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Chapter Fifteen

“Daily, this is Gray Bondurant. Gray, Daily Welsh.”

Barrie loved Daily for not making an issue of their showing up on his doorstep at two o’clock in the morning. He didn’t chastise or barrage them with questions. He merely grunted as he stepped aside and waved them in.

It was obvious they’d gotten him out of bed. Spikes of thinning gray hair radiated from his scalp like the points on the Statue of Liberty’s crown. He was wearing a threadbare undershirt and a pair of boxer shorts that reached almost to his knobby knees. A pair of black socks did nothing to flatter his white, virtually hairless legs.

Upon leaving the coffee shop, they’d agreed that they needed a place to stay where they could rest, regroup, and decide what their next course of action would be. Gray had followed her directions to Daily’s house. Now, she could tell what he was thinking: If this was the best they could do in terms of refuge, their future was indeed perilous.

Daily’s little house was hardly a fortress, and, to a stranger’s eye, he appeared to be a terribly ill man whose life depended upon his modest pension check and breathing apparatus—all of which was entirely, and unfortunately, correct.

“I know this is a terrible imposition, Daily,” Barrie said as he went around the living room switching on lamps. “But there was nowhere else to go.… They killed Cronkite.”

His hand froze on a light switch. “Killed Cronkite? Who did?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got all night.”

The pain in his expression reflected what she was feeling. He opened his arms, and she walked into them. Customarily she was the one to hug him, while he acted the curmudgeon and spurned her displays of affection.

This time, he not only initiated the embrace but held her, patting her back, a bit awkwardly but earnestly. “Sick sons of bitches. What’d they do, poison his food? If I ever catch ’em… Who did it?”

Barrie stepped away from him and removed her glasses to dry her eyes. “There’s a lot to tell.”

Daily went automatically to his recliner, wheeling his canister of oxygen with him. She took her usual seat on his sofa. Gray remained standing. So far, Daily had shown no curiosity about why the retired national hero had emerged from seclusion and was standing in the center of his living room in the middle of the night.

Now, he nodded toward Gray. “What’s he doing here?”

“My house was blown up tonight.”

“Blown up? You mean like ka-boom?” He looked at her, then at Gray, then back at her.

“It’s gone, Daily. Destroyed. Everything. Including my tape library,” she said bitterly, thinking about the irreplaceable videos that had taken years to collect. “Bondurant thinks the back door was booby-trapped. Cronkite went in ahead of me, through his doggie door.”

Daily was aghast. “Who would do such a thing?”

“The President.”

“Excuse me? The President of the United States?”

“Bondurant thinks the explosion was meant to kill me because of the questions I’ve been asking about Vanessa’s health and her baby’s death,” Barrie explained.

“Jesus.” Daily looked up at Gray. “What makes you think—Sit down, for chrissake. You’re making me crane my neck.”

For the first time in hours, Barrie felt like smiling. Gray sat down on the only other available spot—beside her on the sofa.

“What makes you think Merritt would go this far to keep Barrie quiet?” Daily asked him.

“He dispatched Spencer Martin to handle me simply because I’d talked to her.”

“Define ‘handle.’ ”

“Assassinate.”

“I thought you two were friends.”

“We were. Nevertheless, he came to Wyoming to assassinate me because he was afraid that Barrie had told me her theory about the baby’s death. That should give you some indication of how determined they are to put a lid on her story before it gets out.”