Close Call (14 page)

She located Earl's food, and she had the bag and a bowl tucked into the trunk of her Nissan Altima by the time Reese came back downstairs.

Sydney

Later that evening, Sydney
sat on her guest bed because Reese had said the balcony opening off the master bedroom made the room too vulnerable. When she'd testily asked what made Reese an expert on home security, her sister had said she'd picked up a few pointers while writing
Secret Silence
, her blockbuster about a Secret Service agent who was a serial killer. After poking about the house for twenty minutes, making notes, Reese had made Sydney drive them to the nearest hardware store, where they'd bought new locks and window latches. Reese installed the top-of-the-line deadbolts while Sydney put together a light dinner. The whirring of the drill intermittently drowned Earl's toenails clicking on the hardwood floor as he followed Sydney from stove to counter to fridge, hoping. The scents of tarragon and baked chicken still pervaded the house.

Reese was planning to sleep on the pull-out sofa downstairs. They hadn't talked much at dinner, and, when Sydney went upstairs, Reese was hunched forward studying her laptop screen, legs tucked under her, sipping a G&T and making notes on a legal pad. The living room was dark except for the computer's glow; it limned Reese's face, scooping hollows under her eyes, and made the chrome on Jason's bike glow. Earl had curled up on a blanket she'd unearthed from the linen closet and folded into a pad for him. Sydney felt certain he'd give warning of an assassin's entrance, since he'd already barked at Indigo, two youngsters rollerblading on the sidewalk, a squirrel traversing a branch, and numerous dog walkers, joggers, and commuters on their way home from the Metro. She thought about thanking Reese when she said good night, but didn't.

With a pillow scrunched at the small of her back and her laptop open beside her, Sydney let backed-up tears fall. She wore Jason's old plaid robe. It still smelled like him, which was mostly comforting. Shortly after she and Reese had gotten back from the hardware store, his parents, who lived in a tiny apartment in an assisted living facility, had called with details of the service, which was planned for the week after next in Saratoga Springs, New York, his home town. They'd also asked Sydney to clear out Jason's condo, keeping anything she wanted and disposing of the rest of his things as appropriate. If she came across anything small that she thought they would like, she should send it along, his mother said, her voice cracking with age and grief.

“You're not supposed to outlive your children,” his father said through a barrage of throat clearing and nose honking, futile attempts to disguise his tears. That had cued the build-up of tears that Sydney had kept damned in her throat all evening, not wanting to break down in front of Reese.

Now, cried out, she blew her nose, collected the pyramid of sodden tissues to throw out, and opened her email.

One of the letters from Montoya's box—from Aaron Fisher, the Big Kahuna or Grand Wizard or whatever he called himself of the Imminent Revelation—lay beside her. Her Internet research earlier had revealed Fisher to be a product of Oral Roberts University and an ordained minister. The Imminent Revelation's slick website featured a photo of a fortyish man in a suit, who looked more like a businessman than the leader of a paramilitary organization devoted to influencing U. S. elections “by any means necessary.” However, the Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League, who maintained thorough databases on hate groups, cited the IR and its founder as being among the most dangerous groups in the nation and the most likely to resort to “organized and scripted violence” to achieve their aims. True believers all had a two-inch-square entwined
A.S.
, for “Adam's Seed,” branded on their chests. Sydney shuddered when she thought of it. She could not afford to underestimate Fisher, assuming she got to meet him.

She typed his email address into the “To” line on her computer. A plan for approaching him had come to her while she'd read up on his cult. She hadn't shared it with Reese, afraid her sister would put the kibosh on the idea. Fingers flying, she told Fisher they had a common goal: to keep Fidel Montoya from being elected.

I can make it happen
, Sydney wrote.
Let's meet.
She sent the message and relaxed against the pillows. Die cast. She'd gotten in touch with a bunch of right-wing kooks. She hoped they'd respond in a conventional way, via email, rather than with a bomb or a bullet.

Paul
Saturday, August 5

Early Saturday morning, Paul
gingerly peeled back the bandage from his shoulder. In the sputtering fluorescent light of the DC motel room's tiny bathroom, the skin around the stitched bullet hole looked shiny and red. He poked at it, wincing. Infected. He didn't need this crap now. He hadn't been able to pry any antibiotics out of the doctor he'd visited, not when the rapid strep test came back negative. Who knew they had strep tests that gave almost immediate results these days? Last time he'd had a strep test, decades ago, it had taken over two days to get the results. His shoulder pulsed with pain and he pressed the heel of his hand against it, hoping to shut it up. Drenching a thin washcloth with the hottest water he could stand, he held it to his shoulder, letting the heat draw the poison to the surface. Repeating the process several times, he stared into the medicine cabinet mirror, seei
ng not the late-middle-aged man stripped t
o the waist whose skin was losing its grip on his musculature, sliding inexorably south, but his fifth-grade self reclining on the couch, his mother holding a hot cloth to his big toe with its infected ingrown toenail. Like she had, he pushed at the inflamed skin until the pus oozed out, dabbing it away with toilet tissue he pulled from a spare roll. He swabbed the area with the alcohol he'd picked up at a drug store and rubbed in antibiotic ointment before re-bandaging it. That would have to do.

