Blood of Cain (Sean O'Brien (Mystery/Thrillers)) (12 page)

Nick glanced down at my hands. He said, “You’re holding a leash for Max. You don’t ever do that unless you want one of us to watch Hot Dog for a while. Where you heading, Sean?”

“A place called The Villages.”

Nick smiled. “I’ve heard of it. Heard the V might as well stand for Viagra. Lots of baby-boomers doin’ the big boom. Gotta blame it on those seeking medical attention or some kinda attention for those four-hour erections.” Nick grinned, his moustache rising. Black eyes vibrant, squinting in the noon sunlight. He bent down and picked up an icy bottle of Corona next to his deck chair.

“Why are you going up there?” Dave asked.

“Because a girlfriend I knew twenty years ago is visiting her mother there. She happens to be with her husband, Senator Lloyd Logan who’s making a fundraising stop. I’d like to ask her a question.”

Dave pushed his glasses up to the top of his head. “Wait a minute, Sean. Your ex-girlfriend is the wife of a presidential candidate?”

I smiled. “That’s assuming he wins the Republication nomination.” I told them the story of my relationship with the former Andrea Hart.

Dave exhaled and nodded. “I’d rather contemplate Einstein’s theory than yours. You may have, unknown to you, impregnated this former girlfriend, Andrea Hart, now Andrea Logan, the wife of a powerful U.S. senator, a man vying for a presidential bid. She gives the baby up for adoption nineteen years ago, and then almost two decades later, you find a young woman walking on a remote road in the heart of a national forest. You prevent two Neanderthals from attacking her. Later, she shows up here at the marina in the aftermath of a murder. A man with a Munchkin voice tells you that she told him about a shamrock-shaped birthmark on your upper left arm. And if you bore this mark, then you may be related to her. But she didn’t say how. Why wouldn’t she say how she believes you’re related if this girl was your daughter? Why the mystery?”

“I don’t know. And I don’t know how she knew about my birthmark.”

Dave crossed his thick arms. “What happens if you go waltzing back into Andrea Logan’s life and somehow find out that Courtney Burke is your daughter? And to extrapolate this theory, what happens if it’s later proven that Courtney is in fact a serial killer and the biological daughter of a woman who could be the next first lady in the White House, should her husband, the esteemed Senator Lloyd Logan win the Republican nomination?”

I said nothing for a moment, listening to the slap of water against
St. Michael
, the sound of a siren in the distance, the flapping of a pirate’s flag on a trawler tied up behind us. “I didn’t seek this intersection at this point in my life. I can go left, right, turn around, go straight, or go nowhere.”

Nick wiped his hands on a white towel. “Sean, Forrest Gump may be a spot-on philosopher as movie characters go, but this is the real deal, brother. Shit doesn’t always have to happen if you don’t make it happen. Man, just walk away from this one. The only place this can go is the dark side.”

“What would you do if she was your daughter, Nick? I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about some politician’s desire to become president and what, if anything, this could or couldn’t do to his campaign. What I care about is the girl, what’s happened to her and what might happen to her.”

Nick lifted Max to his lap and said, “But if she’s a killer, all positive bets are off, and if she’s your daughter, how would you deal with that? What if she drew down on you, had you in her sights … would you take her down? Could you?”

Senator Lloyd Logan lifted the wireless microphone from the podium, surveyed the people, smiled, and said, “This my kind of crowd! Hello good people of The Villages!” I watched as the audience of more than three-thousand cheered. Logan, tall, a touch of gray in his dark, neatly parted hair, looked like he was sent from a casting office to play the part of a presidential contender. His smile beamed as he worked the spectators into rousing bursts of applause, saying all the well-rehearsed lines he knew they expected to hear.

He spoke to them from a raised platform in the center of the town square, American flags and red, white, and blue balloons were everywhere. The town square that could easily be a facade for a film set. The perfect blend of eateries, coffee shops, trendy bars, and a movie theater all around the city center dotted with majestic oaks draped with Spanish moss.

Many of the over age fifty-five residents sat in customized golf carts, resembling miniature classic cars, holding bottles of water in their hands and high hopes in their hearts that Senator Logan was there for them. He was a man who told them he could change Washington into a streamlined system of efficiency.

