“Since it is earmarked for Jackson’s environmental PAC, it can be justified. Sparrow is on record as a supporter of the mission statement.”
“I hope it’s worth it,” Patrick said.
Mason leaned against the back of his chair, his eyes wide as he stared at his screen. “Fuck. He’s handing them to us on a silver platter.”
“Are you looking at Walters’s message?” I asked as confirmation.
“Fuck yes. Top has logged her location over the last forty-five days. Shit, it goes back further than that. She and Jettison were in DC. Theoretically, she’s poking the Order’s wasp nest too.”
“If he can come up with that data, why didn’t the Order take them out?” Patrick stood and reached for the back of his chair. “Tell me again, why do we trust him?”
My thoughts went to the picture in my suit coat pocket. “I don’t know him like Mason does,” I said. “You’re right. Walters is either for real or he’s setting us up.”
“There’s no reason for him to set me up,” Mason said. “I didn’t defect from or betray the Order. I left with his blessing.”
“Unless,” I said, “you consider the part where he said you became no longer useful.”
“I could be fucking useful.”
Patrick and I both nodded. We’d seen him in action. However, what Walters had said made sense. To live the life of an agent or operative for the Order or even to have lived Kader’s life required the ability to block away emotions, to see people as either targets or assets, and to carry out a job or an order without question or reservation. A split second of regret could mean losing your nerve or being killed.
“Wait a minute,” I said. I turned to Patrick. “Have you listened to the audible of our meeting?”
“Yeah, Romero sent it as soon as Walters left.”
“Okay, I’ve been thinking about what Walters said, and in my mind, I’ve been dividing the world up into targets and assets. Right now, Stephanie Morehead and Andrew Jettison believe the Sparrow world is a target. And yet they haven’t taken a fucking A-bomb and wiped us off the map. Instead, they’ve picked and picked. Right now, Sparrow is on Michigan Avenue overseeing his own FBI raid.” I began to walk as I talked. “Stephanie could have killed Araneae and Lorna.” I turned to the other men. “Why didn’t she?”
“She didn’t want them. She wants Laurel, just like we thought,” Mason said.
“But not for her formula.”
“From the recording,” Patrick began, “if Walters is right, Morehead wanted Laurel dead before you brought her here, long before you married.”
“She hired me to do it,” Mason admitted. “I didn’t know it was Morehead. Those jobs didn’t come with a calling card.”
“And when you didn’t do it,” Patrick went on, “Morehead went to your ranch to do it herself.”
“You saved Laurel again,” I said.
“The Sparrows helped,” Mason replied.
I kept going, “And Stephanie has a grudge.”
Mason inhaled, his nostrils flaring. “She fucking killed Jackson.”
“Yet she didn’t kill Lorna or Araneae,” I said. “Technically, she didn’t kill Nancy either.”
Patrick shook his head. “Cause of death was a combination of things, co-morbidities. Nancy Pierce’s body was worn out. Her organs showed signs of deterioration, in some cases severe. Her liver was working at less than forty percent, and her kidneys were at sixty. It happens when the body is fighting other battles. She also had stage-two lung cancer, which she may not have even known. Laurel and Renita and I debated on the cause of the cancer. While there’s always her history of smoking, Nancy also showed signs of asbestos poisoning. Many of the places she called home over the years were probably decrepit old buildings, the kind with not only asbestos but also lead paint. And it didn’t take a doctor to see that she was also malnourished. The lack of nutrients gave the organs more reason to shut down. The malnourishment could have been Stephanie’s doing.”
“According to Zella,” I said, “The man and woman bought Nancy from Maples over a year before we found her. What the fuck was Stephanie doing with her for that long?”
Mason jumped up from his chair. “Fuck, what if she was experimenting on her?”
“What do you mean?”
“Somehow, she found out that Nancy was my mother. I never put that on any of my military forms. I only listed Lorna, but that shit isn’t that hard to find if you know where to look and dig deep enough. Anyway, if Top is right and