CHAPTER TEN
"No."
It took Alyssa a second to realize that that was the complete answer. There was nothing else coming. Not only was she being turned down, but she was being turned down without so much as an excuse or an acknowledgment of the openness she had shown him first.
"What?"
Matt couldn't meet her eyes.
"No. I can't, Alyssa. I can't tell you who told me."
For a second Alyssa just sat there blinking and swallowing, not quite able to process the fact that she was being told no and it was coming from the one man in the world she expected to always give her everything she wanted.
"Matt! Do you understand that this is the difference between whether or not I go to prison?"
"I'm sorry, Lyss. I can’t tell you how sorry. But you don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes here."
"Oh come on! Of course I get it about reporters protecting their sources. I'm not stupid. But this is me!"
"Alyssa… I can’t. I can’t tell you, and I can’t tell you why."
She sat there and stared at him, jaw hanging open. For the past day, she had had zero friends. Every person she met was an enemy, determined to put her in prison the moment they recognized her. The lifelong loner had finally found a degree of separation that was too much for her.
And then, for a few glorious hours, she had a friend again. There was a person she could trust. One man existed, in the entire universe, with whom she could be completely honest.
Well, not completely honest, she reminded herself. She was holding back from Matt, too. And the things she was holding back…
Alyssa sighed. She had no right to ask Matt for anything. She’d come to him expecting he’d give her exactly what she wanted because he always had. For most of their life, he’d wanted her affection badly enough to do anything she asked. She had counted on that, taken it for granted, all while letting herself forget that she’d secretly stabbed him in the back.
What if he knew? What if he knew what she had done and that was why he said no?
But no, it wasn’t possible. If he knew, he would never have come with her out of his house. He would have yelled loudly enough to bring the guards while they were still hiding in the bathroom.
If he knew how badly she had betrayed him, he would have wanted to hurt her back. Anyone would have long since ceased to trust her or care about her, after what she’d done.
Around them, the patrons of the coffee shop kept mostly to themselves. They were tapping on laptops, or reading the newspaper. A bored barista reclined behind the counter. None of them had any idea that the most wanted woman in the world was sitting among them, frustrated, angry, and guilty all at once.
"OK, so can you tell me when you heard? Even if you can’t tell me who told you?"
"Alyssa, please don’t do this. I know you’re trying to get me to say something that will help you figure out who, and I can’t help you with that.
She sighed and shook her head.
"Let’s just get out of here. I’ll get us a hotel room."
Having used her Alice Cobler ID at a scene where the FBI nearly caught her, she assumed that was burned, so she switched to a driver's license and credit card in the name of Danielle Wilson. Matt and Alyssa both fell asleep almost at once, despite all the coffee.
When she woke after noon, she dressed in the bathroom, then sat in one of the hotel’s chairs and stared at Matt’s sleeping form. He held the key to clearing her name. She was sure of it. Why wouldn’t he tell her? What secret of his own was hidden under there? What could she do that might tease it out?
Alyssa waited for Matt to wake up. She clicked the TV on with the volume very low, to see what they were saying about her. One network was doing "man on the street" interviews, where various patriotic citizens suggested creative means of executing the hated assassin.
When they flipped back to the anchor desk, Alyssa saw that she had been right to change IDs. The scrolling ticker at the bottom of the screen read, "Chambers possibly using the name Alice Cobler."
The next story had to do with the ascent of Lance Reeder. Rich West's Vice Presidential running mate, he was the natural to take his place after the assassination. According to the news, the West/Reeder campaign had become the Lance Reeder for President Campaign. There was a clip of Reeder.
"I don't feel like I can just walk away. Too many people invested too much in Rich West. He represented hope for a lot of people. I feel honor-bound to try to carry on."
When Matt woke up, Alyssa took a shower to give him time alone to dress. Once they were both showered and put back together for another day, she went out for coffee and food. Matt volunteered to go, but she was better prepared to remain undetected in a hostile environment. By now, the feds would have added Matt’s name and picture to all the stories about Alyssa Chambers the assassin. She didn’t trust him to go out in public in that environment.
Once back, she settled very deliberately into casual conversation that didn’t include any questions for Matt.
"It’s just surreal, when I remember last week. Had dinner with you one night, poli sci department meeting, grading papers… it’s hard for me to even believe that stuff was real. I’m sure if I tried to come anywhere near the campus right now, I’d find more men in black than students."
