Meant for Her (13 page)

Julie looked at the ground and frowned. “You took me in like I belonged with you.”

Gwen had thought she might weep for this brave girl who felt so alone. “You do belong with me, sweetheart.” She put her arm around Julie’s shoulders. “We’re family.”

The memory brought a tight smile to her lips as she stared at Leo’s brownstone. John McDowell was also Julie’s family.

He hadn’t always been so selfish. Gwen remembered when he first married her sister, he had been charming and strong. He loved Mary. It was her death that had changed him, made him angry and bitter.

Why did you bring us here, John?

Gwen bowed her head before the divine, praying for guidance and the safety of those she loved. When she raised it again, the yellow light over Leo’s door had begun to flicker irregularly. She drew her lips into a pucker and curled her fingers around the steering wheel.  Slowly and deliberately, she filled her lungs completely with air and focused all her energy on her niece.

 ~~~

The gun was the first thing Julie saw, her eyes drawn to its shiny metal butt sticking out of the holster.

John McDowell stood before his daughter in a dirty T-shirt and green sweatpants, the weapon held by leather straps that were meant to be concealed beneath a jacket.

“Dad?” Her voice was ragged, her throat constricted.

“Julie-girl,” he said, his arms open wide to receive her.

It was a scene she had imagined so many times before, it felt surreal when she finally ran the few steps into his arms. “I thought you were dead,” she choked on a sob.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Julie released him, stepping back and wiping away the tears that wet her face. “I can’t believe you’re really here,” she said. “It’s so good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you, too.” His tone was placating, as if he had simply left the room for a few minutes, rather than disappearing for ten years.

Julie took a good look at her father. His hair, once a salt-and-pepper black and gray, was now completely black, like it was when she was little. The youthful color contrasted with the deeply set lines around his mouth and the sagging of the skin under his dark-colored eyes.

She took in his clothing, her brow furrowing at his bare feet.

Where are his shoes? He’s always so meticulous about his shoes.

He was at once both comfortingly familiar and unsettlingly strange. Julie ran a trembling hand through her hair as she looked at the room around them. It was set up like a small studio apartment, its dirt floor covered with a braided rug. A sagging couch was draped in tired pink fabric, next to a bed with striped yellow and brown sheets.

A power strip hung in mid-air, suspended from an orange electrical cord reaching down from the ceiling above. Julie’s eyes followed the lines to a small refrigerator and a computer on a makeshift desk.

The overall feel was one of a bomb shelter or tomb, the earthen walls enhancing the sense of being buried alive. Julie shivered and wished for a window or door.

“How long have you been living here?”

“I don’t know. A few months.”

She tried to imagine anyone choosing to stay in this place a single moment longer than necessary. “Where did you live before that?”

“What?” He squinted at her.

“Where did you live before that?”

He began to pace between the desk and the couch. “What difference does that make?”

“It’s okay, Dad. Never mind.” Julie rubbed her eyebrow. “Your message said you could prove your innocence, but you needed my help.”

A smile graced his face, brightening his features as he brought his chin up. “I do need your help, Julie-girl.”

“Anything, Dad.”

He blinked repeatedly. Julie saw little dots of sweat collecting on his forehead.

“You have to believe me.”

The urge to run out of the basement and away from her father appeared suddenly, frightening in its intensity. She could see herself darting around him to make it to the stairs, clay walls under her fingertips as she raced up the steps, reaching the front door before Leo could even stand up from the couch and
Wheel of Fortune
.

Can opener.

“What is it?” she asked instead.

“Do you remember when your mother told you she had cancer?”

“Yes.” She took a step backwards, increasing the distance between them. Her father stepped forward.

“You asked me that day, ‘Why did she get sick?’ Do you remember that?”

“I remember being upset,” Julie swallowed against the dryness in her throat, an image of her beautiful mother forming in her mind.

“You asked me why she got sick. And I didn’t tell you the truth.” He was standing so close to her, she could smell his sweat.

“It was a rare form of cancer.” Julie said, mechanically repeating the words she’d been told.

“Yes. A rare form of cancer that you only contract if you’re exposed to ionizing radiation.”

“Ionizing radiation?”

“Yes.”

“Where would she be exposed to that?”

“At Camp Harold.” He stepped away from her, cool air rushing in to fill the space he had occupied.

Julie’s mother had been a Navy structural engineer, working at the same base as her father. The two had married on the base. Her mother had died on the base.

