I’m going to have to tell somebody. Not even to call for help, necessarily, but just because it happened, and when I get together with my friends over a couple of beers, it’s going to slip out.”
Jonathan shrugged again. “Then it slips out. You can tell anyone anything you’d like. You didn’t do anything wrong. You’re a victim here, for God’s sake. You have nothing to feel guilty about. Rejoice in your freedom and quit worrying.”
Thomas started to speak, but then swallowed the words to reconsider. “So you’re saying it’s okay if I report this all to the police, but that you’re not going to. If I do it’s fine.”
“As far as I’m concerned it’s fine,” Jonathan said, directing this conversation down the same path he’d steered it so many times in the past. “Once I drop you off, your life is yours to do with as you please. I don’t care who you call or what you tell them.”
Thomas grunted and turned back around in his seat to face forward. He seemed satisfied.
“Just understand that what you say may hurt the people who hired me. What I do, because of the nature of its outcome from time to time, might not reflect so well on them.”
“H from here. Time to get on with the rest of your life.”
Still, the kid didn’t move. “I still don’t know that I can keep all of this a secret,” he said. His eyes looked sad.
Jonathan gave a half-shrug. “You can only do what you can do.”
“What about you?” Thomas asked.
“I already told you. I’m untraceable.”
That wasn’t what he meant. “If I say something, are you going to come back and…Well, you know.”
Jonathan allowed himself a tired sigh. “I’m not an assassin. Don’t make life unnecessarily difficult, and you’ll never see me again.”
Thomas smiled nervously. “So I only worry if I see you knocking on my door?”
Jonathan chuckled. “Well put. Now get out.”
Thomas still was not comfortable leaving the truck. He looked to his lap, searching for something to say.
“It’s okay,” Jonathan assured.
The kid nodded. He held out his hand for Jonathan to shake. “Thanks.”
Jonathan smiled and shook. “You’re welcome. Here’s to never seeing each other again.”
Thomas opened the door, and Jonathan watched as he walked toward the pharmacy’s double glass doors. This was what he loved about his job. This was why he kept putting himself in harm’s way: the look on the PCs’ faces when they realized-really realized for the first time-that their nightmare was over. It was like being the Lone Freaking Ranger.
He watched until Thomas reached the door, then slipped the transmission back into Drive.
As he pulled away from the curb, Jonathan pressed a number on his speed dial.
Chapter Three
Venice Alexander never slept well on the nights when her boss was on a mission. (It’s pronounced Ven-EE- chay, by the way. Everybody got it wrong the first time, but second mistakes were not suffered kindly.) She always tried, but until the phone rang with the all-clear, she never really rested. In a perverse way, she preferred the larger, more dangerous operations where she was needed to man the computer and the phones in the office over these so-call “milk-run” 0300 ops. Add to that the stress of managing the details of a dozen or so investigation cases by other associates in her charge, and even fake sleep was impossible tonight.
Pulling on a Karen Neuburger robe-Roman, her eleven-year-old son, called it “teddy bear material”-Venice rolled out of bed and pushed her feet into a pair of luxurious slippers. She knew for a fact that Mama had fried more chicken than she’d served at dinner, and a cold drumstick seemed exactly the right prescription to settle her down. That and a cup of hot water with lemon. Snagging her cell phone from the nightstand and dropping it into a big patch pocket, she headed for the hallway and the stairs beyond.
“You’re up late,” Mama said as Venice opened the kitchen door.
She jumped. “Jesus!”
“Watch your mouth,” Mama scolded. The rotund black woman sat at the long oval table, in front of a plate that was nearly as loaded with chicken and green beans as the one she’d consumed at dinner.
Venice padded to the cabinet over the flatware drawer and pulled out a wh
Venice had no memories of her father, a policeman killed in the line of duty before she was born, and it was a source of pain that she’d never truly overcome. For as long as she could remember, she’d always dreamed about what her father might have sounded like and smelled like. The picture on Mama’s dresser gave her a face, but she’d never know the voice that went with it. She regretted that she’d passed the fatherless legacy on to her own son, albeit with a huge difference. If Roman ever wanted to do the research to track his daddy down, he was welcome to. Last time Venice heard, Leroy was somewhere in Afghanistan.
Mama mourned every day for her beloved Charles. As she closed in on her sixty-eighth birthday, she talked a lot about her fear of dying lonely. Not likely, Venice told her. Not with Resurrection House in her life. Seated on two acres in the middle of Fisherman’s Cove’s business district and next door to St. Katherine’s Catholic Church, the gleaming new boarding school was the most stunning building in town, having wrested the honor from Mama’s sprawling Victorian mansion that shared the same property. Except for the courthouse and the hospital, which was not technically a part of Fisherman’s Cove but rather of the unincorporated environs of Westmoreland County, Resurrection House had more square footage than any other structure.
Until five years ago, the mansion and the land that housed the school had been the boyhood home of Jonathan Grave. Upon inheriting the property from his still-living father as part of a court proceeding that no one fully understood, Jonathan decided that he didn’t need any of it, and he signed the property over to St. Katherine’s parish for a dollar. A change to the deed dictated that the property be used in perpetuity as a school for children of incarcerated parents. Mama Alexander would live in the mansion for the rest of her life, and she would hold the position of house counselor for as long as she wanted it. Jonathan covered all costs out of his own pocket.
A third condition was more a matter of paperwork than substance: Jonathan’s involvement in the modification of the building and the endowment of seven teaching positions, plus his high-six-figure annual contribution to the care and maintenance of the place were never to be publicly disclosed. As far as anyone outside St. Kate’s immediate family was to know, those expenses were covered only by the Family Defense Foundation, a nonprofit that Jonathan had formed through one of the many cutout identities he had established over the years.
“No word from Jonathan yet?” Mama intuited.
Venice avoided eye contact. “I’ve got a lot of things on my mind.”
“I suppose he’s on one of his missions?” Mama leaned on the last word in a way that made clear her disapproval.
“Mama, I don’t want to talk about it, and you shouldn’t either. Digger’s safety depends on secrecy.”
Mama didn’t like it, but she didn’t fight. “I hate it when you call him that. I don’t need to know the details to know that you’re worried. I see it in your face.”
Venice sighed. “He’s late reporting in.”
“How late?”
Venice’s veneer started to crack. “A couple of hours.”
Nobody looked too old to be working this late. “What can I do for you?”
“You scared the shit out of me.” Thomas meant it as a simple statement, but it came out angry.
Al’s face darkened. “I don’t much like that language.”
Thomas blushed. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m here to wait for the bus to Chicago. Comes in about an hour, right?”
Just like that, all was forgiven. Al checked his watch. “An hour and ten if it’s running on time. I think I’d count on something closer to an hour and a half. Want something to eat while you wait? Some ice cream?”
The mention of food brought Thomas’s stomach back to life. “That would be great. Are you still serving food?”
