46

VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA

Early in the morning on Memorial Day, Paige parked her car in the gravel lot that overlooked Broad Bay at First Landing State Park. The rising sun was spraying watercolor purples and oranges on the river. The trail through the woods would be deserted and half-lit, but Paige knew her way by heart—every stump, every rut, every turn. By the time she finished, the sun would be fully up, and this day, which promised to be one of her hardest in a long time, would officially begin.

First Landing State Park was one of Virginia Beach’s hidden treasures—sprawling, undeveloped land between Atlantic Avenue on the oceanfront and Shore Drive on Chesapeake Bay. The Cape Henry Trail was broad and fairly even, surrounded by swamp and lined on both sides by cypress trees that provided shade for mornings like this one when it was already eighty degrees and humid.

She had put together a playlist that reminded her of Patrick. She would use it during her run to flush out all of her emotions so they wouldn’t sneak up on her and paralyze her in the middle of the day’s events. She placed her keys on top of her left front tire and popped in the earbuds. She stretched, too quickly to make a difference, and began her run. For the next thirty minutes she would be alone on the park trail with her memories, her tears mixing with sweat as she focused on the world of what might have been.

Half an hour later, she completed her run emotionally spent. She took out her earbuds and walked around for a few minutes to cool down. She felt better—psychologically prepared for the day ahead.

She wiped her face with her shirt, grabbed her keys, and unlocked the door. On her seat was a plain manila envelope. She quickly surveyed the parking lot, but there were only a few cars and nobody looking in her direction. She pulled out the envelope. In the upper left-hand corner, where the return address would normally have been, were two words: The Patriot.

Inside the envelope were a few sheets of paper and a thumb drive. The first page was the cover of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program that took place during the Bush administration. Through her research, Paige was aware of the six-thousand-page report, much of which had been declassified and released to the public. The second and third pages were excerpts from the report. She quickly scanned the documents to see if she could figure out why the Patriot had provided them. There, toward the bottom of the first excerpt, was a list of names that included current CIA director John Marcano.

The next document was an excerpt from a speech given by Marcano when he first took over as director. He was talking about why the CIA mattered. Everyone had their own reasons for doing the thankless work of the agency, he said. For him, it was a good friend, a man who had been in his wedding, a man who was working on Wall Street when the towers fell. He was believed to be one of the men shown free-falling from the building, jumping to his death when he could no longer take the hellish fire inside. It was impossible to know for sure, Marcano said, but he had watched the video a hundred times, and he was almost certain the grainy image was his friend.

“I do this for Eric,” Marcano had said. “I do it for his family.”

Paige had a hunch that when she plugged in the thumb drive, she would see the image herself—the horrific sight of a man plunging to his death.

But how was this connected to her case? And more disturbingly, how did the Patriot get inside her vehicle?

He must have followed her to the park and watched as she put the keys on the tire. It gave her chills to think he had been watching her this morning, alone in the parking lot. How many other days had she been followed? How many other times had she practically rubbed elbows with the man, not knowing who he was?

And why wouldn’t he make himself known? Why was he helping in the lawsuit now instead of complaining that they had filed one?

None of these questions had answers, but she and Wellington had begun a methodical profile on the Patriot. They had started writing down everything they knew about him and hoped, through the process of elimination, to figure out his identity. Now, in addition to the fact that he was a high-ranking official with inside knowledge about the president’s National Security Council meetings and the tactics of the defense lawyers, he was also someone who could make at least two trips to Virginia Beach unnoticed. He was likely some kind of professional spy, and he obviously wanted to see the president brought to justice.

Paige decided she would call both Wellington and Wyatt later and tell them about the Patriot’s latest delivery. If nothing else, these materials would help them understand more about Marcano and better prepare for his deposition.

But other than that, the package raised a lot more questions than it answered.