"Well, I dunno…"
"I do know. This has to be done." She hesitated, then said, "Look, I'm in the city myself. If it looks like she's definitely going to Reagan, you call me and I'll come out there. You need to see which flight she gets on."
"What are we gonna do, follow her?"
"If we have to. We can't be on the same flight, so just watch where she's going, and if we have to, we'll go over to Dulles or BWI to get the first one after that."
"This is getting a little crazy…"
"Crazier than waiting around for her to come after us both and kill us? Listen, Jesse, it's kill or be killed now. We're in this together."
"I ain't goin' back to prison."
"I promise you, if you help me take care of her, so we're both safe, you will never have to worry about money for the rest of your days."
He didn't know much about lawyers, about how much money they made. But he suspected it was a lot. Enough to get him far away from this stinking state, anyway. Far from his mother's angry, disgusted eyes. Far enough to start a whole new life.
"Okay, Ms. Vincent, you got a deal."
She was headed for the beach house. Wyatt had no doubt of that. Lily was being hunted, tracked, and in her mind, there was only one safe place in the entire world-the place of Wyatt's darkest nightmares, the place where he'd taken her to recover from her darkest nightmare.
The fact that the Jeep was missing from the long-term parking lot at the Portland airport confirmed it.
"Damn it," he said as he drove his rental car toward the Maine coast. "It's not safe."
Crandall knew Wyatt had been traveling to Maine recently. It wouldn't take long for the deputy director's goon squad to find out Wyatt owned property there. They'd be on her doorstep before Lily managed to gain one moment of peace.
There was but one consolation in this whole mess. Wyatt truly believed he'd identified their unsub, the person who had been trying to finish what Roger Underwood had started.
His stepsister, Claire Vincent.
Wyatt had a lot of questions for the woman, and he'd ask them sooner or later, whether as an official FBI agent or not. He would not rest, would not stop, until he'd found out if she was guilty, and ensured she never got near Lily again.
Thank God the woman had no way of knowing about the beach house. She should be going about her business today, having no idea Wyatt had figured out she might very well be the one who had killed those four men.
It was crazy, far-fetched even, that a woman, a respected attorney, could have done such things. But Wyatt knew from experience that female serial killers existed, and could be just as deadly as male ones.
He had seen Judith's eyes, had seen the hint of recklessness in them, and was certain it had come from her years of marriage to a psychopath such as Roger Underwood. Claire had been wholly within his sphere of influence for decades; she had been his teenage lover, had worshipped the ground he'd walked on. What wouldn't she do?
He knew no details. He didn't need them. That sixth sense told him she was someone he needed to talk to. And he'd do it just as soon as he got Lily to safety, even if that safety was in custody in the Hoover Building.
"Come on, Lily, call me!"
He glanced at his personal cell phone, not the one he used for work, which lay open on the passenger seat. He already knew she didn't have her cell phone with her; it was still at his place in Washington. He'd dialed the beach house several times since landing, getting no answer, but didn't read anything into that. The evening was a windy one, with dark clouds gathering to the east. Phone service on the beach was notoriously unreliable.
It was also possible she wasn't even there yet at all. He had no idea which flight she'd been on out of D.C. Maybe she hadn't beaten him by much. He'd heard about her escape from Brandon more than an hour after it had occurred, but it hadn't taken too long to get to the Richmond airport, and then to get on a flight to Maine. She might not be more than minutes ahead of him.
But it was also possible she had already arrived at the house and walked into an FBI ambush. He had been out of touch with Washington for several hours and had absolutely no way of knowing.
He still couldn't wrap his mind around what had happened this morning. Brandon hadn't known a lot, just the brief details he was able to get from Jackie before they took her away for questioning. Then Brandon and the others had been taken in, too. Anspaugh's doing, no doubt.
"Anspaugh, you son of a bitch," he growled, filled with such rage, he knew he'd do something violent the next time he saw the man. Because he had no doubt Anspaugh had done something to make Lily panic like she had. From what Brandon had told him, she had been cooperating even when Anspaugh had insisted he accompany her while she changed.
When the phone rang, he started, felt his heart race. Grabbing it, he saw a familiar name. Not the call he was waiting for, but a person he trusted. "Hello?"
"It's Christian."
Christian Mendez, one of the new members of the team. One of the only two members not currently being questioned by a raging Deputy Director Crandall, or so Wyatt suspected.
"What is it?"
Christian was a pro, an excellent agent who'd worked with the DEA in south Florida trying to put a crimp in the drug trade. He was a man of few words, and he never wasted them.
"They just let me go. Anna, too. The others are all still being questioned, and every one of you is on suspension."
"As expected."
Christian didn't ask questions, didn't want to know why he and Anna had been excluded. He didn't even call Wyatt a stupid son of a bitch for being so reckless and leading his team with him into total destruction. He simply said, "What can I do to help?"
"There's nothing. Fm on my way to find Lily, and I'm going to bring her in."
"You know where she is?"
"I think so."
Christian didn't ask, as if knowing Wyatt would never tell him. Wyatt trusted the man, but that didn't mean he would let his guard down completely. Not when it came to Lily's safety.
"All right. Call me before you bring her. I'll make sure there are plenty of witnesses this time, though I don't think there's going to be any trouble."
"Why?"
"I know the truth. We all know. Once it got so serious, one of Anspaugh's own men admitted that he'd gone upstairs to see what was taking so long, and heard Anspaugh attack her."
Wyatt’s hand gripped the steering wheel so hard, the leather pattern imprinted itself on his skin. "He's a dead man."
"I didn't hear you say that," Christian said coolly.” The point is, everybody's on this thing-it goes well above Crandall. Nothing is going to happen to Lily-she'll be treated with kid gloves-as long as she turns herself in. And once we clear her of these murder charges, this should all go away."
Maybe for Lily, the only innocent party in all this. Not for Wyatt or his team, however. He wasn't foolish enough to imagine they'd all escape unscathed.
That, however, was the decision they'd made. He only wished the rest of them wouldn't have to face the consequences. He didn't care about himself-as long as Lily was all right, he would pay any price the bureau asked him to. As much as he liked his job, and knew he did it well, it wasn't as though he actually needed to work.
But the others deserved so much better than to be punished for hard work and loyalty.
Hopeful, given what Christian had told him, he took a chance and said, "Look, let them know I'm going to bring her in, all right? They don't need to come at her guns blazing, even if they do figure out where she is. I'll have her back in Washington by tomorrow."