She leaned back and put her feet up on a wicker ottoman that matched her chair. This wedding had monopolized so much of her time for so long-and now it was almost on top of her. So, so much to get done, and there was so little time to do it. This wedding was a gift to her daughter-and herself. It was the wedding she’d never gotten.
Ginormous, Garrett called it…
The door opened behind her and she heard the heavy footfalls of her personal secretary, Gail Peterson. Nancy found it amazing that a woman barely five feet tall and the weight of a postage stamp could shake the entire house when she walked.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Gail said in her syrupy East Texas drawl. She waited to go further until given leave to do so.
Apart from her stomping around and overly timid nature, Gail was a fabulous secretary. Frumpy polyester suits and hair dyed a faded shade of blond, she’d worked for the family in one capacity or another for over thirty years.
“Have a seat, Gail,” Nancy said. “I need someone to talk to anyhow.”
“Oh, no, ma’am,” Gail said, a little catch in her throat.
It was then Nancy looked up to see her red eyes. She’d been crying. Nancy moved to the ottoman and patted the seat where she’d been sitting. “Please. I insist.”
Gail complied. “I just talked to her earlier this week…” She broke into a series of ragged sobs, drawing a crumpled tissue from the cuff of her blouse to dab her eyes. “The poor thing’s background clearance just came through and I was just fixin’ to call her in when I heard…”
More sobs.
Nancy bit her tongue. She patted Gail’s knee. “Heard what? Whose background?”
“I’m so sorry.” Gail dabbed at her nose with the tissue. “I saw those agents here and I thought they told you. I thought you knew already…”
Nancy closed her eyes, praying for patience. “Told me what, dear?”
“The assistant… we hired to help with the last… minute… wedding stuff…” Gail began to weep as if a dam had broken inside her. Her words were punctuated by tremulous gasps for air. “Grace Smallwood… got stung by a bee… and now she’s dead…”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Quinn was all too familiar with the road between the Naval Observatory and Silver Springs. The Army’s Military Amputee Training Center was located off the same road at Walter Reed Hospital. He’d visited far too many of his friends there during their rehab. Riding down the quiet, park-like streets, he could smell the odors of antiseptic and adhesive tape common to amputee wards.
The night before his first deployment, Kim had rolled over in their bed to face him, tears streaking her face. They’d had dinner with a classmate from the Air Force Special Operations Indoc class. The poor guy had just come back from Iraq with a stump instead of a left hand. In hindsight, the dinner had probably been a mistake, but what do you say? Hey, bud, we can’t go out to eat with you because I’m about to deploy and your hook would scare the crap out of my wife…
Nobody deserved that.
The Bluetooth inside his helmet gave a soft chirp, barely audible over the wind whirring through his half-open face shield. He tapped the side of his helmet.
“Quinn.”
“Daddy…” It was Mattie. Her voice was drawn, tired like a frayed cord.
Quinn suddenly felt dizzy. He let off the throttle and coasted into a parking area along Rock Creek littered with fall leaves.
Two blocks behind Quinn, Nona Schmidt’s chest tightened. She tapped the brakes on the maroon Nissan. “He’s stopping!” she barked into the radio, forgetting to keep it in her lap and out of sight. “I’m almost on top of him. What should I do?”
“Just drive on by and find a place up the road to stop,” her brother said. “Play it cool and pull over at the next parking area. We’re less than three miles back.”
Nona found it impossible to keep her eyes off Quinn as she sped by, faster than she probably should have.
“He’s all by himself at the turnout,” she spoke into the radio.
“Good,” Bobby came back. Nona could hear the engine of their van roaring in the background. “We’ll take him where he sits.”
“What’s wrong? Are you okay, sweetie?” Quinn watched a maroon Sentra drive by with a wild-eyed blonde behind the wheel.
“We’re fine, Daddy. Mama says to tell you hello.”
Quinn closed his eyes and sighed. “I sorta thought she was mad at me.”
“She is.” Mattie giggled. “Way, way mad. But I’m not, so she said I could call you.” Her voice grew softer. “She says you’re not coming home for a while.”
Quinn had taken fists to the nose that hurt less. For a moment, his throat was too tight to speak. He slumped forward, resting on the handlebars. “Yeah,” he said. “I have some important things to take care of at work…”
“Important like those men who shot Miss Suzette?”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “Kind of like that.” She was awfully smart for a six-year-old.
“Okaaaay,” she said, putting on her mosquito-whine. “As long as it’s that kind of important.”
“Can I talk to Mom?”
“She says she’s busy.”
“What’s she doing?”
Mattie giggled again. “She’s busy staring at me.”
“Okay,” Quinn said. “Tell her hi for me.”
“Miss you, Daddy. You’re my besty…”
Quinn ended the call and sat, thinking. In the past when Mattie called, he’d suspected Kim may have put her up to it. Not this time. Watching your daughter snatched off the stage was bad enough. And then having your ex-husband literally butcher someone in your lap, it was enough to make anyone snap.
He’d seen the look in her eyes-a resolve stronger than he’d ever seen before. Maybe their marriage really was over…
Quinn started the bike and pulled back onto the empty road. He tried to press the thoughts of such finality from his mind, thinking instead of Veronica Garcia as he leaned the growling GS into a series of smooth S turns along Rock Creek Park.
Though new to the anti-terrorism business, the Cuban woman understood very well what he was doing. The woman had a look deep in the crystalline amber of her eyes that at once startled and intrigued him. He’d caught a glimpse of it the moment they’d first met at Arbakova’s home, and then saw again during the interview with Jimmy Doyle.
Outwardly, she was cordial enough, knew the right things to say and the right moments to say them. She was intelligent enough to keep up her end of the social contract when it came to niceties-but deep down, in a part of her brain most people don’t like to acknowledge, there was a darkness-a darkness that made her an extremely dangerous human being.
Quinn knew that darkness all too well. He saw it every day when he looked in the mirror.
“He’s moving again,” Nona Schmidt whispered, half relieved that they weren’t taking him on the road.
“Don’t lose him,” Bobby said, agitation buzzing in his voice. “We’re nearly there. We’ll get him when he stops again.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Q uinn had never eaten at Cubano’s, but the heads-up display on the GPS inside his helmet visor brought him in like a guided missile. His stomach growled louder than his motorcycle by the time he made the turn off Georgia Avenue. It was a popular place and he had to park the bike halfway down the street in front of another restaurant. He unzipped the Transit jacket and pulled the tail of his black polo shirt over the Kimber ten-millimeter. Resting in the Galco inside-the-pants holster, the pistol would be invisible to all but the most experienced observer. Temperature-regulated or not, eating supper wearing a leather jacket on the warm fall evening was bound to draw more attention than he wanted. As was his habit, he let his elbow graze the butt of his pistol, reassuring himself. It calmed him to know the gun was there.
Garcia had found a table outside on the raised patio out front, separated from the street by a short rock wall and metal fence. She waved him over, virtually bouncing with excitement at showing off her favorite restaurant.