The Thompson Sisters
A Song for Julia
Falling Stars
Just Remember to Breathe
The Last Hour
Rachel's Peril
Girl of Lies
Girl of Rage
Girl of Vengeance (Summer 2014)
America's Future
Republic
Insurgent
Nocturne (with Andrea Randall)
Prayer at Rumayla: A Novel of the Gulf War
Saving the World on Thirty Dollars a Day
For Khalil
I am proud of you
The Thompson Family
Richard Thompson
Adelina Thompson
Julia Wilson (Thompson)
— Crank Wilson
Carrie Thompson-Sherman
— Ray Sherman
— Rachel Sherman
Alexandra Paris (Thompson)
— Dylan Paris
Sarah Thompson
Jessica Thompson
Andrea Thompson
The Wakhan File
Roshan al Saud
Leslie Collins
Mitch Filner
Vasily Karatygin
George-Phillip Patrick Nicholas
Chuck Rainsley
Diplomatic Security
John “Bear” Wyden
Leah Simpson
The Washington Post
Anthony Walker
Andrea Thompson , May 1, 12:04 am
“Dylan?”
As she saw the lean figure limping toward her in the darkness, Andrea Thompson stepped out of her hiding place. Dylan Paris walked unevenly toward her through the dimly lit entrance to the Bethesda Metro Station. He wore a light jacket, even though it was really too warm for it, and a canvas backpack was casually thrown over his shoulder. His face was grim, mouth turned into a deep frown, and his eyes were focused somewhere else, far away from her. At first she thought he was going to walk right by her.
“Dylan?”
He stopped, his hands tightening into fists. His pause gave her a second to look closer at him, but he wasn’t reassuring. His face, already unshaven, had dark flecks of dirt or something along his jawline. One of his hands shook, and his shoes were soaked. Why?
She’d last seen him as she went over the rail of the balcony. He’d been standing in the darkness, knives in hand, ready to protect her.
Get into the condo below us then meet me … in thirty minutes. At the war memorial on Norfolk. If we miss each other there, then the Metro station at midnight. Got it?
Looking at him now, she wondered what the delay had cost him. Gunmen had been coming down that hallway. She shivered as the realization sank in that this man, who she barely knew, must have killed their attackers with his bare hands. The flecks on his face weren’t dirt.
They were blood.
“We need to get out of here,” he said. His voice was low, and barely contained a hint of savagery.
She nodded. “Where to?”
“I’m gonna make a couple calls, see if I can get us a place to hole up.”
“What about the policia?” She corrected herself. “The police.”
Dylan just stared at her, his expression unreadable. Then he said, “Come on.” He turned and walked out into the darkness. Andrea followed, down an alley, then onto a crowded street. Bars, people crowded onto the sidewalk. Cars were parallel parked along the street.
Dylan took her upper arm in his hands and said, “We can’t go to the police because it was police who came after you in the first place. I don’t know who they are. But for now, we’re getting you under cover.”
She nodded, then said, “I don’t know.”
Dylan stopped and looked at her. “Your sister’s my wife, Andrea. Do you trust me?”
She met his eyes. Dylan—he’d put himself between her and killers. “Yes. I trust you.”
“All right, then. No more questions, for now.”
He turned and strode away. Three cars down, she saw a Chrysler convertible, the top down, parked illegally next to the fire hydrant, its emergency lights flashing. Dylan paused and glanced around. Then he reached in his pocket and took out a cell phone. He looked at it with cold eyes, his jaw firmly set. He quickly tapped a message into the phone, and with one last glance at the people walking by on the street, he tossed it into the back seat of the convertible.
Then he turned and began quickly walking away, pushing his way through the crowd of young professionals out for drinks. At the next corner, he extended his right arm in the air and flagged down a cab.
The car came to an abrupt stop. Andrea peered inside. The cab itself was light blue, with dark blue and orange lettering on the side. Barwood taxi. Hybrid vehicle. The driver looked East Asian.
