Shadowed Read online

  Jae could tell her mother, finally heroic after all these years, had pushed Ranold B. Decenti past his boiling point. He leaned directly across the table, his smoldering eyes boring into her, and slammed both fists on the table three times. “How dare you!” he said. “How could you? You would harbor criminals?”

  “I will protect my family,” Margaret said, her breath coming in labored gasps. “Even against you.”

  “You can’t win!” he said. “Who do you think you are?”

  “I’m a mother,” she whispered, and as Ranold’s angry, screwed-up expression changed to a mask of humor and he leaned his head back, guffawing, Margaret sat again. But as soon as Jae let go of her, the woman pitched away from her and fell to the floor, her head thudding loudly.

  “You killed her!” Jae screeched. “Look what you’ve done!”

  Her father’s face had frozen. He rushed to his wife, whining, “Margaret, don’t! We’ll talk this through!”

  Jae’s mother twitched and jerked and suddenly fell still.

  “Margaret!” Ranold wailed. “No!”

  Jae knelt and pressed her fingers against her mother’s neck at the carotid artery. Nothing. Jae slumped to the floor, shaking her head at her father.

  “What? What! No! Margaret!” He knelt over her, wrestled her onto her back, leaning close, listening for breathing. He laid his ear on her chest, then straddled her, pounding her chest and administering CPR.

  “Daddy, don’t,” Jae said. “Don’t. She’s gone.”

  Ranold turned and reached for his daughter. She allowed him to drape his arms around her, but she did not return his embrace. “What have I done, baby girl? What have I done?”

  Jae wished she could say it, wished she could make him eat it. “You killed her” was on her lips, but not even a monster like her father needed to hear that again.

  He rocked, sobbing, drawing raspy breaths. “You need to get out of here, Jae.”

  “What?”

  “Just go. If you stay I might do something crazy. Go now before I change my mind.”

  “Where will I go?”

  “I don’t care! Just go!”

  “I’m not leaving her here like this. Get off her. At least let me put her in a bed or on the couch.”

  Jae, of course, had never seen her father like this. As she helped him carry her mother’s body into the den and stretch her out on the couch, Jae began forcing her grief and anger to a deep place where she could mine it afresh when she had that luxury.

  She closed her mother’s eyes and mouth and draped an afghan over her, pulling it over the woman’s head. Something inside Jae told her she needed to take advantage of her father’s largesse and go. There was nothing more to pack. All she had to do was grab her coat and run.

  And so she did. She caught a glimpse of her father slumped in a chair near his wife, his shoulders heaving with great sobs. He looked up at Jae as she pulled on her coat, as if expecting a word, a good-bye, an embrace, something.

  The sad fact was, she didn’t know how long she could trust him. He would be as alone as he had ever been in his life, and he might soon repent of letting her go. Jae hurried out through the garage, trying to think like Ranold when he was in his right mind. He was making a huge mistake. If he wanted Paul, if he wanted to exact revenge, he was letting slip through his fingers the one connection that would have brought Paul right back to him. Jae would have been the perfect hostage, the perfect bait.

  But now she was on the run.

  The bitter wind hit her face as she pulled up her hood and sprinted down the street toward the main roads. It hadn’t been two hours since the global curse, and it seemed Jae was rushing through a war zone. She hit Paul’s private number on her speed dial as she ran and, when she got his voice mail, told him where to find her.

  * * *

  Paul was dialing the number—provided by Straight—of the Washington, D.C., area underground when a tone told him a call was coming in. But he couldn’t ring off and get to it in time. By the time he did, he could tell someone was leaving a message. Once it was complete, he pressed his thumb against his middle finger and played it back.

  Jae sounded frantic. “Paul, I’m on foot. Meet me in Brightwood Park on Sixteenth heading toward Silver Spring in about twenty minutes.”

