A Flock of Ill Omens (4 page)

“They won't call me back, but the hospital says to just contain him. It will be a while.”

“Is that what you want to do? Wait?” he asked.

“Not if there's a choice. It doesn't seem fair.”

“Then I'll take care of things, like I said.”

“Thank you.”

He found a nice spot that looked like it wasn't too prone to erosion, nor to getting overgrown and lost in the quick-growing vegetation. He started digging. The sooner the body was buried, the better. Though he had Pam and Trevor to think about. They'd want to say their good-byes.

And before they came out, Matt wanted to have the things he'd need to take with him out of the way. No use getting Pam into a tizzy with questions. He debated making contact with his brother. He'd left Teddy a satellite phone when he was arranging for his mission. His colleagues were mostly reliable, but it never hurt to have a back-up plan. Not that Teddy himself was much of a back-up. Poor kid took the world too seriously and couldn't quite handle it. That, or he'd gotten their mother's need to escape into a bottle now and then. But the kid
did
have a nose for digging up the truth, and some useful connections besides. As back-up went, those weren't terrible assets. But Matt wasn't ready for that yet. Better to check on his own resources first and find out what was what.

When the grave was about half dug, Matt figured it had been long enough since the bug bomb had been set off to go inside and open up. Then, by the time he was finished with the grave, it would be clear for breathing and he could get to work.

He opened all the windows, dragged the body out near the grave site, and turned the house fan on. It was finally starting to cool off outside, so the AC wasn't necessary and fresh air would be better than recirculating that bug stuff and the dead-buddy smell, anyway.

Three hours later Matt was freshly showered. He invited Pam and Trevor out the next night for a sunset burial, figuring twenty-four hours gave him enough time to sort the rest of the noticeable things. He'd open some drawers and make sure nothing critical was mixed in with pictures, but Pam wouldn't be quizzing him on ordinary paperwork, provided he turned over any titles or documents pertaining to Trevor as soon as he ran across them. He had a little time. He wasn't sure how little, but at least a few days. He'd know more when he checked out the Kraken headquarters back in Tallahassee. That would tell him if this was his unit or mercenaries more broadly. Maybe he'd even drive on to Camp Blanding, an Army training and military reserve base that was the closest official compound he knew of. If this—whatever-it-was—was directed at all fighting units, that would tell him a lot about what his next steps should be.

An initial scan of Pax's paperwork told him the guy still refused to carry any debt—he'd confessed to Matt several years back that it was because he wanted to stay off the grid, paranoid that Big Brother was following his every move. He had a singular vice of betting on boxing matches, but he did that in cash. And he'd been ordered to check in at Eagle Corp for his flu shot the week prior. The order was standard. Matt had gotten one, too, but he'd gotten a pass to skip it because he wasn't supposed to mix anything like that with his malaria shots. Besides, he was supposed to be out of the flu zone for six months anyway, eliminating his risk.

Matt found Pax's Blackberry and checked numbers and his calendar, both confirming plans to have Trevor for the weekend. There were a few sexy texts from a woman named Maria; the area code suggested she lived in Orlando and the conversation told him they hadn't seen each other in almost a month. The calendar didn't have plans to see her again, probably because of Trevor, but Matt would give her a call in a few days to let her know what had happened.

Pax's work contact, other than the flu shot, was even farther outside the time window—he was having the three months of downtime they got after being on a long mission. There was a meeting scheduled for early December to discuss his January deployment, but his only physical contact with anybody would have been when he went to headquarters for the shot.

The next night at sunset Pam and Trevor arrived, followed by Mrs. Paxton, Pax's mom. Matt would have to remember to call his buddy Dwayne, or his mother might get confused. Mr. Paxton was sick with the flu and couldn't come. Matt normally didn't give in to ritual, but it seemed important here. He could count the number of people he considered friends on one hand; three fingers would have done it before finding Pax's body. Now he was down to two.

They gathered around the grave site where Matt had put Dwayne's body into the hole and waited for the sun to turn the sky into an orange cranberry cocktail.
Sending you off in a chick's drink
, he thought. Maybe it would bode well for Pax being surrounded by ladies in the afterlife.

