The Kill Shot (22 page)

The second lieutenant who'd shown up to greet Ikaat was a young guy with a test pilot's buzz cut, too many teeth in his smile, and aviator sunglasses that reflected my frown as he chitchatted with the rest of us. His last name, according to the plate pinned to his chest, was Wright. And it was his duty, Wright said, to drive Dr. Oujdad's friends to their accommodations.

Barrett rode shotgun. Not a surprise, since he'd been sent along to spot trouble. Katie and I piled into the back of Wright's Explorer. We took the opportunity to power up our cell phones. Katie had to be eager for news from her sister, and I was eager for news from Roger—while dreading a message from Philip. Philip, though, had stopped calling sometime in the night. I wasn't sure what that meant, but the sight of the beautifully worked phone case he'd bought me reminded me I hadn't treated him too kindly of late.

“That's a lost cause, ma'am.”

For a guilty second I thought he was talking about salvaging my friendship with Philip.

Wright said, “You won't get service out this far in the desert.”

“Great,” I grumbled, and shoved the thing into a pocket.

“Wait until you get to the Hooch. It's got all kinds of amenities, including WiFi.”

Katie developed a dent between her eyebrows. “What's a hooch?”

Being a general's daughter, I knew exactly what a hooch was. And I wasn't thrilled with the prospect of living in one. For troops in the field, though, the sandbagged tents with cots to sleep on, hooks to hold your helmet, and five other sweaty soldiers to share your home-away-from-home offered a precious peace at the end of duty hours.

I, however, was more of a Four Seasons kind of girl.

Wright chuckled and said, “Don't let the name fool you. Because of the kind of work the scientists do, we get all kinds of VIPs through here, including the United Nations crowd. They think they're roughing it anytime there isn't a Starbucks on every corner, so some bureaucrat built them a world-class hooch. That's where you'll be staying. We'll see if we can't sneak you off the post, though. There's a great barbeque joint in town.”

“What's this town called?” I asked.

Wright wouldn't say. His only answer was an even broader smile. We were off the grid—and deep into the government's own special brand of Neverland. The folks who were unfortunate enough to live near this installation probably didn't even have a zip code. I bet it made sending Mother's Day cards tricky. On the upside, Helmet Head would never find us way out here. Or so I thought.

Wright prattled on as we rode through the desert. Katie kept him talking. Great clouds of red dust billowed behind us. The terrain grew rocky. The mountains loomed large. Dark smudges appeared before us. I was still trying to make out what they were when our tires hit asphalt.

Now, we were on an honest-to-goodness road, not some dirt track through the sand. After a handful of miles, the road became a street. But it was a weird street, its concrete as fresh and bright as if it had been poured overnight.

The street widened into an expansive boulevard. The smudges I'd seen from afar resolved into buildings. They looked brand-new, too.

Complete with glassy storefronts, they bellied up to immaculate sidewalks studded with young pin oaks that had already dropped their leaves for the year. Each building was three or four stories tall. Each was crowned with corbels in old-fashioned Western style. And each was covered in high-tech clapboard. All in all, the buildings wanted to look as if they'd stood here since the days of Wyatt Earp, but they hadn't. They were built to mimic the businesses of Jackson Hole or Colorado Springs. And to serve an entire military community.

I spotted a sandwich shop and a credit union, a dry cleaner's and a barber's. Men and women in uniform were everywhere. So were a number of civilians.

A trio of women in capri pants and polo shirts herded giddy preschoolers through an intersection. A teen leaned against a lamppost, her eyeballs glued to her smartphone. And in the shade of one of those naked oaks, a man with riotous red hair and storybook good looks stood watching my SUV breeze by.

I nearly got whiplash as I turned, trying to keep him in my sights.

“What is it?” Katie asked me. “What do you see?”

“Nothing but my guilty conscience,” I replied.

And that was true. The man—whoever he was—had disappeared. Or maybe he'd never been there in the first place.

