The paparazzo waits for him to explain.
“You get to act like one. Now fuck off.” He gets inside the car.
The cabbie blares his horn, moving slowly through the photographers crowding the street in front of the Ritz.
Nico puts in his earbuds, calls Shannon at the show.
“Hey, it’s me,” he says when the showrunner answers.
“Hey! I’m so glad you called. It’s been crazy here.” She sounds like she’s walking. Shannon is always on the move, dealing with problems on the set. “The sheriff announced that the explosion was intentional and the press went bananas.”
“Yeah, that’s what I assumed, based on the mob outside my hotel. How in the hell did they find
me in Philly?”
“No idea. It wasn’t me.”
Nico lets out a breath. “It’ll calm down. The news cycle will turn to something else.”
“I don’t know about that,” she says.
Nico shakes his head. No point in debating it. “I’m headed back. You should start thinking about some shows or special episodes about the mine collapse that we can milk for—”
“I don’t know that the network is going to let you come back,” she cuts in.
“What do you mean?” That motherfucker Davis. Or maybe it’s the show’s insurer.
If they think someone’s trying to kill Nico, it’s a liability issue for the network.
“I don’t know. But they said you’re on paid leave.”
“Well, that’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
“I’ll try to find out more, but that’s all I know. And that the FBI served a warrant for the records on your company cell phone.”
“For my phone?” Nico’s heart rate accelerates.
“Yeah, and an agent interviewed me. Asked all kinds of weird questions. Something about some judge in Philly you knew when you were a kid. Also, they asked about Donnie Danger—you remember him, from Tracer’s Bullet?”
Donnie. That’s a name he hasn’t heard in years. His mind ventures to the bank of the Delaware River, Ben hugging them all after the crooked detective terrorized them. “What about him?”
“You haven’t seen the news? He fell off a cruise ship—was lost at sea—and somehow survived.
The FBI agent asked if I knew about your friends from when you were a kid. You knew Donnie Danger?” She says this with humor in her voice.
She continues, “They asked about your vacation last month—where you went and what I knew about your childhood.”
Nico’s heart is in free fall. You don’t have to watch many TV cop shows to know that if they have your phone records they know more about you than your parents, your spouse, or your closest friends.
They know your search history, your photos, your social-media posts, your dating life, your diet, your music preferences. And they know with GPS precision the coordinates of every place you’ve traveled. That causes an electrical current of fear to prickle every one of Nico’s nerves.
He ends the call and gets the cabbie’s attention. “Change of plans. Can you take me to Chestertown?”
“Where?”
“It’s in Delaware County. About an hour away.”
The guy is tapping the GPS on the phone mounted to his windshield as he drives. Then he says,
“It’ll cost two hundred. It’s a long way and I won’t get any fares on the way home.”
“That’s fine.” Nico needs to get there before the Feds. If they track his movements, then it’s all over for him, regardless of whether the crazy woman with the tube weapon ever finishes the job.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
JENNA
“It seems someone is upset with us,” Artemis Templeton says to Jenna.
They sit in the dim light of the town car. He looks older than in the photoshopped magazine and newspaper images—or the crosshairs of a sniper rifle. But not bad, all things considered. Particularly since he probably hasn’t been sleeping well since someone tried to make that bald head explode like a watermelon dropped from a rooftop. She thinks about the odd boy she briefly knew—the kid with the unusual cadence in his voice, the wooden posture. He still has that distant look in his eyes, like he’s operating on another level than everyone else, but the bald head suits him. His business suit is well tailored and it’s hard to imagine he’s the same kid who wore short-sleeved shirts buttoned all the way to the collar and seemed to model his look on that of his childhood mentor, a neighborhood man the kids called Ned Flanders.
Jenna doesn’t answer. She doesn’t know how much he knows. And whether he’s aware that she was one of the shadowy assassins who caused those dark circles under his eyes. Though she suspects he at least knows she was with The Corporation. It would explain this meeting.
“I suppose we can’t chalk all this up to coincidence,” she says. “Someone after all four of us…”
He raises his brows in agreement. “Hard to believe it’s been so long.”
Another life, she wants to say, but doesn’t.
He waves a manila folder in his hand. “I imagine you’ve been asking yourself the same question I have: Who? ”
“Why would I be doing that?”
He frowns as though he doesn’t have time for games. “You didn’t fall off a ship or get trapped in a mine. But no one’s seen your family since the events of late.”
Fair enough.
He hands her the folder. “This is my security team’s report on our best guess about who hired the hitter. And I recognize it’s merely that. An educated guess.”
Inside the folder are photos of a man. He’s in a suit and looks respectable enough. There’s something familiar about him.
“Who is he?” she asks.
“One of Chestertown’s finest,” Artemis says. “The gentleman from the fifth congressional district.”
Jenna shrugs.
“You might remember him better as one of the kids we hid from at night.”
Jenna examines the photo again.
“Derek Brood,” she says. The name still gives her the creepy-crawlies.
Artemis nods. “After his father disappeared, he was raised by his uncle, the mayor of Chestertown. The Broods have run that armpit of a town for decades. That didn’t change after we left.”
Jenna nods.
Arty continues, “That’s why no one followed up on the girls who disappeared.… Everything was covered up by the Broods.”
He gives Jenna a pointed look. She’d been one of those girls. What happened to the others?
Sabine claimed that she had no hand in their disappearance, that Jenna was the only Corporation recruit from Savior House. But who could be sure with Sabine?
“Why now? After all these years?”
Artemis shrugs. “Politicians tend to be psychopaths.”
“I can’t believe Derek Brood’s in Congress. What a disgrace.…”
Artemis chuckles. “Have you seen Congress lately? There’s more sociopaths and carnival barkers than legislators.”
Despite living in D.C., Jenna has buried her head in the sand when it comes to politics.
“As I see it, we have two choices here,” Artemis tells her.