He stopped. He’d been about to say they couldn’t trust Angel. But he shouldn’t be able to trust Andrews, for the same reason. They both worked for Hollingshead. The man who’d sent Chapel to Denver so he could die just to make the judge look good.
He didn’t want to speak his suspicions out loud, however. Not when it was clear that Andrews had just saved his life.
“Angel was the brains behind this whole rescue,” Julia said. “She tracked you by satellite to that house. She guided us there.”
Angel had made his arm scare Reinhard as well, and that had certainly helped. What did it mean? Angel had to have been in on the setup. She had steered him toward Denver just as strongly as Hollingshead and Banks.
“What about the flares?” he asked, trying to piece things together.
“That was her idea, too,” Andrews said. “I keep a sidearm on board the jet, in case I need to act as an impromptu sky marshal. But one pistol-packing CPO wouldn’t have a chance against a small army of security guards. So she told me to take the flare gun from the emergency kit on the plane and told me how to use it — where exactly to shoot the flares so it would look like a bunch of Special Forces types were storming the compound.”
“Most of the medical equipment I’m using came from that same emergency kit,” Julia told him. “Angel told me to bring it along. There was a full suture kit in there, as well as some antibiotics and painkillers. You owe her, big time.”
It made no sense.
Angel had led him right to the trap and told him to walk in. Banks and Hollingshead had come up with this scheme to make the judge look good by staging an assassination. Angel must have known something of the details.
So why, now, was she helping him? Part of the plan had been for him to die at Quinn’s hands. Hayes had presumably announced to the world that Chapel was dead. If he showed up in public now, alive and with a story to tell, it would ruin the entire plan. Angel should have been helping to kill him, not helping to save him.
He looked over at Andrews. She was beholden to Hollingshead, certainly, but he doubted she’d known any details about the plan. The fewer people who know a secret, the easier it is to keep. That was the entire rationale behind need-to-know information. So it was highly unlikely she was his enemy.
He would just have to trust her. “Angel betrayed me,” he said aloud. “She was told to get me to Denver no matter what it took. Because I was supposed to go there and get myself killed while fighting Quinn.”
Neither Andrews nor Julia looked particularly shocked.
“It was a setup, do you understand? She was in on the scheme to kill me.”
Chapel nearly jumped when Angel answered him directly.
Her voice came from the motel room’s telephone, which must have been set to speaker so Julia and Andrews could consult with her. She must have been listening the whole time.
“That’s partly true,” Angel admitted. “Chapel, Hollingshead and Banks did collude in sending you to Denver. And, yes, I knew you were walking into danger and I didn’t tell you everything I knew.”
Chapel glared over at the phone. If she was admitting that much—
“I thought I was doing my duty. My job. I thought keeping secrets from you, and operating on a secret agenda, was important. It was a matter of national security, and even if I wanted to be honest with you, I couldn’t be. I’m sure you understand that. But then things changed,” Angel said.
“Changed how?” Chapel demanded.
Andrews and Julia both looked away. This was between Chapel and Angel, and they didn’t want to be part of it.
“First, I need to tell you something.”
Chapel grimaced. “What? You’re going to apologize?”
“In a way. Chapel, I want to tell you something about myself. Something I’m not supposed to reveal to anyone. I was a hacker, once. Back when I was a teenager, I was pretty good with computers and I had nothing better to do than to try to hack into the Pentagon’s servers. I thought it would be funny.”
“Why are you telling—”
“Just listen. I was a high school kid. I didn’t know any better. It was easy, almost too easy to get in. I never saw anything important, really. I didn’t understand any of the data I found. I think it was all just payroll records. So I logged out and forgot about it. Until the next morning when a bunch of soldiers broke down my bedroom door and arrested me.
“Long story short, I was looking at a lot of jail time because I’d been bored and fooled around where I shouldn’t. I got passed around to a lot of people, psychologists and intelligence analysts and military lawyers, all of them wanting to know how I did what I did. I tried to explain, but none of them understood. They were convinced I was a domestic terrorist, and they were talking about espionage charges. I could have gone to jail for life, Chapel. But then they took me to this one office, in the subbasement of the Pentagon. You know that office. It used to be a fallout shelter for the Joint Chiefs.”
“You’re talking about Hollingshead’s office.”
“Yeah,” Angel said. “Director Hollingshead was there. He was nice to me. He was the first person who’d been nice to me since I was arrested. He said I shouldn’t worry, that they knew I was just fooling around. I was so relieved! I asked if I could go, and he got really sad and told me, no, it wasn’t that easy. What he could do for me was give me a job. They would find a job that would use my particular skills. He said it would give me a sense of purpose. It would give my life some meaning.
“And he was right. I love my job, Chapel. I love being able to make things happen and help agents in the field. I love the fact that I get to do good things.
“But there’s one problem. Sometimes, I find out that the government isn’t always… good. Sometimes I learn things I wish I never had to know. And that makes me wonder where my loyalties really should be.”
She fell silent. Chapel took a deep breath.
“Okay,” he said. “Well, we’ve seen plenty of evidence of that lately, haven’t we? So what are you telling me, Angel?”
“I’m trying to say I’m on your side. That I’m all yours, Chapel, from now on. No more secret agendas. No more withholding information.”
“I’m supposed to trust this sudden change of heart?” he asked.
“Yes,” Angel told him. She sounded like she expected him to say that in that case all was forgiven and they could go back to being best friends forever.
“Really? And what, exactly, made you switch allegiances?”
Angel was silent for a long moment. “I spoke to Marcia Kennedy,” she said.
SUPERIOR, COLORADO: APRIL 15, T+70:03
“I wasn’t supposed to talk to her, of course,” Angel said. “Director Hollingshead was quite clear about that. You weren’t supposed to continue your investigation. I wasn’t supposed to help you dig up any more secrets. But I had already called her and left a message on her voice mail, asking her if she could help. Asking if she could shed any light on why her name was on the kill list. She called me back, shortly after you were picked up at Denver International Airport. I tried to tell her that I’d made a mistake and that I didn’t have any questions for her, but she wanted to talk about it. She’d been wanting a sympathetic ear to listen to her story for more than twenty years. I couldn’t stop her once she got going, and then, I couldn’t bear to stop her. I had no right to stop her.” Angel’s voice was thick with emotion. “I recorded the call. I record all of my calls. Do you want to hear it?”
Chapel looked around the room. Julia and CPO Andrews were both staring at him, watching his face. He couldn’t quite read their expressions. He couldn’t tell if they were judging him or just waiting to hear his reply.