Because I could've sworn he was Philip Spencer-Dean.

But Philip was half a world away. And even if he wasn't, he couldn't be here. Beneath a tree. In the desert Southwest. Behind the gates of a secret U.S. Army post.

Still, I kept one eye over my shoulder as the road before us rounded a curve.

And Katie kept her eye on me.

Wright turned off the main drag, pulled under the portico of a sprawling building poised at the lip of a canyon. This, I gathered, was the Hooch. In truth, though, with its bright stucco and lush landscaping, the spread resembled a really posh resort.

Of course, I'd never been to a resort where the smiling staff at the reception desk wore semiautomatic firearms hitched to their hips. The young man and woman who welcomed us to the “Canyon Inn,” however, certainly had. With their crisp oxford shirts and pressed khaki pants, ramrod postures and quiet confidence, they also looked like graduates of the FBI Academy. Another pair of armed agents pretended to be bellhops. They conducted us to the hotel's top floor.

Katie stuck close to me in the elevator and as we made our way up the hall.

“So many guns,” she whispered. “Why do they need so many guns?”

I didn't reply. I also didn't mention the Beretta Bobcat I'd stashed in my jacket pocket. Or the nine-millimeter service weapon barely breaking the line of Barrett's tweed sports coat.

One of the agents—whose shaved head had taken on the sheen of polished granite and was probably just as hard—zipped a key card through the lock on a door on the left side of the hall. He handed the card to Katie. “This will be your room, ma'am.”

Katie eyed him like he'd just welcomed her to her own personal jail cell.

“Ms. Sinclair will be next door,” the second agent, a lanky guy who could've stood in for a flagpole during his off hours, added. “You'll share a connecting bath.”

He unlocked my room. With Katie and Barrett at my heels, I stepped inside. And realized Wright hadn't been kidding when he said some bureaucrat had built luxe lodging for the international crowd that came to this anonymous location.

From the terra-cotta tiles that gleamed under my feet to the rough-hewn beams that spanned the ceiling, the room looked like a suite in some fabulous hacienda. The deep, leather sofa and matching side chair were the color of rich Colombian coffee, and I was willing to bet they felt like a cattleman's dream. They were positioned to make the most of the view from the room's mile-high windows—and the purple canyon laid out below. Best of all, behind its own set of leaded-glass French doors, the pencil-post bed was piled high with cushions in cream and coral and the soft shade of Sleeping Beauty turquoise. Just looking at them made me want to burrow through the heap and go to sleep.

But I couldn't do that. Not until I'd had an update on Helmet Head from Roger. And not while Katie was so antsy.

She stood impatiently at my window as the agents withdrew. Frowning down into the gorge, she tapped her fingernails against the pane. “You'd think this would be bulletproof glass.”

“It is,” Barrett told her.

But the news didn't seem to make her feel better. Katie studied the canyon as if she were planning an escape route. And her hand plucked at her pearls.

I said, “We're way off the map here, Katie. And even if a hit man knew about this place, the area is restricted. He'd have to get past security at the perimeter. He'd have to cross miles and miles of desert before he reached this area.”

“Miles and miles?”

“Nearly four thousand square miles,” Barrett said.

That was almost half the size of the state of Vermont, and the figure had Katie turning her back to the window.

“That,” she said, “is a lot of miles, but I don't think it'll be enough.”

Katie, Barrett, and I spent a restless afternoon in my room in the Hooch. Roger phoned to say neither the State Department nor Homeland Security had a new lead on the driver of the silver sedan. Philip didn't phone at all.

By the time the canyon filled with deep shadows and the shade of the mountains had crept across the terrain, I, too, was ready to climb the walls. I nearly launched into space when a knock sounded at my door. It was only Ikaat, though, bursting with all she'd seen and heard throughout her afternoon with the scientists. Turns out, they and the colonel had taken her on quite a tour. And the lab facilities had only been half of it.

