Bob called.
This time there were fewer people in the room. Murphy was there, but the other agency heads were missing.
It was as if people were already distancing themselves from failure.
‘Missed me, didn’t you, Burke? You must be a wreck, wondering whether I had disappeared, if the boys were still alive.’ Bob chuckled.
Burke grimaced but kept silent. The Veep hadn’t stopped lobbying for the Syria bill. She hoped Bob wouldn’t bring it up.
He didn’t.
‘No response? That’s iron self-control, Burke. Congrats. You have potential.’
‘How are the boys? When can we speak to them?’ she asked.
An agent gave her a thumbs up at her composure. She had started receiving surprising support from her fellow agents and from other agencies. Even the media had congratulated her on not flagging, on keeping the hunt alive.
Phone-ins were flooded with praise for her briefings. She didn’t have much progress to report, but people admired her courage for saying so.
All that’s good. But Bob’s still at large, out there. Fairman and Barlow are still missing.
‘The boys are missing their families. That should be obvious, I hope. They are wondering why the cavalry hasn’t arrived, the front door busted in, and why I haven’t been riddled with holes.’
Bob broke off in a loud peal of laughter that no one else joined in on.
‘How’s that coming along, Burke? The investigation, I mean. Any closer to breaking down a door? You know, I was thinking of calling one of those talk shows and introducing myself.’
‘It would make for great TV. However, it would also increase my risk. I am not stupid. You will agree on that, won’t you?’
Burke didn’t reply. Murphy rubbed his eyes slowly, his hands knuckled into fists.
Bob sighed theatrically. ‘You folks aren’t much fun to talk to. How’s a guy to have a conversation. All right, I will give what you want.’
Burke raised her head. Murphy stopped rubbing.
‘You folks remember Kellie McCoy?’
Burke raced through her memory, drew a blank. Her fellow agents, the director, gave her similar looks.
‘Who’s she?’
‘I knew that was the response I would get. I knew you would forget Kellie!’ Bob’s voice rose in rage.
He’s angry, a voice analyst looked up from his machine and whispered at Burke.
That’s obvious.
‘I’ll give a hint. A baby.’
He fell silent, giving them some time to think.
An agent snapped his finger, came forward, and scribbled on a paper.
Veep. Affair. Son. Campaign.
Burke stared at the words as distant memories came back
‘She claimed to have an affair with the vice president?’
‘She didn’t claim. She did have an affair with him when he was a senator!’ Bob raged.
‘She had a child by him. It came out when he joined the president’s campaign trail. He denied everything. That’s what politicians do, don’t they?’
‘The paternity test failed, Bob. He wasn’t the father.’ Burke read out what the agent wrote.
‘Of course it would fail, stupid. He rigged the test. He had enough clout and enough money to buy out a country. A paternity test was nothing to him,’ Bob thundered.
He slammed his fist on something. It sounded like a gunshot. An agent flinched.
‘I am sure the vice president will disagree with you.’ Keep calm, Burke. Let him lose it. You keep it together.
‘What has Kellie McCoy got to do with your kidnapping?’
‘Everything,’ Bob screamed. ‘She lost that child when he was five years old. Did the media report that? No. They were sucking up to the vice president. Did Barlow know his child died in poverty? That Kellie McCoy had to resort to doing tricks to feed his son?’
‘I bet he didn’t. He was lapping up his win.’
Bob’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘You wanted to know what the connection was, didn’t you, Burke?’
‘I am Kellie McCoy’s brother. Find me if you can.’
‘He puts up a great show,’ Chloe commented once they were alone with Burke, after her task force had dispersed to verify Bob’s story. He had made another demand for five million, which the two families were making arrangements for.
‘At this rate, he’ll drip feed them into bankruptcy,’ Bear said grimly after Burke’s strained call with the two mothers.
‘What do you think? Could this be personal? The stuff that he told us about McCoy, all that’s true.’
She rushed on before Meghan and Beth protested. ‘Not about the rigged test, though I think there were enough allegations about that too.’
‘It was a dirty campaign,’ Broker agreed. The president had won by the narrowest margin possible in an election that had polarized the nation.
‘It’s possible. I wonder why he waited so long, though.’ Zeb wondered.
‘Don’t forget, Bob has planned this for a long time. Who knows what else he has in store?’ Beth reminded him
They waited for Zeb to respond and when he didn’t Bwana looked heavenward.
‘Lord, you left him out on that conversation gene, didn’t you?’
Avram watched as Merritt turned off the phone, wiped his face, and drank a glass of water. Acting was a tiring business.
‘You don’t think all these calls will increase our risk?’
Merritt swallowed deeply, refilled the glass and emptied it a second time. He wiped his mouth with his hand and turned to the gunman.
‘We are already high risk, buddy. If the boy hadn’t lost his memory, all this wouldn’t have been needed. We would have extracted the info, killed both of them, and we would have disappeared.’
Avram poured himself a glass and the two stood silently watching the TV. Director Murphy was in a briefing, suggesting a new lead. They were investigating it.
‘How much of that was true?’
Merritt chuckled. ‘All of it, except the paternity. That kid wasn’t the Veep’s. There is a brother. He has been missing, presumably dead, for years. The Feds will chase their own tails once again.’
He patted Avram on the back. ‘Relax. I’ve planned this for a long while. All eventualities will be taken care of.’
