Life of Secrets (9 page)

‘
And how did
you catch the assassin, Special Agent? We found her taking a shower in the
midst of ten FBI guards
.’

Someone came
into the bathroom. Peeking through the door, Alyssa saw that it was a federal
agent. At least it wasn't Matt. The agent was wearing a suit and a
flesh-colored microphone. She remained on guard the entire time he did his
business, in case he turned around. 

Another agent came
in and peed. Then a third. The fourth man, finally, was Matt. He was wearing
just his boxers, his brown hair was askew, and he'd obviously been asleep.

Alyssa let him
finish going, averting her eyes. But when he finished, she
slid
the opaque shower door open silently. She stepped out, wrapped her hand over
his mouth, then leaned in and stood on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear.

"Please
don't fight me Matt. Don't make this harder than it already is."

As usual, the
first reaction was panicked jerking about. Then he froze. She lifted her hand a
millimeter away from his mouth, and Matt whispered, "
Lyss
?"

No one else
ever called her
Lyss
. It made him feel more intimate
to have his own nickname for her.

"Yes. We
need to talk."

"Holy...
You're... I mean you... did you...? Jeez, the FBI..."

"
Shhh
. We need to get out of here."

"But
Alyssa... did you do it?"

She whispered,
"Of course not, don't be stupid. We can talk once we get out!"

"Yeah,
well, you managed to sneak into my bathroom past half a dozen Secret Service
agents. That makes you seem a lot like this crazy ninja assassin they say you
are."

"I'm not a
ninja, I'm not an assassin, but I am very good at sneaking – a skill which will
be wasted, I might add, if the feds start to wonder what's taking you so long
in here. "

"The only
question, Matt, is whether you're going to come with me or turn me in."

There had been
a time when that would have settled it. There had been a time when Matt Barr would
have answered every single question with "I’m on Alyssa’s side." And
she would have been equally likely to tell him, "Please go find some other
side to be on."

That time had
been before Matt knew she’d been living a double life almost as long as they’d
known each other. It had been before he had seen the stories about her
involvement in numerous nefarious political deeds. Again she wondered,
Did
he figure out what I did to him? Does he know?

"I don't
want to be an accessory to a crime," Matt replied.

The answer made
Alyssa wince. It sounded like he did know. It sounded like he had figured out
the lost union financing story and the lost source inside the Reeder campaign.
It sounded like he knew her past and despised her for it.

She found her
voice and did her best to make it work without wavering. "You're not, I
haven't committed a crime."

"Well, how
do you plan to get out?"

"I'm going
to beat down every agent between us and the door then you and I will tear out
of here in that
Camaro
you bought."

She smiled,
remembering. Matt had bought that car and driven up to her place in it, just
assuming he’d have better luck asking her out. The fact that he no longer
behaved like that was what made the past two years so much easier.

Matt spoke,
reminding Alyssa that she was not in a good place for reminiscences.

"Um...
that's kind of... well, normally I would say it's pretty unbelievable. But
right now I believe you could do it. The ‘beating down agents’ part is assault,
though, which kind of goes against my idea of not being an accessory."

"Assault,
maybe, but not murder. I never committed murder."

He took a
moment to respond but when he did she knew she'd won.

"I'm not
much good in a fight."

"You don’t
have to be; I am. Poke your head out the bathroom door and watch," she
whispered. "Get some clothes out of your laundry hamper, then follow about
twenty seconds behind me."

He stammered
out a protest, but she was already out the bathroom door.

As he dressed
in dirty clothes from the laundry pile, Matt thought about Alyssa. There she
went, the woman of his dreams: the rich girl whose family had paid the tuition
for Weathering Preparatory Academy without even noticing, when he'd had to
scrape and beg for every scholarship he could find, the athlete who could have
gone to the Olympics, when he treasured his three minutes of actual varsity
playing time on the high school basketball team, the professor of political
science whose father halfway ran the country, when he struggled every day to
get government sources to talk to him. The woman who had everything.

And an
assassin?

He realized
twenty seconds had probably passed while he tried to come to terms with his
situation. He peeked out the bathroom door to see Alyssa massaging her knuckles
and an unconscious federal agent at her feet.

He tiptoed up
to her and looked down at the agent. She knelt beside the man and took his gun
out of his shoulder holster.

"
Lyss
? You said you were only going to beat them..."

"Promise,"
she whispered then smiled at him. His heart fluttered.

"Wait
here," she said, shoving the stolen Sig Sauer pistol down the waistband of
her fatigues.

Again, Matt
watched her walk away. He'd been watching her walk away most of his life. He remembered
one college night in her private apartment – even during freshman year, when
the school made everyone live on campus, the daughter of H. Franklin Chambers
had a private apartment. He and Alyssa consumed two bottles of wine, each of
which cost more than his one suit, and he'd asked her if she would go to some
upcoming dance with him. It had been about the tenth invitation since they were
high school sophomores.

