A Deeper Darkness Part 33

Xander ran his hand over his mouth. "So that's why Fletcher was in a sling. I am very sorry to hear about Taranto. He was a good man, or at least trying to do the right thing. And I'm happier than ever that you're up here now, where I can protect you."

"Protect me? What about Donovan's family? Susan Donovan is missing, too. For G.o.d's sake, Xander, we can't just hide away up here pretending everything's going to be okay. It's not. It's not okay-nothing will ever be okay again." Sam choked back a sob, of frustration, fear, she didn't know what else, and slammed her chair back from the table. She went to the sink, not giving a d.a.m.n if they watched her.

One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi. Four.

Slowly, the water and soap calmed her beating heart, helped her get her emotions back in check. She breathed deeply with each perambulation, counting off in her head over and over and over.

One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi. Four.

Simon. Matthew. Madeline. Eddie.

When her mind finally felt quiet enough to stop, she rinsed one last time and dried her hands on a red checked dishcloth.

She turned back to Xander and Maggie, who were politely looking away, staring into their beers.

She joined them at the table.

"I'm sorry. I get...upset. Washing helps."

Like they care, Sam. Really. You need to stop telling people about your troubles. She'd managed to go nearly two years without anyone commenting on her failings, and now half of D.C. was aware she'd become a hopeless mess. Maybe she did need protecting, after all.

Xander met her eyes, frank and open. "I understand, actually. That's why I'm up here. I get...upset, too."

"The war?"

"Among other things. I don't know how much you know about me, Dr. Owens."

"Your background. Your parents. That you were a very brave soldier." She stopped for a moment, then started again, quietly. "I know Eddie Donovan thought the world of you. He trusted you implicitly. He talked about you a lot in his journals. He respected you, in addition to enjoying your company. That's why I'm here. Eddie trusted you. And now it seems, so must I."

"Mommy?"

A small, scared voice startled all three of them. Jennifer had climbed out of bed and come down the hall.

"Did you have another nightmare, sweetie?" Maggie asked.

"Yes. The bad one." The little girl's face was pink with the effort not to cry.

"Oh, sweetie. Come here." She gave Sam an apologetic look, and spoke sotto voce. "She's been having bad dreams since we ran." Then to her daughter, she said, "Tell me about it."

The little girl was trying hard to hold it together. "It was the house across the street. Back home. There was a man there. He had a wand. Like Voldemort. He waved at it you, Mommy, and sparks flew out, and you fell down."

She started to cry in earnest, and Maggie pulled her to her chest and held her, murmuring soothing words of nonsense to help calm her child. Sam fought the nausea that immediately blossomed when she saw the intimacy. She stood and went to the window, looked out in the dark night sky, saw the outline of the trees, their edges shimmering in moonlight.

A repeating nightmare.

The house across the street.

A man with a wand.

Perhaps a childlike interpretation of a gun?

Sam rushed back to the table. "She saw the shooting."

Maggie and Xander both stared at her.

"Ask her," Sam said. "Ask her."

Maggie frowned, but sat Jen back on her lap. "Honey, the other night, your birthday night, you read that scary book and had a bad dream, then you called for me. What was it about?"

"That wasn't a bad dream, Mommy. Across the street, there was a shooting star in the window, and then someone left."

She stuck her thumb in her mouth and started humming "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."

Maggie pulled her thumb from her mouth gently. "Sweetie, the someone who left. Did you recognize him?"

Jen shook her head. Maggie tried again.

"Was it a him? Or a her? Could you tell?"

Sam glanced over at Xander, whose face was intent with interest. He doesn't know, she thought. He really doesn't know who killed them.

The realization that Xander had been telling the truth almost made her collapse in relief. For some reason, she so wanted to believe this man. She wanted to believe him in the very worst way.

Was it Donovan? Did Xander remind her of him? Or was it the things Donovan had written in his journal that made her feel like she knew Xander? Parts of him, at least.

Or was it the way his eyes probed into her like he was trying to share the universe's thoughts with her?

Fl.u.s.tered, she turned away, but heard Jen's answer. "It was a him."

Maggie sighed, and Xander sucked his breath in through his teeth. "You're sure?" he asked.

"Yes," Jen answered. "He had short hair and made a big shadow across the street. I thought he was coming to get me. Do you know the bad man?"

Xander glanced at Maggie, then over to Sam.

"Yes, sweetie. I think I do. And I promise, he won't ever come near you again."

Chapter Fifty-One.

Savage River Lodge

Detective Darren Fletcher

The sun was gone. Defeated, Fletcher had agreed to hunker down for the night. His sense of honor was in tatters. He was so worried for Sam he could barely breathe. As darkness had enveloped the search team, they decided a staging point would be necessary, and found the nearby Savage River Lodge, a beautiful stone-and-timber retreat that Fletcher had half a mind to check into and never come back out again.

The forest service guys were stretched out over a table to his right, looking at a topographical map, estimating times and drawing circles with their protractors, then tapping things into their computers. They were attempting to figure out how far Sam could have gone on foot, working on the a.s.sumption, however faulty it may be, that she hadn't been shoved in a car. Or put on a horse. Or dropped off a cliff.

All he could do was wait. On the streets of D.C. he knew what his place was, what he could do. Out here, in the woods, he didn't stand a chance. He'd never been much of a nature guy. Outside of the odd Boy Scout camping trip with Tad, trips that Felicia increasingly took in his stead as the boy grew up, he'd never spent any time in the woods. He wasn't a hunter or a fisher. He was a cop. A jog down by the river was as exotically outdoors as he ever got.

