The Collective (35 page)

“Maybe to save her. Maybe to kill her,” Chang replied.

“Agent Chang,” Voss said sharply.

Coogan stiffened, staring from one woman to the next and then to the next. “Maybe it’s time you clued me in as to what this case is really about.”

Voss glanced at him, then at Monteforte. “When we figure it out, we’ll let you know.”

As Chang started in on a question, they were interrupted by a shout. They all looked around to see Josh jogging toward them across the grass.

“Who’s this?” Monteforte asked.

“My partner,” Voss replied, before realizing it would sting.

Josh’s eyes were alight with frustration and unburnt energy. Voss knew the look—he needed to hit someone or get laid. Instead he studied the faces around him, then turned to her.

“We need to talk. Now.”

Voss glanced at the others. Josh and Nala Chang had started to get a little cozy, but he had doubt in his eyes, obviously wondering whether to include her. Chang saw it, too, and narrowed her eyes at the unintended insult. Whatever flirtation they’d been engaged in had just been polluted, big-time—but that was Josh’s problem.

“Excuse me a second,” Voss said to Detective Monteforte.

When she and Josh had put a dozen feet between themselves and anyone else, they stopped. Emotion rolled off him in waves but she couldn’t read it clearly—was he angry or suspicious or excited?

“What couldn’t you say in front of them?” Voss asked.

“Did Turcotte talk to you about the BOLO on the McCandless woman?”

“No. Why is that bad?”

“The BOLO identifies McCandless as a suspected terrorist.”

“What?” Voss looked across a sea of cop cars and federal agents, searching for Ed Turcotte. Instead, her eyes alighted upon a figure standing to the side observing, hands clasped behind his back. Norris.

Cait McCandless’s brother had died, at least according to the interview she’d given earlier in the day. Someone had tried to abduct her child. Two teams of armed men had shown up at her house, murdered one of her friends, and shot the hell out of the place and one another, and she’d obviously barely escaped with her life. Some of those men had apparently been terrorists. But to suggest that McCandless herself was a terrorist was not only a huge and irrational leap in logic, it might well make the difference between an arresting officer pulling a trigger or not.

“What the fuck is Turcotte thinking?” Voss muttered.

“No idea,” Josh said. “But isn’t it our job to find out?”

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

Side by side, they started back toward the McCandless house.

By the time they reached the exit for Millbury off the MassPike, the clock on the dash showed it was after midnight. Lynch had been adamant about not stopping at a rest area on the Pike and was less than thrilled about the prospect of stopping at all. Considering he had landed at Logan Airport and stolen the first car he’d found with a car seat already inside, then stopped and bought all the things he thought he would need for Leyla while hurrying to try to keep Cait and her daughter from being killed or abducted, he had done fairly well in preparing for their fugitive status. But he hadn’t counted on Cait’s shirt being soaked with baby piss.

“This is a bad idea,” Lynch said as he drove past darkened strip malls. The Target and Walmart were both closed, windows dark.

“Leyla needs something to wear that doesn’t smell like pee. Plus, I need to get her some Cheerios.”

“I have formula, jugs of water, baby cereal, and jarred food—”

“The jarred stuff is fine for the morning, but the easiest thing while we’re driving would be Cheerios. They’ll make her happy and keep her quiet. And I wouldn’t mind a new shirt for myself, either. Plus I could use caffeine to keep me awake and something to eat wouldn’t hurt.”

“One stop only,” Lynch said sternly. “We get what we can, and then we keep moving.”

Cait hesitated. Keep moving. Right. To meet up with his friends in some secret location he would not reveal to her. But at least he had gotten off the turnpike and was willing to stop at all.

“I really do know people who can help,” she said.

Lynch kept driving. Cait had figured in a place with so many fast-food restaurants and strip malls something would be open late. She was banking on it.

