Girl of Rage Read online

  But so had her mother.

  Julia shook her head. She didn’t understand any of it. She looked at the cars ahead of them on the highway, an empty feeling settling over her. Her company had been shut down by the IRS. Two of her sisters and her mother were missing. Nothing made sense any more.

  She sat straight and slowly closed her eyes. She was not going to cry. Not now. She had too much to do, too many problems to deal with, too many people depending on her, not the least of which was Carrie and the tiny little baby who was going to need help to live.

  Bear. May 2. 8 pm.

  “Yeah,” Bear muttered into his phone, fighting to force his eyes open. He groaned and shifted position, sitting up, disoriented. Light flooded his eyes and he squinted them, realizing where he was.

  The hospital. He’d spent the afternoon with the kids after dropping Carrie Sherman back at the safe house, then slept for two hours, then he'd come here. Leah was in intensive care, and Gary, her giant pug of a husband, was pacing at the other end of the waiting area.

  Bear sat up, when he heard the voice on the phone. It was the Secretary.

  “Bear, I need you to come in.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bear said, desperately suppressing a burp, his entire chest rumbling. “What … sorry, sir … I’m a bit groggy.”

  “Be in my office in an hour.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Shit. Bear took the phone away from his ear as Secretary Perry hung up. He looked at his phone, uncomprehendingly. It was 8 pm. He’d been asleep for two hours. Not enough to feel rested, but plenty to make him feel desperate.

  He stood up, staggering a little, wishing he hadn’t quit smoking. Jesus, he needed to get some coffee. And a shower. Did he have time for a shower? Maybe, if he booked it right now. He walked to the other end of the waiting room.

  “Gary,” he said.

  “Motherfucker,” Gary said.

  “How is she?”

  “Not awake yet. But she’s in recovery.”

  Bear sagged. “The kids?”

  “Your mom’s with them.”

  “Okay,” Bear said. He looked at his phone and said, “The Secretary just called me. I gotta go in.”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  Bear shrugged. He and Gary were never gonna be pals.

  “Call me if anything changes.”

  “Yeah, all right.”

  Bear put a hand out and briefly rested it on Gary’s shoulder. Gary froze.

  “Gary. She’s gonna be okay.”

  Initially Gary didn’t respond. He just stood there, his entire body a jumbled mass of tensed muscles. Bear felt him shaking, all 220 pounds of packed muscle vibrating like a well-tuned instrument. For just a second, he thought Gary was going to slug him. Instead, he sagged.

  “Yeah.”

  Bear stepped back and let his hand drop. He didn’t want to push his luck, nor did he feel much appreciation for the irony of comforting the husband of his ex-wife. Miss Manners didn’t give out any scripts for that.

  He left the hospital as quickly as he could. At 8 pm he could count on a long wait at the subway station, or an equally long wait for a cab. Or he could just walk or run it. It was twelve long city blocks back to his apartment, probably a fifteen-minute run. Far quicker than waiting for a cab.

  He opted to run. Maybe that would help wake him up some.

  Bear hadn’t counted on the heat. Washington, DC—the entire East Coast really—had just been through an unusually long and cold winter. Bear hadn’t fully adjusted to the sudden change from winter to summer with barely any transition at all. The air was soupy, thick with humidity and street smells. And, instead of sneakers, he was running in business shoes.

  Asshat. Sometimes Bear’s internal monologue was less than diplomatic.

  He was soaked with sweat by the time he reached his tiny apartment. For just a second, when he walked in, he was disoriented. Twenty-six hours had passed since he’d gotten the phone call from Leah.

  Bear, is there supposed to be a relief team here?

  No. No relief team.

  It was an ambush, an ambush by at least one person who was supposed to be on their team. A betrayal by a long time DSS agent, and Bear still had exactly nothing to go on.