“When she was diagnosed, that goddamned Navy doctor said it was just one of those things that happens. Bullshit. I looked into it. It’s caused by ionizing radiation from TENORM in the concrete on the worksite. They knew it was there.” His body contorted in rage. His nostrils flared with each breath and his clenched arms shook. “They knew all along.”

He turned to the fridge and grabbed a beer, opening it and drinking it down in one long gulp before pitching it into a tall white garbage can. The sound of it hitting other empties punctuated the silence before he opened the fridge and found a replacement.

“You want to know why your mother’s body is rotting in the ground? The U.S. Navy killed her, sure as I’m standing in front of you.”

Julie recoiled from the image he painted. “One or two people made a bad decision…”

“Not
one or two
,” he said derisively. “It ran all the way up the chain of fucking command, right to the Pentagon. Nobody said diddly! That’s what killed your mother. The U.S. Navy, and the absolute authority it holds over the people enslaved by it.”

He stood shock-still, staring at one of the electrical cords hanging from the ceiling. “They killed the only person I have ever loved.”

I love you, Daddy.

The words rang out in her head, unbidden.

“But I got those fucking bastards.”

She watched him suckle at the can of beer as a light humming began to sing in her ears. Then it clicked.

He really is a traitor.

“The Dermody.” She wasn’t asking for confirmation. She knew it now. For ten long years she had suffered for him, believing this man was an innocent victim. Eighty-eight men had perished when that ship went down.

John McDowell had killed them all.

A cold sensation trickled down from the top of her head to her abdomen. Julie stole a peek at the stairway, now seeming so much farther away. It was too late to make excuses and leave unquestioned; the opportunity for safety had passed untaken.

Her father was waiting. Julie said a silent prayer.
Please get me out of here. Help me get back to Hank. I think I love him. I shouldn’t have doubted him.

Julie heard the drip of water nearby. She listened as she counted the drops, one, two, three. Her lungs filled with air, calming her, and she knew what she had to do.

“Thank you, Dad.”

“For what?”

She reached out to him. “For taking good care of mom,” she said, squeezing his arm. “For getting the people that did this to her.”

A proud smirk appeared on his face. He lifted the beer can and finished the rest of the brew. Tilting it toward Julie, he asked, “Oh, I missed you, Julie-girl. Do you want one?”

“Absolutely.” Her palms were soaked with perspiration. “You said you needed my help. What can I do, Dad?”

“I’m still working covert ops for Uzkapostan.” He puffed his chest as he spoke. “Been living there since I left the states. Once the Navy fucked me, I figured there’s no place like home, right?”

Julie tried to keep up with his quick change of mood.

“So anyways, they’ve been getting weapons from the Navy for years. They had a backstage all-access pass to the U.S. Navy supply arsenal, via their own invisible account on the network.”

The technology maven in Julie was horrified. “That’s awesome.”

“It was, it truly was, until somebody shut it down six months ago. I need you to get us back into that database.”

Only a handful of people in the world could do that, and Julie knew she wasn’t one of them. “Anything for you, Dad.”

“I would do anything for you, too. Do you know that?”

I’d sink a whole ship full of sailors for you, baby.

“Yes, Dad.”

He smiled like a child who couldn’t keep a secret. “That boyfriend of yours, Greg?”

The hair on the back of Julie’s neck went up. “Yes?”

“He was sent to bring you back to do this.”

“
What?”

He waved off her excitement. “I have always been so proud of you. I told everyone who would listen how my girl was a natural-born code breaker. They thought it would be too dangerous if I came back here myself, so they sent Greg to come get you.”

Dizziness crept into the back of Julie’s brain, her father’s words beginning to ring like church bells in her mind. “They sent Greg?”

“Yeah.” His expression turned dark and ominous. “Fucking hotshot thought he could do this without me. Bring you back himself and take me out of the loop.” His laugh was too loud, his happiness pronounced. “I took care of that dumb ass son of a bitch.”

“The motel,” she whispered.

The body in the bathtub was Greg.

“You know about that?”

Julie battled the sick fear that made her want to double over. “Of course. The code in the safe deposit box. That’s how they found me.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, right. He wasn’t good enough for you, Julie. We’ll find you somebody real good when we get home. A nice Uzkapostan boy like your old man.”

“We’re going to Uzkapostan?”

“Tomorrow morning. The same flight Greg was going to take you on.”

“I don’t have my passport.”

He flashed her a cocky smile. “Oh, yes, you do. I got it from your apartment.”

