David Baldacci - Daylight

Pine had slowly stood, and her voice had risen along with her. “Isn’t that the truth, Jack ?”

Lineberry looked up at her with a helpless expression. He said, “The divorce was a sham. But they separated to keep you safe.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s not bullshit, Atlee. It’s the truth.”

“How would you know anything about the fucking truth?”

“I will tell you what you want to know, if you will just listen to me.”

“Please, Agent Pine, it’s for the best. You need information,” added Blum.

Pine slowly resumed her seat and waited expectantly, but every one of her limbs was still quivering with anger.

“I didn’t know where you and your family had gone when you all left Andersonville. We were frantic. We looked, but it was like you all had disappeared into a dark hole. And back then there wasn’t the internet or smartphones where everybody was taking photos and video of everyone else. People really could vanish.”

“And then?” said Pine.

“And then, many years later, I got a frantic call out of the blue from your father.”

“How could he reach you?”

“I had given your parents a special number. It was one that I maintained all those years just in the hopes that . . . Anyway, he told me he was in Virginia and that a man had tried to kill him, only he had killed the man instead. A shotgun blast to the head.”

“If he was living in an apartment building, how come no one there heard it?” said Pine.

“Because he wasn’t living in an apartment building.”

“So that was another time you lied to me?”

Lineberry hurried on. “I flew there right away. The man’s face was missing. I didn’t know who it was and Tim said he didn’t, either.”

“How could he not recognize Ito Vincenzo?” interjected Pine. “He had fought the guy in Andersonville?”

“Over a decade before, Atlee. And people do change. Anyway, Tim told me he didn’t recognize him, and I certainly couldn’t have with the damage to his face. We hatched a plan that would substitute Tim for Ito, if it really was him. That way the world would think Tim was dead.”

“So Ito Vincenzo is buried in my father’s grave. And my mother?” Pine added in a trembling voice.

Lineberry broke off eye contact. “She . . . understood what was at stake. She played along. That allowed your father, and her, to safely disappear.”

“And then she joined him a couple months later,” said Pine bitterly. “And left me by myself.”

“They . . . thought it best. They thought you would be better off, I swear. She left you money to finish college and—”

Pine barked, “Where are they now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Jack!”

“I don’t know,” he said sharply. “That was by design. People kept tracking them down. There had to be a leak. At that point no one was above suspicion, not even me. It was thought best that no one knew where they were going. I haven’t seen them since then. No contact at all. None.”

“And I’m supposed to believe that, considering how often you’ve lied to me?”

“I can’t make you trust me, Atlee. And I haven’t earned that trust anyway. But I also didn’t have to tell you what I just did.”

“So why did you?”

“Because you deserved it. You’ve earned it. And I’m tired of not telling you what you need to know.”

His words didn’t mollify her, but she sat back and tapped her fingers on the wood of the chair. She stared off for so long that she had almost forgotten that Blum and Lineberry were still in the room.

“Why do they need to keep running and hiding?” asked Blum. “It’s been, what, thirty years now. Is there anyone around who would still be after them, or even care?”

Lineberry shook his head. “I don’t know, Carol. The Mafia has a long memory. But they’ve been on the run and off the grid for so long now it’s probably all they know anymore.”

“But they left me, as a sitting duck,” pointed out Pine. “Ito took my sister and nearly killed me. So my parents run off and leave me to face the people coming after them?”

“I think they believed you were effectively off the radar by the time you were an adult,” said Lineberry.

“Ito found us. Who’s to say someone else couldn’t?” she countered. “It wasn’t like they had changed my name. I was still Atlee Pine. How many of those are there?”

“I don’t have a good answer for that. I really don’t.”

“And you could have found me, if you had really wanted to. I have my own Wikipedia page someone set up when I was competing for the Olympics. I became an FBI agent. My name appeared in the news from time to time.”

Lineberry wouldn’t meet her eye. “I . . . I guess by then I had just stopped looking. And your father didn’t tell me where you and your mother were when I went to help him.”

“Sure he didn’t. Ignorance is bliss, right, Dad ?”

“What . . . what will you do now?” asked Lineberry, who was looking paler by the minute.

Before answering, Pine stood. She looked down at the fragile Lineberry.

“I came here to find my sister. I’m a lot closer than I was. And now I’m going to do all I can to bring her home, even if you won’t.”

“What are you saying? I want that, too. She’s your sister, but she’s also my daughter,” said Lineberry.

“Oh really?” she snarled, her face contorted in fury. “You don’t give a shit about either one of us.”

“Atlee, of course I do,” he said, stunned by her reaction. “How could you say that?”

Pine closed her eyes and when she reopened them she stared out the window at the cottage. Something seemed to occur to her, and she turned and stormed out.

“Where is she going?” said Lineberry.

Blum said nothing.

A minute later they both saw Pine on the rear grounds, marching resolutely toward the cottage.

CHAPTER

78

THE RAIN WAS STARTING TO FALL more heavily as Pine neared the cottage construction site. There were five men framing away, two on ladders and three on the ground.

She stopped in front of the cottage and called out, “All of you leave now.”

The men glanced curiously at her but continued to work.

Pine pulled out her gun and her FBI shield and called out, “FBI, everybody leave. Now!”

Now the men all stopped what they were doing and looked at her, and then glanced at each other nervously.

Pine knew they probably thought she was unhinged.

And maybe I am.

A large man in a construction hat gingerly headed over to Pine.

“Ma’am, we got a job—”

Pine pointed her gun at the sky and fired two shots. “Now!” she screamed.

Some men scrambled down ladders, others on the ground grabbed lunch coolers and coats, and they all hustled from the area, looking back at her with panicked gazes. Pine watched as they exited the rear gate, jumped into their trucks and cars, and sped off.

Pine lifted her pants leg and took out her Beretta backup gun. She laid both guns on a wooden table, slipped off her jacket, placed it on the table, and placed a waterproof tarp over them. As the rain started to pick up even more, she stepped inside the shell of the cottage and looked at the wooden framing.

She knew exactly why she was here.

He took something from me. The truth. My truth. And now I’m going to take something from him.

She spied a sledgehammer, picked it up, studied the configuration of the framing, and then lashed out and hit a king stud near the front doorway. The wood splintered. She hit it again and the double boards broke free. She next took out the crippled studs underneath a window adjacent to the doorway and smashed out the sill plate. When she broke out a stud next to that, a portion of the framed panel gave way. Pine next took out a whole row of studs. She kept striking away at the wood until the entire wall broke loose and fell outward, landing in the grass.