At all costs

CHAPTER FORTY

“All you have to do is drive,” Nick mocked under his breath as he crossed the once-grand lobby of the Radford Hotel. He carried the pizza box on his shoulder, bearing the logo of Papa Lorenzo’s Perfect Pizza Parlor. The box was empty, of course. Nick and his coconspirator had consumed the whole thing while sitting down the block in Thorne’s rental car, working out the fine points of the plan. Tasted pretty good, actually, considering the fact that Papa Lorenzo and his staff all wore turbans.

Even though Little Rock was a small city by most standards, the task of locating a single needle named Irene Rivers in a haystack of several dozen hotels seemed hopeless at first. Then Jake got an idea. In fact, he seemed flooded with ideas. Good ones, even. An amazing turnaround, Nick thought, given the quivering mess he’d been just scant hours before.

Their approach was simple: divide the Yellow Pages in half and burn up a ton of quarters in pay phones calling front desk after front desk and asking for Irene Rivers’s room. They were just shy of four dollars into their strategy when Jake got a hit on the Radford. After the phone in her room rang ten times without anyone answering, he just hung up, confident she was still out saving the world from the likes of himself.

Finding the hotel was only the first step, though. They still needed a room number, and for that, Nick needed to do some legwork. Between the two of them, his was the face that hadn’t dominated the news.

The Radford was a big old place, which once had been the destination of choice for visiting presidents and celebrities. On the heels of more than a few slow years, though, the Radford had been unable to keep up with the Grand Marquis and the Crown Plaza, and its once-dependable clientele had shifted its loyalties elsewhere. The place was still several giant steps away from homeless-shelter status, but there was precious little charm left in the threadbare Oriental carpets and scratched cherry walls.

To be put up in a place like this was clear evidence that Irene Rivers had seriously pissed off her travel agent.

As Nick approached the two teenagers manning the front desk, they looked up simultaneously and smiled. “Hi. Can I help you?” one of them said.

Nick noted the similarity of the girls’ features-even down to the matching zits on their chins-and he wondered silently if maybe they were sisters. He smiled back, trying his best to look a little sheepish while praying that his hands wouldn’t shake.

“Hi,” he said back. “You sure can.” With hopes of making himself look more like a local, he spoke around a toothpick he’d picked up at Papa Lorenzo’s. “One of your guests called and ordered a pizza. Unfortunately, I lost the note with her room number on it. Got a name, though. Rivers. Irene Rivers. Can you give me her room?”

The Bobbsey Twins exchanged glances, then shook their heads in unison. “No, I’m afraid not,” said the one on the right. “We can’t give out people’s room numbers to anyone.”

“I can call her, though, and have her come down and pick it up,” offered the twin on the left.

Nick’s stomach knotted. He felt a burst of panic, then forced a smile. “No,” he said quickly. “Please don’t do that. Listen, truth of it is, I’m already running fifteen minutes late with this thing, and this is the second time I’ve lost an address tonight. Boss told me this Rivers lady is a pain as it is. If she gets ticked and calls, I’m sunk, know what I mean?”

The girls shared a significant look this time and nodded again. Obviously, they’d known some difficult customers in their time and maybe even worked for an asshole or two along the way.

“We really shouldn’t…” hedged Bobbsey Left.

“Please,” Nick begged winningly. “It’s humiliating enough for a man my age to be delivering pizzas. I could really do without a lecture to go with it, you know?”

Another look. And a joint sigh. “Okay,” said Bobbsey Right as she tapped the keys on her computer. “Just don’t get us in trouble, okay? Room 405.” She looked up and pointed across the lobby. “You can take those elevators over there.”

Nick smiled and thanked them. He wandered over and pushed the call button, but it seemed forever before anything happened. Even the elevators in this old barn were tired. Fortunately, he was the only passenger. After the big doors rumbled shut, Nick pushed the buttons for both the second floor and the fourth, so that the floor indicator in the lobby would go all the way to Agent Rivers’s floor, even after he exited on the first stop.

The hallway was bright enough, if somewhat narrow, in the style of old downtown hotels, and he encountered his first dilemma in trying to figure out what to do with the damn pizza box. Finally, he gave up looking for a trash can and just slid it under a Coke machine.

