Chapter 64

I

She lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering if this is what happiness really and truly felt like. If it was, she thought, I really do like it.

Sandrina San Marco wasn’t at home. She was laying in bed with Alex in his hotel room not far from where the rest of her family had been staying. He had brought her back there on the pretext of catching up, and ended up in bed making love.

Alex was a perfect gentleman, a perfect lover in Sandrina’s opinion. She had never felt so loved and needed. Considering that her first experiences were while she was still in high school with boys who were just as nervous as she was, this was heaven as far as she was concerned.

She was exhausted from her aunt’s wedding, Alex’s proposal, and fielding questions from her brothers, cousins and complete strangers about how she and Danica managed to pull off such a herculean task.

All she wanted to do now was sleep for the next three days while Alex was in town. She knew it wasn’t going to happen, because Danica, at some point, had to sleep. It was her cousin’s idea for Sandrina to go with Alex and spend some in-person time with him. “I’ll be fine, Sandy,” she had said; “It’ll be me and the twins, and no doubt we’ll find some mischief to get into. Go have fun with Alex.”

Sandrina remembered sighing at that point, then she and Alex went back to his hotel.

It started out innocently enough, with them talking and catching up. Then with Alex apologizing for embarrassing Sandrina in the middle of the reception with his proposal; Sandrina telling him it was a nice surprise. She had no advanced warning that Alex had planned to pop the question, though they talked about getting married “someday”.

It was a lot to wrap her mind around at only 18 years of age. Alex, who was five and a half years older at 23, knew he wanted the tall, curvaceous, white-blonde Sandrina as his wife. He sometimes forgot she was barely out of high school.

She snuggled up against Alex’s rangy frame and sighed silenly.

“Sandy, how long have you been awake?” asked Alex out of nowhere. “Did I wake you?”

“A little while. You didn’t wake me, Alex,” she said.

“You’ve been thinking about things again, haven’t you?”

“Do you blame me?” she asked; “I’m a college sophomore with a heavy classload this upcoming fall, I’ll be living with my aunt and her new husband, her kids and Danica. Now I’m engaged. It’s a lot to think about.”

“You’ll be fine, Sandy,” he said; “As soon as I am tranfered to the Reserves, which should be any time now, I’ll come back up here. We can go look for an apartment together near campus.”

“You know how much some of those apartments go for, Alex?” asked Sandrina; “I’ve seen four to six students sharing a three bedroom apartment because they’re so pricey.”

“We’re just not any students, Sandy,” Alex said; “I have a significant savings account I can live on, plus my Reserve pay. I started saving money when I first joined the Army, and it’s a pretty nice chunk of change. I had always planned to use it to go back to college when the time was right.”

“I’m not exactly hurtin’ for cash myself,” Sandrina said; “My parents started saving for my and my brothers college funds after the Occupation was over. Same with Danica. We only stayed with Aunt Tash because we weren’t familiar with the area. I think Danica is going to stay with them a while longer, then think about moving out. She’s really gung ho about the wedding planner thing. She has a business plan drawn up and everything. She’s just smart like that.”

“Isn’t she a finance major, though?”

“She’s a business major with a concentration in finance,” Sandrina said. “If she can keep the books of her grandfather’s lobster fishing cooperative, running a business of her own will be a piece of cake. Her grandfather even told her that he’d loan her the money to get started, if she wanted. She insisted he charge her interest. I don’t think he will. He knows anything that Danica does is a safe bet.”

“And you’ll design everything from the napkins to the wedding dresses,” Alex said.

“I don’t know about the dresses, because clothes designing isn’t my thing, but with my graphic arts background, I can design what something looks like. You should see the wedding invitation samples I whipped up in two hours so that Danica could have them for her business plan.”

“Nothing less than stellar, I’ll bet,” Alex said as he stroked Sandrina’s hair.

“I don’t know about stellar, but they are nice.”

“You’re being modest, Sandy,” Alex said; “I’ve seen what you can do. I’ve even showed samples of your art to people I know in Corolla and Nags Head. My cousin’s boss wants to sponsor your first gallery showing, if that is what you want.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Sandrina said. “Probably won’t have anything close to that for a few years yet.”

“I know you want to finish school first.”

“That’s the plan,” Sandrina said; “For now anyway. I’m always open to changes in that plan. Life is unpredictable. You gotta roll with it or get run over.”

Alex was never surprised at what came out of Sandrina’s mouth. She was intelligent beyond her 18 years. Maybe that’s why he forgot she’s still just a teenager. She wasn’t like any teenager Alex ever knew, himself included.

He kissed her forehead as she lay facing him. “I love you, Sandy,” he said softly. “I’ll work the rest of my life proving I’m worthy of you.”

“Why do you think you’re not worthy?” asked Sandrina, puzzled. If anything, she felt she wasn’t worthy of him.

