Power Play (An FBI Thriller) (25 page)

Perry Black’s condo

Saturday evening

Y
ou’re making too much noise out there. I can’t sleep.”

Davis was lying quietly, wrapped up in his two blankets, watching the dying fireplace embers fade from orange to black. He’d barely been breathing, he thought, listening, always listening, for any stray sound that shouldn’t be there. He smiled into the dim firelight, called out, “I was thinking the same thing about you, but I was too polite to troop into your bedroom and announce it. You know, I’d probably have had to crawl in beside you, shake your shoulder, tell you you’re snoring and to turn on your back. I might have even had to wake you up.”

“Oh, shut up. You weren’t asleep, were you?”

“Nah, I was lying here thinking and listening, and wondering why you wrote your last blog on Russell Wilson. You know no one outside the Beltway gives a crap about anyone but the Redskins, unless they’re a threat.”

He watched Perry come in wearing her ancient blue robe. He saw she was barefoot, her toes painted a pretty coral color. Her
hair was all over her head in wild tangles, her face clean of makeup. He had to admit he really liked looking at her.

She yawned. “Well, there’s Tebow, and he’ll be front and center until he’s an old man with no teeth. What with my finding out about Tebow’s girlfriend, Bennett is so pleased with me I can write what I want for a week. And that’s why I wrote about Wilson. He really came into his own this past season, and his dad dying young, it was a real tragedy.” Like her dad, she thought, and maybe that was the real reason she’d wanted to write about him.

She walked to stand over him. “So you can’t sleep? Why? Hooley looked great today with Connie hovering all over him.”

“Nice to see Beef has an admirer, and Connie, of all women. I think they make a great couple.”

“And Mom had a great day, meeting with the president, getting his support and all the security she needs. Even Arliss came around.”

“So why don’t I see you sleeping, either?”

She began to pace in front of him, then turned. “I don’t know. There’s lots to think about.”

And it’s finally getting to you.
He watched her meander around her living room, pause here and there to straighten a book, a picture. “Do you know when I first saw you on your hog in my driveway, when was it—five days ago—with your punk girl boots, that space-age helmet and all the black leather, I thought,
Dear Lord, what wonderful gift have you landed in my driveway?
”

“What?” She turned so fast she hit her shin against the coffee table, yelped, and bent over, rubbing furiously.

“You heard me. Those black boots with their kick-ass little chains. You nearly stopped my heart.”

“You’re a pitiful liar.”

“Not altogether. If you’d been humming, say, ‘Time Bomb’ by Rancid, I would have expired right there on the concrete with my neighbor Mr. Mulroney looking on, shaking his head, wondering if you had tattoos beneath all that black leather.”

“Only one tattoo.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Where? What?”

“None of your business. It didn’t hurt very much. No worse than childbirth, I’m told.”

“I hadn’t heard that, though I doubt any guy would know what to make of that comparison.”

“Guys don’t like to admit they feel pain of any kind. Take Hooley today, lying there all stoic, trying to smile when you called him Beef and told him you were considering becoming a vegetarian.”

“He couldn’t wimp out in front of Connie, could he?”

Perry paused, looked at him still lying on the sofa, relaxed and calm, watching her. “Have you ever been hurt in the FBI? Not at Quantico, I mean, on the job?”

“Not recently. Well, I gotta say that a couple of weeks ago I flew the sister of a new agent in the unit back to Washington from Maestro, Virginia. She was studying at the Stanislaus School of Music, got herself into a fix. By the end of the flight she was trying to kick me out of the plane because we disagreed on the music.” Davis shook his head, picked up a glass of water from the coffee table and took a drink. “Women who can’t accept good music can be unforgiving.”

She wanted to laugh, maybe throw something at him, or maybe drag him onto the carpet and rip his white undershirt over his head.

Whoa.

“I’m going to bed. Alone.”

A dark brow went up, but unfortunately the effect was lost in the dim light. Davis said, “I don’t recall inviting myself in to spoon with you. I don’t snore, by the way. Good night.”

“Great to hear, Davis. Good night.” She left the living room, went down the short hall, and snapped her bedroom door shut. Davis lay back down, his head cradled in his arms, and smiled at the ceiling, but for only a moment. He had a lot to think about, too.

Savich’s house

Saturday night, near midnight

T
hey thought they were so smart, so sneaky, kneeling behind the thick bushes at the side of their house, pressed in close. They were waiting for him to show himself, waiting to kill him. They had no idea he’d been watching them since they’d hunkered down in those bushes. Nearly two hours now.

Blessed looked through the window of their neighbor’s darkened living room, sipping a cup of hot chocolate. They had to be cold and miserable out there, as he had been the night before, standing in the shadows away from the pole lights in the hospital parking lot, pacing between the cars, watching and waiting.

