David Baldacci - True Blue

Mary Bard sat down across from him, her hands clasped in front of her and resting on the table. Roy was no longer tied up and the gag and blindfold had been removed. They obviously didn’t care if he could identify any of them. They clearly didn’t anticipate him sitting in a witness box.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“You watch too much TV,” said Bard with a bemused expression.

“And what exactly did you expect me to ask?”

“Do you want to live?” she said simply.

“Yes. But why do I think it highly unlikely?”

“It is very unlikely,” she conceded. “But not impossible. And in your situation, it is the impossible you must strive for.”

“Like this?” He leapt across the table and attempted to grab her. He outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds and was nearly a foot taller. When he woke, he was lying on the cold floor on his stomach. His right shoulder felt like it was out of its socket. He slowly sat up, holding his damaged wing.

Mary Bard was once more seated at the table and staring at him with the same inscrutable expression. “Are you finished playing John Wayne?”

John Wayne? She either doesn’t watch much current TV or isn’t from America and subsists on a steady diet of decades-old movies.

“How did you do that?” he asked, grimacing with pain.

“I could tell you, but you wouldn’t understand, so what would be the point?”

He got to his feet and slumped down in the chair, holding his injured shoulder. “I think it’s popped out of joint,” he said. He felt sick to his stomach.

“It is. Would you like me to put it back for you?”

“How about some morphine instead?”

“No. You need to be completely focused for what is coming.” She walked around the table and stood next to him. “Turn toward me.”

“I swear if this is some kind of trick, ninja chick or not, I will-”

She moved so fast he had no time to react. There was a pop, an instant of gut-wrenching pain, and then his shoulder was back in place.

She sat back down while he gingerly moved his arm around, testing her work. “Thank you.”

“Pleasure,” she said as she stared at him.

“You’re not American, are you?”

She shrugged. “What does it matter what I am?”

“Okay, I’m focused. What do you want?”

“We want you to text Mace Perry. We want to meet with her too.”

Roy sat back. “I don’t think so. You’ve got me, you’re not getting her too.”

“Mr. Kingman, you really should reconsider.”

“Okay, I will. You want me to text Mace. Ask her to meet me in some out-of-the-way place so when you grab and kill her no one will even know. And then you’ll just kill me too. I’m thinking about it, thinking about it.” He paused and said, “Go to hell, lady.”

“We can of course text her ourselves using your phone.”

“Then why even ask me?”

“As a test, of course.”

“Did I pass or fail?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“So where does that leave us? If you let me call her, I’ll warn her it’s a trap. And since I’ve never sent her a text before, she’ll be instantly suspicious if she gets one. She’s sort of paranoid by nature. And she’ll call me. And when I don’t answer…”

“Yes, we thought the same thing.”

“I figured it out, you know. The money thing. The piggyback ride. Dialing for terrorists? Is that what you are? You don’t look Middle Eastern but are you one of bin Laden’s babes?”

“I am not anyone’s babe,” she said, her voice rising slightly.

“Okay, but maybe you should consider this. Mace doesn’t know any of what I found out. And neither does anyone else. I never had a chance to tell anybody.”

“Your point?”

“You don’t need Mace. You’ve got me. You kill me, it’s over.”

“I doubt it would be over.”

“What do you mean?”

“My briefing on Mace Perry leads me to conclude that if you are in danger she will stop at nothing to try and help you.”

“Your briefing ? Okay, what government do you work for?”

For the first time Mary Bard exhibited a touch of chagrin. Her lips compressed slightly and there was a certain irritated look to her eyes.

When she didn’t answer him, he said, “I’d say the impossible just got wildly impossible. I’m never walking out of here, so what incentive do I have to help you?”

There was a buzzing sound. Roy looked around for a moment until he realized it was the woman’s phone vibrating. She rose, went to a far corner, and answered. She barely spoke, mostly listened. It dawned on Roy that the room was probably wired for both sound and video. Who was out there?

Bard put the phone back in her pocket and retook her seat. “No incentive at all. But the fact is she will come to try and save you once we tell her we have you. You see, you’re the bait.”

“Her sister is the D.C. police chief. If she comes it will be with an army.”

“No she won’t. Because we will tell her that will ensure your death.”

“But her coming alone she knows will ensure both our deaths.”

“And yet she will do so.”

“How the hell are you so sure?”

“Because if it were me, I would do the same thing.”

MACE WAS SITTING in the living room of the guesthouse with a bag of ice on her swollen cheek. She’d tried to call Roy numerous times and hadn’t received an answer. The phone call she’d just gotten, however, had stripped the mystery out of this. They had Roy. They wanted her too. If she didn’t come, he was dead. The deadline was twenty-four hours from now.

She just sat there, icy water dripping down her face. For one of the few times in her life she didn’t know what to do. Then, as if her hand were being guided by some invisible force, she picked up the phone and made the call. Beth arrived in twenty-seven minutes, the roof lights of Cruiser One still whirling as she leapt from the ride and sprinted to the guesthouse. A quick discussion with Mace filled her in.

“Where do they want you to meet them?” Beth asked.

“They will kill him if I don’t go alone.”

“And if you do they’ll kill both of you. Kingman may already be dead, Mace.”

“No, he’s not dead.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know, okay?”

The two stared at each other. Finally, Beth said, “You know, Kingman made some sense when he said you and I should be working together instead of against each other.”

“We used to make a pretty good team.”

“We’ve been reactive this whole time. Chasing phantoms down alleys.”

“Or getting shot at by them.”

“What do we know? I mean, what do we really know about all this?”

“Beth, we don’t have time to sit and noodle this.”

“If we don’t sit and figure this out, Kingman will be dead. We’ve got nearly twenty-three hours. If we use it properly that’s a lifetime.”

Mace drew a deep breath and calmed. “Okay, I’ll start. Diane Tolliver had dinner with Jamie Meldon and then was murdered. Soon thereafter Meldon was killed too.”

Beth said, “Meldon’s investigation was taken over by people I don’t know, and even the FBI was called off the case. I’ve made inquiries and it seems Meldon might have been the target of a group of domestic terrorists.”

“But that would mean that Tolliver was killed because of her connection to Meldon and not the other way around.”

Beth looked puzzled. “But according to what we’ve found out about the two refrigerators, Tolliver was killed on Friday night, before Meldon, and Dockery was supposed to take the fall.”

Mace picked it up. “I found out in Newark that Meldon and Tolliver had an affair years ago. If Tolliver had found out something and needed help, she might’ve gone to him, especially since he was a U.S. attorney.”