That done, he took the stairs down to a preselected side entrance on the first floor. Checking one more time to make sure that the stairwell was empty, he opened the door and nearly screamed. Jake was standing right there, not two feet away on the other side. “Jesus! You scared the shit out of me!”

Jake looked at him like he was crazy. “I told you I’d be waiting here.”

“Yeah, but…” Oh, the hell with it. “She’s in room 405. How’re you gonna get in?”

Jake shrugged and craned his neck to peer up the stairwell. “I don’t know yet. But I’ll make it.”

They climbed the first two floors together before Nick broke off to retrieve his elevator. “I’ll wait for you in the car,” he said. But his face said something else entirely.

Jake smiled. “I’ll be there.” He sounded none too convinced himself.

It was nearly two by the time Irene returned to her hotel room, exhausted. Her body was whipped, but her mind whirled way too fast to permit sleep. She’d hoped that the martini before dinner and the two glasses of wine with the entree would take the edge off, but it was no use. Slice by slice, her career had been whittled away to virtually nothing these past few days, and all the alcohol had accomplished was to give her a world-class case of heartburn.

A hot bath was her last hope. She preferred them just this side of scalding, where the skin of her fingers and toes would prune up in minutes and the heat would suck away her ability to concentrate on anything but sleep. None of the worry mattered, anyway. Even with his wife and son in jeopardy, Jake Donovan still remained out of reach. That part surprised her. She’d thought for sure he was more of a family man than that.

Still fully clothed, Irene plugged the tub and cranked the faucet all the way to hot. After a few seconds, she eased it back a bit, then closed the door behind her as she strolled back to the bedroom to change out of her suit.

They knew for certain now that Donovan was getting help from someone. The local cop in Newark reported a third party, as did the paramedics at the Rescue Squad building. Crime scene technicians had confirmed glove smudges in the Faylons’ Toyota, but no extra prints yet. The Caddy was a rental-under a fictitious name-and as such had hundreds of fingerprints all over it. They’d run them all through the computer, of course, but it was a giant step between having rented a vehicle and being a suspect in a crime.

Agents from the Chicago field office had been following through on Irene’s pet theory involving Harry Sinclair, but after a day of turning his house inside out, no one had found a single piece of evidence to implicate the old man. Old Harry had even shown up at the house again, after a day of what he called “alone time.” Apparently, occasional stretches of unaccountability helped him cope during his periods of heavy thinking.

Ted Greenberg in Chicago had sent a tape of Sinclair’s interview via courier to George Sparks’s office in Little Rock. Irene had listened to a copy in the car on the way to dinner. It was funny, really, hearing Ted work to trip up the old man.

“So, how do you explain the phone call from Travis Donovan?”

“I suppose he wanted to talk to me.”

“Did he?”

“Why don’t you tell me.”

“Look, Mr. Sinclair, it’s in your best interest to cooperate here.”

“Consider me the poster child of cooperation.”

“Fine. Did you speak to Travis Donovan?”

“I’m afraid our connection was broken.”

“So you didn’t speak to him?”

“If the connection was broken, how could I?”

“Please answer the question, sir. Yes or no.” The frustration in Greenberg’s voice jumped right out of the cassette. “Did you or did you not speak over the telephone with Travis Donovan?”

“That would be very difficult without a connection, don’t you think?” Equally obvious was the amusement in Sinclair’s voice.

And so it went, for forty-five minutes, with Harry Sinclair neither incriminating nor perjuring himself. It occurred to Irene that the old man would make a great politician. In all likelihood, the interview would have continued ad infinitum had Sinclair’s attorney not shown up and put a stop to it. He’d already talked an appellate judge into nullifying their warrant and slapping a stay on their wiretap, due to a lack of evidence.

What the hell? she told herself. It was a dead end, anyway.

She undressed quickly and clumsily, kicking off her shoes and wriggling out of her suit. She paused a minute to check a spaghetti spatter on the front of the blouse and made a mental note to send it out to the cleaners first thing tomorrow, before it had a chance to set. Next came her weapon, a black S amp;W. 40-caliber semiautomatic, which she unclipped from the waistband of her skirt and dropped with a thunk onto the dresser. In less than a minute, she was naked, ready to soak. On her way back toward the bathroom, she paused for a moment to view herself in the mirrored closet doors, first full-face, then profile.

