In the Grey (40 page)

Alex smiled. Courtney had
just married Cee Cee and was pregnant with their son when the other
children were kidnapped and killed. Cee Cee told her he was leaving
for a business trip when he went into hiding and never came
back.

“
Are you going tonight?”
Courtney asked.

“
To . . . ?” Alex shook her
head.

“
Sue Ann and Pete,”
Courtney said in a conspiratorial tone.

Alex nodded.

“
I’ll see you there,”
Courtney smiled.

“
Courtney?” Buffy wailed
from the back of the house.

“
I should go,” Courtney
said. “If you’re wondering, Cee Cee gave each of us a copy
of
The Gadfly
when we got married. It was his ‘wedding present.’ I would
have preferred money or maybe diamonds, or anything I could sell to
pay the rent, especially since he split a month after the wedding,
but that was Cee Cee.”

“
The
Gadfly
?” Alex asked.

“
Yeah right. How is that a
wedding present?” Courtney gave a rueful shake of her head. “Cee
Cee said it was a desperate romance of star-crossed lovers,
but . . . it’s mostly about revolution and stuff.
Too . . . melodramatic for me. I’d give you my copy,
but I tossed it, along with the rest of Cee Cee’s crap. Buffy says
he took her copy. That’s what she wants back.”

“
Who wrote it?” Matthew
asked.

“
Some Irish lady. Uh,”
Courtney looked up at the ceiling for a moment. “E. L. Voynich, in
like the 1800s. Anyway, I should go, or suffer the wrath of
Buffy.”

Courtney turned to look at
Matthew, and then at Alex.

“
Thanks for bringing him,”
Courtney said. “I know this whole scene is stupid and crazy,
but . . . with him here, we’ll have story to tell
and our children will have a place to visit. It means a lot to me
that you’d go out of your way bring him.”

She was almost out of the
room when she turned and said, “See you tonight.”

“
Courtney!” Buffy gave a
hysterical yell.

Courtney rolled her eyes
and went into the back.

“
Let’s go,” Raz swept into
the living room from the study.

They moved as a unit
through the dining room.

“
I’ll get Royce,” Matthew
said.

Alex and Raz left the
house and jogged to the sedan. Raz took the driver’s seat, and Alex
got into the passenger’s seat. Royce and Matthew came from around
the house and slipped into the back seat. No one said a word until
they were a few blocks away.

“
What did you get?” Alex
asked. “Royce?”

“
I found out that those
hysterics were just an act,” Royce said. “Buffy celebrated the
night poor ole Cee Cee died. She and her lover, who apparently
lives with her, had a big party.”

“
You mean Buffy is lying
about being sad?” Matthew’s voice was filled with mock
surprise.

“
I’m saying she’s crazy
like a fox,” Royce said. “I guess she’s all upset and talking about
suing for more of poor ole Cee Cee’s estate, and all the while, she
has the bulk of it.”

“
What a surprise,” Alex
said. “Trixi said she has his secret money accounts.”

“
Trixi?” Royce asked.
“What’s a Trixi?”

They laughed.

“
How did you do, Matthew?”
Alex asked.

“
That book they were
talking about?” Matthew asked. “
The
Gadfly
? There’s a battered copy of it
sitting on a shelf between Marx and Lenin.”

“
You mean Buffy lied?”
Royce asked. “How is that possible?”

They laughed.

“
The pictures on the
mantle and the wall have been moved around,” Matthew
said.

“
Hasty redecoration at
that,” Raz said.

“
Right,” Matthew said.
“Like someone was in a hurry. Things are missing from the mantle
and new things have been added. It’s like the whole house went
through a cosmetic redo.”

“
I wonder if that happened
when we showed up at the funeral,” Alex said. “Any idea what was
moved?”

“
No,” Matthew
said.

“
There are three hefty
bags next to the trash cans,” Royce said.

Raz turned the car around.
They drove back to Buffy’s house and snagged the trash
bags.

“
The FBI will be so
jealous,” Alex said.

“
Actually . . . ,” Raz glanced at her.
“They are very good at trash.”

“
Good thinking,” Alex
said. “After all, we have a wedding to get to.”

She took out her phone to
call the FBI. She arranged for a team of agents to meet them at the
hotel.

“
And what did you find,
Agent Rasmussen?” Alex asked when they were on their way
again.

Raz pulled a six-by-ten
photograph from the inside pocket of his sports coat. Alex took the
photograph from him. The photograph showed fifteen smiling adults
and maybe twenty children standing on the banks of a river on a hot
summer’s day. She looked at it for a while before passing it to
Matthew.

“
What is that?” Alex
asked.

“
I’d say it’s an extended
family portrait,” Raz said.

“
Looks like Grampa’s
birthday or something like that,” Matthew said. “You can see the
smoke plume from a barbecue or a fire pit in the
background.”

He gave the photograph to
Royce.

“
Did you recognize
anyone?” Raz asked.

Alex turned around in her
seat to get the photo from Royce. She looked at each of the
faces.

“
I see Buffy,” Alex
said.

“
People only see what they
expect to see,” Raz quoted Patrick Hargreaves.

“
Okay,” Alex said. “What’s
actually there?”

“
Upper right corner,” Raz
said. “Old man; side view.”

“
Josef Yakovlev,” Alex
said. “Wow. Do we know when that was taken?”

“
No,” Raz said. “But
there’s more.”

“
Who?” Matthew asked. He
and Royce leaned forward to see the photo.

“
Young girl; maybe five or
six?” Raz asked. “Second row near the middle, holding a younger
child’s hand?”

“
I pegged her for Buffy,”
Alex said. “You?”

“
Who’s hand is she
holding?” Raz asked.

“
A little boy?” Alex
shrugged.

