Patriot Lies (Jack Widow Book 14) Read online

  Then again, she might’ve moved on by now. She might be in a happy relationship. There was no reason for him to interrupt her life.

  He said, “I’m staying nowhere.”

  “Nowhere?”

  “I can check into a motel though. Not a problem.”

  Gray turned her head and looked back out the window at the quiet street in front of her house. Then she looked at the sofa under Widow’s butt.

  She said, “You can stay here. But no funny business. That sofa pulls out into a bed. You can take it. We have more to do. You want more coffee?”

  “Does a duck fart in the woods?”

  Gray ignored that. She waited for him to take the last pull from his coffee mug. Then she took it and went back into the kitchen. Five minutes later, she returned with two fresh coffees. Widow took his cup and sat back down on the sofa.

  Gray took the phone and called Cameron to report in. She shared everything that they had learned and put in flight request and the request for the list of names of Cho’s SEAL platoon.

  They worked into the night. Around eight in the evening, Gray ordered Chinese delivery. When it arrived, they stopped to eat. They ate right there in her living room, Widow on the same sofa he’d started on. His feet remained planted on the floor. His posture remained as upright as when he was in school. However, one thing did change. During the Chinese dinner break, Gray moved to the same sofa Widow was on, the one with the pullout bed.

  Just then, a bell dinged on her phone and her MacBook at the same time. She received an email in her secure NCIS email account. She stopped eating and opened her phone. She had an email from Cameron.

  She opened it and looked at it.

  She said, “It’s a list of SEALs in Cho’s platoon.”

  “How many names?”

  “Fifteen.”

  She handed the phone to Widow, and he took it. The list comprised full names and ranks and jobs of each SEAL. Widow saw Henry Cho on the list.

  Widow said, “There’s Eggers. Right there.”

  Widow looked it over. He started at the top and worked his way down and repeated the process, memorizing the names.

  Widow grunted like an ape finding a problem.

  Gray stared at him.

  She asked, “Anything suspicious there?”

  “SEAL Teams consist of six platoons, each with sixteen SEAL team members. There are usually two officers, thirteen enlisted, and one chief.”

  “So, what’s the problem?”

  “There’s a name missing from this roster.”

  “There is?”

  “Yeah. There are only fifteen names here.”

  “Is that something to worry about?”

  “No. It’s not a big deal because SEALs and SEAL teams are always in transition. So the number’s not always going to equal sixteen. Could be that someone left the unit, and they were expecting a replacement. The weird thing is that it’s the chief.”

  “Huh. But don’t they get swapped and moved around all the time too?”

  “They do. I suppose.”

  Gray and Widow stayed on the sofa and sat close together. Gray never moved any closer to him than she already was. She was near the other arm and she stayed there until it was time for bed. Bedtime procedures, for her, rolled around at nine-thirty at night.

  Just before that, she got a call from Cameron, the last of the evening. Cameron informed her they could fly out the next afternoon. She relayed the information to Widow and told him goodnight.

  Widow slept uncomfortably on the pullout sofa. He spent a good bit of time thinking of Gray in the next room, asleep in her bed, until he drifted off to sleep.

  Thirty-Two

  Widow had slept in his clothes on the foldout bed from the larger sofa. The night before, he had moved the coffee table out of the way in order to open it. The bed wasn’t the most comfortable thing he’d ever slept on, but it wasn’t the worst either. He managed to lie on one side, avoiding the lump in the middle as best he could. His feet hung off the bed, another thing he was used to.

  In the morning, Widow woke because he heard Gray stirring in her room. A minute later, she opened her bedroom door. Milo ran out past Widow and ran through a doggie door in the wall in the dining room.

  Widow sat up. The early morning sun beamed through the windows and curtains from the east.

  Widow yawned once, stretched his arms out, and got up off the foldout sofa bed. He pulled up all the sheets and blankets and the pillows that he’d slept with, folded all of them up, and set everything in a neat stack on the other sofa. Then he returned the foldout to its sofa position.

  He followed his first instincts, which led him into the kitchen, where he helped himself to his first cup of coffee for the day. He did all the same things he had seen Gray do the day before. He used the same big mug he’d drunk out of the day before. He rinsed it in the sink and set it under the Keurig and took out an old coffee pod and inserted a new one from out of a metal tree filled with them. He hit a button that read: Full Cup.

  It turned out to be a false advertisement, but he took it and went to the sliding door and opened it. He stepped outside, walked to the middle of Gray’s backyard, and stood there, letting the breeze off the Potomac blow over him like it was an old friend. He stood in the center of a row of bonsai trees. He surveyed the landscape and the river and the sky. All was good. All was peaceful.

  Thoughts of owning his own property like that someday swept over him. A place to call home. That would be nice. But then he thought about property taxes and busted pipes and HOA fees and lawn care and mortgages and interest rates and staring at the same walls every day and neighbors. He thought about the freedom he had right then, and he breathed out a sigh of relief.

  Widow saw more brown pelicans across the banks of the river. Milo came running by from out of some bushes at the edge of the shore and the property. He was wagging his tail like he was happy.

