12. Farrow
Chapter twelve
Farrow
Dane was catching what sleep he could. I was moving through the house, checking locks and windows. My phone buzzed, and I had it to my ear before the second ring.
Eamon didn’t say hello. “We move at oh-four-hundred.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Brookline. It’s a carriage house behind a larger property. The Guardians own it.”
“What’s the approach like?”
“It has a single road in flanked by mature trees. We’ll flag anyone coming up the drive well before they reach the gate.” He paused. “I know Dane might be sleeping.”
“He’s already on the stairs. He’ll be standing here with me before you hang up.”
Eamon almost laughed. “Oh-four-hundred, Farrow.”
He was gone. Dane was at the bottom of the steps. He wore a black hoodie and jeans. He looked at me and waited.
“We move by oh-four-hundred to Brookline. It’s a Guardians-owned carriage house.”
He nodded once and headed back up the stairs. I tucked the phone away and followed. The treads creaked under my boots. Three hours and forty minutes to be out the door.
I was halfway up when I heard Wiley’s voice. I stopped on the landing.
His door was cracked an inch—not enough to see through, but enough to hear. He’d started his latest five-minute call.
“In the next several hours,” Wiley said.
A pause. Samuel was likely speaking.
“I can’t tell you that.”
Another pause.
“I can’t tell you that either.”
A shadow crossed the thin strip of light under the door.
“I will. I promise.”
A longer pause. I imagined Samuel sitting at the kitchen island in the safehouse in Newton, with Vega somewhere in the next room making coffee.
“I love you.”
Wiley was quiet, but he didn’t hang up.
Five seconds passed, and then ten. I could hear the faint hum of the handset. Wiley wasn’t talking, and he wasn’t hanging up either.
I had no idea what fifteen years of marriage sounded like at four in the morning when one of you was in a safehouse and the other was in a different safehouse.
Wiley spoke softly. “I’ll call you when I can.”
The handset clicked off.
I joined Dane in the room we’d been using for sleep while the others kept watch on the house. He’d stripped the bed to the mattress and bagged the linens. His duffel sat at his feet, half-zipped. He was running a microfiber cloth along the top edge of the dresser.
“Bathroom’s done,” he said.
I pulled my duffel out of the closet and joined him. He looked up.
I caught the back of Dane’s neck and kissed him. It was short, and his mouth was warm. His free hand found my hip and stayed there for the length of it, then let go.
He stepped back first. “Five minutes, Farrow.”
“I know.”
It was long enough to brush my teeth and remove the evidence.
“I’ll gather Cabot and Wiley,” he said. “You secure the ground floor.”
Fifteen minutes later, it was oh-three-forty-nine. Three vehicles already idled at the curb, lights off. Dane came down the stairs with Wiley and Cabot following. All three were silent.
Reed reported that he’d seen no one on the street for more than half an hour. That didn’t comfort me.
“Ready?” Dane asked. Wiley wiped his eyes but said nothing. He nodded along with Cabot.
The lead SUV was Collins. I knew the silhouette of his head against the dash light before I’d cleared the steps. The middle vehicle was a second Guardians runner, a woman named Pereira. The third was a contractor I didn’t know, sitting in a sedan two car-lengths back.
Dane took Cabot to the lead SUV. Collins had the door open before they reached the curb. Cabot folded himself in. Dane closed the door, walked around to the far side, and was inside in five seconds.
I steered Wiley to the middle vehicle. Pereira had the door already ajar. He climbed in without looking back at the house. He shifted to the far seat and put his hands flat on his thighs.
I climbed in beside him and pulled the door shut. Reed locked the house’s green door and climbed into the sedan.
Reed’s sedan pulled away from the curb first. He’d play a fake principal in the back seat, hunched in a coat, with his head down and cap pulled low. Anyone tracking us would have to choose—lead car, second car, or third.
Collins pulled out next, taking Cabot and Dane south toward Mount Vernon.
Pereira watched the corner Collins rounded, counted to ten under her breath, the final three out loud, and eased us away from the curb in the opposite direction. She u-turned north toward Cambridge Street.
A light mist began to fall. The wipers cycled once and stopped. The Charles came up on our left, flat and black, with the lights of Cambridge thin and scattered on the far bank.