“The town is charming,” she enthused. “We are to have a house. Our very own house!”

She grabbed her father's hands and they spun in a little jig.

He said, “I should like to grow vegetables, I think. Would the soil support tomatoes?”

I assured him it probably would.

“And I shall have my work.” Ikaat's dark eyes grew dreamy. “I shall ask questions of the universe. I shall search for answers in my beautiful, beautiful laboratory. Best of all, no one will tell me I mustn't.”

She trembled as she said this; the words were practically a prayer.

And not for the first time, I remembered that the hardships I faced in this world were nothing compared to those that so many others faced.

But I didn't have time to ruminate on all that. Ikaat's new colleagues had invited us to dinner. Moreover, our military handlers had made arrangements for our safety, so it was back to the black SUVs—and this time, we were headed off base.

Even at highway speeds, it took twenty minutes for our caravan to reach the installation's gate. Guard dogs and beefy guys in black riot gear watched us as we rolled between concrete barriers and through the chain-link gate. Then we drove for another ten minutes into the setting sun before we reached the nearest town.

The tiny burg popped up from the desert as suddenly as a wildflower after rain, and the next thing I knew, we were cruising down its main street. Unlike the replica built on the base, though, the buildings that lined this thoroughfare were authentic. According to a sign out front, a squat, 1950s cinder-block structure played host to the police department, even though it resembled a bomb shelter. The firehouse was next door, replete with two late-model trucks. And a pretty lady with a gaggle of kids carried a gallon of milk from a grocery that apparently hadn't been remodeled since before the last world war.

Past it all, on the far side of town, was a little roadside stand with an even smaller parking lot. The lot was jammed, and so was the porch, a low-slung affair with rails of loblolly pine and a pitch in its roof that suggested rain rarely fell. A hand-painted placard announced that we'd reached Poppie's, and the heavy scent of hardwood smoke in the air promised we'd eat the best in West Texas–style barbeque.

Poppie's inside was a shady relief after the heat of the dying day, and so was the sight of patrons hefting tall, frosted mugs of beer. Peanut shells littered the floor, and row after row of picnic tables met end-to-end across one big dining room. Bright checkered cloths decked the tables. Multicolored Christmas lights festooned the walls. A country-and-western band played a cheery tune from their platform behind a makeshift dance floor and a cheer went up from Ikaat's new colleagues when we walked into the place.

Even without their lab coats, the scientists looked nothing like the locals. I chalked it up to their nerdy corduroys and bowl haircuts, but the block of muscle-bound agents flanking them were the deciding factor. The real kicker, however, was the fact the townsfolk paid our little circus no mind. Apparently, the good people of the area were used to the shenanigans at the government's secret research facility. And they treated the resident scientists—seated among openly armed federal agents at a string of picnic tables sandwiched between two very visible emergency exits—as ordinary neighbors.

That, I decided, would bode well for Ikaat and her father.

Even if the two of them would undoubtedly have to overcome some pretty steep culture shock.

When I slid onto a bench at one of the tables, Ikaat scooted into the spot beside me. “Jamie, what is this place?”

“This?” I shrugged, at a loss to describe Poppie's to someone who hadn't been born and raised in the United States. “It's a barbeque joint.”

“Bar-be-que?” The phrase tangled Armand's tongue as he sat beside his daughter. “What is bar-be-que?”

Katie, perched next to Barrett on a bench across from us, launched into an explanation of cooking techniques coupled with an American history lecture. In the meantime, the scientists ordered enough meat to feed a band of young lions. Besides smoked ribs, smoked brats, smoked chicken, and pulled pork, they requested generous bowls of all the fixin's. Like collard greens steeped in ham hocks and onion. And Cowboy's Caviar, black-eyed peas sauced with tomato and vinegar. When it arrived, the potato salad was piled high. But the pièce de résistance was the sweet, crumbly, golden cornbread. It took on melting butter the way daisies take on sunshine.