  The dog’s got the dream life, he thought.

  He finished his coffee outside on a bench against the back of the house. Then he went back inside and saw Gray making herself a coffee. Her hair was all over the place. One of her eyes didn’t seem to want to wake up. She wore pajamas with some cartoons on them. Widow didn’t recognize the characters.

  She turned and walked past him like she didn’t even notice him. She stopped and turned back.

  “I’m going to take a shower.”

  “I’d like to get in on that.”

  She froze. The half-closed eye popped open, and she stared at him with both.

  Widow said, “I meant after you’re done. If that’s okay?”

  She smiled and said, “You can join me.”

  He looked at her, blank-faced.

  “Kidding! Of course. You didn’t think I was serious?”

  “No. I was thinking about what Cameron would think.”

  Gray smirked.

  “She’d love that.”

  Widow said, “I can take one after. If that’s okay.”

  “Sure. After me. I pay the bills. Therefore I get first dibs.”

  “Understood.”

  Widow returned to the kitchen and set the Keurig to make himself another Full Cup of coffee in the big mug. Afterward, he sat at the bar and waited. He heard the shower click on and the pipes hiss. After a while, steam piped into the living room from underneath Gray’s bedroom door.

  Suddenly, Gray’s phone started buzzing. She had left it out on the bar top. The ringer was off, but the vibrate feature was on. Widow stared at it. He wasn’t sure if he should answer it or not. On the one hand, it could be Cameron. On the other, it could be someone else. And Unit Ten wasn’t supposed to be helping him. He might answer it and get someone who knew his name. Then the jig would be up, and Gray would get into serious trouble. Also, it might be her boyfriend or someone with equal reason to be concerned that a strange man was answering her phone. So he let it buzz until it stopped.

  But ten seconds later, it buzzed again. He did the same
as before and let it buzz until it stopped. Again, it started up, buzzing and getting louder and louder. He let it go to voicemail like before.

  The house phone rang from its cradle.

  He heard Gray from the shower.

  “Widow, would you get that?”

  Widow got up from the barstool and walked to the living room. He scooped the ringing phone up from the cradle and answered it.

  A voice on the other end said, “Sonya! Why the hell aren’t you answering your phone?”

  Widow recognized the voice. It was Cameron.

  “She’s in the shower, Chief.”

  “Widow?”

  “Yeah.”

  Cameron was quiet for a moment seemingly processing the fact that Widow was answering Gray’s house phone while she was in the shower, which meant that he had stayed the night.

  “Get her out of the shower!”

  “I’m not sure she wants me bursting in on her.”

  “Widow!”

  “Yeah?”

  “Gray sent two guys to your lawyer friend’s house?”

  “You know she did.”

  “You’d better get over there! Now!”

  “Why?”

  “Something’s happened. I don’t want to get into it over the phone. They’re asking for her to get there. Get Sonya and get over there—double time!”

  “Yes, Chief.”

  “And Widow?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t call any police. Tell Gray not to inform anyone else. Keep this between all of us.”

  Reluctantly, Widow said, “Okay.”

  He hung up the phone and walked to Gray’s bedroom door. He knocked on it, but there was no answer. He heard the shower running and nothing else. He turned the knob to her bedroom and opened it just a crack.

  “Gray!” he called into her room.

  Nothing.

  He opened the door more and called to her.

  Nothing. No response.

  He opened the door all the way, putting one hand over his face in case she should happen to walk out of the bathroom naked. He peered through the gaps in his fingers and kept his eyes on the floor. He made his way to the bathroom door and opened it ajar and called out to her.

  “Sonya?”

  “Yes? Who was it?”

  “It’s Cameron. She wants us to get over to Aker’s. Something’s happened.”

  Thirty-Three

  Widow was an adequate driver, not a great driver, but better than a mediocre one. He had gone through the same combat, evasive, and high-speed car crash courses that Gray went through. His were decades before hers, but still as good. Only they must’ve improved the curriculum because she qualified for Formula One compared to him.

  After Cameron called to warn them about the Akers’ house and the protection detail, Gray dressed and they hopped in the Charger and took off. She drove onto Ninety-Five, where she lit up the lights and kicked up the speed to nearly ninety miles an hour, dodging and weaving in and out of lanes.

  Eleven miles in, she moved to the Four Ninety-Five express lane.

  The whole drive, Gray had her phone synced to the electronics in the dashboard. She called ahead to the highway patrol to let them know that she would be speeding through their tolls, in case they had lanes closed or other road work, anything that might disrupt their drive to Aker’s place.

  Twenty miles in, she redialed her guys every few minutes using voice commands. They kept getting nothing but busy signals from both agents.

  “What the hell is going on?” she asked out loud.

  “Maybe they’re on the phone with Cameron?”

  “Both of them?”

  “Maybe. It could be a conference line. Or maybe she instructed them to wait till you get there before answering.”

  Gray shrugged and kept trying and kept driving.

  After several attempts to get one of her guys on the phone, she called Cameron’s number. The phone rang and rang, just like the other lines. She got nothing and hung up.

