Jad Bell: Bravo Part 27

:P.

The night is brilliant, clear and so full of stars, and Athena takes a moment before mounting her bike to just stand in the driveway of Gail's house and look up. There's no moon, and the Milky Way is distinct, and she thinks about the fact that right this moment there are people living up there on a s.p.a.ce station, that there are s.p.a.cecraft that have left the solar system, that there is so much out there. She read a physics article once that talked about infinite universes and how if the universes were really infinite there would be another one of her, just like her, out there somewhere. Another deaf Athena, and a hearing one, and one who never met Joel, and one who had already lost her virginity to him, and one whose parents weren't divorced.

She climbs on her bike and starts pedaling, taking it slow because of the darkness. She's got flashers on her bike, front and back, and she's wearing her helmet. It's still warm, but the humidity has dropped, and as she rides she feels the slight, pleasant breeze on her arms and through her T-shirt.

Athena turns onto Edinborough, and the first thing she notices is that the Mazda isn't parked down the block anymore, and neither is the Toyota. It's dark, so maybe she's wrong, or maybe they've left. She knows that Mom had a fight with Dad the other day about the people watching them. She's still not entirely sure what she thinks about that whole thing, the idea of them being under surveillance, as Mom put it. On the one hand, it's definitely creepy, knowing someone is following you and watching you; Athena's been very careful about not changing clothes anywhere near her windows. On the other hand, there's something rea.s.suring about it, in feeling that you're being protected.

She's just about reached her house when she sees the slant of light from the front door, realizes it's ajar. Her first thought is that maybe Leaf has snuck out, but she doesn't believe it even as it comes to mind. She stops on her bike, feet on the ground, searching the street once more for either of the cars she now knows belong to people who are meant to protect her and her mother. She is more sure than ever that the cars are simply not there.

Dismounting, she guides her bicycle across the lawn, rests it against the elm tree. She makes her way across the gra.s.s, climbs the stairs to the porch, careful where she sets her feet. She wishes, just for once, that she could hear the world, that she could know if there were voices or silence coming from inside, if the wood beneath her feet was creaking. She thinks of all the stories she's read in which a footstep is betrayed by its sound, and she is certain that it's happening to her now. She thinks she's being silly, that she's worrying about nothing. The door is simply ajar, nothing more.

All the same, Athena holds on the porch, slides her feet sideways until she can see through the gap between the door and the frame. It's a straight view down the hallway to the kitchen, the source of the light, and she can just make out her mother seated in a chair that should be out of sight, at the kitchen table, but isn't. Her mouth is moving, and Athena sees that her mother is sitting with her hands in her lap, and her back is straight, as though her spine is tied to a plank, and her chin is tilted just that much up, and it's a posture, or, more precisely, a manner, that she has seen before. It's a manner she will never forget.

It's the same way her mother looked at the men who made them their prisoners at WilsonVille.

The apprehension Athena Bell feels spasms, turns into fear. Whoever her mother is talking to, that person is not a friend. Whoever her mother is talking to, that person is dangerous.

She takes a step back, then another, runs into the porch railing, startles herself. Certain she's made noise, she vaults back onto the lawn, rolls on the gra.s.s and to her feet, runs around the near corner of the house, into deeper darkness. Her heart is pounding, and she stops, dares to peek back around to look at the front door. Nothing has changed. She feels for her phone in her pocket, frees it, snaps the screen open. Her thumb hits 9 and then 1 and is about to hit 1 again before she stops herself. Her cell provider has no text-to-911 system; there's no way for her to communicate without third-party a.s.sistance or TTY. She could call, try speaking, try to p.r.o.nounce the words in a way that will be understood, but she's afraid of the noise she will make. Just calling without speaking-maybe they would try to trace it, send the police, and that would be good, but then she thinks that maybe it wouldn't be, either. Calling the police but not being able to tell them that her mom's inside their house and she's in danger.

She wants to believe that she's overreacting. That would be the best thing, and it would make sense. Everything in WilsonVille, everything with Dad-maybe it's her imagination. Except those cars that are supposed to protect them, they're not there anymore. But maybe there are new cars. Maybe they're on break or asleep.

Athena thinks about texting her dad, but what if she's wrong? If she really is overreacting? Mom had texted her just half an hour ago, not that long ago. Could so much have changed in just thirty minutes?

She peeks around the side of the house again, and still the front door is just that little bit ajar, she can see from the light. Everything on the street looks so quiet.

It's the thought that her mother is in danger that ultimately moves her, that decides her course of action. The thought that her mom is in trouble and that her dad would know what to do. Shoving her phone back into her pocket, Athena continues along the side of the house, toward the backyard, peers around the corner. She can see the kitchen window, and now she can see another shape in there, and it's definitely not Mom but a man. He's wearing a white shirt and a blue tie, sitting at the table, his jacket hanging from the back of his chair. Athena edges closer, trying to adjust the angle to get a better view, and the man moves his left hand, speaking, a very calm and reasonable gesture, and she would let that persuade her that she is, in fact, overreacting, except that resting on the table beneath his right hand he has a gun.