And then there was the tequila.

I had no idea scientists could drink hard liquor the way fish drink water, but these guys sure did. Ikaat declined to taste the spirit, but Armand tried a sip. Katie knocked back a shot or three, and frankly, I was glad. She'd been entirely too tense since Barrett and I had found her in her family's house in Culpeper, and she'd been worse since we'd reached the Hooch, spending all afternoon fixated on the canyon trails beneath my window and the mountains beyond. Hopefully some liquor would calm her down.

I myself was so uptight I felt like my head would snap off at my neck, but I let the bottle pass me by. In case trouble caught up with us, I wanted my wits about me. And judging by the way the agents skipped the booze and kept systematically scanning our surroundings, I knew trouble was a real possibility.

Still, the band played on as if no one at Poppie's had a care in the world. And when the violin began to sing a familiar song, patrons all over the restaurant hopped to their feet and took to the floor. Ikaat clapped her hands, delighted with the sight.

“What dance is this?” she asked.

“It's the Texas Two-Step,” Barrett told her, his chocolate-brown eyes hot on me.

“Two-step?”

Armand rose from his seat, eager that he and Ikaat give it a try. Father and daughter joined hands, tripped across the room laughing. And Barrett's phone began to vibrate.

He fished it from a pocket, checked the caller ID. “Excuse me. I have to take this.”

But when he slipped from the table, I followed him. Barrett retreated to the peace and quiet of Poppie's front porch, vacant now that all of the patrons had found seats at the tables inside. And on the front porch is where I caught up with him, neck deep in a tense conversation with whoever was on the other end of his cell phone's connection.

“She won't like it,” he was insisting.

And I had little doubt the
she
was me.

Barrett covered the phone's mic with the palm of his hand. “Roger's sending some photos. See if you notice anything familiar.”

He punched up his email icon, opened an attachment. And there, on his phone's screen, was a grainy photo of a motorcycle and a helmeted rider. Something about the bike and rider looked familiar, although I couldn't have said how. Maybe it was the guy's posture as he leaned over his bike. Maybe it was the cant of his helmet. In any case, I couldn't be sure I'd ever seen this person before, either in London or behind the wheel of that silver sedan on Capitol Hill.

“Is that him?” Katie asked, popping up beside me and peering at the phone in Barrett's hand. “Is that the man who wants to kill us?”

“I don't know,” I replied.

And that pretty much summed up my grasp of the situation. I didn't know anything. About anything.

“Were these photos taken in London?” Katie asked.

“Vienna, Virginia,” Barrett said. “At the park-and-ride adjacent to the Orange Line Metro Station.”

Meaning that although Metro Police had lost track of the silver sedan's driver once he changed trains at Metro Center, this could be him, emerging in the suburbs and climbing onto a motorbike to complete his getaway.

As if she could hug away her fear, Katie wrapped her arms around her middle.

“Does the rider look familiar to you?” I asked her.

“Yes.” She'd gone very pale. “The guy in London wore a jacket just like that, didn't he?”

I shoved my geeky glasses up the bridge of my nose, took another look at the photo. In the snapshot taken in Vienna, the rider wore an ordinary denim jacket. In London, Helmet Head had worn leather. I'd gotten a good look at his jacket when he and Dalmatovis had fought me for the diplomatic pouch at Heathrow. And I'd had a better look when Helmet Head had planted his foot in Philip's chest in my hotel room.

Of course, Katie hadn't been there then.

Only Philip had.

Philip.
Who should've been in England at this moment. But who may have been standing beneath an oak tree on American soil this morning.