He'd been stupid to think he could control the situation. Alexander Whitfield was a seasoned soldier, capable of hiding in plain sight, and that knowledge made Fletcher even angrier. He'd been played. They'd all been played.

But something in his gut told him Whitfield wasn't his man. He was so far off the grid that calling attention to himself by murdering his old friends seemed out of character, at least the little bit he'd been able to profile from Whitfield's record and Sam's translations from Edward Donovan's journal.

Now, Margaret Lyons was another story. A woman scorned is a powerful thing. According to Taranto, Perry Fisher was the father of her kid. Maybe someone in her chain of command had figured that out and was using that knowledge to scuttle her career, and things got out of hand. Croswell could have found out and confronted her. She snapped, walked him across the street to the house she knew was empty, shot him and played dumb until morning, when Fletcher and Hart came knocking on her door.

A plausible theory, sure. But where did Donovan fit into that? Lyons had been at work at her law firm when Donovan was shot. Three people had seen her and confirmed.

Karen Fisher was still a good choice. a.s.suming she was playing the reporter for her own personal gain... She could have been using Taranto to ferret out the real story, and Donovan and Croswell were trying to keep it quiet.

s.h.i.t, if he just knew who'd been the actual shooter in the friendly fire. That would help narrow it down.

DOD wasn't talking. Roosevelt had called three times, pushing hard. He was about to play his last card, which was going public with the information in an attempt to bluff them into telling the story. Fletcher wanted him to do it right now, but Roosevelt fancied a few more tries to see if he could work the back channels.

Fletch even thought about calling Felicia, beg and plead for her to talk to Joelle again, but they were running out of time.

That d.a.m.n phone call. That's what got the ball rolling. But there was nothing to indicate that the Raptor offices were Donovan's end goal-he could have been meeting anyone anywhere. For all intents and purposes, it looked like a fluke that his direction took him toward the Raptor offices. Donovan's boss, Deter, hadn't called him in. The other guy, Culpepper, was in Iraq at the time. Fletcher had interviewed the personnel there three times, and didn't have a single hit.

So Donovan was headed somewhere else. But where?

Fletcher paced around the room.

He thought back to the conversation Sam had with Taranto. He brought out his notebook and went through the code names again.

King, that was Perry Fisher. Doc was Donovan. Shaky Guy was William Everett. Mutant was Whitfield, Jackal was Croswell.

There was another name on that list. Taranto said when Karen Fisher heard that her husband might had been killed by one of his compatriots, by one of his friends, she went to another, Orange, to get the truth.

So who the h.e.l.l was Orange?

Orange was his killer. He had to be. And something about Perry Fisher's death exposed the man, or woman, who operated under that nickname, and as a result, they needed to minimize the damage as quickly and efficiently as possible.

And the best way to make sure no one talks is to permanently shut them up.

Had Susan Donovan figured out the truth? Fletcher resisted smacking himself on the head. Of course she had. She'd found the missing pages from the journal.

Could she be responsible for her husband's death?

s.h.i.t. That couldn't be. She was missing. But had she gone on the run? No. He was firmly convinced the killer was part of Donovan's unit overseas.

He called Roosevelt.

"Where are we with the DOD?"

"Third time's a charm. I've been invited to the Pentagon. Fifteen minutes."

"That is fantastic news. I've got a couple things for you, too. Knock on my head must have sprung loose some nuts. You need to go find Karen Fisher. Taranto supposedly had her hidden away. She is involved, though how I don't know. Check Taranto's credit cards-he told Sam he was keeping Karen somewhere safe, so he probably got her a hotel room. And while you're at the Pentagon, see if you can find out who was saddled with the moniker Orange while they were over there. Someone in Donovan's unit was called Orange, and that's who our killer is. I'm sure of it."

Roosevelt was quiet for a minute. "Seems I should let you get shot, lost and hit on the head more often. How would someone get saddled with the nickname Orange?"

"f.u.c.k if I know. Maybe he likes orange juice, or is from Florida or California. Remember that show, the O.C.? Orange County? Or has red hair. Doesn't matter. We just need to find out who he or she is."

"Your wish is my command."

Fletcher laughed. "Call me back." He closed his phone and went to the table of forest service guys.

"You got anything?"

The lead kid, and Jesus, he was a kid, nodded. "Four sites they could be, sir. Spread across the mountain. All very remote. Permanent camps on private property. It's going to take a few hours to get to any of them."

"Show me."

The topographical map was just a bunch of lines and squiggles, circles and four small red Xs. All of them were in an area within the greatest concentration of lines, scattered across the map like miniature campfires.

"What do those lines mean?" Fletcher asked.

"Oh, you don't know how to read a topo? That's an elevation indicator. Pretend it's in 3-D. If you can imagine the lines as rising into the air, as the concentric gets smaller, that's the higher up the mountain it is."

"I failed Boy Scout 101. How far are these from us?"

"Closest one will take two hours. Farthest is five, minimum."

"Do you know who lives at any of them?"

"No. No, sir. Very remote. We don't normally get up that way. We're a.s.signed to the park only. That's private property."

"All right, then. There are four of you. Each of you will guide a team of my men. And we aren't waiting for morning. We're moving out right now." He turned to the tactical team guys who were happily sprawled around the lodge's great room, enjoying the fire and their full stomachs. The lodge owners had taken good care of them.

Fletcher spun his finger in the air over his head.

"Get off your a.s.ses. Lock and load. We're rolling."

"But, sir..." The kid who'd explained the map looked panicked. "Really, it's not safe."

Fletcher turned on him.