Greg Rucka - Patriot acts

What little remained of the media pursuit of Danielle and Christopher Morse became more and more infrequent, and then, almost as abruptly as it had come, ended.

I waited.

For almost a month, alone in a house in Charlotte, I waited, and it nearly killed me. I was worried for Alena, but it wasn't like it had been upon leaving Lynch. That had been fear, honest and true, and what I felt now was nervousness, nothing more. But I was stagnant, and once I took care of those few things that remained for me to do in Charlotte there was nothing else, and there was nothing to be done for it. I was stircrazy before the end of the fourth day, and on the fifth I risked venturing out and bought myself a membership at a Gold's Gym located two and a half miles from the house. Then I went in search of the local library and, finding it, began dividing my time between the gym and the stacks. I packed, unpacked, and repacked my go-bag multiple times. I cleaned the house. Thoroughly.

And everywhere I went, in everything I did, I walked with ghosts.

Pulling a book from a library shelf and seeing Natalie Trent with the blood trailing from her mouth, where it had formed a puddle on brittle, dry leaves. Doing the dishes and hearing the sound of her father's suddenly dead weight collapsing all at once to the hotel carpet. The shudder and wheeze of the dying hidden behind the threads of spring that had come to Charlotte.

I walked with ghosts, and they gave me no peace. The day before Earle was scheduled to lecture at Georgetown, I packed up my go-bag for the last time and drove north to D.C., in a used Honda that had been purchased for precisely the purpose two weeks earlier. I had a new ID provided by Panno, and the old ones that Sargenti had given us back in Boise, and I had eighteen thousand dollars in cash. I had two changes of new clothes, spring weight, because it was April and though the weather was forecast to be mild, it could just as easily turn hot.

I spent the night in a Red Roof Inn just off the Capital Beltway, and Panno met me in the bar there just past nine. He had another Budweiser and I had mineral water, and there were a couple of businessmen and women in there with us, and there was enough noise that we could talk.

"You're good to go," he told me. "She'll expect to hear from you tomorrow morning at oh-nine-hundred to confirm coms. I've got both your numbers, I'll keep you posted."

"You're not worried about putting this over a cell phone in the heart of D.C.?"

"Not the cell phones I've supplied you guys with, no." Panno slugged back some of his beer and cracked a grin at me. "You're covered."

I nodded, and we fell into silence for several minutes.

"Did you know Natalie?" I asked him.

"From the time we were kids," he said, running his eyes around the bar. "Right up until college, yeah."

"Didn't stay in touch?"

"Got difficult to. I was in the service, here and there. We fell out. My mistake, I could have reached out if I had wanted to, and I didn't."

"Why not?"

"I was in love with her." Panno quit his survey of the bar, brought his eyes to me. "We had a thing for a while, high school, like that. Ended when we went to college. She ended it. I didn't take it well."

"I thought you were in this because of Trent."

"It's as much about her as it is about him. Let me ask you something. You were in the Army. Why'd you leave?"

"I wasn't very good at it. You?"

"Special Forces."

"That wasn't what I meant. Why'd you leave?"

"I have a problem following the orders of idiots," he said. "There weren't a lot of them, but I seemed to have a knack for finding the ones that were hiding in the woodwork. My problem is I look like I'm dumber than I actually am, and I was dealing with people who were dumber than they looked, you know?"

"Too well."

"You got a future at this."

"I'm not sure I want it."

"You're good at it. That move the two of you pulled in Wyoming was fucking brilliant."

"That was her, not me."

"Not according to your wife. I asked her."

"What'd you call her?"

"C'mon, man, if you don't have a common-law marriage I don't know what one looks like."

I shook my head slightly. "She's being generous about Wyoming."

"She says that putting yourself out there in Montana, that was your idea, too. That took balls. That took more than just guts-that took passion."

I looked at him. It wasn't a word I was hearing much, and I wasn't feeling terribly passionate at the moment. I was feeling cold, to the world and to myself.

"Some people need killing," Panno told me.

"I've heard that before," I said. "I'm not sure I disagree with it. I'm just not sure I'm the guy to be making that call."

He nodded, then raised his beer.

"For Natalie and her dad," he said.

I met his glass with my own.

"For Natalie and her dad," I agreed. I didn't sleep well that night, and was up again before the dawn. I tried yoga and couldn't get myself to breathe properly. I took a shower and shaved off the beard, but kept the mustache, turning it into something that drooped deep around the sides of my mouth. I liked the look better than the full beard, but that wasn't saying much. After I had dressed again, I turned on the television and watched the news, and nowhere did my face or Alena's appear.

I checked out early, got into the car, and headed across the Potomac. I drove out to Arlington, parked, and waited for nine o'clock to roll around. When it did, I took the cell phone Panno had given me the previous night and switched it on, then dialed the number for Alena.

She answered on the first ring. "Hello."

"I love you," I said.

There was a pause. "Coms are working," Alena said, softly, and I wasn't sure if it was uncertainty or surprise in her voice. "Call me at noon to confirm."

"Noon," I said, and cut the connection.

Panno called five minutes later, also to confirm that coms were working, and that everything was still on schedule. That left me most of three hours to kill, so I drove over to the Mall. It was the heart of spring in D.C., and it was already muggy, but that wasn't stopping the tourists. It took me a while to find a place to park, by which time it was a little past ten. I started at the Lincoln Memorial and walked from there for the next hour and a half. I stopped for twenty minutes or so at the Vietnam Memorial, found it as affecting as I always did, and spent much of it just staring at the three soldiers, at their fatigue and their honor and their sorrow.

I took my time heading back to the car, and if I was being surveilled, it was beyond my ability to spot it. It was twenty-three minutes to noon as I was climbing back behind the wheel, and that was when the phone Panno had given me began to ring.

"Go," I said.

"He's canceled," Panno told me. He was doing a very good job of keeping the frustration from his voice.

My heart jump-started again.

"Is he spooked?" I asked. "Did he get tipped?"

"Fuck if I know. My information says he's just canceled the Georgetown gig, that's all. Could be a thousand reasons why he would do that, it doesn't mean he knows anything."

"Can you find out if he's still planning on being at the Watergate?"

"He only canceled-"

"No, I know that, I'm asking can you confirm that he will be at the Watergate tonight?"

"I'll get on it. You'll tell her?"

"I'm heading out there now," I said, hung up, and then hit my redial. Alena answered as she had the first time, before the first ring was through. "He's canceled."

"Why?"

"We don't know. I'm trying to confirm that he'll still be going to the Watergate."

"What are you thinking?"

"I don't know yet. Where are you?"

"At work, on campus. It's confirmed, he's not coming?"

"He's not coming," I said. "I'll be there as soon as I can."