The Widow File (28 page)

“You’re the third person today,” Dani said, stepping forward, “who has said they’re going to kill me. The third today. That’s got to be a record, right? Do you know what makes Evelyn better than any of you? Poor sad crazy Evelyn? At least when she said she was going to kill me, she took credit for it. She owned it. She didn’t pass it off as some holy obligation coming from God himself. She was willing to pull the trigger and willing to own it. She didn’t need all this moral rationalizing pseudo-patriotic bullshit. You are nothing but bullshit.”

Mrs. O’Donnell put the gun in her pocket. “And you are nothing but fallout.” She raised her hand, her finger pointed to the sky. With a flick of her wrist, she dropped her hand, her finger pointing at Dani and Choo-Choo. A second later, two shots rang out.

Booker watched the van arrive. Just once he wished people like this would show up in a lemon yellow convertible or a beaten-up Impala, but no, the black panel van seemed to be standard issue for villains. Nobody stepped from the vehicle so Booker made himself comfortable on the curb in the shadows around yet another statue. He peered up at the wet bronze face—John Paul Jones. Water gurgled from bizarre-looking sea creatures at the statue’s feet. Funny, Booker thought, that they put in a water feature for a sea admiral when they could have just turned the statue around and given the man an eternal view of the Tidal Basin. Still it wasn’t a shabby spot for a Scot to be memorialized. The Washington Monument shone white and huge a few hundred yards to his right; straight ahead and less than half that distance, the World War II Memorial glowed yellow and somber.

It was a nice spot for a clandestine meeting, a place he would have picked himself for a hit. The wide open spaces, the broad pass of Independence Avenue behind him leading away from the Mall gave the illusion of safety but the lights of the many memorials played strange tricks bouncing off the wet pavement. Low wisps of fog hung close to the trees and
manicured shrubs. An unchecked imagination could make a person see figures darting through the night.

Booker’s imagination stayed put. He kept his focus on the black van parked less than fifty feet from where he sat. The streetlights made the moisture sparkle on the glossy paint job. The shadows could swallow him before anyone could step foot from the vehicle.

He didn’t know how much later he saw the trio arrive onto the broad walkway of the World War II Memorial. Interesting, he thought, watching the redhead charging ahead and Dani walking after her, arm in arm with the tall blond man. He had seen that man before. Booker rarely forgot a face. It didn’t matter now. Now he just wondered which one, if either of them, Dani could or did trust.

They argued and Booker smiled at the stubborn stomp of Dani’s little foot. She looked mighty out there holding her ground in the light of the memorial. The other two towered over her but Dani seemed to him the hardest force at play. He wanted to cheer for her. The redhead apparently lost the argument, because she walked off toward the van alone. The passenger window rolled down and she leaned in to talk with whomever sat inside. Booker watched Dani and the blond for a moment, swallowing down a flare of jealousy when he saw her rest her head on his shoulder. He indulged himself with one quick image of her head on his own shoulder, of Dani finding her comfort with him. Nothing to be done about it now.

The door to the van opened and Booker perked up. Maybe now he would finally get to see who was pulling the strings, who had the power to silence the news and silence the client. When the tall, black-clad figure stepped out, Booker let his head fall back.

“You have got to be shitting me,” he whispered to the sky. Mrs. O’Donnell? That iron bitch was the principal? He’d seen her tied to the chair in the van, her imperious posture and snotty expression looking down on him. He’d wanted to slap her just because he could, but the client had held his hand. Now he knew why. The whole kidnapping bit had been for show to get her off-site and into the driver’s seat. He’d been played. Unbelievable. He wished he’d slapped her when he had the chance.

He watched the two women walk into the pool of light and he knew what was going to go down. Four people stood together at the memorial,
only one was going to walk away. What he didn’t know was how many other figures were in play. Would Mrs. O’Donnell shoot them all herself? It didn’t seem likely. Not that she didn’t seem capable of murder. The woman looked like she’d bathe in the blood of kittens given the chance, but three people were difficult for one person to kill without some serious firepower. He’d bet she’d brought along a shooter.

He had to admire Mrs. O’Donnell’s approach. She started by dropping the redhead to the ground in a cloud of blood. That certainly got their attention. He tried to imagine what Dani must be feeling, industrious, clever Dani who probably kept her head down and did her job and cashed her check and never worried about things like climbing the ladder and impressing her boss. Now that the boss turned out to be the boogeyman, would she panic? Or would she get pissed? He bet she’d say something funny either way.

Mrs. O’Donnell’s voice echoed off the marble walls but Booker didn’t bother listening to her ramble. Villains and their speeches. They always loved the sound of their own voices. Instead he kept an eye on the van. Sure enough, once Mrs. O’Donnell had really hit her stride, he saw a man, all in black, slip from the van and pad quickly across the street toward the statue where Booker sat hidden. If the man in black’s attention hadn’t been so focused on his boss, he might have seen the figure in the shadows as he passed. Booker was smiling at the close call when a sliver of light fell across the shooter’s face, and then he groaned inwardly.