“You know... Dwayne saved my life once,” he began.

Mrs. Paxton turned on the waterworks and clutched Trevor's hand. The boy looked sad, but also concerned at his grandmother's action. Matt couldn't blame him. Old women and their grief could be needy. A heavy burden for a kid to carry.

“We were brothers,” he continued. “Neither of us was easy to live with, and I can't say we never traded black eyes.” Pam chuckled softly, which Matt appreciated. “But when I
needed someone to have my back, Pax–Dwayne—was the best man I could have asked for.”

He glanced over to Pam and nodded. They'd talked about this and he figured she could get out a few words.

“I loved Dwayne,” she said. “Like Matt said, I couldn't live with him. He could be mean when he drank and he preferred to be off saving the world, but it didn't mean I didn't love him.”

Matt felt a guilty pang there. Mercenary work was about thrills and cash, not valor. But the mom and the kid didn't need to know that. Pam either. Let them keep their image.

“And I'll be forever grateful for the gift of my son,” she said. “He was a good man.”

Matt looked at Mrs. Paxton and then Trevor. He wondered if either of them would talk, but when they didn't, he held out the shovel. “Trevor? You want to toss the first dirt?”

The boy shook his head.

“You should do it,” Mrs. Paxton said to Matt.

Matt scooped up a bit of sandy soil and tossed it, then handed the shovel to Pam who did the same. Once they had, Trevor and Mrs. Paxton seemed to think the symbolism was okay and each tossed on their own scoop of dirt.

“I'm afraid I don't know many prayers,” Matt said. “Mrs. Paxton, do you have one you'd like to say?”

She said the Lord's Prayer. It was simple and Matt figured he maybe could have remembered it if he'd thought to try, but it was good to have Dwayne's mother end the ceremony. She brought him into the world. Let her send him out.

When it was over, Pam walked over to her former mother-in-law and whispered something. Matt kept shoveling and didn't pay much attention. He just wanted to make sure the
body was buried enough that none of the night predators would get to it.

The three of them waved and walked around to the front of the house, but Pam returned ten minutes later with a bottle of tequila, a shot glass and a Tupperware container with lemon wedges and a salt shaker.

He grinned. “Now there's a fitting send-off.”

“Alaine is taking Trevor for the night. This seems more like Dwayne to me, too.”

He dashed the shovel into the pile of remaining dirt and joined Pam for a shot. By the time he'd licked some salt and bit the lemon, she'd poured him a second.

“Gimme another twenty minutes and then we can polish that off,” he said.

“I won't be able to drive.”

“That a problem?” Matt said, only half-registering the double entendre of the question.

“Not for me.” She picked up the goods and went in the house.

Twenty minutes, several shots, and some life-affirming sex later, Matt wondered if he'd regret this. He liked Pam, but he didn't need someone being needy. He had stuff to do. In the morning he was sure he
had
misjudged it, but for different reasons. He woke up to her sitting on the side of the bed looking at him.

Shit.
His honor had abandoned him somewhere mid-bottle. This was Pax's wife. Ex-wife. But still, a guy didn't do that to a brother. And here she was looking at him like she expected something.

“I want you to promise me something,” she said.

Uh oh
. “What's that?”

“If you find out this wasn't an accident... if my son's daddy was killed by terrorists... promise me you'll kill the motherfuckers who did this.”

He nodded.
That
was a promise he'd be happy to keep. He turned to her again and she was gone. She'd just needed the same comfort he had: to share some of the life they'd lost and remember they were still here and would go on. And to exact a promise from him that he was happy to give. Pax would have understood.

1.
5. Dorene Radcliff:

New Orleans, Louisiana

Daddy's Girl

There were times Dorene Radcliff wondered what the hell she was doing with a man like Corbin Tildon. He could be such an ass. Sure, his prospects were great. He was an Orleans Parish prosecutor only six years out of law school. He’d sworn when he hit ten years he'd tip his nose into politics and there would be no looking back.

Days like today made her fear for that eventuality. Because it was surely going to happen, but he could be so uncaring. Even about her. How could he ever care about his constituents?

“I assure you, Reeny, your father is perfectly safe.”

