“Where are you now?” he asked.
“We’re at this abandoned safe house a few miles from Washington.”
“You don’t mean the one in Burke?”
“That’s the one,” Shield confirmed.
“How did you know about it?” he asked. “It’s exclusively EOO, but we haven’t used it in a decade or more.”
“It looks it. This woman who helped us escape told me where to find it.”
“How did she know?”
“I have no clue.”
Monty looked at Joanne to see whether she knew about an agent under cover in the area. She shook her head, as mystified as he was. “What’s her name?” he asked Shield.
“She wouldn’t say. I asked her to come with us, but she said she had to stay or they’d kill her. She said she was working for the same woman as Wagner, someone named TQ. But Wagner says she’s never heard of a TQ. You know, for a while I thought our helper was one of ours in deep cover—she used the EOO mantra to signal me.”
“By any means necessary?” Monty said distractedly.
“I offered to help her. Told her my people would protect her, but—”
“But what?”
“It was strange, but she said my people don’t give a damn about her.”
Joanne gasped. “What did she look like?”
“Dark hair, cut kinda short,” Shield replied. “She had green eyes, and a scar from her cheek to the corner of her mouth.”
“Oh, my God!” Joanne cried out.
“One of the men called her Silent Death.”
“Jaclyn,” Monty said aloud, stunned.
“As in Harding?” Shield sounded surprised.
“Jaclyn is alive,” Monty mumbled, and leaned back, ignoring the question.
“She saved my life,” Shield said.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“Probably long gone by now. Somewhere at a hospital, I would think.”
Monty gripped the armrest. “What do you mean?”
“After she gave us the keys to the van, she shot herself in the leg to make it look like I did it when she tried to stop us.”
“Are you sure this Wagner doesn’t know TQ?”
“She’s admitted to everything else,” Shield replied.
“It sounds like TQ and Rothschild are somehow connected, work together,” Joanne said. He nodded. “Rothschild should be easy enough to find.”
“She’s a customer of mine,” Shield offered. “She buys crates of wine directly from Tuscany.”
“I doubt she has it shipped to her home. People like Rothschild use in-between addresses,” Monty said. “Stay where you are until further notice. This TQ bitch means business. If she has to crawl under rocks to find you, she will.”
“Harding made that clear when she sent us to the safe house.”
“I’ll call when I have something.”
“They took my cell,” Shield said. “I don’t know the number here.”
“I do.” Monty hung up.
“What do we do about Wagner and the president?” Joanne asked.
“Thomas was returned to office hours ago,” he replied. “So far she hasn’t said anything about her kidnapping.”
“She probably won’t talk if she wants to keep her credibility.”
“And life,” Monty added.
“We do nothing,” Joanne concluded, “unless it becomes our business.”
“My business right now is to find Jaclyn.”
Chapter Thirty-three
Burke, Virginia
Ryden glanced around the living room while Kennedy spoke in muted tones to her organization on the phone. She’d never seen a more bare-bones living space. No pictures on the walls, not a single piece of decoration, no books, not even a television—the couch faced a massive fireplace instead. At least, she mused, the place would be a little cozier once they touched a match to the stack of wood that had been left for whoever took refuge here.
Kennedy hung up the phone and turned to her. “Make yourself at home. I don’t know how long we’re going to be here.”
“Anywhere is fine as long as I’m free from those people.”
“I’m going to look for something to clean you up.”
Ryden wasn’t sure how to take that and suppressed the urge to do an odor check.
Kennedy must have seen her surprised look. “Your arm is bleeding.” She walked to the bathroom.
“Oh. Yeah.” Ryden noticed for the first time how thoroughly blood had saturated her sleeve. Although she knew she’d been grazed, she’d hardly been aware of it because so much was going on and the wound hadn’t really hurt. But seeing all that blood had suddenly changed things. Now it hurt. A lot. “Why the hell did I have to look?” she muttered.
“What?” Kennedy stuck her head out of the other room.
“Your eye is swollen.” That mysterious woman who’d helped them escape had taken a good swing at Kennedy.
Kennedy disappeared again as she went to check herself in the mirror. “So I see.”
“This place clearly hasn’t been used for years. I doubt you’ll find anything, but I’ll take any expired painkillers you can find.”
“Ten years, to be exact.” Kennedy returned from the bathroom with a big first-aid box in her hands.
“Thank you.” Ryden extended her hand to take it from her.
“Have you cleaned a bullet wound before?”
“Can’t say it’s on my list of experiences.”
“Then remove your shirt and let me have a look.” Kennedy appeared and sounded irritated.
“You don’t have to. I’ll let you know if it’s bad.” She wasn’t about to burden Kennedy with cleaning her up. She could barely face her after tonight’s revelations, and besides, she didn’t feel comfortable being seen half-naked.
Not that Kennedy would give a damn either way. Any attraction she might have felt toward Ryden during their time in the White House had disappeared within seconds of her finding out the ugly truth of who Ryden really was—nothing but a lying, selfish florist. Why couldn’t Kennedy understand that she’d just tried to stay alive? Although, in retrospect, it was stupid to trust these people, her gullibility and will to live should somehow excuse her actions. If Kennedy wanted to believe she was a maniacal terrorist and manic liar, that was her right, but Ryden was getting fed up with having to defend herself.
“You clearly want nothing to do with me, so please give me the kit.” She snatched it from Kennedy’s hands. “I can take care of myself. I always have.” She went to the bathroom and closed the door and looked at herself for the first time in the mirror. She had definitely seen better days: pale from tonight’s angst, black circles under her eyes from days of not more than a few hours of sleep, and the pain were starting to show in the lines of her face. “You look like a zombie,” she said to her reflection.
She unzipped the hoodie and managed to slip her arms out with minimal discomfort. Then, without thinking, she began to lift her arms to remove her long-sleeved T-shirt and screamed as pain tore through her arm and shoulder.
Kennedy stormed through the door in seconds, gun in hand. “Are you…?”
“It hurts.” The white-hot burst of agony had subsided, but tears still streamed down her face. She tasted salt as she licked her lips.
Kennedy placed the weapon on the sink. The bathroom was barely big enough to fit them both. “Will you let me help you?”
“I can’t lift my arm.”
“We’ll do it slowly.”
“I can’t. Just cut the shirt off.”
“We can if you want to walk around half-naked for the duration of our stay here,” Kennedy said, a trace of a smile at the corner of her mouth. “It’s up to you.”
“I don’t think so.”
Kennedy stood in front of her and took hold of her good arm. “Let’s start with this one.” She coaxed the arm free of the sleeve. “That wasn’t too bad, right?”