Girl of Rage (23 page)

Dylan shrugged. “Someone did.”

Mendoza’s lips tightened in a straight line. “That’s right. A lot of someones.”

Andrea looked confused. Mendoza leaned forward and said to her, “Bunch of our guys got killed in Afghanistan. Or after, with Sherman and Hicks.”

“Hicks is the man who killed Ray?” she asked.

Dylan nodded. “Yeah. He was—just really messed up.”

“Everyone was, except me,” Mendoza said. “I broke my ankle and went home and missed out.”

“Good thing,” Dylan said.

Half an hour later they were back out in the car. Mendoza drove them first to a stylist on Columbia Pike.

It wasn’t anything like the barbershops Dylan usually frequented. For one thing, the pictures on the walls showed a wide variety of hairstyles, not a single one of which looked normal. Spikes and mohawks in a thousand variations. He watched as Andrea walked around. Her eyes narrowed in, finally pointing.

By the time they left, Andrea didn’t look like herself. Her hair, mostly dark brown, was now completely black, except a wide alternating turquoise and violet streak across the front and down the left side of her face. Her hair had been cut into a reverse bob, and both eyebrows had been plucked and shaped, giving a significantly different look to her face. Older, narrower, with her cheekbones far more prominent than before. Dylan thought there was no mistaking that she was sister to Sarah Thompson, but she looked nothing like before.

Dylan’s hair and eyebrows were three shades lighter, a blondish brown, and his unshaven beard was neatened up and trimmed. He looked at himself in the mirror for a long time—the change in appearance had an odd effect on his mood. Even as a teen he’d never paid much attention to his personal appearance other than trying to stay generally neat. But this was an intentional look, and that felt strange.

“Ladies man,” Mendoza muttered, half sarcastically, when Dylan finished.

“You should get yours done,” Dylan replied.

“Nah,” Mendoza said, running his fingers through his thick black hair. “Nobody touches the locks.”

Andrea giggled, and Dylan smiled. It was the first time he’d seen her really laugh.

“All right,” Mendoza said. “Time to complete the look.”

Dylan muttered curses to himself, but followed.

An hour later, they had discarded their clothes. Dylan had shifted from his typical khakis and flannel shirts to more businesslike khakis and a button down shirt. Andrea wore a red and black flannel dress.

“You look like the 1990s,” Mendoza said to Dylan.

“Shut up.” Dylan chuckled. Then he adjusted the plastic-rimmed rectangular sunglasses he’d bought. “These are hideous,” he said.

“No,” Andrea said. “They look good. And the point isn’t for you to be fancy. It’s for you to be hidden.”

Dylan nodded. “Yeah, yeah, that’s easy for you to say. You don’t suddenly look thirty.”

She smiled. “What’s next?”

Dylan thought a moment. Before leaving the condo the night before, he’d reached into the bag and randomly stuffed stacks of bills into his own bag. Once he’d finally counted the stacks of money, he’d been stunned. He’d barely scratched the surface of the bag full of money they’d found in Andrea’s room. But that scratch had contained 32 stacks of bills totaling 80,000 dollars.

He didn’t know where the money had come from. Or why they’d been attacked. But he knew that right now they needed to stay hidden, and the money was going to help.

“Mendoza, how much time do you have?”

“I’m all yours, man.”

“I want to buy some pre-paid Visa cards. Bunch of them. But you can’t just walk into one place and buy a lot … so I’m thinking half a dozen stops. And then I want to pick up some burner phones. Four phones, a dozen SIM cards.”

“All right.”

“Okay … I got one last thing for you.”

“Yeah?”

“How much is that piece of shit car worth?”

“I don’t know … two thousand?”

“I’ll give you six for it. We’re gonna need wheels.”

“Done. And I got a text back from my guy—he’s gonna meet us to do the IDs.”

Andrea. May 2. 6:00 pm.

Andrea sank into the booth seat, exhausted and with aching feet. Dylan, looking equally exhausted, shrank into the faux-leather upholstery across from her. He had a bleak expression on his face as he looked around the diner.

