David Baldacci - Simple Genius

It took twenty minutes to clear the trees and he came to the York River and the boathouse belonging to Babbage Town, which was situated along a pier that jutted out into the wide, calm, deepwater river. It was a long, plain cedar board structure painted yellow with multiple slips and garage-style doors enclosing each slip. He tried the door to the boathouse but it was locked. He peered through a window and could make out the shapes of several boats. He walked out onto a floating dock attached to the boathouse and noted several kayaks stacked on a holder there as well as two paddleboats tethered to cleats. One covered boat slip was open. On a power lift there were three Sea-Doos with their covers on. If Monk had used one of these crafts to get to Camp Peary, who had returned it here? Dead men didn’t make good sailors.

The sun was coming up now, throwing streams of light across the flat surface of the water. Sean pulled out a pair of binoculars from his knapsack. The sunlight was glinting off the razor wire fence on the other side of the York. Sean walked down to the edge of the river, his feet near the sandy edge, and took a sweep of the land opposite, not seeing much of interest. A couple of discarded crab pots floated in the water. Channel markers rose out of the depths of the York and a low-flying heron swooped effortlessly across his line of sight looking for breakfast in the murky water.

He wondered where the runway was that would allow a large jet to land. As he looked to his left he saw it: a clearing in the tree line revealing a wide swath of grass. The runway must start just after the grass, he thought.

Farther down to his left, long crane arms reached to the sky. The Cheatham Annex, he concluded. Navy boys. On the drive to Babbage Town he’d seen a gunmetal gray destroyer alongside a pier in front of the Naval Weapons Station. This area was alive with the presence of the military. For some reason that didn’t give him comfort.

The small branch fell from the tree and hit him on the head. Sean dropped to the ground not because the branch had hurt him, but because something else almost had. It had to have been a long-range rifle round. The bullet had clipped the branch right over his head. He hunkered down in the tall river grass. Who the hell had taken a shot at him? After about a minute he chanced a peek, his gaze scanning across the river. The shot had to have come from there. Now the question was obvious. Did the shooter intend to miss just to scare him, or was the branch supposed to be Sean’s brain?

When the next bullet whipped over his head, missing it by inches, his question was answered. The person was trying to kill him.

He burrowed deeper into the dirt and sand, pressing his body as flat to the ground as he could.

He waited for two minutes. When no other shot sailed past he began clutching at the short grass and propelling himself backward, resembling a snake whipping through the grass, albeit in reverse. He reached a patch of tall grass, and then the tree line. Once behind a thick oak, he stood and began zigzagging through the trees back toward Babbage Town.

He hit the path and ran flat-out to Len Rivest’s bungalow. Rivest didn’t answer his knock, so Sean pushed the door open and went in.

“Len. Len! Somebody just took a shot at me.”

No one was on the main floor. He raced up the stairs, two steps at a time, and flung open the first door he came to and stopped, his chest heaving.

Len Rivest was lying naked at the bottom of his claw-footed bathtub, his eyes staring unseeingly at the pale blue ceiling.

HORATIO BARNES WAS SITTING at his desk looking at a map showing the small town in Tennessee where Michelle had lived when she was six.

Horatio had learned from Bill Maxwell that Michelle was many years younger than her next oldest sibling. Michelle might have been a mistake, Horatio mused. That could affect a child, he knew.

Horatio had pulled a few strings and gotten some information from her work file at the Secret Service. It had listed all the traits he knew that she had: control freak, hard on her underlings, but hardest on herself, incorruptible, fair, all earmarks of a good federal agent. Somewhere along the line she had lost or at least managed to control her fears, her inability to trust others, though the two agents he’d talked to about her had had strikingly similar comments. Both men had said that they would have trusted her with their lives, but they had never managed to get to know the enigmatic person behind the Kevlar and Glock pistol.

He’d had patients like Michelle before, and he’d wanted to help them all, but with Michelle he felt an extra urge to get her straight. It might be because she’d risked her life for her country or was the closest friend of Sean King, a man he respected like few others of his acquaintance. Or perhaps it was because he felt in her a hurt so deep that he just wanted to help her erase it, if she could.

And there was another reason, one he had not shared with Sean King or Michelle. People who attempted to end their lives, no matter how amateurishly they might do so at first, often got better at it, with the result that on the third, fourth or sixth try, they ended up on a slab with a coroner poking around their remains. He could not allow that to happen to Michelle Maxwell. He had a week’s vacation coming up. He’d planned on flying to California to go abalone diving with some friends. Instead, he went online and bought a plane ticket to Nashville.

MICHELLE HEARD THE FOOTSTEPS AGAIN, exactly at one A.M.

She rose and slipped out the door. Now she had added incentive to find out what Barry the Peeping Tom was up to. She prayed it was at least a felony. She headed down the darkened hall, gauging the pace of the steps echoing lightly in front of her. She reached the end of the corridor and peered around the corner. There was a light on at the end of the hall. She edged forward until she could see its source. It was the pharmacy. There was someone in there. As the man moved in front of the glass window in the door, she saw that it wasn’t Barry. It was the little man she’d seen in the pharmacy earlier. Pretty late to be dispensing drugs, she thought.

As she stood there another figure appeared near the door to the pharmacy. Barry looked around cautiously and then went inside, closing the door behind him. Michelle slipped forward as much as she dared for a better look. And then it hit her. Why would Barry be here at this hour in the first place? He’d been on the day shift. During her stay here Michelle had noted that the personnel pulled twelve-hour shifts, turning over in the morning and evening right at eight o’clock. Barry had been off-duty for five hours. Was he putting in a little personal overtime?

Michelle heard it before she saw anything; it was the slight squeak of rubber on linoleum. At first she thought it was the sneakers that the nurses here wore. But then she saw the wheelchair come into view. Sandy was fully dressed, her hands efficiently propelling her down the hall. Then she stopped and took up watch, her gaze on the pharmacy door. Michelle quickly drew back as Sandy suddenly whipped her head around and looked in her direction. A minute later when Michelle dared look back around the corner, Sandy was gone. A few minutes after that Barry and the other man left the pharmacy, the latter closing and locking the door. Fortunately, they walked down the hall away from Michelle.

As soon as their footsteps had faded, she stepped forward and made her way cautiously down to the pharmacy. What surprised her was that both men had left the pharmacy empty-handed. What was going on here?

Then she turned her attention down the other hall, toward Sandy’s room. She edged along the corridor, taking small, near-silent steps and hugging the wall. She reached Sandy’s room. It was dark. She peered in the glass and could just make out Sandy lying on the bed. The woman was obviously pretending to be asleep. But what had she been doing watching the pharmacy? Was she part of whatever Barry was up to? Michelle didn’t want to believe that but she couldn’t discount the possibility.