‘What do we do with the doc?’ They could hear the faint sound of the doctor snoring, even though a story separated them.
Merritt’s smile wasn’t pleasant. ‘He will die here.’
He peered out of the front window for a moment and then turned to his fellow gunman. ‘I’ll be going out for a while to prepare those other two locations.’
Avram nodded and shut the door behind him.
Merritt went to the garage and started the white truck and backed it out slowly. The rack on top had a boat, which was securely fastened by tie down straps to the rails.
Merritt repaired small boats. The garage was converted into a large workshop, fully stocked with tools. Boats lay on the floor or stood against the wall, in various states of repair.
Lighthollow was three hours away from the coast, and a few eyebrows were raised when he started his business.
‘Less competition,’ he countered. The flow of boats to and from his garage had quelled any further doubts.
The cover was good. It gave him all the excuse he needed to move out of the house at will, to create a racket inside the garage, to have people – customers, move in and out of the house.
He had built the cover over two years and had gotten to know the neighbors well. One of them, Greg, a baker, waved at him from his garden. Merritt returned the greeting.
Merritt was a good neighbor. So what if he was a killer?
He drove for an hour and reached Chantilly in Virginia, and after rolling down largely empty streets, he turned into the driveway of a four-bedroom house.
The house was very similar to their hide, except that it was empty.
Merritt jumped out of the truck, unlocked the house, turned on the lights and turned on the most important device in the house.
An internet router.
He logged onto a laptop and sent a few random emails to a dummy account, making sure the emails had keywords.
Kidnap. Boys. Vice president’s son.
He created several other messages and timed them for scheduled delivery.
He left the house, went to the next house in Winchester and repeated the actions.
It was evening when he reached his hide. Greg was watering his lawn this time. Merritt slowed, commented on Greg’s neat garden, shared a few laughs and wondered silently if he would have to kill his neighbor.
Zeb and the twins were back at Kale, and were being seen to by Fairman and Barlow’s teacher.
Rudy Peele knew every one of his students well and described the boys at length when Zeb asked him to.
‘Do you have any video recordings of the boys?’ Zeb asked him when Rudy had finished his glowing praise.
‘Sure,’ the teacher rose and went to a laptop and attached it to a projector. ‘We’ll have several, I am sure. We record all performances or recitals of the students and play it back to them, for them to improve.’
He scanned several files and brought one up. It was a play.
‘Not a play. Something like a debating competition, or a quiz?’
Peele went back to his files. Zeb ignored the sideways looks from the twins.
The teacher brought a quiz first in which Barlow had participated. It was a twenty -minute clip that they watched silently.
‘James aced it,’ Peele said with quiet pride.
Great memory. What about Fairman?
Fairman showed a similar sharpness in the clips Peele played.
‘Anything special about these two boys?’ Zeb asked the teacher when he had put away his equipment.
‘They were outstanding students, great friends.’ Peele looked at Zeb as if to confirm that’s what his visitor wanted to hear.
Zeb nodded, thanked the teacher, and left.
Behind him he heard the twins praise the teacher effusively and follow him.
‘What was that about?’ Meghan narrowed her eyes at him when they were in the SUV.
He didn’t reply.
How easy is it for young kids to conceal their abilities? For fear of being bullied or being mocked at?
Horses surged beneath the hood when he turned the key.
Not difficult at all.
‘Aren’t we going after Kellie’s brother?’ Beth asked when Zeb maintained his silence.
‘Zeb’s probably shot him already,’ her twin replied drolly and drew a smile from Zeb.
‘Not quite. The Feds will throw enough manpower after him. Besides, I have a feeling it will be another red herring.’
It was dark when Merritt stepped outside again, in the backyard of their hide in Virginia.
The sky was clear and peppered with tiny white dots. Another man would have contemplated the vastness above and reflected on the smallness of man.
Merritt didn’t. He wasn’t small. He regarded himself as a giant of a man in the world he lived in.
The night was still, broken only by normal night sounds. Vehicles in the distance, a cruiser’s wail falling and rising, then fading away.
He walked the length of the backyard and reached the thick hedge at the rear.
The hedge was seven feet tall, four feet wide and was a dense barrier that separated his backyard from the one behind. It ran the length of the backyards on the street and was bookended by cul-de-sacs at either end.
Merritt went to the center of the hedge, pressed a section and a door opened.
It was a wooden door that swung silently on oiled hinges. Its outer surface was lined with foliage and was impossible to detect unless one knew where and what to look for.
He went inside the hedge and closed the door behind him.
Over the eighteen months, he had spent considerable time on the hedge. He had worked nights and had hollowed the hedge out to make a narrow passage, a foot and a half wide that ran from his backyard to the cul-de-sac at one end.
In that dead end, a getaway vehicle stood, keys hidden in one wheel well, fueled and ready. Merritt kept the vehicle stocked, fueled, and with the right papers.
No one questioned its presence. Leave something in a place for long enough, it becomes furniture.
However that wasn’t the only trick Merritt had up his sleeve.
In the middle of the hedge, another door opened and led to a backyard of another house. This house was five backyards away from his hide.
This house was his too, owned by a phantom business. In its drive was another getaway vehicle.
Merritt walked through the backyard, entered the house and made sure there were no obstructions from the back to the front.
A quick escape might be required.