Dylan opened the door and said, “Get in.”
She didn’t hesitate, sliding across to the seat behind the driver. The car was small and clean, and the radio was loud, tuned to a news station. He got in beside her and leaned forward, resting one hand on the back of the seat in front of him.
“Where to?” the cab driver asked.
Dylan shifted in his seat, then he said, “You know any good hotels? Like on the other side of town?”
The driver shook his head. “No good hotels there.”
“No, listen … good like … I don’t want to get asked too many questions. Pay cash.” Dylan reached in his pocket and slid out a hundred dollar bill, then slid it into the driver’s hands.
The driver looked at Andrea in the rearview mirror. Creepy eyes.
Then his eyes shifted back to Dylan. “I know place in Maryland. Cash only. No ID.”
“Perfect,” Dylan said.
As the driver put the car into gear, a raindrop splashed on the windshield. The traffic was slow, but they were moving. Three police cars, lights flashing, rolled by going in the opposite direction. Back toward the condo.
Andrea leaned back in her seat. The last three days had been a nightmare. She’d been kidnapped, escaped, then watched her family fall apart with the realization that she and Carrie had a different father than the rest of their sisters. She’d been faced with assault and attempted murder.
She was exhausted and terrified.
“What’s the plan?” she whispered, pitching her voice beneath the prattle on the radio so the driver couldn’t hear.
“We hide. Get some rest in a place where we can’t be tracked. Then we figure out a plan.” His voice was low enough she didn’t worry about the driver hearing them over the car radio.
“Why did you throw away your phone?”
He shrugged. “GPS. Someone wants you dead badly enough to either be a federal agent or impersonate one. I don’t want to be found. I sent a text to Alex to warn her she wouldn’t hear from us.”
She sighed. “I thought so.”
The raindrops fell steadily now, a rapid drumbeat against the roof of the car. For a few minutes she just listened as the taxi driver navigated traffic and the rain fell against the roof. For just a second, the drumming of the rain took her back to Calella, driving along the beach in the summer rain with her best friends. She wanted to go home.
All of this chaos stemmed from … what? Something about her mother? Her real father, whoever that was? She didn’t even believe Richard Thompson’s assertion that Senator Rainsley was her father. He’d never said anything true to her before. Why should she believe him now?
She needed answers. She needed to know why she’d been virtually abandoned by her parents. She needed to know why strangers had been trying to kill her.
She needed to know who her father was.
“I need answers, Dylan,” she whispered.
He didn’t answer right away. Instead he stared out into the rain, his face turn
ed away from her. “I know,” he finally said. His tone was desolate.
“I need to know who my father is. And who is trying to hurt me and my sisters.”
He nodded.
“Will you help me?”
A handful of raindrops pattered against the roof before he turned and put a hand on her shoulder. “Of course,” he said. “I’ll help.”
Adelina. May 1, 10:15 pm Pacific
The little man grimaced, rubbing his eyes. Adelina Thompson had called three times during the drive north, and he’d promised to stay awake until she arrived. But he hadn’t been gracious or polite about it. He was short, with thick glasses that magnified his rheumy eyes, and his pale blue pajamas were threadbare, the vertical blue stripes faded into obscurity. She imagined that winter was tough for him—his knuckles were swollen and arthritic.
He had a business here in the shadow of the northern California redwoods, but it was a business that merely limped along. The prospect of the twenty extra dollars she’d offered for late arrival had been powerful.
The campsite was deep in the woods, and the air was moist and warm. Crickets and frogs and God only knew what else made a continuous buzzing, and the darkness hid the trees and cabins and dangers beyond. It was oppressive. Claustrophobic.
“Here’s the key. No noise, everybody’s already asleep. You’re in the second cabin on the left.”
“Thank you,” Adelina said. “We won’t be making any noise. My daughter’s asleep in the car.”
“I’ll just need to make a copy of your driver’s license, please.”
