Page 56 of Fearless
Monroe doesn’t wait for me to respond because there’s nothing to say. He tears off a much smaller piece and places it over my mouth. I hear footsteps come up behind me and stop a few feet away. Monroe smiles at the person and says, “She’s all yours.” He leans down and presses the pendant on my chest to start recording.
Several minutes pass after the two agents leave before my father finally approaches me. He squats down so that we’re nearly at eye level and says, “I’m so sorry you gotdragged into this, Harper. I never meant to get you involved.”
My mother silently moves to stand beside him and rests her hand on his shoulder. “We didn’t tell you what we discovered because we wanted to keep you safe,” she says softly.
I nod in acknowledgment, waiting for either one of them to continue. A tear falls from my father’s face as he says, “We love you, Harper. Never forget that.”
“Well, isn’t this cozy,” Whitman says as he enters the barn, pointing his gun at me. “The Finnegans are all together as one big terrorist family. This is going to be like shooting fish in a barrel. You’re making this too easy, Robert. Hello, Eloise.” His taunting sends chills down my spine, as does his malevolent grin.
Smith and Jones follow closely behind, training their weapons on my parents. “Hands up!” Smith shouts. My parents comply while keeping their eyes on Simms and Monroe, who walk past them to retrieve two chairs. Monroe sets one down on my left, and Simms places the other on my right.
“Now take their weapons!” Whitman demands, spit flying from his mouth. “Then tie them up!”
Monroe pats down my father and removes the gun from his hip and ankle. Simms does the same to my mom. They toss them a few feet away and gesture for my parents to sit. Smith and Jones come closer, ready to shoot if my parents make a move.
I scowl at Monroe as he tapes my father’s ankles to the legs of the chair, but he winks at me in response. He’s having a bit too much fun with this, and I vow to get him back later.
Whitman holsters his weapon now that he has four agents at his disposal, all armed and ready to shoot at the slightestprovocation. He walks over and stands in front of my dad. “Robert, Robert, Robert. What am I going to do with you? You stole my blueprints and my uranium, which makes you a very naughty boy.”
Therat-a-tat-tatof weapons firing outside surrounds the barn, and Whitman grins even further. “Don’t you love the sound of victory? That’s my men outside cleaning up this mess you’ve made.”
My dad sneers. “You mean the messyou’vemade. You’ve been smuggling in illegal immigrants for years, Marshall. Or shall I call you Wesley? That is the name on your birth certificate, isn’t it? Wesley Marshall Millstone? But then your parents died in a car crash when you were eight, and you were adopted by the Whitman family.”
“You’re very clever, Robert. But once I suspected you were on to me, I wiped those records from existence. The only Wesley Millstone anyone will find is you.”
I try to scream at Whitman, but other than shaking my chair and emitting muffled noises, it doesn’t do any good. Whitman simply laughs at me.
“And you, dear Harper, thought you were helping me capture your father.” Whitman takes another step and squats down in front of my mom. “Eloise, how does it feel to know that your precious daughter, your lifeblood, came here to arrest you? It was so easy to turn her against you.”
My mother spits in his face, which only makes Whitman cackle. “Harper is doing what she believes to be right. You leave her out of this!” she shouts.
More gunfire. More shouting. I watch as Zurkowski runspast the open door, but before he is out of sight, he drops to a knee and returns fire. He takes off running again, followed closely by one of Whitman’s men.
Whitman wipes his face clean with the palm of his hand, then wipes it on my mother’s pant leg. He faces me. “As you can see, I have the upper hand. I wonder what your parents would be willing to tell me if I started removing your fingernails with a pair of pliers. One. By. One. Would they give me the location of the uranium? Or the blueprints? What would it be worth to them?”
“Leave her alone!” my father demands. “You want the uranium, and I want answers. It’s a fair trade.”
“I thought you had it all figured out, Robert,” Whitman says smugly.
“I know the ‘who,’ and I know the ‘what.’ You plan on building a nuclear bomb. But I don’t know the ‘where’ or the ‘why.’ Where do you plan on detonating the bomb, and why are you doing this?”
“The why should be easy enough to figure out, but I’ll spell it out for you. P-O-W-E-R. Not power for me, but for the Bureau. With the CIA more or less in shambles, we’ve been taking on a lot more responsibility. We need to police not only the sheep in this country but also the wolves. If we had been able to keep tabs on the CIA, they never would have been able to do business with The Demon Kings in the first place.”
“Isn’t that what you’re doing? You’ve been working with The Demon Kings to further your own agenda. How are you any better?” my dad asks.
Whitman’s face turns red as he shouts in my father’s face, “The Director of the CIA wanted to line his pockets! I’m doing it to keep America safe!”
“Detonating a nuclear bomb isn’t exactly keeping America safe,” my mom quips. “What was your plan exactly?”
“I have no intention of detonating anything, but the threat needs to be real. That’s all America needs to hand over their rights. A little fear goes a long way. The bomb is going to be planted under Times Square on New Year’s Eve, and the FBI will swoop in and save the day before it can go off. There will be a huge public spectacle that showcases the importance of the agency and how we’re fundamentally important to preserving their freedoms.”
“Freedoms you plan to take away. It will also cause mass panic and a stampede. People will die because they’re trampled on. Either way, you’re killing Americans,” my father says steely.
Whitman shrugs. “It’s a small price to pay to keep America safe.”
“What about the illegal immigrants you’ve been smuggling into the US? How are they a part of your plan?” my mother asks.
“They serve a two-fold purpose,” Whitman says casually, his face returning to a normal color. “They pay me handsomely to come here, and I give them a simple job. But don’t worry, Eloise. I didn’t keep a single penny. That money was used to fund this plan.”
