Born to Run

Chapter 26

The scream woke Jack at dawn, and he shot bolt upright in the bed. The window shades were drawn and the room was still dark, but Jack immediately sensed that the other side of the bed was empty.

“Andie?” he said, but he didn’t wait for a response. He heard something-muted voices? — and ran toward the kitchen.

“Whoa!” said Theo, shielding his eyes. “Forty-year-old naked man. Not pretty.” Jack quickly wrapped himself in a towel from the hallway linen closet and entered the kitchen. Andie was standing at the counter, already dressed for work and making coffee.

“What was the screaming about?” said Jack.

“Oh, you mean Andie?” said Theo. “There’s a black man in the house, there’s a black man in the house!”

Andie swatted him. “I didn’t say that. I just didn’t expect someone to be standing in the kitchen.”

Jack said, “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“Time to go fishin’, dude. Dolphin are running.”

Jack had a three-year lease on the most modest waterfront property on Key Biscayne, one of the original “Mackle houses” that were built mostly for World War II veterans who were brave enough to live in what was, at the time, little more than a mosquito-infested swamp. The house originally sold for twelve thousand dollars, and the current owner was renting it out to Jack until market appreciation added three more zeros to the land value-which wasn’t far in the offing. It was basically a two-bedroom concrete shoe box, but it came with over one hundred feet of waterfront and a dock. Four years ago, Jack and Theo had gone boating, and by the end of the day, they were too tired to load the boat onto Theo’s trailer. Jack said he could dock it overnight. It was still there.

“Coffee?” said Andie.

“Sure,” said Theo.

“She was asking me,” said Jack.

Andie poured a cup for each of them. Jack enjoyed the aroma before drinking. Theo gulped his, then said, “I hear President Keyes is a real coffee carouser.”

“Connoisseur, Webster.”

“Sorry, I don’t speak Latin.”

“It’s French.”

“Technically, it’s English,” said Andie, reading from the web-page on her iPhone. “Derived from old French. Originally from cognoscere, which is Latin.”

“I was right!” said Theo.

“Whose side are you on?” Jack asked Andie.

Theo poured himself more coffee. The guy couldn’t get enough of anything that was free.

“So,” said Theo, “did you at least have coffee with the prez in the White House before you got canned?”

“I didn’t get canned.”

“That’s what the paper said.”

“Shit, it was in the newspaper?”

“Jack,” said Andie, “you were fired, okay?”

“I repeat: Whose side are you on?”

She didn’t answer. Her gaze was still fixed on the display screen of her iPhone, but she had turned very serious.

“Something wrong?” said Jack.

“I-” she started to say, then stopped. Jack knew she’d received one of those FBI e-mails that she couldn’t tell him about.

She looked up and said, “Turn on the television.”

Jack grabbed the remote and switched on the set. Andie took the control from him and tuned to CNN. On-screen, a reporter was standing outside a three-story apartment building. The red banner with white letters at the bottom of the screen identified her as Heather Brown, and her location was listed as the LaDroit Park neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

“That’s where Chloe Sparks lived,” said Jack.

Andie raised a hand, telling him to listen.

The reporter continued: “It was in an alley directly behind this apartment building, at approximately four o’clock this morning, that police found a white sedan. Police have confirmed that the vehicle belongs to CNN reporter Paulette Sparks.”

“Hey,” said Theo, “isn’t Paulette the reporter you-”

“Quiet!” Jack and Andie said in stereo.

The wind was kicking up in Washington, and the reporter fought to keep her hair out of her face. “CNN has also learned that the car’s engine was running, but the lights were off, and the first officers on the scene did not see anyone behind the wheel. As the first officer approached, he saw what he described as a hose running from the exhaust pipe into the car through the rear window, which was opened just a crack.”

“A hose?” said the anchor.

“Yes,” said Brown. “A regular rubber garden hose. It was then that they shined their flashlights inside the vehicle and saw a body slumped over the console. The door was locked, and police shattered the driver-side window. Paramedics were notified immediately, and the victim-described as a white female in her early thirties-was taken to George Washington Medical Center.”

“Any report on her condition?”

“I don’t have that information.”

“Has the victim been positively identified yet?”

“I’m told that she has, but police are not releasing her name until her family can be contacted.”

“Of course we don’t want to speculate,” said the anchor, “but Paulette Sparks is like family to many of us here. We are all deeply concerned. Our thoughts and prayers are with Paulette and the Sparks family right now.”

The anchor switched gears to another breaking story. Jack switched off the television and looked at Andie.

The look on her face said it all, but she verbalized it anyway. “It’s Paulette.”

Jack glanced at Theo, then back at Andie. “Is she going to be all right?”

Andie drew a breath before answering.

“She’s dead.”