Never Go Home (21 page)

“Don’t freeze
me out.”

“Listen to me.
I can have done to you what you did to Leon. If this goes down successfully,
then I’ll consider bringing you in on what happened. But for now, you would be
wise to do what you’re told, when you’re told, like the soldier I hired you to
be.”

“Sure thing.”
Alessandro ended the call. He squeezed the phone. He knew when he signed up
that there was no way out. Even if he could track down Vera and kill her, there
was someone behind her. He had no idea who. He had no idea who ultimately
employed him, or who she reported to. The calls came from her. The money was
deposited into any number of bank accounts, which changed regularly.

He had to do
what he was told, like when he killed that unarmed woman, or he would end up
like that poor sap, Leon.

The jet rolled
to a stop in an area lit up by huge lights fixed to the top of tall poles. I
stood at the top of the metal staircase that had been wheeled up to the side of
the plane. Sasha stood at the bottom. She had a smile on her face. It did
little to hide the concerned look in her eyes. Behind her, almost identical
Audis sat parked side by side. I assumed the black one had been brought for me.
Through the semi-tinted front windshield, I made out the shape of Marcia in the
passenger seat.

“How was your
flight?” Sasha said.

“I slept. Guess
that makes it good.” My feet hit the pavement. I took two steps toward her.
“Now tell me what’s going on here.”

She shrugged.
“You saw how she is. She won’t—”

“Not her,” I
said. “Nothing has come up about me? No one knew I went to the States?”

She turned and
gestured for me to follow. Once we reached her car, she said, “All I can tell
you is that we came across credible intelligence that indicated your life was
in danger.”

I decided
against telling her Marcia had said the same thing. “What kind of evidence?”

“Someone was in
town to kill you,” she said.

“I already knew
that. He got someone else. Best we can tell, he fled.”

She said
nothing.

“Where did this
tip come from?”

“I can’t say.”

“It’s my life
on the line, Sasha. You need to tell me.”

“I can’t say,
because I don’t know, Jack. It was anonymous. But when I put my resources to
work, they confirmed it.”

My comfort
level shifted to the negative. We were in a wide-open space. At least two
people in London knew where I was. How many more knew?

“Why didn’t you
come right out and say it?” I said.

“Would you have
wanted me to? Besides, we found out after they fled.”

I didn’t get
the feeling that the women were sharing information. Marcia had stated that the
man who fled was not the danger.

“Anything we
can do to follow up on this?” I said.

“Like what?”

“You’re the one
that works in Intelligence, Sasha. You tell me.”

She looked
away. Her cheeks turned red.

I held up my
hands. “I’m on edge.”

“I understand,
Jack. And I need you to realize that I’m doing everything I can to get to the
bottom of this. In the meantime, you’ve got a new responsibility, one that you
agreed to. So get in that car and do whatever Marcia Stanton tells you to do.”

“Anything she
says?”

“Within
reason.” The tension drained from her face. She smiled, reached out and touched
my cheek. “Be careful. Check in with me in the morning before you guys leave.”

“OK.”

I took a step
back. Sasha pulled her door open and slipped behind the wheel. I turned,
rounded the front of the car she’d brought for me and got inside.

Marcia stared
through the windshield, toward the jet. She didn’t acknowledge me at first. I
wondered what went through her mind. I started the car and followed Sasha’s
taillights. She’d lead me toward the city.

After a few
minutes of silence, Marcia said, “I live about twenty minutes from here.”

I nodded, said
nothing.

“They provided
this car. It’s not mine. We’ll talk more at my place.”

The car could
be bugged. Someone could be listening to our conversation. She was smart not to
say anything important.

I drove on
through light nighttime traffic. Traffic lights worked against us. We were
stopped at half of them. We drove along Whitechapel. She told me to turn right
onto Commercial Street. I kept going straight.

“What are you
doing?” she said. “I live back there.”

“You’re under
my care now,” I said. “That means I’m taking you to a place where I know that
I’m safe.”