"Look,
Matt," she had said. "I don’t want that in my life. You don’t see me
dating other boys, do you? I have a j… well, it just works better for me not to
have anyone too close. I like my privacy."

Once again, he
jumped when he realized that he was supposed to be following her. He tiptoed
down the stairs to the first floor of his house to find a fight in progress.
His first reaction was amazement that it could take place so silently.

Two Secret
Service agents were on the floor, one completely unconscious, the other
groaning thickly and holding his broken nose. But a third had Alyssa in a headlock,
choking her and fumbling for his radio.

The man was
standing with his legs apart slightly, bracing himself to hold her. Matt
considered the situation, and figured he could run up behind the man and manage
to kick him right between the legs, even from that angle. It wasn't manly, but
it would have to do since he had no illusions about his ability to win a fair
fight.

Before he could
make up his mind, the agent went flying through the plate glass window. Matt
couldn't even tell how it happened. Alyssa moved so fast she was a blur, but
the agent screamed and the glass shattered.

She shouted as
she threw him, then added, "That'll bring the outside guys for sure, but
he didn’t leave me much choice. Come on!"

She was already
running for the garage door by the time he had processed what happened.
Belatedly, he ran after her. Barging through the door, he pounded the button
for the automatic garage door opener even as she was climbing into the driver's
seat. He grabbed the spare and ran around to the passenger side. Even as he got
there, he saw a federal agent running toward the opening door.

He climbed in
and handed her the keys. Alyssa gunned the engine and stomped on the gas,
throwing the manual transmission into reverse. Tires squealed and the vehicle
jerked backwards.

Even over the
roar of the engine and tires, Matt heard the report of the agent's pistol as he
fired it. He almost wet himself at the thought that a genuine, honest-to-God
gun had just been fired in his direction. But then they were on the street.
Alyssa slammed the car into gear and jammed the accelerator to the floor. They
left a trail of rubber.

Looking over
his shoulder, Matt could see the agent talking into a radio.

When he looked
forward again, he caught a glimpse of the speedometer. "Um,
Lyss
... this speed is illegal even on the beltway."

"So is
beating up four Secret Service agents and almost running over a fifth. If I
slow down, we go to prison."

"Um..."
she was right. He was a criminal now. "Great. Thanks for putting me in
this position."

She didn't
reply. She just drove like a madwoman.

"Are you
going to start explaining now?"

They ditched
Matt's car near the Treasury building, where the Secret Service was certain to
find it. Matt thought that seemed crazy, but Alyssa said giving them the car
right away would mean they’d use resources and manpower to study it – manpower
that couldn’t be used to chase them. Matt figured she was the expert about this
stuff, so he went along.

They bounced
from cab to cab until they found an all-night coffee shop not far from K Street
that catered to lobbyists and other insiders working late hours.

Alyssa never
told anyone about her life. No one. There was no one she could trust that much.
But now, Matt could possibly be that someone.

Besides, she
would need him to tell her the name of a source. For a journalist that would be
a big sacrifice. It would be a big act of trust, so she would need to earn it
with trust of her own.

"All right
Matt. Where do you want me to start?"

"Oh, I
don't know, how about starting with how the girl I've known since I could walk
turns out to be a master criminal?"

"Do you
remember when my mother died?"

Matt’s first
instinct was to reach across the table and touch her hand to comfort her, but
he stopped halfway. Alyssa saw it and wondered whether it might have actually
been pleasant.

"It was
forever ago. It’s not like I still hurt over it. But she said something to me
then that changed my life."

♦

Alyssa
remembered the incident from when she was twelve. Chambers Estate was a huge
home, and the 12-year-old girl had to run a long way to answer the door. The
butler took Sundays off because so few people called then. She wondered who it
could be. Not Matt; he would just come in.

Two policemen
stood at the door. Their uniforms were brown and tan. To their right stood
Reverend Barr, in his black pants and tweed jacket. His thinning hair blew
slightly in the spring breeze. He stood ramrod straight and formal.

When she saw
him, Alyssa backed up a step and put her hands up at her sides, as if
surrendering. "I haven’t seen him all day! We didn't do anything!"

The three men
looked awkwardly at each other and shifted from foot to foot.

"Is your
father home, young lady?" asked one of the policemen.

She shook her
head, her black tresses flopping back and forth.

"I don’t
know what Matt did, but I didn’t have anything to do with it! You can’t tell my
father about something I never did anyway and besides, Matt would never break
the law!"

One officer
squatted down, to bring himself to her level.

"We’re not
here about Matt, Miss. Reverend Barr is here because…" he cut off in
midsentence, and then finished, "Is your father home?"