  6

  JAE HAD UNDERESTIMATED the distance from her father’s home to where she planned to rendezvous with Paul and the kids. She alternated running and walking, the trauma of the day catching up with her and making her muscles ache. And that atop her burning lungs and labored heart.

  Jae didn’t want to keep calling Paul. Though he had assured her the connection to him was secure, not a day went by without someone announcing new technology that allowed the tracking of cellular and solar phone systems. Who knew? Maybe he would be safe but she could be tracked. Maybe her father had already changed his mind and had initiated an all-points bulletin.

  She hailed a cab, no easy feat. The driver, a husky woman with an eastern European accent Jae couldn’t place, tripped the meter and immediately got personal, as if the world situation granted such license. Jae wasn’t offended.

  “Who you have lost?” the woman said.

  “Sorry?”

  “Everybody has lose someone. I lose two uncles and brother.”

  “How awful.”

  “Everybody suffers,” the cabbie said. “You?”

  “Half my family.”

  “Half!”

  “My brother and my mother,” Jae said.

  “Your mother?”

  “Heart attack, I think.”

  “I think it is end of world.”

  “Do you?” Jae said. “Really?”

  “What else one can think? When first I hear about threat, like most, I laugh. Then it happens. End of world.”

  “You believe in God?” Jae said.

  “I do now. How I can not?”

  * * *

  Jack Pass sounded like the lone switchboard operator for an entire city. “Good to finally meet you, Stepola, even by phone. Sorry about the circumstances. What’s your story?”

  Paul told him in one long, run-on sentence.

  “So you’re the spy who wants to come in from the cold.”

  “I don’t want to stay long. Not much for sitting. But I’ve got to secure my family.”

  “That’s what we’re here for, but you can imagine how limited our resources are, especially space.”

  Paul told him of his family and their ages. “And I might be able to help you with resources. Cash, I mean.”

  “Seriously?”

  “No promises, but I can make a few calls. Well, one call.”

  “Oh yeah. You were on the Demetrius case in Atlantica, weren’t you?”

  “Good memory.”

  “We could sure use the help,” Pass said. “Not to mention the extra hands.”

  “We wouldn’t freeload.”

  “Ah, listen, Stepola, you need to know we’ve got a situation here. One of our most trusted elders lost a son.”

  “At 6 p.m.?”

  “You guessed it.”

  “Ouch.”

  “We don’t know what to do with him. He swears it’s coincidence, doesn’t understand it, says all the right things. We’ve got him in lockup. We can’t risk it.”

  “If he’s an infiltrator, he’s probably already reported on your location.”

  “That’s our fear,” Pass said.

  “You planning an exodus or increasing security?”

  “Both. Moving would be a major, major deal.”

  “Question is who this guy represents,” Paul said.

  “Could be anybody.”

  “I’d like to meet him.”

  “You’ll get that chance. We’ll come get you.”

  * * *

  After only a few minutes in the cab, Jae thought the temperature had dropped when she disembarked on Sixteenth. She didn’t want to appear too obvious, but she didn’t want Paul to miss her either. Jae stepped i
n and out of the shadows near an electronics store at a corner, trying to sort her emotions.

  She was exhausted physically and emotionally, of course. Scared. Missing Paul and the children terribly. It hadn’t been that long since she’d seen them, but she wouldn’t feel safe until they were together again.

  Bouncing from one foot to the other, she watched a flickering TV on sale in the window. She couldn’t hear, but when “NPO” rolled across the bottom of the screen, Jae stared, waiting for the headline to come around again. The running banners updated death tolls from around the world, and Jae kept peeking away to see if she could spot Paul.

  Finally she saw it: “High-ranking NPO official reports wife murdered, government-issue car stolen. . . .”

  * * *

  Paul took a call from his secretary in Chicago.

  “Did you steal your father-in-law’s car?”

  “I can’t wait to hear this, Felicia. I appropriated it, yes. I’m still NPO too, last I heard.”

  “Not for long. They pressed us all back into service, as you can imagine.”