“Your
apartment?”

I said nothing.

“You think that
place is going to be safe? Sasha and her team probably have an army of bugs in
there.”

I still said
nothing.

“Jack, don’t be
stupid.”

I pulled into a
deserted lot and stopped the car. I flung my door open and got out. Marcia
hesitated, then did the same.

“We’re not
going anywhere they know about,” I said. “Got it? Not your place, not mine.
I’ve got a little house on the other side of the city. It’s rented in a false
name. I paid a year up front in cash.”

She protested,
but once it became clear that I wasn’t turning around, she gave up. We took our
seats and passed through the city. I picked up the M4 and drove to West
Drayton. A few minutes later, I parked behind an apartment building.

“Let’s go,” I
said.

Once outside,
she said, “You know the car’s being tracked.”

“Yup, that’s
why we’re getting in a different vehicle and
then
going to my place.”

She caught up
to me. “Are you always this paranoid?”

“The day I stop
is the day I die.” I pointed at a white sedan. “There it is.”

I got back on
the M4 and drove west another ten miles to the far end of Slough. The
streetlights in the neighborhood were few and far between. My house had a
wooded lot. It was almost impossible to see the front door from the street. I
pulled into the driveway and parked in front of the garage.

Marcia followed
me up to the front door. I had installed an electronic lock when I moved in. I
blocked the pad and punched in the code. I swung the door open for the first
time in two months. Stale air escaped and surrounded us. I entered first. She
followed.

Marcia glanced
around the barren great room. “Not much for looking at in here.”

“I’m never
here. It’s a backup option. That’s all.”

“How long are
you planning on keeping me here?”

“We’ll start
with tonight and see where it goes.”

She looked like
she wanted to argue with me. Instead she took a seat at the dining table.

I went into the
kitchen. A small white fridge with a chrome handle stood next to the stove. I
opened the door, grabbed two bottles of water. I placed a bottle in front of
Marcia, and took a seat opposite her.

“You said my
life was in danger,” I said. “You said the web was closing in on me. Care to
elaborate now?”

She brought the
bottle to her mouth and tilted her head back. She swallowed, then licked her
red lips. Her lipstick coated the rim of the bottle.

“I’m not who
you think I am,” she said.

“I could say
the same,” I said.

She smiled,
looked down at her hands. Her fingernails were long. They matched her lipstick.
She drummed them against the table in a slow, steady motion, starting with her
pinky finger.

“You’re Jack
Noble. You were born in Crystal River, Florida. You grew up there. Your mother
is deceased, your father is still living. You have one brother. His name is
Sean. He has a wife, Deborah, and a daughter, Kelly. There are no aunts,
uncles, cousins, or anything like that. You had a sister. She was four years
older than you, two years older than Sean. She died at the age of sixteen.”

I looked away.
No one knew about Molly, not even my closest friends. She’d been abducted. I
witnessed it. Did nothing when it happened. Paralyzed by fear. It was the last
time something like that happened to me. Four days later they found her in the
woods. Someone had bound her hands and legs together, and slit her throat. I
let the rest of the details deteriorate over time.

Marcia
continued. “You entered the Marines at the age of eighteen, although it wasn’t
long before they realized you were special. A co-op with the CIA followed. You
did things in the States that the CIA wasn’t allowed to do. Then you went to
Europe for a few months. Then the world changed in September, 2001. You and
your partner Riley were sent to Iraq before most anyone else. Information
gatherers, right?”

“More like
henchmen who guarded front doors.”

“The program
you were in was dubbed a success by some, a failure by others. Some wanted to
shut it down. Someone else didn’t. That someone was high ranking and he got
greedy. You confronted General Keller head on. The evidence you gathered did
you no good, though. Nothing ever came of it. Keller stepped down in time. You
moved on.”

“How do you
know all this?”

She took
another drink from her bottle. A trickle slipped past the corner of her mouth
and ran down her chin. She wiped her face with the back of her wrist.