“And how the hell would you know?” Corbin gasped at her swearing and she decided she should do it more often. “Lucretia said he's taken ill.”

“He has the very best doctors. At the very least, get your flu shot before you go traipsing off to play Florence Nightingale.”

Dorene hated to admit it, but that wasn't a bad idea. She just wished he could dish his advice with some decency.

“I'll go to the clinic up at school today, let my professors know I have a family emergency, and leave first thing in the morning.” Not that her professors would care. Law professors, like lawyers themselves, were short on sympathy. She'd have to get course notes from a friend and send her work in electronically.

He let out his breath and it whistled through his nose. It was a sure sign he was
frustrated when he sounded like a tea pot. “Have you forgotten the benefit tomorrow night?”

“No. I haven't forgotten, but I'm placing my father in a higher-priority position.”

She walked away from him, then. She couldn't look at him anymore.

The health clinic at Tulane was swamped, but Dorene had brought a stack of briefs she'd been intending to read for a mock trial she was preparing for. If her father didn't recover soon, it would be a moot point because she wouldn't be back for it, but she could hear his voice lecturing her in her head.
“Law is a hard path for a young woman, Dorene. Those boys will have every advantage. You need to work harder and smarter if you want to keep your edge.”

He was right. She couldn't afford not to stay on top of her work. But she'd always been a daddy's girl and she had a nagging feeling about this flu. In twenty-three years she'd never seen her father driven to bed by any illness. And Lucretia, their housekeeper for as long as Dorene could remember, wasn't typically paranoid—doting, yes, but she knew Senator Radcliff was too busy for a fuss if he didn't need it. And she didn't ask anything of Dorene unless it was serious. What she'd said on the phone was, “you need to come home.”

The line for the flu shot was fast, considering she'd been some sixty people back when she walked in. It smarted a little, but there was a sense of freedom when she was done. She could pack and head home. Maybe she'd even go tonight. It would take all night, but something about it appealed to her—made her feel rebellious like she hadn't in several years. She'd be there first thing in the morning.

There were a dozen roses waiting when she got to her apartment. Corbin probably didn't think he'd done anything wrong, but he knew she thought so. Not for the first time, she felt burning anger at this latest act of contrition. Whenever he did it, it made her sure he was courting 'the senator's daughter' instead of Dorene Radcliff, the smart, pretty law student. Every decision Corbin made was about power and Dorene's power was in her bloodline. It didn't stem from any abilities or characteristics she had.

She left the roses on the landing in the hallway and went inside to pack. Let him think he'd missed her.

The road to Atlanta was crowded at first, but traffic died out as she got away from New Orleans. She drove and drank coffee, stopping when she needed to, but feeling energized by what she was doing. As she hit the outskirts of Atlanta, the sun turned the sky to a blaze. The traffic that had dwindled as she drove was reappearing, most of it heading away from the city. It made her feel like she was going the wrong way. The temperature had dropped as she headed north. A front in the gulf must have been holding off the winter that was trying to encroach on the rest of the US.

It was 9 AM when she pulled into their long, circular driveway; Lucretia rushed out to meet her, short and plump, arms spread wide like a mother hen.

“Thank the sweet lord you're here, Miss Dorene! You must have drove all night! The doctor is in with him now, but I think it's bad. You leave your bags. I'll have Tommy get them and move your car. You just get in to your daddy.”

Dorene did as commanded. Her mother had died of ovarian cancer when she was a teen and Lucretia had been the closest thing she'd had to a mother since. She'd been away at boarding school during the school year, since her father had been in Washington, DC, but Lucretia had made coming home
feel
like home and sent all the care packages she could have asked for.

“How is he?” she asked the doctor when she entered.

Her father opened his eyes and started to give his standard protest that she had better things to do than sit around at his bedside, but he didn't have the fight in him. It scared her.

“You shush, Daddy. Lucretia told me to come and I'm glad she did.” He did whatever Lucretia commanded, too, so he had to understand that. She took a breath and fought the tears stinging her eyes. He would want her strong.

“How's school?” he asked. Dorene heard the full lecture he normally would have given even though he didn't have the strength to say it.

“It will wait. I'm top of my class and a well-rounded person cares about more than just her standings.”