Matt nodded.
"But what I don’t get is all that stuff was unreal to you anyway. Real life was lived at night, breaking, entering, stealing, computer hacking, spying, etc. Faculty meetings and grading papers were just a mask. So why do you miss them?"
It was a fair question. She wasn’t sure exactly what would get Matt to tell her the secret, but she suspected he had received this tip – whatever it was – last week sometime. She wanted to keep the conversation on that time frame, and she wanted to keep building trust, so she answered his question honestly.
"I got into… well, I got into what I do because I wanted to test myself. I wanted to prove my strength. But it was always like two separate worlds. I could go about my ordinary life – safe, easy, boring, and comfortable – and sneak out to do something dangerous and fun one or two nights a week. I always had my safe place to come back to. I guess is what I’m trying to say. But that was last week. This week, I’m a hundred percent, full-time, professional thief and plumber. No retreat, no safety, no comfort. It’s radically different."
Matt nodded.
"I can understand that."
He paused for a long time before speaking again.
"Alyssa, I feel like I have to ask. Do you really think this is what your mother meant when she wanted you to be strong?"
Alyssa didn’t answer. What could she answer? Her mother would never even have conceived of this life.
Matt went on.
"I knew her too, you know. Obviously not like you did, but I was around your house all the time when we were kids. She hated H. Franklin’s ‘victory above everything’ approach to politics. She was always struggling with words, trying to find a way not to say disrespectful things about your father in front of you, while at the same time teaching you that some things mattered more than winning."
"Are you saying I came out like my father and not like her?" There was a dangerous edge to Alyssa’s voice, and she locked her eyes on Matt’s.
He backed up in his chair and held his hands to the side.
"Alyssa, I know how you feel about him. I know he never cared about you growing up, I know he never gave you any time, and I know he was wrong about that. But ask yourself: wouldn’t what you do now fit in just fine with how he practices politics?"
She looked away. She remembered taking a job for her father once. Yes, having a good operative on call fit very well into her father’s vocation.
"He brought you up telling you that his was the only way to do politics. He tried to teach you that ‘do anything to win’ was the only possible philosophy. But he’s wrong about that Alyssa. There are people in politics who live and thrive on a value system that’s more like ??
?give anything to do what’s right.’"
Alyssa looked out the window. Trying to earn Matt’s trust was not going at all the way she planned. She was supposed to be manipulating the conversation. She was supposed to be guiding him into revealing things. Instead, he was leading her.
"H. Franklin never really made much effort to teach me," she replied.
She felt she needed to disagree with him, just to avoid where he was taking her.
"We had one conversation about politics before I went to school, and that was it."
Alyssa smiled at the memory.
"I just walked right in on him and poured myself a glass of his scotch without asking. I was hoping for more of a reaction from him than I got."
Matt smiled at her indulgently.
"He had no idea you’d been teaching me about single malts?"
"Oh, he knew darn well. You remember that time your dad got mad at us for being alone and out of sight?"
Matt laughed.
"How could I forget. Dad was so hyper about keeping me moral and pure. He seemed to think you were just waiting to turn me into a bad boy at the first opportunity, which really got my goat in high school, since you had no interest at all. It really stinks to be constantly found guilty of a crime that’s never going to happen."
Alyssa arched an eyebrow.
"Irony."
Matt laughed.
"Yeah, I guess so."
"Anyway," she said, "My father came up and talked to me about it. I guess your dad must have yelled at him. He asked me if we’d been stealing alcohol again."
Matt gave her a warm smile.
"Well, if it hadn’t been for you, I never would have learned about single malt scotch. Dad wouldn’t have anything to do with alcohol at all, and all the other kids I knew in high school were into Bud Light."
"Your teaching stuck with me though," Matt added. "I had a chance to drink some Laphroaig 15 last week. I don’t drink much anymore, but I had to have some when I saw it, because it reminded me of you. It was very, very nice."
"Ah, well, all that was in the past," Alyssa said, sighing. "I doubt I’m going to sit in father’s leather chairs having a drink with him for a long time."
But inside, every alarm in her psyche went off. Matt had just given her a clue.
Matt liked scotch only because Alyssa did. But Alyssa liked it for itself. She had been brought up in a household that treated liquor like everything else – if you’re going to do it, do it right. She studied fine whisky, and knew where to find it.