He’d come back last night to this house in time to see them rush out. He’d followed them to the hospital, watched them pull up under one of the lights and hurry in, Sherlock’s red hair an incredible flame under that fierce beaming light. Her face was pale, pinched. He’d never seen her look so grim. Savich showed no expression, always the hard man, no give in him at all. Blessed hated himself for the fear he felt, and that made him hate Savich more.

Somebody was hurt, somebody important to them, had to be, to bring them to the hospital so late. Blessed wondered who, but he didn’t really care. It was too cold to worry about it, waiting there in the parking lot all that time. All he’d seen was half a dozen people leaving the hospital for the night, looking exhausted. There was a steadier flow of people showing up to the ER, some of them limping, moaning, crying. People had no guts anymore. Pinch them on the arm and they’d go off screaming and complaining. Damn gutless worms.

As he drank his chocolate, Blessed thought of his brother Grace, as cold as the winter ground outside, dead and buried in the wilderness. Grace had always been stronger, known what to do and how to do it. But Grace was dead, gone. For a long time now. And these FBI agents were trying to kill him dead, like his mama was, and Father. Everyone he loved was dead, except Autumn, and she wanted no part of him. Even the old bum whose coat kept him warm was dead and gone.

He wondered what had become of his mama’s house—no, more a shrine, really. He sometimes wondered if his mama hadn’t loved that house more than him or Grace, maybe even more than Father. He shook it away; it was disloyal. No, Mama had loved them both.

He mourned them all, and wished somehow they could know he was mourning. He didn’t think there would be anyone to mourn him when his own time came. Mama wanted him to find himself a wife, but he didn’t think that was going to happen.

He knew his brain was looping back and forth, had been for days now, between what he’d lost and what he had to do. Couldn’t be a good thing, but what else was there? This was what his life was for now, and there was no changing it. Mama asked him for
revenge, and that meant the deaths of these two agents in the bushes who’d brought his family down.

He looked out again through the winter dead branches of an oak tree, and beyond to the yew bushes. That was the right spot. He could see them moving, trying to stay warm in their dark parkas and their winter gloves. They were waiting for him to come, only he wouldn’t, because two hours ago, he’d knocked on Mr. MacPherson’s kitchen door. When the old man had opened it the width of the chain, he’d looked into his old rheumy eyes and told him to invite him in. Like a vampire, he thought, and wasn’t that a kick? It smelled like an old guy’s house, like he’d been alone for some time, but still it was nice, filled with mementos of his long-dead wife and what seemed like dozens of his grandkids, photos all over the place. His mama hadn’t kept a lot of photos, preferred showing off her antiques, and Grace’s soul-black paintings.

He’d walked the old man to his couch in a living room that smelled like faded violets. He didn’t tie him up, no need. He’d stay there until Blessed told him otherwise. He even laid a big, soft quilt over his lap, just like his mama used to do for him in the cold months. He scooped up the yapping little mutt and tossed him in the bedroom closet. He gave the old man his ancient revolver and told him to shoot anyone who came in.

He smiled now, realizing those two had to be tired, growing careless. Unlike them, he’d slept most of the day to stay out of sight of the cops. On his way here, he’d stopped for two hamburgers at a burger place over in Foggy Bottom.

It was time for him to stop sitting and waiting. It was time to get up close and personal, from behind them, close enough to put that Glock three inches from their heads, if he could, and end this. Then he could leave this cold, ugly city with its crackheads and
gangs and homeless bums roaming the streets and sleeping in the alleys, and this was the nation’s capital? Marble buildings and granite monuments and thousands of worker bees and the underbelly he’d stayed in that nobody gave a crap about.

He eased quickly out of the back door of the house, bent low and started working his way through the backyards, down past a couple houses, then he’d get on his hands and knees and quietly work in behind them.

S
herlock had a cramp in her calf. Dillon rubbed it for her, but she had to stand up, no choice. She eased up onto her knees, looked through the bushes. All was quiet, all the houses were dark, neighbors in bed. It was cold, but the night still, with little wind. She heard the sound of an engine and tensed. She smiled when she saw an old Mustang she recognized come cruising to a halt at the curb of the Morgans’ house, three houses down across the street. No wonder it was coming back late—it was Saturday night and the Morgans had three very pretty teenage girls. The boy cut his engine and coasted up to the house, lights off. Was he hoping for a little necking time? An instant later, the Morgans’ living room light went on, then the porch light. The front door opened and Todd Morgan came out, pulling his robe belt tight around his waist. Six foot four inches of firefighter dad stood with his arms crossed over his chest, sending the hairy eyeball toward the Mustang.

She heard a muffled yapping sound—a dog’s bark?