Athena steps back, catches her breath. Her stomach hurts. She wants to be sick.

The stairs down to the bas.e.m.e.nt door are just ahead of her, six feet that she covers with her back flush against the side of the house to keep from being seen from inside. She turns, drops down into the darkness, lands on the bottom step, falls forward, hands out. Catches herself on the door, and she can feel a vibration from behind the wood, an irregular pulse, and she thinks she knows what it is. She tries the k.n.o.b, but it's locked, and she has to dig for her keys, feel her way to the keyhole in the handle, for the moment both blind and deaf. She feels the bolt turn, and as quickly and as quietly as she can, she shoves it open, steps through, and shuts it behind her. Leaf is immediately at her hip, nosing her, and she can tell he's barking, she can feel it in the air. Someone put him in the bas.e.m.e.nt, the man or Mom, and Athena thinks it must've been Mom, because the light over the dryer is on, and if the man with the gun did it, he wouldn't care if there was light for the dog.

Athena hopes to G.o.d that Leaf's been barking the whole time, not because of her arrival.

Do what Dad would do, she thinks.

She goes to the stairs, climbs them quickly, Leaf following. He's still barking, and she wonders if that's enough to cover the noise. She pushes him back, gives him the hand sign to stay, and he backs off, then comes forward again. She repeats the sign, and he lowers his head but doesn't move, and he stops barking. Athena sets her hand on the doork.n.o.b, turns it slowly, feels it rotate without resistance. She doesn't open the door, not yet.

Do it like Dad would do it.

She takes a deep breath, lets it go, takes another, and opens the door as smoothly as she can. Slips through, shuts it again, turns right, three steps, and she's at the linen closet opposite the bathroom.

From the linen closet, it's another right around the corner, past the guest room into the kitchen. She rounds with the shotgun coming up, tucking the b.u.t.t high on her shoulder, the way Dad and Uncle Jorge showed her that one summer. Mom is facing her, in her chair, and she sees her at once, but it's the man at the table that Athena is aiming at, and she has her finger on the trigger, and she's saying some of the words that Uncle Jorge taught her to say when Mom and Dad weren't paying attention.

"h.e.l.lo, motherf.u.c.ker," Athena says.

Mom is signing, speaking at the same time, but Athena isn't paying attention to her. The man at the table looks at her, and she's kind of surprised, because he doesn't even look afraid. She can see that his clothes are a little rumpled, like he's worn them for a day too long, that the tie is loose, the top b.u.t.ton at his collar unfastened. His right hand rests on his gun, the gun on the table. He spreads his fingers, raises his hand, leaving the weapon behind, and Athena takes another step toward him, the barrel never wavering.

"Limp-d.i.c.k motherf.u.c.ker," Athena says, trying to get the sounds right, biting each word, like Uncle Jorge taught her. He spent a long time teaching her that one. "f.u.c.kbag."

The man glances at Mom, then back to her, his mouth moving. He speaks slowly, like he knows she's deaf. He speaks slowly, she realizes, so she can read his words.

You must be Athena, he says.

Athena risks a glance at her mother, sees that Mom is on her feet, holding out a hand, and for a moment Athena thinks she wants the shotgun. When she looks back to the man, he is shrugging, then slides the gun on the table toward Mom. She picks it up like it's a diseased rat, points it at the floor. When her hands are done with it, the gun is empty, the slide locked back, and both the weapon and its magazine and a shining bra.s.s bullet are on the counter. She turns to Athena, signing again.

Give shotgun.

Athena does not give her the shotgun, still pointing it at the man. With it in her hands, she cannot sign, so she puts it all in her expression, hoping Mom can read it the way she knows that Gail and Lynne and Joel would.

f.u.c.k that.

Mom signs again, angry.

Give weapon now young lady so help me.

Athena looks from the man to her mother. The man is far too calm for her liking. Mom looks like she's going to start spitting flames at any moment. Her hands fly, speaking quickly.

Man wants talk Dad. Give shotgun N-O-W.

Confused, Athena hands the weapon to her mother. She's even more confused when Mom brings it up to her shoulder and points it at the man at the table, exactly as Athena has done.

Very slowly, so Athena can read each word, her mom says, Call your father.

She gets out her phone and begins typing.

Hey Dad? she writes. Mom's pointing the shotgun at someone here who needs to talk to you right away.

Chapter Twenty-Nine.

JORDAN WEBBER-HAYDEN doesn't stop crying.

From the moment the cuffs are on her, to the transport, to the unloading and the second search and trying to bandage the flesh wound along her side, through processing and right into interrogation, her body shakes, and she sobs, and the tears flow, and mucus spills from her nose. For Bell, who has seen trauma and grief in more places and more phases than he can count, it verges on awe-inspiring. Jordan Webber-Hayden, he decides, is either out of her skull with grief or simply out of her skull.

