‘You realize of course that we’re fugitives not only being hunted by our own people but most probably every law enforcement agency available right now,’ Holland said. She spoke as if that fact had just occurred to her.
‘As you said once before, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”’
After they landed, Wyatt went to a rental car office and booked an automobile. It didn’t take long because he had called ahead from the plane. She had to admit that regardless of the memory confusion he had described experiencing, he was still an impressive and efficient man. During the trip she had tried to accept all that he had told her and not to think of him as something freakish. It was difficult, because every time he spoke or smiled, she immediately wondered, Who is he now? It was better to focus on the situation they faced and not think of the rest of it.
As soon as they got into the car, Wyatt turned on his PDA and accessed the information bank for Ted Carter’s home address.
‘Got it,’ he said, punching the address into the car’s GPS. ‘It’s not far from here, in West LA on Sepulveda. We’ll be there in ten minutes.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Holland said, putting her hand on his wrist.
‘What?’
‘Something puzzles me about this rotten state of Denmark.’
‘What?’
‘Why are the bureau’s facilities still available to us? No one has cut off your or my access to the banks of information, even though I’m sure they are quite aware by now that we’ve gone AWOL. You know that’s the protocol. We’d be frozen out of everything.’
‘Maybe they’re using our contact with the facilities as a way to stay informed about our whereabouts,’ he said.
‘Yes, but why are they letting us run loose? Someone should have been here to intercept us at the airport. I’m sure the plane was tracked the entire trip, aren’t you? Why are they letting us continue?’
‘Remember, it’s not brain surgery. It’s simple, Holland. They’re giving us more rope so they can see who’s running our show. You know how it goes—we’re small potatoes. The big potatoes are the ones who are arranging all these deaths and exposing the program.’
‘They think we’re in cahoots because instead of taking me out back in Florida, you helped me escape?’
He shrugged. ‘That’s my guess. Unfortunately, it also makes us look pretty guilty,’ he remarked, ‘so we had better be successful.’ He turned to her as he pulled away from the parking spot, ‘Work on it as if our lives depended on it, because they just might depend on it.’
The reference to danger reminded her of her father. She reached for her cell phone.
‘When you turn that on, you’ll be sending out a beam and making it easier for them to track us.’
‘I really don’t think they need it to track us, Wyatt. I imagine,’ she said looking back, ‘someone is on us right now. Besides, my father might be trying to reach me. I’ve got to talk to him.’
She turned on her cell phone and it immediately indicated a message. She thought it would be from her father, but it was from Landry Connors. If she were now truly a suspect, why would he be calling her directly? She called into the answering service to get his message.
‘Your father?’ Wyatt asked when she brought the cell phone to her ear.
She couldn’t explain even to herself why she lied, but she nodded. It probably related to that belief in instinct.
‘I knew he’d be worried,’ she said, and then listened to Landry Connors.
‘What the hell are you doing, Holland? Where are you? If you’re with Wyatt, you could be in very serious danger. Call me immediately. He’s not who he says he is. He escaped from the interrogation. He’ll give you some cock and bull story about a research project he’s in. Don’t buy it. He was lent to us last year from a division of the CIA. They’re out to change things dramatically, but not by following any democratic processes. Get back to me before it’s too late for you and…your father.’
‘What?’ he said when she closed the phone. Her heart was pounding.
‘He’s worried. I’ll call him as soon I can. Meanwhile, I’ll try the Times offices to see about Ted Carter,’ she said.
‘Look at the time. He’s probably at home,’ Wyatt told her. ‘We should just go to that home address. I told you, we’re only minutes away.’
‘Reporters don’t punch a nine-to-five clock, Wyatt, especially investigative reporters. We’ll be lucky to find him at all so why waste time going to his home to look for him if he’s still at work? Slow down while I check,’ she said. She almost added, ‘It’s not brain surgery,’ but held back. It was no time to even imply a lighter tone to all this.
He shrugged and slowed down. ‘Whatever you think,’ he said.
She called the Times and asked for Ted Carter.
The operator seemed confused and asked her to repeat the name.
‘He’s in the news division probably,’ Holland said, eyeing Wyatt.
There was a silence and then the Times operator said, ‘I’m sorry. There is no Ted Carter employed at the LA Times.’
‘Are you certain?’
‘I am,’ she said. ‘There’s a Ted Sanders and…a Ted Browning, but they’re both in classified.’
‘Could he have been hired just recently?’
‘This list I have is reformulated every day, Miss. We’re very careful about getting people in contact with our reporters. Is there someone else you might speak with, perhaps?’
‘No. Thanks,’ she said and closed her phone.
‘What?’
‘Pull over,’ she said.
‘Huh?’
‘Just pull over, Wyatt.’
He did so.
‘There is no Ted Carter working at the LA Times.’
‘That’s crazy. It has to be a mistake.’
‘You heard me ask her to reconfirm it. She checked and rechecked.’
‘Wait a minute,’ he said. He worked his PDA and then turned it to her. ‘Look at the write-up. You saw me request it when we were at the restaurant.’
‘That’s obviously false information. If that came from where you said it came from, we’d have to believe you were deliberately fed false information by the bureau.’
‘Maybe, or maybe it was simply a dizzy receptionist at the paper. This is La La Land, isn’t it?’
‘On the contrary, it’s all making sense to me now. Ted Carter was never a reporter. Forget all that nonsense about being tracked by the press. He was a plant, a phony.’
He blinked rapidly and nodded, his resistance to the idea rapidly evaporating. ‘I see what you mean. Yes, you’re right, I’m sure.’
The speed at which he changed his opinion unnerved her. He was too eager to please.
