What if they all did? What if they’ve just been playing you ever since the beginning?
Less than forty-five minutes ago, she’d agreed to help the twins eliminate a national security threat, but there was a lot more going on here than met the eye, a lot of currents flowing beneath the surface, and she wasn’t sure she was in the right position at the moment to trace where they all came from or in which direction they were flowing.
The man who’d introduced himself as Jevin Banks was watching her closely, waiting for her response.
Honestly, she had no reason to doubt anything he or Ms. Antioch had said, especially considering the risk they’d taken getting this information to her, the effort of creating fake IDs and documentation, of working their way past three security check—
“Who are the twins, Dr. Colette?” I ask her.
She hesitates only slightly before answering. “Darren and Daniel are military-trained assassins.”
Oh.
Well, that made sense.
Darren, ending with an N; Daniel, ending with an L. Is that it? The reason for the initials?
I couldn’t be sure, and right now it didn’t matter.
But why would they target the commander-in-chief? Why, if they worked for the military? What possible motive could they have?
I realize that at the moment that doesn’t matter either. Their plan, whatever it consisted of, did.
“We need to stop them,” I tell her. “Do you know where they are?”
“No. But I’m supposed to meet them at 10:45. They told me we needed to move on it this morning.”
“Before the president’s speech,” Charlene notes.
“It would seem so. It won’t take long to send the electrical impulses to the electrodes once I get there. I’m not sure how long it would take for them to focus their thoughts, but I’m guessing not too long. Are you certain that it’s the president they’re trying to kill?”
“No,” I admit, “but—”
Her desk phone rings, startling all of us.
“Excuse me.” She picks up the receiver, listens to someone on the other end, acknowledges that she understands, then hangs up.
“There are two Secret Service agents at the front gate. They’re asking about you.”
Oh, not good.
Somehow they’d tracked us after all.
And now they were here, and undoubtedly, they were going to bring us in for questioning.
For a moment Dr. Colette stares out her office window at the trees surrounding the property, then picks up the phone again, taps in a number, and speaks into the mouthpiece. “Yes. Those two agents? Send them in.”
She hangs up.
So.
That’s how it’s going to go.
“If the Secret Service goes after the twins,” she explains, “there are going to be a lot of dead Secret Service agents out there. Daniel and Darren are that good. But they’ll listen to me, and they’re going to wait for me. I think I can stop them, stall them at least. And you know more about this than I do. I want you to come along.” She snatches up her purse and a small daypack. “We’ll take my car. By the time those agents get here to my office, we’ll be off the property. Let’s go stop the twins.”
Oh yeah.
That’s what I’m talking about.
“I could really grow to like this woman,” Charlene whispers to me as we hurry out the door behind her.
“Me too.”
The Embalming Room
Darren snapped the man’s neck as his brother took care of the woman just a few feet away.
Both of the targets died quickly and with very little struggle.
Darren let go and the man’s body thudded to the carpet. Daniel was more considerate, lowering the woman’s corpse gently to the floor.
Both the male funeral home director and his female embalmer lay staring unblinkingly at the ceiling.
They had, appropriately enough, died in the building where they’d prepared and then displayed so many other bodies. Dying in this place dedicated to the dead.
Darren closed the shades of the funeral home’s west-facing window.
The Schuylkill River flowed swiftly past the edge of the property, providing a panoramic view of the late autumn trees lining the other bank. A prayer garden and flower bed lay in the funeral home’s yard, but the lawn stretched fifty feet beyond them to the six-foot drop-off to the river.
The Faulkner-Kernel Funeral Home was located on River Road, less than twenty minutes from central Philly. The tranquil setting provided “a picturesque, restful setting that no other funeral homes in the city can offer,” according to the brochure the twins had picked up earlier while they were scouting out sites they might use.
A picturesque, restful setting for families to come and view the embalmed corpses of their loved ones.
A place far enough from the city center to allow for on-site cremation.
The brothers had wanted that option available to them for disposing of Dr. Colette’s corpse.
Out front, the hearse sat in the curving driveway leading to the front doors. Parking was limited, so Darren imagined that during an actual funeral, the people attending would have to park on the side of the narrow road winding along the riverbank. He’d parked their sedan behind the hearse.
He and his brother had needed a place where they would be isolated and would have equipment that Dr. Colette could use for any medical procedures she might have to do if things didn’t go as planned. So, a place that would have at least a rudimentary operating room.
The embalming room would work.
After all, that wasn’t the kind of place someone would be tempted to suddenly walk into, even if for some reason a visitor were to show up at the home. The room offered them everything they needed. Seclusion. Isolation. A private setting where they would be able to relax and focus their thoughts enough to kill the leader of the free world.
For a moment Darren studied the two bodies on the carpet. Then, for the time being at least, he and his brother laid them to rest in two of the caskets in the funeral home’s small but well-stocked showroom.
A pair of unfortunate but necessary civilian casualties.
He checked his watch.
10:29.
Twenty-six minutes before they were scheduled to begin with Riah.
“She’ll be at the exit at 10:45,” he told his brother. “I’ll call her a few minutes beforehand with the address. That should give us just enough time.”
Last-Minute Revisions
“Read me what we have.”
“Mr. President, I would rather—”
“I want to hear it while there’s still time to change it.”
Brennan Sacco had only been brought in as one of the president’s speechwriters six months ago, but he’d discovered right away that it was always this way with President Jeremiah Hoult — last-minute changes. Some of which never even made it to the teleprompter.
Now the presidential limousine caravan turned onto Market Street and passed Declaration House. Five limos so that no one would know which one actually carried the president. Today Brennan was in the fourth, along with the president and two Secret Service agents.
Yes, it was unusual for a speechwriter to work this closely with the president, but Hoult had always insisted that the most important part of his job was sharing his vision for the future with the American people, and the way to do that was through communication.
Obviously, he didn’t know that Brennan was being bribed by Dr. Cyrus Arlington to share his own communication with him, leaking the contents of the speeches concerning health care issues.