“Not bad for forty-two,” she told herself. Then, to remember what she looked like at twenty-two, she sucked in her stomach until she couldn’t breathe. “It sucks to grow old,” she grumbled. Hearing the vernacular, she reminded herself how much she was beginning to sound like her kids.

I’ve got to call them, she thought. First thing tomorrow. It’s been two days. And two days alone with their father was more than anyone should be asked to endure.

By the time she finished brushing her teeth, the water level had reached the danger line, and she had to take care as she lowered herself into the steaming bath not to slosh anything over the sides. It was wonderful; better, even, than she’d hoped. In the oversize tub, the water came past her breasts, just high enough to tickle the underside of her chin. The tension and the worry drained away as she leaned her head back against the tile and closed her eyes. This was heaven. If only she’d thought to turn out the lights, she could’ve fallen asleep right there.

In fact, she’d nearly nodded off when she heard the bathroom door open.

“Don’t scream,” Jake warned as he took aim at Irene’s left eye. “In fact, don’t say anything. If you try to call for help, I’ll kill you.”

Irene didn’t move, other than to begin trembling in the scalding water.

“Do you believe I’ll kill you?” Jake asked.

The fugitive’s face was blank, yet his eyes remained warm. The contrast petrified her. She nodded. Yes, she believed him.

He nodded along with her. “Good.” He pulled a towel off the metal rack next to the sink and handed it to her. “Here,” he said. “Cover yourself up.”

She reached for the towel too quickly and caused a wave of water to arch over the porcelain edge and slap down onto the black and white tile floor. As she tucked the towel around her body, she realized with a shudder that she was staring down the barrel of her own gun. A humiliating end to a humiliating day.

“What do you want?” she demanded. The strength she heard in her voice surprised her.

“How’s my son?”

She glared at him, her fear dissolving quickly into anger. “Who do you think you are, charging into my hotel room-”

“You know who I am,” Jake interrupted. “And if you truly believe all the bullshit they say I’ve done, then you should be scared shitless right now. If you don’t believe it, then you should know just how angry and unstable I have a right to be.” He helped himself to a spot on the vanity and drew one knee up to help support the weight of the pistol. “Either way, it seems that you should think twice before pissing me off.”

She continued to glare. There was fear in his eyes now, and combined with the complex assortment of other emotions he projected, she didn’t know what to make of his stability. Perhaps it was, indeed, time to be careful.

He took a deep, shaky breath and tried again. “I’m not asking you for state secrets, Rivers. I’m a father whose son is sick. Now, please answer my question. How is he?”

The way she broke eye contact said more than her words ever could. His shoulders sagged.

“They say he’ll live,” she said softly. “But it’s too early to tell the full extent of the damage to his lungs.”

Jake felt the sadness return and closed his eyes. At least he’s alive, he told himself. This was a time to focus on the positive.

He heard movement in the water and his eyes snapped open, freezing Irene in midlunge. If her foot hadn’t slipped, she might have made it.

“Don’t!” he yelled, more loudly than was prudent this late at night. His finger was half a pull away from killing her, and she seemed to know it, her full attention focused on the barrel of the pistol. “Sit down!” he commanded sharply. “Dammit, Rivers, don’t do that to me!”

She did, indeed, sit back down, and she watched as Jake struggled with his emotions. Sure as hell he’d have killed her, and from all appearances, that fact scared him nearly as much as it scared her.

A full minute passed before anyone said anything. Then he asked, “Have you seen him? Travis, I mean?”

She nodded. “Yes, I’ve seen him. He seems to be resting comfortably. They’ve got him in pediatric ICU, and he’s on a respirator, but he doesn’t seem to be in any distress.”

He considered that, then nodded to himself. “That’s good,” he said. “It’s good he’s comfortable. We can handle anything as long as he’s alive.” Another long pause followed. “Do you have children, Rivers?”

The question made her uneasy, but there seemed to be no threat in it. “Uh-huh,” she said. “Two daughters.”

