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Nearly two weeks had passed since Roth’s daughter had been abducted by Jacob Calakmul. The suspense was ripping all of them up inside. Worse: Roth still didn’t know whether his wife was alive or dead. Calakmul might have them both, and he certainly wasn’t Roth’s biggest fan. They were playing the waiting game, and each hour felt like it lasted a year—hence why he’d brought his sons here for a distraction.
As the crowd flowed outdoors, the bite of cold air struck them. It wasn’t as cold in DC as it was in Bozeman, Montana, where they lived, but it definitely wasn’t California weather.
“If I could travel back in time to any event in history,” Roth told the boys, “I would have picked April 14, 1865. So many things went wrong that night. Booth should never have gotten close enough to kill President Lincoln. Knowing when and how the murder was going to happen, I could stop it all from happening. Like you said, Brillante, the whole history of America altered that night because of John Wilkes Booth and that theater.”
“If I could travel back in time, I would have warned us not to go to Mexico in the first place,” Lucas said. “Then none of this stuff would have happened.”
Roth looked at his son, seeing the tightness in his eyes, the worry. They all missed the half of their family that had been carved away. They wanted answers. But they were hundreds of miles away from Sarina and Suki, staying in Washington, DC, under FBI protection, trying to sort through an international conspiracy led by a very dangerous man.
Roth’s burner phone buzzed in his pocket with a text. He pulled it out and saw it was from Lund. He’d been expecting a message.
I’m behind you. Keep walking straight and then turn left at Pennsylvania.
Roth texted back: How far away are we?
The answer came quickly—3 minutes.
They passed a Hard Rock Cafe before crossing E Street. And there it was, directly ahead of them, the distinctive building that Roth had seen on episodes of the X-Files. The J. Edgar Hoover Building. FBI headquarters.
They crossed the street when the light turned green. The Hoover building was old, having been schemed by President Kennedy and built by Nixon. It didn’t look like other federal buildings in DC, with its concrete pillars, small square windows, and memorable overhanging roofline. It was a massive structure with multiple levels below ground and eight to eleven floors above ground. After crossing the street, Roth instinctively looked back to see if he could spot Lund, but there was no sign of him. The man could be a ghost when he wanted to be. He’d spent the majority of his career with the FBI and knew many who worked in the building. But the FBI forced employees to retire early, at age fifty-seven, and many chose to start a new career afterward. Thankfully, Lund had done just that. His commitment to protecting his clients was laudable. He was still fuming that Roth’s high school friend, Moretti, had tricked him into handing over Suki.
None of them had suspected the ultimate betrayal, that Moretti, whom Roth had known for decades, had been working for Calakmul all along.
After walking down the sidewalk to Pennsylvania Avenue, they turned left and went to the front of the building. From the corner, there was a row of denuded trees—the leaves long since banished by winter. Looking east, they could see the dome of the US Capitol building.
A man with a big overcoat, a cup of coffee, and a beard reached them. His sunglasses completed the look, and Roth didn’t recognize him until he was within a few steps of them.
“Enjoy the museum?” Lund asked after taking a sip.
“It was boss,” Brillante said.
“How’s Jordan doing?” Lucas asked. Jordan was one of Lund’s employees, a younger man who’d left the Army 82nd Airborne. He was a marksman, a sharpshooter. He’d saved their lives in the cabin in the mountains outside Bozeman, even after taking a bullet to the shoulder.
“He’s flying to DC tonight,” Lund said. “He heals pretty fast.”
“Maybe he misses Monica,” Lucas said, wagging his eyebrows. The boys shot each other matching grins.
Roth rolled his eyes, and Lund coughed to hide a chuckle. They’d all sensed the sparks between Jordan and Monica, although Monica was a consummate professional and didn’t give much away. Jordan couldn’t keep anything to himself, which was part of his charm. “Agent Sanchez,” Lund corrected, “is waiting for us. Follow me.”
They approached the main doors of the FBI building and entered through a rotating turnstile. Roth’s stomach was doing some flip-flops. They’d come to headquarters when they first arrived in DC, but it had been several days since their last visit, and that had been in the dead of night. Roth worried they were being observed, but Lund continued to assure him that making random changes to the schedule was the best way to prevent being spotted. There were too many people living and working and visiting DC for their presence to stand out in any meaningful way. And Lund’s company had set up various fake hotel reservations throughout the capitol to keep Calakmul’s goons constantly guessing. Roth had also shaved off his signature beard and started using pomade for his hair, both of which had altered his features dramatically enough that the hotel mirror still startled him at times. The boys had changed their hair too—Lucas’s was dyed, and Brillante’s was buzzed. They didn’t pass as twins on first glance anymore, despite the hoodies.
Agent Sanchez greeted them in the lobby with some plastic visitor badges. “Good afternoon, family.” She looked at Roth and tilted her head, her nose a little pinched as if wondering if he was okay.
“Any news?” he asked her in a low voice.
“We can’t talk here,” she said. “But yes. There’s news.”
They went through the security checkpoint, where Lund showed the guards the special weapons allowance he’d been given by the director first and then the weapon holstered beneath the jacket as well as a pocket pistol strapped to his calf, both of which they allowed him to keep. That done, Monica took them to a bank of elevators. They filed onto one of them, and she punched the button for an upper floor.
“What time is Jordan’s flight arriving?” Monica asked Lund.
Lucas wagged his eyebrows again, but he was behind her, so she couldn’t see.
“Eleven tonight. He’s taking a taxi to our hotel,” Lund said.
“The director isn’t happy that you won’t tell us which one,” Monica said archly.
“Director Wright has bigger problems to figure out than where we’re staying. But that was our agreement. Until you find out who else is on Calakmul’s payroll, I don’t trust any of the regular FBI safe houses.”
