The Book of Fate - Brad Meltzer [163]
“Welcome, sir,” a brown-haired agent called out as the man left the car and marched toward the pale blue Colonial with the American flag above the door.
Halfway there, a fourth suit-and-tie agent approached from the front steps.
Well aware of the protocol, the man again handed over his ID, waiting for it to be looked at.
“Sorry, sir . . . I didn’t . . . You’re here to see the President?” the agent asked, anxiously handing the ID back.
“Yeah,” The Roman replied as he stepped inside the President’s home. “Something like that.”
97
Wanna try that one again?” Boyle growled in the back of the van as he dug the barrel of his gun into O’Shea’s temple.
“You can demand all you want, it’s the truth,” O’Shea said, spitting up blood and contorted by the lightning bolt of pain coursing through his shoulder. As he kneeled in the van, his voice was purposely soft. Boyle shook his head, knowing it was just a trick to bring his own volume down. O’Shea still pushed on. “I know this is emotional for you, Boyle, but you need t—”
“Where the hell’s my son!?” Boyle exploded, shoving the gun so hard against O’Shea’s head, it sent O’Shea backward like a turtle on his shell. But even as he worked his way back to his knees, O’Shea didn’t thrash, panic, or fight. Boyle couldn’t tell if it was exhaustion or strategy. The only thing he knew was that, like a wounded leopard still locked on its prey, O’Shea never took his eyes off Boyle’s gun.
Eight years ago, Boyle’s hands would’ve been shaking. Today, he was perfectly still. “Tell me where he is, O’Shea.”
“Why, so you can wait outside his school—what is he, nine, ten years old now?—so you can wait outside his fourth-grade class and tell him you want visitation rights? You think your girlfriend Tawana—”
“Her name’s Tiana.”
“Call her what you want, she told us the story, Boyle—how you flirted during the campaign, how she followed you to D.C.—”
“I never asked her to do that.”
“—but you didn’t have any problem hiding her from your wife and daughter for almost four years. And then when she got pregnant—darn!—better do something about that.”
“I never asked her to get an abortion.”
“Oh, I’m sorry—I didn’t realize you were a saint.” In the distance, a pack of cars whipped past them on the highway. O’Shea curled downward and lowered his head for a moment, yielding to the pain. “C’mon, Boyle,” he stuttered as he looked back up, “you hid the kid from the entire world—insisted that they never approach you in public—and now you suddenly wanna take him to the father-son White House picnic?”
“He’s still my son.”
“Then you should’ve taken care of him.”
“I did take care of him!”
“No, we took care of him,” O’Shea insisted. “What you did was send fifty bucks a week, hoping it would buy food, diapers, and her silence. We’re the ones who gave her—and him—a true future.”
Boyle shook his head, already agitated. “Is that how The Roman sold it to you? That you were giving them a future?”
“She needed cash; we offered it.”
“Or, more accurately: You paid her to hide, then refused to tell me where they were unless I agreed to be your fourth turncoat,” Boyle said, his voice now booming. “So don’t make it look like you were doing her any favors!”
Pressing his chin down against his shoulder, O’Shea looked up from the floor, his hazel eyes glowing in the darkness of the van. A slow grin rose like a sunrise on his face. “Boy, we really picked the right push button, didn’t we? To be honest, when The Roman said you cared for her, I thought he was full of crap.”
Boyle aimed the gun at O’Shea’s face. “Where are they? I’m not asking you agai—”
Leaning back on his knees, O’Shea erupted with a deep rumbling laugh that catapulted from his throat and echoed through the van. “C’mon, you really think we kept track after all this time? That somehow we kept them as pen pals?”
As the words left O’Shea’s lips, Boyle could feel each syllable clawing straight through his belly, shredding every organ inside his chest. “Wh-What’re you talking about?”
“We killed you, jackass. Or at least that’s what we thought. For all