He nodded again, though she wasn’t at all sure he’d heard her answer. “Kids are a hoot, aren’t they? Nothing makes you laugh as hard or cry as hard as a kid.” Again, he seemed to disappear into a distant room in his mind.

“Why are you here, Donovan?” she said, interrupting his thoughts. “No offense, but for an intelligent guy like yourself, this is a stupid place to be.”

He looked up again and chuckled. “So I’ve heard. Well, I’ll admit it seemed a much better idea when I was planning it than it did once I got here. But sooner or later, I figured I had to trust someone. You’re it. What does that tell you about my available options?”

“How did you get in?” Get him talking about himself, she thought, remembering her hostage negotiation training. As long as he felt like he had a friend, he’d be less likely to harm the hostage. She must have skipped the lesson on what to do when the negotiator and the hostage were the same person.

“You’d be surprised how many master keys they’ve got lying around the Housekeeping Department at this hour,” he said.

“That’s smart,” she said. “I’m not sure I would have thought of that.”

The comment brought a smirk to Jake’s face, and then the smirk turned to a smile and the smile to a laugh.

“What?” Clearly, she didn’t like being laughed at.

“Why, Agent Rivers, I believe you’re trying to suck up to me. Is that one of the lessons in Hostage 101?” He laughed again.

She scowled. “I don’t know-”

“Please,” he interrupted with a wave. “Spare me. If it sets your mind at ease, I don’t want anything from you except conversation, okay? If you just stay put and do what I tell you, I’ll be on my way in a little while. As you might imagine, I feel a little exposed here.” He eyed her towel and chuckled again. “Well, okay, maybe not as exposed as you, but still…”

She smiled in spite of herself and pulled the towel a little closer.

“So, tell me, Rivers, do you really believe that we killed all of those people back in 1983?”

Her eyes narrowed as she searched for the right answer.

He sighed. “Relax, okay? This isn’t a quiz. It’s a fact-finding mission.”

She shrugged. “Well… yes.”

He considered the answer. Certainly, it was no surprise. “That all makes perfect sense to you, does it? That my wife and I-neither of us with the slightest hint of a violent past-would shoot our friends, blow up half the state, and then leave a note?”

She shrugged. “With all due respect, Donovan, crooks have been known to do some pretty stupid things. Zealots, in particular, have a long history of stupidity.”

“Zealots.” He said the word softly, as if testing its flavor. “So that’s what we were, huh? Zealots? I suppose the record is full of documented examples of our zealous causes? Or was this environmental thing our first?”

“Look Jake…”

“No, you look, Irene,” he pressed. “Have you found any evidence at all to substantiate this zealot crap? Registration cards for the American Nazi Party, maybe? How about-oh, damn, who was it that burned all the campuses in the sixties? — SDS, that’s it. Students for a Democratic Society. Have you found that? How about the NRA? Have you been able to dig up a single example of Carolyn or me being zealous about anything?”

Irene rolled her eyes. “Come off it, Donovan. Even Fidel Castro had a first time. The evidence speaks for itself. Frankly, this little campaign of yours to dream up a conspiracy about some skeleton is kind of sad. Maybe if you’d come forward at the time, but really…”

He recoiled a bit at the mention of the skeleton, but then he realized that she must have interviewed Carolyn. “That proved to be a dead end,” he said. At this point, honesty could only help.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The skeleton we came after turned out to be a dog. Must have wandered in and died before any of this happened.”

Now she was really confused. “So, what-”

“But getting back to the note,” he said, gesturing with the gun as if it were an extension of his forefinger. “You’re telling me you don’t find that even a little absurd? A little convenient? Jesus.”

She didn’t know where this was going, so she remained silent. She figured he’d get to his point sooner or later.

“Have you investigated many arsons, Rivers?”

She shrugged with one shoulder, the abrupt change of subject putting her on edge. “My share, I suppose.”

He nodded approvingly. “I thought so. I remember seeing on television once that sometimes arson is used to cover up an entirely different crime. Has that ever been your experience?”

She regarded her visitor for a long moment before answering. “Let’s say I’ve heard similar rumors.”

“Okay, fine. Let’s say that. It wouldn’t be out of the question, then-I mean, it wouldn’t be inconceivable-if you found out that such was the case in Newark back in ’83, right?”