Wiley spoke. “I keep thinking about the courier.”
He paused, and I waited for him to continue.
“He looked like a kid. He was a kid with a bike helmet under his arm. Donna at the Globe signed him out and put him on a bike and sent him to a house she didn’t know was a safehouse, with an envelope she didn’t know contained a threat.”
“Yes.”
“They used him.”
“They did.”
Wiley exhaled through his nose. “That’s what I can’t stop turning over. They didn’t have to risk exposure for any of their people. They walked their note up the front steps inside a Globe satchel.”
I checked the side mirrors. There was a cab two blocks back, with a delivery van behind it, both moving at normal speed for the hour.
“They wanted us to know they could do it,” I said.
“They wanted me to know.”
“You and Cabot. The note didn’t specify.”
“The envelope had my name on it.”
“Then they read the room wrong. Cabot’s the asset they want, and you’re the man who can name them. They don’t get to pick which one of you scares them more.”
Pereira took us down past the back side of the State House and merged us onto Storrow. The river opened up beside us.
Wiley was quiet for a half-mile. Then: “Where are we going?”
“Brookline. A carriage house behind a larger property.”
“Do you know it?”
“No, but Eamon described it on the phone. There’s a single road in, mature trees, and a controlled approach. Discreet. It's the kind of place a couple fixes up while insisting they are just friends.”
Wiley nearly smiled.
I checked the mirror again. The cab had peeled off two blocks back. The delivery van was still there, three car-lengths back.
Wiley turned away from the window. “How long until we’re there?”
“Fourteen minutes. Maybe twelve.”
The van was still there at the BU Bridge. It was three car-lengths back, traveling at a steady speed.
I watched the mirror without turning my head.
Pereira adjusted her hands on the wheel, left at ten, right loose at five.
Wiley looked out his window again.
I kept my voice flat. “Wiley.”
“Yeah.”
“In a minute I’m going to ask you to get on the floor. When I do, you go down without asking questions.”
He turned his head, and his mouth tightened slightly. That was the closest he’d come to signaling fear in three days.
“Okay.”
“Keep your hands free and out of your pockets.”
“Okay.”
I tapped my comm.
“Dane. Possible follower. Delivery van, white, no markings. Three car-lengths back. Held position from Cambridge Street through the curve onto Storrow.”
“Plate?”
I read it off what I saw in the mirror.
“Copy. Stay on the line.”
Pereira eased our SUV one lane to the left. The van moved with us.
A beat later, she drifted back to the right. The van followed.
“Confirmed,” I said into the comm. “He’s tracking lane changes.”
“Copy. Tell Pereira to take the BU Bridge exit at speed. Don’t signal. Take the ramp on the inside line.”
I watched Pereira. She’d heard him through her own earpiece.
“Copy,” she said, eyes on the road. “Coming up.”
“Wiley. Down.”
He went down.
He didn’t fold gracefully, the way the principals fold in the training videos.
He went down sideways and awkward, one shoulder catching the seatbelt before he twisted free of it.
Wiley ended up on his side on the floor of the SUV with his face turned toward the door and one hand braced against the back of Pereira’s seat.
“Stay there. Don’t look up.”
“Okay.”
I drew my sidearm and tracked the mirror.
Three hundred feet to the exit. Then two hundred. The van was still three lengths behind.
Pereira didn’t signal. At one hundred feet, she committed, full pressure on the wheel and no brake. The SUV pulled hard right across the line and onto the exit ramp at fifty miles an hour. Wiley slid an inch on the floor mat and braced harder against Pereira’s seat.
Behind us, the van committed too. It cut across the same line a beat after we did. No hesitation. Whoever was driving had been waiting for the move and reacted within half a second. It was a professional maneuver.
Dane in my comm. “Boston PD has a cruiser on him.”
The car came out of the right lane on Storrow with its lights dark and dropped into the lane directly behind the van as it cleared the merge onto the bridge ramp. It didn’t use sirens or flashers, but it was a sudden official presence eighteen inches off the van’s rear bumper.
The van’s brake lights came on. Held. Then they cycled off and on. It was a driver dealing with the unexpected.