Alyssa angled
her head slightly to the side and peered at him. He was acting awfully strange.

"No,
Father’s at a political meeting with the Vice President. I don’t really know
what they’re talking about."

The policeman
squatting in front of her looked up at his standing colleague.

"I guess
that explains why his cell phone’s off. Should we go find them?"

The standing
officer replied, "You want to be the one to interrupt the Vice President
of the United States for this? Besides, we don’t even know where they’re
meeting. I didn’t even know he was in town."

"Someone
on the force has got to know," the squatting officer replied. "You
don’t bring the Vice President someplace without a little on-the-ground
security."

The standing
one replied, "Yeah, but I don’t think there’s time."

The squatting
one – Alyssa had come to think of him as The Nice One – turned back to face
Alyssa.

"I… I
should be telling your dad, honey. Oh sweet Lord, how I wish he was here…"

She felt sorry
for him. He was a grown up, and he looked like he was about to cry.

"What’s
wrong Mister?"

"Your
name’s Alyssa, right? It’s your mother, Alyssa. She’s…"

The ride to the
hospital was a long blur of The Nice One trying to get her to stop crying while
she wiped her eyes over a loud, annoying siren wail that the little girl wished
would just be quiet.

It was followed
by a chaotic run through the hospital, smelling of chemicals. They caught up to
doctors and nurses wheeling a big cart covered with a sheet down the hall, and
shouting various medical terms at each other.

The Nice One
said, "This is her daughter. We couldn’t find her husband."

One of the
doctors said, "It doesn’t matter anyway. We have to get her into surgery.
There’s no time."

And then the
sheet on the cart moved. Alyssa realized for the first time that there was a
person under the sheet. At the sound of "her daughter," Alyssa's
mother lifted her head up.

Their eyes met,
and Alyssa realized who was on the cart. She started crying again.

"Be
strong, Alyssa. Be strong."

And then the
head fell back down, and a loud droning sound, and one of the nurses stood in
front of her and The Nice One, kneeling down to stop the little girl from going
forward by hugging her so tight she couldn't move. The doctors all shouted and
rushed the cart into a different room.

♦

Remembering it
aloud for Matt's sake suddenly made Alyssa think. The police had been wearing
tan and brown uniforms. City cops usually wore blue. Brown and tan made her
think of the highway patrol....

She shook it
off. She needed to focus on the matter at hand. She met Matt's eyes.

"Those
were the last words she ever spoke. Something about it… maybe it was the
tension of the situation, maybe it was the look in her eyes… it burned into me.
The memory never fades. ‘Be strong, Alyssa.’ To me, that always meant the
obvious. Be able to take care of myself. I learned martial arts, I learned to
shoot. But it meant more – it probably got mixed in with a lot of ‘You’re a
Chambers, don’t do anything small’ garbage from H. Franklin. If I’m ever
thinking about just doing something easy, or taking the undemanding path, or
walking away from a challenge, I hear my mother say, ‘Be strong.’"

Matt finally
found the courage to reach all the way across the table and take her hand.

"Even when
we were little, I could tell how much you two loved each other. But it was rare
for you to talk about her after she died."

"I tried
to tell you once. Do you remember our last spring at Weathering Prep? We were
walking outside. Some kids were playing touch football. I'd beat some punk up,
and was trying to tell you that I wanted to live up to what my mother said,
that strong people stood up for their friends."

He stared at
her.

"I do
remember that! Wow. All this goes back to that?"

"Well,
really it stems from the feelings I was trying to express, not from the conversation
itself. Anyway, it was that very night that I learned from some family
connections that a congressional campaign would give anything to get their
hands on certain evidence. I got it. It's the first time I can ever remember
something that was hard – that I didn't think I could do, but I did it."

"Lance
Reeder! Everyone said Ken Wells had the goods to prove he cheated on his wife
but then nothing ever happened."

"Yeah,
well, I made connections from that job... blah
blah
,
it's a long story. Point is, I built a career as a ... I
dunno
.
A plumber, they call me sometimes."

"I suppose
it sounds better than thief, but why call it a plumber?"

"The term
goes back to the Watergate days. The original plumbers were Nixon's men who
tried to stop leaks of confidential information. Stopping leaks –
plumbers."

"And all
this time you're Miss Respectable to the world – daughter of H. Franklin
Chambers, distinguished professor..."

"Well, you
can't just put 'political thief' on your tax returns, can you? But let's fast forward
to the present day." She looked very deliberately down at his hands.
"No notebook, I see."

"Yeah,
yeah, I know the rules. None of this is for publication.
Lyss
,
right now I'm not thinking of my job, I'm thinking about you. I'm thinking
about how the woman I... well, how my best friend went so far wrong."