fucking delusional!”
“Sean, you have to understand. Smith-Sanborn-is a master manipulator. He can-”
“Make people commit murder and not even know why they’re doing it? Come on, think, Faith! Think about how idiotic that is!”
“This is what he wants. This is part of what Smith was trying to do. He’s destroying us. He wants me to pay-”
“Oh, bullshit!” Sean shouted. “Spare me your goddamn conspiracy theories! You’ve lived with that Department Thirty crap for so long that now you’re believing it yourself, that it’s in your own life. Somehow you’ve figured that your own brother is a cold-blooded killer.” Sean tapped his chest with his fist. “I didn’t kill Daryn, obsession or not. I don’t care what the fucking evidence says, and I don’t care what
Faith’s cell phone rang.
“Better get that,” Sean said, the bitterness thick in his voice. “You know how important you are.”
The phone rang again.
Sean turned and walked down the hill, toward the border.
“Sean!” Faith shouted.
Sean kept walking, closer and closer to the port of entry.
Faith took a step, willing her mind to clear.
Only a handful of people had the number of the Kimberly Diamond cell phone. Finally, she pulled the phone out of her fanny pack and looked at the caller ID. She didn’t recognize the number right away, but it was area code 405. Oklahoma.
Sean drew closer to the border. He was leaving her, leaving everything, walking away.
She knew he would have been defenseless in the face of Isaac Smith’s machinations and Daryn McDermott’s seductive powers. She’d tried to tell him she understood. Had she actually said the words? Suddenly Faith couldn’t remember, and suddenly it seemed very important.
She flipped open the phone, watching her brother grow smaller. “Yes?”
“Faith? It’s Rob Cain.”
“Yes, Rob?”
“Scott was found dead in his condo last night.” A long pause. “But you knew that already, didn’t you?”
Faith said nothing.
“Your message,” Cain said. “I didn’t understand it, until-”
“What do you have?”
“Where are you, Faith?”
Faith was silent for a long moment, then said again, “What do you have?”
“The autopsy results from Daryn McDermott. Now I know why it took so long to get the report. They had to be one hundred percent certain of what they were looking at.”
“Yes?”
She listened to him for two minutes, to his crisp, professional explanation. When he finished, her hands were shaking as she put the phone away. The last pieces of the puzzle fell into place.
Ahead of her, Sean stepped across the border and into Mexico.
“No!” she shouted. “Sean!”
Faith broke into a run. As she ran down the hill, she realized she was still carrying a gun in her fanny pack, and she knew that if she carried it into Mexico, she might never see the U.S. again. She had nothing identifying her as an employee of the Department of Justice, nothing to justify carrying a firearm across the border.
Without breaking stride, she unsnapped the fanny pack and flung it to the side of the road.
“Sean, wait!”
Sean was a few steps beyond the border now. On the Mexico side, the road wasn’t paved but loose gravel. He was heading up a small hill toward a building that presumably served as the Mexican mirror of the port of entry.
He turned back to look at her. “Go back, Faith! You don’t have any jurisdiction over here!”
Faith ran. The door to the building on the American side opened. The guard named Mike stepped out. On the other side of the road, from the booth on the northbound side, a female officer was watching her.
“Hey!” Mike shouted.
“Go back!” Sean said.
American citizens didn’t have to show any kind of documentation to enter Mexico. They didn’t have to stop, didn’t have to answer questions, could simply walk or drive across the border and enter the other country. Faith pounded down the pavement, cursing the stiff boots and wishing she had her Reeboks instead.
A few more steps and she would be there.
“Hold it!” Mike shouted. “I want to talk to you! Hey, woman! Stop!”
Ten more steps. Sean had stopped and was staring at her in disbelief, as if he couldn’t believe his sister was crazy enough to follow him into a foreign country.
Five steps.
She heard Mike unsnapping his holster again.
Then she realized:
She stepped into Mexico, felt the ground change from blacktop to gravel.
“Are you out of your mind?” Sean said.
Behind them, Faith heard Mike talking on the phone.
“You’re going to get us both arrested or killed,” Sean said. He was twenty steps away from her.
“You have to come back with me,” Faith said.
“No, I don’t.” Her brother turned away. “Go back, Faith. You and I don’t know each other anyway. Tell Mom and Dad something, I don’t care what.”
“Listen to me, Sean-”
“No, I won’t listen to you!” Sean kept walking, right in the middle of the road. No traffic came or went.
At the top of the hill, two Mexican men appeared at the edge of the small white building.
Faith kept running at full speed and tackled her brother around the waist. She squeezed his stomach and felt the air go out of him.
Faith held on, sliding down his body, even when his foot connected with her face. Thankfully he was wearing soft-soled shoes.
“Let go! Goddammit, Faith, you’re insane! Let go of me!”
“No,” Faith breathed. They rolled over. She tasted gravel.
Sean scissored both legs back and forth, finally shaking loose of her grip. He stumbled, but managed to get to his feet. The two Mexican border guards began to hurry toward them.
Faith doubled over. “You have to come back with me.”
“To hell with you, Faith, and everything you stand for.”
Faith absorbed the words like a slap, shaking her head violently.
“I know what happened, Sean,” she said, and surprised herself by how steady her voice had become. “That call…I know what happened.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I know you didn’t murder Daryn McDermott.”
The Mexican guards were closing. “
Sean went still. “How-”
“This wasn’t a murder,” Faith said. “Daryn McDermott committed suicide.”
36
THE MEXICAN GUARDS SEARCHED THEM AND, FINDING no contraband, escorted them back to the port of entry, requesting that they leave Mexico for “creating a public disturbance.”
They declared their American citizenship at the border and were admitted back to United States soil. Mike met them as soon as they’d made their declaration and walked them into the building. Sean did most of the talking, assuring Mike it truly was nothing but a family squabble. Never mind that it had spilled over into another country and created an incident at the border.
“Irish, you don’t want to be doing stuff like this,” Mike said. “I believe you’re in enough trouble already.”
Sean assured him they were leaving the border now, and they did. They walked back to the cantina, looking at Faith’s Miata and the huge Suburban next to it.
“You drove that?” Sean said. “You
They followed each other back to Tucson, to the airport, where Faith turned in the Suburban to the rental agency and they left the Miata in the long-term parking area.
They caught a Southwest flight, traveling as Kimberly Diamond and Michael Sullivan, and settled in. Sean peppered Faith with questions, but she’d gone to the place where nothing and no one could reach her.
“Trust me,” she said.
She dozed off and on for the entire flight, and Sean drank three beers in rapid succession. He thought she was deeply asleep, but Faith heard him order the beer from the flight attendant. She decided against saying anything about it. They’d said enough to each other.
She thought back to what Rob Cain had told her. It all made a sort of sense now. A convoluted sense, to be sure, but now she knew where the pieces fit together.
And she knew that for all the lives that had been shattered, for all the people who had been destroyed, for the families who had been devastated, it had all been about two people: Isaac Smith and Faith Kelly.
Faith felt her rage, and this time, she wasn’t sure she could control it. What frightened her more was the fact that she wasn’t sure she wanted to.
