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He clambered up through the opening and gripped another of the old girders, his eyes tracing from one side to another, satisfied it, too, remained secure. A small superstructure extended skyward a few yards, part of a chimney that once funneled smoke. He leveraged himself to his feet and scrambled across the warm metal, balancing like an acrobat, finding the edge where the rope disappeared downward.
Cassiopeia Vitt stood in the thick brush below. Trees engulfed the incinerator on all sides.
“You couldn’t just open the door?” he asked her.
“It’s padlocked.”
“Why didn’t you pick it?”
He knew she always carried the proper tools.
“It’s a combination lock. So I had to go find some rope, and that wasn’t easy.”
“You could have called out and told me what you were doing.”
She smiled up at him. “And what fun would that have been?”
They’d split up this morning. She dropped him off in the national forest, then drove to visit with park rangers trying to obtain more information. Finding him would have been easy since he wore a Magellan Billet–issued watch that contained a GPS tracker, her smartphone capable of accessing the signal.
“I assume there’s a good story here?” she asked.
“It’s a laugh a minute.”
The drop was over twenty feet, so he reeled up the slack from inside the incinerator, discarded the rock, and tied the rope’s end to one of the girders. His vantage point was high enough that he was able to spot the same chalky ridge he’d located earlier at the GPS coordinates that had started his search.
He was not all that far off.
A shot echoed and a bullet pinged off the iron a few feet away.
He dropped to the girder, lying flat, using the old superstructure chimney for cover. Sweat ran down his brow and stung his eyes. He blinked the moisture away and, through the trees, spotted a gunman with a rifle fifty yards away, perched atop another ridge, large boulders providing cover. The shooter was shifting positions, perhaps looking for a clearer line of fire.
“Darling.”
He caught her condescending tone from below.
“Reel up the rope.”
He did as she said.
Tied to its end was a nine-millimeter pistol. Not one to question a gift, he freed the gun and leveled the weapon, waiting for the rifleman to appear from behind another outcropping
He squeezed twice.
Rounds skipped off the distant rocks like flung stones.
His assailant ducked away from the line of fire toward a scatter of boulders. Which allowed him to stuff the gun inside his belt, then toss the rope over the side and slip down to the ground, the incinerator and trees now providing protection.
“You look terrible,” she said as his feet hit the ground.
He was wet, unshaven, and odorous. Dirt and grime stained his clothes, especially his hands, red with rust. She actually looked great, though, moving with the ease and suppleness of someone quite comfortable in snug jeans. Her pitch-dark hair, normally cascading past her shoulders, sat coiled into a tight bun at the back of her neck. Her coffee-colored skin seemed accustomed to the heat, part of a Spanish ancestry, her sultry face full of beauty and candor, the type of woman who easily turned a glance into a stare. He calmed his breathing and tried to think beyond his adrenaline.
“Does that knot on your forehead hurt?” she asked.
He shook his head with a strained attempt at vigor. His mind was racing, ticking off possibilities. Number one on the list of things to do was finding out who attacked him, but common sense told him the answer to that inquiry lay on the ridge above.
“You move ahead and see if you can draw the shooter’s attention,” he said to her. “The brush is too thick for anyone to get a bead on you. Try and make enough noise to attract attention. I’m going to double around and get behind whoever it is.”
“I think the people at the Smithsonian are oblivious to what’s going on here.”
“That’s an understatement,” he said. “I almost brought Gary into this.”
His seventeen-year-old had begged to come, and he’d nearly given in, but the warning of trouble from Martin Thomas’ earlier visit had cautioned otherwise. And school, too. Gary lived with his mother in Atlanta and still had another two weeks before summer break.
His head remained woozy and each breath tore his throat like a mouthful of broken glass. “Do you have some water?”
She produced a plastic bottle from her backpack. He unscrewed the top and swilled the tepid liquid in his mouth, trying to ignore the tinny taste. Somebody had been watching him in the woods, somebody who knew exactly where to be and possessed skills enough to get close. Then that somebody, or somebodies, had carried him here and tossed him inside an iron can.
That was a lot of effort.
But for what?
Time to find out.
CHAPTER FOUR
Danny parked the car in the empty parking lot for the Missionary Baptist Church. The woman from the cemetery sat across from him in the front passenger seat. A little insane for an ex-president to be alone with a total stranger, but instinct told him that this lady was no threat. Rain continued to tap the roof, hood, and windshield. They’d ridden in silence from the funeral, slipping away unnoticed.
“You plan to ever tell me your name?” he asked her.
“Alex said that you and he were best friends. Is that true?”
“How long were you and he friends?”
He’d never suspected Alex Sherwood was an adulterer.
“We’ve known each other six years,” she said.
That shocked him even more. “How was it possible to keep that secret?”
“Because we truly were just friends. That’s all. Never once did he violate his marriage.”
“And what did his wife think of this friendsh
ip?”
“I have no idea. She came to Washington only a few times a year. Her husband seemed to be the last thing on her mind.”
He caught the contempt. But it wasn’t unusual for congressional spouses to stay at home. Most had either jobs or children to care for, and living in DC was not cheap. Contrary to public opinion, the vast majority of people in Congress were not rich and the salary they were paid barely compensated for the costs of serving.
“I live across the hall from Alex,” she said. “We were neighbors a long time. He was a darling man. I can see you don’t believe me, but sex was not part of what we meant to each other.”
He could understand his old friend’s self-control. He and Stephanie were at first enemies, then friends, now something more, and all without him violating his marriage, either.
“We enjoyed spending time together,” she said. “Having a meal, watching a movie, reading. He was talking about retiring from politics in two years.”
Another surprise. “Then what would happen?”
“He told me he was going to divorce his wife.”
“Because of you?”
“I don’t know. We rarely spoke of her. But during the past few weeks he’d begun to say more. And he wasn’t some miserable husband, complaining to another woman. He just seemed like an unhappy man who’d grown apart from his wife.”
“And your presence had zero to do with that?”
“His telling me his intentions to divorce came as a total shock. But I won’t say I didn’t like the prospect. He said he would do it when he was no longer a public person. I know what you’re thinking, that’s self-serving. But he thought it would be easier, on all concerned, if it happened that way.”
He could perfectly understand that philosophy, as it was exactly what he’d done. The only difference being that he and Pauline had mutually agreed to end their marriage.