R. Mrs. O’Donnell’s sniper was the client’s obnoxious assistant, his “internal security consultant.” Booker had never picked up a clue. At that moment he knew that as soon as he finished this job, Booker was taking a vacation. His instincts clearly needed a break. This job had been a disaster since the get-go.

Booker rose from the curb, pulling the damp seat of his trousers away from his skin. He could see his breath in the mist but felt warm and comfortable. Staying in the shadows, he followed the sniper to his position on the Washington Memorial side of Seventeenth Street, directly across from Dani and company. Pretty nervy, he thought, striking a hit in such a public location.

R stood in a shooter’s stance, his attention on the targets in his sight. Booker watched him for a moment, wishing he would have the chance to
see R’s face when he realized it was Booker who killed him. But Mrs. O’Donnell raised her hand and R tensed and Booker knew he had to strike. Sliding the serrated blade out of its sheath, he slipped up behind R, ready to move his hand between the shooter’s left arm and his chin. With a simple flick, the blade would slice from jugular to jugular and blood would explode. But R was fast and got a shot off before the blade hit home, a second shot going wild as Booker leapt back from the blood spray.

Booker swore.

Dani had screamed.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The marble exploded behind Dani and half a second later her thigh erupted in pain. Before she could register the wound from the ricochet, another shot fired, this one hitting Choo-Choo square in the chest as he lunged to cover her. The force of the bullet threw him backward and for one horrible second he lay balanced over the low wall of the memorial, blood blossoming across the front of his shirt, his eyes wide with terror. Gravity and momentum won, throwing his body over the wall and down onto the level below. Dani screamed, jumping up to try to catch him or save him or touch him, but the wound in her leg screamed louder and she fell to one knee.

Mrs. O’Donnell screamed too, although hers was a scream of anger and impatience. “Shoot her! What are you waiting for? Finish the job!”

Dani crab-walked back against the wall, keeping her head beneath the ledge as if this would somehow make her invisible. Blood poured from the hole in her leg, making her slide as she scrambled to put distance between herself and her screaming former boss. When the yelling stopped, Dani listened for a sound from Choo-Choo but heard only the rush of the fountain and her own panicked breathing. Mrs. O’Donnell had turned from her, looking toward the lawn of the Washington Monument, and Dani stared, trying to see what she watched for.

It was Tom. Dani knew him from the set of his shoulders and the shape of his head. His white shirtsleeves had become transparent in the rain and his dark hair clung to his forehead but she knew him. He looked just as he had looked outside the hotel—warm and comfortable despite the icy air,
despite the purpose he was bending himself to. Dani had to squint to be sure but from where she sat, it looked like he was smiling at her.

“Well, well, well,” Mrs. O’Donnell said. “If it isn’t the freelancer. Trying to score a little overtime pay, Mr. Booker? Because I must say that you—”

Booker fired without breaking stride, the bullet hitting her in the center of the forehead. “Shut up,” he said as her body collapsed in a heap. “God almighty, does she ever shut up?” He stopped less than twenty feet from where Dani huddled. “How badly are you hurt?”

Dani blinked several times, her thoughts refusing to line up in any orderly fashion. She managed to get to her feet, pressing her fist into the wound. “I think I’m supposed to say it’s just a flesh wound.”

He laughed, his smile bright in darkness. “People say it’s only a flesh wound when it’s someone else’s flesh that got wounded.” He turned to stare at Mrs. O’Donnell’s body. “So who are they? Or should I say, who are you? CIA? NSA? Homeland Security?”

“I don’t know,” Dani said truthfully, sliding herself sideways. “I haven’t really found out. I don’t think any of the answers is better than another.”

Booker shook his head, muttering something to himself. He pulled out a handkerchief, wiped down the gun, and tossed it onto Mrs. O’Donnell’s body. The action should have reassured her—Booker was throwing down his weapon—but the resignation in his posture set off alarms in her mind.

She had a bad leg and a very short head start, but everything in Dani’s body told her to run.

Booker threw the gun onto Mrs. O’Donnell’s body. They’d never trace it back to him. There was no point in carrying it anymore. Gunshots on the Mall tended to make the police nervous. He was running out of time. The last bits of this job were going to have to be done by hand. The thought of killing Dani with a gun seemed vulgar and cold, in any event. He wanted to feel the blade sink into her flesh. He wanted to see her eyes when she died. He owed her that.

When he looked back and saw her limping into the shadows, he had to smile again. That took guts. From what he could see, the wound on her
thigh was messy. That she could run at all told him it had missed the major infrastructure of the leg, but still, it probably hurt like hell. Never let it be said Dani Britton lacked grit, he thought. He called out to her.

“Dani, stop. Don’t do this to yourself. I get it. You’re tough. It doesn’t have to be like this.” It really didn’t, but as he set off at a casual stroll after her, he had to admit that he was more than a little glad it was like this.