Girl of Lies (36 page)

The balcony. Christ. It was eighteen floors down. But if he could get her to the floor directly below—

“Stay,” he called, then ran into Carrie’s room, the first bedroom after the living area. He yanked the blanket off the bed and carried it out to the living room.

Five shots in quick succession. Loud. That must be Leah.

“Shit. Andrea—they’re after you. You’re going over the side. Get into the condo below us, then meet me… in thirty minutes. At the war memorial on Norfolk. If we miss each other there, then the Metro station at midnight. Got it?”

Her eyes were wide as saucers. He shoved the blanket at her. The shooting started again.

“Go! You can do this!”

Andrea crouched on the floor, holding a useless sheet, her heart pounding. Four more shots outside shook the entire floor, the glass sliding doors to the balcony shaking and rattling.

Dylan was in the kitchen, pulling back drawers, an unreadable expression in his face. He strode from the kitchen carrying a butcher knife in one hand and a cleaver in the other. As he passed into the living room, then the front hall, he switched the light out, stationing himself in the darkness, knives at the ready.

“Go, damn it! I’m only going to be able to stop one of them, if that many!”

At Dylan’s command, she jumped to her feet and slid the balcony door open. The wind was blowing, warm, from the Potomac River half a mile away. She rushed to the edge of the balcony then sucked in a terrified rush of air.

It was eighteen stories down. The cars at street level looked like toys.

She heard a voice cry out, and Dylan said, “Damn it, Leah’s down. You need to go
now.”

Tears began to run down Andrea’s face freely. As quickly as she could, she wound the blanket up and knotted it around the balcony railing.

Before she could give it even a moment’s thought more, she grabbed the knotted blanket, wrapping it twice around her right wrist. Then she looked back at Dylan as she swung a leg over the edge of the balcony.

He stood, ready, in the darkness. His legs were spread shoulder width apart, knives at the ready. His expression was savage. She met his eyes.

Dylan nodded, his expression an inscrutable mix of love and resignation. His hands tightened around the knife handles. She dropped down over the side, just as the front door of the condo burst open. Dylan crouched, huddled in the darkness behind the door.

Andrea gasped as she swung down and the blanket tightened. Immediately she heard a tearing sound, the fabric not strong enough to hold her weight, and she screamed, unable to see anything but the ground two hundred feet below. Flailing, she reached out and grabbed the rail of the condo below Carrie’s, gripping it as tightly as she possible could and pulling herself in.

Tears ran down her face as she got purchase for her feet. Her heart beat in her chest so hard that she thought she was going to die of a heart attack then and there, and as she raised her leg and scrambled over the side, she heard more gunshots upstairs.

Shit!

The balcony door down here was locked.

A man was crouched in the kitchen, clearly in view of her, holding his wife and a small child. He watched her with terrified eyes, but made no move to unlock the balcony, even though he’d seen her come over the side on a fucking sheet.

Andrea didn’t hesitate. She picked up one of the cast iron chairs on the porch and swung it.

The glass sliding door shattered inward.

She strode into the condo, her feet crunching on the broken glass. She looked at the man who cowered on the floor with his family and said, “Sorry about that.”

Andrea let herself out the front door.

“W
HAT THE HELL?” Alexandra said as half a dozen uniformed police officers, accompanied by their Diplomatic Security detail, burst into the restaurant. They were accompanied by Bear Wyden, the head of the investigation.

Carrie shifted position, her body tensing up. The sudden change alarmed Rachel, asleep in the sling across her chest. Rachel began to stir, then cry.

Sarah stood, alarm on her face.

“What is it?”

“Can the three of you come with us, please?”

Alexandra went pale. “Dylan? Is Dylan okay? What’s going on?”

“Ma’am, please,” Bear said.

The three women stood. Carrie felt an awful sense of dread. Bear didn’t say,
Dylan’s fine.
He didn’t say,
Don’t worry, Dylan will be okay.
Unconsciously, she reached out and took Alexandra’s hand.

A moment later, the three of them were in the back of a giant SUV. Bear sat in the front passenger seat as a uniformed DSS agent drove. “Go!” Bear said. “The rest can catch up.”

Carrie leaned forward and said, “Where are we going? What’s going on, Mr. Wyden?”

Bear rubbed a hand across his forehead.

“Mr. Wyden? Where is Andrea? And Dylan?”

Bear shook his head. “We don’t know.”

Alexandra gasped. “What do you mean you don’t know?”

“Exactly that. At least three men bearing apparently valid IDs attacked the condo. They killed the security guards. It appears, as best we can tell, that Andrea got away. It’s… less clear… about Dylan. Two of our agents are dead, and at least three of theirs.”

“Who are
they?”
Carrie said.

“We don’t know. But whoever it is… your family home in San Francisco has been… destroyed. There was a bomb.”

“
Shit!
Julia and Crank?”

“They’re being questioned by the San Francisco Police Department now, and we’ve got agents on the way.”

