“Wait,” Faith told her. “Just wait, then you can talk all you want.”
Faith did look at her quite a bit herself, though. She looked almost frail, waiflike, but with eyes of pure steel. There was something vaguely familiar about her, though Faith couldn’t place it. Just like the elusive Franklin Sanborn. She’d searched every database she had access to, and had come up empty. But she was still positive she knew the name. With any luck, she’d know why very shortly.
Department Thirty’s safe house in the white-collar suburb of Edmond had once been the home of Frank and Anna Elder, the new identities assigned to James and Natalia Brickens, aka “Adam and Eve,” who had once been the world’s premier freelance assassins. They were still considered the biggest catches ever in the department, though both were now dead. Their case, and the turbulent search of their son to find his own real identity, had been her introduction to Department Thirty. That case had led to the death of her mentor and father figure, Art Dorian, and had brought her into his world.
The department had held on to the house, though, paying the mortgage, taxes, utilities, and insurance through a variety of accounts. It was in a quiet subdivision just off Santa Fe Avenue and Danforth Road on the north side of Edmond. The suburb had grown hugely just in the years Faith had lived in Oklahoma. The corner of Danforth and Santa Fe had once been an open field. A single convenience store had been the only business. Now all four corners were occupied by bustling shopping centers.
Faith kept a garage door opener for the house, just as she did for the Yukon safe house. She pressed the button and pulled the Miata into the two-car garage. Hendler’s Toyota pulled in behind her. Sean got out, but Hendler leaned out his window and said, “I have to get back downtown. There are a lot of…well, we’re still not quite sure what happened.”
“I’ll talk to you later,” Faith called. Hendler backed out. Faith lowered the garage door.
They went into the house through the garage and into the kitchen. The house was quite musty. Unlike the one in Yukon, this house had once been occupied on a long-term basis, and consequently, all its furnishings had belonged to the occupants, Frank and Anna Elder. Faith had scavenged some furniture for the place, but it wasn’t much: a couple of sagging armchairs in the living room, a coffee table, an ancient TV set. Those cases who’d been housed here temporarily slept in sleeping bags on the floor.
“It’s not much,” Faith said, “but it’ll do for now.” She turned and faced Sean and the younger woman. Her eyes zeroed in on the girl’s scratched face, and the way she was slightly hunched over. “Are you hurt? Do you need a doctor? I have one that I can get here if you need medical attention.”
“No, I don’t need a doctor,” she said. Faith thought she detected a ghost of a smile on her face, and wondered what it meant.
“You hit your head when he shoved you,” Sean said. “And he kicked your ribs. You might need X-rays.”
“No. No X-rays. My ribs aren’t broken, and my head’s pretty hard.” There was the strange little smile again.
“All right, then,” Faith said. “I’ve made the offer. If you don’t think you need medical attention, I can’t force you to get it.” She walked into the living room and motioned them to chairs. She sat on the edge of the coffee table. She didn’t even look at her brother. “Your name is Katherine Hall, is that right?”
“Yes,” she said.
“No,” Sean said.
Faith looked at both of them. “We’re not going to get anywhere if we can’t even get past the basic stuff.”
“Tell her everything,” Sean said. “This is the time to tell the truth, good and bad, Daryn. If you want protection from Sanborn, and if you want to save your cause from turning into just another domestic terrorist group, you have to tell everything.”
“And you?” Daryn said. “Why don’t you tell the truth?”
Sean shrugged. “My name is Sean Kelly. I’m an agent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security. At least I was.”
Daryn said nothing, staring at him.
“But none of this was official,” Sean added quickly. “This is a freelance job.”
“My father hired you.” A statement, not a question.
“He sent someone to hire me, yes.”
“To bring me back before I embarrassed him?”
“Essentially, yes.”
“Bastard,” Daryn said.
“Who are you?” Faith asked.
Daryn looked up at her slowly. For a moment it seemed as if she wasn’t focusing. Then her eyes cleared, and Faith noticed the same hard darkness she’d seen there before. “My name is Daryn McDermott. My father is Senator Edward McDermott of Arizona.”
Faith waited, thinking. “Now I know why I recognized you. You’re the one who was arrested for public nudity at the demonstration in front of the Capitol.”
“Isn’t it funny,” Daryn said, “how society works? It doesn’t matter what else I’ve done or said. But once I took off my clothes, people paid attention. The very fact that we have laws against public nudity in this country are proof of the change we need.”
Faith glanced over at Sean. Sean shrugged. Faith looked back to Daryn. “So you were involved in what happened downtown today?”
Daryn squared her shoulders and looked Faith in the eye. “Yes. And now let me ask you a question.”
“Go ahead.”
“Who are you? The two of you are related, right?”
Before Faith could speak, Sean said, “I guess that’s pretty obvious when you see us together. Daryn, this is my sister, Faith Kelly.”
“And what exactly is it you do, sister Faith Kelly?”
Faith took note of the way Daryn McDermott had swung from quiet bemusement to anger to insolence in her tone, all in the space of a few minutes. “I work for a special unit of the Justice Department.”
“Witness protection.”
“Not exactly. Not witness protection, but criminal protection.” As she always did, she paused for a moment to let that sink in.
Faith and Daryn locked gazes for a long moment. Daryn looked away first.
“If you were involved in what just happened downtown, you’ve been involved in an act of terrorism. In this country, here and now, that’s taken pretty damn seriously. Now, Sean seems to think you need protection, and he also seems to think you have something to tell, something that might warrant that protection by the U.S. Government. Do you?”
Daryn looked at Sean.
“There’s no other way,” Sean said. “You heard what Sanborn said at the end.”
“Sean,” Faith said, “I’m going to advise you to keep your big Irish mouth shut, okay? This is what I do, and you stay out of it. Also, the fact that I still don’t know the extent of your involvement in this makes me wonder how deep you are in it. I’ll deal with you later.”
Sean sat back. He’d never heard the cold, official Department Thirty side of Faith before. He raised his hands in a mock surrender.
“Who’s older?” Daryn said suddenly.
“What?” Faith said.
“You’re brother and sister. Which one of you is older?”
“He is, by eighteen months,” Faith said.
Daryn nodded. “Interesting dynamic, isn’t it?”
“It would be if we were talking about my family dynamics,” Faith said. “But we’re not. There are two questions you have to answer. Do you believe you need protection, either from prosecution or from the threat of bodily harm? And do you believe you have information vital to the national interests of the United States? Yes or no, right now.”
“Yes, on both counts,” Daryn said, her head high.
Faith spoke to Sean but kept looking at Daryn. “Sean, you have to leave now.”
“What?” Sean said. “But I brought her in. I’m the one who-”
Faith whirled to face him. “Listen to me, dammit! The less you say the better, for her, for me, for yourself. Just for your information, most of my department’s cases don’t come in this way. We find them, they don’t find us. There’s only been one exception in the department’s history. So we all have to be very, very careful here. Do you understand me? I’m not bullshitting you, Sean. This is the way it has to be done.”