The Divine Appointment (32 page)

“I really need to be going,” Dr. Frazier said.

“I know. I’m so happy you came by.”

“Me, too, and I’m glad you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. You can go to bed tonight knowing that if you were to die, you would go to heaven.”

“That’s a great feeling.”

Anna and Dr. Frazier stood up, and Anna escorted him to the door.

“Good-bye, Anna,” he said, pressing her hand warmly. “I hope to see you in church on Sunday.”

“I’ll be there.”

Dr. Frazier left, and Anna closed the door. She rested against it from the inside for several seconds, her eyes closed, reliving the events of the last hour. She felt incredibly wonderful.

For the first time in her life, she knew that she would never be alone again.

Tag stood quietly at the door between the study and the den. He had listened to the entire conversation between Dr. Frazier and Anna for the past hour. His knees and legs ached, but he refused to sit down. He had heard everything. He had heard Anna pray and ask Jesus Christ into her heart.

When she’d done so, he’d felt an inexplicable sensation…as if there were a separation between him and Anna that hadn’t existed before.

After Dr. Frazier left, Tag eased open his study door and tiptoed into the den. He walked to the foyer and peeked around the corner.

There was Anna, leaning against the door with her eyes closed, smiling.

There’s something different about her
, he thought. But he didn’t understand, and it made him uneasy. His life had taken many twists and turns but none more dramatic than the ones that had occurred in the last several months. Although his marriage to Anna was strained, she had at least remained constant during that time. Now, though, even she was changing right before his eyes. He couldn’t stand much more. Dropping his gaze to the floor, he slipped back into his study without Anna seeing him.

Arlington, Virginia

Jill Baker awoke unexpectedly in her motel room at 3:30 a.m. eastern time on Wednesday. Her mouth felt parched, and she blamed the Mexican food she’d eaten earlier with Holland. Getting out of bed, she filled a glass of water from the sink in her room. After drinking half of the water, she lay back in the bed but couldn’t fall asleep.

Finally she decided to connect her laptop to the high-speed Internet connection in her room so she could check her office email. She responded to three or four emails—she knew the recipients would be surprised to see an email from her at 3:57 a.m.—then lay down to try to sleep again.

Nothing.

After tossing and turning for fifteen more minutes, Jill activated the television and watched it while lying in bed. It didn’t take her long to appreciate that the television choices were as bad in Washington at four thirty in the morning as they were in Jackson. The only entertainment was the commercials of lawyers who reminded her of used-car salesmen. She turned the television off, slung the covers back, and rose from bed again. Jill walked to the window and pressed the Power button on the air-conditioning unit, hoping the humming, monotonous sound of the fan would create a better sleeping environment.

After she turned the air conditioner on—and merely out of reflex—she peeked through the curtains. She wasn’t looking for anything in particular. She was just looking. But that one look was all it took.

Hastily she closed the crack between the curtains and stood still for several seconds. She forced herself to look again to make certain of what she saw. And she was.

Across the parking lot and directly behind her rental car was a dark-colored Yukon. She couldn’t determine with absolute certainty in the black of the night—and with only two quick looks—that the color of the vehicle was green. But she was certain of one thing: there was someone sitting in it.

And that was enough to convince her that it was the same dark green Yukon she had seen from Holland’s window the previous afternoon.

Washington DC

It had been five full days since Holland had heard from
her
. He thought—hoped—that she had given up on him or found another avenue to use to attack Senator Proctor. But when his telephone rang at 4:45 a.m. Wednesday, his only thought was that
she
was calling again. He moaned and buried his head under his pillow, hoping she would go away. On the third ring he finally realized that something was different this time. It wasn’t his apartment phone ringing. It was his wireless. And
she
didn’t have his wireless number.

Jumping from bed, he retrieved the phone from his dresser across the room. He was dressed in his usual sleeping attire—pajama bottoms but no shirt.

“Hello,” Holland said. He acted as if he were already wide awake but knew his scratchy voice told the person on the other end of the phone that he had been recently asleep.

“Holland, this is Jill.”

Her voice sounded frantic and scared. That immediately caused clarity in his head.

“What’s wrong?”

“I hope nothing, but I’m a little scared.”

Holland’s mind darted to a similar conversation he’d had with Tiffany Ramsey, and his heart leaped into his throat.

“Are you in your room? Is the door locked?”

“I’m okay. The door’s locked. But I think someone is watching me from the parking lot.”

Holland felt a sudden pain in his stomach at the thought of Jill in peril. “What are you talking about?”

“I should’ve told you earlier.”

“Told me what?”

“That I thought someone was following me—us.”

“Jill, you’ve lost me. When did you think someone was following us?”

“When you were napping yesterday, I noticed a guy sitting in a green Yukon in the parking lot of your building. He was there the whole time you were asleep, but when we left your apartment he was gone. I thought I was just being paranoid.”

Holland’s pulse began to race. “And now he’s outside the motel?”

“I think so. It could be my imagination, but it looks like the same vehicle and the same guy.”

“Jill, get dressed, and get all your stuff together,” he ordered. “I’ll be there in less than thirty minutes.”

Holland heard Jill’s protests but ignored them and closed his wireless. In less than two minutes Holland was dressed. He walked to his closet and retrieved a shoe box from the top shelf. From inside the box he removed a silver, semiautomatic handgun that his father had given him when he’d moved to DC. Holland had protested then, but his dad had insisted.