The corner of his mouth edged up as he tried to smile at her. “My girl. So proud.”

He fell asleep not long after that and she dragged the doctor out to get the prognosis.

“He'll probably recover from the flu,” he said. “But the drugs we had to use have had a side effect—it's rare, but your father wasn't honest with me about how much he drinks. And there was some medical information missing from his records. His liver couldn't take it and I'm afraid the trickle effect is in the kidney. He's got weeks, maybe, but not months. And certainly not years.”

“Kidney? He's got another, right? Or we can try for a transplant?” Dorene said.

“He only has the one. That was the medical information I alluded to. If he'd told me, I wouldn't have used the drug—this side effect is rare, but common enough that, had I known, I would have gone with a milder drug.”

“Where'd the other kidney go?” That seemed like something she should have known.

“A brother?” The doctor didn't sound sure, like he didn't know whether to believe it.

Dorene was confused, though her father did have a few brothers. “How was that not in his medical records?”

“They did it abroad. He said the brother had a criminal record and couldn't come to the States. It was done quietly. Your father said his career couldn't have taken it if this was known—a shame, really. A man who donates a kidney is a hero, no matter who the recipient is.”

That
brother. The one she'd never met. He'd left the US well before political pundits tracked people's life histories and her father had seven other siblings, all law-abiding US citizens, to talk about, so nobody had ever looked into the brother in Quebec. He'd originally dodged the draft for Vietnam, but while he was hiding, he'd also vandalized some military holdings—there'd even been an explosion, though he was a pacifist, so it was an empty facility he'd damaged. Dorene wondered where he was now.

'Weeks' was enough time to set his affairs in order and say good-bye, but it certainly wasn't time to fill the hole he'd leave in her heart and in her life. And she didn't savor what might happen to Georgia politics without him. Cooperative gentleman politicians were an endangered species.

A few days of caring for her dad and making note of his wishes resigned Dorene to what was going to happen. She even managed to forgive Corbin, probably because in a matter of weeks she'd no longer be a senator's daughter and their relationship would finally have some clarity. She'd be free from wondering what it was he saw in her.

She went downtown to the capitol where her father had an office to see if she could get a handle on the priorities, make sure his senior people knew what was happening, and bring him a few important questions about how he wanted things handled. His staff was pleased to see her and, though the news was bad, they were glad to know so they could start planning. Many office functions were at a standstill. Her father wasn't the only person who'd called in sick with the flu.

It occurred to her that Corbin could actually be helpful here in a way that would help
his
career, too, so Dorene decided to call and let him know he'd been forgiven. Then she'd invite him up to schmooze and help in a real political office.

He sounded like hell.

“Corbin? I know you're furious, but I'm glad I came. Daddy's dying.”

He gave a groan that sounded like, “I think I am, too.”

“Are you sick?”

“Mmm hmm.”

“I thought you got your flu shot before I did.”

“I did. Got it anyway.”

“Oh, you poor thing. I'd come nurse you. I swear it. But with Daddy...”

“I know. It's okay.”

“I hope you feel better,” she said.

“Me, too.”

She could have let the guilt eat at her, but there was too much to do. She wanted her dad to have the peace of mind when he went that he'd left no giant emergencies. Unfortunately, a flu epidemic causes more than a few emergencies. At her father's request, and because they'd heard the governor was ill, Dorene filled out the paperwork requesting that Georgia be declared
a state of emergency for him to sign. Then she tracked down the two people her father trusted to take over until the people of Georgia had a chance to voice their opinion.

One of them had the flu. It was very surreal to realize how many important people were really sick. She wondered if it was the case everywhere.

Public relations threatened to be the biggest nightmare in this crisis. Beau Duchamp, a televangelist, wanted a united front to prove to the people of Georgia that God would help them. Whatever that meant. And a list of cronies a mile long kept offering to help, undoubtedly with a lot of provisions for good press and substantial pieces of the resources of Georgia when the crisis was over.

Dorene watched as the people in her father's office worked out deals and it left a sour taste in her mouth, but that was politics. The one time she said anything, she was shooed out and talked to like a third-grader. And since she didn't have an official appointment, there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it.