In a flash, every underhanded thing Barrett had accused Philip of in Britain came back to me. And now, on the outskirts of this small desert town, I could see the possibilities. Maybe Philip had indeed drugged my drink. Maybe he'd tried to mine me for information about Ikaat and Armand. Worst of all, maybe, when Ikaat couldn't be coerced into remaining in Britain, Philip had known my flight hadn't had a snowball's chance of reaching Washington. After all, he'd been willing to put me on that plane—until the Anonymous Men in the sunglasses had shown up. Then he'd begged me to stay.

If he'd had his way, he and I would've been burning up his sheets while Ikaat and Armand, and Katie and Barrett, slammed into the sea. Neither of those things had happened, though. So I couldn't say he'd followed us to Washington—or that he'd tried to knock me and Ikaat out of commission on Capitol Hill.

Still, the possibility had me feeling ill. I took advantage of the porch's rustic railing, sat on the edge of it, and said, “The guy in the photo isn't the one who attacked us in London.”

“Isn't it?” Katie asked.

“No. But I think I know who it could be.”

Katie went stone still. She seemed to shrink before my eyes. “What do we do now?” she asked bleakly.

“You do nothing,” I answered. “Barrett and I will handle everything.”

But she remained anchored to the porch floor. So I slipped my good arm around her, gave her a squeeze and a reassuring smile.

“We'll get him,” I assured her. “He won't hurt us. I promise.”

“He?”

I nodded.

Katie gulped in air like she'd been about to suffocate. With the breath, much of the tension she'd been carrying melted from her shoulders. But not all of it.

So I decided she needed a distraction.

“Oh, look,” I said as one of the FBI agents joined us. He was as muscled as the rest of them, and like the men at Heathrow, wore his sunglasses though the sun had set long before. For all I knew, his shades had some kind of heads-up display inside them that read infrared signals and, in the case of trouble, relayed real-time battlefield-style assessments. “This fine young man needs a dance partner, Katie, and so do you.”

As mannerly as a West Point cadet at a cotillion, the agent rendered me a polite nod.

But when he spoke, he spoke to Barrett.

“Sir, I recommend we get the ladies inside.”

“Ms. Sinclair stays with me.”

The agent nodded again. And to my surprise, offered his arm to Katie. He led her away like an escort at the prom and, from where I stood, it looked like she'd get that dance after all.

I, on the other hand, had to break some bad news to Barrett.

“Adam, I think the guy at the Vienna Metro could've been Philip.”

“Spencer-Dean?”

I nodded.

He shook his head.

“I'm serious. I think you may've been right. I think he may've drugged my drink at that party. I think he may've known our plane would crash. I think—”

But Barrett didn't want to hear it.

“Dance with me, Jamie.”

We were alone on the porch, with nothing but the scent of honeysuckle and sage to keep us company. A soft breeze sighed through the dark desert. And past Poppie's roof, above the horizon, a multitude of stars glittered like diamonds on velvet.

Barrett took my hand in his, and in my stomach, butterflies took flight.

“No,” I protested, even as he drew me into his arms. “We have to talk.”

Behind us, the band began to play a ballad. I tried to tune it out. But the melody tugged at my heartstrings with its words of love and longing.

Barrett's palm warmed the small of my back. He stepped into a slow dance, taking me with him. I'd never danced with him before.

He was good at it.

He held me close. And I was tempted to forget what I needed to say. Especially when my head came to rest on Barrett's strong shoulder.

But guilt niggled me about Philip.

And that I hadn't listened to Barrett in London.

“I'm pretty sure Philip's here,” I blurted.

“He is. He entered at LaGuardia this morning and boarded a Southwest Airlines flight for Phoenix twenty minutes after we left Maryland.”

I stopped dancing. “You
knew
? You knew Philip was in the States? And you didn't tell me?”

“Honey, do we have to talk about him tonight?” Barrett carried my hand to his mouth, dusted a kiss across my fingertips.

But I wouldn't be pacified. I pushed my way out of his embrace. “Yes, we have to talk about him. Because I've got news for you. I saw a man who looked an awful lot like Philip this morning. On the post. Not far from the Hooch.”