The Triangle Conspiracy

Co.

He moved to the curb, holding his hands out away from his body, trying to think. But his brain felt encased in some kind of gel, something that surrounded him and wouldn’t let him go, wouldn’t let him think.

“Traitor,” Sanborn hissed, lowered the gun and shoved her hard. She tumbled to the ground and he kicked her in the ribs. “We’ll regroup in Mulhall. The Coalition isn’t dead, young Miss McDermott. We’re just getting started. The rulers will know that we’ve spoken, and one of them will be your father.”

He motioned to Britt with the gun, then ran for the Jeep.

“Daryn?” Britt said.

“Come now, Britt!” Sanborn shouted. “She betrayed the Coalition. She betrayed you! You loved her and she betrayed everything we stand for! Come on!”

“Daryn?”

Daryn was curled into a fetal position, clutching her ribs. Sean moved toward her. Daryn didn’t speak. She hadn’t made a sound since Sanborn grabbed her. Her eyes were squeezed closed. Tears streaked her face and ran onto the asphalt.

Britt finally walked to the Jeep, never taking her eyes from Daryn.

“If you try to come back to the Coalition,” Sanborn said, “I’ll kill you, or I’ll have you killed. And maybe…” He slid behind the wheel of Sean’s Jeep. “…maybe I’ll have you killed anyway.”

Britt got in beside him, and Sanborn turned the Jeep around, maneuvering it out of the dead-end street.

Sean looked up. He saw a face at a window across the street. He heard more sirens, and pandemonium from down the street. Smoke billowed and streamed from the Chase Tower.

He went to Daryn, picked her up in his arms, and took her back to the curb.

“He’s going to kill me,” Daryn whispered. “He’s going to come after me. He thinks I’m a traitor…but he…he’s the traitor. It wasn’t supposed to…” She contorted her face in pain, in anguish.

Sean’s head was pounding. Everything had gotten mixed up. He didn’t know who was who or what was what anymore. For a moment he could almost imagine that he was back in the cantina in Sasabe, drinking whiskey and eating tortillas half a mile from the Mexican border.

But he’d found Daryn McDermott. Her identity was in the open, as was his. Somehow Sanborn had broken his cover. But that didn’t matter anymore. Nothing was the same. Sanborn was right- Daryn would be implicated in any conspiracy charges. She and Sanborn had together been the driving forces behind the Coalition’s plans. Behind the plans yet to come. He remembered the list of other banks, all over the country, culminating with a “strike” on Citibank in New York City.

A little bit of the gel surrounding his mind melted. “Oh my God,” he said aloud. He knew in that instant he would never see the rest of Tobias Owens’s money, that Senator McDermott would probably never see his daughter again, and there was no chance at redemption for his career. But he had to make a choice. He pulled out his cell phone.

When Faith answered, he said, “Where are you right now?”

“At my office. All hell’s broken loose downtown. Why didn’t you-”

“Faith, we’re not far away. Come and get us.”

“What? What do you mean, us?”

Sean cradled Daryn’s head in his lap. “You’re in the protection business, right? I have someone who needs protection, and I think she might have some information you and your bosses would find useful.”

20

FAITH HAD TO LITERALLY PLUCK THEM OUT FROM under the noses of the local cops. As soon as she hung up the phone with her brother, she knew the us he referred to had to be himself and the missing girl, Katherine Hall. She also knew that if she was about to become officially involved, not as Sean’s sister but as a Department Thirty case officer, she needed to avoid any entanglements with the locals. All she would need was Detective Cain sniffing around what had turned into a federal matter.

Since her Miata was strictly a two-seater, she pried Hendler temporarily away from the downtown melee. The girl was to ride with Faith, and Sean with Hendler in his Toyota. Sean complained about the arrangement, but Faith silenced him with a look. He was in her territory now.

With no time to make other arrangements, she decided to use the Edmond safe house after all, and they headed north. The girl, Kat Hall, kept looking at her during the half-hour drive, kept trying to talk to her.

“Wait,” Faith told her. “Just wait, then you can talk all you want.”

Faith did look at her quite a bit herself, though. She looked almost frail, waiflike, but with eyes of pure steel. There was something vaguely familiar about her, though Faith couldn’t place it. Just like the elusive Franklin Sanborn. She’d searched every database she had access to, and had come up empty. But she was still positive she knew the name. With any luck, she’d know why very shortly.

Department Thirty’s safe house in the white-collar suburb of Edmond had once been the home of Frank and Anna Elder, the new identities assigned to James and Natalia Brickens, aka “Adam and Eve,” who had once been the world’s premier freelance assassins. They were still considered the biggest catches ever in the department, though both were now dead. Their case, and the turbulent search of their son to find his own real identity, had been her introduction to Department Thirty. That case had led to the death of her mentor and father figure, Art Dorian, and had brought her into his world.