  Bear left a trail of dirty clothing from the door to the shower, and washed his hair and body in record time, the water turned all the way up, pounding his sore and exhausted body with the hottest water possible. He was red faced and relaxed when he stepped out and began to dry himself off, only to discover that he’d failed to wash his armpits, which still smelled pretty dodgy. Whatever. He sprayed himself with deodorant and got dressed quickly, wearing the thickest socks he had because he’d developed a blister on the back of his ankle on the run over.

  He picked up his shoes and started to put them on. They were scuffed all to hell. 8:32, and he had twenty-eight minutes left before he had to report to the secretary’s office. He took thirty seconds to apply polish to his shoes, ninety seconds to chug a Red Bull and fifteen seconds to reach in the drawer for his laptop so he could check his email.

  Then Bear froze. The laptop wasn’t in the drawer.

  His kitchen table was completely clear.

  Oh, shit. When he’d left the apartment twenty-six and a half hours ago, he’d left at a dead run. Shots had been fired at the Thompson condominium, his ex-wife was in the line of fire, and he didn’t take a minute to lock up the classified documents that had been sitting on his kitchen table. Classified documents, which included the personnel file of the former spy turned diplomat turned Secretary of Defense-elect Richard Thompson.

  He could see it in his mind’s eye. The file, carefully opened on the table, where he’d been reading it.

  He traced his movements the night before. He’d left the office a few minutes after 5:30. The classified documents desk had called him after receiving the fax from the San Francisco police. The police report.

  It still made no sense. Adelina Thompson sexually assaulted, and her husband the suspect, more than twenty years ago. She’d refused to testify and the case had been closed with what looked to Bear to be unusual dispatch. Bear put the file, along with Thompson’s personnel file and background documents on Wakhan and Pakistan in the 1980s, into a bag and walked out of the building.

  He’d walked out of the building with a bag full of improperly secured classified documents. Then, when he found out his ex-wife had been shot at, he’d left them out on the table.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  He was shaking. He looked at the clock. 8:38. Twenty-two minutes. It was a twenty-minute walk from here to Main State, and typically four minutes from the entrance to the elevator and then up to the 7th floor.

  He needed to leave right now. Instead, he walked over to his closet and kneeled at the floor safe. Maybe he’d forgotten. Bear had slept a total of three hours out of the last forty-eight. He was functioning on empty. Maybe he’d just forgotten.

  He dialed the combination, but got it wrong and cursed in frustration. Then he tried again, and opened the safe.

  It was empty.

  No classified documents.

  No nothing. His passport, birth certificate, a thousand dollars in cash, and other documents were gone, including the three surviving photos of his and Leah’s wedding, which he’d locked in the safe to ensure he didn’t burn them while drunk. Everything was gone.

  Shaking, Bear shook his head, then stood up. He had to get to the Secretary now. He had nineteen minutes. He ran out the door, letting it slam shut behind him, and hit the down elevator button.

  Then he stood there. The left elevator was on 18, the right on L. Neither moved.

  Christ.

  He shifted his weight back and forth from one foot to the other, limbering up. He was going to have to run. It wasn’t far, straight down New Hampshire Avenue to 23rd Street, then left, through the George Washington University campus and there it was. He walked it every day.

  He didn’t run it twice a day. He wished h
e’d worn sneakers. Finally. The elevator was moving.

  “Oh, there you are. Mister Bear!”

  Christ. It was Millie McPherson, the widow who lived two doors down from him. Millie was a blue-haired old woman who had, from her patterns of speech, probably grown up on an antebellum plantation in central Georgia. She had on a sixty-year-old yellow sundress, patent leather shoes and a bow in her hair, for Christ’s sake, and her smile revealed a full set of unnaturally straight teeth.

  “Oh, hey there, Miss Millie.”

  “Do you have time to chat for just a moment, Bear?”

  The elevator was moving now, coming up, floor 7, 8, now 9.

  “I don’t, really, I’m kind of on an emergency call, if the freaking elevator ever gets here.”

  “It won’t take but a moment, sugah, I promise.”

  “Maybe you could ride the elevator down with me, Miss Millie.” He wanted to be polite. He really did. But the elevator dinged and the doors opened and he stepped inside. He stabbed the L with his index finger as she tottered over toward the door.

