Constance spoke to the woman gently. "It'll be okay," she said, as tears gathered in her eyes. A man in a navy blue security uniform stepped over and took the woman.
Declan reached out and grabbed Constance's hand, pulling her behind him as he began to walk towards the side of the building. Digging her heels into the soft ground at the corner of the building, she stopped.
"Where are we going?" she demanded. "Why are we leaving?"
Declan couldn't explain it, but something inside him told him that whoever was behind what had just happened wasn't finished yet. Bells ringing through his mind like a sudden thunderstorm told him that Kafni had been the target.
"Because Abe's still in danger!" he said.
Constance relented and struggled to keep up as he moved briskly around the side of the east wing. As they rounded the building and the parking lot came into view, Declan looked to his left. A twisted metal frame engulfed in flames was all that was left of the white Ford Crown Victoria that had been parked near the security canopy at the front steps of the building. His mind raced as they headed towards their car. Having more than just a passing knowledge of bombs, and particularly car bombs, from his years in the IRA, Declan knew that the device had to have been inside the vehicle. This was an inside job.
The low lying clouds were awash with red and blue flashes from the LEDs on the emergency vehicles that were arriving as Declan turned over the ignition in the sports car, the six cylinder engine purring to life. He shifted furiously through the gears and piloted the convertible out of the lot and onto the small state road that ran alongside the Barton Center. As the orange glow from the burning building faded into the distance, Constance put her head in her hands and began to cry. Declan had no idea what to say to her. As the headlights chased away the darkness in front of them, he couldn't escape the feeling that two worlds that had been separated by a decade of peace had just collided violently.
Chapter Seven
Being hired by Sweat Security to operate the gate and man the tiny sunroom that had been erected to temporarily serve as a guard house for the Briton-Adams mansion was the best Chris Evans could hope for after losing his job at the White Rock Intermet Foundry. The last three years had been marked by long periods of unemployment after the plant he'd worked in for twenty-two years had closed; in the current slow economy, a forty-eight-year-old father of three without a college education wasn't exactly at the top of the hiring list.
Putting his feet up on the particle board desk, Chris spread a copy of the Lynchburg News & Advance open in front of him as he leaned back in the black leather office chair that had been borrowed from the mansion's study. The chair creaked under his two hundred and fifty pound frame. Working a toothpick through his teeth with his tongue, he looked over the inside front page of the paper. A full page spread with pictures of the newly completed construction at Liberty University and the guests expected to attend that night's gala unveiling kept his attention for a moment before he moved on to the sports page.
His experience as an MP with the Marine Corp Reserve and his lack of a criminal record meant he'd met the base qualifications for the job and had been hired as part of the three man team that was providing the security for the mansion while Abaddon Kafni was staying at the property.
The Briton-Adams mansion was a three story brick plantation house that had been constructed in the late nineteen-thirties by a wealthy industrialist named Morgan Adams on a high knoll two hundred yards off Cottontown Road in the northeastern part of Bedford County, Virginia. After his death, the house had been sold to pay off his debts and had been bought by the Briton family, who owned it presently.
The Britons were a family from the British West Indies who had played a key role in the development of the area and had owned a large portion of the land that now made up the neighborhoods surrounding their home. As wealthy developers, they had helped in the founding of Liberty University and continued to donate large sums to its projects. Since they spent much of their time traveling, they'd offered their home to the university's latest lightning rod professor, Abaddon Kafni, while he took up his new post and set about finding a permanent residence for his family in the area.
In the eyes of Chris Evans, the Britons were old money suburbanites who didn't have to worry about a slow economy or the closing of a factory. In all probability, they were the kind of people who closed factories and sent the jobs overseas to a country with far lower wages and living standards than the United States.
But it was an easy gig, he reasoned with himself, as he took a drink of coffee. Kafni had his own three man security detail to take care of everything inside the house. The only thing Evans and the other two hired guards had to do was keep a watch over the perimeter of the property and call the police if they noticed anything out of the ordinary. Two weeks on daylight and two weeks on nights was a bit rough, but it was an income and he'd been guaranteed several months of employment while Kafni stayed at the mansion. If Sweat Security's contract was renewed once Kafni moved to a more permanent residence in the area, he'd been assured that he would be a shoo-in for continued employment.
Closing the paper and fighting a yawn, he removed his feet from the desk and sat up just as the headlights of a vehicle coming up the road attracted his attention. Standing and leaning out of the door, he looked east on Cottontown Road as a dark colored truck rounded a bend from the south. Immediately he was struck by the speed the vehicle was traveling, but was prepared to write it off as another crazy teenager with a lead foot until the vehicle began to slow down. As it got closer, Evans recognized it as one of the two black GMC SUVs that Abaddon Kafni and his security team drove. He stepped out of the guard shack with his hand on the radio clipped to his belt. The SUV made a right turn, the driver's side window descending into the door frame as the vehicle came to a stop.
"Open the gate!" someone inside the SUV yelled.
Evans squinted into the darkness and saw the face of Levi Levitt, Kafni's no-nonsense assistant, staring back at him. He ran back to the guard house and hit the button to open the gates.
"There's a white sports car coming in, too. Lock the place down behind us and don't let anyone else through until the police arrive!" Levitt yelled, as he floored the accelerator and the SUV roared up the long straight driveway towards the house. Evans watched the taillights vanish into the mansion's detached garage, then reached for the radio on his belt to alert the other two guards positioned along the north and west sides of the property. Suddenly another set of headlights washed over the guardhouse from the west and a dark red Chevy Suburban made a left hand turn into the drive and accelerated through the gates.
"Hey! You can't go in there!" Evans shouted as he ran out onto the paved drive, radio in hand. He turned as he heard another vehicle approaching. A second dark red Suburban screeched to a halt in front of him, the headlights preventing him from seeing who was inside.
Evans heard the driver's door open, followed by brisk footsteps, then a short man with dark receding hair and a thick beard stood in front of him. He regarded Evans coolly for a moment before raising a suppressed pistol.
“What? No!” exclaimed Evans, frozen to the spot.
"Excuse us," the man said, as he fired three times and stepped away towards the guard shack.
Evans felt the rounds enter his chest as the radio slid from his grasp. He stood still for a moment trying to draw breath, then fell to the wet pavement, still struggling to breathe. The sound of the gate beginning to close and the driver's door of the SUV being shut were the last sounds he heard as he clawed his way towards the guard shack and died, lying in the grass beside the one lane driveway he'd been hired to watch.