Carrie looked back at Alex, who was sitting, stunned, her face pale. She looked… terrified. She looked like Carrie must have looked in the hospital last August, not knowing if Ray was going to make it or not.

He hadn’t. And she… did. And some days, some moments, if it hadn’t been for Rachel, she might have wished otherwise.

Alexandra didn’t have a baby girl to worry about. Carrie reached out and squeezed her sister’s hand. Sarah had Alexandra’s other hand. They’d be there for her. She was going to need it, if anything had happened to Dylan.

She slumped back to her seat. She still had no idea what had prompted all of this. She didn’t know why Andrea had been kidnapped, or who had attacked them. But whoever it was, whatever it was, it was serious enough they were willing to kill. Whoever
they
were.

“What are you doing to find Andrea and Dylan?” she asked.

“We’ve mobilized every police department in the region, Miss Thompson.”

“Mrs. Sherman, please. Or Carrie. But not… that,” she corrected.

“Right. We’re on it, Carrie. I promise you, if they’re out there to be found, we’ll find them.”

The sun had long since set over the Pacific Ocean. Adelina glanced over at her daughter. The one daughter she was in a position to take care of.

Jessica was asleep in the passenger seat, curled up in a near fetal position. She’d been asleep most of the drive, her body still recovering from the drugs which had ravaged her system. When she wasn’t sleeping, she was eating. The good news was, she’d gained 15 pounds in the last ten days.

The bad news was, she still hadn’t made it back over a hundred pounds.

Just one more score to settle with Richard.

Her phone was off. She’d made one stop, at a bank, where she’d withdrawn ten thousand dollars in cash from her savings account. After that, there would be nothing, because she had no plans to leave an electronic trail until they were across the border, and not even then if possible.

For thirty-two years she’d kept his secrets. To protect Luis, and later to protect her daughters.

But now her daughters were in danger. Her home was gone—she’d seen that much. She didn’t wake up Jessica as she drove past the smoking hulk of their house. Nor did she spare a moment’s regret for the building that had been a prison for much of her adult life. Instead, she kept on going, turned the car around and got on the highway headed north.

Traffic on 101 North was light. It was going to be a much slower route than the interstate, but she wanted to stay off the main highways. She would take it slow, use pay phones, and keep a low profile until she had Jessica out of the United States. Once her daughters were safe, then she could worry about the rest.

Starting with the unfinished business in that phone call, and the chill those words evoked.

Always, Adelina. Always.

From the War Memorial on Norfolk Avenue, Andrea Thompson could just make out the mass of police and emergency vehicles crowded around the condominium four blocks to the south. Flashing strobe lights in blue and red illuminated the windows of buildings on both sides of the street, and cars were stuck in heavy traffic on Wisconsin Avenue, angry commuters blocked and unable to get around. Horns honked and angry voices cried out.

As she watched, she could just make out EMTs, not in any particular hurry, wheeling a body out of the building.

Andrea knew she looked like any other teenager in the area, though perhaps not dressed as well. Blue jeans and a pajama top. She had no money, no passport, and no phone. She had people trying to kill her who had the resources to gun down federal agents in a highly secured building. She had a father she’d never met, and a not-father who she wished she’d never met.

She had a mystery for a mother, who—for reasons unknown—knew something was going to happen and called a warning. Too little. Too late.

She fished in her pockets, but found nothing but lint.

Meet me… in thirty minutes. At the war memorial on Norfolk.

Far longer than thirty minutes had passed since Dylan said those words. But she’d hung around, just in case. Hoping Dylan might show up. Hoping he might still be alive, even though she knew she’d left him armed with nothing but kitchen knives, as gunmen came down that hallway.

Gunmen intent on killing
her.

She sighed. Then turned to walk away. Dylan Paris had sacrificed himself so she could live. She wasn’t going to waste that sacrifice.

 

Thank you to Andrea. For your heart, your courage, your love.

Lori Sabin, you've been a wonderful editor for most of the Thompson Sisters books and Nocturne. Thank you.

Thank you to my fantastic beta reader team: Brett Lewis, Jackie Yeadon, Tanya Spence Hall, Kristen Teaff, Emma Corcoran, Kathy Harshaw Baker, Wendy Neuman Wilken, Dimitra Fleissner, Laura Wilson, Bryan James, Michelle Kannan, Sarah Griffin, Amy Burt, Jennifer Mirabelli, Stacy McDowell Grice, Kirsten Papi, Beth Suit, Rita Jenkins Post, Kelly Moorhouse, Kirsty Lander and Sally Bouley. 

Thank you to Ashley Wilcox and ACS Tours for organizing the blog tour. 

Jillian Dodd, Tiffany King, Tara Sivec, Michelle Pace, Les Pace, Maggi Myers, Jenn Sterling, Melissa Perea, Michelle Warren and Priscilla Glenn form part of my professional network of authors: all gave advice and suggestions regarding the cover, blurb and more through this process. Thank you.

Copyright 2013 Charles Sheehan-Miles.

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Edited by Lori Sabin

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is unintentional, with the exception of certain named historical characters.