The Last Family (20 page)

Erin pointed her finger at Sean. “And you owe me a can of this,” she said, handing him the empty can of Mace. “It was eight dollars at K and B.” Then she added, “I was hoping it’d work better, though.”

“Let’s let the men run through the house for a moment,” Thorne said. He spoke into his radio, and an agent appeared from Alice’s house with a small black case and disappeared into Laura’s front door.

After the agent had allowed them in from the porch, Laura made a pot of coffee while the three agents and two children watched from the counter. Sean held a wet cloth to his eyes, but he wasn’t damaged much beyond the humiliation.

“Reb, Erin,” she started, “this is Thorne Greer. He’s a DEA agent who …” She thought for a second. “Wait a minute, didn’t you retire? Weren’t you bodyguarding some actor?”

“Arnold Murphy for the last three years.”

“Really?” Erin said. “You know Arnie Murphy? Jesus H. Christ!”

“Erin!” Laura snapped.

“What does he need bodyguards for?” Reb wondered. “He’s tough as rubber snakes.”

Thorne smiled. “Not in real life. He’s as scared as anybody else. People are always wanting to see how tough he really is.” He looked at Laura. “The entire Green Team has been recommissioned.”

“Not … Paul, too?”

Thorne nodded.

“My daddy?” Erin said, disbelief cracking her voice. “He’s in the DEA again? Where is he?”

Reb leaned against the counter. “He couldn’t do that. He never leaves his place in Montana. He’s got brain problems and stuff.”

Thorne smiled at Reb. “Just this one time,” he said. “Temporary assignment.”

“Why?” Reb asked. “How come?”

“Because there is a very, very mean person who is hurting people. Your father has agreed to help find him because we can’t do it without him.”

“The man who shot him?” Reb asked.

Laura straightened. “Reb, the men who shot your father were …” She was reluctant to say “were killed” because Thorne and Joe McLean were among the ones who had killed them. “Darling, Thorne was there. Tell him, Thorne. Tell him why that’s impossible.”

“Actually, Laura, he’s right. Reb, it’s not the men who shot your father, it’s the man who told them to.”

“See,” Erin said. “You don’t have any idea. You were tiny. You don’t even remember Daddy’s being in the hospital.”

Laura turned her back on the agent so her children wouldn’t see the panic in her eyes.
We are in danger
.

“Is my daddy coming here?” Reb asked, the excitement rising to his eyes.

“Is he?” Erin echoed. “Mother, is Daddy coming?” The excitement was contagious.

“We’ll see.… I don’t know.… Thorne?” Laura said. In light of what she had run into in Montana, the idea of Paul’s walking through the door of her house
seemed no more likely than Wolf’s being invited to sing at the Met. “You kids have homework to do,” she said. “First, Erin, clean the leaves out of the pool.”

“I want to hear—” Erin started.

Laura’s voice cut her off, startling the agents. “The leaves, Erin! Reb, you help her. We can talk about all this later!” The kids didn’t argue. Laura was on the edge, and they knew better than to press.

Laura and Thorne watched them leave. She poured them another cup of coffee and led Thorne to her studio. He sat at the table that held Laura’s paints and brushes and stared at the paintings on the wall.

“Nice work,” Thorne said. “Is that Paul?”

“I’ve only got a few minutes.” She crossed her arms and leaned against the window frame. “Why don’t you cut the crap and tell me exactly what’s going on. Who’re we in danger from?”

Thorne began with the deaths of his divorced wife and their son. Then he told her about Joe’s family. By the time he told her about what had happened to the Lees, she was crying.

“Who? You said the man who set Paul up?” she asked.

“Martin Fletcher,” he said.

“Martin Fletcher! You people haven’t found him
yet?”

“He’s back in the country.”

“Oh, dear God,” she said. “So did Paul send you?”

“Not initially. The local DEA has been watching the house for two weeks since the Lee hits. The infrared sensors and the laser listening post went up a week ago. Paul only came in a few days ago. He opened the doors in D.C. to allow us to … work the case.”

“ ‘Us’ as in you and …”

“Rainey and Joe.”

“The very people he has sinned against. That seems a little unusual, Thorne.”

He averted his eyes.

“And you’re watching us from Alice’s house?”