He's sincerely hoping it's the first, because if it's the second, they're s.h.i.t out of luck.

"We've got a team going through her residence," Ruiz tells Bell. "Heath's leading on it. Wallford is on his way over."

Bell looks through the one-way gla.s.s at the woman in the interrogation room at Fort Belvoir. Her hands have been cuffed and joined together by a chain that runs through a D ring on the table. Her head is down, a spill of brown hair, and her shoulders are visibly shaking.

"She's been like that the whole time," Bell says.

"She say anything?"

"Just the one word in Russian."

"You think she's talking about Brock?"

"Maybe."

"We need to find out," Ruiz says. "My watch says it's fifteen fifteen, it's Friday, and we're looking at our only lead on this thing."

"Nothing else on the names?"

"Nothing after Ledor." Ruiz pauses. "We found a note on the general, in his coat. Handwritten."

"Saying?"

"Saying he had betrayed his country and could no longer live with what he'd done. Some other things."

Bell waits.

"Had her home address in the West End and a list of five names. One of them was Lee Jamieson."

"Who were the others?"

"The kind of names you don't want to ask me about, Master Sergeant."

Bell thinks about that, thinks about names like Lee Jamieson's on a list left by a man who had planned a murder-suicide.

"You want me to run at her?" Bell asks.

"Soon as the chief gets back." Ruiz indicates Jordan Webber-Hayden with his chin. "Maybe she'll calm down."

"Don't count on it," Bell says.

"You could always talk dirty to her."

"You're a funny guy, Colonel."

"I've got a brigadier general who was leaking top-secret information shot dead in a Hilton near BWI, a hysterical suspect as my only lead to a terror attack on home soil in the next eighteen or so hours, maybe, and my Indigo First Team leader is whispering naughty sweet nothings over the net to our very own Mata-f.u.c.king-Hari. I'm about to p.i.s.s myself, I'm so funny."

"Situation normal," says Bell.

"All f.u.c.ked up," Ruiz says in agreement.

Nessuno enters with Wallford a couple minutes later. She's cleaned herself up and bandaged the claw marks on her wrists, and she gives Bell a weak smile as she enters. He wonders if he looks as fatigued as she does and suspects that he looks far worse.

Wallford, for his part, comes with the same energy as ever. As Nessuno moves to Bell's side, Wallford goes to the gla.s.s, puts his hands and face against it as though he were a five-year-old visiting an aquarium. He taps the surface with his fingertips, drums them, and in the interrogation room, Jordan Webber-Hayden doesn't look up, just brings her hands together as if in prayer, shifts her head. Her shoulders continue to shake.

"Jordan Webber-Hayden," Wallford says.

"So it appears."

"Scrubbing the residence?"

"As we speak."

He turns, puts his back to the gla.s.s, grins at them. "No known aliases, no record, no nothing."

"Helpful," Ruiz says.

"This is. She bought a Walther PPQ yesterday morning from a dealer in Alexandria."

"No gun on her," Nessuno says.

"Single use, maybe."

"Jesus Christ," Bell says. The thought that he's looking at the same person who put a bullet in Tom O'Day, who murdered O'Day's wife and daughter, is sickening. He feels the anger again, feels any dribs and drabs of sympathy her tears might've engendered evaporating with its heat. "What the h.e.l.l is she?"

"She's a pro," Nessuno says. She looks at Wallford, then at Ruiz. "I want to talk to her. Can I talk to her?"

"You want to go in alone?"

"Better with a partner." Nessuno now looks at Bell, and Bell hesitates. What he wants and what he needs are two different things, and for a bitter instant, he resents his duty above all else.

"Got your back, Chief," he says.

Nessuno fills two paper cups with water, and Bell carries a box of tissues. Jordan Webber-Hayden doesn't look up when they enter, and as soon as they're through the door they can hear her wheezing, her sobbing hoa.r.s.e and weak. Bell sets the tissues on the table, and Nessuno sets one cup down, then the other.

"Jordan," Nessuno says. "My name is Petra. Have something to drink."

The woman doesn't move, doesn't acknowledge them at first. Nessuno takes one chair, and Bell takes the other. Nessuno reaches out to him, touches the back of his hand, and Bell looks at her, confused. Nessuno uses her eyes to indicate the woman.

"I'm Jad," Bell says. "It's all right."

She lifts her head, looks at him, her eyelashes matted and her eyes rimmed red. A pool of snot has formed on the table; a string runs from it to her nose. She snuffles, but the sobbing subsides. Bell pulls a tissue from the box, reaches out, and wipes her nose. The woman coughs.

"Thank you."

Bell crumples the tissue, tosses it into a corner, pulls another one free. He reaches out again, this time cleaning up the table.

"Don't worry about it," he says. "We all have bad days."

She snuffles again, makes a sound as if trying to laugh. He discards the tissue, offers her the box. She takes one, wipes at her eyes, then her nose.

"You're not police," she says.

"No."

"FBI?"

"Jordan," Nessuno says. "Who is dorogoy?"