Girl of Rage (8 page)

Ray Sherman wasn’t alive anymore, but when Carrie gave herself to her baby daughter, she could still feel his breath in her soul. She knew that no matter what happened, she would always feel it.

Now that Carrie had more or less covered herself, Bear looked back toward her and answered the question. His face was surprisingly emotional. “Leah’s going to pull through. She took two bullets, and it was touch and go all night. But she’s stabilized. Gary—he’s her new husband—is staying at the hospital, and I’m going to spend the morning with the kids and hopefully get a couple hours of sleep in.”

What?
None of that made sense. Unless—wait… “Leah isn’t…”

“My ex-wife? Yeah, she is.”

“I had no idea,” Carrie said, her voice low. She studied him. He was exhausted, his eyes red rimmed, dark bags permanently formed under them. But she could imagine the turmoil he was going through. Leah and Bear might be divorced, but he would have to be inhuman to not be turned upside down by this. “I’m doubly sorry for this morning. I was a raging bitch.”

He waved a hand to dismiss it. “All right. So first things first, I want to go over a couple of things with you, and ask you some questions. First—any clue where Dylan and Andrea might be other than the text he sent? Any friends in town? Hideouts? Acquaintances?”

Alexandra shook her head. “I don’t think Dylan knows anyone around here.”

“No old Army buddies?”

Alexandra shook her head. “None that I know of. Most of…” Alex’s voice trailed off.

Carrie leaned forward and spoke in a bitter tone. “Most of Dylan’s
Army buddies
are dead, and the ones who aren’t are in prison.”

Bear grimaced. “Right. The shooting in Iraq.”

“Afghanistan,” Carrie corrected.

He nodded. “I’m gonna ask you a straight question here. Carrie, it’s your condo. Any idea how the drugs or cash got in there?”

Carrie twisted her mouth a little, and Rachel stirred, grabbing at her with a tightly wound fist. “Someone planted it there. I guarantee you Andrea’s not mixed up in drugs.”

“What about Dylan? I understand they had him on some pretty powerful painkillers after his injury.”

Alexandra said, “Dylan doesn’t even drink. Much less do drugs.” For a quarter second longer than they should have, Carrie’s eyes locked on Sarah’s. Then she looked away.

Alexandra was fooling herself if she didn’t know Dylan was drinking again. Carrie had seen it in the furtive movements of his eyes, in the tension in his body when he was near Alexandra, in the slight shake of his hand. From Sarah’s expression, she knew it too. All the same, while Dylan may be drinking again, he certainly wasn’t dealing massive quantities of drugs. She didn’t know where the drugs in the condo had come from, but it wasn’t Dylan Paris.

“All right,” Bear said. “So they didn’t come from Dylan, and Andrea had literally just arrived in the country. And we
know
she had nothing, because she was kidnapped off the plane and her things were examined and catalogued before they were returned to her. Had anyone else been in and out of the condo?”

Carrie shrugged. “Not in the last week. Family. My father. The nanny. And a bunch of people from Diplomatic Security.”

“Does the name Ralph Myers mean anything to you?”

It wasn’t familiar, and Sarah also shook her head no. But Alexandra spoke up. “Isn’t he one of the guys on your team? He asked me some questions about Columbia. Yesterday? I think so. It’s all jumbled together.”

“Where was he? Where were you?”

Alexandra closed her eyes and thought. “Carrie was out, gone to see Dad. Andrea and Sarah were at the doctor. Must have been yesterday.”

“Where was Dylan?”

“Out on the deck reading a book. We’d … we’d had an argument. Anyway, Ralph said he was on duty and was just curious about how Dylan and I met. He’s a nice guy.”

Bear frowned. “He was a nice guy. He’s dead now.”

Carrie flinched, and for just a second she felt a flash of irritation at Bear. She knew it was irrational. But she couldn’t stop herself.

“The attackers killed him?”