  “Wait…” she called.

  He pretended to reach for the door to stop it and said, insincerely, “Oh no,” as the door closed.

  The elevator started moving and he prepared to run.

  Two minutes later he was out the front door of the building and on his way. It was 8:47, and he had thirteen minutes to make a twenty-minute walk. He ran as quickly as he could.

  It was a warm Friday night in Washington, DC near DuPont Circle. The crowds were out in force, people spilling onto the sidewalk and traffic jammed up, nobody moving in their cars except the cabs who drove recklessly in between other lanes and sometimes narrowly missing bumping onto the sidewalk. Bear ran through a crowd of twenty-something college students who crowded the sidewalk, all skinny jeans and halter tops and skin everywhere, an appalling display of youth and beauty and crushing envy which Bear might have normally enjoyed. Tonight he had no time and no inclination, pushing past the kids aggressively, his passage evoking cries and curses.

  Finally he was free, headed down New Hampshire Avenue. He dodged traffic at the intersections, only having to stop when he finally hit K Street with its wall-to-wall traffic. He checked his phone. 8:55. Damn it. There was no way he’d make it in time.

  No matter. The moment the light changed he launched himself across the street, hearing the screech of tires as an overly aggressive cabbie had to suddenly stop. Down 23rd Street, past George Washington University Hospital where Leah was recovering from the gunshot wounds, and on toward Main State.

  It was five minutes after nine when he arrived, breathless and sweaty, at the Secretary’s door.

  He knocked, sucking back breaths. He had to compose himself before that door opened. He took a last shuddering breath, then tried to hold himself calm as the door opened.

  It was the Secretary himself at the door. A tall and gaunt man, James Perry had once been a naval riverboat captain in Vietnam, and later a United States Senator. His runs for the Presidency had ended in failure—Republicans labeled him as too wonky, too intellectual, too weak-kneed, to be President. Bear admired him, though in general his attitude about Democrats was to be appalled at their lack of fortitude or patriotism. But in Bear’s eyes, no one could question Perry’s courage or his patriotism.

  “Bear, come in. I was starting to worry.”

  “Sorry about that, sir,” Bear gasped out.

  “Bear … you all right?”

  Bear followed Perry into the dimmed office. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  The Secretary’s office was large, with a sizable sitting area marked with ornate couches and tables. His working space, a large mahogany desk, was at the opposite end. Wide planked hardwood floors stained a deep reddish brown stretched across the broad space, contrasting with the white walls, elegant wainscoting and elaborate molding.

  “Have a seat, then,” Perry said, walking over to the desk and indicating a chair that sat at an angle to the desk. Bear took a seat, sucking in another shuddering gasp of air as he did so, trying to be discreet.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Perry asked. “Breathe, man.”

  “I’m fine. I was running late so I actually ran over here from DuPont Circle. I live over that way.”

  Perry raised his eyebrows. Bear noticed for the first time that the eyebrows were shot through with white. Perry must dye his hair.

  “I see,” Perry said. “First, how’s Leah Simpson?”

  “She’s out of surgery, sir, and in recovery. The last news we got was that her prognosis was good.”

  “Good, good,” Perry said, nodding. “And the Thompson daughters. They’re still at our safe house?”

  “Yeah,” Bear said. “Though Carrie Sherman blew the location earlier, with one of the other sisters.”

  Perry frowned. “How did she do that? You didn’t take their phones?”

  “They aren’t prisoners, sir.”

  “True. All right, that’s what it is. Tell me what else you have?”

  Bear sighed. Then he said the first thing that came out of his mouth. “Nothing, sir. Or—very little.”

  Perry bit his lip. Jesus. He was personally interested in this, not just professionally.

  Bear said, “We know that Adelina Thompson lied about her age. Not on official documents, but socially. She was actually sixteen when Richard Thompson knocked her up.”

  “Okay. What else?”

