overgrown with jasmine and honeysuckle, but there was a gap where two lengths of the fencing didn't quite meet. She squeezed through the narrow opening just as Palmer shouted, “There she is!”

Tripping over garden hoses and flowerpots, Tobie dodged between the nursery's long rows of raised garden beds to yank open the heavy wooden gate at the far end. She stumbled out onto the broad, lamplit expanse of Nashville Avenue and knew she'd made a mistake. The instant those men rounded the corner, she'd be an easy target.

“Jesus.” She swerved sideways, down the narrow, darkly shadowed opening between two houses. A dank, tomblike smell of wet earth and cold brick enveloped her. She could see a low chain-link fence stretching across the rear garden in front of her. She leaped it without breaking stride and felt her knee almost give way beneath her.

Limping badly across someone's darkened backyard, she darted up their driveway to the broken brick sidewalk and saw the shadow of a man silhouetted against the streetlight on the corner. “There!” he cried, and ran toward her.

Her messenger bag thumping against her hip, Tobie sprinted across the street. Dodging the jutting fender of a parked Mercedes, she hit the muddy strip of half gravel, half grass on the far side of the pavement and her feet slid, her arms windmilling as she tried to keep her balance.

Breathing hard now, her lungs straining to draw in air, she ran along a row of rusting tin sheds backed by a cinder-block wall that rose up to engulf her in shadow. She could hear a dog barking from somewhere close at hand. A lamp in the house beside her flicked on to throw a square of light across her face and shoulders as she ran past. She shied away, but it was too late. She heard the men shout again.

A flash of lightning veined the dark clouds overhead. She ran on, her bad knee exploding in fire with each step. A cool wind lifted the damp hair from her forehead and flattened the thin cotton of her skirt against her thighs. She smelled rain and heard the rumble of
thunder mingling with the sweet chiming of church bells ringing out over the tops of trees bending restlessly with the wind. The wedding was ending.

Throwing a quick glance over her shoulder, she dashed toward the narrow, car-lined street and the low-slung, modern brick sprawl of St. Francis of Assisi Elementary School beyond it. She could hear the sound of car engines gunning to life, see the stab of headlights piercing the darkness. There were people here, but not many. All were in a rush to get to their cars before the storm broke. She wasn't safe yet.

She was conscious of people turning their heads to stare at her. Crossing the parking lot, she slowed to a trot, her lungs straining, her chest jerking with each breath. She dodged down the walkway that ran along the high walls of the old brick church and felt the wind gust up stronger. A fine mist hit her face, blessedly cool against her hot sweaty skin.

She could see more people, spilling down the church steps, milling about on the wide swath of paving that stretched to the curb. Throwing another glance over her shoulder, she saw Lance Palmer, his hand held significantly beneath the front of his suit jacket. She broke into a run again.

Heedless of the startled expressions and indignant exclamations she provoked, Tobie pushed her way through the laughing, talking crowd that filled the open space before the church. A row of shuttle buses stood lined up at the curb, ready to ferry the wedding guests to some distant reception site.

The first bus was almost filled. She leaped onto
the steps just as the doors snapped closed and the bus lurched away from the curb.

She swung around, one hand flinging out to grasp the nearby chrome bar as the bus swayed and picked up speed. Through the glass doors she could see Lance Palmer start forward through the crowd. Then he disappeared into the night.

Old Town Alexandria: 4 June 9:10
P.M
. Eastern time

Jax Alexander lived in a narrow brick town house overlooking
the Potomac. He had inherited the house from Sophie's father, the late Senator James Herman Winston. It was Senator Winston who had paid to send him to a string of expensive East Coast boarding schools—he kept getting kicked out—and, ultimately, to Yale. The Winstons were a venerable old Connecticut family who could trace their ponderous wealth and prestige back three centuries. It always grieved the senator that Jax took after his father, who was neither venerable nor ponderously wealthy.

The mist was drifting in off the water as Jax let himself into the town house's paneled entry hall. Through the French doors in the living room, the river showed as a sheet of moon-struck silver that rippled lazily with the flow of the current. He could see the red message light blinking on the answering machine in the kitchen.
Hitting the Play button, he headed up the stairs to pull an overnight bag from the closet.

“Hey, Jax.” Sibel Montana's low, husky voice drifted up the stairs after him. “I got your call about the tickets to
Turandot.
I'll be free tomorrow after four-thirty.”

Jax squeezed his eyes shut and swore under his breath. Sibel Montana was a brilliant, funny, long-legged lawyer with Williams and Connolly. It had been nearly four years since he'd met a woman who connected with him the way she did. But in the past three months he'd already had to cancel two dinner dates, a weekend in the Hamptons, and a trip to Barbados with her. Opening his suit pack on the bed, he punched in Sibel's number on his phone and went to yank open the top drawer of the antique mahogany dresser that stood in an alcove overlooking the river.

Sibel's voice was a warm contralto. “Hi, Jax.”

“I got your message,” he said, tossing boxers and socks into his bag. “I've got the opera tickets and reservations at the Old Ebbitt Grill. There's just one potential problem. I need to go out of town. But I should be back by tomorrow night.”

There was a long silence at the other end of the phone. “That's what you said the last time, Jax. You didn't come back for two weeks.”

Jax retrieved his toilet kit from the bathroom. “I know. I'm sorry, Sibel.”

Sibel was a smart lady, and she had lived in Washington, D.C., for six years. It had taken her only two dates before she added Jax's evasiveness together with a few other clues and figured out exactly what he did for a
living. Now, she let out her breath in a long sigh. “You know, Jax…I don't think this is going to work.”

He heard the break in her voice and stopped packing. “Don't do this, Sibel.”

“I'm sorry, Jax. For a while I thought maybe I'd get used to it. But the closer we get, the more it bothers me. We all have jobs that require us to keep business out of our private lives, but with you, it's so much worse. What kind of relationship can I have with someone who is constantly being sent out of town on a moment's notice and who can't even tell me where he's going or what he'll be doing?”

“Sibel—”

“I like you, Jax. I like you a lot. I think we could have had something special together. If you ever decide to change jobs, give me a call.”

“Sibel, please listen—”

“'Bye, Jax.” The connection ended.

“Son of a bitch.” He snapped his cell phone closed and tossed it on the bed beside his half-packed suitcase and the holster for his Beretta.