“What’s up, man? You look like someone pissed in your Cheerios.” Mendoza was sitting next to Andrea, and was far more alert than he had any right to be. Of course, he hadn’t spent the night being attacked by assassins, then holed up in a shitty hotel in the worst neighborhood in suburban Maryland.

“Nothing,” Dylan said, shaking his head absently. “Missing Alex a little—we usually eat at this diner down the street from campus. Looks kind of like this place.”

Mendoza shrugged. “She’ll be all right, man. Don’t fret. It’s you two I’m worried about.”

Dylan just looked away from Mendoza, his eyes tracking the approaching waitress. Mendoza shifted position, unhappily. He didn’t like not being the center of attention, and he didn’t at all like Dylan ignoring him.

“What’s your plan, Paris?”

Dylan looked back at Mendoza. “We crash at your place tonight. I think we’re all set to fly under the radar now, so in the morning we start searching for Andrea’s father.”

Andrea sat up. “Where are you going to start?”

“We start with our burner phones. I want to ask some questions of your oldest sisters. Find out what they remember. Carrie was in Spain with you when you were a baby, right?”

Andrea nodded. She thought about that album, and the damnably out of focus photographs. She opened her mouth to speak, but the waitress arrived, and they hurriedly placed their orders.

Who
was
the man in those photos? She wished she’d had more of an opportunity to look at them. It seemed like it was an eternity ago that she’d sat down with her sister Carrie, looking at the album from Spain. That was only on Tuesday. She closed her eyes, picturing the man in those two photos again. His face had been slightly blurred, but it was clear enough to see his eye color matched hers, as did his slightly aquiline nose. The man in the photo was easily six-five.

But she had no idea who he was, and Carrie didn’t remember either. Maybe Luis or Abuelita would know. She needed to call them both anyway. They’d have heard about the attack by now and would be terrified. She felt awful she hadn’t gotten in touch already, but there had hardly been an opportunity.

She could tell her voice sounded tired when she said, “I think we should ask Luis.”

Dylan looked confused. Andrea said, “My uncle—Mother’s younger brother. He’s
much
younger. I think she was sixteen when he was born. He might know who the man at the beach was. Or other details I don’t know about.”

Dylan started nodding as she spoke. “Okay. We got something there. Do you know if Carrie has those photos on her Facebook page?”

Andrea shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’d never seen them before.”

“Okay,” he said. “We need to get her to post them. I want to do image searches on all the people in the photos. Everyone you don’t know. Who knows what might turn up there?”

“Julia might know more,” Andrea said. “She’s the oldest. I mean—I was born in China. She was already a teenager. She must have seen something, right?”

“She’s never really talked about it with me much, but I get the impression she saw way too much in China,” Dylan said.

Their waitress was already on the way out, carrying a heavy tray of food. “Food’s coming,” Andrea said.

“About time,” Mendoza said. “I got a question. What if this isn’t about the blood tests at all?”

“What do you mean?” Andrea said.

“Well, look—I get it. Your dad isn’t your dad. And you got attacked. But no one attacked—what’s your other sister’s name? Carrie? Right?”

Dylan raised an eyebrow. “It was her condo we were in,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m just saying—don’t close off possibilities. If your dad is into bad shit,” he said, nodding at Andrea, “there could be all kinds of possibilities. Plus, it’s not like this is the first time. I mean, Ray was murdered.”

Dylan frowned. “That’s not happening to anyone else.”

“Good luck controlling that, Dylan. No wonder you look like crap if you think you could have done anything to save Ray. You were in New York when it happened, right?”

Dylan grunted. “Yeah, I know. I tend to blame myself for stuff that’s—”

“Stuff you couldn’t do nothin’ about. I get it, Dylan.”

“Yeah, yeah. I can at least protect
this one
,” he said, pointing at Andrea.