Take Laphroaig 15, for example, which Matt had mentioned. The distillery no longer made it. It had become almost impossible to get. In fact, there was only one supper club in D.C. that still had it: The Buchanan Club.
A reporter couldn’t afford the cost of a membership at the Buchanan, which meant Matt had been there with someone else. And the Buchanan wasn’t a place you went for a casual hangout. It was very high end. It was the kind of place a source would take a reporter to stress the importance of the tip.
Without realizing it, Matt had just told Alyssa where he met the source that gave him the information about her.
Although Matt Barr could never afford the price of a membership at the Buchanan club, the Chambers family had had one all her life. Alyssa knew the club quite well, from every time H. Franklin had brought the family with him to D.C. She knew, for instance, that the Buchanan required reservations, and that the list of reservations was in a binder on the Maître D's podium. It would go back several weeks.
Now all she had to do was kill the rest of the day, so she could break in at night.
♦
The sun sank into the horizon as a spring afternoon faded to evening. A perfectly manicured lawn stretched unreasonably far from the house to the stone wall at the property line. A ten-year-old girl came running up the front step of the house, dirt and mud all over her dress, black hair tangled and flying everywhere.
"Daddy! I had a fight, and I won!"
On the patio, two men reclined in wicker chairs, puffing on cigars. Both were in their thirties, clad in suits and ties. The little girl heard words like "Speaker" and "Majority" as she leapt up the steps. She had learned that those words meant boring things.
The only one of the two men that she cared about wore a three-piece suit of gray with a black tie sloping up from the vest to the collar where it was held by a full-Windsor knot.
"I punched him right in the face, Father!"
"That’s nice, Alyssa. Go tell your mother."
His hand came down over the child’s shoulder. He pushed her gently but firmly away.
The girl walked back off the front porch and stood still for a second. She knew better than to go inside while she was covered with mud, but that’s where her mother was.
She went around the side of the house, passing the neatly trimmed hedge and the fountain in the shape of a porpoise. She found the kitchen window and waved both hands frantically as high as she could above her head, trying to get them into view from the window.
"I had a fight, Mommy!" she shouted.
Before long the side door opened. A slender, waif-like black-haired woman came out, holding a tumbler of amber liquid with ice cubes. Alyssa smelled it right away. It was an odor she learned was rum, and that it was only for grown-ups.
She held her closed fist up to her mother’s face for her to look at the scrapes.
"I punched him and I won!"
The older woman drew back instinctively, and then eased down to sit on the steps at her daughter’s level. She took a long sip from her glass. "You have to learn to control that temper, Alyssa. You let anger rule you. You need to be strong. You need to rule your anger. Don’t let anger rule you. You’re a slave to whatever rules you.
"But still, if you’re going to have a fight, it’s good you won. Tell me about it."
Pouting, the young Alyssa Chambers sat down beside her mother.
"I saw that one boy picking on Matt so I went up and told him to stop and he told me a little girl couldn’t do anything about it, so I pushed him and he pushed me back and said to go away, so I got really mad and I just punched him right in the nose and he cried and ran away."
Mrs. Chambers smiled at her daughter, drank deeply from her glass, and listened.
"Matt said his father says girls shouldn’t hit, but I think Matt should be glad I did."
Sarah Chambers sighed.
"Matt’s father just has some very firm beliefs, that’s all. It’s not really good for anyone to hit people but if it has to be done, you can do it just as well as anyone else."
As the older woman drank more rum, draining it down to the ice cubes, the two men from the front patio walked around to the side. Her father’s gray suit was unbuttoned, and his tie fluttered a bit in the light breeze. He knocked ash off his cigar, and then said, "Give us a moment with your mother please, Alyssa."
"But you said I could come and tell her about my fight!"
"Run along inside, child. Your mother will be in soon."
The man patted her on the head and gave her a gentle push toward the door. Alyssa’s mother knelt down to look her daughter in the eye.
"I’ll come soon, dear," she said.
Alyssa stomped inside, angry, and wanting to cry. Winning your first fight was a big deal, and she couldn’t get anyone to listen to her about it.
As she went through the door she heard, "Sarah, I’d like you to meet a friend and colleague. Lance, this is my wife Sarah."