Armageddon Conspiracy (22 page)

Suddenly, headlights appeared in the distance, and a car approached out of the misty dark. Maggie was still frozen, but Brent recovered his senses enough to scuttle into the road for the pistol that lay a few feet from the slick of wet blood. He shoved it into his waistband, jerked his shirttail to cover it, and then pulled Maggie to her feet and back to a safe spot. They waited by the front fender of the truck as the car slowed.

“Car trouble?” a man’s voice asked.

“This lady just hit a deer,” Maggie heard Brent say. She waved to show that she was unhurt. “We thought it was dead,” Brent continued, “but then it jumped up and ran off.”

“Happens all the time around here,” the man said. “As long as everybody’s okay, I wouldn’t worry. Those damn things have an amazing ability to live.”

“Yeah, thanks for stopping.”

“Okay, ‘night.”

Brent waved as the car drove away, and then let out a moan. He turned toward Maggie, his eyes tight. “This has gone too far,” he said. “I’ve got to turn myself in.”

“No!” she said, the heat of her emotion catching her by surprise. She was operating purely on instinct, but she felt no doubt whatsoever. “We’ve got to hide all of this and get out of here.”

“No!” Brent said. “We’ve got two more guys dead! This can’t go on!”

“If you quit, they win!” Maggie shouted. She forced herself into motion. She had several plastic evidence bags in her purse, a holdover from her detective days in Morristown, and she used one as she bent down and hurriedly removed the contents of the first man’s pockets. She repeated the process with the second man, sealed both bags, and then wrote “passenger” on the first one and “driver” on the second. She wasn’t sure the distinction mattered, but she was pleased that her brain still worked on some level.

Brent watched her for a few seconds then pulled open the pickup’s door and searched the inside. A moment later he climbed out holding a manila file and the truck’s registration papers.

Another car materialized out of the mist, coming faster than the last. Maggie stepped into the truck’s headlights to make herself visible, but as this car passed it did not slow. Maggie glimpsed a woman passenger’s face turned toward them for an instant, her expression a worried frown. Was it possible she would call the police and report two suspicious vehicles stopped in the wildlife sanctuary?

“Hurry,” she called to Brent.

He tossed the file in the Toyota then came around to where the bodies lay. Without another word, Maggie took the nearest one by
the ankles while Brent grabbed it under the armpits. Together, they hoisted it into the truck bed where it fell with a sickening thud. The second body was much heavier, but they managed it as well.

Brent lifted his shirt, pulled out the gun he’d picked up, and started to toss it into the bed.

“Don’t,” Maggie said, her voice tight. Her mind was leaping ahead. She was operating on a cold certainty now, not only of Brent’s innocence but that all the usual rules had been put on hold. “You’ll probably need it.”

He hesitated and looked at her as if she was some stranger he’d never met, but then he tucked the pistol back in waistband.

“Find a place where the truck will be out of sight,” she said. “I’ll follow you.”

Brent nodded and then climbed behind the wheel of the truck and started off. As Maggie followed in her Toyota, her mind raced. This wasn’t just a theft. It wasn’t even a theft/murder. It was a complex
operation
of some sort, and it pointed right back to Prescott Biddle. So, why would a billionaire steal a billion dollars?

She thought she already knew the answer, but others would say it was a wild supposition, pregnant with political risk. She hadn’t even shared her thoughts with Brent because they seemed so improbable. She’d put them down in her memo and left it on Jenkins’ desk, but that was as far as she thought it would go. She estimated zero probability that anyone at Project Seahawk would want to follow it up.

However, her gut instincts told her she was absolutely right and that she was looking at a full-blown national crisis—all of which brought her back to Brent. Two more dead bodies were even more reason for him to remain at large. If he turned himself in, the police
and FBI would consider the problem solved, and it might be weeks before anyone could persuade them differently. By then it might be too late, which meant Brent had to remain on the loose until the two of them could build a credible argument. What were the odds, with the police and FBI coming from one direction and these would-be killers coming from the other?