“You pulled
some strings and got out of the Marines. After what had happened, no one
protested. They thought it would keep you quiet. And it did. You were scooped
up by another organization. It was no accident that the SIS came calling, Jack.
Only, they were pushed into action almost too late. In fact, if they hadn’t
managed to delay Jessie’s flight, she would have reached you before Frank
Skinner did. Then what would have happened?”

I slid my right
hand off the table and wrapped it around my pistol.

She continued.
“You did plenty in your time with the SIS. But, in the end, it wasn’t for you.
Your true calling came to fruition when you set out on your own. Right?”

I said nothing.

“The thing is,
Jack, you still flirted with the pretty girls whenever they called. You took
job after job. It didn’t seem to matter who called. You’d do a job for one guy,
and then turn around and kill him if someone else paid you enough money. You
took the calls from the SIS, and other organizations. You did work for your
friends in London. The French called on you from time to time.”

I slid my hand
from my pistol to my pocket and retrieved the paper from Jessie’s house.

“I appreciate
the history lesson, Marcia. But what does any of this have to do with right
now?”

She pushed back
in her chair, rose and turned. Her black pants hugged her curves. She walked
across the room. Her footsteps echoed against the wall. She stopped, appeared
to stare at the wall. Her hands were clasped behind her back. She tugged on her
fingers one by one.

I leaned back
and waited for her to continue.

“What did you
learn in Florida, Jack?”

Was now the
right time to present my evidence?

“I’m not sure
what you mean, Marcia.”

She turned
around. Her lips were pursed. She swung her arms forward, grabbed her right
wrist with her left hand, let them fall to her waist. She was a powerful woman
on the inside and outside. She knew how to present it and appear intimidating
without being threatening. I dwelled on what she had said earlier.

“I’m not who
you think I am.”

She said, “Did
you find out anything about your friend?”

I said, “We’ve
been talking a lot about me. Let’s hear about you.”

She shook her
head. “In time. Just go along with this, please. It is relevant.”

“She didn’t
kill herself. At first, I thought it was her husband and his brother and
brother’s friend. The evidence I uncovered suggests otherwise.”

Marcia walked
back to the table. She pulled out the seat next to me. She placed her hand on
my forearm. “You can do better than that, Jack.”

“Why should I?”

She said
nothing. She looked serious, apprehensive, frightened even. Up close and under
the lighting I saw the faint traces of crow’s feet extending from the corners
of her eyes. Shallow lines spread across her forehead. They did nothing to
detract from her beauty. I refocused and answered her question.

“OK, here’s how
it went down. I suspected her husband and his brother. There had always been
bad blood between us. It seemed natural. He had an alibi, apparently solid. He
accused me of having a long distance affair with Jessie.”

“Had you?”

“I last saw her
over ten years ago, after the Keller affair. It sounded like you already knew
that.”

“OK, continue.”

“Glenn, her
husband, had evidence. He showed it to me. To him, it indicated secret
rendezvous and things like that. To me, it was a hit list, and my name was on
it.”

She didn’t seem
surprised. “Was there anything else?”

“It was all
gone. I assume whoever took her out, stole or destroyed everything. Hell, she
might have been expecting them and had it all in a folder. Maybe she knew they
were coming and destroyed it herself.”

She placed one
elbow on the table and propped it under her jaw. “Can you describe the evidence
you saw?”

“I can do
better than that.”

I tossed the
folded paper onto the table. She grabbed it and opened it up. Her eyes scanned
left to right, focusing on the code.

“What do you
make of that?” I said.

She said
nothing.

“Any idea who
has me on a kill on sight list?”

She still said
nothing. Her lips moved as she went over the jumbled mess of letters and
numbers on the page. She looked up at me.

I waited for
her to say something.

She glanced
down at the page again. Her lips moved some more. I couldn’t make out the words
she formed. She finished, and looked up at me again.