The statement, and the fierce look on his face, sent shivers down her spine. She couldn’t get her mind around the fact that less than twenty-four hours before, he had fought gunmen
with a knife.
To protect her.

“Good. There you go. Something you can do,” Mendoza said.

“Leave him alone,” Andrea said.

“Do
what?”
Mendoza replied.

“Dylan’s had a rough time. Let him alone.”

“You don’t need to protect me,” Dylan said. His tone was harsh.

“You don’t need to protect
me,”
Andrea replied.

Dylan rolled his eyes. “People are trying to kill you.”

“Yeah, I know that, Dylan.”

He closed his eyes. And then he said, “I’m so tired I could collapse right here. I can’t eat a bite.”

“Go get some rest,” Mendoza said.

“Yeah,” Dylan replied. “But do me a favor. Is there some place busy, like a mall, not close to where you live?”

“We could go up to Tysons, maybe. It’s a big mall. Crowded. But we gotta be back at my place by 9, so you can get your IDs.”

“Yeah … let’s do that. We’ll call Alex and Carrie, then toss the first SIM card in the garbage and head to your place. And get some sleep. I don’t know about you, but I’m desperate.”

“Let’s go,” Andrea replied, heart suddenly beating faster at the thought of talking with her sisters.

Anthony. May 2. 1:00 pm.

Anthony Walker felt a wave of exhaustion slip over him as he slid into the chair in front of his desk at the offices of the
Washington Post
. Spread in every direction across the floor around him was the staff of the entertainment section—a dozen reporters, editors and photographers, two research assistants, and his boss, Linda Halloran.

Linda wasn’t exactly a friend. In fact, the day he’d shown up at her desk, she’d looked up at him with scorn. “I know you think you’re better than the rest of us, Walker. But foreign correspondents put their pants on the same way as everyone else. While you’re working for me, you’re one of the little people. Understand?”

Her attitude was unjust. Anthony might have been a foreign correspondent, but he had professional respect for everyone at the paper.

Personal respect—now that was something different. In the few short months he’d been in exile at the entertainment desk, Linda had gone out of her way to assign him to the crappiest possible stories. He’d covered the free weekly plays for toddlers at the National Theater. He’d interviewed Efua Lawal, the Nigerian pop singer who’d been arrested in New York with two prostitutes and fourteen grams of cocaine. He’d spent
two entire weeks
in January covering Justin Bieber’s arrest in Miami.

Prior to January 24
^th
, he’d never even heard of Justin Bieber.

Only a few weeks left and he’d be out of this hell. But then the call came early last week.
Morbid Obesity
was recording a new album. Would he do a profile of the headliner, Crank Wilson, and his wife, Julia? As an added incentive, Julia Wilson was the eldest daughter of the newly nominated Secretary of Defense.

Anthony jumped at the chance. It would be far more interesting than any other stories he was likely to get.

Julia and Crank had presented far more of a story than he’d bargained for. First, Julia’s youngest sister had been kidnapped the day she arrived in the States, setting off a media firestorm. Now someone had blown up their house, the IRS had shut down their business, and Julia’s father was under investigation.

Not your typical entertainment desk story.

Anthony logged into his computer, then picked up the handset for his phone and dialed into his voicemail. He opened up a notebook and began writing down the messages. Two from Linda Halloran, sometime yesterday evening. A call from his mother. Bill Lieby, his best friend and a foreign correspondent for the
Post.
The final message was from Jackson Barlow, the executive editor.
That
message had been left at 12:30, only half an hour ago.

Anthony pulled the phone to him and dialed.

“Jackson Barlow’s office.” A pleasant voice, but an unfamiliar one. Did Barlow have a new assistant? He was notoriously grumpy and went through executive assistants at a pace of two or three per year. It was a miracle the paper had never been sued—or at least, as far as Anthony knew it hadn’t. That didn’t rule out the possibility that something had been hushed up. Anthony had wondered more than once if Barlow was a womanizer in addition to being so grumpy. It would explain the continuous parade of new pretty young girls working for him.