Pray for the Innocent Read online

  Although Dragunov favored one-on-one killing—more personal—he had to admit that causing panic was monstrously effective. When high-profile politicians or celebrities were targeted, people felt bad, but they had an explanation, a rationalization, for the murder. It couldn’t happen to me, they thought, I’m not famous.

  But when random violence occurred in their cities and towns, in their businesses and on mass transit and at the shopping center where they bought groceries on a daily basis, people became paralyzed with fear. And the panic just seemed to feed on itself.

  That was what would destroy America. Terror.

  After he’d awoken in the lab two days ago, it hadn’t taken him long to surmise what had happened. He’d been captured and was about to be tortured. Under the direction of that bastard Nick Nolan, the American scientists were going to interrogate him—using the latest drugs—to first discover his mission, then figure out how he’d become such an amazing killing machine.

  They’d made the grievous mistake of underestimating him. He’d been able to escape their lax security without any difficulty whatsoever.

  But all was not rosy. Whatever drugs they’d pumped into him had affected his brain. Made his thinking slow and fuzzy. He’d have clear thoughts for a while, then they’d deteriorate. His mind felt like an AM radio stuck between stations, where sometimes the music would come in clearly, other times the news. Too often, though, the broadcast seemed to be an overlap of both stations, mixed with a dozen others, which created so much confusion Dragunov couldn’t function. Sometimes the cacophony became so bad he had to lie down and wait for the interference to pass. For the turmoil to calm.

  Despite his impairment, he hadn’t had much trouble securing some transportation. And Dragunov was especially pleased with the weapon of attack, a truly inspired choice. Sometimes he was at his best when he had to improvise with the tools at hand. He’d decided not to kill that man whose car he stole, thinking it might be more effective to have a victim relate the terror he felt as Dragunov grabbed him from behind and ran the screwdriver into his neck half a dozen times.

  Something nagged at him, though. The escape from the lab had been so easy, almost too easy. It was as if they were setting some kind of trap. He’d have to maintain his vigilance. Though the Americans were inferior in every way measurable, they weren’t totally incompetent, and Dragunov knew he couldn’t drop his guard. One mistake on his part and the mission could be jeopardized.

  An unusual bird fluttered by and perched on an oak branch not more than twenty yards away. Dragunov got a good glimpse, even without using the binoculars. He was tempted to reach for the field guide, but it wasn’t necessary—he already seemed to know the type of bird and everything about it.

  Prothonotary Warbler (Protonotaria citrea): Male: Greenish back, gray wings without wing bars, yellow underparts, and bright yellow/orange head. Small songbird in the warbler family. Diet consists of butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, mayflies, and spiders. “Prothonotary” refers to Roman Catholic clerks whose robes were bright yellow. One of only two warbler species that nest in tree cavities.

  He couldn’t recall ever learning that information, had never read any books about birds. Never cared much about wildlife at all, in fact. It was weird, but he wasn’t complaining. Knowledge was a good thing no matter where it came from.

  A wave of brain interference washed over him, and he almost forgot to pay attention to the van. He fought the confusion and trained his binoculars down the hill, just in time to see a bus pull up near the van, ready to unload visitors before heading to park in the garage. No doubt the bus was packed with tourists on a sightseeing trip, all eager to get out and admire the wonderful church. A moment later, the door opened, and they emerged from the bus like a herd of cows going through the chute at the packing plant to their slaughter.

  Which, Dragunov knew, was a very apt metaphor.

  He waited until a few more passengers had disembarked before he pressed the detonation button on his smartphone. Then he picked up his birding book and strolled away, whistling a pleasant little tune to cover up the sounds of the distant screaming.

  #

  Emily strolled down the street, forcing herself to take it easy and act nonchalant, difficult for the girl who usually had only two speeds: fast and faster. She pulled her phone out of her backpack and slowed down, pretending to send a text. A gentle breeze carried with it the yeasty aroma of fresh bread, no doubt from the commercial bakery she passed. On any other day, she might have gone in search of free samples, but today, the wonderful smell only served as a minor distraction.

  She drifted down the street as she fiddled with her phone until she reached a spot across from a shuttered printing business that was next to Gosberg’s warehouse. Peering over her phone at it didn’t yield any more information about the facility’s owner.

  The warehouse was two stories, rectangular, encased in gray corrugated metal siding all around. Completely devoid of any architectural merit whatsoever, unless you counted utility and cost. Emily could not have imagined a more mundane building.

  But that made it a perfect place to hide.

  No sign. No telltale noises. No heavenly smells. No outward indication of what the company did. The warehouse could have manufactured rocking chairs or stuffed giraffes or nuclear weapons parts, from all she could discern from the outside.

  Although a company making rocking chairs or stuffed giraffes probably didn’t need a security gate to protect the parking lot.

  She was tempted to send a real text to Professor King, telling him what she’d found. But she hadn’t found much, and she wasn’t sure how he would react when she told him she wasn’t at her computer but was instead in some run-down industrial park, lurking outside of a secret facility.