 ~~~

With an eerie sense of déjà vu, Hank ducked under the yellow police tape and approached the smoldering building. A guttural scream rose in his chest and begged to be freed as he walked closer to the brownstone and the familiar smell of waterlogged timber.

No. No. No.

“Sir, you need to step behind the barrier.”

He flashed his badge. “Who’s in charge?”

The fireman nodded to a woman standing beside a large red SUV. He identified himself, his hands shaking as he flashed his badge and asked, “What do we have here?”

“Explosion. Appears to have been deliberately set, probably natural gas. One confirmed dead.”

He could feel his chin trembling. “Male or female?”

“Male. From the neighbor’s description, it appears to be the owner, Leo Basinski.”

Hank pressed his palms to his eyes and nearly wept with gratitude.

“You okay, mister?”

“Yes. I thought it was a friend.” He took a big breath. “Was there anyone else in the building?”

“Negative. Neighbor says he lived alone.”

Hank’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He fished it out and saw an unfamiliar number with an 802 area code.

Vermont.

He stepped away from the SUV. “Hank Jared.”

“It’s Gwen.”

“Thank God. Where are you guys?”

“Julie’s not with me.”

“Where is she? I’m sitting outside Leo Basinski’s house, watching them carry him out in a plastic bag, Gwen. What the hell’s going on?”

“Oh, my God. We were just there!”

“Where’s Julie?”

“She’s with her father. I’m following them, Hank. Ninety-five north. I think Julie wanted me to call you.”

“You think?”

“Yes.”

“I’m getting in the car now. You can fill me in while I drive.”

 ~~~

It hadn’t been easy to convince him to come to Boston.

She told her father the computers at Systex Corporation had superior processors to the ones in Uzkapostan, which would enable her to hack into the Navy procurement database in half the time. That was a lie, but in Boston she had a fighting chance to save her own ass.

She was driving Leo’s late model sedan down the interstate, the smell of old cigar smoke thick in her nostrils. Her father was in the passenger seat, a beer and a gun in his lap. The gun was for protection, he said, but Julie didn’t believe him.

She’d watched that gun kill Leo, and it had probably killed Greg, too.

“Slow down. We don’t want to get pulled over,” he said.

That’s what she was hoping for, which is why she was speeding. Easing her foot off the accelerator, she glanced in her rear view mirror to check for the minivan that had been following them since they left the house. Her father hadn’t known Gwen was waiting outside for Julie, having shot Leo before the other man had a chance to tell him.

Call Hank. Tell him to come to Boston.

Julie was concentrating hard, and her head was beginning to pulsate in tempo with her own heartbeat. She was trying to send telepathic messages to her aunt for the last hour, feeling like an idiot trying to bend a spoon with her mind at a slumber party.

She didn’t even believe in this stuff.

His business card’s in my purse under the seat. Gwen, call Hank. We’re going to my office in Boston.

Her father belched in the seat beside her. “I need to take a piss.”

“I’ll get off at the next rest stop.”

“I gotta piss now. Pull over.”

Julie knew she’d lose Gwen if she did that, and her grip tightened on the wheel. “It’s the interstate, Dad. A cop might stop if we pull off the road.”