Shrugging into a green polo shirt, he reviewed Plan B. There were contingency plans as well, but he didn't want to have to resort to them.
The client's insistence on making the job look like an accident complicated things.
Putting a bullet through a man's temple was so much simpler. Or tossing a grenade into his bedroom, like that mission in Hanoi—Ho Chi Minh City, as the gooks had taken to calling it—in '75. Simplicity and surprise were two of the principles of warfare that Clausewitz had espoused, and now Paul had neither on his side. He preferred Sun Tzu's war-fighting philosophies, but had to admit Clausewitz had a good thing going with his nine principles. Something about numbered lists was appealing, he thought, lacing his cross-trainers.
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
, Letterman's Top Ten lists.

The one good thing about this target, though, was that he could find out where Montoya was going to be at any hour of the day merely by checking the congressman's website for his appearance schedule. This close to the election, the candidate was stumping full-time, speaking at Kiwanis meetings over breakfast, visiting schools and factories in the mornings, lunching with union leaders, and so on, right up until his black-tie speaking engagement at an American Bar Association banquet that night. Folding up the print-out of Montoya's schedule, Paul put his gun in the gym bag and slung it over his good shoulder. Plan B called for interpreting “accident” in a somewhat liberal fashion.

Sydney

Sydney expected Reese to
be hungover and groggy Saturday morning, but she was up, dressed, and clear-eyed when Sydney came downstairs. Reese's short hair stuck out every which-way, and Sydney flashed back to how long it had been in high school and the way Reese had fussed with it every morning. Now she didn't look like a woman who even knew what a curling iron was, never mind one who'd once owned two hair dryers with detachable nozzles, three curling irons, hot rollers, and enough hair spray to supply the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders for a month. Sydney wondered what she'd owned in high school that she would disdain now. Other than a collection of boy-band T-shirts and turquoise cream eyeshadow, she couldn't think of anything. Probably a bad sign, a sign that she hadn't moved on, grown, matured.

She told Reese, “I'm off to visit a rabid white supremacist today. What are you up to?”

Her flip tone didn't faze Reese. “Explain.”

Sydney told her about contacting Aaron Fisher and read her the email he'd sent in reply to hers, which set up a time and place to meet in rural Maryland. He'd included a scan of a map that showed how to get to the meeting point, which she imagined to be at the Imminent Revelation compound.

“Shit,” Reese muttered. “Let me think.” Her thumb and forefinger pinched her brow above her nose, the way she'd worried at any problem since she was in grade school.

Earl barked imperatively, and Sydney opened the back door to let him out. As the door banged closed, Reese said, “Here's what we do.”

Three hours later, Sydney slowed to twenty-five miles per hour; even so, the undercarriage of her car scraped the washboard ruts in the gravel road that led—she hoped—to the Imminent Revelation meeting site. Her teeth snapped together as the car jolted into a particularly deep pothole. She wrenched the steering wheel to the right and continued. Another third of a mile, if the directions were accurate. She scanned the verge on either side, seeing nothing but deciduous trees, brambly-looking undergrowth, an occasional bird. Spears of sunlight pierced the canopy and dappled the road, providing just enough brightness to keep her sight from adjusting to the shadows.

Blinking her eyes closed hard, Sydney opened them to see an area of trampled grass on her right. That must be the “parking area” indicated on her map. Backing into the lay-by, she cut the engine and took a deep breath—which whistled out in a muted scream as someone tapped on her window.

Her head jerked to the left, and a camo-clad figure motioned for her to get out. His pistol remained in the holster slung at his hip, but Sydney found that only minimally reassuring. Hesitantly, she unlocked the door and put a foot on the ground, slipping her key chain with the panic device into her front pocket.

“Miz Ellison?” The man, hardly more than a teen, had hair cut so short she couldn't tell if it was blond or brown. He stood about four inches taller than she did and was triathlete-lean in a tight T-shirt, his long legs ending in scuffed combat boots.

At her nod, he pulled a red and white bandanna from his pocket. “It's clean.” Twirling a finger to get her to turn, he slipped the cloth over her eyes and tied it, catching a few hairs.

“Ow.”

