Harrison says bleakly, “Suppose they follow through with their threat. And harm comes to her …. What then?”
“Then the nation will rally around a President suffering the grievous loss of his wife. Your affair will be overlooked. Your margin of victory will even be larger.”
Harrison shakes his head. “That … the cynicism … I mean …”
“Mr. President, excuse me for being blunt. When it comes to kidnappings, chances are that the First Lady is already dead. Once they get their money, the kidnappers will want to rid themselves of her. They know the entire federal government will be chasing after them … and they will want to leave no witnesses behind. With the added thrill of humiliating the leader of the free world in the process.”
There’s a pause. Parker says, “Remember what I said. How does your speech, how will it serve the country? It won’t. It will ensure the election of a granola-crunching fool who will roll back all of the progress you’ve made—both domestic and foreign—and your legacy will be a bungled affair and a kidnapped First Lady.”
Another pause. Parker thinks, We’re close. Let’s go in for the kill. “Or … you make the necessary sacrifice on behalf of the nation. You get reelected, with an enormous mandate, and you have four more years to build on the previous four years. For the benefit of the American people and for a safer world.”
He waits.
Waits.
The President of the United States looks at his hand, the one grasping the pen, like he’s wondering how it got there.
With a savage motion, he scrawls his signature on the presidential directive, and shoves both the paper and pen back at his chief of staff.
“Get out of my sight,” he snaps.
Parker stands up. “Yes, sir.”
CHAPTER 59
I PUSH PAST Scotty, using my flashlight, and besides the frightened woman in front of me, there are other people as well, men and women, boys and girls. They blink and hold up their hands against the flashlight beams, and they all appear to be Hispanic.
I quickly count off eight, and there’s no First Lady back there, just cots, a few buckets with dishes and soiled clothes, a hot plate and laundry hanging from a clothesline in the rear. There are two men, two women, and four boys and girls from toddlers to preteens.
Tanya grabs Mrs. Westbrook by the scruff of her robe and pushes her in. “Is this what you’re hiding, you bitch? Cheap migrant labor? Paying them next to nothing for the privilege of shoveling out the shit from your million-dollar horses?”
For a small woman she’s pretty tough, and she easily breaks free. “No, it’s not that, not at all.”
“Then what is it?” Tanya demands.
Mrs. Westbrook ignores her and speaks in soft Spanish to the two families, and they nod and a couple try to smile as they settle back on their cots. One of the men has a bandage wrapped around his left wrist. It comes to me that this is what they’re used to, being in rough quarters and knowing that at any moment of the day or night armed men and women from the government could break in.
“There,” she says, looking back at me. “You’re in charge here, are you not?”
“I am.”
“Then let these people be.”
“I want an explanation,” I say.
“You’ll get it … just as soon as you give these people their privacy.”
I gesture to Scotty, Pamela, and Tanya, and we step out, and with the rising sun, everything is becoming more visible. Not more clear, no, not that, but definitely more visible. Scotty closes the door and picks up the broken doorknob, looks around with some embarrassment, and drops it to the ground.
“You … people,” she begins, with her old and strong voice. “You think you know everything.”
She bundles her robe tighter about her slim frame. “For more than three hundred years my family has lived here, and raised generations here, and yes, for a while, kept slaves. That’s our enduring shame, that my family, at one point, owned human beings. You can read the old journals and old stories about my ancestors, and how proud they were that they treated their property well. But it was still an abomination. No matter how many years have passed, it was still an abomination.”
I say, “You’re making penance.”
“For once, miss, you’re making sense.” A fierce nod. “Yes … this farm, this place, was never an Underground Railroad stop back in the day. But it is now. Those two families … they have jobs, a new life waiting for them up north. All we do is make sure they get there, without being harassed or arrested.”
She stares at me. “Are they going to be arrested?”
“No,” I say, holstering my pistol. The others follow.
“Am I going to be arrested?”
Tanya mutters something about what she’d do if she were in charge, and I say, “No, Mrs. Westbrook, you’re not going to be arrested.”
“Are you and your … people, are you done here?”
Then it hits me like a slow-moving yet large and wide tidal wave, an overwhelming sensation of being utterly exhausted, bone-tired, and worthless. The sun is coming up. The ransom will probably be paid, and we’re through here. A few minutes ago, it seemed like success was within reach, just past that wooden door, just past that trash bag with bloody bandages.
So damn close and yet so damn far.
Scotty looks around and says, “Where the hell is Brian?”
“Good question,” I say. “Pamela? He belongs to you. Where did you last see him?”
“I didn’t,” she replies, rubbing at her cold hands.
Tanya says, “I saw the kid go back and grab his laptop from the Suburban. He said he wanted to check something out.”
“And you let him do that?” I demand. “This was a hands-on search, not a—”
There’s shouting coming from the direction of the parking lot. As one, our little group turns, and in the better light, I see Brian running in our direction, carrying a laptop under his arm.
More yells and then I make out his words:
“I know where she is! I know where she is!”
CHAPTER 60
I HEAR WORDS from the other agents, and instantly I cut them off at their throats.
“Shut your mouths, all of you, right now,” I say.
Brian races up to me, nearly slipping to the ground as he passes through a patch of mud, and nearly out of breath, he gasps out, “She’s here … she’s here … I just know it.”
In seconds we’re around Brian, and he opens up his laptop and says, “When we started searching I thought about how we lost CANARY, and how her horse Arapahoe came back by himself.”
Pamela says, “So?”
“Damn it, you know how that horse loved her,” Brian said, trying to hold the laptop open with one hand while working on the keyboard with the other. “But the horse came back alone. If CANARY had tried to sneak back through the woods and ended up here somewhere, no way Arapahoe would have left her alone. He would have gone through the woods and brush with her.”
“All right, so what do you have?” I asked. “Where is she?”
He moves the laptop around and says, “Damn it, I had a good signal earlier …”