Deja Vu (19 page)

Annie and Myra shook their heads.

“Well, I was. I guess there’s no harm in telling you this. Her name was Margie Evans, and she came to see me every day in the hospital. Then when they brought me here, they told me I had to cut all ties. I knew they were watching me so I… buckled. I told myself I did it for Margie’s safety, but I was a coward. That’s the bottom line.”

Myra felt so sorry for the man sitting in front of her, she dropped to her knees and reached for his hands. “Do you want us to find her for you?”

“And have her see me like this? No! Not while Hank Jellicoe is still out there. No!”

“Mr. Anders, you said she stuck by you while you were in the hospital and came to see you every day. That has to mean she knew what your condition was, and she was okay with it. When you were at the library on the computer, didn’t you ever
try?”

Anders shook his head. “I opted to let sleeping dogs lie. I would like to know that she’s okay. I think about her as much as I think about Hank Jellicoe and what might have been.”

If Anders was going to say anything else, he was interrupted by the sound of the doorbell.

The alarm on Anders’s face was so palpable that Myra and Annie were on their feet in a second. “No one called. How did they get past the guard? That guard carries a gun. You must have been followed!” This last sentence was almost a shriek of panic.

The French doors opened, and Avery Snowden stepped onto the lanai. He introduced himself and the men standing behind him.

Anders sagged in his wheelchair.

“Charles said an hour, and the hour is up right now, this minute,” Annie said happily.

Myra held out her hand. “You’re in good hands, Mr. Anders. Thank you for talking with us. We can see ourselves out.”

Annie held out her hand. Both women had turned to leave when Anders called out, “What about my book? What are you going to do with it?”

Annie laughed, a sound so strange even Avery Snowden looked startled. “Why, publish it, of course!”

Outside, Myra looked at Annie. “Oh, dear, we forgot we have to call for the golf cart to take us back to our car.”

“Not so, Miz Rutledge,” a deep voice said from the side of the house. “I’ll be more than happy to drive you to the gate.”

“I do love security, don’t you, Myra?” Annie said as she tripped along behind a burly man who was roughly the size of a tree.

True gentleman that he was, the guard drove like a race-car driver. When they reached the gatehouse, he got out first and helped Myra and Annie step down from the SUV. “Where’s the guard?”

“Sleeping.” The security man, who’d said his name was Sam, looked at his watch. “He’ll be napping for another two hours. If you notice, we put a temporary sign on the gate saying because of electric problems, the gate will be closed for several hours. Have a safe trip back home, ladies.” Sam tipped an imaginary hat and careened back the way they’d come.

“Well, that was productive!” Annie said, climbing behind the wheel of the rental car.

“We’re going to publish Mr. Anders’s book! Annie, I don’t think you should have made such a rash promise to Mr. Anders. What if we can’t find a publisher for it, and what if it isn’t any good? It just might be the ravings of a cranky, justifiably used-to-be reporter bent on vengeance.”

“We can worry about that when the time comes. One way or another, we will publish it even if it’s in excerpts in the
Post.
People love stuff that is serialized. That’s when a publisher snaps it up, then the author becomes published. Most of the time it happens like that. Let’s cross our fingers that Mr. Anders is not the exception to that rule,” Annie said.

“You have an answer for everything, don’t you, Annie?”

“Since I can’t depend on you, I have to come up with my own answers. Look, there’s the van.” Annie pulled the rental car into a parking space at a strip mall. Doors opened and doors closed. The Sisters piled out, all of them jabbering ten miles to the minute.

When Annie suggested that they stop at a little Greek place in the mall to grab something to eat before heading back to their home base, Nikki said that was not a very good idea and that they needed to get out of the area ASAP.

When Myra protested, Kathryn told her that Nikki was right and that all would become clear when they found a place to eat. “Please, let’s just get back into the van and make tracks. And by the way, we’re taking a different route back to Pinewood. All will become clear in a few minutes.”

After twenty minutes of deafening silence, Alexis said, “There’s a little Italian place over there. We should be far enough away now, so let’s grab something to eat.” The women ran across the lot to get out of the blistering heat. The delicious smells along with the arctic coolness inside the little restaurant was a balm to their sweaty faces and thumping hearts. The heady aroma of baking pizza, garlic, basil, and aged cheese was overpowering.

