The instant he heard Irene’s command to get down, he just let his legs fold, collapsing onto the floor and leaving Frankel suddenly exposed.
Irene saw Jake drop and knew she had her shot. “Don’t move, goddammit!” she yelled, and in that instant, the world exploded in gunfire, as Paul blasted the door lock from the outside. Irene whirled instinctively at the sound, breaking her aim on Frankel, then instantly realized her mistake. She dropped to one knee and tried to bring her weapon back around on target, but she was too late.
The first bullet hit her high on her right arm, knocking the air out of her lungs and sending her pistol airborne. The second shot, fired less than a second later, caught her just above her left ear, but she never felt a thing.
Paul looked away as he fired, shielding his eyes from the flying bits of splintered wood and steel. Five slugs pulverized the doorjamb, where the dead bolt joined the keeper, and with a single powerful kick, he sent the solid-core door exploding inward.
All he saw were muzzle flashes as a man in a suit threw an arsenal of lead at him. Paul dropped to the concrete and scrambled for cover as a plate-glass window on the opposite side of Connecticut Avenue shattered and collapsed into itself.
He randomly returned fire, scrambling to find shelter behind the brick wall of the town house. He never aimed a shot; to expose himself would have been suicide. Instead, he exposed only his hand and his weapon as he fired over and over, hoping that the random spray of bullets would keep the shooter at bay.
He felt the slide lock open as the last round exited his weapon, and the instant he withdrew his gun to reload, the brick facade began to pulsate behind his back. The gunman had found his aim, but the bullets couldn’t penetrate the masonry shield. Just as he’d been trained through endless hours at the FBI range, he dropped the spent magazine out of his weapon as he fished for a spare from his belt and slapped it in place. The slide jammed the next round home, and he was ready to go again. Total elapsed time: less than five seconds.
Out on the street, the panic had just begun. He heard the heavy impact of colliding vehicles behind him, but he ignored it. As rush-hour commuters dashed for cover, he swung his arm back into harm’s way and started pulling the trigger.
Jake never saw Irene fall. He just saw the pistol on the floor, amid a wild, unfocused cacophony of gunfire, and he scrambled for it. He lost track of the number of shots Frankel had fired, but each trigger pull seemed to drive an ice pick into Jake’s eardrums. It wasn’t until he cleared the archway into the center hall that he heard the return fire coming from the front door. Just random gunplay, really. A hand extended through the open door, spraying bullets through the center of the house as fast as its owner could pull the trigger.
Who the hell is that?
That explained why Frankel hadn’t turned back to fire at Jake. He had a far more threatening target to eliminate. Pressing himself as flat against the floor as possible, Jake made his final lunge for Irene’s weapon. He brought it around just as Frankel stole a spare magazine from Eddie Bartholomew’s corpse and jammed it home.
“Don’t do it, Frankel,” Jake shrieked, but he couldn’t even hear himself.
Frankel didn’t hesitate in bringing his weapon to bear.
Neither did Jake. He felt the big S amp;W buck in his hand before he realized he’d pulled the trigger. Frankel hesitated but didn’t fall. Jake’s gun bucked again. And again. And one by one, each round found its mark. Belly. Belly. Right arm. Chest. The chest shot dropped him. Frankel sagged to his knees, his face a mask of terror. He knew he was dead, and he knew who’d killed him.
A final shot, this one coming from the cowboy behind the door, ripped Frankel’s lower jaw clean off his body. The impact spun him a quarter-turn, then dropped him like a tree onto the carpet.
“Freeze, goddammit!” The gun at the door had a voice now, and Jake knew instantly, just from the tone, that it belonged to yet another FBI agent.
Jake froze, just as he was instructed, as the man at the door scampered quickly up the hallway and jammed Jake face-first onto the fioor, kicking the pistol free from his hand.
“Jesus Christ, what did you do?” the man panted.
“For one thing,” Senator Albricht said, rising from behind his table shield, “he saved my life from that madman on the floor.”
Paul looked confused. In all the noise and the flying wood and glass, he’d never gotten a good look at the man who’d been shooting at him. When he did look, recognition was instant. “Oh, my God,” he whispered.
“He shot your partner,” Jake said. “She needs an ambulance.” He struggled under the agent’s weight to find a spot to rest his face that wouldn’t hurt so much.
Paul looked even more stunned as he fully recognized the cast of characters in the room. “Jake Donovan!” he said.
“Help your friend,” Jake said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Clearly, that’s what Paul wanted to do, but first, he had a prisoner to take care of. As he reached for his handcuffs, Senator Clayton Albricht placed a hand gently on his shoulder. “Please don’t do that,” he said gently. “It really isn’t necessary.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
Travis pulled at his shirt collar, hoping the fabric might stretch and give him some room to move. He hated ties.
“Stop fidgeting,” Carolyn whispered. “And sit up straight.” She couldn’t count the number of times she’d said those words over the years, in that same order, but for some reason, they seemed fresh, unused. The fact that she was able to say them at all was a miracle she’d never again take for granted.
After five weeks of therapy, her neck was better, though not completely. Doctors still weren’t sure that she’d ever get full range of motion back, but given the nature of the injury, and progress she’d made so far, there was plenty of reason to hope.
Travis stopped squirming, but he didn’t straighten his shoulders. They were his shoulders, after all, and he could keep them slouched if he wanted to. “How come Dad gets to pace around?” he asked.
Jake turned away from the window and its view of Old Town, Alexandria, to face his son. “Because pacing keeps me from exploding,” he answered, honestly enough.
Travis leaned heavily on the ancient oak conference table and took a deep, exasperated breath. It caught in his throat and triggered a heavy cough.
“You okay?” both parents asked as one. It was a sound that would forever live in their nightmares.
“Jesus Christ, I’m not allowed to cough anymore?” Ever since Travis had gotten out of the hospital, his folks had been like this, on edge about everything he did; every sound he made. It was like living under a microscope. God only knew what was going to happen next time he caught the flu.
Carolyn closed her eyes and shook her head. For the time being, she’d given up correcting his language. His voice had only recently taken on a husky, smoky quality that was fascinating to listen to, no matter what he had to say. Whether it was the remaining traces of his injury or the onset of adolescence, she wasn’t sure, but as long as the words were coming, she couldn’t bring herself to interfere.
Jake was the one she worried about. Clearly, they’d won their war, yet Jake still wouldn’t allow himself to celebrate. The final details had taken a while to work out, and in the end, he’d had to spend two nights in jail, but then it was officially over.
They were celebrities now, with every talk show host in the country dogging them for interviews. Book publishers, movie producers, and magazine editors fell all over themselves trying to scoop their competition in what was turning out to be the biggest story of the year-at least until the next biggest story came around-and a growing gaggle of celebrity lawyers pandered every day for the opportunity to represent them.
Through it all, Jake had become more and more withdrawn, his outward sense of dread in many ways stronger now than it had ever been while they were on the run. He refused to talk about any of it, but Carolyn knew in her heart that it had something to do with his days alone with Thorne. Something awful had happened, and Jake was either too afraid or too ashamed to discuss it. In their quiet times together, in the hotel rooms provided by the FBI, Carolyn had tried to probe it out of her husband, but he’d have none of it.