“So, where were you?” Jack asked as he leaned over and put his forearms on the waist-high stone wall that bordered three sides of the porch. He was staring at a distant tree line through the long-shadowed September evening and across green pastures dotted with several barns. Their mother, Cheryl, loved Thoroughbred horses and rode almost every day. “I called you a few times, but I never heard back.”
“I was climbing K2. We did it from the Chinese side.”
“Bullshit. I would have read about it.”
“I’ve done Everest, so why not?”
“Look, I was worried about—”
“I can’t say where I was, Jack. You know that.”
Jack shook his head as thunder rumbled in the distance. “Isn’t all the secrecy with me kind of ridiculous at this point?”
“No.”
“After I got you out of Alaska, after Karen got shot in Wyoming getting the Order and protecting the peak?”
Troy grimaced. “I’m sorry about Karen. You know that.”
“If you were really sorry, you’d hate Shane Maddux.”
“Don’t start with me about him.”
“You still aren’t going to tell me where you were?”
“I can’t.”
“I know as much about Red Cell Seven as anyone.”
“You think you do.”
“I know you’ve been using that damn room in the basement again.”
After a few moments Troy asked, “How are you and Karen doing?”
“Dodging me again?”
“I have to. You know that.”
“See?”
Troy chuckled. “Good one, brother.”
Jack flicked a tiny pearl-white pebble from atop the stone wall, and it fell ten feet down into the dark mulch of a neatly manicured rose garden. “Karen and I are doing fine.”
“Marriage is still pure bliss?”
“Karen’s my soul mate. She was right away, as soon as I saw her. You know that.”
Troy shook his head. “Even after—”
“Even then.” Jack knew where Troy was headed with this. “It doesn’t matter what happened to her in Wyoming. I love her. She’s still the same person.”
“Uh, okay.”
Jack heard the sarcasm, which was unusual. Troy rarely used it. “She is, damn it.”
“Okay.”
“What about Jennie?” Jack didn’t want to dwell on Karen’s condition. “She’s a nice girl.”
“Sure she is. But she isn’t my soul mate. I doubt I’ll ever find a woman who is. Marriage seems too permanent.”
Troy was such a rolling stone. “That’s the whole point.”
“Yeah, but most people I know who’ve been married for a while wonder if they did the right thing. They may not say it directly, but it’s in their eyes.” Troy chuckled like he’d dodged a bullet. “I guess that’s why it’s called wedlock.”
There was something going on here, Jack figured. “Am I sensing trouble in paradise?”
“I never said Jennie and I were in paradise.” Troy banged the top of the wall with his fist. “It’s hard to keep a relationship together when the two people in it are apart a lot. She hates it that I’m gone all the time, and that I can’t tell her where I go.” He shrugged. “Hey, look at Mom and Dad.”
“Dad’s disappearance has nothing to do with Mom or their marriage.”
“You don’t know that, Jack. No one does.”
“Yeah, well—”
“What about Rita Hayes?”
Jack winced. Rita had been Bill’s executive assistant at First Manhattan for many years. “What about her?”
“Maddux has that video of them,” Troy reminded Jack. “The one Rita took secretly.”
“Maddux is a bad guy,” Jack said disgustedly. “A very bad guy.”
“He’s dedicated to the truth.”
“For that bastard the truth is simply what he thinks you’ll believe.”
“He’s a man who puts this country in front of everything, including himself.”
It was like hearing fingernails screech slowly down a blackboard. “How the hell can you defend him?” Jack demanded.
“What do you mean?”
“Last October he tried to kill you in Alaska.”
“And last December he saved my life in Florida.”
“He murdered Lisa Martinez, the mother of your son.”
“I’m aware,” Troy said quietly, looking away.
“Shane Maddux is a murderer and a liar.”
“He’s a patriot.”
“He’s scum, and I—”
“Enough,” Troy interrupted loudly. “Look, Rita’s off the grid, too, just like Dad. Personally, I think that’s more than just a coincidence. If he’s alive, he’s getting help from someone.”
Jack nodded reluctantly. “I hear you.”
They were silent for several minutes as dusk gave way to darkness.
“Follow me,” Troy finally said, heading for the wide stairway leading down to the lawn.
“Where are we going?” Jack asked when he reached the grass. Troy was walking away from the house, toward the high, four-slat fence bordering the pasture in front of them.
“Just follow me,” Troy called over his shoulder as more thunder rumbled through the darkening sky.
“What about the party?” Despite Bill’s disappearance, Cheryl was having a small family party tonight to celebrate his birthday. “It starts in ten minutes,” Jack said, checking his watch.
“Then hurry up.”
When they reached the first barn, Troy had Jack wait outside while he went in. When he reappeared, he was carrying a piece of cloth.
“What the hell is going on?” Jack demanded as Troy moved behind him and used the cloth as a blindfold.
“Shut up and do what I tell you,” Troy snapped, moving in front of Jack and placing Jack’s right hand on his left shoulder.
As they moved inside the barn, the familiar scents of hay, seed, and manure seemed particularly pungent thanks to the blindfold.
“Kneel,” Troy whispered.
Jack obeyed, guided down to a cushion by hands firmly clenching his upper arms. When he was on his knees, the blindfold slipped away.
As his vision cleared, he realized that he was in front of a makeshift altar. On the plain white wooden table were two lighted candles, which cast an eerie, flickering glow around the stall. Also on the altar, facing him, was a human skull with a small red metallic-looking “7” affixed to the forehead. Just in front of the skull’s chin, the sharp ends of two shiny sabers crossed. Each of the sabers also had a tiny “7” affixed to the tip of the blade.
Jack glanced up cautiously into the dim light, past the altar. Behind it he counted a dozen individuals, all clad in black robes with hoods and masks. The person immediately in front of him on the other side of the altar held an open book with both hands. It looked like a Bible, but Jack couldn’t tell for sure.
His gaze flickered from side to side. The two robed individuals at each end of the assembly brandished pistols, both aimed directly at him.
CHAPTER 7
Stewart Baxter and Henry Espinosa sat in the study of Espinosa’s home in Potomac, Maryland. They were thirty-five miles northwest of the White House, near Congressional Country Club.
Baxter was President Dorn’s chief of staff, and his reputation inside the Capital Beltway was that of a supreme ballbuster. He was well into his seventh decade, but he didn’t act like it. With Dorn’s popularity bursting at the seams, he was stepping on the president’s agenda hard, as well as a lot of toes.
He loved his reputation. Every once in a while he fired a staffer just because, just to push the legend, not because the individual had done anything wrong. He enjoyed it that people walked on eggshells around him.