“I could stay here forever. I just love Italian restaurants. If I had to choose between smelling something like this or the finest French perfume, I’d choose this.” Nikki sighed.

“The AC in the van wasn’t working, and before you can ask, five women descending on a gym translated to five new memberships, so it was a piece of cake getting in and out of the locker room. And miracle of miracles, down the hall from the main gym was a small, for want of a better word, Internet café for members. They serve sandwiches and soft drinks along with juice and coffee, and they have five computers for members. I copied the files on the flash drives, sent copies to Charles, Jack, and Bert, one to Maggie, and one to Lizzie. I also made a copy just for us. I was in and out in sixteen minutes. Yoko timed me,” Nikki said proudly.

“Well done, girls,” Myra said, as Kathryn placed an order for three large pizzas with the works. “Two pitchers of root beer,” Alexis added.

“Okay, girls. What did Nikki just leave out? Clearly something happened, or we would be eating in that Greek place in the strip mall and not riding around on back roads to get home. Out with it. NOW!”

“As Nikki said,” Yoko began, “she had no problem getting the flash drive and copying it. But while she was doing it, a Fed walked into the gym, and—”

“Are you absolutely sure it was a Fed?” Annie exclaimed. “What happened to our immunity? It wouldn’t be CIA since they’d be risking a major problem if they were caught operating on U.S. soil. So it had to be FBI.”

“It was,” Yoko assured her. “I took him out by pretending to try to save him from a black widow spider. How dumb is that. He obviously knew just who I was and still let me get close enough to send him to the floor, unconscious, with no obvious violence.

“Then we left the gym, shouting for them to call nine-one-one, and pulled his partner from a black FBI sedan. When we left, he had a bloody nose, a cracked rib, and was handcuffed to the door of the car. Oh, and Kathryn has his gun and badge. She thought we might want to send them to President Connor as a present. Or failing that, maybe Director Yantzy would like them.”

“We don’t know where we screwed up, Annie,” Isabelle said, “but they got on to us somehow. And they must know that we are interested in Virgil Anders. What are we going to do now?”

Annie gave Myra a signal, and Myra got up, went to the restroom, and called Charles to tell him what had happened and to arrange for Virgil Anders to be moved to a safe location somewhere unknown to either Henry, call me Hank, Jellicoe or possibly soon-to-be-ex-director John Yantzy and his FBI hooligans.

When Myra returned and gave Annie a thumbs-up, Annie said, “Let’s talk, girls. Myra and I will go first. We think it’s safe to say that, for the moment, at least, we can cross Mr. Anders off our worry list. Mr. Snowden and his men arrived as we were leaving. He’s in good hands and at this very moment is being moved to a safe location. The FBI is not going to be able to take him. And even if he had been left in place, I don’t think there’s any way Jellicoe could have gotten to Mr. Anders even if he’d managed to secure some kind of help by way of perhaps a few old cohorts.

“Now that we have
the book,
I think we should let it be known that we have it. Knowing
the book
is out there swinging in the breeze might force his hand. By the time we put the book into play, Mr. Anders will be buried so deep that no one without authorization from us will be able to get to him. Having said that, I’m open to any and all thoughts.”

“I read the opening lines of Mr. Anders’s book,” Nikki said. “Would you all like to hear it?”

“What a foolish question, dear. Of course we want to hear it,” Myra said, speaking for the others.

“This is how it goes. I heard about the man. I was not impressed. I read the myth attributed to the man. I was not impressed. I met the monster man in person. I was impressed.”

“Oh, my goodness,” Myra gasped.

“Sounds like a runaway best-seller to me,” Annie quipped. The others agreed.

While they waited for their pizzas to arrive, the Sisters slipped into their friendship mode and playfully poked and jabbed one another as they laughed and kibitzed about their outing at the gym. Then, one by one, they all got up to hit the restroom to wash their hands.

Left alone, Myra looked at Annie. “What’s wrong? What’s bothering you?”

