The Escape (John Puller 3)

“Lethal injection? Bring it on. You murdered Anton. What do I care about living one second longer?”

“I didn’t murder him. I shot him before he murdered others.”

“Your version of the truth. I’ll stick with mine. So your leverage is less than zero, Puller. Kill me. Get it over with. And your brother can go back to rotting in jail. Even with all that’s happened now, there is no evidence to overturn his conviction. I’ll think about that when they put the needle in my arm. And I’m sure it will bring a smile to my lips as I say goodbye to this miserable world.”

“Even though you set him up, framed him? He’s innocent. You know that.”

She looked bored now. “How many surveillance devices in here, I wonder? Three? Ten?” She said in a raised voice, “For the record, Robert Puller is guilty as sin. He stole classified information. He met with a known Iranian spy. He was working with me to bring down the U.S. government. He is scum. I will testify to this in exchange for a deal that will allow me to live peacefully and quietly in a minimum-security prison with the possibility of parole in five years.”

She turned back to Puller and smiled tauntingly. “One always has to have a backup plan.” She paused, studying him. “You ever wonder where that text came from telling you not to trust Knox?”

Now Puller remained silent, waiting.

“I sent it.”

“Why, if you believed she was working with you?”

“Because I didn’t really believe it. I don’t trust anyone. No one. Except Anton. And I’m very much into divide and conquer. If you two killed each other off, so much the better.”

“What was it like to plan your husband’s murder?”

She said derisively, “I was in Russia thousands of miles away.”

“Yeah, Russia, your adopted country. But I wonder where your boyfriend Anton was?”

“Well, we’ll never know, since you murdered him.”

“Your son knew you did it. He told me so. He called me after your arrest. Thanked me for bringing him closure.”

“Poor Danny was always a little slow on the uptake. And he spent too much time in fantasyland. And he was way too much of a daddy’s boy. He has no balls of his own.”

“He’s an FBI attorney with a very impressive conviction record.”

“Do you think I really care?”

“My point is you didn’t fool him.”

“And my answer would be exactly the same. I don’t give a crap.”

“Did you orchestrate my kidnapping in Kansas?”

She nodded. “Whether you told us what you knew or said you would stand down, we would have killed you. We were just toying with you. It’s the style that counts. Anton and I have a lot of that. Other people would have just shot you.”

“Well, your ‘style’ gave my brother the opportunity to save my life.”

She shifted in her seat and used her chin to rub at a spot near her injured shoulder. “I would like to know how you pulled it off,” she said. “How did you figure we were going to hit the safe house?”

“Dan told me you were tight with your daughter. So I went to see Audrey. I knew she’d call you after I phoned to set up the appointment. You would have tailed me back to the safe house.”

“But I blew it up. Incendiary rounds.”

“But we weren’t in the house.”

“I saw you go inside. And you didn’t come back out. Anton was watching the back. He would have seen you.”

“That safe house has been in the system a long time and consequently has been retrofitted. There’s an escape hatch in the back bedroom that leads to a tunnel that in turn leads to a house four doors down. All the houses around there are empty, so it was easy to do. You hit the right house, but at the wrong time, because there was no one in it. The exterior security took the same path. We didn’t want to have anyone in harm’s way when you opened fire with your Olympian sniper skills.”

“And your shooting me?”

“I figured that knoll would provide the best firing line for you. So I waited about a hundred yards away facing that point. When I saw your muzzle flash I waited for you to finish firing and pulled the trigger.”

“You’re not as good a shot as you think. At a hundred yards I would have nailed my target ten times out of ten.” She indicated her casted arm and shoulder. “You only managed to wound me.”

“I’ve killed people from farther away than your shot that night, Susan. And they were shooting back at me. But I didn’t kill you because I didn’t want to kill you. I just wanted to injure you. And I did, incapacitating you at the same time.”

She scoffed. “I don’t believe that.”

“I’m a soldier. I do this for a living.”

She barked, “Why the hell would you want to keep me alive? You had no problem killing poor Anton.”

“I didn’t need poor Anton alive. But I needed you alive.”

“Why?”

He glanced down at the piece of paper still resting between them. “Because I need you to sign this.” He slipped a pen from his pocket and held it up. “I even took care to shoot you in your left arm, so you could sign it with your other hand. You’re a righty.”

“I have no incentive to sign anything. Certainly nothing that would help Robert Puller. He can rot in prison.”

There was a TV bolted to one corner of the ceiling. Puller picked up a remote from the table and turned on the TV.

As the picture came on, Reynolds sat up straight.

“What the hell is this?”

Puller turned to look at the screen where Audrey Reynolds was sitting in a jail cell, dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, sobbing and looking like she couldn’t believe what had happened.

“She’s been arrested and is awaiting arraignment,” said Puller.

“Why?” snapped a stunned Reynolds. “What possible reason could—”

“As a coconspirator in a terrorist plot against the United States,” interrupted Puller.

“She had nothing to do with any of this!”

He looked at her disdainfully. “Come on, Susan. You really expect us to believe that the daughter you were so tight with knew nothing? Even a newbie prosecutor could get a conviction on that. She phoned you right after I called her to set up a face-to-face.”

“She called me, yes, but she didn’t—”

Puller slammed his fist down on the table so hard that a part of the wood cracked. “Shut the hell up! And listen!”

Reynolds froze.

Puller leaned forward. “Here is how it’s going to play out, Susan. Unless you sign this confession and provide whatever corroborating testimony is required to see that my brother is fully exonerated, you will be tried, convicted, and put to death.” He pointed behind him at the screen. “At the same time your daughter will be tried, convicted, and sent to prison for the rest of her life without the possibility of parole. Not because of anything she did. Because of you. You are right on the edge of destroying your daughter’s life, Susan.”

“She knew nothing about any of this! I will testify to that.”