An instant later, in the reflected light from the Morgans’ front porch, Sherlock saw movement in the bushes next to Mr. MacPherson’s house, low and moving away from them. She whispered, “Dillon, there’s someone bent low, in Mr. MacPherson’s backyard, going or coming, I can’t tell. It’s got to be Blessed. I hope Mr. MacPherson’s all right.”

He came up on his knees and looked across the street, using his night-vision goggles. He saw perfect stillness. There was another yap—a puppy’s yap—and they both realized it was Gladys, Mr. MacPherson’s new puppy. “If he’s backing away, it’s probably because of Gladys’s barking.”

Gladys was barking louder now, short, high, piercing yaps. Savich said, “Blessed has either made it inside the house or he’s holding perfectly still. I’ll bet he was about to make his move, but with Gladys yapping her head off, he doesn’t know what to do. Can you run with that cramp in your leg?”

She rubbed her knotted muscle furiously and nodded.

Suddenly, Mr. Morgan shouted at the top of his lungs, “Lindy, you get in here now!” and the Mustang door opened and the interior light flashed on to spotlight Lindy looking mad and her date looking embarrassed. The car light flashed on Blessed, pressed frozen against the wall of MacPherson’s house, looking wildly around him and back to where they crouched behind the bushes. He raised a gun quickly, lowered it again, and took off around the back of the house.

Savich jumped to his feet, tossed aside his night-vision goggles, and ran toward him, shouting over his shoulder, “Stay put, get that cramp out.” He juked around to the back of Mr. MacPherson’s house.

When he reached the backyard, he paused, crouched low, still and listening, but he didn’t hear anything. He found the back door open and pushed it slowly open. The kitchen was dark. As far as he could tell, the whole house was dark. He heard Gladys, but she wasn’t running at him—no, she was in another part of the house.

“Mr. MacPherson?”

There was no answer.

Gladys was growling now. Was she coming closer? Why?

Savich pressed his back against the wall and eased down the hall toward the living room, Glock raised.

He saw a man’s shadow coming out of the living room, then he saw Gladys run out, leaping and barking wildly. The man’s arm was shaking as he raised a gun and fired at Savich, once, twice, three times. Wild shots, nowhere near him, but he’d already dropped and rolled back into the kitchen and hugged the refrigerator.

He heard deep, steady breathing and Gladys still yipping, sounding like she was still jumping up and down, again and again.

He heard the front door open.
Sherlock.
He felt his blood freeze. He wanted to yell at her to leave, but he knew she’d heard the gunshots, knew she’d be ready. Still, he rolled up onto his knees, saw the man’s shadow again. He was standing perfectly still, Gladys jumping up and down against his leg. Savich raised his Glock, shouted, “Blessed!”

The man didn’t move at the sound of Savich’s yell, simply stood there.

It was Sherlock who first realized what was happening. She yelled from the front hall, “Mr. MacPherson!”

A familiar old voice said softly, “Who is that?”

In the next instant, the man went down, a light switch went on, and Savich saw Sherlock fall to her knees beside Mr. MacPherson. Gladys was no longer barking, she was wildly licking Mr. MacPherson’s face, whimpering. Sherlock looked up. “He’ll be okay, Dillon. Blessed got to him. I knocked him out, and he won’t remember anything about this. Look at this. Blessed gave him my Glock so he could shoot us. I’ll see to Mr. MacPherson. Go get Blessed. He’s got to be close.”

Savich had almost shot the precious old man who’d lived in this house since before Savich was born. He ran out the front door, looking for Blessed.

Blessed didn’t slow until he’d run the four blocks to where he’d parked the Ford he’d stolen in Alexandria that afternoon. He had a violent stitch in his side, and his lungs were aching something fierce when he finally reached it. All the houses were quiet. Hadn’t anyone heard the gunshots? They’d sounded like cannon shots to him. Had the old man managed to shoot them? Even as he thought it he knew Savich wasn’t lying dead; the old man was no match for him. No, Savich was after him, even now that Porsche of his was screeching out of his driveway, but it wouldn’t do him any good. He had no idea which direction Blessed had run.

He got himself together enough to climb into the car, still panting. He had to go now. Savich could get lucky enough to come his way. He coasted quietly forward without turning on the lights, happy for the bit of incline. He looked into his rearview mirror and saw only streetlights. He heard the roar of the Porsche in the distance, but it was moving away. He smiled.

He heard the sirens approaching, and he smiled once more. He’d gotten away yet again. Then he saw his dying mother’s face, all gray, fanatic old eyes filming over, and her face was twisted in disappointment. At him, because he’d failed yet again? Didn’t Mama want him to live? He tasted something rancid and nasty in the back of his throat. He swallowed, wishing he had some water.

How had that wretched little yapper gotten out of the closet?