She passed the photo to
Royce for them to take a look. They shook their heads and gave the
photo back to Alex.

“
Twenty dollars that’s
Robert Powell,” Raz said.

“
What?” Alex flipped the
photo in front of her face. She shook her head. “I’ll give you that
the child looks familiar. He could also be Cee Cee?”

She gave the photo back to
Royce.

“
I think he’s right,”
Royce said.

“
That’s the Boy Scout,”
Matthew said.

“
I’ll have to take your
word for it,” Alex said. “You think the Boy Scout is the ‘him’ Cee
Cee let down?”

Raz nodded.

“
But Cee Cee denied
knowing him!”

“
Cee Cee lied,” Raz
said.

“
Wouldn’t be the first
time,” Matthew said.

Shaking her head, Alex
leaned against the back rest. They drove toward the motel in
silence.

“
I
wonder . . . ,” Alex said as they pulled into
the hotel parking lot.

Raz found a parking spot
and turned to look at her.

“
I wonder if Robert Powell
isn’t actually his name,” Alex said. “Cee Cee might not have
recognized the name ‘Robert Powell.’”

“
Sure,” Raz said.
“And?”

“
How did Trece’s identity
get switched with his cousin’s?” Alex asked. “His identity was
swapped completely – fingerprints, DNA, everything. I couldn’t keep
him out of prison.”

“
She’s right,” Royce said.
“They are good.”

“
They must have had a lot
of practice,” Raz said.

“
Must be how Cee Cee got
around,” Alex said. “Swap identity here or
there . . .”

“
What do we do?” Royce
asked.

“
We have to figure out who
Cee Cee let down,” Alex said.

“
How?” Raz asked.
“Everything points to the Boy Scout.”

“
Good question,” Alex
smiled. “No time for spy work, though. We have a wedding to
attend.”

The knock on Alex’s window
brought them to the present. The FBI took the bags of trash they’d
taken from Buffy’s home. Joseph met them on their way into the
hotel to meet the rest of the team.

“
Did you just give away
the trash?” Joseph asked. “What are you thinking?”

“
We have other business to
attend to,” Alex said.

“
Oh yea?” Joseph
asked.

“
Pete and Sue Ann are
getting married in an hour or so,” Alex smiled.

Joseph grinned.

“
Shall we?” Alex
asked.

“
I’ll let the team know,”
Joseph said.

Alex nodded.

F

Saturday, early
morning

November 20 – 1:05 a.m.
PST (November 20 – 3:05 a.m. CST)

Pelican Bay, Crescent
City, CA

Trece woke with a start.
He knew that sound – the march of boots, the jingle of keys, and
the toneless whistle of the head guard as he moved down the
hallway.

Someone was leaving
Pelican Bay by armed guard.

Trece sat up and looked
out his cell at White Boy. His best friend’s attention was focused
on something coming down the hallway.

He felt like he was in a
pocket of still safety. The sound passed the first cell. The sound
passed the second cell. Trece’s heart began to beat overtime. He
heard the guy in the cell next to him get up and go his door. Trece
watched White Boy.

The sound passed the third
and the fourth cell. They were either taking the guy next door or
him.

“
What’s going on?” White
Boy asked.

“
Paperwork came through,”
the other guard said. “They’re moving him to Florence. They
intercepted plans to escape in a tunnel or some other
bullshit.”

Trece felt the prisoners
around him react. Florence, Colorado was the location of the
Federal Supermax Prison. By reputation, life in Florence was only
slightly worse than Pelican Bay SHU. Trece licked his lips, but
didn’t get up from his spot on the bunk.

He still had no idea who
was being moved.

“
Hey,” the prisoner in
cell one yelled out his door. “You better get my
lawyer.”

The tension on the pod
increased a notch. White Boy glanced at Trece.

“
Nobody wants to talk to
you, asshole,” the prisoner in cell four said.

“
Shut up,” a guard’s voice
came from down the hallway.

“
I’m s’pposed to get you,”
the guard outside his cell said to White Boy.

Trece breathed a sigh of
relief. The guard only wanted White Boy’s help to move another
prisoner. The guard leaned in to say something to White Boy. From
his vantage point in the dark looking out into the lit hallway,
Trece could see White Boy’s jaw muscles tense. His right forearm
tensed and relaxed.

And Trece knew.

He was the prisoner being
moved.

This was like something
that would happen to Alex. He was being taken to his death. His
heart beat so fast he thought it was going to come out of his
chest. He glanced around the room to see if there was a place to
hide.

When the guards came in,
he put up a hell of a fight. The more he fought, the more guards
came into the room. White Boy kept yelling to him to knock it off,
but he was too amped up, too frightened to hear him.

Finally, they knocked him
to the ground where they put a restraining belt on him. They
flipped him over to clip in the chain from the ankle shackles. They
cuffed his wrists and clipped them to the belt before tightening
down the shackles. With the help of White Boy, the guards got him
up and pushed him out of the cell.

Terrified, the other
prisoners on his pod turned away from their doors. The guards
pushed and prodded Trece with their stun batons. They marched out
of the pod and down a long hallway. Ahead, Trece made out two
guards standing in the dim light at the end of the
hallway.

Trece swallowed hard. From
this distance, he could tell that they were tall, and looked mean.
He glanced over his left shoulder to make sure White Boy was with
him. When they got to the end of the hall, the federal prison
guards nodded to the Pelican Bay guards.

They turned right and
walked down another hallway. At the outside door, the Florence
guards made the Pelican Bay guards sign the forms to release him
into their custody. In desperation, Trece stared at White Boy. The
guards grabbed Trece’s arms and started toward a transport
helicopter. They went a few feet, and the guard on Trece’s right
turned back to look at White Boy.