Now, even those simple desires seemed self-indulgent, perhaps ultimately impossible to achieve given what she’d heard the previous evening. She could still picture Ann Jenkins as she laid out her response to rumors of eight Russian air-to-ground missiles and several pounds of spent nuclear fuel.
As the impact of Jenkins’ Condition Red began to spread, things in New York would soon be a complete mess. Tankers would back up in the Atlantic as they waited to unload, and local business owners would be screaming as their goods accumulated and food rotted and the shelves of New York’s stores grew bare. Then, in the absence of quick irrefutable proof, politicians would slam Project Seahawk for unrealistic, heavy-handed tactics. Maggie had to admire the woman’s guts.
However, as if Jenkins’ announcement wasn’t troubling enough, it wasn’t even the worst thing. Brent’s name had come over the law enforcement network at around eleven thirty, a flicker on her computer screen, one more green line of print among thousands of others, but her eyes had gone straight to it. He was the subject of a detain-for-questioning order regarding the disappearance of client funds and possible violations of RICO and anti-money-laundering statutes.
She’d been stunned because the idea of Brent stealing anything was preposterous, but she also remembered his phone call, the troubling undercurrents in his voice, his need to meet with her. Had he been reaching out for help?
Her teeth chattered in the morning air, but she ignored the chill and stepped through her backyard gate in the hope that movement would diminish her anxiety. The eastern sky was growing paler, and the outline of her flowerbeds began to emerge. There were roses along one side and at the rear a perennial bed with a thick phalanx of iris stalks, their blooms already past. Overhead, more birds were starting to sing, and the scent of fresh dew rose from the grass.
As soon as she’d seen his name on the wire she’d called Brent’s cell phone, letting the number ring until she got his recording. Around one a.m. Brent’s name had come across her screen a second time. His client, a Dr. Khaled Faisal, had been found murdered along with two other people in a Manhattan townhouse, and the detain-for-questioning order had been upgraded to an arrest warrant. According to the report, police had found the bodies after a butler’s wife alerted them that her husband hadn’t returned from work. This time the bulletin had included Brent’s picture.
At three a.m. a third bulletin said Brent’s car had been located in a Manhattan garage, along with the body of a slain garage attendant. Until then, all of it might have been a terrible mistake, but now she knew it was much more than coincidence or mistaken identity. By four a.m. she could no longer keep even the simplest thoughts in her head, and she made an excuse that she was ill and went home.
In spite of the hour, she’d almost stopped to see Brent’s Uncle Fred on her way home. She knew Fred couldn’t be sleeping. First losing Harry and now this—he had to be beside himself. Nothing about the accusations made sense to her, yet she hadn’t stopped. Emotionally, she was in complete denial, but as a cop she’d seen people, even wonderful people, sometimes go over the edge. It seemed incomprehensible that Brent could have become homicidal, but regardless of her emotions, she needed to admit to the possibility.
Now, on a sudden whim she kicked off her shoes, hiked up the skirt of her navy blue pin striped suit, and pulled off her panty hose. The grass was long and needed mowing, and the wet blades licked the tender skin between her toes with shocking coolness. She closed her eyes, thinking it felt good to be here, so peaceful. For a few moments she wished she could be a little girl again, back in that perfect age of innocence where the dew could wash away her worries and make all the bad things disappear.
She crossed her arms and looked overhead at the last pale wash of the night’s stars. Where are you, Brent? Maggie wondered. Where would you run? She sighed and started toward her back door, thinking she’d go inside and try his cell phone once more before she tried to sleep. Maybe he was already in custody. If he wasn’t, even if she managed to talk to him, what could she say? Give yourself up? She shook her head. Not him.
She was so tired that the squeak of her garage door hinges barely registered, but in another instant her training took over. In one motion, she unsnapped her holster, pulled her Glock, spun, and crouched. She thumbed off the safety, and in less than a half second held a rock steady aim on the dim outline framed in the blackness of her now open garage door.
“Police!” she barked. “Raise your hands and come forward! Move slow!”
A man took several slow steps forward. “Maggie?”
She knew the voice. “Keep moving!” she commanded then watched him stumble and go to his knees.
“Lie face down on the driveway with your hands out to your sides. Now!”
“Maggie,” the voice said again. “It’s Brent.”
“I know who it is!” she said, only now her hands were shaking, her breath coming short. She kept the gun aimed but clicked the safety back on because she no longer trusted her control.
“What the hell have you done?” she demanded.
He wasn’t lying down. He stayed on his knees with his hands over his stomach. “I didn’t do it,” he mumbled.
She took two steps closer. “On your face, Brent! Now!”
He looked up at her and shook his head, and that was when she saw the blood. His shirt was dark with it where his suit coat came apart.
“Jesus,” she said, coming closer but staying out of reach. “How bad are you hurt?”
“Not as bad as I could be,” Brent said. “A guy tried to kill me in a parking garage.”
Maggie felt sick. “The attendant?”
“No, another guy.”
“Who?”
Brent shook his head. “I never saw him before.”
She looked at him hard. She saw no sign of lunacy, not on the surface at least; instead she saw fear and vulnerability and isolation. Her instincts told her this was Brent, the man she’d loved and trusted, but her training made her question his innocence. She pushed it back and came another step closer. She could see him clearly now in the gray light, exhausted and haggard, like he’d aged ten years.
“I’m sorry I came here,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper. “I’m not going to involve you in this.”
“I have to arrest you, Brent. I don’t have a choice.”
He looked at her, and something like Brent’s old determination emerged. “Yeah, I know,” he said. He winced then struggled uncertainly to his feet. He turned and lurched back toward the garage.
“Stop!”
He shook his head and kept going.
“Stop!” she cried a second time. She felt tears well in her eyes, but she thumbed off the safety.
“Shoot me or let me go,” he said over his shoulder.
“Why are you doing this?”
He turned halfway around. “Cause I’m innocent.”
“So give yourself up!”
He shook his head. “Got no proof.” He stumbled and put his hands on his knees. “They did too good a job,” he said, and then crumpled to the ground.
Thirty minutes later, Maggie was slumped on one of the chairs at her kitchen table with her head on her folded arms. Brent lay asleep on the couch in her small den, where he’d half walked and she’d half dragged him. She’d pulled off his shirt and pants, washed and disinfected his wound, and then used all the butterfly bandages in her police-issue first-aid kit to close the cut. She knew the wound probably called for stitches, but the butterflies would do for now.