She lay her hand on the counter and said, “Oh no … I’m afraid I forgot it.”
The old man narrowed his eyes. “Can’t rent a cabin without a driver’s license.”
She frowned. “We’re only here for the night. Can you make an exception? You wouldn’t make me and my daughter sleep in the car, would you?”
He grimaced. “Them’s the rules,” he said, sounding unsure of himself. It was after midnight, after all, and temperatures had been dropping.
“Please?” she asked, leaning slightly forward. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t urgent. You see…”
“I don’t need any trouble,” the man said.
“We’re no trouble. It’s just … my husband…” As she said the words, she dropped her eyes to the floor.
He grimaced. “Left him, did you?”
“He hurt me,” she whispered.
The man exhaled. “All right, then. Fine. I guess the copier’s not working. You make sure you’re out of here early, mind you. We don’t get inspected often, but if the county finds out I’m letting people stay without ID, there’ll be hell to pay.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”
He frowned. “That’ll be forty dollars. Plus the twenty you promised on the phone.”
¡Gilipollas! It didn’t matter. Right now, the important thing was to get Jessica into a bed and get under cover for the night. She couldn’t drive without sleep and Jessica couldn’t continue at all. Despite the adrenaline and shock of the news of Andrea’s kidnapping and finding their home burning away, Jessica had still slipped into a deep sleep within minutes of getting on the highway. She’d tossed and turned, moaning and resistant when Adelina woke her to eat at a fast-food chain along US 101.
That was the withdrawals.
She won’t suffer through the same kind of physical withdrawals you see from alcohol or heroin, Sister Kiara had told her. But it will be almost as bad in its own way. She’s only been doing meth a few weeks, but it might be two years before she laughs again, or feels any joy. That’s just what happens to the brain. She’s done a tremendous amount of damage to herself. In the meantime, all you can do is love her.
That, and keep her alive. Jessica had been through a harrowing ordeal on an emotional level, but Adelina knew that the only way she could keep her daughter safe now was to run as far and as fast as she possibly could.
She thought about the voice on the phone … the voice she hadn’t heard in more than a decade.
Always, Adelina. Always.
Hearing his voice again gave her a thick pain like a fist buried in her chest, slowly squeezing the breath out of her. He’d been the love of her life. He’d gone away, at her insistence.
Hearing his voice gave her something she hadn’t had in years.
Hope.
So she ran. It’s not that she thought Richard would hurt Jessica. He was a monster, but in some ways a predictable one. He wouldn’t hesitate to hurt Andrea, most likely, reasoning that she wasn’t actually his daughter. But Jessica was his, and he knew it.
But Richard wasn’t the only threat. She never knew the details, but something terrible had happened in Afghanistan when Richard was there thirty years ago. Something so terrible it had lain dormant, a secret which had floated some careers and killed others. She thought she knew who some of the players were. Prince Roshan, a charming snake of a man who kept his wives in veils in Saudi Arabia while sporting around Washington with twenty-year-old call girls on his arm, a man who had smiled at her and been charming and had the same cold, lifeless look in his eyes as her husband.
She thought the other threat was likely to be Leslie Collins, who Richard had insisted for years was nothing more than an accountant. He thought she was stupid, and at times through the years it had served her well to let him think that. It had protected her and her daughters. But Collins was no accountant, and when he finally reached a level where further promotion required Senate approval, the now Director of Operations for the Central Intelligence Agency finally had to go public about his career.
Collins wouldn’t hesitate to torture small children to accomplish his goals. She just hoped the rest of her daughters had heeded her instructions to run.
If only she knew what had happened in Washington. She’d called the condo that afternoon and gotten Dylan, her son-in-law. Her instructions were simple. Run, and get Andrea out. She heard a loud crack over the phone, then more, and then Dylan hung up. She knew what the sound was. Gunshots. She’d called again, but it was too late. She kept trying, stopping at rare pay phones along the road—there were few enough of those left—but no one answered at the condo.
