Fires of Autumn (31 page)

“How long
is this recording?” she asked him, realizing her voice was trembling.

“About
twenty five minutes,” he said. “What’s he doing?”

Casey’s mind
was whirling and she struggled to give him an answer, any answer, that wouldn’t
have him running off and telling someone. She didn’t want any of this getting
around.

“I… I, uh,
asked him to help me with a project,” she moved away from the monitor; she couldn’t
look at it anymore. “That must be what he’s looking for.”

“What
project?” Chris wanted to know.

“None of
your business,” she snapped. “It’s something for the President.  Where is
Sheridan, anyway? Have you seen him around?”

Chris
shook his head. “He’s not working today.”

Casey
froze at her desk, her heart suddenly leaping into her throat. “I thought he
was scheduled.”

Chris was
messing around with his monitor. “Harrios has the detail today. Sheridan is
off.”

“Are you
sure?”

“Positive. 
Harrios told me when he was down here earlier in Sheridan’s office.”

“Oh,”
Casey was ready to burst into tears right at that moment.   She had to get out
of there before she made a fool of herself, so she grabbed a couple of folders
off her desk and crammed them into the picnic basket to pretend that she had
what she had come for.  “Well, I’d better get home.  I guess I’ll see you on
Monday.”

Chris
looked up as she made a break for the office door. “What do you want me to do
with this recording?”

Casey
paused in the doorway.  Everything about her was trembling and it was a
struggle for her to remain calm as she answered him.  She wanted to erupt but
she fought it.

“Just
erase it,” she said as steadily as she could. “I’m not worried about it since
he was… um, helping me… with a project….”

Chris just
shrugged and went back to his computer as Casey very quickly headed out of the
West Wing.  She couldn’t even think at the moment.  She was beginning to feel
like the biggest fool in the world and the mere thought that Colt had been
playing her had her shattered as she had never been shattered in her life. She
was cracking and pieces of her were bleeding out all over the place, leaving a
trail of heartbreak.  She practically ran to her car and tossed the picnic
basket in the back, slamming her car door and turning the key as the painful
tears came.

Body
wracking sobs hit her. She couldn’t drive. She couldn’t see. All she could feel
was betrayal.
He had lied to her
.  He wasn’t working at all. Turning off
the car, she climbed into the backseat and wept until she could weep no more. 
As the sun set over the capital of the United States of America, Casey passed
out from sheer exhaustion in the back seat of her car.

When her
cell phone rang around six thirty in the evening and she saw that it was Colt,
she threw the phone over the side of the parking structure.

***

“I don’t
even know why I agreed to talk to you,” the woman said. “Last time this subject
came up, I think someone tried to kill me.”

Colt was
sitting in the Southwest Grille in Iselta Pueblo, New Mexico, about ten miles
south of Albuquerque’s International Sunport.  The town was little dusty, and
the Grille was more of a dive than an actual restaurant, but it was the only
place Katy would meet him.   In jeans, cowboy boots, a big cowboy hat and dark
sunglasses, Colt didn’t look anything like his usual self as he sat in the
booth opposite the hesitant woman.  He was a reporter from the Washington Post
and that’s all she needed to know.

“I read
your article,” he avoided the assassination comment. “Thanks for taking the
time to talk with me about it. I won’t keep you long, I promise, but I’m doing
some research for an article of my own and I want to know how you came across
all of this information on Talbot.”

Katy was a
small woman with a bob haircut, looking a little bit like the old silent screen
star Louise Brooks with the shape of her face against the haircut.  She was
clearly uncomfortable with the subject matter.

“Look,”
she lowered her voice seriously. “I’m just a journalist. I don’t have any
political ambitions. All I want was the truth, and the truth is that my
photographer friend took pictures of Russell Talbot at a private airstrip in
Socorro National Park meeting with guys who flew in on a plane registered in
Bogota, Columbia.”

Colt
listened with interest. “That’s what your article said,” he replied. “But I
want to know what makes you think that plane was part of the Columbian drug
cartel and why you think President Talbot was involved with them?”

Katy
looked around to make sure no one was listening.  “You’re sure you weren’t
followed?”

“I wasn’t
followed. Just tell me what you know.”

She sighed
heavily. “I was a freelance reporter back then,” she said quietly. “My
photographer friend – he was my boyfriend at the time – was an amateur
astronomer and he used to do a lot of hiking back in the mountains near
Magdelena Ridge.  One day, he’s up in the foothills and sees this plane fly
in.  There were trucks there to meet the plane and he saw them offloading
packages and loading them into the trucks.  He saw it twice more on his hikes
up there.  Then, he started taking pictures with a telephoto lens because he
thought they might be smugglers and he wanted to turn them over to the cops.”

“Did he?”

Katy shook
her head. “One day, we got to examining the pictures,” she said. “I had a
friend at the department of motor vehicles and asked her to run some of the
license plates on the trucks. Turns out they were registered to Eric Travis,
who’s a huge supporter of Russ Talbot. He also owns the land that the planes
were landing on and I think his son now works for the President. Anyway, one
day I decided to go with my boyfriend on his hike and we saw another plane land
so we began taking pictures.  When we developed them, we saw Russ Talbot as
plain as day driving one of the trucks.  After I wrote the article of my
suspicions, some men came to our house, tore the place up, broke the cameras,
and destroyed all of the film they could get their hands on.  They told us that
if we didn’t forget what we saw then they’d burn the place down over our heads
and make it look like an accident.  I didn’t believe them until they beat my
boyfriend up so badly that he had to have surgery.”

