Into the Night (66 page)
He reached for her. "Joan—"
"Don't," she said, stepping away from him. "I'm just managing to keep it together."
"Sorry," he said. "I forgot we were still in hide-our-
relationship mode." -.
"Whoa," she said. "Wait. We are?"
"Aren't we?" Muldoon asked.
"It's going to be kind of hard to have a wedding without telling anyone," she said. "I mean what kind of invitations would we send? I guess it could be like a surprise party in reverse."
Muldoon's chest felt tight and his throat filled, but instead of jumping or dancing or crying from happiness, he merely nodded, using one finger to push the hair back from her face. "I don't think you're allowed to say something like that to me without, you know, kissing me afterward."
"If I kiss you, I'm going to start to cry." She started anyway, her face scrunching up as if she were a little kid. "Who would shoot into a crowd like that? Who would do such a terrible thing?"
He pulled her into his arms and held her close, wishing he had answers for her. "I don't know," he said. "I don't get it, either. It's okay to cry, though, Joan. It is."
"Can we please just go and get you to the hospital? Because I'm so tired and I need you to get checked by a doctor, and I have to make sure Gramps is all right, and then, God, I really, really want to go home."
"Home?" he asked. "You mean to the hotel?"
"I don't care," Joan said. "The hotel will do. As long as I can have a bed to sleep in, and you. That's all I need to be home."
Muldoon kissed her.
As far as he was concerned, he didn't even need the bed.
Mary Lou made it past the guards by showing her ID and proving mat she was, indeed, the wife of one of the SEALs in Team Sixteen. She'd had to run back to her car to get her purse, but once she got it, they let her in.
She could see where there was some kind of medical area set up to help the wounded, and she ran toward it as the first of the ambulances was pulling away.
There were seven bodies on the pavement—oh, God!— already neatly in a row, covered with tarps. They were being guarded by a stern-faced sailor, so she made a wide berth around them.
Please God, please God, please God, let her be wrong!
Kelly Ashton was there, her hands in surgical gloves and blood smeared down the front of her shirt.
"Kelly!"
"Sam's okay," Kelly told her as she took off her gloves and put on another pair. "All the guys are all right. Mike Muldoon needs a few stitches, but other than that..."
"Is the President ... ?" She couldn't say it. If he was dead, she was an accomplice to a Presidential assassination. Even though it wasn't really her fault, she would be blamed. They were always looking for someone to blame when Presidents died.
"He's safe," Kelly said.
Mary Lou followed her over to a man who was holding his arm.
"I fell off the stands," he told Kelly. "I think it's broken."
"I think you're right," she said. "Sorry you had to wait so long."
"Hey, I'm not bleeding," he said. "I didn't mind the wait. How'd they get the guns in?"
"Your guess is as good as mine," Kelly said. "Although I'm sure there'll be an in-depth investigation. They'll figure it out and you can be darn sure it won't happen ever again."
Mary Lou had to sit down. An in-depth investigation...
"It looks to me like you've got a clean break," Kelly told the man. "Although you'll need X rays, of course. Is there a particular hospital you'd prefer to go to?"
He shook his head. "I'm from out of town."
Kelly showed him where to go to get a ride to the nearest medical facility. And once again the gloves came off with a snap. She noticed Mary Lou sitting there.
"Mary Lou, is there something else I can help you with?"
"Ihbraham Rahman," Mary Lou said, and Kelly sighed.
"Yeah, that's right, you knew him, too."
Knew. Past tense. Oh, God.
"He's hurt pretty badly," Kelly said. "I don't know if he's going to make it."
Mary Lou looked up at her. "He's still alive?"
"He was as of fifteen minutes ago. But he's got a serious head injury, and ... these things can be tricky. I have to be honest, it doesn't look good."
"Is he ... Was he involved?" Mary Lou couldn't help it. She started to cry. Kelly—a doctor—thought that Ihbraham was going to die. But, Lord, maybe that was a good thing. If Ihbraham was a terrorist, he deserved to die. If he was a terrorist, then everything he'd said to her, everything he'd done, was a lie. She hoped that he died. She prayed that he died. And that way no one would ever know that he'd smuggled the weapons onto the base with her help. Her unwitting help— but no one would believe that.
"I don't know. The men with the guns were apparently all of Arabic descent," Kelly told her. "Does that automatically mean that Ihbraham was involved? / don't think so. I knew him pretty well, and I just don't believe ... But everything happened so fast—no one who I've talked to really saw anything. I was near one of the gunmen myself, and I have to be honest—when I heard the shots, I didn't know who was shooting, I didn't know where it was coming from. All I know for sure is that after the shooting stopped, Ihbraham was one of the people on the ground, seriously injured. As of right now they've found only three weapons, so it doesn't look like he was armed. If you want my opinion, most of the people who were injured to that degree were the people who actually tried to disarm the three gunmen."
Mary Lou went even more numb. His brothers. He must have been trying to stop his three brothers. Maybe he wasn't a terrorist.
But what did it matter? He was going to die.
She stood up. She had to get out of here. She had to get Haley, to breathe in her sweet scent, to remind herself why it was important that she stay sober on a day when there were so many reasons to drown her pain in a drink.
Bob Schwegel, Insurance Scoundrel, had tried to steal her virtue and the money in her bank accounts.
Ihbraham had tried to steal her heart and soul.
The irony was that when she'd first met him, there'd been nothing for him to take. He'd nurtured her, grown her—like one of his flowers. He'd made her fall in love with him.
Now here she sat, even emptier than when she'd started.