Irene didn’t like being cross-examined by a murderer. “The water’s getting cold, Jake. Please get to the point.”

“Fair enough.” It was time to play the Big Bluff. “Living underground as I have these past years, I’ve developed some interesting friendships with people who have access to information you wouldn’t believe.”

“And Harry Sinclair is one of them,” she interrupted.

Jake was ready for that. “Who?”

She rolled her eyes. “Right,” she groaned. “Go on.”

He shrugged it off. “Well, this information, I’ll admit, is not always put to good use, but it’s proved to be very reliable.” He paused for a reaction, got none, then moved on. “These friends have recently given me proof that your boss, Peter Frankel, was up to his elbows in illegal activities back in the early eighties…”

“Oh, please!” she scoffed. “I don’t even need to listen to this.”

“Hear me out,” he insisted.

She looked poised to argue but then seemed to give up. “I guess I don’t have a lot of choice, do I?”

Okay, here we go. It was time to sell guesswork as fact.

“Frankel was a senior guy in Little Rock, wasn’t he, back in ’83?”

“Are you telling me or asking me?”

“I’m trying to get you to open your mind.” Jake barked.

She smiled smugly. “Then you’re wasting your time here.”

Okay, fine. False start. He tried again. “Well, if you do some research, you’ll find that he was in charge of the whole investigation back then. Fact is, he was senior enough to be involved in just about everything coming out of your Little Rock office.”

“As the supervisory agent in charge is wont to do,” she interrupted.

Bingo. Guess number one confirmed. “Well, my people tell me that your boss knew all about the chemical warfare shit that was stored back in that magazine but had reason to keep it a secret from everybody-including his bosses.”

“And what reason might that be?” She pretended to be amused, even as a tiny light came on in her brain.

“Lots of money to be made in illegal weapons sales, you know.”

Irene’s heart skipped a beat as she recalled George Sparks’s recent mission to Iraq. To Jake, the recognition registered only as a slight tic in her right eye and a slight parting of her lips. Like a silent sigh. She said nothing, and she recovered quickly.

“So he’s having this regular yard sale out of Uncle Sam’s general store, when bingo! up pops the EPA and slaps a lock on the door. He’s cut off from his supplies, and all the evidence in the world is just sitting there waiting to convict him.”

“You’re guessing,” she hedged. “You don’t have any evidence.”

Jake was encouraged, even as she hit the nail on the head. It made too much sense for it not to be true, but he was powerless to verify anything. If he did his job right, she’d do the research for him.

“Oh, there’s evidence,” he bluffed. “You already see it in your head. I know you do. You don’t want to, but it’s there, isn’t it? If you want the same proof I have, all you have to do is look for it.”

“Where?” she pressed. “Where do I look for this earth-shattering revelation? Who do I talk to?”

“C’mon, Rivers. People can die for answering questions like that.” It was the response he’d rehearsed in the car with Nick. Mystery masks any lack of substance.

She shook her head vehemently. She refused to buy into it. “Why not just blow the place up, then? Why go to all the effort to kill so many people if he was just trying to hide some evidence of missing inventory?”

Her question stopped conversation dead. Jake narrowed his eyes and allowed himself a bitter smile. “Why kill so many people…” He savored the words as he repeated them. “You ask that question when it’s one of your own, yet you assume simple insanity when it’s Carolyn and me. Strange, huh?”

She acknowledged the point by looking away.

“Think about it, Rivers,” Jake urged, his tone growing more insistent. “Assume for just a second that I’m telling the truth here-that Carolyn and I are innocent. Now look at the facts. If you want to truly hide a secret, it’s not enough merely to destroy it. You’ve got to provide an alternative explanation for the destruction. The last thing Frankel wanted was an open-ended investigation. Without evidence to point to someone else, the trail might very well have led back to him. As it was, he got his bad guys on the first day and got the entire episode cleared up within a couple of weeks. Because of who he was, no one questioned anything.”

Irene considered it, and the more she thought, the more frightened she looked. “How could he have known that you and Carolyn would survive? If he was planning to pin this elaborate conspiracy on you, how could he know you’d get away?”

