John Miller - Inside Out

“Wasn't the altercation between you and Mr. Devlin why you remained here with Mrs. Devlin?”

“Yes. After Devlin killed the cat, Mrs. Devlin was upset. He had been warned not to approach her, but he confronted her and she struck him.”

“She struck him first?”

“I sure did!” Sean cried. “He wanted me to. He knew I was about to explode over Midnight.”

“Midnight?”

“The cat was black,” Winter explained.

“Did you ever strike him before?” Archer asked Sean.

“Do I seem like someone who would physically confront another person?” She scowled. “Don't answer that.”

“May, I?” Winter interposed. He explained how the altercation had started, what he did, and why he did it. Archer didn't interrupt, but his expression was one of dissatisfaction.

“Mrs. Devlin, is there anything you'd care to add?”

“First of all,” she told Archer, “I am not easily provoked and I have never struck my husband, or anyone else, before. I didn't know my husband was a violent person. If I had I would never have married him. Deputy Massey saved me from being hurt, and last night he saved my life.”

“You didn't know your husband was violent?” Archer asked, incredulous.

“I believed he was a marketing consultant,” she replied. “He told me that his boss in Washington had dealings with Russian mobsters and that he was cooperating with the government in the prosecution of the Russian Mafia-certain politicians and lawyers. I learned differently only when Mr. Whitehead confirmed that my husband had been killing people.”

Archer sat in silence, contemplating what she'd said.

“If that's all?” Winter asked. “Ms. Devlin needs some rest.”

“The bedrooms are all being processed,” Archer said curtly. “Mrs. Devlin can use this couch.” Archer stood. “We'll need your prints for comparison purposes, Mrs. Devlin.”

Sean said, “Aren't you wasting time dusting for prints? The killers wore gloves and you have their bodies. So what's the point?”

“That's our business,” Archer shot back.

Winter was accustomed to long periods awake punctuated by catnaps, but Sean was obviously getting punchy. After giving her prints and washing her hands, she rejoined Winter in the living room.

“I thought Dylan was being protected from the bad guys,” she said under her breath. “Not because he had been killing people for the bad guys. I can't blame Archer for not believing that. It must be hard to imagine anyone being so ignorant about somebody they were married to.”

“If all you heard was his lies, they probably made sense-especially if you wanted to believe them.”

“If it had been you bringing the coat out, instead of Angela, all three of us would be dead now and nobody would know who did it.”

“Maybe not, but they'd have known his boss ordered it.”

“I know it made you furious that he killed a dozen people and because he testifies, he gets off without a scratch. Now more innocent people are dead because of Dylan.”

“Hopefully when he testifies it'll end up saving more lives because it will stop the man who paid him to do it. All I can hope is that there's a net gain on some tally sheet somewhere. If I spent my time worrying about what the courts do or don't do, or how disgusting and unfair the deals the prosecutors cut are, I'd be in a mental hospital on a Thorazine drip. Like the serenity prayer says: Don't waste your life worrying about crap you can't fix.”

She began to cry softly and, uncertain how he should respond, Winter put a tentative hand on her shoulder. It had been three years since any woman had been this close to him. He felt for her, an innocent who through no fault of her own had been in the company of ravenous wolves, having to fight for her life.

She regained control, wiping her eyes with her hands.

“Thanks,” she said. Her voice was stronger. “For everything, Winter. I mean, even if you did let that man shoot me.”

“If it would make you feel better, you can let somebody shoot me sometime,” he teased.

She scooted away from Winter, but to his surprise, she lay down, placing her head on his leg like it was a pillow.

Eleanor used to sleep with her head on his leg just as Sean was doing. Sometimes Rush still did. He was glad that she felt secure enough with him to fall asleep. But once the initial impact of the life-and-death struggle they had experienced together wore away, she would probably associate him with an unpleasant experience and do her dead-level best to forget him.

Winter looked down and studied her delicate features. He found himself drinking in the scent of her, daring to imagine what being in bed with her would be like. He realized that this woman sleeping against his leg was a mystery to him. With a sense of unease, he remembered how easily she'd lied to Reed about the cat.

He closed his eyes. Her lie didn't matter. Tomorrow she would be gone and he would go to Washington for debriefing and then home. Later he and Greg would meet somewhere, open some bottles, and dissect the entire operation. Maybe by then-with Greg-he would be able to laugh at the funny parts and not cry at the sad.

Friday morning

The sound of Archer's voice roused Winter abruptly from his nap.

“Deputy Massey, I need to talk to both of you.”

Light from outside filled the room. Sean Devlin was curled up, her head still on his leg, sound asleep.

Opening her eyes, she sat up and stretched, running her fingers through her hair, sweeping it back.

“I'm just going to say this outright,” Archer said. “The plane carrying Inspector Nations and his team vanished below radar four minutes after takeoff. The assumption was that the jet had gone down in the Atlantic. After the search started, we got word of what happened here.”

“You knew that when you got here,” Winter said. Anger flooded his mind.

“The Coast Guard and Navy started a search, and I came to see what had happened here. We assumed both events were connected. When we found the plane, we were certain of it. It was discovered at an abandoned military base in Virginia, a hundred miles inland from where it dropped off the radar screen.”

“Emergency landing?” Winter wondered aloud. Despite Archer's unemotional delivery of the information, Winter knew this was going to be very bad news.

“The plane was hijacked, flown to the old base, then blown up.”

“Hijacked?” Winter repeated incredulously. “How do you know that?”

“The two Justice Department pilots who flew Avery Whitehead to Cherry Point to meet your detail were found there murdered and stripped of their uniforms. Someone took their places. There is sufficient physical evidence at the Virginia base to conclude there were multiple fatalities. Based on the way these people operated here and at Cherry Point, I think we can assume that the seven people on that jet were murdered and the hijackers escaped.”

The idea that Greg was dead would not fit into Winter's brain. Archer was saying something about transportation, but Winter was incapable of listening. He turned his attention to Sean, who sat expressionless. He expected her to ask questions, to at least be curious about her husband, but she merely sat there, numbly silent, as though she was listening to a mechanic explain what was wrong with her car.

“Killing Mr. Devlin,” Archer continued, “was the whole purpose of both operations. Looks like there were two independent teams to ensure success even if there were last-minute changes.”

“Maybe they aren't all dead.” Winter felt as though he had been drugged.

“I am going to the scene, Deputy Massey,” Archer told him. “Your director is there. I am taking you with me.”