Page 9 of The Night Of
Who could kill the president beneath the nose of the entire Secret Service? While security was even tighter than usual, thanks to the seven other heads of state who were on site that night?
Who could kill the president in a locked room and make his death look like a suicide? And then vanish into thin air?
I couldn’t come up with an answer.
The people who are closest never believe what’s happened
I turned away, pacing with my hands on my hips. “Look, the president’s note said to call Carl, right? So who the hell is Carl?”
“Carl Rose, one of our other close friends. He worked in the State Department in Brussels with Steven. Of course, he wasn’t really State. He had diplomatic cover, but he worked on the other side of the embassy.”
“CIA?”
Jonathan nodded. “He moved over to run the counterespionage strike teams three years ago. He’s been up to his eyeballs in this Hardacre disappearance.” He scrubbed one hand down his face, sighing. “And Hardacre was eating Steven up. He was in agony over the situation, over the CIA officers who were being murdered. We couldn’t recall all of the CIA, though. We couldn’t expose ourselves like that and leave the United States vulnerable. But every single CIA officer has a bull’s-eye on them right now, thanks to Hardacre. Those deaths were destroying Steven.”
“Destroying him enough to—”
“No,” Jonathan hissed. He strode for me, getting close. Close enough to stare me down. Close enough for my belly button to pucker.
There was a rawness in Jonathan’s gaze, a fury building deep in the center of him.
I understood.
I’d seen the aftermath. I saw the broken-down door, my fellow agents frozen in shock when they burst in. And I saw Baker before it happened, too. When he was surly and foul and depressed, and he didn’t reach out to anybody and no one reached out to him.
What desperate conclusion had Baker reached? Had it happened when he was all alone, leaning against the patio railing? Had I been watching him when he made his secret decision?
Right now, Jonathan was channeling that fury at the world, at me, at disbelief and a hunger for answers. At some point, that fury would shift, bleed into the memories of his best friend.Whywas a cancer, poisoning the past.I would have followed him anywhere, he’d said. Into hell, into the fury, into the black night of the soul and beyond. Jonathan would have gone the ultimate distance for Baker. I knew it, and the president should have, too.
So why didn’t Baker ask his best friend for help when he most needed it?
Maybe he did. The president’s note was a bell that couldn’t be unrung. It hummed, questions spiraling off into the vapor of my mind.Call Carl. It all goes back to Belgium. I need you.
“All right. Let’s call Carl and get some answers.”
Jonathan stared. I never could read him. It’s what made me so fucking crazy, before. “Carl is dead.”
“What?” I almost shouted. I was quickly approaching the edge of rationality, helped on my way by exhaustion and adrenaline. “When?” Maybe this would help put the note on a timeline. Maybe Baker had put it under his desk before, and Jonathan just hadn’t seen it.
“He was shot in Anacostia last night. DC Metropolitan Police have his body and are investigating. There’s video of the incident. The cops say there’s no indication it was anything other than what it appears to be: an attempted carjacking by a neighborhood gang.”
I sputtered, searching for something, anything to grab onto. The world was spinning, the walls melting and swirling away, and I was caught in the whirlpool, the black waters spiraling downward. My mouth moved, curses and questions tumbling silently as I ran my hands through my hair. I didn’t know Carl Rose, but I felt the world closing in. Ice and claustrophobia crashed inside me, waves of heat and chill alternating beneath my skin. I shook my hands, paced away.
Through the churn, a few facts were staring at me.
The president was dead. He’d left a secret note for Jonathan, seeming to imply that there could be trouble, that he might not be alive much longer. He couldn’t reach out to anyone else, he thought. And the man he sent Jonathan to for help was dead. Killed last night, just before Baker killed himself.
Was that a reason for Baker’s—
I slumped onto Jonathan’s couch, my elbows on my knees as I deflated. Jonathan watched me, still silent, still wreathed in the quiet intensity that defined him. He was like a nuclear reactor, so much raw power harnessed inside him it seemed like he burned. Fuck, it hurt to look at him.
“Youreallybelieve the president was murdered?” I asked. There wasn’t a hint of skepticism in my voice. Jonathan was the smartest man I knew. If he believed this, down in his bones, then…
Maybe there was more than just a broken heart fueling his pain.
Or maybe it was exactly as it appeared: unimaginable loss and twenty-five years of friendship obliterated in a single act. A search for reason where the only answers were deeper shades of pain and loneliness.
“I do,” Jonathan said. “Steven did not kill himself. Iknowit. He wouldn’t.”