Jake watched her for a few seconds, waiting for her to see it for herself. “The name Tony Bernard mean anything to you?” he asked.

It took her a moment to place him. “Yes. He’s one of the people killed that day. Back at the motel room.”

“And why was he back at the motel? Do you remember?” If this was going to work, she had to put some pieces together for herself.

Irene closed her eyes. She’d just reread the file that morning, but it felt like years ago. “He was sick, wasn’t he? Some stomach thing.”

Jake waited, but she still didn’t get it. “Awfully odd, don’t you think? Young man like that suddenly too sick to work, and then these murderous barbarians go all the way back to the motel just to pop him-and to leave a note?”

Irene’s eyes grew intense enough to spark a fire as the pieces fell into place. “You think that Tony Bernard was the original patsy?”

Jake smiled. “In fact, I know he was,” he lied.

“But what about his illness? There were witnesses-”

“And how tough is it to give somebody a bellyache? I saw him that morning, too. He was heaving his guts out. He thought it was something he ate. I bought it at the time, just like everybody else did. But hell, we all ate the same stuff at the same place. Why was he the only one to get sick?” He let the words settle for a few seconds. “When Carolyn and I survived, Frankel had to shift gears a little, but he stayed with essentially the same plan. I figure that Tony was killed as an insurance policy. No telling what he might have known.”

She considered it all for a moment longer. “And if you and your wife had gotten arrested, it wouldn’t have mattered a bit, would it?” she thought aloud.

“Not with the case that Frankel put together,” Jake agreed. “And the further false evidence I’m sure he would’ve found if he was pushed to the wall. Plus, when emotions run as high as they did after Newark, the standards for evidence decrease. Why scour the bushes when the answer is delivered to your door? People want a quick conviction in these things. In the end, nothing we said could have gotten us off.”

Her head spun with new possibilities. It had never occurred to her to believe Carolyn’s story. Was it possible the Donovans were telling the truth?

“So how’s Carolyn?” Jake asked, another radical change of subject. Irene looked at him, confused. “I trust you’ve spoken with her?”

Irene nodded. “She’s fine. Frightened, angry, and sad, but otherwise fine.”

He smiled. “Good. Next time you see her, will you tell her I love her? And that I’m doing my best to fix everything?”

She saw a chance. “Why don’t you tell her, Jake? Let me take you in, and we’ll get this all straightened out. I promise you, I’ll pursue every lead you give me.”

That one made him laugh. “You’re kidding, right?” She wasn’t, and he knew it. “Well, I appreciate the offer, but forgive me if I decline. I’m not entirely convinced that trusting you this much hasn’t been a huge mistake. Somehow my faith in the criminal justice system just isn’t as strong as it used to be.” As he spoke, he dropped the clip out of Irene’s weapon and started thumbing the bullets into the toilet. He saw her look of disgust and smiled. “I know, it’s kind of gross, but I can’t very well leave you with a loaded gun, can I? I don’t think either of us wants the hassle of a shoot-out at two-thirty in the morning.”

“So what’s next?” she asked cautiously.

He shrugged. “I guess that’s up to you. You need to decide if your job is about justice or simply about following orders.” With the bullets removed, he dropped the clip into the bowl, then drew his own weapon before snapping the last of Irene’s bullets out of the chamber and closing the toilet lid. “I do have one last thing for you to think about, though.”

“I’m all ears.”

“I know you’ve been wondering why we came back here today, and I’ve done my best to explain that. We came for that dog skeleton, and it was a horrible miscalculation. Stupid reason, isn’t it? Made no sense. So how come you were expecting us?”

Without waiting for an answer, he slid down off the vanity and turned the doorknob to let himself out. “By the way,” he said with a grin. “I was hiding in the closet when you came in, and I have to agree. You’re not bad at all for forty-two.”

Sleep now was out of the question. Irene considered trying, anyway, if only in deference to the time of night, but even as her body screamed for a place to lie down, her mind spun like a top.

Donovan’s visit had left her stunned. All day long, she’d tried to think of a sound, logical reason for the couple to return to Arkansas. Cliches notwithstanding, smart criminals never returned to the scene of the crime. And after fourteen years on the Ten Most Wanted list, the Donovans had proved themselves to be very smart indeed.