“Son,” he’d said, “DC is a different place from Roanoke. You might need this.”

Holland had finally taken it, said thank you very politely, and had immediately hidden the pocket pistol in the top of his closet, never to be seen again. But with Jill in danger he decided his father might have been right. He might need it for protection, even though he hadn’t fired a weapon in a long time. He slid a clip of ammunition into the magazine, checked the safety mechanism, and stuffed the pistol in his waistband.

Leaving his apartment, he barreled down the stairs from his second-story flat to the sidewalk. He had hardly closed the door to his Camry before he backed out of the parking space and exited the apartment complex’s parking lot. He slid the pistol under the driver’s seat and glanced in his rearview mirror.

A set of headlights was reflected in the mirror. Holland perceived that the vehicle must have exited the apartment complex behind him.

Not good
.

The pace of his heartbeat increased, and he squeezed the steering wheel.

Somebody’s following me, too
.

He remembered the two other times he had seen a black Mercedes that he thought was following him and believed it was the same vehicle.

Instead of driving south toward Arlington—where Jill’s motel was located—Holland steered north and eventually onto Georgia Avenue NW, toward Silver Spring, Maryland. If he was being followed, he didn’t want to lead his pursuer to Jill. Georgia Avenue NW was a major north-south thoroughfare through the nation’s capital. As in most large U.S. cities, there was plenty of traffic even at 5:00 a.m. It wasn’t as dense as morning or afternoon rush hour, but still numerous cars, trucks, and semitrailers crowded the northbound lanes.

Holland merged his Camry into the right-hand lane of traffic and adjusted the speed of his car to that of the other cars on the street. He hoped that if he drove normally, the car following him wouldn’t realize that Holland had spotted it. He eventually moved into the center lane. He glanced constantly in his rearview mirror, making sure he knew which set of headlights was trailing him.

Arlington, Virginia

“Going north on Georgia?” Hal Crowder asked.

Hal spoke with Frank Melton—another private investigator—whom he had hired to work the night shift watching Holland Fletcher. It shouldn’t have been a difficult assignment.

Hal was confused. “Why would he be going in that direction at this time of the morning?”

Hal sat in his green GMC Yukon in the parking lot of the Hampton Inn on Jefferson Davis Highway in Arlington, Virginia. He had assumed his position at midnight when he’d relieved one of his employees who had handled the surveillance of Jill Baker beginning at 2:00 p.m. the previous day. Cooper Harrington’s instructions had been explicit. Hal and his employees were to take Fletcher and the woman to an abandoned building in College Park, Maryland, where Cooper would deal with them personally.

Hal waited in his vehicle, directly across the parking lot from the car rented by Jill Baker. He had an unobstructed view of the door to her motel room. He was waiting patiently for just the right moment to take her while one of his minions sat outside Holland Fletcher’s apartment with the same instructions. But now Holland Fletcher wasn’t cooperating.

“Don’t lose him,” Hal said. “Something’s up. Everything’s quiet here, but Fletcher’s up to something. Stay with him.”

Washington DC

Holland kept a close eye on the set of headlights two cars behind him and drove carefully. The traffic stopped for a red light at the intersection of Georgia Avenue and Peabody Street NW. Holland’s Camry was the second car from the intersection. The weather was overcast, and the stars were hidden behind the low-hanging clouds. Daybreak was over an hour away. The moon’s glow was barely noticeable, but the streetlights drizzled brightness on the area around the intersection.

There wasn’t a car in the lane to his right, and he nervously glanced through the passenger window of the car to his left. A Hispanic woman was driving, alone, and she never looked in his direction.

Holland’s vision darted from one outside mirror to the other and then to his rearview mirror. He saw his shadow two cars behind him and was certain there was only one occupant. But he couldn’t resolve whether it was a man or a woman.
The headlights are too high to be that Mercedes
.

The traffic light changed to green and Holland continued north on Georgia Avenue. He occasionally changed lanes to see if the other car would do the same, and it did. When he was certain that he was being followed, Holland called Jill on her wireless.

“Change of plans,” he said. “I’ve got someone following me, too.”

“We need to call the police.” She sounded even more nervous than he was.

Holland knew from her quick response that she must have been contemplating that course of action since he had spoken with her last. He heard the fear in her voice, but he wasn’t ready yet to involve the authorities.

“And tell them what? That we have people following us? The police won’t believe us.”

“I don’t care. I’m calling the police.”

“Don’t do it yet,” he implored. “I might be able to lose the one who’s following me. I’ll call you back in a little while.”

“Holland, please don’t do anything crazy. It’s not worth it.”

“If they wanted to kill us, they would’ve already. They’re just making sure they know where we are and what we’re doing. That’s all. We rattled someone’s cage, and they didn’t like it. I’ll call you back.”

Holland closed his wireless and tossed it in the front-passenger seat. He gripped the steering wheel again with both hands, glanced in the mirror, and thought about the pistol under his seat. His trailer was still on him, and he began to formulate an escape route in his head. Continuing north on Georgia Avenue past the Emery Recreation Center, he kept his Camry in the middle of the three northbound lanes and met several vehicles in the southbound lanes. A few cars passed him on either side going north, but the pursuit vehicle maintained its position behind him. A lone car behind Holland separated him from his pursuer.