Out in the cool of the morning off Interstate 10, Gannon watched his son raise his left arm, turning the baseball in his long, graceful fingers.
They were in Arizona now, somewhere west of downtown Phoenix. It was just after sunrise, and they were standing in the open desert a couple of miles from their hotel beside an empty truck stop pull-off.
The early morning workout had been Gannon’s idea. In full coach mode now, he had gotten Declan up and moving the second he woke up.
Nothing like getting the blood pumping, to smooth out any pretryout jitters he might be having, Gannon thought.
“Ready, Dad?” Declan said.
Gannon was about to say yes when a car came off the two-lane highway into the strip of truck stop beside them. Gannon watched it. It was a silver sedan.
He kept watching as it pulled to a stop in front of their rented Silverado truck. There was only one person in it. He couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.
Shit, was it a Ford? he wondered suddenly. Didn’t the feds drive Fords?
No, he saw. It was too small. It was some kind of Honda. He stood silently watching it anyway. After a moment, it pulled away again and was gone back onto the road.
“Dad?” Declan said again.
Maybe his son wasn’t the only one who needed to work out a jitter or two this morning, Gannon thought as he punched his catcher’s mitt.
“Okay, let’s go. Batter up! Play ball!” he yelled as he finally crouched down.
They went for almost an hour, then piled back into the rented Silverado. They were heading off the exit ramp back for the hotel when they saw the Starbucks sign.
He’d left Declan in the truck and was inside waiting his turn in the crowded morning rush line when his eyes glanced off the newspaper in the rack by the door.
Gannon stared. When he suddenly realized what he was looking at, he couldn’t decide which was making his suddenly kick-started heart beat faster.
The above-the-fold page-wide photograph.
Or the huge three-word headline above it.
He zombie-shuffled numbly back through the people behind him to the rack and lifted up the paper.
He stared at the photograph some more. The thick white hair. The somber and austere expression.
No. There was no mistaking it.
FBI DIRECTOR DEAD, Gannon read again and then stared back at the face of the old white-haired man he’d seen dead under the water on the crashed jet.
FBI Director Dunning Dies of Stroke in Rome.