Graham, a one-man crime wave. She looked up at him after reading the
story.
“We need to keep moving.” He looked at her, drained his coffee and then
got up.
The cab dropped them off at Jack’s motel on the outskirts of
Alexandria’s Old Town. His eyes looking left and right and then behind,
they made their way to his room. After locking and bolting the door, he
took off the ski cap and glasses.
“God, Jack, I’m so sorry you’re involved in any of this.”
She shook; he could actually see her trembling from across the room. It
took a moment for him to wrap his arms around her until he felt her body
calm, relax. He looked at her.
“I got myself involved. Now I just need to get myself uninvolved.” He
attempted a smile, but it didn’t dent the fear she was feeling for him;
the awful dread that he might soon join her father.
“I left a dozen messages for you on your machine.”
“I never thought to check, Kate.” He took the next half hour to tell her
the events of the last few days. Her eyes reflected the growing horror
with each new revelation.
“My God!”
They were silent for a moment.
“Jack, do you have any idea who’s behind all this?”
Jack shook his head, a small groan escaped his lips. “I’ve got a bunch
of loose threads sliding around in my head but none of them have added
up to spit so far. I’m hoping that status will change. Soon.”
The finality with which the last word was spoken hit her like a sudden
slap. His eyes told her. The message was clear.
Despite the disguises, the elaborate travel safeguards, despite whatever
innate ability he could bring to the battlefield, they would find him.
Either the cops or whoever wanted to kill him. It was only a matter of
time.
“But at least if they got what they wanted back?” Her voice drifted off.
She looked at him, almost pleadingly.
He lay back on the bed, stretched exhausted limbs that didn’t seem to
belong to him any longer.
‘1That’s not something I can really hang my hat on forever, Kate, is
it?” He sat up and looked across the room. At the cheap picture of Jesus
hanging on the wall. He would take a dose of divine intervention right
now. A small miracle would do.
“But you didn’t kill anyone, Jack. You told me Frank’s already figured
that out. The D.C. cops will too.”
“Will they? Frank knows me, Kate. He knows me and I could still hear
the doubt in his voice at first. He picked up on the glass, but there’s
no evidence that anyone tampered with it or the gun. On the other hand
there’s clear, take-it-tother-bank proof, pointing to me killing two
people. Three if you count last night. My lawyer would recommend my
negotiating a plea and hoping for twenty to life with the possibility of
parole. I’d recommend it myself. If I go to trial I’ve got no shot. Just
a bunch of speculation trying to tie Luther and Walter Sullivan and all
the rest into some landscape of conspiracy of, you have to admit,
mind-boggling proportions.
The judge’ll laugh my ass right out of court. The jury will never hear
it. Really, there’s nothing to hear.”
He stood up and leaned against the wall, hands shoved in his pockets. He
didn’t look at her. Both his short- and long term prospects had doomsday
written all over them.
“I’ll die an old man in prison, Kate. That is, if I make it to old
age-which is a big question mark in itself.”
She sat down on the bed, her hands in her lap. A gasp caught midway in
her throat as the sheer hopelessness sank in, like a boulder dropped in
deep, dark waters.
SETH FRANK OPENED HIS EYES. AT FIRST NOTHING CAW WM focus. What his
brain registered resembled a large white canvas on which a few hundred
gallons of black, white and gray paint had been poured’to form a cloggy,
mind-altering quagmire. After a few anxious moments, he was able to
discern the outline of the hospital room in all its stark white, chrome