“She gave us permission. She’s extending her vacation
a couple of days to accommodate us. We needed to be close. We thought you might be bugged.”

“Am I?”

“Not anymore.”

“How do you know?”

“My man got them all.”

“Bugs? Martin was in here? He was sneaking around in
this
house?” She covered her mouth for a few seconds, her eyes saucers of horror.

Thorne shifted his weight. “Martin knew all about our families’ personal schedules. He planned George Lee’s hit to the point of intercepting him on a scout trip in the Smokies. He knew where the boys were going to be and when; he was waiting on the trail in a uniform. If he had followed the car with George in it, he couldn’t have been ready with a uniform. He had to have scouted the trail. It was smooth … excuse the term. Somehow he got their confidence … the targets never knew what hit them. Course, none of them knew Martin. He had to have had bugs in the house to know what he had to have known.”

“Why didn’t you warn us?” Her eyes were cold, accusatory.

“It was for your own good.”

“Our own good? We’re bait!” Laura was suddenly angry. “You’re waving my family in front of that psychopath!”

“No. Well, actually, I suppose that’s one interpretation.”

“One interpretation? What’s another?”

“You weren’t in any danger. We’ve been monitoring the house. We’ve been listening to every …” He stopped, realizing what he had said.

“You have your own bugs in my
house?”
Laura was horrified. “You just swept to see if he did, too? You have a court order?”

“No. We use laser devices aimed at the windows. Like drumheads, windows.”

“This is America, Thorne. We have rights just like everyone else out there. So the government will let people
exact revenge on killers and tap the lives of innocent people to further those aims, and it’s okay? Because Paul can pull a few strings?”

“Our devices are strictly to monitor for any unusual activity or panic situations, lasers, cameras watching the perimeters. We aren’t taping except for the loop, which is two hours. Then it records over the last … it’s a … loop.” He realized that he was spinning his finger in a circle and stopped.

She seemed to calm. “How well can you hear what’s going on in here?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“I want to know to what extent … my family is being protected.”

“Well, when it’s quiet, we can pick up your brush strokes. We know Reid snores and there’s a bird that whistles and something that squeaks like a hamster running in a wheel that needs oiling.”

Laura blushed and put her hand to her mouth. “My God, Thorne! My bedroom?”

“The devices pick up the entire house.”

“But he was listening to us? What did you find?”

“Several functioning transmitters. Two in the kitchen area, one in the phone and another in the light fixture, one here in the studio and two in the bedroom, one in the telephone again. The telephone devices pick up whatever is going on in the rooms. We weren’t able to locate the receiver. Could be anywhere.”

“Why in the receiver
and
the base?” she asked.

“Redundancy, maybe. Different kinds of transmitters.”

“Martin Fletcher has been in my house?” Fear silenced her for a moment; then her anger came surging back. “Christ, I feel like I was raped once and then raped again by the cops when they showed up. I must be the most watched woman in America.”

“Well, you’re clean now,” he said. “He’ll know we found them when he checks the listening post.”

“Great,” she said. “So Paul’s out. Where is he now?”

“He’s heading this investigation. He’s on the ninth
floor of the U.S. Courthouse building annex in Nashville. The DEA has offices with the federal prosecuting attorney. He’s using Rainey’s office.”

“I didn’t think anything short of dynamite could blast him out of his hole,” she said, aware of the bitterness that filled her words.

“He’s really changed,” Thorne said. “He’s not the same man. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. After what happened and all.”

“He didn’t want me to know, did he?”

Thorne looked down. “Laura, it’s …”

“Of course he didn’t.”

“He only agreed to come out when he knew you and those children were in danger. That was the only reason. He cares.”

“Oh, I know how much he cares. Enough to send people to protect us … but not enough to actually visit his children. Enough to use us to lure Martin.”

“That isn’t fair, Laura.”

“Do you know that he hasn’t laid eyes on Reb or Erin in all these years, except for the photos I send? I don’t care for myself. Really, I don’t. But he has hurt those children. He was never around when they were little. Always chasing a drug lord or flying raids in Bolivia or someplace. We never saw him. Then he ran out on us completely. He didn’t even try. So, fine. But I’m not going to let that son of a bitch tell me what to do. Don’t tell me he cares—don’t you
ever
tell me he cares about us. This is about him. All of you are using us. Fine, there’s nothing I can do. But I don’t have to like it. If it weren’t for the kids, I’d take my chances with Martin Fletcher. At least Martin Fletcher is honest. He says he wants to hurt us, but Paul says he wants to protect us. Only trouble is he’s the one who has hurt us.”

