Vengeance

22 MEDINA FALLS, ARKANSAS

It was just after ten in the morning, during the lull between breakfast and lunch, as Sarah Greenwood finished rolling the last few sets of silverware inside their napkins. As she placed the utensils in their bin in preparation for lunch, a shiny black SUV stopped outside the diner. A man wearing a black suit emerged from the front passenger seat and opened the rear passenger door.

An attractive woman in her forties stepped onto the sidewalk, carrying a brown leather satchel. She wore a business suit — a dark blue jacket and skirt, tailored to accent her figure, paired with a light blue blouse. The woman looked around for a moment, studying the storefronts along the street, then entered the diner, accompanied by the man who had opened the car door for her. She stopped just inside the restaurant, waiting a moment while her companion’s eyes scoured the diner, then walked toward Sarah.

As the woman approached, Sarah examined her closely. Sarah had known since she was a teenager that she was attractive, but in a plain-Jane sort of way compared to the woman before her. Sarah was pretty, while the woman was beautiful — elegant and refined. The perfect haircut and highlights, wearing tailored clothes and designer shoes. The outfit she was wearing probably cost more than Sarah’s entire wardrobe.

When the woman reached the counter, she pulled a photograph from the satchel and placed it on the counter. It was a picture of Jake.

“I’m looking for this man. Do you know where I can find him?”

Throughout Sarah’s interactions with Jake, he had given the distinct impression he didn’t want to be found.

She examined the photograph. “I can’t say that I do, ma’am. He doesn’t look familiar.”

The woman pulled a sheet of paper from her satchel and placed it on the counter beside the photo. On the paper were three pictures — of Sarah, her mom, and her dad.

“One of these three,” the woman said, “did an internet search for this man, Jake Edward Harrison, yesterday from your home. Based on the websites that were visited after this search — a trendy makeup site followed by a women’s clothing store, which included a search for size four dresses — my guess is that it was you. Would you like to answer my question again?”

Sarah swallowed hard. How did this woman know the websites she had visited?

Who was she?

The woman tapped a finger on Jake’s picture.

“Now that I think about it, ma’am” — Sarah cleared her throat — “he does look familiar. Jake… yeah, Jake. That’s his name, I think.”

Looking up from the photo, Sarah glanced at the man who had entered the diner with the woman. He had settled onto a counter stool near the back — the same seat that Jake selected whenever it was unoccupied, one which offered a clear view of the front door. A second man, dressed identically to the first, had stepped from the SUV and was standing outside, surveying the street in both directions.

“Do you know where I can find him?” the woman asked.

Sarah decided to provide an indirect answer, hoping she could somehow slip away and warn Jake that someone was looking for him.

“He normally comes in for lunch at around noon.”

“I’d rather not wait until then,” the woman said. “Where is he staying? There’s no hotel in town, so he must be staying with a local.”

Sarah hesitated, trying to concoct another evasive answer, but the woman interrupted her thoughts.

“I know how things work in a small town like this. Everybody knows everyone else’s business, and I have no doubt that you know where Jake is staying.” She glanced at the two men with her. “We’ll eventually find him, and if it turns out you knew where he was staying and refused to tell me, there’s a legal term for the charge — obstruction.”

Sarah’s stomach knotted at the implication, being charged for obstructing justice somehow, although it didn’t seem like the woman and her two companions were police officers.

“There’s no need to be concerned,” the woman said in a softer tone. “I’m a friend of Jake’s and have known him his entire life. I know he’s hiding out here, getting away from things for a while, but something important has come up and we need to talk.”

Unsure whether the woman was telling the truth, Sarah searched for a way to confirm her story — that she had supposedly known Jake his entire life — then recalled the two bullet wounds she had seen on his back when she had dropped off the pie and cookies at his cottage.

“You’ve known Jake his entire life? Then what kind of scars does he have on his back?”

Her question elicited a raised eyebrow from the woman, followed by a wry smile, as she probably wondered how Sarah had seen Jake’s bare back. Then the woman took a step back from the counter and pulled her skirt up a few inches, exposing a scar on her right thigh.

“Two bullet wounds, like this,” she said. “One behind each shoulder.”

Sarah let out a slow breath. Clearly, she knew Jake well. Very well. Sarah also realized that she was dealing with a woman who had been shot at least once, and might have shot others.

“He’s staying in Miss Potter’s guest cottage. Her house is a few blocks that way,” Sarah said, pointing to her left, “on the other side of the street. A large white house with blue shutters.”

“Thank you,” the woman said as she slid her skirt back down, then collected the photos on the counter, returning them to her satchel.

The woman and her two companions returned to their SUV, which did a quick U-turn and headed toward Miss Potter’s house.

Despite the woman’s assurance that she was Jake’s friend, Sarah wanted to warn him, but there was no way she could get to Miss Potter’s before the woman. She would have called, but Jake had never provided his phone number, and now that she thought about it, she had never seen him use a mobile phone, nor had she discovered one while searching his cottage.

With a protective agent beside her, Christine O’Connor knocked on the cottage door. She noticed one of the front curtains pulling back slightly as a man inside examined his unexpected guests. A moment later, Jake Harrison opened the door.

Christine considered asking if she could come inside, but based on her most recent interactions with Jake, there was a high probability he’d say no. Instead, she chose not to give him that opportunity.

“Something has come up,” she said as she moved past him into the cottage. She stopped and faced him. “We need to talk.”

Harrison stared at Christine’s protective agent, who had moved forward when Christine stepped inside, but was still at the front door.

“Jake and I will talk in private,” she said to her agent.

The man nodded and returned to the SUV, but Jake kept the door open, his hand still on the knob. She met his gaze without flinching. One way or another, this conversation was going to happen.

Finally, he closed the door and gestured toward a dining room chair, then took one opposite her.