  Emily stood there for a few minutes, waiting to see if any people went in or came out of the building. She hoped a delivery truck would arrive and drop off something that might offer a clue as to what Gosberg’s company did. As she stood, her fingers moved above the little keyboard on her phone, pretending to text, a ruse in case she was being watched. Ten minutes passed, and no one came close to the building. In fact, only three cars went by, and all turned around in the cul-de-sac at the end of the street without stopping.

  Nick Nolan wouldn’t sit outside, hoping for something to drop into his lap. He’d march right into that building and demand to know what was going on.

  Emily slid the phone into her pocket and darted across the street. She marched right up to the front door of the warehouse and rapped on the glass a few times, then stepped back and waited.

  And waited. And waited. As she waited, she tried to peer through the heavily tinted glass but couldn’t see a thing. Obviously, Gosberg’s company—or agency, or whatever—didn’t expect walk-ins. Emily knocked again, harder and more insistently. Luckily, she’d honed her skill at being a pest by annoying two older brothers for years.

  She repositioned a ring on her finger and rapped it against the glass door. A dozen raps. Then two dozen, then another twenty, barely pausing between barrages. She knew at least one person was in the building—Gosberg—and she was prepared to wait until quitting time to corral someone if that’s what it took.

  After another ten minutes of ring rapping, the door finally swung open a crack. A tall, gangly man with black bushy eyebrows peered down at her through the narrow opening. “I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong place, miss.”

  “You don’t even know what I’m looking for.”

  He smiled. “Okay. What are you looking for?”

  “I’m trying to find—”

  “Like I said, I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong place.”

  Emily thought about putting her shoulder down and ramming the door but decided to keep trying diplomacy first. “What is this place, anyway?”

  “Research facility.” The man’s smile dissipated.

  “Oh? I love research. What kind?” With her right hand, Emily slipped her phone out of her pocket. P
ut her finger on the shutter button.

  “Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but we’re not open to the public, and I have a lot of work to do. Goodbye.” He started to close the door, but Emily slipped her foot inside, trapping it between the door and the doorjamb. The man stared down at her foot but didn’t let up on the pressure. “This is a private facility, and you’re trespassing. If you’re looking for the nearest Starbucks, go out to the main drag, turn left, and go for about half a mile. It’s on the right. Now, please remove your foot.”

  Emily pulled her foot out of the doorway and tried one last Hail Mary. “I’m a grad student, and I’m thinking about going into research. I thought you might be able to answer a few questions. Won’t you do that for me?” She smiled as broadly as she could, but her efforts were wasted. Quickly, she brought her phone up and snapped a couple of pictures.

  Unfortunately, the door had already closed.

  Chapter Six

  Monday night meant dinner at his daughter Amanda’s, and on those occasions when King couldn’t come up with a viable excuse not to go, he pasted on his smile and spent a few hours with his only child. It wasn’t that he disliked Amanda—quite the contrary—but the evenings too often devolved into her trying to persuade, cajole, or wheedle him into doing something he didn’t want to do. Like eat healthier, exercise, relax, socialize, or, heaven forbid, begin writing again.

  Last week, he’d turned down the standing invitation, claiming he was tuckered out after a long day shaping the minds of impressionable youths. But tonight, after Gosberg’s mysterious visit, he felt a bit out of sorts and figured getting nagged by his daughter would jolt him right back to reality.

  He’d sat through a full meal—salad, steak, mashed potatoes, followed by his favorite, Dutch apple pie—listening to her stories of the daily grind at the landscaping business she owned. Politely nodding and feigning interest. “A delicious meal, sweetheart. I’m very pleasantly stuffed.” He dabbed his mouth with his napkin and set it down next to his plate. “I enjoy our get-togethers.” Mostly true, and there was a time when Amanda would never have even let him through the front door.

  “It’s one way to get you out some. Be right back.” She rose, scooped up their dessert plates, and disappeared into the kitchen.

  King leaned one elbow on his armrest and glanced around the dining room. The walls were a cheery yellow and adorned with watercolors that Amanda had painted. A forest of snow-covered pine trees. A bed of red roses. A field of tall sunflowers in bright sunlight, stalks bending with the breeze. Amazing works of art, even more amazing to King because Amanda herself had created them. He had no idea where she got her talent—all he knew was that it hadn’t come from him. Coming over to Amanda’s house made him realize how much of a cave he really lived in. And King thanked the Lord every day that Amanda’s hate for him had thawed.

  From her vantage point, he was the man responsible for her mother’s death twenty-four years ago.

  Rina’s screams had jolted him awake. King had had too much to drink before turning in, and as he tried to get oriented, he got tangled in the sheets. In his thrashing, he bumped his head on the corner of the nightstand and ended up on the floor, all while Rina’s cries rose and fell.

  There was another sound, too, out of place. Not as loud but equally unnerving. Like heavy footsteps in the mud. Thwick, thwick, thwick. Wet and gloppy. With each thwick came a renewed cry of anguish.

  Thwick, thwick, thwick.

  King untangled himself and scrambled to his knees, trying to make sense of what was happening. An intruder? Hurting Rina?

  The screams had stopped, replaced by heavy breathing. His own. It had to be a dream, didn’t it? But Rina’s cries had been so real.

