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“Carly?” J.C.’s voice took on an impatient tone.
“I’m thinking,” she countered quickly. No, she reasoned, if he’s trying to get in touch with me, there’s only one explanation. He intends to go public with— “He promised me an exclusive,” she told J.C.
His voice sharpened. “When did he promise you that? You never mentioned it to me.”
“I don’t tell you everything.” A long silence followed, during which Carly could have sworn she could hear J.C.’s thoughts.
He didn’t say any of the things she figured he was thinking. All he said was, “When the senator arrived in DC last night, he released a statement through his press secretary.”
“Saying?”
“Nothing more than he’d been asked by the Phoenix police and the FBI not to discuss the incident since it’s still under investigation. But his press secretary refused to take any questions during the press conference, including the one every reporter there wanted to ask—what was he doing at the Mayo Clinic? Congress is in recess, and as far as anyone knew, Senator Jones was back home in Colorado.” J.C. let that statement hang there for a few seconds, then asked, “Do you know why?”
Carly’s heart skipped a beat. “Yes,” she admitted. “But only on deep background. I can’t report the story until he’s willing to go on the record, and when I spoke with him two days ago he had no intention of doing that.”
“Damn it, Carly,” J.C. growled.
“But I think he must have changed his mind,” she said before J.C. could go ballistic. “Or rather, the events yesterday must have changed his mind. Other than that, I can’t imagine why he’d want to talk with me. It can’t be anything to do with the assassination attempt—he’s staying mum on that, isn’t that what you told me?”
She didn’t wait for J.C.’s agreement. “So the only thing he and I have to discuss is...what I can’t tell you until he gives me the go-ahead.” She tugged her notebook out of her purse along with a pen and added, “What’s the phone number?”
* * *
A clean-shaven Marsh Anderson pulled his carry-on luggage from the overhead compartment and deplaned at Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC. He strode confidently through the airport, past the airline employees and TSA checkpoints, then retrieved his nondescript white Chevy truck from the long-term parking lot. As he drove to his home in Arlington, Virginia, his thoughts dwelled on the two phone calls he’d received yesterday—one from the man who’d hired him, one from the man on the inside. Neither had been at all happy with the outcome. Marsh agreed with their assessment that he’d screwed up. Not so much for missing his shot—that could happen to anyone due to circumstances beyond his control—but for allowing himself to be recorded as he made his escape.
“Damned reporters,” he whispered under his breath. He’d planned everything so carefully. He’d waited nearly an hour in the little park across from the entrance to the Mayo Clinic, moving around a little from spot to spot so as not to draw attention to a man lying in wait. He’d assembled his AS50 sniper rifle even earlier, secreting it between a boulder and a large aloe plant—close enough to retrieve at a moment’s notice, but out of sight. He’d known when the limo had pulled up in the driveway in front of the hospital, that was his signal the senator would be down shortly. He’d surreptitiously retrieved the rifle and had moved into position—a hidden vantage point he’d scouted and tested two days previously.
But everything had gone wrong from that point forward.
He’d followed his original plan regarding the disposal of the weapon he’d used and the clothing he’d worn, too, just as if he’d been successful in his assassination attempt. He’d immediately and without a qualm dumped the AS50 in a ravine in the Phoenix Mountains Preserve southwest of the Mayo Clinic—after he’d wiped it clean of prints, of course, and had rammed a metal rod down the barrel. That would ensure no one could match the rifling marks to any of the bullets it had fired—in case any had been recovered in usable form.