“The girls. You just witnessed all of them together, like I did. Old times, all of them working in unison. Again. Think back to the separation. Now they’re all back in the fold, and all of them have issues with the men in their lives. Even Maggie, although she won’t admit it. I’m worried about all of the girls. I knew they had a strong connection to one another. I’m just now realizing how strong that bond is. What if they can’t go back to having normal lives again? What then, Myra?”

“Oh, Annie, I don’t know. I have to admit, Charles and I did discuss this very thing a few days ago, and he is as worried as you are. That’s not to say I’m not worried, because I am. I think this is something the girls are going to have to work through on their own. I don’t think we should interfere. A nudge here or there, a few well-chosen words of advice, but that’s it.”

Annie whipped out a small bottle of hand sanitizer and motioned for Myra to hold out her hands. She squirted liberally. “Here come the girls. Shhhh.”

“Like you have to tell me that,” Myra murmured under her breath. She managed to work up a bright smile just as the waitress set down three glorious-looking pizzas.

The Sisters went back to their easy, comfortable banter as they devoured the pizza and swigged down the frosty root beer.

An hour later, Kathryn leaned back in her chair, and said, “Either I was starved or that was the best pizza I’ve ever eaten.” Alexis took issue with that statement and said the best pizza was from a place in Arlington named Tony’s. The girls were off and running again as each one offered her opinion.

Annie nudged Myra’s leg to drive her worried point home. Myra nudged back.

Myra reached for the check, whipped out some bills, and left a more-than-generous tip as the girls gathered up their bags to leave the restaurant.

The conversation during the ride back to Washington was mostly speculation on what was going to go down once they decided how to handle Virgil Anders’s book.

“Anders nailed the title,” Isabelle said. “My gut is telling me that Hank Jellicoe is going to go nuclear when he hears that book is out there. We need to figure out how we’re going to safeguard ourselves. The man knows where we all live. He’s been to Pinewood, and Myra’s electronic gate is not going to keep someone like him out.”

“We need to stay together. One on one, none of us is a match for him. And what about the guys and Maggie?” Alexis asked anxiously.

“I say we all stay out at the farm until we resolve this,” Nikki said. She turned to call out to Annie. “What is this going to do to your and Myra’s trip to Las Vegas?”

“A trip is easy to postpone. When we get home, we’ll fall back and regroup. Call everyone to meet us this evening at the farm. We need to come up with a plan,” Myra said.

“Then we should recruit Jack,” Yoko said. To Annie’s and Myra’s dismay, the girls went off into peals of laughter.

“They don’t look too worried to me,” Annie said. “Unlike you and me.”

“Oh, Annie, that’s because they are together. They are so tuned to one another, they are convinced that as a unit they can do anything, and that means capturing Hank Jellicoe. And, before you can ask me, no, I don’t think that’s going to work this time around.”

“I just love it when you are so cheerful and confident, Myra. Has it escaped your mind that you and I are the brains of this group?”

Myra laughed. “Don’t ever change, Annie. If you change, I won’t know what to do.”

“You’ll figure out something. Stop with the pearls, or the girls are going to think you’re worried.”

“Point taken, dear.”

Chapter 17

D
irector John Yantzy slammed the door of his office, his face purple with rage, the veins in his neck as thick as straws. “I don’t believe this! You’re supposed to be two of my best agents. That’s why I assigned you to this case. A rookie agent wouldn’t have screwed up like you two just did!

“You, Carpenter! You let a goddamn woman wrestle you out of a Bureau car and handcuff you to the goddamn door! And if that wasn’t bad enough you allowed a second woman to stomp on your nose and break it! You’re a goddamn senior federal agent, for crissakes, and you let this happen. And … they took your gun and your damn badge!

“As for you, Finn, you let some midget sell you a bill of goods about a black widow spider on your fucking neck! Son of a bitch, how stupid can you be? That Oriental vigilante is every bit as lethal as that bastard Wong. They’re married to each other, for crissakes.

“I’m putting both of you on unpaid leave for what you allowed to happen. Well, say something!” Yantzy bellowed. “Oh, and the local police filed a report. That’s going to be in the papers in the morning. The only goddamn good thing you did was not use the word
vigilante.
I’m waiting.”