“My brother’s friend Herc … I need to call him. And there are guys from my unit in Iraq who would march through hell to cover my ass—fuck, they
have.
”

Up ahead, they spotted the illuminated sign for a 24-hour CVS pharmacy. Cait wished she could have felt some relief or gratitude, but all she wanted to do was scream. Not just at Lynch—the guy really did seem to be trying to help her the only way he knew how—but at the world, and at the sick freaks who thought the birth of a child could stop a war and killed babies to make sure that didn’t happen.

“All of those people work for the government, or used to,” Lynch said.

“My brother trusted Herc completely. And Ronnie and Jordan … either one of those guys would take a bullet for me, and me for them.”

Lynch grunted; Cait had not known him long enough to interpret the sound. He pulled into the CVS parking lot and drove to a spot snug up against a Dumpster at the back of the store, where the light from the lampposts barely reached.

He killed the bypassed ignition on the engine, then leaned over and opened the glove compartment, which revealed a pack of Marlboro Lights and a few old CDs. Cait tensed, the
gun comforting in her hand, but a moment later he pulled out a hard plastic eyeglass case.

“I thought I’d seen this in there,” he said as he opened the case and donned a pair of nondescript spectacles. “Must be a backup pair, or he only needs them for driving.” Lynch looked at her, squinting slightly behind the prescription lenses. “Wish I had a hat. Anything in particular you want me to try to get for you to eat?”

“At a CVS? It’s snacks or snacks, basically. Coke. Pretzels. Some of those Goldfish if they’ve got them. Aren’t you afraid I’m going to take off the second you’re inside the store?”

His eyes darkened. “How far would you get with a baby in your arms at midnight? If you bang on someone’s door, you risk them calling the police. If you try hitchhiking, you risk more than that. But if you think I’m completely out of my mind, that there’s absolutely no truth to what I’ve told you—which would beg the question of how I found you in the first place—then by all means, make a run for it. I’m not going to shoot a woman I’m trying to help. And I’m not going to hurt a baby.”

They locked eyes a moment, then Lynch climbed out, shutting the door quietly to keep from waking Leyla. That alone might have been the thing that kept her from running inside and telling the clerk he had kidnapped her, or trying to get to the pay phone she’d seen near the Bank of America kiosk a couple of parking lots back. She had no doubt the man lived on the fringe of lunacy; the look in his eyes was evidence enough. But she had to allow for the possibility that it was more fanaticism than insanity.

And he’d killed two men already to keep her and Leyla alive.

Cait glanced into the backseat. From around the edge of the rear-facing car seat, she could see that Leyla’s head had drooped forward. She set her gun on the floor, unsnapped her seat belt, and got onto her knees to reach back and adjust the baby’s position. A surge of love swelled inside her and she smiled. Leyla’s mouth still hung open. Her lower lip trembled a moment and then she sighed, her breathing returning to the soft rhythm of sleep.

With a sigh of her own, Cait righted herself in her seat, which brought her gaze to rest on the open glove compartment and the package of Marlboro Lights in there. She hadn’t had more than half a dozen cigarettes since returning from Iraq, but in the desert there had not been a lot to do to pass the time except clean the sand out of her weapon and smoke. The habit often disgusted her, but she could not deny its ability to calm her nerves.

She thought about Auntie Jane and Uncle George, and how worried they must be. At some point she would have to get a message to them, let them know she and Leyla were all right. But she had to be careful not to give them any information that the police, or anyone else, might be able to use to track her down. Whatever happened, she wanted to keep them as far away from this trouble as possible. They, and Leyla, were all the family she had left.

After a moment’s reconnaissance—they really were parked in the darkest corner of the lot, near a half-fenced enclosure around the Dumpster by the pharmacy’s back door—she pushed in the car lighter. As the seconds ticked by, she wondered how many people still used them to light cigarettes instead of to charge cell phones and other electronics.

