The Triangle Conspiracy

fade away.

Daryn collapsed onto the bed and wept bitterly.

Very gradually, over the course of the last year, Faith had come to feel comfortable in Scott Hendler’s Edmond condo. It was just off Danforth Road, not far from the safe house. It had a lived-in feel to it, but was still neat and tidy, like Hendler himself. He had a thing for windmills and old train stations, and there were numerous photos and paintings of both throughout the place, even over the bed.

She was propped up under the sheets, wearing only a long blue T-shirt and reading yesterday’s newspaper. She’d listened to Hendler’s end of the brief phone call, and realized with resignation that she still wasn’t finished dealing with Daryn McDermott. Even though Department Thirty had officially rejected her, there was still going to be cleanup duty. The call from Rob Cain confirmed it.

After Hendler hung up, she said, “He talked to her, is pretty sure she’s lying, and he wants to know what the hell is going on.”

Hendler settled back into the bed. “Not in those words, but that’s pretty much it.” He looked at her. “Faith, what the hell is going on?”

She put down the newspaper. “I’m not really sure, and that’s the truth. I just know Thirty couldn’t work with the girl.” It was as close as she ever came to giving him actual details of one of her cases. “None of her information was right.”

“And Sean?”

“I don’t know what to think about Sean. When I got home, he was so drunk he could barely move. I was so pissed off at him, that’s when I called you.” She tilted her head back until it was touching the frame. “I don’t know what to do with him.”

“I’m sorry, Faith,” Hendler said. “All the weirdness with your case aside, I know this business with your brother has been tearing you up.”

She leaned toward him. “Yeah,” she said.

They held each other. Faith savored the unspoken connection between them. They could just be together, nothing else required. For a few moments she felt safe, the last two weeks falling away. It was a frail feeling, and Faith was afraid that if she dwelled on it too much, it would be gone, and so would Scott.

Hendler turned off the light, keeping one arm around her. “He wants to see us in the morning,” he said sleepily.

“Who?” Faith said. She’d been far away from the FBI and Department Thirty and her brother and the bizarre events of the last two weeks.

“Cain,” Hendler said. “He wants to talk to us about the case. He specifically mentioned he wanted me to bring you.”

Faith nodded. “In the morning,” she said.

It took Daryn more than two hours to find the calm she needed for what came next. The whole gamut of emotions, some real and some imagined, had drained her. The exhaustion had been gaining on her, but she had more to do before she could rest.

It was nearly one thirty a.m. when she opened the dresser drawer that had come with the furnished apartment, and began to get dressed. She chose plain blue jeans, a pastel-pink T-shirt, and open-toed sandals with low heels. She stepped back and looked at herself in the mirror. It wasn’t Daryn McDermott, or even Kat Hall. The look was nothing like her. It appeared like something Faith Kelly would wear. Daryn smiled at that irony, but it faded quickly. She touched her short blond hair, wishing for a moment she could take time to wash the dye out and have her natural dark color back. But there was no time. She also missed the long braid she’d worn for most of her life-it was part of her.

It occurred to her that this was a strange way to be thinking now. She’d wanted to become someone else, and had actually done it for a while. Yet here she was, feeling nostalgic for something that had physically defined her as Daryn McDermott. She blinked, feeling sudden tears welling. The tears were decidedly different from those that she’d wept upon throwing Sean Kelly out of the apartment. Now she cried silently, letting the tears run straight down while she looked at the image in the mirror.

She stood there for a long time, until the tears ran dry and her mind began to clear. She applied some light makeup, took one last glance at the mirror, and went downstairs.

She booted up her laptop on the cheap coffee table, then logged in to her Web-based e-mail account on the Hubopag server. She turned off all the lights, letting the only light in the apartment come from the glow of the computer screen.

In some ways, this was the most difficult part of the plan, yet ultimately would be the most satisfactory. She loathed everything her father stood for, hated what he had done to her mother, hated the unspeakable atrocity he had committed on her. Her father had used her as a prop for all her life. Now she would do the same with him.

She typed in the address: [email protected].

She typed Dear Dad, then stopped.

Daryn closed her eyes.

Anything for The Cause. Anything for The Cause.

Anything.

She swallowed hard, and this time she warded away the tears before they came. The time for crying was past now.

I know I’ve been out of touch, she wrote. Daryn smiled.

You know me. I’ve been busy, traveling a lot. I have to tell you something now. Even though you and I don’t talk much, something tells me I need to reach out to you now.

I’m scared, Daddy. I’m really, really afraid.

She thought the use of Daddy would really get to him. Daryn kept typing.

Sean had no clue where he was, nor how he got there. He knew he was still in Faith’s car, and that it was damnably uncomfortable. How could Faith have bought a car this small? he wondered.

Light played across his face as he slowly awoke. He blinked fiercely, trying to orient himself. It was still dark outside, but the car was parked at the periphery of a lot of bright lights. His hearing started to awaken. He heard traffic sounds. The picture came into focus: gas pumps, a high canopy overhead, bright blazing fluorescence. In the distance was a straight line of black, broken by occasional headlights.