I stood as far to the right side of the podium as possible in order to get a good look at the first few rows of people standing, wearing sunglasses, ball caps, and big grins on their faces. I didn’t watch Logan. I watched for his wife.

And there she was.

Andrea looked stunning. She wore a blue summer dress, brown hair to her shoulders, and a strand of pearls around her long, slender neck. She stood next to a man in a sports coat, pale blue shirt open at the collar, no tie, dark glasses, and a flesh-colored receiver in his left ear. I knew he wasn’t listening to music.

I thought about Dave’s reference to “Plan B.” Maybe I could come up with a Plan C when dealing with the Secret Service. If the guy to her immediate right was visible to me and everyone else, the other members of his team were not. What I didn’t know was why Lloyd Logan would warrant government agent protection at this stage of the race. He hadn’t won the nomination yet. He certainly wasn’t a minority or an obvious threat to hate groups. There were six other Republican hopefuls hitched to the dream-wagon as well. Did they all have a federal posse in tow?

Maybe these guys were the newbies. Maybe not.

Plan C.

I worked my way through the crowd, careful not to move too quickly, keeping my hands open and visible. I knew their first responsibility was the guy on the stage, the candidate, not the candidate’s wife. These meet-and-greets were more casual, geared to press the flesh, to solicit campaign contributions, to convince voters to buy into future visions. All I wanted was a look into the past. And I wanted to look into Andrea’s eyes when I asked the question that gnawed at my gut and now, my heart. I stepped next to her, the opposite side from where the Secret Service agent stood, and I said, “You must be very proud of him.”

She turned to me and smiled. “I am. The country needs Lloyd right now.”

“What do you need, Andrea?”

Her eyes opened wider, mouth forming a slight O, removing her sunglasses, the carotid artery in the side of her neck pulsating. “Sean … Sean O’Brien. Oh my God! It’s been so long.” Her eyes moistened. She didn’t know whether to shake my hand or give me a hug. She just stood there and looked at me like a ghost just tapped her on the shoulder.

The agent turned to me and nodded, face suspicious. He looked at Andrea. “Is everything all right, Ms. Logan?”

“Yes, everything is fine, Robert. Sean is an old friend of mine.”

The agent looked at me again, his body language taut, lower jaw muscles rigid. I could tell he was listening to a voice in his earpiece. The agent nodded and turned from us, whispering something into his sleeve.

I looked into Andrea’s eyes, eyes as lovely as the first day I saw them across the coffee shop. “If you can sneak away for a quick break, I’d love to buy you a cup of coffee. There’s a Starbucks across the street. As I remember from that first day we met, you liked your coffee with a touch of cream, no sugar.”

She smiled. “I still do. Sean, I can’t believe you’re standing right here. How
are
you? Do you live here in Florida?”

“I’m good. And even better now. I do live in Florida, but not here. I don’t meet the age criteria. I have an old cabin on the St. Johns River, and I’m restoring a boat in a marina.”

“You always loved boats. You loved anything nautical.”

“Andrea, I need to talk with you.”

She bit her full bottom lip for a second, glanced at her husband on the stage, and turned back to me. “We’ll have to make it quick. Lloyd will wrap up in a few minutes. He’ll do some Q and A, and then we’re off to Tampa for another fundraiser.”

“I’ll have you back before he finishes.”

She inhaled deeply through her nostrils, turned to the agent and said, “Robert, I’m going to have a cup of coffee with my friend, Sean. We’ll be back in a minute.”

“Absolutely, Ms. Logan. May I ask, what’s your friend’s last name?”

“O’Brien, Sean O’Brien.”

I smiled at the agent as I walked away with Andrea, glancing up at the platform and into the eyes of Senator Lloyd Logan. I knew now that they had my last name, probably my image on face-recognition data banks, the searches were moving at the speed of light through the government’s computers. And I knew it was just a matter of a time before more than one agent would enter the coffee shop.

Only one customer was in the Starbucks, a man sitting in one corner. He had an iPhone on the table, as well as a tablet and small keyboard. Everyone else was outside, listening to Senator Logan speak. Andrea and I ordered coffee and sat at a table in the opposite corner. I took a chair where I could see the front door. “Your husband’s an eloquent speaker.”

