David Kent - The Triangle Conspiracy

“Hey,” she said. “Clayton said you were waiting with the Marshals.”

“No one I knew was around. Seems Hagy and Leneski had to run out on a last-minute protective detail.”

“Do tell.” Faith unlocked the bare door to her office and they went in. Once inside, the door closed, she leaned down and kissed his cheek. “You don’t look half bad, for having gone through a bombing. Who’s doing what over there?”

“Dunaway’s running it now. She runs the antiterrorist squad these days anyway. She lives for terror, you know.”

Faith pictured petite, elegant Cara Dunaway living for terror. She smiled. “I know.”

Hendler plopped into one of the guest chairs. “Man, we got off lucky this time.”

“How do you mean?” Faith perched on the edge of her desk and kicked off her sneakers.

“Of course, I guess the families of the six people who died won’t say we got off lucky.” Hendler rubbed his face. “When you called and we mobilized to Bank of America, we were ready for the worst. Another Murrah Building. We evacuated, set up a perimeter, it was one smooth operation.”

“I didn’t know about Chase when I called you,” Faith said. “I guess Bank of America was a diversion, and they planned to hit Chase all along.”

Hendler looked at her strangely.

“What?” Faith said, growing impatient. “What’s that look about?”

“The woman you drove to Edmond…she’s the missing one, right? The one Rob Cain was working on. How much are she and your brother connected to what went down a few blocks from here?”

“Neither confirm nor deny.” She’d said the same thing many, many times by now. “What kind of casualty figures do you have from Chase? Six dead. What else?”

“It could have been much, much worse. It was a relatively small cache of C-4. Six dead, twenty-nine taken to hospitals, thirteen of those treated and released, mostly glass cuts, bruises, smoke inhalation. The ones who died were people nearest the suitcase of C-4, which was placed right outside the bank’s revolving door. Structurally, the building will be fine. Lots of ground-floor damage, but nothing approaching the scale of the Murrah Building. Still…” Hendler bowed his head. “Six dead. One was a two-year-old boy, Faith. His mom was going into the bank to make a deposit. She was one of the ones treated and released. The little boy was standing almost on top of the suitcase, right by the door. The mom was two steps ahead of him.”

Faith leaned forward, steadying her hands on Hendler’s knees.

“Faith, I don’t know what this is,” Hendler said. “And I don’t know where you and Thirty are in it. But terrorism just came back to Oklahoma City.”

Faith found Sean half an hour later, passed out on the couch in her living room, an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s placed carefully in the center of the coffee table.

That’s Sean, Faith thought bitterly. He might pass out dead drunk, but he’ll be damn sure he doesn’t spill anything or knock anything over. Wouldn’t want to make a mess, after all.

“Hey!” she called, kicking at the edge of the couch.

Sean stirred slightly, moved an arm, stayed asleep.

“Wake up!”

He didn’t move.

“Shit,” Faith muttered.

She slapped his leg. He rolled over, away from the edge of the couch.

Sean was wearing heavy-soled hiking boots. Faith grabbed one, unlaced it, and pulled it from his foot. She started hitting him lightly with it, working up his body.

Sean finally started moving. “Hey,” he said thickly.

“Wake up! Wake up before I get to your head!”

She hit his rib cage with the boot and he rolled over defensively, finally coming up in a half-sitting position.

“What the hell, Faith,” he said. “Let a guy get a nap.” He squinted; then his hands went to his temples.

“Some nap. I specifically told you not to stop anywhere, not to get a drink. I wanted you to come straight here.”

“What…well, shit, Faith.” Sean pressed his hands tightly to his head. “I…shit, I can’t think.”

“Now that’s a surprise.” She flung the boot at him. He put up his hands in a halfhearted effort to deflect it. “Ow! What’s the matter with you?”

“I told you to come straight here!”

Sean’s eyes seemed to clear. “Well, you know what, baby girl, I don’t take orders from you. You’re getting just a little bossy for my taste.”

“Can you possibly be that stupid, or that drunk, or both?” Faith kicked the air in front of her. “You’re hooked up with an extremist group, you’ve been screwing around with a senator’s daughter, and you’ve dragged Department Thirty and me into it. Right now you’d better damn well take orders from me.”

“Can’t I just sleep for a little while? I’ve been through a lot of shit the last week. I bought a bottle just to-”

“Don’t even say it, because I don’t want to hear it. I don’t care what today’s excuse is. Go in the bathroom, wash your face, do whatever you have to do so you can pay attention to me. We have a bit of a problem.”

Sean focused on her with great effort. “Problem? Is Daryn all right?”

“She’s fine for the moment.”

“What do you mean, ‘for the moment’?”

“Dammit, you sober up and then we’ll talk.”

Faith stalked down the hall to her bedroom and slammed the door behind her. In a strange mimicry of Sean, her own hands were shaking, but from rage instead of alcohol. She remembered something Cara Dunaway had told her, about an alcoholic’s only three choices: Get sobered up, get locked up, or get covered up. Sobriety, jail, or death.

Her brother had faced a real potential of the second, with all of this mess. She worried about how dangerously close he might be skating to the third.

She stomped about the room like an enraged lioness, losing track of time. A knock sounded at her bedroom door.

“Faith, I’m here,” Sean said. “Let’s talk. What’s going on?”

She opened the door. Water dripped off his face and he’d smoothed out some of the wrinkles in his shirt. “Can you pay attention?” Faith snapped.

“I can always pay attention,” Sean shot back. “Whether I’m shit-faced or not, I can comprehend what someone says to me.”

Faith shook her head. “I can’t believe you.”

“You have something to say? Something about Daryn?”

They walked down the hall to the living room. “Six people died at Chase, Sean, including a toddler. Nearly thirty were hurt.”

Faith lowered herself onto the couch. It was still warm from where Sean had lain. She pounded an arm-rest. “What the hell are you trying to pull? Be straight with me, Sean. No bullshit, I just want to know and I want to know right now.”

“Trying to…nothing. Christ, Faith, the guy told us he felt the Coalition had to get people’s attention, that speeches and demonstrations wouldn’t do it alone. Ask Daryn. Ask any of the Coalition people. Let’s find them-they all heard it. Thirteen people were standing there listening when he said that.”

“But still nothing from your Coalition. No claims of responsibility, no speeches, no demonstration following the bomb. Nothing. Zero.”

Sean came to the couch and sat down at arm’s length from his sister. “I don’t know…it’s real, Faith. This isn’t some bullshit fantasy, and it isn’t booze either. Daryn is real, the Coalition is real. Franklin Sanborn is real. For Christ’s sake, I lived at the house for a week. I didn’t just imagine that. I can tell you exactly where it is, every bump in the road up to it. And believe me, there are a lot of damn bumps on that road, way back in the country. Kat and Britt and I slept in the room upstairs at the end of the hall. Jesus, Faith, I had both of those women every night.”