Bear shook his head. “No, as best we can tell, Dylan Paris did. Myers was one of the attackers.”

Alexandra gasped, and Carrie’s irritation at Bear shifted to anger. “Mr. Wyden, do you think you can consider—”

“No. I need to know,” Alexandra said. “What happened?”

Bear sighed. “We’re still trying to reconstruct the events, and some of it I can’t talk about. But as best we can figure, when the attack came, Andrea went over the side of the balcony, and Dylan stayed to ambush the attackers.”

“Andrea did
what?”
Carrie asked.

“She tied a blanket to the balcony rail and used it to swing down to the floor below, then smashed in their sliding glass doors and let herself out on the 19
^th
floor.”

“Badass,” Sarah murmured.

“And what happened after that?”

“The shooters killed Mick Stanton, and wounded Leah. Once she was down they busted open the door to the condo. As best we can tell, Dylan was hiding behind the door—he took down one right there, and the other one in the living room.”

Carrie said, “He took them down?”

“The evidence seems to indicate he stabbed them with kitchen knives.”

Alexandra gasped and covered her mouth.

“At that point,” Bear said, “it’s not clear what happened next. He had blood in his shoes—it looks like he went into Andrea’s room and took some of the cash. We’re still reconstructing the scene. But he left the building via the elevator at that point. The car he threw his phone into was near the Metro station, so we think he
may
have gone that way, or he might have taken a cab. We’re having some trouble getting the surveillance video from the Metro station analyzed.”

“Maybe you should leave him alone,” Sarah said.

“Sarah,” Alexandra commented. “We need to find him.”

“Seriously,” Sarah replied. “Think about it. He’s taking Andrea underground, because someone is trying to kill her. Will you get that through your head? The last thing he needs is to have the cops breathing down his neck. And frankly,” she said, looking now directly at Bear, “you need to spend more time figuring out who is trying to hurt Andrea and less time trying to stop her from getting away from them.”

Bear frowned. “I’m going to be straight with you, but you’ve got to be straight with me. Why didn’t any of you tell me the IRS was investigating the family? Don’t you think that might have been relevant information?”

Carrie stared at Bear, stunned. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t bullshit me. The IRS seized your sister Julia’s offices this morning. They’ve had an investigation running for some time.”

She turned to Alexandra. “Do you know anything about this?” At Alexandra’s head shake, she said, “This is the first I’ve heard of it. I haven’t talked with Julia since the middle of the night last night. She’s on her way here, last I heard.”

Bear shook his head. “No one’s questioned you? Asked any questions? Sent even a letter in the mail?”

“From the IRS? Nothing.”

“I don’t get it.” Bear looked genuinely puzzled.

“Neither do I. Just in case you missed it, we’ve been basically housebound since the day Andrea arrived in the States.”

Bear leaned forward and looked closely at Carrie. “Look, Carrie, I know you and I haven’t exactly hit it off in the last few days. But I need you to level with me. I don’t know exactly what’s going on with all of this stuff, but you can bet if what I’m hearing about the IRS is true, you’ll have agents coming to see you. FBI, treasury agents, who knows what. You’re certain you know nothing of this?”

Carrie looked him in the eye. “I’m certain.”

“All right,” he said. “I’m going to do everything I can to make sure you’re safe. You and your sisters and your daughter. What I need you to do is keep talking to me. You hear me? You
have
to let me know what’s going on.”

Carrie took a deep breath and sat back. She looked up at the ceiling. Did she really have any good reason to trust Bear Wyden? So far nothing in her experience led her to trust any federal agent. She remembered all too well sitting in a room across from Janice Smalls and Jared Coombs only a year ago as they prepared to destroy Ray’s life.

Something about Bear, though … made her want to believe. He wasn’t a soldier—he never had been from what she knew. He looked nothing like Ray. He was a barrel of a man, with few social niceties. But the fact was, she
needed
to trust him.

Before she knew what she was doing, she said, “I think this is all somehow related to whoever my father is.”

