"Yes," I said.
"And all of this bullshit he's pulled, it's for the same reason. Because he's afraid of the two of you."
"Yes."
"The son of a bitch is wrong. He should be afraid of me."
"That's what we were thinking," Alena said.
Trent closed his eyes, dropping into dark thoughts, and I was right there with him. Beside him, Panno was frowning, suspicious, as if sensing that suddenly Trent, Alena, and I were having an entirely different conversation from the one he'd been privy to.
"Then I'll kill him myself," Trent said, opening his eyes. "You two just tell me how."
"The same way your daughter would have done it, Mr. Trent," Alena told him. "With a rifle."
CHAPTER
I woke early the next morning and found Trent already gone, and that Panno had presumably gone with him. There was no note, there was no message, but the two pictures that had formed the shrine to his family were missing. In the room Panno had been living out of on the ground floor I discovered a weapons bag tucked beneath the bed. Inside the bag were two pistols, both semiautos, a Colt and a Smith amp; Wesson. The Smith had been fitted to take a suppressor, and I wasn't surprised to find one waiting for me in the side pocket of the bag. I left them where they were and went out onto the front porch to do my yoga in the morning mist.
Alena joined me about fifteen minutes later, and since we were suddenly without baby-sitting, we decided to go for a run on the beach. We were back at the house ninety minutes later, and I made breakfast while Alena showered. We ate at the table, surrounded by our research and our notes.
"You want me to do it?" Alena asked me while we were doing the washing-up.
"No," I told her, and went to take my shower. The next morning Panno came back, driving a green Acura I'd never seen before. Alena and I were waiting for him at the door. He came onto the porch like he was preparing to slug me.
"Baltimore Marriott Waterfront Hotel," Panno said. "Inner Harbor. Room fourteen-oh-four."
I held out my hand, and he dropped the car keys into my palm.
"You are a cold-blooded son of a bitch," he said.
"We both know someone colder," I told him.
Then I got in the green Acura and drove to Baltimore. I parked a couple blocks away from the hotel, then walked the rest of the distance. It didn't quite feel like spring yet in Maryland, and the wind off the water was cruel, and it made me wish I'd brought a watch cap or some other sort of cover for my naked scalp. I had the Smith tucked into my pants and the suppressor in my left pocket, and the metal of each conducted the cold. It was early evening, already dark, and there were plenty of people about, and I had to wait for a group of conventioneers to exit the lobby before I could make my way into the hotel.
It took a couple of seconds to find the elevator, and two minutes of waiting before a car came to carry me to the fourteenth floor. I rode up with three others, a very carefully prepared blonde in her mid-thirties and her two J. Crew-appointed children, the eldest of them perhaps ten years old. He accidentally stepped on his mother's foot as they followed me into the car.
"Dammit," she snarled at him. "It wouldn't kill you to apologize."
The boy looked at her with the same contempt she was directing his way, then backed against the wall of the car for a slouch. Without any sincerity whatsoever, he said, "Sorry."
Mom sniffed, and then the car came to a halt on the fourteenth floor, and as I was exiting I said to the mother, "You treat him like a monster, he'll become a monster."
I lost her response behind the closing doors. Trent let me into the room without a word, turning away as soon as I stepped inside, and I took the opportunity to pull the Do Not Disturb sign from where it was hanging on the knob and place it on the outside handle. Then I closed the door and followed after him, found him standing at the desk, pouring from a bottle of Maker's Mark. He added ice to the drink, using his fingers instead of the provided tongs, then offered the glass to me.
"No, thanks," I said.
His response was to tilt the glass and deliver half of what he'd poured down his throat.
The room was a queen, and Trent had kept it orderly. On the nightstand closest to the window he'd placed the photographs of his wife and daughter. The golf bag he'd used to transport the rifle was visible leaning against the wall beside the closet, and the weapon itself was lying on a bath towel on the bed, as if he had just completed a fieldstrip of it. Perhaps he had. The rifle was a Robinson Armament M96, the same model that Natalie had favored, the same model that Alena had used to kill Oxford three and a half years earlier.
Trent finished his drink, and set the glass down on the papers resting on the desk. From where I was standing I could see the rows and columns of numbers Alena had helped him to prepare.
"She liked you," Trent said, and he was looking at the pictures on his nightstand. "That counts for something, I guess."
"She loved you," I told him. "That never changed."
"No, it wouldn't have." He kept his eyes on the photographs, speaking to them as much as to me. "I wanted to protect her. I hated that she followed me into Sentinel because I worried she would get hurt, and I loved that she wanted to follow her father."
I rolled the suppressor out of my pocket and into my left hand, then took the Smith amp; Wesson from my waist. The suppressor fit it perfectly, tightening smoothly into place.
"She was the most precious thing in the world to me."
Trent coughed, clearing his throat, then faced me again.
"I don't care why you do it, Atticus," he said. "Do it for your country. Do it for the money. Do it for her. But make that bastard pay."
"We all do," I said.
Then I shot him twice in the head.
CHAPTER
According to Panno, the fallout went like this:
Fifteen hours after I'd killed him, Elliot Trent was found dead in his room by housekeeping. The hotel called the police, and shortly after their initial analysis of the crime scene, a homicide lieutenant with the Baltimore Police Department in turn called the FBI. Said lieutenant then informed the Special Agent in Charge that he had reason to believe the murder victim discovered in the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront Hotel had been planning to assassinate White House Chief of Staff Jason Earle.
The FBI took over the investigation, and as a matter of course, took all of the evidence that the Baltimore PD had collected, including the victim's personal belongings and those items deemed to be in his possession at the time of his death. They found a high-powered rifle, suitable for sniping. They found two maps of Chevy Chase, Maryland, and each had been marked with notations by a hand determined to be Trent's, and each highlighted Earle's home, as well as the most likely routes he was liable to take to and from work. They found three sheets of what at first glance were determined to be math computations, but were quickly identified as firing solutions of the kind that would be prepared by a sniper. They found two photographs, one of Trent's late daughter, another of his late wife.
They found nothing by way of evidence that might explain who had murdered Trent, or why.
Three days after the discovery of Trent's body, a special agent from the Bureau's headquarters in D.C. met with the White House chief of staff to brief him on what had been found. While the identity of Trent's killer remained a mystery, the circumstantial evidence surrounding the discovery of Trent's body led to an alarming conclusion. At the time of his death, Elliot Trent had quite clearly been planning to assassinate Jason Earle.
Whether or not the attempt would have been successful, the agent could not say. But without a doubt, Trent's intention, ability, and willingness to attempt the act were clear. As to his motive, all the agent could offer was that, given the presence of the two photographs, it was possible that Trent felt that Earle was in some way responsible for the deaths of his wife and daughter. Why Trent would think that was anyone's guess.