The shock of his statement made Evan’s bones feel like water. ‘This isn’t freedom, Dad. You haven’t been able to do what you wanted. Be what you wanted. You just traded one cage for another.’
‘Don’t judge me.’
Evan stood. ‘I’m not staying in the cage you built for yourself.’
Mitchell shook Evan’s shoulders. ‘It wasn’t a cage. Your mother got to be a photographer. I got to work with computers. Our choices. And you got to grow up free, not afraid, not with us rotting in a prison, just like our mothers.’ Mitchell’s mouth contorted in fury and grief; rage fired his eyes.
‘Dad…’
‘You don’t know the evil you were saved from, Evan. I don’t mean the evil of murder. I mean the evil of oppression. Of your soul suffocating. Of constant fear.’
‘I know you think you did the right thing for me.’
‘There’s no think about it, I did, your mother and I did!’
‘Yes. Dad.’ Evan drew his father into a long embrace, and Mitchell Casher shuddered. ‘It’s okay. I will always love you.’
His father hugged back, fiercely.
‘You did the right thing at the time,’ Evan said. ‘But this life killed Mom, and it has nearly killed me and you both. Please. We have a chance to end it. We can go anywhere else. I’ll dig ditches, I’ll learn a new language. I just want what’s left of my family to stay together.’
Mitchell sank down in the chair in front of the computer and put his face in his hands. Then he sat up, quickly, as though he’d assumed an unnatural posture.
He has to be ready all the time. Every moment that he’s awake. Then Evan realized he had moved to that same edge of life, in just a week. He went to the computer, studied the faces of the lost children. He took Khan’s PDA from his pocket, wirelessly moved all the client names and agent names from the files on the computer onto the PDA.
‘What are you doing?’ Mitchell said.
‘Insurance.’ Evan erased the downloaded files from the PC. Erased the browser history so it wouldn’t point back at the remote server. He shut down the laptop and closed the lid. He could re-download the files from the Internet again. If he lived.
‘The files paint a target on our backs. You should destroy them,’ Mitchell said. Evan wondered which face his father wore now: the protective dad, the frightened agent, the resolute killer. Evan’s skin went cold with shock and with fear.
‘I’m afraid of you,’ he said.
Piotr Matarov, Arthur Smithson, Mitchell Casher, looked up at him.
Evan walked out of the bedroom. In the small breakfast nook, his father’s raincoat lay over the back of a chair. Evan dug around in it, pulled out a satellite phone. Clicked it on, paged through the few numbers listed. One for J. He carried the phone back to his father.
‘You did what you did to have your life. I have to stop Jargo to have mine. I cannot let him kill Carrie, and I cannot let him get away with killing Mom. He gets stopped in his tracks. Now. You can either help me, or not. But before you walk away, I need you to make this phone call.’ Evan put his hand on his father’s arm. ‘Call. Find out if Carrie’s all right. You haven’t seen me. I got away.’
Mitchell clicked, rang. ‘Steve.’ A pause. ‘Yes.’ Another pause. ‘No. No, he got away from me. He has a friend or two in Miami. I might try them.’ A pause. ‘Don’t kill her. She might know where Evan would go. Or if I find him, she could be useful in bringing him in. We still need to know how large Bricklayer’s group is.’ Mitchell spoke with a soldier’s brisk tone. Weighing options, offering countermoves, speaking like a man comfortable in shadows. ‘All right.’ He clicked off. ‘They’re at the safe house. Our final stop on our escape route. She’s still alive. He’s… questioning her. He wants the password to the laptop.’
What had she said in the car? He’ll give me to Dezz. I’d rather be dead.
‘She doesn’t know the password. That computer’s empty, anyway.’ Except for my fallback, my poker bluff for Jargo, if he ever cracks it.
‘I bought her time,’ Mitchell said. ‘But it won’t be pleasant for her.’
‘Where is she?’
Mitchell shook his head. ‘You can’t save her.’
‘I can. If you help me. Just tell me where Jargo has her.’
‘No. We’re running. Just you and me. Never mind Carrie. You and me.’
Evan took the Beretta from his coat pocket. He didn’t raise it. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Evan, for God’s sake, put that away.’
‘You made the tough choices, Dad, for me. Because you loved me. But I’m not leaving Carrie. Tell me where she is. If you don’t want to go, it’s your choice.’
His father shook his head. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing.’
‘I absolutely do. Your choice.’
Mitchell closed his eyes.
44
I t will end tonight, Evan thought. One way or another, all the years of lies and deceit end. Either for my family or for Jargo.
Mitchell drove north to 75 West – nicknamed Alligator Alley. As they headed west, the night cleared and the adrenaline settled into Evan’s flesh and bones like a permanent high. They listened to a news station out of Miami; McNee was dead, shot by a police officer as she tried to flee the scene in Miami Beach.
‘Jargo won’t kill Carrie right away. They’ll want to know everything that the CIA knows – they’ll take their time. Jargo can’t afford to let the CIA work another mole into the network.’
‘Will Jargo torture her?’ Torture. It wasn’t a verb you wanted within a mile of the woman that you loved.
‘Yes.’ The answer sounded flat in the dark space between them. ‘You cannot dwell on Carrie, Evan. If you go in thinking about Carrie
… or your mother, you’ll die. You must focus on the moment at hand. Nothing more.’
‘We need a plan.’
‘This isn’t my forte, Evan. Rescue operations. We’re not a SWAT team.’
‘You kill people, right? Consider it a hit. On Dezz and Jargo.’
‘I don’t usually have an untrained person to protect, either.’
‘This is my fight as much as yours.’
Mitchell cleared his throat. ‘I go in alone. You’ll stay hidden outside. They’ll expect me to return here, if I can’t find you. I’ll say you’re still missing, no report that the police have found you. I’ll tell them that I’ve heard the news report that McNee is dead, but that I heard on the Miami police band that she’s alive but captured. Since Jargo stole a civilian car, he won’t have heard any police-band reports.’
‘We hope.’
‘We hope. They’ll know if McNee is alive, the FBI and CIA will bring extraordinary pressure to bear on her. We need to run.’ Mitchell glanced at his son. ‘That movement creates an opportunity of weakness. They will want to shut down everything in the house before they go.’
‘The decoy laptop. They’ll take that with them?’
‘Yes, unless they’ve already broken it with an unlock program.’
‘They won’t have,’ Evan said. ‘What did you put on the decoy?’
‘Let’s just say I learned a few tricks from the poker champs when I filmed Bluff. The importance of mental warfare.’
‘When they come out of the lodge, Jargo will be walking alone, Dezz probably will have Carrie in cuffs. Both will be armed and ready. I’ll drop back and get them both in my kill zone. I will shoot Dezz first, because he will have the gun on Carrie. Then Steve.’ His voice wavered.
‘Don’t hesitate, Dad. He killed Mom. I promise you it’s true.’
‘Yes. I know he did. I know. Do you think knowing makes it any easier? He’s still my brother.’
Silence hung between them for a long moment before Evan spoke. ‘What if they want to kill Carrie before leaving? The Everglades – you could make a body vanish forever.’
‘Then,’ Mitchell said, ‘I’ll lie and say I want to kill Carrie myself. But slow. For turning you against me.’
The cool calculation of his father’s voice made Evan shudder. ‘I don’t think it’s right you go in alone. You don’t have to fight my fight.’
‘The only way this will work is if they believe you and I are not together and have not been together.’