The soft knock on the door interrupted a harsh sob, and she held her breath. Now she knew what it felt like to be hunted.
“Sasha.”
“Go away, Jacob.” She didn’t want him to see her like this. “Please.”
“The girls are wondering why you’re in here.”
She pressed a tissue to the bottom of her eyelids. “They’re wondering why you met them at the bus stop, too.”
“Please open the door, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart. He hadn’t called her that in years. “Please go away, Jacob,” she begged through the bathroom door. “Please.”
CHAPTER 22
It seemed strange to Troy to have to sneak into his parents’ house in Connecticut. He never had before, but Bill was requiring it this time. He’d made them wait until nightfall, too, so they had the cover of darkness. Because Travers was with Troy, Bill had claimed — he was taking absolutely no chances on anyone seeing that.
But Troy had a feeling Bill would have been this cautious even if it had just been the two of them meeting tonight — which meant his father was worried about President Dorn monitoring everything they were doing. That was the only explanation he could think of for this intense level of stealth.
It also meant Stewart Baxter was probably operating behind the scenes on Dorn’s behalf, which made it likely that Dorn had told Baxter everything he knew about Red Cell Seven. Bill’s gamble of letting the president get his nose even farther under the cell’s tent wasn’t paying off. Bill was trying to be reasonable, but Dorn was showing his true colors, even in the face of the Holiday Mall Attacks.
Once a dove, always a dove, his father had always preached. The mantra had been drilled into Troy’s head over and over as he was growing up. Even about Jack, who always banged the liberal drum — sometimes just to irritate their father, Troy believed. Still, it begged the obvious question: Why would Bill violate his own mantra now, especially when the fight involved the president?
As ordered, Troy and Travers had taken a roundabout route to the Jensen property outside Greenwich. An hour ago they’d hopped a cab at the Westchester Airport after flying in on the Jensen plane from Raleigh. And Troy had directed the confused driver to drop them off in the middle of nowhere, in the woods on a lonely country road several miles from the house. They’d hiked the rest of the way through the forest.
Finally, they’d come through the tree line and into the open at about the spot where Troy thought Maddux had been when he’d shot Jack. Then they’d jogged the last few hundred yards across one of the pastures to a back basement door Bill had unlocked after ordering his five-member private security force to stand down for a few minutes and take a quick break from watching the perimeter.
The three of them had then gone directly to the card room of the large finished basement after Bill had resecured the door and turned the alarm back on. It was an interior room that had no windows. His father was being careful about everything. Troy had never seen him this uptight or worried. Usually, you couldn’t tell from his face what he was feeling. But the grim, stony expression was an obvious tip-off.
“What happened in North Carolina?” Bill asked as they all sat down around the six-sided table covered by soft green felt.
“We got this guy out,” Troy answered, gesturing at Travers. “Unfortunately, we lost the two agents who went with me to rescue Major Travers.”
Bill winced. “I’ll check to see what the family situation is for both of them. We don’t have many married men in the cell, but there are a few. If they were married, I’ll take care of their families.” He drummed the felt tabletop with his fingertips. “So what happened?”
“Maddux showed up,” Travers answered for Troy. “One second he was nowhere, the next he was right in front of us. It was like he stepped out of thin air right in front of us. He shot the other agents in the head before they even knew what was happening. Real clean shots, too, dead-on-impact accurate. Then he had a knife at Troy’s throat.”
“Crazy,” Bill muttered under his breath. “That guy still amazes me even after twenty years.”
“Agents Wyoming and Idaho cased the grounds and the other buildings with me before we went down to the basement looking for Major Travers,” Troy explained. “Maddux was not around, Dad.”
“There’s no way to know for sure,” Bill said. “And it isn’t your fault you didn’t find him if he actually was there. Sometimes I don’t think Shane Maddux would show up on an infrared camera after running a marathon in the dark.”
“Maybe not even on a regular camera on a sunny day,” Travers cracked.
“Maybe not.”
Bill was preoccupied and hadn’t even come close to a smile at Travers’s remark. “He’d definitely recruited Nathan Kohler out of RCS,” Troy said. “Now Kohler’s dead, too.”
Bill looked up from a pad of paper he’d been writing on. “Oh?”
He’d been penning a note about checking on the family situations of the two dead agents, Troy saw. “Someone else showed up in that basement in North Carolina while we were down there.”
Bill put the pen down. “Who?”
“Don’t know, Dad. But whoever it was shot Kohler dead and then bolted when Maddux dropped a smoke bomb for cover. I didn’t get a look at the guy’s face. It all happened too fast.”
Father and son stared at each other for several moments across the green felt before Bill’s gaze shifted to Travers. “How did Kohler find you at your place in the mountains? How in the hell did he know you were even there, Major?”
Travers shrugged. “I have no idea, sir.”
There was a soft knock on the door. All three men sat straight up in their chairs as they glanced quickly at the door.
“Yes?” Bill called as he stood up.
“It’s me, dear.”
Troy recognized his mother’s voice as Bill pointed at Travers and then to a closet in a corner of the room. When Travers was inside with the door shut, Bill let Cheryl in. She gave him a quick kiss and moved to where Troy was standing after he’d risen from his chair as well.
“Hello, Mother.”
Cheryl Jensen was tall and slim. In her late fifties, she looked much younger than that to Troy. Every time he saw her he thought that.
“What do you have there?” he asked, pointing at the bundle in her arms.
“Someone who misses you,” she answered. As she leaned in to give Troy a kiss on the cheek, she carefully handed him the blue knit blanket and the baby wrapped inside it. “Someone you need to spend more time with.”
Troy smiled as he glanced down at Little Jack. He was damn cute even if he was only a few months old. Most babies looked the same to Troy, and not cute at all. In fact, some of them were downright ugly, even when everyone was oohing and aahing over them.
L.J. was different. He was definitely cute, even handsome already with his shock of straight black hair, distinctive features, and beautiful light-brown skin. Of course, Lisa Martinez had been a beautiful woman.
And the little guy seemed to have a glint in his eye other babies didn’t, Troy noticed. He seemed already aware of all that was going on around him. Troy chuckled softly. Of course, maybe L.J.’s father was a little biased.
“Thanks, Mom,” he said as he took the baby.
Cheryl smiled lovingly. “You’re welcome, dear.”
Jack’s death had torn her apart. She’d been a wreck at the funeral the other day. But Karen was right. Having Little Jack around seemed to have boosted her spirits. She had a glow about her when she gazed at the baby.