“Secretary Thompson?”

“No,” she replied. “No. Apparently, he … is not my father.”

Bear nodded. “I suspected so. Nor is he Andrea’s.”

“That’s right.”

“What makes you think that has anything to do with all of this?”

Carrie shrugged. “Obvious, isn’t it? No one’s ever tried to kill any of us before. But now, when we’re getting blood tests related to a genetic disease? Are you familiar with the term Occam’s Razor?”

Bear shook his head. “Afraid not.”

“Basically it’s a principle used in science—in short, if you have a bunch of competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions is most often correct. You start out with the simplest explanation and work your way up.”

He nodded. “Yeah, they teach the same principle to detectives. Because it’s the truth—ninety percent of the time, the obvious perp is the one who did it.”

“But not always,” Alexandra said.

“No, not always.”

Sarah asked the next question. “So what’s the simplest explanation here?”

Bear shrugged. “Your father isn’t Richard Thompson. Someone else is. And that someone else doesn’t want to be found out.”

“You would have to be one cold-hearted bastard to kill for that.”

“If there’s power and money involved, you can assume that. Who are our candidates to be your father?”

“My dad—shit…” Carrie stopped. “I’ve always called him that. My—whatever he is—says Senator Chuck Rainsley is my birth father. I have an appointment to see him later this morning. Or rather, Andrea and I had one.”

“I’ll take you,” Bear said, sighing. “I’ll get with the kids this afternoon.”

Carrie sighed. “Thank you.”

“There’s one more thing you need to consider, Carrie.”

“Yes?”

“Whoever is trying to hurt Andrea—if it’s because of who her parents are—then we need to be concerned about your safety too. And Rachel’s.”

Andrea. May 2. 10:15 am.

The rhythmic thumping from the headboard of the room next door did nothing to ease Andrea Thompson’s frustration, nor the fact that it had been going in spurts all night. The pattern was clear. Twenty minutes would go by. The door would open, and she’d hear voices. Then the building seemed to shake as the steel door slammed shut, and a few minutes later it would start, usually slow, then faster and faster. Never more than a few minutes. Then the door slammed again. The television Andrea kept on wasn’t loud. She didn’t bother—it would have to be all the way up to block out the noise from next door.

It was a few minutes after ten and this had been going on all night. An internal debate had been running through her head after she lost count sometime in the early morning, awakened every forty minutes or so. Was the woman next door a prisoner? Was she trafficked? Or a prisoner of her own addictions? Who knew?

What Andrea did know was that she herself was effectively a prisoner, a fugitive. It presented an interesting ethical problem for both her and Dylan. If the woman next door was a prisoner, they should call the police. But of course, the police had clearly demonstrated they couldn’t protect her. And Andrea did not want to die.

Right now, however, she was nervous and frustrated and frightened. Dylan had left almost an hour before to get cigarettes and find out what he could of the news. An hour later he still hadn’t returned, and she was worried that whoever was after them had somehow found him. Was he laying somewhere injured? Was he dead?

Andrea replayed her doubts and worries over and over again, a never ending loop of anxiety and stress, a film on repeat that kept showing her the same images. Hairy Chest, his dead and swollen face as he collapsed in the car. The sight of Dylan, psyching himself up to a killing rage, knives in both hands, as she swung down off the balcony. But even further back. The disapproval on her father’s face. She remembered the looks he’d given her when she was young, but they’d never made any sense. The looks of slight disgust and solid disinterest. She remembered her mother’s tears and protestations that they loved her.

Then why do you keep sending me away?
Andrea had asked once. Three years ago? It was right before her thirteenth birthday, in June of 2010.
My birthday
is in two weeks. Why are you sending me away?

Her mother had sighed and said,
It’s best, Andrea.

She
hated
her mother. Her father she could understand—he was a cold bastard and rarely came out of his office to spend even five minutes with any of his children. But her mother?
Why?