Pereira was already through the curve and onto the bridge deck. The Charles opened on both sides of us.
I kept watching in the mirror. The van took the bridge with us.
Two seconds later it changed lanes hard, cut across into the right lane, and took the Memorial Drive ramp going west. Pereira was already committed east. The van’s taillights pulled away from us on the far side of the rotary and were gone.
“He’s off. Boston PD broke the follow.”
Dane’s voice came back. “Copy. Status of Wiley.”
I looked down. He was still on the floor. He was breathing fast, but his hands were steady against Pereira’s seat.
“Conscious. Not hit. On the floor.”
“Get him up when you’re clear of the bridge.”
“Copy.”
The line remained open.
Dane wouldn't hang up until I told him I had Wiley back in his seat and we were three minutes out from Brookline. It wasn’t protocol. It was something else. I held that against my ribs while I turned my attention back to the road.
Pereira cleared the bridge, took the rotary at speed, and brought us down onto Memorial Drive. I kept the sidearm in my hand.
Wiley didn’t move. “It’s over,” I said, low enough that the comm wouldn’t catch it.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“How sure?”
“Sure enough that you can get up.”
He didn’t get up. He stayed on the floor with his face turned toward the door, and he continued to breathe fast. I didn’t push him.
Pereira took the next turn toward Brookline. The van didn’t return.
When Pereira took the turn off Memorial onto the surface streets that would feed us into Brookline, I shifted in my seat and looked down.
“Wiley, we’re three minutes out. I need you up.”
He pushed himself off the floor in stages, elbow first and then hand on the seat. He got himself upright, turned, and lowered into the seat beside me. His hands were flat on his thighs, and he stared straight ahead.
I tapped the comm. “He’s up. Four minutes out.”
“Copy,” Dane said. “We’re inside. Everything’s set.”
The gate was already open when we arrived. Collins’ lead SUV was inside, parked tight against the side of a building I could see through the bare trees. It was a converted carriage house, two stories, with dark green clapboard and lights on behind the second-floor windows.
Pereira pulled in behind the lead SUV and killed the engine.
“We’re here,” I said.
Wiley nodded.
I let him have ten seconds. Then I unclipped my belt, opened my door, and walked around the back of the SUV to his side. I opened his door.
“Wiley, out.”
He swung his legs out and set both feet on the gravel. He braced himself with a hand on the door.
I waited.
After a beat, he took his hand off the door. I closed it and walked beside Wiley toward the carriage house. Dane stood inside the open door, outlined by the warm light behind him.
Wiley crossed the threshold and went past Dane without speaking.
I walked in behind him. Dane closed the door, threw the deadbolt, and turned to me.
His voice was soft. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.”
Dane wrapped me in his arms and cupped the back of my neck in his hand. It was over as quickly as it had started.
He led me through a short hallway into the carriage house’s front room, and I followed with my coat still on and the sidearm still warm against my ribs. The kitchen was small. Wiley sat at the table with the secure handset in his hand. I pulled a water bottle from the refrigerator for him.
Dane joined us. “Eamon set the phone. You can call.”
“I can, but—“
“He’ll want to hear from you,” I said.
“Yes, but if I call him at five in the morning, he’ll know it was bad.
” He paused. “He’ll hear it in my voice in the first three words.
Samuel won’t ask how bad. He doesn’t do that.
He’ll ask, are you somewhere safe, and I’ll say, yes and he’ll know I’m lying, because I’m not somewhere safe.
I’m only somewhere new, and he’ll lie back to me and say, good, and we’ll both sit on the line and listen to each other not saying anything for the rest of the five minutes. ”
He set the handset down.
“I’ll let him sleep.”
I didn’t answer.
“Thank you for not telling me to call him,” Wiley said.
“You don’t need anyone telling you what to do with Samuel. You worked it out a long time ago.”
Wiley looked up at me. “Have you ever had someone like Samuel?”
“No.”
He nodded.
Wiley pushed up from the table and picked up the half-empty water bottle.
“I’ll show you where you sleep,” Dane said from the doorway.
I stayed where I was until I heard a door open and a minute later close. Then I went to find Dane.