First Daughter - Eric van Lustbader [72]
Just ahead of them, off the driver's-side fender, rode the gray BMW. Jack could see that the expert driver was jockeying for the perfect position, to enable the shooter to have a clear line of fire. The professionals were leaving nothing to chance.
The scenario was clear in his mind, the playing field existed in his world, and there was no one better at its mastery.
Jack's eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, his mind performing a thousand calculations in the blink of an eye. He braked suddenly. The Toyota behind them screeched to slow down, rear-ended them at a reduced speed, jouncing them sharply against their seat belts, then back against the seats. In the following moment, when most people would be in shock, Jack's brain figured vectors, speeds, distances. Then he slammed the BMW's right rear fender.
The BMW spun clockwise; then everything happened very quickly. Jack put on speed. The BMW careened out of control, veering sharply to the left, its rims sparking off the wet tarmac. Jack caught a glimpse of the driver desperately scrambling to regain control, the shooter off-balance, white-faced. Then the BMW struck the left-hand guardrail at speed, its rear end rose up angrily before the car punched through the rail, spun crazily down the slope at the side of the parkway.
A moment later, flames flickered and an explosion of debris geysered up as the gas tank cracked. Jack floored the car, heading for Kansas Avenue NE, smack in the middle of his past.
PART THREE
TWENTY - FOUR
ALLI CARSON lay drowsing in the pantry, on the folding cot Kray had provided for her. The sheets and blanket were tucked up around her chin. Her face was flushed but calm. Kray, standing over her, emptied a syringe into the crease behind her left earlobe, where the puncture would never be noticed. On the counter below Carrie's lair was a full syringe, capped to keep the needle sterile. Kray dropped the empty syringe in the hazmat waste bin, bent over Alli, began to whisper in her ear.
Alli's mind was adrift on a cloud that shape-shifted first into her favorite toys as a child: Splash the dolphin, Ted the giraffe, and Honey the teddy bear. They romped and laughed as she played with them, before dissolving into other images. At first, these images were jumbled, smeary, and confusing, but presently they resolved themselves into scenes intimately familiar to her. Specifically the incidents that more or less defined her life up to the moment she was abducted.
Her mind brought her back to just before she was diagnosed with Graves' disease. At thirteen, she suffered moods so black, her mother took her to a psychologist. She referred Alli to her physician, who in turn referred her to an endocrinologist, who finally made the diagnosis. Her pituitary gland was affected, her eyes bulged slightly, her mood swings were vicious, the bouts of anxiety left her limp and exhausted, drenched in her own sweat. There were times when she was sure she was losing her mind. Lying on her bed, she would stare up at the ceiling, lost in the blackness of the universe, the essential futility of life. Future, what future? And why would you want one, anyway? Her heart galloped faster and faster until it seemed as if it would burst through her chest. Methimazole prevented her thyroid from producing too much hormone, so gradually the anxiety loosened its grip on her, her heart rate returned to a normal trot, her eyes ceased to bulge.
These memories, running one over the next, vanished into a pearly mist, only to be replaced by visions of the summer when she went to camp for the first and only time. She was fifteen. She'd begged her parents to let her go, not only to separate herself from the suffocating atmosphere of a senior senator's entourage but also in order to get a sense of how she'd do on her own. She needed a venue where she could explore who she was. She met a boy—an unutterably handsome boy from a wealthy family in Hartford. His father owned