  “She had an affair. Who with we don’t know, but two of the daughters aren’t his. And we know that when he found out, he beat her up and raped her.”

  Perry blanched. “What? Are you serious?”

  “Yeah, unfortunately. It happened in 1990.”

  “I didn’t know about that. What’s your conclusion about Richard Thompson’s original employment?”

  “Thompson was CIA.”

  “Right. You saw that Henry Kissinger signed his recommendation. He was National Security Advisor then. Richard Thompson was CIA.”

  “But CIA puts people in diplomatic cover all the time.”

  “Of course they do, Wyden. Tell me how that works.”

  Bear nodded. Of course. When CIA needed to place someone, they created a cover with the cooperation of State.

  “He was some kind of a long term plant,” Bear said. “But for what purpose?”

  “Think about the crew running CIA then. George Bush and William Colby and Kissinger. Those guys thought they could do anything. The CIA was running assassination programs and drugs and all kinds of stuff. I think Thompson was a recruit, and they placed him at State. Then Kissinger came over here too, as Secretary.”

  “What does all this have to do with now?”

  “I don’t know yet. But I can tell you this—Thompson’s got some enemies. They’re trying to take him down, and they don’t care who goes down with him. Things are changing very rapidly right now.”

  Bear’s mind turned to the missing files.

  “Right. I get that,” Bear said. “Sir, we may have one problem. I suppose I’m reporting myself. I had Thompson’s personnel file along with some other classified documents about Wakhan and Pakistan at my apartment. I didn’t properly secure the documents last night when the shooting was reported. And when I finally got back tonight—they were gone.”

  Perry sat back and rubbed his eyes. Then he said, “We do have a problem, then.”

  Bear waited. It was a problem all right. DSS sacked people for far less. People went to jail for less.

  Perry looked up and said, “You should know, the reason I called you in—I got a call from the White House about an hour before I called you.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Thompson’s nomination is being withdrawn by the President. He’s going to hang him out to dry, which I think is well deserved.”

  Bear nodded. That was good news. But not if they took down his daughters with him. Bear didn’t know the oldest daughter Julia, but he knew Carrie had been through too much already.


  “I was ordered to hand over the investigation to the independent prosecutor and the FBI. They’re doing a joint investigation with the IRS and Secret Service. We’re out of it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bear muttered. He didn’t want to be out of it. He wanted to know who had shot Leah.

  “The thing is,” Perry said, his voice quiet. “There’s something that isn’t right here. Something just doesn’t make sense. Richard Thompson is a snake. But drug money laundering? I don’t buy it. Not at all.”

  Bear was confused. He looked at Perry and said, “So … what happens now?”

  “Well, obviously I have to take you off the case,” Perry said. “We’ll have your team here turn over whatever they have, which isn’t much from what you’ve led me to believe. And—given what you’ve reported to me, I may have to temporarily suspend you, with pay, while I investigate.”

  Suspended. That was a blow. Bear sat back, nodding. Then he realized Perry was staring closely at him.

  “Now, Bear, I can’t tell you what to do with your free time, if you’re suspended. But I’d expect you’d be careful.”

  Huh. What was he saying? Go investigate on your own? Was he saying he’d cover for him? Or was this one of those situations that happened sometimes, where people just got hung out to dry? He’d be out there with no professional backing, no actual business being on the case. He wouldn’t have a budget, or a right to carry a weapon except for self-defense, with no jurisdiction to do anything at all.

  Did it even matter? He thought for just a second about his ex-wife, fighting for her life in the hospital. About Andrea Thompson, on the run and not even knowing who her father was. He thought about Carrie Sherman, fighting for the life of her daughter.

  He nodded slowly. “Sir, I apologize. I suppose I’ll have to accept the suspension. How long will I be suspended, sir?”

  “I’d say indefinitely. Until I can complete an investigation. Right now I’m a little busy, though.”

  “Yes, sir. I understand.” Bear stood. Then he let an uncharacteristic grin appear on his face. “You know, sir, for a Democrat, you’re all right.”