A truck stop, somewhere along an interstate highway.

He remembered the sex, and he remembered that by the time he climaxed, he’d just wanted it to be over with. It had become work, and he’d just wanted to finish and go to sleep. But Daryn had been maniacal, doing everything to stimulate him, oblivious to herself, determined beyond reason that he should finish inside her.

He remembered her screaming, her rage as she hit him and scratched him. He’d stumbled out into the night until he found the car where he’d parked it around the corner.

That was all.

He didn’t recall driving, certainly didn’t remember getting on a major highway and coming to this truck stop.

His neck was sore from the contorted position he’d slept in behind the wheel, slumped slightly to the side. The gearshift of the Miata had poked into his ribs, and they were sore as well. He held up his arm to the light that spilled through the window. His watch read 3:56.

Nearly four o’clock in the morning, and he had no idea where he was.

He blinked again. He remembered snippets of other things. Faith had been angry at him…so what else was new? He’d dropped something or knocked something over in his house, but hadn’t cleaned it up. He felt vaguely ashamed about that.

Daryn…Daryn wasn’t going into Department Thirty protection.

He sat up straight. Faith hadn’t protected Daryn. Now Daryn was back in Kat’s apartment.

Sean closed his eyes again. It all seemed to be spinning around him. Daryn, Faith, Kat, Sanborn, Britt, Tobias Owens…

He wrenched open the car door and vomited onto the pavement, heaving until he had nothing left.

Even after he’d emptied his stomach, he still hung out the door, feeling the cool night air. After nearly five minutes, he swung his legs out and stood unsteadily. He slammed the car door, wincing at the sound, and went into the truck stop. He went to the bathroom, emptied his bladder, washed his face. He bought a bottle of water. The clerk, a young Middle Eastern man with a scraggly beard, eyed him strangely as he walked back out into the night.

He turned the corner at the edge of the building, back to where the Miata was parked haphazardly, taking up parts of two spaces.

Franklin Sanborn was leaning against it.

“Hello, Sean,” Sanborn said, in the same genial, easygoing voice he’d used the day Sean and Daryn first arrived at the Mulhall house. “At least I can call you by your real name now.”

Sean lengthened his strides.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Sanborn said. “You’ve done quite enough of that already, don’t you think? It’s all quite complicated, really, and you don’t know anything. Think twice about anything you may think you know, because chances are it’s not true.”

“What…” Sean’s mouth felt like he’d been chewing rocks, and his stomach was still queasy. “What do you want? Why are you here?”

Sanborn looked at his watch. “Well, it’s too late to save Daryn, but maybe if you hurry, you can catch the real killer.”

Sean dropped the bottle of water. It rolled away from him until it smacked into one of the Miata’s tires. Even as his stomach threatened to revolt again, he grabbed Sanborn by the throat and slammed him into the car.

“Go ahead,” Sanborn breathed. “Beat me to a pulp, Sean. You could even kill me and it wouldn’t matter. You’re too late. Way too late.”

“What have you done with her? What the fuck have you done with Daryn?”

“Weren’t you just with her? You probably should have stayed with her, Sean. Maybe she’d still be alive now if you had.”

Sean couldn’t mistake the taunt in his voice, a school bully picking on a weaker child. With all his strength, Sean took both hands and shoved Sanborn to the side. He rolled off the Miata’s hood and stumbled into the ice machine that stood on the sidewalk. Sean was on top of him in an instant, crashing his fist into Sanborn’s face.

“Where is she?” he panted.

“They’ll find her soon,” Sanborn said, his cheek starting to swell. “And then they’ll find you. In death, she’ll be Kat for a little while, but then she’ll be Daryn. She’ll die as the senator’s daughter. That’s rather ironic. Don’t you think that’s ironic?”

Sean grabbed his shoulders and slammed him repeatedly against the ground. “Tell me, you piece of shit! Tell me what you’ve done!”

“It wasn’t hard to follow you from her apartment, you know. The way you were driving, it was an easy trail. You’re just lucky you escaped the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. Now that might have been unpleasant.”

Sean slammed him to the pavement again.

Sanborn grunted in pain, but he didn’t stop. “They’ll find you, Sean. See, they’ll find your Jeep-remember it?-and it’ll have Daryn’s blood in it. And in the glove box, they’ll find your gun. You shouldn’t have left it at the Mulhall house. That was very unprofessional. In a day or two, when they do the ballistics tests, they’ll find that the gun that killed the senator’s daughter was registered to Sean Michael Kelly of Tucson, late of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”

Sean toppled to the side, his head spinning. “I don’t-”

“Then after the autopsy, they’ll find your semen inside her. As a federal law enforcement officer, your DNA is on file and it won’t take long for them to match it up.” Sanborn shook his head, blood trickling down one side of it, just as it had when his car crashed in Bricktown. For a moment Sean thought he was seeing things, time caught in an endless loop.