“Unless Maddux got that smoke bomb off before whoever it was had a chance to take out the rest of us, too.” Travers hesitated. “And wasn’t necessarily on either of our sides.”
Troy wanted to make sure of something before this conversation went any further. “You know Maddux defected, right?”
Travers nodded. “Oh, yeah.”
“How’d you find out?”
“And I know he and Ryan O’Hara tried to kill President Dorn a few weeks ago in Los Angeles,” Travers kept going without answering. “O’Hara’s the one who tried to kill me in Delaware.”
Troy glanced up. He was aware that Travers had dodged the question, and he wanted an answer. But he’d get to it later. “What?”
“O’Hara and another young gun were the ones who ambushed Harry Boyd and me in Wilmington two days ago.”
That didn’t make sense to Troy. “But they aren’t the ones who brought you down here to the farm. I thought that was Kohler.”
“It was Kohler,” Travers confirmed. “I took out O’Hara and the other guy after they got Harry. Kohler got me later, at my place in the Appalachian Mountains.” He stopped gulping down food for a moment. “Hey, you think you got Maddux when you shot the basement up?”
“I doubt it.”
“Me too. I always heard that guy basically survives everything.”
Something else occurred to Troy. “You know, I don’t think O’Hara was trying to kill you in Delaware. I think he was trying to do the same thing Kohler actually did. Maddux wanted you under his control. He didn’t want you dead. He made that clear in the basement. I think O’Hara was trying to bring you to Maddux, not kill you.”
Travers had been about to eat a mouthful of hash browns, but he stopped the fork’s progress in front of his mouth for a moment. “Maybe.” He shrugged then ate the bite hungrily. “How was I supposed to know? I didn’t even know who they were when they killed Harry. I was just trying to survive at that point. And they were shooting while they were chasing me.”
“From what I’ve heard about Ryan O’Hara, if he was trying to hit you he would have, even if you were a moving target.”
“He missed the president in Los Angeles.”
“Well—”
“He didn’t kill him. That’s what I meant. He hit him, but he didn’t assassinate him.”
“Only because Rex Stein deflected the bullet at the last second by diving in front of Dorn on the platform.”
“How did Stein know? Who tipped him off? I never heard an explanation of that in the media.”
Troy hesitated. “My brother Jack called him on the stage.”
“Your brother’s in RCS, too?”
“No.” He quickly explained to Travers what had happened — about Jack going to Alaska and stopping the LNG attack, about his calling Stein on the stage, and then about Maddux shooting Jack.
“Now I get what you and Maddux were going back and forth about in the basement. Sorry about that.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“So who was Lisa?”
Troy gave Travers an even briefer explanation about her.
Travers shook his head. “You must really hate that guy.”
Troy glanced at the entrance. A Middle Eastern family was standing there waiting to be seated. The man and two small boys were dressed in casual pants and shirts. But the woman wore a full-length black cloak along with a traditional abaya over her head and neck, which left only a thin space for her to see.
“How’d Maddux get down into the basement?” Travers asked as he took another big bite of food. “You guys checked that place out hard. I watched you. It was like he came out of nowhere.”
“Like a ghost,” Troy agreed as the hostess led the family to a booth near the back of the restaurant. The booth was well away from where anyone else was sitting. “I don’t know, Major. There had to be a hidden access from outside or from another floor. I know there was no other stairway down there from the first floor.”
“I guess.”
“How did Kohler find you?” Troy asked. Other patrons in the restaurant were watching the Middle Eastern family closely. Troy could feel the hatred building around him. It was almost palpable. It wasn’t right; it was totally misguided. Unfortunately, it was human. “Where were you?”
“I’ve got a place in the mountains west of Washington, DC. That’s what I was telling you before. It’s where I go when I need to hole up. It’s in the middle of nowhere in the woods. It’s really just a shack.” Travers shrugged. “I don’t know how in the hell he found me there.”
Troy gestured to Travers without looking at him. He was watching two men on the far side of the restaurant who seemed to be taking more than just a passing interest in the family, which had just sat down in the booth. “Check this out.”
Travers followed Troy’s gaze. “What’s up?”
“Maybe nothing, maybe something.” A moment later the two men they were watching stood up from their table and headed toward the family. “Christ,” Troy muttered. “Here we go.”
Words had already been exchanged by the time he reached the table.
“You people ought to leave,” one of the men was saying to the family, “before one of you gets hurt.”
“And don’t ever come back,” the other man hissed. “Or one of you will definitely get hurt.”
The two little boys were terrified, and their father seemed paralyzed. The woman was holding one hand to the thin opening of the abaya.
“What’s the problem?” Troy asked evenly.
The men spun around toward Troy and stepped a few paces back, obviously surprised. But they collected themselves quickly.
“Don’t get involved, boy. This ain’t your fight.”
“Yeah, it is. When you treat someone—”
One of the men reached inside his jacket. Before Troy could react, Travers had cut in front and put the man to the ground with a single, vicious right to the jaw. Travers grabbed the pistol the man had been going for — it had clattered to the floor beside him — and leveled it at the other man, who threw his hands in the air.
“Don’t shoot!”
Troy stared at Travers for several moments, then glanced down at the man, who lay prone on the floor, not even moving. That was impressive.
“Come on, Captain,” Travers said with a thin smile. “Let’s go.”
Troy nodded, still impressed by what he’d just witnessed. “Yeah, right.”
That afternoon Jacob Gadanz left the office at three-thirty. It was the first time he’d left his business before eight o’clock at night in three years. He was waiting for Elaina and Sophie when they got off the school bus, and he hugged each of them tightly before holding their hands as they walked on either side of him all the way back to the family’s townhouse.
Sasha knew something was wrong. If everything had been all right, he never would have come home so early this afternoon and then gone right to the bus stop after asking her where it was.
But she was too afraid to ask him what was wrong. The only reason Jacob would have come home this early was because he was scared. And that frightened her more than she could have ever anticipated. In their sixteen years together, she’d never seen Jacob Gadanz even remotely scared. He was the bravest man she’d ever known. Perhaps because of who his brother was. And what difference did it make?
But Jacob was terrified today. She’d seen it all over his face as soon as he’d walked in the door — which was why she was sobbing uncontrollably in the bathroom off the bedroom with the door locked. His terror had petrified her.
And then there was that other thing that was driving her insane and making the tears flow like rivers. She knew a little about what was going on — by accident, of course, but she knew. She’d stumbled on it so now she understood a shred of the terror she’d seen on Jacob’s face. She wished to Almighty God she didn’t, but there was no denying it.