Klein let out a long breath but didn’t immediately move. Finally, he slipped out of his office and began the reluctant but all-too-familiar trudge down the hall.
By careful design, his visits to her office were infrequent. He hated everything about it: The grinding music played at elevator volume. The plastic dolls, old records, and commemorative plates that covered nearly every surface. And then there were the framed pictures of her with men — all very famous, she assured him — who looked like they had just been released from prison.
Star held up a finger when he appeared in her doorway but she seemed to be looking right through him. It was an increasingly common phenomenon known as the Dresner Stare. Cell phones had been annoying enough, but at least you knew when people were using them. Now there was no way to tell what someone was seeing when they looked at you.
“Damn,” she muttered and then pushed the intercom button on the phone at the edge of her desk. “Maggie? I had a perfect connection with Jon and it just went dead. Now I’m rolling to his voicemail. Do you think you can get him?”
“He’s with Randi,” Maggie responded over the speaker. “Hold on. Let me give her a try.”
Finally, Star’s eyes seemed to focus and she smiled pleasantly. “What can I do for you, Mr. Klein?”
He held up the photo he’d found on his desk. “Who is this?”
“Pretty impressive, huh? All I had was a vague description and it’s only been…”
“Too much information.”
“Sorry. He’s former military intelligence guy. Name’s Whitfield.”
Klein felt a dull rush of adrenaline in the pit of his stomach. “Major James Whitfield?”
“Yeah. Do you know him?”
He didn’t answer, instead dropping the photo and rushing back to Maggie Templeton’s desk. “Have you been able to get Jon yet?”
She shook her head. “He’s still rolling over. And I can’t get Randi’s cell either.”
“What about a landline?”
“There is one at the cabin but it seems to be out of service.” She tapped a few commands into her keyboard. “I’m not sure what the problem is. The cell tower servicing the area seems to be online and they normally get good signal…”
“Shit!”
Maggie looked up at him with alarm as he ran to the safe and began digging through it. Klein rarely swore. And he never ran.
“Get a team to where Randi’s staying,” he said. “Now!”
“A team?” Maggie responded. “What do you mean? What kind of team?”
“Anyone and everyone we can get with whatever weapons they can put their hands on.”
“But we don’t have any people available, Fred. Kate’s on the East Coast, but she’s in Philadelphia right now. And you just sent Darren to Kazakhstan.”
“Then we’ll pull from our security detail. Tell Jason to bring the helicopter.”
“Here? You want him to bring it here?”
“Just do it!”
She dialed and then held her hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. “Fred!” she said, starting to sound a little panicked. “What in God’s name are you looking for?”
“My gun.”
“Gun? What are you going to do with a gun?”
He found it at the back under some files and checked the clip while rushing back down the hallway. “Just bring in the helicopter! And get Jon on the damn phone!”
“What do you want me to tell him if I do?” she shouted after him.
“Tell him to try to hold out. Help is on the way.”
44
The grenade hadn’t exploded, which turned out to be a mixed blessing. Instead, it was rolling across an imported Oriental carpet spewing a bluish gas that Smith couldn’t identify. He held his breath and squinted in an effort to protect his eyes as Randi launched herself around and over furniture with customary athleticism. He had no idea where she was going, but she seemed to have a plan, so he followed with lungs already starting to burn. If it was a nerve agent, one breath was all it would take.
They made it to the hallway at the back of the house and Smith ducked when a sighting laser came through the window and diffused in the haze. Randi bounced off the doorjamb leading to the room she’d claimed when they arrived and immediately dropped, sliding across the polished floorboards until she slammed against the wall between the two east-facing windows. Smith hit the ground, too, staying out of the reddish beam probing above him while Randi pulled the shades. With the windows safely covered, she got to her feet again and ran for a small walk-in closet, grabbing his collar as she passed and dragging him along with her.
Despite the cramped fit — and the fact that even children considered closets too obvious a place to hide — she slammed the door behind them. Smith dropped to his knees in the darkness, ripping clothes from the wall and stuffing them in the crack beneath the door. If the gas was just some kind of an irritant or anesthetic, it might help. If not, there was probably already enough in the closet to kill them. And worse, now they’d cornered themselves. Had she taken a breath? Was her judgment compromised?
There was a muffled crack of wood and suddenly the closet was bathed in the dim glow of a keypad similar to the one next to the front door. Randi’s eyes were bulging a bit from lack of oxygen as she punched a code into it.
Was it a panic button that signaled the alarm company? Had she sucked in enough gas to think a bunch of rent-a-cops were going to come riding to their rescue?
It turned out that he’d once again underestimated her obsessive thoroughness and well-justified paranoia. Instead of connecting them to ADT, the entire wall slid silently back to revealing a room of about the same size as the closet, illuminated with red emergency lighting. He crawled in after her and she slammed an open hand against a large red button. The door slid shut and Smith felt a cold breeze as a fan came to life and began flushing the tiny space with outside air. His vision was blurring from lack of oxygen and he could see Randi’s chest starting to convulse as her body tried to force her to breathe, but they just stared at each other. Both wanted to let as much gas as possible clear but, even with people trying to kill them, there was no denying that it was also a competition.
No more than five seconds passed before the breath exploded from Randi. He lasted another two before they were both desperately sucking in air that might kill them.
There was a slight chemical odor that he couldn’t place but it was probably just coming off their clothes and seemed to have no effect. It took almost a full thirty seconds before he could pull himself to his feet and look around.
A short laugh was all he could get out.
Most of the back wall was hung with combat equipment — everything from gas masks to assault rifles to knives. There was even a crossbow. Smith wasn’t quite sure what she intended to do with that.
“I told you I spared no expense,” she said, pulling her shirt over her head and starting to unbutton her pants. Feeling inexplicably uncomfortable, he turned toward a bank of video monitors while she donned the camo fatigues neatly folded on a shelf.
“Does your friend know about this?”
“To be completely honest, I may have forgotten to mention it.”
In the reflection off a monitor, he saw her finish dressing and reach for an HK416 assault rifle suspended above a row of communications equipment. A moment later he spotted movement on the top left screen.
“We’ve got a man coming for the back door. Looks like he’s getting cover from someone in the trees on the west side. I can’t see anyone in front, but I think we can be sure there’s at least one man watching the north and east aspects. Okay, the man in back is kicking the door…He’s in.”