It wasn’t safe to use cell phones. She’d thrown them into the San Francisco Bay as they left town. Then drove, for hours, north, stopping only for one meal and restroom breaks. In a way, Jessica’s deep depression and withdrawal made the trip easier.
But Adelina kept questioning herself. Second guessing. Jessica needed to be in heavy therapy. She needed to be in an environment where she could get treatment. She needed to be examined by a doctor. Instead, she was on the run, and the only thing Adelina could do for her daughter was pray.
Finally they had reached her destination for the first night—a campground in Crescent City, California, surrounded by redwoods and quiet. As she got out of the car, Adelina took a deep breath, the scent of pine and spring flowing into her nose. It was a smell of hope.
She stumbled in the darkness to the cabin and unlocked it, the latch opening with a loud, audible click. The door swung wide. A queen bed and a bunk bed. A small table. No sheets or pillows. They would make do. She had a blanket in the back of the minivan, and bundles of clothing from their bags would have to serve as pillows.
First, she needed to get her daughter inside.
Adelina opened the sliding side door to the van. Jessica was sprawled across the middle seat. Her lifeless brown hair was splayed across her face, eyes closed, and mouth open. Since Adelina had taken her to the retreat to dry out less than ten days ago, Jessica had begun to gain weight. But it still wasn’t enough. Her face, red and marked with acne, was gaunt, the hollows in her cheeks heartbreakingly prominent, her ribs clearly visible under her tank top.
“Jessica, wake up. Come inside the cabin and you can sleep in a bed.”
Jessica groaned and turned her head into the seat.
“Come on, Jessica. I need you to get up for just a
minute.”
Jessica didn’t stir. Adelina closed her eyes. Her daughter was eighteen years old.
Her daughter was a wreck.
She leaned into the van and tilted Jessica out of the seat, pulling the girl to her shoulder. Jessica groaned and flailed, and Adelina staggered a little under the weight, her knees bending. With a lot of effort, she got her arms around Jessica and dragged her out of the van, Jessica’s sneaker-clad feet hitting the ground with a thud.
Jessica groaned and said, “All right, all right. Head hurts.” Then she stood, and staggered toward the door of the cabin.
As she stepped inside, Adelina sighed and whispered a prayer. For now—for the next few hours—they were safe.
She leaned against the doorframe for just a second, staring in at her daughter, indirectly lit from the headlights of the car. Jessica had staggered in and fallen into one of the bunk beds. Anyone else who saw this scene would see a strung out kid who might be a drug addict or might be anorexic, a kid who couldn’t keep her eyes open, brush her hair or take basic care of herself.
Adelina knew what they saw. She’d seen the looks, in the weeks leading up to their final departure from San Francisco. When Adelina had first returned home, switching places with Richard, she’d given Jessica plenty of leash. But it became clear, quickly, that her daughter was out of control. Conflict and rage. Sadness and grief. It was clear Jessica needed help and wasn’t getting it.
In February, she had to drag Jessica out of the house when her daughter refused to even get dressed. They’d gone into the grocery store with Jessica padding behind her, wearing pajamas and flip flops, muttering and cursing at her mother all the way through the store.
She’d seen the looks of curiosity and pity from the young mothers. Disgust from single men. Understanding and empathy from the older mothers and grandmothers.
Nothing was as simple as it seemed. Adelina didn’t see an eighteen-year-old drug addict lying on the bare mattress in the cabin. What she saw was a three-year-old daughter twirling in her ballet shoes. She saw the daughter who seemed to take on the pain of her daring, sometimes reckless twin. She saw a young teen, fifteen years old at the time, serious expression on her face, as she played Paganini’s 24th Caprice for a packed recital at the Green Music Center. One of the most difficult pieces for violin, and Jessica had mastered it. Of all of her daughters, Jessica was probably the only one who had both the musical talent and discipline to match her mother, and until a few months ago, it had seemed likely she was destined for the San Francisco Conservatory.