Wingate sighed. “He’s delusional, Vanessa. That’s what makes him so convincing. He really believes everything he’s told you. But none of it is true. There was no secret army. I did not arrange for Carl to be drafted, and I never ordered Carl to kill Eric Glass. That was all in Carl’s head, and you believed him because you hate me. But I’ve always loved you, even when you’ve hurt me. Do you have any idea how badly I feel knowing that my daughter believes I’m so evil that I could murder my wife, a woman I loved dearly?”
The General ducked his head, and his voice caught. “I’ve never told you, but there have been nights where I’ve cried myself to sleep because of you, knowing that you…have such a low opinion of me that…”
Wingate shook his head. To Vanessa it appeared that he had been overcome by emotion, and that shocked her. She had never seen her father lose control-not even at her mother’s funeral. It was one of the things that had convinced her that Morris Wingate did not love his wife. Was the General’s display of emotion genuine or manufactured? Everything she believed about her father convinced her that he was faking.
“Are you hungry?” Wingate asked. “I’ll have dinner sent up.” He smiled in an attempt to lighten the conversation. “I have a new chef. He’s French. I stole him away from a four-star restaurant in Los Angeles.”
“It looks like kidnapping is becoming your new hobby.”
“Yes, well you’ve got a few interesting hobbies of your own,” he answered wearily. “You’ve put me in a terrible situation, Vanessa. You’re a wanted criminal. You helped Carl Rice, a multiple murderer, escape from jail. I’m your father and I love you and want to protect you, but I’m also running for my party’s presidential nomination, not to mention the trouble I could get into for harboring a fugitive. What should I do?”
“Your political ambitions are no concern of mine,” Vanessa said.
“I know you don’t believe me, but Rice is a very dangerous man. I had to get you away from him.”
“So, are you going to turn me in?”
“No one knows you’re here, and I’m going to keep it that way. I have plenty of connections worldwide from my government days and Computex. It would be an easy matter for me to get you a new identity, even a new face. You could start over in another country. You’d be safe and I’d make sure you had plenty of money.”
“So that’s it. You want me tucked away in some backwater where I can’t rock the boat.”
“I do not want you in jail because your delusions led you to help a murderer.”
“What do you have planned for Carl?”
“Carl is a problem for the police. They may never catch him. He’s very resourceful. He’s managed to elude capture for years. Maybe his luck will hold out. Did he tell you where he was going, what his plans are?”
“We didn’t know where we were going. We were going to hole up at the cabin where Sam found us and figure out our next move in the morning, after we’d gotten some rest.”
“So you have no idea where he might be?”
“No.”
Wingate glanced at Cutler. He straightened up and took a hypodermic out of his pocket.
“What’s that?” Vanessa asked.
Wingate moved quickly and pinned Vanessa to the bed.
“Something that will help you rest,” he said. “It won’t hurt.”
“I don’t want any more drugs,” Vanessa screamed as she struggled to get free.
Wingate and Cutler ignored her pleas. Sam stood over Vanessa. She bucked and threw herself from side to side. “Hold her still, General,” Cutler said as he bent forward to administer the injection. “I don’t want to miss the vein.”
It was a little over two miles from the jetty to the mansion through the woods on the south side of the General’s property. Charlotte Kohler liked to stroll along paths she’d had a landscape architect lay down through her private forest, but Carl avoided them because they would be a natural place for motion detectors. After a while, Carl saw the lights of the house through breaks in the foliage. He crept forward cautiously until there were only a few trees between him and the lawn at the back of the mansion. The grounds directly behind the house offered few places to hide, and two guards crossed on the back lawn while Carl had it under surveillance.
Carl watched carefully as the guards walked their route. One of the men crossed the pool deck near the cabana where Carl had changed into a bathing suit on his first visit to the estate. As soon as the guard disappeared, Carl made a decision.
It took the guards twelve minutes to complete their circuit. Carl worked his way through the woods as close to the cabana as he could. Everything depended on getting behind it undetected. He sprinted from the woods to the pool and dove low behind the cabana.
Carl checked his watch. Three minutes to go. He visualized the attack, going over possible scenarios. With a minute to go, Carl withdrew the combat knife from its sheath. He had made several silent kills, and he knew that he had to act without hesitation. He had already seen in such circumstances a certain phenomenon that convinced him that human beings had some kind of electrical field around them to warn them when there were other humans in close proximity. Though he didn’t know if there had been any scientific studies to support his notion, no matter how stealthy an approach, an intended victim would sense when an attacker entered this field. A moment’s hesitation was all it took to turn a sure kill into a fight to the death.
The guards passed on the lawn, and Carl’s target arrived at the pool just as the other guard disappeared around the side of the house. Carl moved as soon as the guard’s back was to him. The guard was turning as Carl attacked, but he had no chance. The knife struck home and he died without making a sound. Carl dragged the guard’s body into the cabana and changed into his clothes. Now, in addition to the Glocks and his knife, Carl had the guard’s automatic rifle and two extra clips of ammunition.
To make up time Carl walked a little faster than the pace his victim had kept, but he was still late. He spotted the other guard when they were on the north side of the mansion near the door to the cellar. This was fortunate because they were away from any windows. Carl knelt and pretended to tie his laces. He kept his head down to conceal his face.
“What’s up, Rick?” the guard asked as he came in range.
Carl shot him with the silenced Glock and dragged him against the side of the house. He tried the cellar door. It was locked. He rifled the guard’s pockets and found a key chain. The third key he tried opened the door.
In high school, Carl and Vanessa had made love in the basement’s cool darkness on a discarded Persian rug while Vanessa’s father was meeting with movers and shakers above them. The basement was still cool and dark, but those erotic moments were forgotten as Carl moved between the stacked furniture and abandoned art and up the steps to the first floor. He remembered that the basement door led to a short hall near the kitchen. He opened the door wide enough to see into the corridor.
A guard walked past the entrance to the hall, and Carl ducked behind the basement door. As soon as the guard was past, Carl moved down the hall toward him. When he reached the end of the hall, Carl stooped down and peered around the corner. The guard had stopped with his back to Carl. It looked as if he was taking a break. Carl stunned the man with a blow to the back of the skull, then choked him unconscious. He dragged him back into the basement, cuffed him with plastic cuffs he found in the guard’s back pocket, sat him against a stack of mildewed cardboard cartons, and slapped the guard back to consciousness.
The man’s eyes flicked open. They tried to focus on Carl’s face but the taste of metal in his mouth brought the guard’s eyes down to the gun barrel that was wedged between his lips.
“You have one chance to live,” Carl said in a calm, authoritative tone. “When I take this gun barrel out of your mouth you’ll tell me where the General is holding his prisoner or I will shoot you and find someone else who will tell me. Understood?”
The man nodded. Carl withdrew the barrel past the man’s lips.
“Second floor, maid’s room.”
Carl hit the man fast and much harder than he had the first time. The guard slumped sideways as Carl headed for the stairs. He knew the location of the maid’s room. He and Vanessa had screwed there one summer evening. Now that he thought about it, almost every memory he had of Wingate’s mansion was connected to sex.
Carl used the back stairs to get to the second floor. He moved down the hall without making a sound. As he drew close to the maid’s room, he heard voices. Then Vanessa screamed, “I don’t want any more drugs.”
When Carl wrenched open the door the General was pinning Vanessa to the bed and Sam Cutler was poised over her with a hypodermic needle.
“Put down the hypo or die,” Carl said.