After fishing the ammunition out of the toilet bowl-thankfully, she’d flushed after using it last-she’d strolled back into the bedroom, where she found her weapon in the middle of the king-size bed. She didn’t bother calling to alert anyone about Jake. He’d be long gone as it was, and the last thing she needed was another documented getaway.

Pulling on the lightweight flannel nightgown she always kept stuffed in her garment bag, she sat heavily in the hardback desk chair in front of the faux-wood desk. The Donovan file lay in her briefcase, just out of reach, but she didn’t want it right now. She wanted to reconstruct the case against them from memory.

What did the Bureau have, really? The note. Sixteen dead bodies. The fact of their survival and escape. What else?

Nothing. The thought made her gasp. What had seemed so ironclad-so obvious-only an hour ago now seemed pitifully superficial. Fragile almost. There was enough there, she supposed, to win a conviction in the hands of a skillful prosecutor; but suddenly, there seemed to be huge holes in the case. Holes big enough for a skilled defense attorney to drive a Mercedes through.

Maybe that’s what this was all about, she mused, resurrecting her natural cynicism. Maybe their return and the attendant shenanigans were merely stunts, designed to build a case for reasonable doubt in the minds of a future jury. Lord knew that the standard for acquittal was getting lower these days. Maybe this was just a high-stakes roll of the dice. They’d made their stand, and if they won, they’d be able to reenter society as full-fledged citizens. Was such a plan truly out of the question for people as intelligent as the Donovans? Especially if they had Harry Sinclair’s money behind them?

Certainly, it wasn’t as absurd as Jake’s assertion that Peter Frankel was involved in arms trafficking and murder.

So why did the Donovans return? Why didn’t they just disappear one more time? They’d made it, for heaven’s sake; they’d dropped completely off the radar screen after they snagged their kid from the school. Certainly, Sinclair would have helped them one more time. Why risk so much just for a jury stunt?

And why the hell would they just give up like that, after all this time on the run?

But they didn’t give up, did they? Their kid got hurt, and they sought medical attention. If that hadn’t happened, would they have disappeared, anyway? Dammit, why weren’t these questions in her head when Jake was in her bathroom?

Maybe hurting the kid was part of the plan. Certainly, that would garner more sympathy from the jury. Wouldn’t it be harder to send grieving parents up the river than it would a pair of hardened killers?

Perhaps. But she’d seen the pain on Carolyn’s face. And on Jake’s. As a sometimes-negligent parent herself, Irene easily recognized parental guilt in others, and the emotions she saw in the Donovans today were as genuine as any she’d ever seen. There was no faking that kind of pain.

What was Jake’s challenge to her? Is your job about justice or merely about following orders? She wondered bitterly if salvaging a career might be a noble third option.

So if the day finally came to testify against the Donovans in open court, could she sell a jury on the idea that all of this conspiracy crap was merely an absurd stunt to deflect attention away from their heinous crimes? Absolutely. And in so doing, did she believe in her heart of hearts that justice would be served? The answer to that one scared her.

But Frankel? Jesus.

Jake’s claims of hard evidence were a bluff, and she knew it. Clearly, lies were not his strong suit, even after so many years of living one. Still, even though she wished with all her heart that she could dismiss his theories as crazy, she had to admit that he made a lot of sense.

What was it he asked on his way out? The question she was supposed to ask herself? Ah, yes. Frankel was the one who told her that the Donovans were coming to Arkansas. Something about a computer geek at EPA. So what was the big deal there? They put triggers on computer files all the time. If someone tried to access it, then a warning..

Then she saw it. “God damn it,” she breathed. “He knew they’d go back, sooner or later.”

Her face flushed hot as the pieces fell into place. Oh, God, this is suicide.

Now it was just a matter of proving her case without detonating her career. Fact was, she found herself liking this criminal named Jake Donovan. Much as it sickened her to think it, he seemed far nicer-and far less likely to take another life-than Peter Frankel ever had.

Moving quickly to make the most of the few hours remaining before dawn, she opened her briefcase and slid her laptop out from under the Donovan file. Damn thing took forever to boot up, but once running, the rest was a breeze. The Internet was never busy at this hour.