“Sorry, ma'am. OPSEC. We can't have anyone knowing our exact location for security reasons. You understand.” Taking her upper arm in a firm grasp, he marched her along the roadside.

She could tell when they left the road and headed into the woods because the crunch and roll of gravel under her feet turned to the soft scrunch of grass and twigs. Her escort guided her by the pressure of his fingers on her arm. Feeling like a cross between a prisoner and someone playing that trust game that facilitators liked to force on participants at team-building events, she walked, trying to count her steps and keep track of turns. By the time they stopped, she figured they'd been walking fifteen minutes, plus or minus.

Her guide exchanged greetings with someone who called him Samuel. “This the one?” the new voice asked.

“Yes, sir. She's Mr. Fisher's guest.”

“Take her on in, then.”

They walked forward a short way on level ground before Samuel said, “Three stairs.” She lifted her right foot, too high as it turned out, and stepped hard onto a wooden stair. Two more followed and then she was in a building. The cooler air was a relief after the muggy, hot walk. Fingers fumbled at the back of her head and the blindfold fell away. She checked her watch: eighteen minutes. Of course, Samuel could've led her in circles, so she might not be more than a few hundred yards away from her car.

She knew Reese was less than a mile away, due east of where she'd parked. They'd spoken for a moment before Sydney continued on to the rendezvous point.

“I'll move in closer if I can,” Reese had said, pulling the bill of her baseball cap down. She tilted her head and Sydney imagined she was studying her from behind the sunglasses. “You sure you want to do this? Fisher and his fanatics aren't playing around. They're dangerous. I looked them up, you know. Nutjobs with branding irons. We can find some other way to suss out their involvement.”

“Fisher and the Fanatics sounds like an alternative rock band,” Sydney said, dodging the question.

Reese didn't smile at her joke; she just held Sydney's gaze seriously, silently asking her to consider her question. Hell no, she didn't want to do this, but it seemed like the fastest way to prove or disprove the Imminent Revelation's involvement in the plot to kill Montoya, so she was going to do it.

“I could go—” Reese started.

Sydney was shaking her head before her sister had finished. “They want to talk to me, and they said if I'm not alone, there'll be no meeting. Besides, you won't know if he's the one. I mean, I heard the man's voice on the cell phone. I want to hear Aaron Fisher's voice up close. Maybe I'll recognize it.”

Reese had snorted but quit trying to argue her out of it. “Take this.” She thrust a small gadget with a button at Sydney. “It's a panic button, like one of those ‘I've fallen and I can't get up' devices. Hit it if it looks like things are going south. Don't wait too long, either. If you start to feel itchy, hit the damn button.”

“What will you do?” Sydney had visions of her sister descending on the Imminent Revelationists, guns blazing, a cross between Rambo and Lara Croft.

Reese shoved her sunglasses up her nose. “Call the police.”

Looking around the small room now, the kind of port-a-cabin used for construction site offices or overflow classrooms, she saw no phone. A map of the Eastern seaboard covered most of one wall and photos obscured the one opposite. A dorm-room-sized refrigerator and a two-burner stove huddled in one corner, a teakettle hissing atop the stove. A folding table sat at the far end of the room, ringed with five chairs. Two were occupied.

“Thank you, Samuel,” the man seated closest to her said.

Aaron Fisher, she presumed. He held himself as erect as a king on a throne, despite the rickety metal chair he sat on. No more than medium height, he had short brown hair and wore a uniform that reminded her of photos of World War I–era German officers, complete with riding pants and glossy boots. He even held a crop in one hand.

“Did you search her?” His voice was nasal but deep, nothing like the voice she'd heard on the cell phone.

“N-no, sir,” Samuel said, sounding unsure.

“Do you not understand the need for security?” In one motion, Fisher surged to his feet and slashed the crop across the young man's face. Sydney stifled a gasp and stepped back involuntarily. Samuel stood stoically, not even flinching, as a red weal wormed its way to the surface of his cheek.

“You're dismissed. Report to Daniel.”

Did all the Imminent Revelation members have biblical names? Was it a condition for joining or were they assigned new names when they signed up?

“Yes, sir,” Samuel said, swinging on his heel and clomping out of the building. Through the briefly open door, Sydney caught a glimpse of a small compound hedged with barbed wire and at least two other buildings. The door banged closed.

“Mo.” Fisher jerked his head toward Sydney, and the other man stood.

Also clad in a uniform, more Army surplus store than movie set wardrobe, Mo was tall and lanky, with a neck that poked forward and hands covered with a thatch of black hair. He stopped in front of Sydney.

“I don't have a gun or anything,” she said.

Fisher huffed a laugh as Mo's hands slid over her arms and down her sides. “I'm more concerned about a recorder than a weapon, Miss Ellison.”