“That isn’t true.”

“What do you mean?”

“I shouldn’t be telling you this, but he’s … the local agents say that he asks them to check on you every so often and report to him.”

“When? When was the last time?”

“Reb had his school play last year—they took pictures of the thing and sent the prints to Paul.”

“Why?”

“I’d guess he wanted to make sure you’re all okay. Laura, when we first saw him in the mountains, he was like a wounded animal, defeated, frightened. But you should have seen him in Nashville. He was like the old Paul. In charge, surefooted—he seemed strong as a bull.”

“Thorne, I can’t tell you how sorry I am to hear about your family. I wish I had kept in closer touch. And Doris Lee and I were friends once. I’ve never been good about staying in touch with anyone, especially Paul’s friends. You know how it is. People take sides or feel disloyal somehow.”

She looked at Thorne and seemed to be figuring something out, weighing her words. “Promise me something?”

“If I can.”

“Tell him I want to see him face-to-face. I need to have some closure so I can get on with my life. If he doesn’t want to see the children, I’ll understand, even though they won’t. He has devastated Erin and Reb by hiding from them. It’s plain rejection to them. I told them it’s because of his face, the incident, and the brain damage, but now that they know he’s back, all that is changed. No. On second thought he has to see them. He has to let us say good-bye so we can go on. I can’t give Reid what he needs until I know Paul doesn’t want it. I owe him that.”
After what I did
.

“I’ll try. You know Paul.”

“Try hard.”

16

“T
HE CAR THING’S A WASH,”
S
HERRY SAID AS SHE PLACED A FOLDER
on the conference-room table. She drummed her nails on the table surface for emphasis. “No abandoned or towed cars near where the Rover was taken. No speeding tickets we can connect. Nothing on surveillance tapes of outgoing air travelers we can connect.”

Paul opened the report cover and grazed over the information. “So he probably had an assistant,” Paul said. “You did a thorough job, Sherry.” He smiled at her, memorizing details about her the way he committed a favorite view to memory. She was a beautiful woman, and more intelligent than he had figured at first. Not that brains and beauty couldn’t reside in the same place. Laura had proved they did.

Paul had studied the surveillance pictures from the Nashville airport’s cameras until they had become teasingly familiar, yet he hadn’t seen anyone who looked like
a newer model of Martin based on the old Martin Fletcher frame. It was an impossible task, though. Paul’s mind had wandered as he’d scanned the shots for something familiar, waiting for a bell to ring.

“Martin’s game on Martin’s turf in Martin’s time,” Paul said out loud.

“Vengeance is mine thinketh Martin,” Rainey said.

“Why leave the opening for you to thwart him? Why didn’t he get Laura and the kids sooner?” Sherry asked. “The challenge?”

“I’m afraid he is saving the best for last,” Paul said.

“Why don’t you … I mean, why did you decide to stay here instead of being in New Orleans?” she asked.

“I’ve got a good team in New Orleans. They’ll know what to do if Martin comes.”

“Sure, but what I was really asking—wouldn’t you rather be there? In New Orleans?”

Paul noticed Rainey turn to look at him, waiting to hear what Paul would say.

“Look, we need to try to get a description of Martin, hopefully to track him from where he was last seen. Maybe we’ll narrow the variables somehow. I’m better off doing that here. Also, Martin believes he’s superior to the rest of us. He’ll want his final action to gain him maximum satisfaction. He wants to kill …” Paul stopped for a second and took a deep breath. “Unless our intelligence and mental profiles are way off, he’ll want to kill the family while I’m on the scene. We know he’ll meet his mother somewhere around the third of October to get his mind retwisted, or whatever the visits do for him, and go for the family after, when he thinks we aren’t paying attention. So it’s imperative we get him with Eve.”

Paul thought about the A team, his carefully selected hunting team sitting at an East Texas air base, anxiously waiting for a direction to run in. Freelancers, and expensive ones at that. T.C. Robertson had agreed that he needed men like that to meet Martin. He hadn’t quibbled about costs.