"I'm sorry," she told Kelly. "I have to..."
Mary Lou ran for the gate, ran back to the restaurant. It took all of four seconds to give Aaron her resignation.
She went home before picking up Haley and quickly packed as much as she could fit into the set of matching luggage Sam had bought her from Sears on Mother's Day.
Gee, maybe his buying that for her had been a hint.
She loaded the car, packed a bag of food and snacks, wrote Sam a quick note.
Twenty minutes later, she and Haley were on the highway, heading east.
Charlie sat with Vince in the hospital, waiting for the doctor to give him a clean bill of health so they could go home.
Joan and her young officer had come to this hospital, too. Mike was getting his arm stitched, and Joan bounced back and forth between their two rooms.
"Well," Charlie said, "I think today answers the question of whether or not we're going to Hawaii next year. I'd rather skip the VIP treatment next time, thank you very much."
Joan stuck her head in the door. "Gramma, there's a reporter outside who'd like to talk to you."
"Not interested," Charlie said. "Someone just shot my husband. How does it feel? It stinks, thank you very much. He could have died, so of course I'm very relieved, yet, funny, I'm also angry as hell that that bastard was shooting in the first place. No further comments."
"I'll tell him no, thank you." Joanie disappeared.
Vince was shaking his head. "I'm fine. This isn't that big a deal, and you know it. You've seen real bullet wounds, Charles."
She had. Still, she had the right to be good and mad.
"You saved Joanie's and my life," she said. "And you put yourself in the way of a bullet that could well have ricocheted off the metal of the stage and hit the President of the United States. And still it's me they want to talk to. When are they going to ask to interview you? You're the hero. You've always been my hero, Vince."
He actually looked embarrassed. "Well, thanks, Charlotte, but..." He shook his head and laughed.
"But what? You're so annoyingly easygoing. Everything's okay with you. Aren't you even the slightest bit mad that you were shot?"
"In the ass," he pointed out. "And sure. It's a... pain in the ass." He laughed, but then he got sober really fast. "I thought we were going to die, Charlie. I thought I was going to watch you bleed to death in front of me like..."
"Ray?" she asked softly.
"Like Ray and a lot of other good men. Brave men."
"And you think they 're the heroes," she said. "Like James. Because they didn't come home."
"Yes," he said quietly. "Like James." He cleared his throat. "We've never really talked about him. All these years, and... I'm the one who didn't want to talk about him. Maybe you did, and I apologize for not letting you do that."
"Vincent..."
"I think we should go to Hawaii," he told her. "It doesn't have to be part of this ceremony next December. That's fine if you don't want to do that. In fact, I think we should go before then. Soon. I think it's important for you, and frankly, it's even more important for me."
Charlie shook her head. "I don't understand."
His smile was so sad it nearly made her start to cry as he said, "Don't you see, Charles, I've lived his life—the life that should have been his. I want to go there and visit him and... well, properly pay my respects."
"Vincent, you didn't live his life. You lived your life. Our life. You don't really think—"
"Answer this for me," he said. "Would you have married me if you hadn't been pregnant?"
"Yes!"
"Come on, Charlotte," he said. "All those nights when we were first married—I heard you crying."
"My God." Charlie was shocked. "For all these years, you've actually believed... ?" She stood up and went to the door and called down the hall. She could be good and loud when she put her mind to it. "Joan! Is that reporter still out there? I changed my mind—will you ask him if he'd like to come to our home for .an interview? This evening, at seven?"
Mary Lou Starrett's car wasn't in the driveway of her little house on Westway Drive.
Husaam Abdul-Fataah sank down low in the driver's seat and waited for her to return, listening to the news on the radio.
Twenty-four people wounded, four killed—not counting the terrorists—two of them members of the Secret Service. It was a pathetic outcome, considering two of the three weapons he'd helped smuggle onto the base had been submachine guns.
President Bryant was, of course, untouched. Husaam had pretty much assumed that would be the case, although he hadn't attempted to correct his associates' hopes. Who was he to crush their pathetic little dreams of glory? He was just the man who helped them with their plan in exchange for a generous fee.
A briefing from the White House revealed that one man concealed his weapon in a baby stroller. Another carried a lady's purse. The third had a side arm hidden beneath his jacket.
They'd been identified as Jalaal Izz Udeen, Mamdouh Ihsaan, and Ghiyaath Abdullah. Two were from Saudi Arabia and one was from Syria. All had strong al-Qaeda connections.
What a surprise.
All three had come into the country on student visas that had long since expired.
All three of the terrorists had left this earth and gone on to their heavenly reward—although there were several others in critical condition in the hospital that the authorities were planning to question in terms of a possible connection to the attack.
And that was good news. Confusion always helped. In this case it was the United States with their "No, we don't do racial profiling" promises, even as they did just that, that were muddying the waters. He was willing to bet that all of the "several others" questioned would be of Arabic descent.
While Husaam Abdul-Fataah, formerly known as Warren Canton from Lenexa, Kansas, aka Bob Schwegel, or Luke Daniels, or John Manning, or Doug Fisk, was nowhere near the list of suspects.
And he was determined to stay that way.
As Husaam watched, Sam Starrett pulled into his driveway and went inside his house. The sun was starting to set, but there was still no sign of Mary Lou.
A few minutes later, the radio announcer said that a new Pentagon briefing revealed that holes had been cut in the fence surrounding the parade grounds. The gunmen and their weapons were believed to have entered the secure area that way, directly from the Navy base. Officials believed the three men had entered the base as part of a tour group, and remained in hiding there for four, possibly five days prior to the attack.
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