“He’s passionate about what he’s saying as it relates to the betterment of the nation.”

I smiled. “I wish him the best. Why the federal agents at this point in the horse race?”

“The Secret Service offers protection where they think it’s needed the most. Lloyd is a front-runner, doing great in the polls. That means he has his share of detractors, people who would rather harm him than try to beat him at the ballot box.”

I looked over her shoulder and spotted the agent, Robert, standing outside the large front window. “Andrea, do you and I have a daughter?”

Her eyes opened a little more. Nostrils widening. “What? A daughter? Sean, what the hell’s going on? Is this some kind of a joke? Why are you showing up twenty years after we said goodbye, coming out of nowhere to pop up at my
husband’s
campaign appearance?”

“Because a young woman’s life might hinge on what you tell me.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that a girl, maybe twenty years old, walked into in my life. She knew that I had a shamrock-shaped birthmark on my left arm. And there’s no way she could know that unless someone told her. You always said you loved that birthmark, loved touching it because you said it gave you good luck. This girl said because of it—the birthmark, she
knew
that she was related to me. But she didn’t say how. She didn’t get a chance, really. She was running from the scene of a killing. Police believe she murdered a man, maybe more than one.”

Andrea shuddered, her eyes on the cup of coffee in her hands. “Dear God,” she whispered.

“I have my doubts that she’s the killer. But right now I need to know if you were pregnant when we separated.”

Andrea lifted her eyes to mine. She started to speak when the front door opened wide and two men walked inside. The agent, Robert, remained outside. The two coming into Starbucks were older, wearing suits. Splashes of gray in one man’s hair. The other was balding. A straightforward walk. Wingtip shoes loud against the tile floor.

“Tell me, Andrea, were you pregnant?”

“Sean … this can’t be happening. Maybe one of Lloyd’s opponents is doing something to try to destroy the campaign.”

As the men walked toward us, I glanced at my phone on the table and discreetly pressed the video record button. The taller of the two, a man with a shave so close the pores on his face seemed threadbare, stepped closest. He said, “Excuse me, Ms. Logan. We need to have a word with this man.”

Andrea looked up from the table. “This man is a friend of mind. Everything’s fine, Andy.”

The agent nodded. “We understand. However, we still need to ask him a few questions.”

“Okay, but I want to be present to hear his answers, too.”

The agent scratched his clean-shaven face with one finger. He looked at me. “Mr. O’Brien, why are you at this rally today?”

I smiled. “Last time I checked it was a free country, and people could attend political rallies. What if I came to hear what the senator has to say?”

His chest swelled. The second agent stepped closer to the table. The sentinel at the window touched his earpiece.

Andrea said, “Sean, please. They’re just trying to do their jobs.” She looked at both agents and added, “Sean and I go way back. We’re simply catching up. That’s all.”

“Well, Ms. Logan, you’re catching up with a man who was in the middle of shootout a while back involving a radical Islamic group, Russian arms dealers, and weapons-grade uranium found in an old German U-boat. Mr. O’Brien has quite a history. Delta Force, serving in the Middle East. And a checkered past that’s either buried and sealed due to the nature of it, or he simply vanished off the radar for almost two years.” He looked down at me, his face well within the wide-angle lens of the phone. “So, Mr. O’Brien, we’d like to know why you’re here, and what’s the nature of this conversation?”

I looked him dead in the eye. “I’m here because I have a right to be here. And the nature of what Andrea and I are talking about is private. None of your business.”

“All right, stand up. We’ll have the discussion elsewhere.”

I reached for my phone, video recorder still capturing the moment. “I have done nothing wrong, and I’m not going anywhere with you unless it’s to a cable news station, where they can broadcast the video I just recorded of your little inquisition, and we can take calls from viewers who’d be happy you ask you questions about First Amendment rights. How do you think that would flatter the campaign of Senator Lloyd Logan?”

His face smoldered for a brief moment, the tops of his ears red. He started to reach for my phone when Andrea raised her hand. “Gentlemen, we know you’re just doing your job. Please, leave us. Sean is one of the most honest, patriotic men I’ve ever known. And he’s right; what we’re discussing is private. Please, respect that. We’ll be done soon.”