  Gray said, “Maybe she’s on the phone with them now?”

  “She said to go straight there.”

  Widow said, “We can call Aker direct. I know his number.”

  Gray glanced over at him and nodded and unlocked her phone and opened the keypad.

  “Give me the number.”

  Widow recited the number from memory. Gray dialed it and set the phone down in the cupholder. The phone rang over the car’s speakers.

  She zoomed around a cluster of cars and continued driving.

  There was no answer.

  Gray hung up the call and drove on. Widow could tell that her mind was painting the worst-case scenarios for what they might find.

  The drive from her house in Quantico to the Akers’ home in North Bethesda would’ve taken an hour under the best of circumstances. Gray made the time in fifty minutes.

  They got off the interstate and drove through various streets into the suburbs. She slammed the brakes on the Akers’ road, and the car screeched to a stop out front.

  Gray’s two agents were leaning against another Navy blue charger, another car from the NCIS motor pool like hers.

  Gray parked the car, left the engine running and the blue lights flashing, and got out. She marched straight for her guys. Widow followed behind, arriving slower. He kept his eyes on Aker’s front door and windows.

  The curtains were all closed tight. He saw one of them whip closed fast as if someone had been watching for them to pull up and then jumped back out of sight.

  If Widow didn’t know better, he’d say it looked like a hostage situation. Closed blinds and drawn curtains. The house was quiet and dark.

  Gray stopped right in front of her guys. She stood dead center between them. Her hands clutched her hips. A stern look grazed her face.

  She asked, “What the hell’s going on? You guys aren’t answering your phones!”

  The protection detail was two guys. They both had buzz cuts and dressed like NCIS agents who were trying to get noticed. They weren’t wearing NCIS windbreakers, but they were damn close to looking like cops on a bad TV show. The only visible difference between them was that one was black and one was white. They both had that look of good soldiers who follow orders.

  “We don’t know,” the white agent said.

  The black agent said, “They won’t let us in the house.”

  The white agent said, “They keep asking for some guy called Jack Widow.”

  Gray turned and stared at Widow. He shrugged.

  Widow turned, glanced at the front door. They heard the deadbolt unlock, and the front door cracked open. Aker stuck his head out halfway, just far enough for Widow to identify him. There were smaller hands on his chest as if someone was standing behind him, clutching him.

  Widow saw the house was dark. He couldn’t see who was behind Aker. He turned and walked slowly up from the driveway, easing his way across stone steps laid down in the grass.

  At the front door, he saw Aker. The guy’s hair was disheveled. His cheeks were flush. His face was red and dark. He had huge black circles under his eyes as if he had been crying or hasn’t slept or both. He was a far cry from the neat, trimmed lawyer Widow had met two days earlier in that church.

  Widow stopped several feet from the door. The welcome mat was two feet from the toe of his boot. He put his hands up to show his palms like he was trying to approach a lion in the wild, calming it with his gesture, showing that he wasn’t a threat.

  Aker opened the door wide. He was dressed almost unrecognizably different from before. He wore a white T-shirt under a black sweater and jeans with holes in them. He had house shoes on. His face was unshaven, and his hair was disheveled. Widow saw nothing but darkness behind him.

  “Come in,” Aker said.

  Widow stepped closer. He saw a woman’s face appear from behind Aker. It was his wife. She looked worse than he did. Her face was flushed crimson and her eyes were puffed to the point of bursting. She’d definitely been cr
ying—no doubt about that.

  “What’s going on?” Widow asked.

  Aker glanced over at the protection detail standing in his driveway.

  “Come in,” he said. He opened the door wide enough for Widow to step through.

  Gray started to follow, but Aker put up a hand.

  “NO!”

  Widow spun halfway back to her and put his hand up in the air.

  “I’ll be back out,” he told her.

  Gray froze and shrugged.

  Widow entered Aker’s home. Aker shut the door behind him and locked it.

  The house was dark, but Widow’s pupils dilated and his vision adjusted. He turned back to them.

  “Aker, what the hell is going on? Why are you locking them out?”

  Aker’s wife stepped out from behind her husband and walked up to Widow. She was about the same age as Aker, maybe a little younger. She had short blonde hair and a frame near the same size of Gray’s, only without all the muscle definition. She wore a housedress, all white. She was luminous, even in the dark. She looked like a picture-perfect mother. She had huge blue eyes, which stared right up into Widow’s. They were glassed over and filled with turmoil giving the appearance of oceans and crashing waves. She looked like she was fighting back a frantic version of herself, ready to blow, ready to fall off the edge.

  Widow said, “What’s going on?”

  She said, “Our daughters. They’re gone.”

  Thirty-Four

  "Let me get my friend to listen to this," Widow said.

  "No!" Aker's wife said.

  Aker reached his arm around her and squeezed her, consoling her.

  "We were told no cops," Aker said.

  Widow said, "It's okay. We can trust her. She's not a cop. Trust me. We'll need her."

  They didn't protest. Widow didn't wait for them to change their minds. He backed up through the darkness, into the foyer, and out the front door.

  He waved Gray over. She came up the walkway to the front of the house.