As Jake settled into his seat, Christine noted his lean appearance. Physically, he had lost a good deal of weight while recovering from the two chest wounds and the subsequent surgery. From a psychological standpoint, Christine didn’t need to be a counselor to know that Jake had been damaged in a significant way by Angie’s death. She could only imagine the visions, anguish, and guilt he had to deal with.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Hello to you, too, Jake.”

“Dispense with the pleasantries, Chris. I didn’t ask you to come here, and I don’t want you here.”

“Alright, I’ll get straight to the point. Lonnie has resurfaced. He was the assassin who killed the secretary of defense.”

“You lied to me,” he said. “You told me Lonnie was dead when you knew he was alive and had escaped.”

“What did you expect me to do? While you were lying in a hospital bed grieving for Angie, did you really want to know that the man who killed your wife had escaped? I was planning to tell you later — I wasn’t trying to hide it from you. I just wanted to give you some time.”

“How did Lonnie get away? Why did you let him live?”

Christine pulled back; she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Let him live? Is that what you think? That I let Lonnie go?” She leaned forward, tamping down on her rising anger. “I realize you lost a lot of blood that night, but that’s no excuse for your deranged accusation.”

Jake waved her response away. “If you’re here to ask me to return to the agency, I’ll save you the spiel — I’m not interested.”

“You can’t keep hiding like this.”

“I’m not hiding. I’m keeping Maddy safe.”

“The best way to ensure her safety is to kill or imprison Lonnie.”

“I already tried that. Angie warned me about returning to the agency to help hunt him down. I told her not to worry. I promised her that she and Maddy would be safe. See how that turned out? I should have listened to Angie, but you just couldn’t let me be. You had to drag me back into the agency. As far as I’m concerned, you’re the reason Angie is dead. I meant what I said in the hospital — I don’t ever want to see or hear from you again. You apparently have a comprehension problem.”

It was clear that Jake was still in an irrational state of mind, blaming Christine for Angie’s death when it was Mixell who had driven the knife into her neck. But she had to admit that he was partially right. If she hadn’t convinced him to join the CIA, enlisting his help to track down Mixell, Trish wouldn’t have died at Jake’s feet, and Angie wouldn’t have died in Jake’s arms. Christine decided to concede his point.

“You’re right,” she replied. “It’s my fault for dragging you into this. We’ve had some unfortunate setbacks, but we need to finish this.”

Harrison’s face lit up in anger. “Angie’s death was an unfortunate setback?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

He leaned forward, his voice dropping a notch. “You destroy everything you touch.”

“Could you be more specific?” Christine asked tersely.

“Dave, dead on your kitchen floor. Brackman, dead at Ice Station Nautilus. And Angie—” His voice choked with emotion.

Harrison’s words evoked images of the confrontation with her ex-husband a few years ago, culminating with him straddling her waist while she lay on the kitchen floor, trying to drive a knife through her neck. Then of Captain Steve Brackman aboard a submarine torpedoed beneath the polar ice cap, sacrificing his life while closing a watertight compartment door, trapping him on the wrong side as the submarine flooded.

His accusation cut into her. “That’s so unfair, Jake, blaming me for their deaths. None of them were my fault.”

“What about Huan in Beijing and Gorev in Russia? I’ve known you my entire life and witnessed it many times — your tendency to turn vicious in the heat of the moment, remorseful for your actions the next morning.”

Images flashed in Christine’s mind, one of her putting a bullet into the head of a defenseless man kneeling at her feet in China’s Great Hall of the People. Then a scene on the coast of the Black Sea, where she had jammed a pistol into the mouth of Semyon Gorev, director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, then pulled the trigger, blowing his brains out. In both cases, there had been alternatives. But in the first case, killing Huan had seemed the most effective, and the option chosen in the second case had been the most gratifying. Later, she had regretted her actions, taking the lives of defenseless men.

Jake’s words hit close to home, igniting Christine’s rage. Her voice followed her temper as it rose.

“If you want to play the blame game, the blood I’ve spilled is your fault!” She jabbed a finger at him. “You started it in China. You put a flash drive in one of my hands and a pistol in the other, then shoved me onto a ledge to finish the job. Everything I’ve done from that point on is your fault!”

She set her jaw and looked away. He had hit her where it hurt; he knew she was ashamed of what she had done.

There was a strained silence between them until Harrison replied in a softer tone. “I’m sorry, Chris. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Jake waited quietly as Christine’s temper ran its course. When she turned to face him, his eyes searched hers. As her anger faded, she noticed the plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies and the pie on the table.

“You’ve taken up baking?”

“A friend dropped them off.”

“Let me guess — Sarah from the diner?”

“Yeah. She had an altercation with her ex-boyfriend and I helped her out. This was her thank-you.”

Christine considered asking him how Sarah knew about the scars on his back, but decided otherwise. What Jake did in his personal life was none of her business.

“How’s Maddy?” Jake asked.

“As well as can be expected. She misses her dad.”

“It’s safer this way. When Lonnie finds me again, I don’t want Maddy anywhere near me.”

“Hanging out in Medina Falls isn’t the best way to handle the issue. Do you plan to spend the rest of your life hiding while Maddy grows up without her father? She’s already lost her mother. She needs you.”

Christine waited a few seconds for her last comment to sink in, then continued. “The faster we find Mixell and plant him six feet under or behind bars, the sooner Maddy can have her dad back. Come back to the agency. Help us find Mixell.”

He seemed to be considering her offer, so she added, “Help me track Lonnie down, and when we do, I swear this to you — if it’s within my power, we aren’t going to take him alive.”

Jake contemplated Christine’s job offer a moment longer, then nodded.

“Give me a few minutes to pack.”

Christine stood and started toward the door, then stopped beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be good to have you back.”