She’d been following Brent as he searched for a turnoff, and now she noticed a strange sound, something halfway between a moan and a voice. It took her several seconds to realize she was the one making it. She was a lapsed Catholic, hadn’t been to Mass in over a year, but she’d been saying, “Oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus,” over and over through gritted teeth.

BRENT SLUMPED LOW IN THE
Toyota’s passenger seat, using a paper towel to dab at the gashes on the back of his head, while Maggie filled the tank with gas. His hair was matted with dried blood, and he had a pounding headache, but at least the bleeding had slowed. A moment earlier he’d unbuttoned his shirt and checked his abdomen. Amazingly, only one of the butterflies had popped. A thin trickle of blood oozed from the wound, nothing serious.

He glanced up when Maggie slid behind the wheel, studying her face in the halogen glare of the service station’s lights. Dark shadows pooled in the hollows of her cheeks, and the olive tone of her skin had turned a sickly yellow. Her eyes that normally sparked with energy and intelligence were dull and lusterless. It made what he had to tell her even more difficult.

The last several hours had been a descent into madness, but a
moment earlier things had gotten infinitely worse when he’d opened up the dead men’s wallets only to find the Sheriff’s Deputy badges. The sight had sickened him.

It must have shown in his expression, because Maggie cocked her head. “What?”

Without a word, he took one of the wallets and heard her sharp intake of breath as he flashed the badge. She surprised him when her expression immediately grew hard. “It was self-defense. They were going to murder us.”

“Yeah, but why? What the hell does, ‘I am the Chosen!’ mean? Chosen for what?”

Brent shook his head as he thought again about the truck with the two bodies. They’d left it at the end of an overgrown dirt track, rammed deep in some high bushes, but the wildlife refuge was public. In a day or two someone would stumble over it, and there would almost certainly be microscopic evidence—blood or hair samples, something that would link him to the killings. Then he’d be a cop killer on top of everything else. Even worse, Maggie had been there. He balled his fists, wishing he’d been able to keep her out of this.

As though reading his mind, Maggie put her hand on his forearm and squeezed. “I make my own choices.”

He nodded and turned away. He knew she was strong and independent, that no one could force her to do anything she thought was wrong. It didn’t make any of this right, but he couldn’t worry about it now, not the lack of fairness, not his feelings for her, not the future. There’d be time for those things if they succeeded. His job right now had to be pushing past their problems and giving her strength while they planned their next step.

He put the wallets aside and handed her the folder he’d found in the pickup. “This helps explain how those guys managed to find us,” he said, referring to the collection of intimate details about his life, down to Maggie’s home address, even quotes from his employment interview with Genesis Advisors’ consulting psychologist.

Maggie shook her head in disbelief as she skimmed the pages. “This cost someone thousands of dollars.”

Brent glanced at the truck registration showing the Lambertville address. “Reverend Turner’s liable to disappear when he learns these two guys are missing,” he said. “I’m going back.”

Maggie looked at him, her eyes glazed with exhaustion. After a second, she found enough energy to nod.

He reached across the seat and took her hand. “Alone,” he said. He didn’t know how he could succeed by himself, but it didn’t matter. “I can’t thank you enough for . . . everything.”

Maggie seemed to come awake. She slapped the steering wheel with her other hand, as a bit of her old spirit glimmered. “Not a chance. You’ve got the world’s worst sense of direction. You’d never even find his house without me.”

BRENT BRAKED TO A STOP
on the gravel road then used Maggie’s flashlight to check the number on the mailbox—75 East Elm, though the five lacked a nail and tilted at an angle against the seven. The house was small, like the others in this area that was not quite suburb and not quite country. It stood back maybe fifty yards from the road, well separated from the neighbors on both sides.

Brent checked his watch, twelve thirty. Lights still burned downstairs, although the front porch light was turned off. A van and an older model Volvo sedan sat in the unpaved driveway.

“Looks like somebody’s still awake,” he muttered. Was it the Reverend awaiting a phone call from the two deputies? He glanced toward Maggie and saw she had finally dozed off. He watched her chest rise and fall with deep respirations and wished he could leave her there undisturbed.

“Hey,” he said after a few seconds, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “We’re here.”