Colt
sighed faintly. “Did they ever identify themselves?”

Katy shook
her head, edgy with the bad memories. “Never,” she said quietly. “But I saw
Russ Talbot on television a few weeks later and one of those men was on
television with him, like his bodyguard or something.  Whoever they were worked
for Russ when he was governor of New Mexico.”

Colt
pondered the information, pausing when the waitress brought them a couple of
Coke’s.  When the waitress wandered away, he leaned forward onto the table with
his hands folded thoughtfully.

“So you
believe, based on what you saw, that then-Governor Russell Talbot was allowing
drug smugglers to land their planes in the New Mexico desert?”

Katy
nodded firmly. “Yessir,” she replied. “I saw it with my own eyes.”

“Do you
remember the time period?”

“I saw it
myself in September of 1998,” she said. “My boyfriend saw it several more times
prior to that. Russell Talbot is crooked, Mr. Sheridan, and that’s the truth.”

Colt sat
back in the booth, scratching his scalp beneath the big cowboy hat.  After a
moment, he took the glasses off and set them on the table top, wiping the sweat
from around his eyes and digesting everything he’d been told.  It only
confirmed what they’d already heard.

“It’s too
bad all of the photos were destroyed,” he said regretfully. “I would have liked
to have seen them.”

“What
would you do with them if you
did
see them?”

Colt
wriggled his eyebrows. “Use them.”

“For
what?”

“For
whatever I had to do. Maybe my article will succeed where yours didn’t.”

He took a
sip of his cola.  As he did, Katy dug into her backpack and pulled forth a
wrinkled white envelope, setting it on the table between them.  It was worn and
dirty, and Colt eyed it.

“What’s
that?” he asked.

For the
first time since they met, Katy seemed to loosen up.  A faint smile came to her
red-hued lips.

“They
didn’t get everything,” she whispered. “Good luck.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

It was
almost eleven o’clock at night when Riley’s cell phone rang.  The number was
restricted but she answered it anyway.

“Hello?”
she practically shouted.

There was
a long pause on the other end of the line. “Riley?” it was a deep male voice.
“This is Colt Sheridan. Is Casey there?”

“No!”
Riley was in a panic. “She left around two this afternoon and we can’t find
her. She hasn’t called or anything.”

Standing
in his living room, Colt’s worst fears were confirmed. He’d spent the past five
hours calling Casey’s cell phone every five minutes, but it went straight to
voicemail.   He’d finally called a guy he knew who worked for Verizon and was
able to get Riley’s number, but now her panic was feeding his.  He felt like he
couldn’t breathe.

“Where did
she say she was going?” he asked with more calm than he felt, moving to go find
his coat.

“She
didn’t,” Riley sounded as if she was verging on tears. “She kept saying how bad
she felt that you were working today, so she made some turkey sandwiches and
took off. I assumed she was going to find you. She didn’t find you?”

Colt’s
stomach dropped to his knees.  “Did she say she was going to the White House?”

“No,”
Riley was losing her battle against tears. “But she kept talking about you and
how it wasn’t fair that you didn’t get any turkey.   When I asked her where she
was going, she grinned and was really cagey about it, you know? I think she was
going to surprise you with some turkey. Oh, my God… are you saying she never
made it to the White House?”

Colt’s
heart was thumping so strongly against his chest that he felt faint. He
couldn’t remember ever feeling such terror, grasping the closet door for
support as he tried to pull out his coat.

“Did you
call the cops?” he demanded.

“Yes,”
Riley replied. “They won’t take a Missing Persons report until it’s been
twenty-four hours. She’ll be dead in twenty-four hours!”

“Like
hell,” he growled. “Riley, listen to me; I’m going to go look for her, okay?
I’ve got more resources at my disposal than the cops do.  I’m going to find
her. You said that you think she went to the White House?”

“I think
she was going to surprise you with turkey because you had to work.”

Colt
managed to get his coat on one arm, swearing softly as he thought of Casey
going to the White House when he wasn’t even there. He struggled to pull his
thoughts together.

“I’ll
start there,” he said. “You stay home and call me if she calls you, okay?”

“Okay,”
Riley agreed, feeling vastly better now that Colt Sheridan was on the hunt for
Casey. “I’ll let you know right away if she calls.”

“Thanks,”
he said, grabbing his keys. “I’ll call you in a bit.”

He hung up
and bolted from his townhome, out to the garage where his car was.  He peeled
down his driveway, throwing the car into gear once he hit the street and
tearing off towards the White House.

His first
thought was to hit their parking garage to see if her car was there. He didn’t
know where else to start. As he blew through red lights and raced to the
neighborhood surrounding the White House, he struggled with all of the panic he
was feeling; panic for Casey’s safety, panic that she may have discovered he
had lied to her about working on Thanksgiving, wondering what in the hell he
was going to tell her. God, he hated himself for having been put in this
position but he hated Meade more.  He hated that old man for giving the orders,
for forcing the directives. But the truth was that Colt had no one to blame but
himself.  He was responsible for his own actions. 

Up until
the past few weeks, his career had been perfect. No slip ups, not even a minor
mistake. Everything had been as it should be. But the introduction of Casey
Cleburne had changed everything and suddenly, he wasn’t thinking of his career
anymore or the secret directives he’d been tasked with. He’d only been thinking
of her and of this wonderful life he’d never known to exist.  He wanted nothing
more than to settle down with her and have a few children, watching them grown,
taking them to soccer games or putting band aids on scraped knees.  It’s what
he wanted most in the world but he didn’t realize that until recently.  Casey
had changed his whole life.