  “You’re not calling from the office . . . ?”

  “Give me some credit, Paul. I said I was running out for a smoke.”

  “So, how did you know I was—”

  “You’re a glowing target in that car, Paul. Decenti claims his daughter broke his wife’s neck, murdered her, and that you absconded with his NPO car.”

  “Margaret Decenti isn’t dead. I saw her just—”

  “I’m just telling you what he’s telling the NPO, Paul. If you’re in his car, you might as well be waving a white flag.”

  * * *

  When Jae pulled out her phone to warn Paul, a text message awaited. Peace Park, northeast corner, fast, no calls. We’ll be on foot.

  That was eight blocks north and two blocks west! That Paul and the kids were on foot meant he had been warned about the car. What about the luggage? They couldn’t handle it all. And if the authorities were looking for a young family, he was going to have to abandon almost everything and keep to the shadows and side streets.

  Jae didn’t dare try another cab. Who knew if she was implicated? She didn’t feel like taking another step, let alone running again. But what could she do? Rest when you’re dead, she told herself.

  * * *

  Paul left Ranold’s car in a secluded spot, holding out the faint hope that whoever picked him up from the underground could swing past it and see if they could retrieve any belongings.

  Before tightening the kids’ coats and hats, he disconnected every wire he could find under the hood, rendering the car useless.

  “We’re going to find Mommy about six blocks away,” he said.

  “I want to stay in the car!” Brie said.

  “Me too!” Connor said.

  “We can’t. And we have to hurry and stay out of sight.”

  “Why?”

  He couldn’t sugarcoat it. “Bad people are after us. If you do what I say, we’ll be safe.”

  “And then you’ll tell me all about it?” Brie said.

  “Promise.”

  “I’m scared,” Connor said.

  So was Paul.

  * * *

  Jae entered Peace Park and stayed in the shadows, behind statues and trees, noticing a van, lights off, idling midblock off one corner. It was probably only minutes, but it seemed like hours before she saw Paul and the kids enter the park from the west.

  The kids started jabbering as soon as they all embraced in a huge bear hug, but Jae shushed them as Paul placed a call.

  “We’re here,” he said. “Yes, we see it. Brake lights twice, got it.”

  The van’s rear lights immediately shone twice.

  “Let’s go,” he said, and soon they were inside and warm again.

  To Jae’s relief, the driver—a tall, skinny man in a huge parka— immediately took to the kids and started telling them about other children they were about to meet. That gave Jae and Paul a chance to hurriedly bring each other up to date.

  “So she is dead?” Paul said. “I’m so sorry, Jae.”

  “I couldn’t believe Daddy let me go, but it shouldn’t have surprised me that he’s already changed his mind. Paul, what are our chances?”

  “I think you know.”

  “Right now I’d almost be relieved to just have it out in the open,” she said. “‘Yes, okay, we’re the enemy. Do what you have to do.’”

  Paul nodded toward Brie and Connor. “And them?”

  “Like my mother said, they’d have to kill me first.”

  7

  THE DRIVER FOLLOWED Paul’s directions and swung back past Ranold’s car. “I don’t see anyone,” he said, “but it’s your call. Last thing we want is a tail.”

  “Our whole lives are in that car,” Paul said. “Let’s risk it.”

  Jae offered to assist, but Paul insisted that he and the driver, working quickly, would attract less attention. Within seconds they had tossed everything from the sedan into the back of the van.

  The driver drove ten minutes, Paul noticing that he was somehow able to monitor his rearview mirrors while distracting the kids. “So, you ready for a real adventure?” he said.

  They both nodded, and Connor even smiled.

  Paul shuddered. He whispered to Jae, “Any reason the kids have to know about your mother?”

  She shook her head. “We’re going to have to tell them about Berl. They deserve that.”