She sat up and blinked. “You okay?” he asked.

“I’ll make it,” she muttered.

“You wouldn’t have any wire cutters?”

She looked at him and wiped at her eyes. “Phone line?”

Brent nodded.

“I’m glad one of us can still think.” She jerked her head. “In the trunk.”

He found the wire cutters in a wooden box along with a crowbar, several screwdrivers, and a slip bar for unlocking cars. He closed the trunk softly then tapped on Maggie’s side window. “Got it,” he whispered.

She climbed behind the wheel and waited there while he circled the house and prayed the Reverend wasn’t a dog lover. He reached the backyard without incident and heard the hum of an air conditioning unit in an upstairs window. The overhead wires came from the rear of the property and attached to the house beside the kitchen porch. Enough light spilled through the kitchen curtains to outline a wooden railing about five feet below.

He crept toward the porch and glanced up, guessing the thinner, lower wire had to be the phone line. The faint sound of a television came through the wall, and he hoped it would mask his footsteps as he climbed the steps and mounted the railing. The wood protested but held, and he pulled out the cutters. A thick coating of rubber covered the handles, but he tensed as the blades gripped the wire, wondering if a few hundred volts were about to blast his body.

He squeezed, and the wire snapped away from the house with a
loud click. He let out a slow breath, stepped gently off the railing, and retraced his steps. He checked the houses on both sides, but they were still dark. In some distant yard a dog barked.

Maggie met him on the Turner’s front porch. “Any problems?” she whispered.

He shook his head. “Ready?” He waited for her nod then knocked on the door.

A few seconds later, they heard heavy footsteps. “Yes?” a familiar voice asked.

Brent nodded to Maggie. “Reverend Turner?” she said. “This is Special Officer Margaret DeVito with Project Seahawk. I wonder if I could have a word with you on a matter of national importance?”

“Uh,” the Reverend’s voice came back, suddenly ragged with anxiety. “Well, I don’t know. It’s very late. Could you come back in the morning?”

“I’m afraid not. It concerns the death of two local sheriff’s deputies and several murders in New York City. I am sure you can appreciate the need for your immediate cooperation.”

“Uh . . . just a minute.” Brent heard the hiss of hurried whispers and words that sounded like, “Call Mr. Wofford.” A second later a woman’s voice came back, “It doesn’t work.” More whispers followed, something about a cell phone and the van, the rest indistinct.

“Reverend, I have to ask you to open up right away. This will only take a few minutes.” As Maggie spoke Brent jumped off the porch and raced toward the rear of the house, drawing the pistol from his waistband. As he came around the side, he saw light spilling through the open backdoor and a woman on the porch, wearing a bathrobe. Something about her seemed oddly familiar.

“Mrs. Turner!” he shouted.

She swung her head toward him so that the light caught her face. His breath caught as he recognized Ruth Simmons. Panic etched her features as she turned, ran into the house, and slammed the door. A second later, Reverend Turner called out through the closed kitchen door. “You can’t just come barging in our house like this! It’s the middle of the night! We have rights!”

Brent stepped onto the back porch and rattled the doorknob. He heard a sound like someone choking, and then footsteps. Thirty seconds went by. He fought the urge to check on Maggie. “Open up!” he called, and then used the pistol barrel to break a glass pane in the door.

As he reached through and flicked the lock, a shotgun blast came from another part of the house. Thinking only of Maggie, he threw open the door and raced inside. He ran through the kitchen, small dining room, and living room, but the downstairs was empty. “Maggie!” he shouted.

“Out here!”

He ripped open the front door and saw her, gun drawn, down in a shooter’s crouch. “You okay?” he shouted.

Before she could answer, there was another shot followed by a hollow thump. Brent jumped back and aimed up the stairs.

“Reverend Turner, Mrs. Turner,” Maggie shouted. “Throw down your weapons and come to the top of the stairs with your hands up.”

Brent held his breath. Seconds passed. The same dog still barked. Had the neighbors heard the shots?

“Reverend Turner!” Maggie called again. “Come down stairs with your hands in the air.”