‘But you said you had reported it to Landry Connors, didn’t you?’
‘I did.’
‘Why wouldn’t he have checked it out and told us there was no reporter at the Times by that name? I know Landry Connors. He doesn’t miss a beat and he gets a second and even third opinion about every tidbit of information that crosses his desk, just the way someone with a medical problem would go to more than one doctor for an opinion.’
He looked at the photo on his PDA and then the business card they had been handed in the hotel restaurant.
‘The guy even had this card. Maybe there was a Ted Carter once working at the Times and…’
‘Anyone could print up a phony business card,’ she said. ‘Are you absolutely, without a doubt sure that you gave the information to Landry Connors, Wyatt?’
‘Stop asking me that.’
‘Why? It’s a reasonable question. Didn’t you admit you were having some memory problems, some confusion because of this so-called miraculous resurrection?’
‘Not about that,’ he insisted. ‘Only about personal things. I know what I reported and what was reported to me. I have no doubts. And look at the damn PDA,’ he said, handing it to her. ‘Go on.’
She took it, but put it beside her. ‘What am I supposed to conclude here, Wyatt? That someone within the department has been working us like puppets on a string for nefarious purposes?’
‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘That’s what’s happening.’
‘Right. Someone at the bureau is feeding us false information; someone at the bureau is framing us, someone at the bureau wants to destroy the Federal Division of Jurors, and I think I know who it is.’
‘Really? Who?’
‘You,’ she said. She pulled her pistol out of her purse and pointed it at him.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘Take your pistol out slowly, Wyatt, Stamford, or whoever you are, and put it carefully between us.’
‘Why?’
‘Just do it, Wyatt, and be very, very careful.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I think I do,’ she said.
‘Look…’
‘Tell me something, Wyatt, did they really send you to take me out back there or did you slip past them and come to me?’
‘What difference does it make? We know we’re being framed. Look, I was afraid they had convinced you to believe I was dirty so…’
‘So you did escape. Your pistol, Wyatt.’
She waved her barrel and thumbed back the hammer on the gun. Her cold look left no doubt about what she would do if he hesitated or moved too fast.
He took out the pistol and placed it between them, beside his PDA.
‘Now what?’
‘Get out,’ she said.
‘What are you doing, Holland? You’re losing it.’
‘On the contrary, I’m saving myself and maybe the Division of Jurors,’ she replied.
‘Why are you saying this now?’
‘Look at the facts, Wyatt or Stamford or whoever the hell you really are. With your help, I, too, escaped from the internal affairs people and literally participated in hijacking an FBI private jet. I don’t think it coincidental that the information about this so-called LA reporter is still in your PDA even though some reference to a Matthew Letters was supposedly removed, remember? And as far as this mythical Carter’s home address to which you eagerly wanted us to go…my guess is the address is a trap for yours truly. In fact, now that I think back over everything, the whole set-up has been an elaborate trap,’ she added and gestured at the door. ‘Out.’
‘You’re making a terrific mistake.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Who really left you a message? Did your father tell you something? He’s getting the wrong information. Someone is feeding him misinformation. Let me…’
‘I want you out of the car, Wyatt.’
‘Whatever you were told or think, you’re in just as much danger as I am, probably more.’
‘No worries. If something happens to me, I’ll leave a note to have myself taken to Roc Shores and resurrected. Out,’ she said sharply.
He shook his head and got out. She leaned over, closed the door and locked it. Then she got herself into the driver’s seat, put the car in drive, and shot away into the traffic, glancing back at him in the rearview mirror. He was standing and still shaking his head. She drove for a while and then pulled into a shopping mall parking lot to call her father.
His answering machine came on.
‘Dad, call me. It’s all right to call me on my cell phone. Everything is making sense now.’
After she hung up, she called Landry Connors and the receptionist said she would pass the call through.
‘Where the hell are you?’ he demanded, by way of a greeting.
She summed up what had happened and what she had done with Wyatt.
‘That’s good work, Holland,’ he said, ‘but I have good reason to believe he’s not alone. This whole thing brought me to Los Angeles, too. Take this address and get here as quickly as you can. It’s a safe house. I have some agents around the property. When you’re at the house, we’ll take your full report and see what we can all do to save this situation.’
He dictated the address to her and she jotted it down quickly.
‘What about Wyatt or whatever his name is? The mechanic at the private strip in Florida called him Stamford. Made it sound as if he were an Agent Stamford, in fact. Was there such an agent?’
‘Forget about him. He’s a dead man walking. Just get yourself to safety.’
‘OK. Could you do me one favor?’
‘Sure, what?’
‘See about my father. Wyatt knows I called him and that he had been doing some reconnaissance about him for me. I’m worried for his safety now.’
‘Will do. I’ll send a car over there as soon as we hang up.’
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘If I made any mistakes, I’m…’
‘Forget about it, Holland. You came through in the end. That’s what matters the most around here. See you soon,’ Landry added.
She took some deep breaths, and finally she felt her body relax.
We’re going to be all right, Dad, she thought. We’re going to get through this just fine.
She started driving again. The navigator ordered a right turn and she took it. Then it alerted a left turn coming up in a half a mile. She moved into the left turning lane and slowed down at the light.
When she made the turn, she froze.
‘Shit,’ she muttered.
Without thinking, she had been following the directions Wyatt had entered from his PDA into the car’s GPS. ‘How stupid can you be, Holland?’ she asked herself.
She read the address Landry had given her and started to enter that one into the GPS, and then she stopped.
It hit her like a blow to the back of her neck and for a moment, she couldn’t breathe.
It was the same address.