Linda gives her husband a hug. “I scavenged a few sleeping pills for you,” she whispers in his ear.
“I don’t need any damn pills,” Scott angrily whispers.
“We’re not going to argue about this, Scott. You’re exhausted and grumpy as hell,” Linda says before breaking the embrace and stepping back. “I still love you, though.” She reaches out and tenderly places a hand on her husband’s cheek. “You need to put what happened in that prison behind you, babe.”
“How exactly do I do that?” Butler asks.
Linda lowers her hand. “By talking it through. If you’re not going to talk to me, then talk to Freddy or someone else who endured that hellhole. Keeping it bottled up inside is not an option. And you know that.”
Butler nods. “I know, but if I talk about it I’m afraid I’ll relive it.”
“Maybe some of it. But right now, you’re reliving it every night. Maybe you should go talk to Tracy Green. I thinks she’s in the hospital today.”
“I’m not talking to a shrink. Hell, that woman’s got more than one screw loose.”
“Shh,” Linda says, looking around to see if anyone overheard. “Okay, not Tracy, then.”
Linda sighs in frustration. “There has to be someone you can confide in. What about your brother?”
“I can’t call him because there’s no phone service. I’ll get it worked out.”
Linda steps in closer and lowers her voice. “Bullshit.”
Butler holds his hands up about shoulder high. “Okay. I’ll talk to Freddy about it.”
“Good. Do I need to clue him in in case you forget?”
“No. I won’t forget.”
Linda leans in and gives Scott a peck on the lips. “If I didn’t love you I wouldn’t care.”
“I know. And I love you, too.” Butler takes a sip from his coffee cup. “What are we having for dinner?”
“Tonight I will be heating up the beef ravioli in meat sauce.”
Butler rubs his belly. “Sounds yummy. Can’t wait.”
Linda laughs. “I have to run. Love you, babe.”
“Love you, too. See you tonight.”
Butler takes off in search of Parker and finds him where he thought he would — at the nurses’ station. “Ready to roll, Freddy?” Butler asks.
“Yeah. Did you check on Clark and Perez?”
“We’ll come back later.”
“You mean when they brew a fresh pot of coffee?”
Butler shrugs. They make their way back to the truck and climb in. Freddy takes the wheel again and fires up the truck and pulls out of the parking lot. A mile down the road, Butler says, “Freddy, we probably ought to talk through some things…”
CHAPTER 91
Despite a worldwide manhunt, the man known as Basir Nazeri remains at large. How he slipped the quickly closing net is still unknown. FBI agents viewed vast quantities of traffic and pedestrian camera footage in and around Boston and have yet to find any trace of Nazeri. Current thinking is that he may have slipped onto a ship in Boston Harbor, and with his computer skills could have easily erased or covered his tracks some other way. The FBI is still trying to trace the calls from the landline phone inside the building. The calls were bounced around the world several times and whom Nazeri was communicating with remains unknown. In fact, much remains unknown about the man who caused so much death and destruction.
The one spot of good news, depending on a person’s political perspective, is that the president will fully recover after having his pacemaker replaced with one the authorities say is unhackable. Paige has been working around the clock with others from the NSA to dissect the computers captured in the raid and to unravel the worm that has compromised a large number of the nation’s computer networks. The dissection is almost complete, but ferreting out the malware is a job that will take months, if not years.
Now back at her spacious condo after many days away, Paige Randall closes the lid of her laptop and returns to the kitchen for another cup of coffee. She’s been running on coffee and energy drinks for days on end and she knows she needs to slow her intake of acidic drinks to give her roiling stomach a break. After taking another sip of coffee, she pours the rest down the sink, vowing to stop the caffeine cascade this very moment.
As she cleans the coffeepot she wonders what Peyton and Eric are up to. After Paige reached out to the FBI’s Chicago field office, a couple of agents were sent out to find her sister. It didn’t take them long to locate Peyton and Eric, who were still in the neighborhood, staying with one of her sister’s friends. Paige was shocked to learn about their house burning down, but the agents insisted her sister and brother-in-law were doing just fine and Paige had passed that information on to her mother, Frances. Surprisingly, Champlain still has power and cell service. Paige had been so busy that she and Frances have talked only briefly during the week, but her mother did let on that she might be seeing someone.
Paige smiles at that thought as she puts the carafe back in place. She’s happy for her mother. Exiting the kitchen, Paige walks down the hallway, enters her bedroom, and turns into her closet, searching for the perfect outfit for today’s lunch meeting. After pawing through the rows of slacks and jeans, she turns in another direction and selects a simple skirt and a sleeveless top and pulls out a pair of Tory Burch three-inch espadrilles. After laying everything out on her bed she slips into her spacious bathroom to shower. She doesn’t know what to expect from today’s meeting, but she’s hoping it turns out well.
Across town, Hank Goodnight steps out of the shower in his apartment and grabs a towel. He had spent most of the week in Boston searching for any clues that would lead to the capture of Basir Nazeri. But the clues are few. If Hank and the FBI didn’t have a picture of him they would think he doesn’t exist — a ghost. However, they do have a picture of the man, thanks to Hassan Ansari, and it’s been plastered on newscasts and newspapers all across the globe.
Ansari and the other four members of the terrorist gang are still being held at undisclosed locations and the interrogations are ongoing. Their lives and past actions are undergoing intense scrutiny while authorities debate which legal forum would be best for prosecution. Regardless of which court forum is eventually chosen, all five will never enjoy a single day of freedom for as long as they live. There have been murmurs of prosecutors wanting to seek the death penalty, and Hank won’t be surprised if that does occur, but he’ll fight to keep Hassan away from the needle.
Hank wraps the towel around his waist and runs a comb through his hair. He has a few butterflies about the upcoming lunch meeting only because he doesn’t know what to expect. The power is still out in D.C. and many other cities and towns across the country. Some portions of the grid will be repaired much quicker than others and the thinking is the electricity in the nation’s capital could be restored within days. He spoke with Nana earlier today on a landline phone at tribal headquarters. Her generator is still humming along and the Chickasaw Nation still has a good supply of fuel.
The stock markets are still a mess and it will be months before active trading begins again, if ever. The malware destroyed millions of documents and what money belongs to whom may never be sorted out. Hank opens the closet door and doesn’t spend a long time worrying about what to wear. He grabs a pair of jeans, a button-down shirt, and his cowboy boots. Elaine Mercer, his boss, hasn’t decided where his skills would be put to the best use, so Hank will continue his hunt for Nazeri until something new pops.