A nervous glance back at Leyla, then she slid the Marlboro Lights from the glove compartment and tapped one out into her hand. Paranoid as Lynch was—and as paranoid as she needed to become—she know she should stay out of sight. But she could easily keep an eye out for anyone approaching and jump back into the car. A quick glance out the window showed her the security camera up on the side of the building. From the angle she couldn’t be sure if she would be within its range, but she could keep her back to it.

The lighter popped. No way would she smoke in the car with Leyla. She opened her door and lit the cigarette, taking a long drag to make sure it was burning before pushing the lighter back into place. Then she stepped out, cigarette pressed between her lips, and picked up the gun, which she slid into the rear waistband of her pants. They sagged, not made for this, but the gun remained in place.

She lowered her head and peered into the car to make sure she hadn’t disturbed Leyla; the baby slept on. So much for the cigarette calming her; she felt more agitated than before, just being outside the car. Steadying herself, she took another long drag and let the smoke plume out of her nostrils. Then another. By the third, her pulse had started to slow and her mind began attempting to sort out the mess she was in. Grief tried to shove at the edges of her mind, but Cait shoved back. No time for grief—not when Leyla’s life depended on how she handled herself from this moment forward.

A metallic creak made her jump. Biting down on the cigarette, she went to reach for the gun and then remembered the security camera aimed at her back, even as the back door of the CVS swung open and a young woman came out carrying two large garbage bags. Even in the dark, the moon provided enough light that the diamond stud in her nose glittered. Her features suggested India or Pakistan.

Breathe
, Cait told herself. Her right hand, which had been going for her gun, relaxed and she let it fall to her side as the girl caught sight of her.

“Oh!” the girl said.

“Hi,” Cait said, trying to look normal.

“Hi. Smoke break?”

“Yeah. My friend is taking a while. Figured I’d light up while I wait.”

“This is where we always come to smoke on our breaks,” the girl said as she tossed the lighter bag into the Dumpster and then hefted the other with both hands.

Cait wondered if she expected to be offered a cigarette now that she had made this revelation, but that wasn’t going to happen.

“Must feel like forever, working the night shift,” Cait said.

“Sometimes,” the girl admitted. “But we get a lot of people who work nights coming in. Well, not a lot, but you know what I mean. Enough. That, and people who need medicine in the middle of the night, parents whose kids have fevers, that sort of thing.” She seemed to realize she was talking a lot and grew sheepish. “Anyway, have a good night.”

“You, too,” Cait said.

The girl started to go inside, then paused thoughtfully and glanced back. After a second, a smile spread across her face. “I knew I recognized you.”

Cait froze, her stomach twisting. Lynch had been scanning radio channels for news stories on the shootings at her house, wondering if the police would bring the media into their search for her. So far they’d heard nothing, but maybe they had just missed it, like flipping TV channels trying to find the weather report. She plastered on a fake smile and dropped her cigarette, grinding it out with her heel.

“You do?”

She thought about the gun at her back and wondered if she could kill the girl if it meant keeping her daughter safe. But that would be murder. Cait could not commit cold-blooded murder. Not and live with herself. Which meant she had to think of another way to deal with this girl.

This smiling girl.

“Yes! I saw the video of you on TV kicking the crap out of that guy who was beating up his wife. A-Train? I watched it like ten times online. I posted it on my blog, even. That was just awesome.”

Cait trembled as she exhaled. “Thanks. It wasn’t … I mean, I didn’t enjoy it or anything, but somebody had to do it.”

“Totally.” The girl shrugged. “I’ve got to get back in there, but it was nice meeting you.”

“Yeah. Good night.”

When she had gone back in, pulling the door shut behind her, Cait sagged against the car. From inside she heard a small mewling, which meant that Leyla was on her way to waking up, and she needed her to get as much sleep as possible on this long, insane night. The baby would need a bottle soon, but Cait was anxious and wanted to get back on the road first. So she slipped into the car and began to sing softly—an old James Taylor song that her father had sung to her when she was a little girl, and that Sean had sung once or twice when she was young, just to make her feel better.