  “Rina?” he called out. “Rina?”

  No answer. Just heaving breathing. And not just his own. More came from the foot of the bed.

  As King stared into the darkness, a shadowy figure seemed to coalesce. It stood, motionless, looming above the bed. Was his imagination running amok? A second later, an eerie sound filled the air—a singsong nursery rhyme being recited, over and over, in a high-pitched voice. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

  The episode had not been a dream.

  King’s fingers clawed at the nightstand drawer. He flung it open and grabbed for his Beretta. Then he yanked the bottom drawer clean out of the nightstand and rooted around for the magazine. Why had he allowed himself to compromise with Rina about keeping the two separate?

  Amanda. What would happen to her if the intruder harmed him? Terror electrified his body. What if the intruder had already visited Amanda’s room?

  The magazine slipped from his fingers, and he fumbled to pick it up. What seemed like a span of minutes was only a matter of seconds. In some remote corner of his mind, he wondered why the intruder didn’t turn on him or flee.

  The singsong rhyme echoed in his head.

  He snapped the magazine in place and aimed the gun at the dark figure, who was still standing motionless at the foot of the bed.

  He was about to squeeze the trigger but froze.

  Did he dare flip on his light before firing, making himself a target?

  What if, in his panic, he made a mistake? What if it had been a dream and the dark figure at the foot of the bed was his daughter?

  “Amanda?”

  No answer.

  “Amanda, honey? Is that you? Answer me.”

  King knew how the darkness played tricks on the mind.

  “Goddamn it, who’s there?”

  No answer.

  Trying to hold his gun steady, King rose off his haunches and turned on the nightstand lamp.

  A man dressed in combat fatigues stood there, knife in hand. A creepy toothless grin below wild eyes.

  King aimed at center mass and squeezed the trigger, squeezed until all the bullets were gone.

  His ears rang from the shots, but he detected a shrill scream. There in the doorway was Amanda, who’d just witnessed him shoot the intruder.

  Tears streamed down her baby-doll face as she stared, eyes wide, mouth contorted in anguish.

  Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

  King would never forget the abject terror on his daughter’s face for as long as he lived, just as he was sure Amanda would never forget the sight of her mother lying on blood-soaked sheets or her father gunning a man down in front of her eyes.

  King glanced around the dining room again, unmoved by the brightly colored walls and pretty artwork. That one night had turned his entire life upside down, and in the following months, the feelings of guilt had consumed him. Rina’s murder had been entirely his fault. He’d been the one to write about violence and death and destruction, practically inviting a psycho killer like Oscar Boorman into his home.

  He’d made a deal with the devil, and the devil had come to collect.

  One detail haunted him more than anything. King had assumed the murder weapon was a knife, and no one had told him differently. But during Boorman’s trial, the police officers and medical examiners testified that Boorman had actually used a ballpoint pen to murder Rina.

  A fucking ballpoint pen.

  Thwick, thwick, thwick.

  Where had Boorman gotten that idea? From King himself. In the original Attack on America manuscript, King had written a nighttime intrusion scene where Dragunov used a ballpoint pen to kill his victim. Even though his editor had changed the pen to an ice pick at the last minute, King had bragged about how clever he was for using such a creative murder weapon during a book tour appearance that Boorman had attended. Mathias King, pompous ass and master of “outrageous” kills.

  He’d actually bragged about it.

  As devastating as Rina’s death had been to him, it had hit Amanda even harder. For the next seven years, King had taken her to a series of psychologists, where she tried to come to terms with what had happened and the role King had played. Amanda had blamed him twofold: primarily for his violent books that had resulted in the murder of her mother
, but she’d also been profoundly affected by witnessing him—her very own father—gun down Boorman.

  After she’d turned eighteen and moved out, she hadn’t spoken more than ten words to him in any year. And if it hadn’t been for the terrible events of 9/11, King was convinced she still wouldn’t be speaking to him. But during that day, she—along with millions of others—must have realized life was too short.

  The return to normalcy between them had been slow and not without bumps, but now they were in a pretty good place. King couldn’t shake the feeling, though, that if another calamity befell them, their relationship was liable to shatter like a crystal goblet falling off the table.

  Amanda cared about him—and nagged him—much like any daughter. And he doted on her in return. He knew he couldn’t make up for the lost time and affection, but he was going to damn well try. Life was too short.

  King concentrated on the picture of the sunflowers, trying to absorb some of the cheeriness, without much luck. A moment later, Amanda breezed back into the room and slid into her seat at the table. Propped her chin on both hands. “How are you doing, Dad?”

  How was he doing? Shitty, like any time he found himself reliving the events of that night. “Oh, fine. You know me.”

  “Yeah, I know you.” She winked at him. “Have you thought about what we discussed a few weeks ago?”

  Writing. She wanted him to get back to writing, figured his self-imposed sabbatical was a giant hole in his life, figured he’d be much happier if he just started putting the pen to the proverbial paper. “I had a good run, but . . .”

  “You don’t have to write thrillers, Dad. There are other genres. You’re a writer. It’s who you are.”