  The driver finally pulled into an industrial park that appeared abandoned. He stopped and threw the van into park, turning in his seat to address Paul and Jae. “There’s a secluded alley three blocks ahead,” he said. “If I spot a tail or anything suspicious, I won’t stop. If I do stop, each of you take the hand of one of the kids and get to the left side of the first building as quickly as you can.

  “They’re expecting you, and I will radio them that you’re here. Knock twice on the side door, which opens out, so step away from it. They’ll call out a phrase and you answer it, and they’ll let you in.”

  “What phrase?” Jae said.

  “If I have to tell you,” he said, “I picked up the wrong people. Now just a warning: This is only one of more than a dozen heavily guarded entrances to our underground, and it happens to be one of the farthest from the actual compound. You will walk more than a quarter mile once you’re inside. Don’t take any of your stuff. I’ll deliver that through another entrance.”

  * * *

  Jae studied Brie and Connor. What kind of a childhood was this? At least they would have companionship. But they knew nothing of God, and all of a sudden they would be surrounded by families risking their lives for Him.

  Atheism in the schools for kids their age was more a matter of omission than overt negativity. God was simply never mentioned, never acknowledged. Jae wasn’t sure either Brie or Connor even had a concept of God. How she would have loved to begin their education about Him with the story of God’s sending His only Son to earth. How could they be expected to understand Him when it was likely that within a day or two of finding out their parents were God followers, they would learn of His fearsome power to kill?

  * * *

  “See it?” the driver said, stopping and pointing. Paul nodded. “Hurry. Don’t hesitate. Go now.” The driver spoke into his radio. “T minus fifteen seconds and counting.”

  Paul grabbed Connor’s hand and headed directly to a dark, flat door almost invisible in the brick wall. With Jae and Brie right behind, Paul noticed a motion sensor on the ground and a tiny camera on the roof. Hardly anyone outside his profession would have been aware of them.

  He knocked firmly and a man’s voice called out, “He is risen.”

  “He is risen indeed,” Paul said, stepping back as the door swung open. It was dark until they were all inside; then the man turned on a large flashlight. “Let me get a look at you,” he said.

  Paul made the introductions.

  “Jack Pass,” the man said, aiming the beam at his own face
. Paul hadn’t known what to expect, but certainly not a fortyish man, pudgy and balding. He saw zero resemblance to Jack’s late older brother, under whom he had served in the Special Forces years before. Andrew Pass had been a military cliché: crew cut, trim, ramrod straight, all that.

  “This is what I call service,” Paul said. “The man himself.”

  “We’re all just servants here,” Jack said. “Come on. We’ve got a walk ahead of us.”

  “I don’t like this place,” Connor said.

  “You will, little one,” Jack said, leading them at least two floors down a wood staircase. “Trust me. It’s like playing fort all day every day.”

  8

  JAE HOPED THE COMPOUND itself would be warmer than the subterranean tunnels leading to it. But that wasn’t the only thing giving her a chill. She and Paul had not talked about the elephant in the room. Angela Pass Barger, the martyred Andy Pass’s daughter and Jack’s niece, had to be there.

  All Jae knew about the woman was that she was beautiful, a young widow, had two sons older than Jae’s kids, and that Paul had appeared to be taken with her when they worked together on a case in Las Vegas. Jae had actually tried to find her there on her way to Los Angeles the year before, only to learn that Angela had returned to Washington.

  * * *

  When finally they arrived at the end of the labyrinth of tunnels and emerged into the warmth of the underground warren, Paul was struck by how spare and efficient the place was. Jack Pass told him more than a thousand people lived here.

  To Paul it appeared as cold and antiseptic as a factory office full of cubicles. He couldn’t imagine its original purpose, then discovered it had merely been the far-reaching foundation of several industrial-park buildings. Jack confirmed that it had once been just an empty, concrete-walled space full of water and gas pipes, electrical conduit, and phone and computer lines. “When it became obvious the industrial park was dying, this became more of a dumping ground than active storage, so when we discovered it and took it over, we spent half a year just gutting the place.”