Mo patted her back and stomach, then slid his hands up her legs, lingering on her crotch. She was glad she'd worn jeans. He thrust a hand into her pocket, coming out with her keys. “What's this?” He pointed to the panic button.

“The remote for my car,” she said. She held out her hand imperiously and, after a moment, he placed the key ring in it. Her fingers folded over it gratefully.

“She's clean,” he told Fisher.

“Have a seat.” Fisher pushed a chair forward with one foot.

Sydney was glad to sit and hide the trembling in her knees. The assault on Samuel and the thorough pat-down made her doubt her decision to approach Fisher. Clearly, these people relished violence. She'd let herself be misled by the professional website, the educated-sounding though repulsive rhetoric. Reese had tried to warn her.

Fisher tapped the crop on the table. “You intimated we could help each other, Miss Ellison,” he said. “What did you have in mind?”

“You want to make sure Fidel Montoya doesn't get elected. I can help.” She leaned forward, hoping to exude sincerity.

“You embrace our cause, then?” Fisher's eyes narrowed slightly.

“Let's just say I applaud your desire to keep Montoya out of office,” Sydney replied, consciously adopting the more formal cadences of Fisher's speech. She'd read somewhere that it loosened up interview subjects if the reporter mimicked their speech patterns. Maybe Reese had told her that.

Fisher nodded. “How can you help us?”

“I have a … relationship with Fidel. I have photos.” A gleam in his eye told her she'd caught his interest. “For a fee, I could make those photos public and ruin his chances on Tuesday.”

Shouts and the thud of marching feet drifted into the cabin. “Get in step, recruit!”

“If you have a ‘relationship' with Congressman Montoya, why are you so eager to ruin him?” Fisher asked.

Was it her imagination, or had Mo inched closer? “I've come to realize that his policies would be damaging for America.” That much was true.

“He dumped you, you mean, Miss Ellison? Your Latrino lover dumped you, just like that kike Manley, and you want revenge.” At her startled look, Fisher continued. “Did you think we wouldn't research you before inviting you here?” The sweep of his arm took in the compound. “You're Sydney Linn, Jew-loving whore. Now you disgrace your race by trying to educate and raise up niggers. Your association with them is an abomination.”

This was getting out of control fast. Sydney dropped a hand to her
side and pushed the panic button. “I can see we have nothing to discuss,” she said calmly, pushing back from the table. As she stood, Mo moved, quicker than she would've guessed he could, and grabbed her arm.

“What are you really after, Sidney Linn Ellison?” Fisher rose, too, and moved to stand a foot in front of her, his blue eyes probing hers. He breathed mouthwash into her face. “Are you a spy for Montoya?”

He slapped the crop lightly along the length of his leg and Sydney found her eyes drawn to it. “That's absurd. It's obvious you doubt my sincerity, so I'll just leave.” She tried an affronted sniff and worked to still her racing mind so she could think. These men were not rational. Even though she'd suspected them of hiring a killer, she'd never entertained the idea that they might physically harm her. Now menace clouded the room, as real as Mo's stale coffee breath.

“Mo.”

The single word from Fisher galvanized the larger man and he grabbed Sydney by the shoulders and forced her down into the chair. His fingers dug into the notch above her collarbones. Fisher strolled to the back of the room, stopping beside the small stove.

“I think you're lying to me, Miss Ellison,” Fisher said. “And I take that as a sign of disrespect.”

With jerky, agitated movements, he pulled on a single leather glove—was he going to beat her?—and picked up something propped against the stove. Sydney dug her nails into her palms as he stood upright with a metal shaft in his hand … a branding iron topped with a backward
A.S.

“You are still the seed of Adam, even if you've betrayed your blood,” Fisher said, explaining the brand. “Maybe the purifying fire will set you on the straight and narrow, keep you from the eternal fires of damnation.” As he spoke, he held the branding iron against the burner and it slowly turned from black to dull red. “An open flame works better, but we make do, Miss Ellison, we make do.”

His voice was eerily calm, but the look in his eye when he turned to face Sydney made her feel like she'd been plunged into a bathtub of ice cubes. Her skin alternately tingled and burned, and she must have made an involuntary move because Mo's hands weighted her more heavily into her chair. Fisher stepped closer, stopping just on the far side of the table, the branding iron uplifted in one hand.

She'd gotten herself into this mess trying to trick Fisher. Maybe the truth would work. “This isn't necessary, Mr. Fisher. You're right. I lied to you and I'm sorry. My boyfriend was shot to death Wednesday and I'm … I'm searching for his killer.”

The door burst open, ricocheting off the flimsy wall. “Fire!” A short man with grizzled hair huffed on the threshold. “Fire, sir,” he told Fisher. “In the northeast bunkhouse.”