on its side. Nothing was left of it except the engine block and some twisted lengths of metal attached to the badly distorted frame, which couldn’t be recognized as being a part of a car just a moment ago. Very little of the cabin was intact, nor were any bodies visible, though four people had been inside the car. Flames and dark, greasy smoke rose from the wreck.
All of that came to McGarvey in the first second or two after the explosion, the horrible thought crystallizing in his mind that his wife and daughter had been killed right in front of his eyes. Not twenty feet away from him.
Every part of his body ached; it felt as if he’d been run over by a truck, and sounds were distorted. It was as if he were in a dream state where he couldn’t make his arms and legs function.
Ansel on his left had pulled himself up and he was saying something impossible to understand. And Mellinger had been shoved aside, and lay doubled over on the floor up against the right rear door.
McGarvey managed to reach over him and yank the door handle, but the car’s frame was bent and the door jammed. He braced his back against Ansel, who was struggling to come to his senses, and kicked at the door, once, twice, and on the third time it screeched open.
Ansel was trying to grab for him, but McGarvey scrambled over Mellinger, who was starting to come around, and tumbled out into the ditch.
He got to his feet and for another second stood, drunkenly swaying, until he was able to climb up onto the driveway and totter toward the burning wreck. But the intense heat and thick black smoke stopped him from getting close.
And it hit him, fully hit him, Katy and Liz were dead. There would be no bringing them back, nor would there be much of anything left to bury.
He raised his right hand to shield his eyes against the brightness of the flames, wanting to see his wife and daughter, their remains, but nothing was there. The blast had come up from the road, blowing out the bottom of the limo that had apparently been an ordinary VIP vehicle, and therefore unarmored.
In the far distance he thought he might be hearing a siren, but then it was gone, and he wasn’t sure he’d heard anything.
In pieces now it was really hitting what had just happened, and more than that, why it had happened, and he focused on two names: the Friday Club and Administrative Solutions.
He saw the expressions on Sandberger’s and Remington’s faces in Germany.
He heard Todd’s voice on the cell phone.
He felt his wife’s body against his as he’d hugged her before the funeral, and saw the devastated look in Liz’s eyes.
And Otto and Louise not showing up.
Nothing was making any sense to him, and it was driving him nuts.
He paced a few feet to the left, and then to the right, like a caged animal seeing its freedom just beyond a fence. For this moment he was hammered into inaction, if not submission, so overwhelmed by what had happened even he was having trouble fully comprehending the situation. The fear that his family would someday pay the price for what he was had always preyed on his mind; in fact, he had left Katy early in their marriage in what he’d come to believe was a false hope of saving her, or removing her from danger.
And now he asked himself if he’d been right to come back, and that burden was the most terrible thing he’d ever faced in his entire life. He was mad at himself and afraid for what might happen next. What he might do. What self-control remained after Todd’s assassination had been erased.
Someone was shouting his name, and he turned in time to see Ansel coming across the driveway, his pistol drawn, Mellinger just a few paces behind. For a split second he had no idea what they wanted, and what Ansel was shouting, but then it came to him in nearly the same force as the explosion, that he was their prisoner, and they were going to take him into custody.
Todd’s death had been hard enough on him, but this, now, was devastating, and there was no telling what a former black ops officer, an assassin, might do next. The safest thing would be to get him someplace safe, under lock and key until he could be calmed down and