“Why would I?”
“Because I can keep a certain loved one alive.”
“Is this how it’s going to be? You’re going to threaten me with Cass every time you want something?”
“You leave me no choice, since you hold little value for your own life. I’m going to ask you one last time, Jack. What happened to you?”
“I was tortured in Israel by this guy Amzi, who was supplying guns and explosives to some Palestinian radicals. I managed to escape before he killed me.”
“What were you doing in Israel?”
“I had taken a job for a rival weapons dealer,” Jack lied. She was protecting the EOO and wasn’t sure why. Maybe because Cass worked for them. “And in the process fell for a woman. Turns out she was a spy. She pretended it was mutual to get information and then handed me over to Amzi.”
“You seem to have this nasty habit of getting involved with the wrong women and sacrificing everything for them.”
“If you’re implying Cass is one of them, then you’re wrong.”
“What do you think she’ll do when she finds out you’re missing?”
“Look for me.”
“With what resources, Jack? She’s a violinist.”
“I didn’t say she’d find me.”
“True.”
“Do you want her to look for you?”
“No.”
“Oh?” TQ sounded surprised.
“I want her to stay the hell away from you.”
“Do you really think she could get anywhere near me, or even suspect that I’m behind this?”
“No.” Jack lied again.
“Why not?”
“I haven’t been honest with her. She doesn’t know what I’ve done or who I’ve worked for.”
“Not even after you teamed up with special forces to save her from Rózsa?”
The bitch had done her homework. “I told her someone owed me a favor and let me tag along.”
“The FBI owed you?”
“An old school buddy works for the bureau.”
“How convenient.”
“Exploit whoever, whenever, right?”
“My kinda gal. How did they torture you in Israel?”
Jack had spent years trying to forget what had happened to her, and this psychotic bitch wanted to take her back. “They hurt me.”
“How?”
“They used me as a punching bag. Whipped and starved me.” Jack left out the rape, the thing that had hurt and degraded her the most.
“How did you escape?”
“After a long while, when they thought I was too weak to stand up, I managed to strangle one of the guards with the chains they bound me with and ran.”
“Brave, resilient woman.”
“I guess.”
After a long pause TQ continued. “I don’t want to hurt or torture you, Jack.”
“Then tell me what the hell you want.”
“I want you to work for me.”
“Doing what?”
“Whatever I ask.”
“Like?”
“What you are infamous for,” TQ replied.
“Poker?”
“I want you to take care of some of my business.”
“Be more specific.”
“Sometimes I need to make certain individuals see things my way.”
“You want me to hurt people.”
“Hurt, execute, whatever is necessary.”
“I don’t do that anymore,” Jack said.
“Because your girlfriend asked you not to?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
“Once a paid assassin, always a paid assassin, Jack. You can’t refute your nature.”
“What if I decline?”
“What if I have Ms. Monroe shot during the concert?”
“No. You can’t touch Cass.”
“Then you can’t decline.”
The bitch left her no choice. “I’ll do it.”
“I need proof.”
“So do I. I want to hear Cass is okay.”
“Fair enough,” TQ replied. “I’ll talk to you soon.”
“I want to meet you in person.”
“We’ll get to that but not just yet.”
The static disappeared. TQ was gone.
*
The White House
Thomas’s meeting with Moore lasted an hour. Both came out with blank, distant expressions, and neither looked at Shield. When Shield followed the president to her room, she shut the door in her face without so much as a good night. Thomas was clearly upset with her, and she couldn’t fault her.
When Jason, her Secret Service replacement, arrived to take the night watch outside the president’s door, Shield left for her bedroom.
Although she was exhausted, she couldn’t stop thinking about Moore and his hold on Thomas. After tossing and turning for a couple of hours, she reached for her iPhone and Googled Jeffrey Thomas Elizabeth died. She had no proof, but her gut told her Moore was somehow involved in his death.
News reports said Thomas’s husband had been playing a round of golf at the Bath Country Club near the couple’s home in Maine when his heart failed during the game. His wife Elizabeth, who was campaigning in Vermont at the time, rushed to Mid Coast Hospital in Brunswick, accompanied by her special advisor, Kenneth Moore, a close family friend. But Jeffrey Thomas was pronounced DOA before she arrived. He had stopped breathing in the ambulance and could not be revived.
Reporters covering the story from the hospital said the presidential candidate was too distraught to make any official comment about her husband’s sudden death. The only video of her was several seconds shot by a local TV station, of Thomas and Moore getting out of a car in front of the hospital and going inside. Thomas’s face was a study of sadness and pain, as though she already had been informed of her husband’s passing. Moore’s countenance was somber.
One news story, shot several hours later outside the couple’s home, said that Elizabeth Thomas had released a statement saying she hoped the media would respect her need for privacy during this difficult time. Kenneth Moore, shown on camera outside the two-story brick residence, said that he was deeply upset by Jeffrey’s death. “He had been a heart patient for years,” Moore told the reporter, “but you’re never prepared for the tragedy of a friend’s death.”
The news reports went on to say that Jeffrey Thomas, an attorney, was fifty-six at the time of his death, thirteen years older than his politician wife. The couple had been married for twenty-two years and had no children. Shield could find no reference to whether an autopsy had been performed.
By the time she got through finding everything she could on the Internet, it was three a.m. in D.C., one a.m. in Colorado. She could have waited for morning, but she dialed the EOO’s number and asked for Reno.
“All of you are responsible for the black circles under my eyes,” he said immediately.
“Sorry about the late hour, Reno.”
“Yeah, that’s what you all say.”
“What happened to that sunny personality of yours?”
“I was told it bothers some,” he replied grumpily.
“Who?”
“Jack Harding and Chase.”
“You mean Phantom.”
“She doesn’t like that name.”
“What’s the deal with her, anyway?” Shield had been away on assignment when the rogue former agent had returned to the EOO headquarters a few months earlier. She’d teamed up with agent Chase to track down Andor Rózsa, the madman who had kidnapped her partner Cassady Monroe, aka operative Lynx. “Strange that Pierce let her get away with going AWOL.”
“No one really knows why, but there’s talk,” he whispered.
“Ah, yes. The ever-growing grapevine.”
“That’s funny.” He chuckled. “You owning a—”
“Yeah, yeah. I get it.” She cut him off before he finished pointing out the obvious.
“Now, you see? It’s that exact attitude that’s changed me.”
“It shouldn’t matter what people say. Just keep being your sunny self. We have enough cynics among us as it is.”