The department had held on to the house, though, paying the mortgage, taxes, utilities, and insurance through a variety of accounts. It was in a quiet subdivision just off Santa Fe Avenue and Danforth Road on the north side of Edmond. The suburb had grown hugely just in the years Faith had lived in Oklahoma. The corner of Danforth and Santa Fe had once been an open field. A single convenience store had been the only business. Now all four corners were occupied by bustling shopping centers.

Faith kept a garage door opener for the house, just as she did for the Yukon safe house. She pressed the button and pulled the Miata into the two-car garage. Hendler’s Toyota pulled in behind her. Sean got out, but Hendler leaned out his window and said, “I have to get back downtown. There are a lot of…well, we’re still not quite sure what happened.”

“I’ll talk to you later,” Faith called. Hendler backed out. Faith lowered the garage door.

They went into the house through the garage and into the kitchen. The house was quite musty. Unlike the one in Yukon, this house had once been occupied on a long-term basis, and consequently, all its furnishings had belonged to the occupants, Frank and Anna Elder. Faith had scavenged some furniture for the place, but it wasn’t much: a couple of sagging armchairs in the living room, a coffee table, an ancient TV set. Those cases who’d been housed here temporarily slept in sleeping bags on the floor.

“It’s not much,” Faith said, “but it’ll do for now.” She turned and faced Sean and the younger woman. Her eyes zeroed in on the girl’s scratched face, and the way she was slightly hunched over. “Are you hurt? Do you need a doctor? I have one that I can get here if you need medical attention.”

“No, I don’t need a doctor,” she said. Faith thought she detected a ghost of a smile on her face, and wondered what it meant.

“You hit your head when he shoved you,” Sean said. “And he kicked your ribs. You might need X-rays.”

“No. No X-rays. My ribs aren’t broken, and my head’s pretty hard.” There was the strange little smile again.

“All right, then,” Faith said. “I’ve made the offer. If you don’t think you need medical attention, I can’t force you to get it.” She walked into the living room and motioned them to chairs. She sat on the edge of the coffee table. She didn’t even look at her brother. “Your name is Katherine Hall, is that right?”

“Yes,” she said.

“No,” Sean said.

Faith looked at both of them. “We’re not going to get anywhere if we can’t even get past the basic stuff.”

“Tell her everything,” Sean said. “This is the time to tell the truth, good and bad, Daryn. If you want protection from Sanborn, and if you want to save your cause from turning into just another domestic terrorist group, you have to tell everything.”

“And you?” Daryn said. “Why don’t you tell the truth?”

Sean shrugged. “My name is Sean Kelly. I’m an agent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security. At least I was.”

Daryn said nothing, staring at him.

“But none of this was official,” Sean added quickly. “This is a freelance job.”

“My father hired you.” A statement, not a question.

“He sent someone to hire me, yes.”

“To bring me back before I embarrassed him?”

“Essentially, yes.”

“Bastard,” Daryn said.

“Who are you?” Faith asked.

Daryn looked up at her slowly. For a moment it seemed as if she wasn’t focusing. Then her eyes cleared, and Faith noticed the same hard darkness she’d seen there before. “My name is Daryn McDermott. My father is Senator Edward McDermott of Arizona.”

Faith waited, thinking. “Now I know why I recognized you. You’re the one who was arrested for public nudity at the demonstration in front of the Capitol.”

“Isn’t it funny,” Daryn said, “how society works? It doesn’t matter what else I’ve done or said. But once I took off my clothes, people paid attention. The very fact that we have laws against public nudity in this country are proof of the change we need.”

Faith glanced over at Sean. Sean shrugged. Faith looked back to Daryn. “So you were involved in what happened downtown today?”

Daryn squared her shoulders and looked Faith in the eye. “Yes. And now let me ask you a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“Who are you? The two of you are related, right?”

Before Faith could speak, Sean said, “I guess that’s pretty obvious when you see us together. Daryn, this is my sister, Faith Kelly.”

“And what exactly is it you do, sister Faith Kelly?”

Faith took note of the way Daryn McDermott had swung from quiet bemusement to anger to insolence in her tone, all in the space of a few minutes. “I work for a special unit of the Justice Department.”

“Witness protection.”

“Not exactly. Not witness protection, but criminal protection.” As she always did, she paused for a moment to let that sink in.

Faith and Daryn locked gazes for a long moment. Daryn looked away first.

“If you were involved in what just happened downtown, you’ve been involved in an act of terrorism. In this country, here and now, that’s taken pretty damn seriously. Now, Sean seems to think you need protection, and he also seems to think you have something to tell, something that might warrant that protection by the U.S. Government. Do you?”