“Because most men spend their lives looking for the perfect mate, like your Uncle Darren,” he said; “I found her before I was 25. What do you see in me, dearest Sandrina Kiera? I’m just a boy from the Outer Banks of North Carolina who wasn’t expected to go anywhere.”

“Don’t you know, Alex?” asked Sandrina; Alex shook his head. “You, Alex, saw beyond my name, my family’s reputation, and got to know me for who I am. Not because you were starstruck by my father’s exploits during the Occupation. You saw Sandrina San Marco. You saw me, Alex.”

Alex noticed tears forming in Sandrina’s eyes and brushed them away gently. He knew that she’d been hurt by lesser men...boys, really,  because of her name. To him, she was just Sandy, the girl he loved more than life itself. The woman he wanted to marry when she was ready.

He just held her close to him. She was his world, and he suspected, he was hers.

===

Jeremiah wasn’t liking what he saw on his tablet’s screen.

He decided to do some research on an article he was writing, and came across some information that he wasn’t expecting. “I’d always heard they didn’t exist...” he half said to himself.

For once, he was glad the kids were with their cousins and Jasmine had decided to go home to go back to work. He really didn’t want to discuss what he had found with anyone but Nik.

Nik was taking a nap, though, while his wife was out with Julia, Jordan and the young females in the family. “It will just have to wait until he decides to get up,” Jeremiah said to himself.

He had found an article on the Central Intelligence Agency’s website about whether the “DeepCon” unit existed. Officially, it didn’t, but some people, including the article’s author, was certain that it did and had laid out evidence to make his point.

I wonder if that’s who was skulking around the restaurant during the reception yesterday, Jeremiah thought. Nik had been the first to notice, and pointed out people to Jeremiah. He thought it was probably CIA at the time, but now, Jeremiah wasn’t so sure.

DeepOps, if it did exist, was one of the most dangerous groups of specially trained people the U.S. government had working for them. It was, essentually, an entire group of people who had the same skills that Nik, Julia, Natasha, and Jeremiah himself had. It was the government’s answer to the Ghost Squad that Nik had been part of.

An entire team filled with Julias, Jeremiah thought. That’s a scary proposition right there. Even though she had not been active since she went on her leave from Homeland Security, she still had skills that could kill a man without a single thought. A whole group of people who had those same skills.

Not anyone that Jeremiah wanted to meet in a dark alley on a moonless night, that was for damn sure. He was still dealing with Julia’s skills; never mind a whole group of Julia Summers clones.

Jeremiah sighed. He picked up his secure phone to see if he could talk to the man who authored the article about DeepOps.

It would be an education to be sure, thought Jeremiah.

===

II

They were almost to Nags Head, where Jacob had rented a house on the beach for three weeks. Christine hadn’t been to the Outer Banks since before she ran from her abusive former husband. She remembered it well. A family picnic with her siblings, their spouses and kids, and her grandmother. Nonna Stefanie had organized the whole thing.

God, Christine thought, I miss Nonna. I hope she’s still amongst the living. I suppose I could check the internet to find that out. The thing was, Christine was afraid of what she might find- that her grandmother had passed and that Christine didn’t have a chance to say goodbye. That made her sad. Nonna had taken up a lot of the slack after their mother had died. It was Nonna who encouraged Bethanie to become a nurse.

“You always wanted to take care of everyone, Bethie,” Nonna said. “Why don’t you look into nursing?”

“You think I have the stuff for that, Nonna?” Bethanie asked.

“If you don’t faint at the sight of a lot of blood like Britt does, then I think you have the battle half won there,” said Nonna.

“I kind of wanted to join the military, Nonna,” said Bethanie. “I was thinking about the Army or the Marines.”

“You’re certainly tough enough for either of those branches,” Nonna said; “And they’ll train you to be a nurse.”

“What if I became a nurse first, then joined the service?”

“You’d definitely be valuable to them if you did that,” Nonna said.

“I know I can do it,” Bethanie said; “I’ve always liked science and biology.”

“If you need any help with money or anything, Bethie, let me know,” Nonna said; “Your mother left each of you money for schooling, and your share isn’t chump change.”

Bethanie laughed. She always liked her grandmother’s goofy sayings, even if she didn’t really know what “chump change” meant.


Christine sighed silently to herself. She looked over at Jacob, and he had fallen asleep. As much as he hated his Secret Service detail, he did like not having to drive himself everywhere. She leaned up against him, and she felt his arm go around her. “Ah, Christine...” he mumbled in his sleep.

She didn’t know if he meant her, or his late wife when he said things like that.  

===

Vixen Vincent was not having a good day.

Her brother was on her last nerve. Danica was taking a nap. And now, there was someone sneaking around their neighborhood that Vixen felt shouldn’t be there.

Before her mother’s wedding, Vixen asked her if this weird feeling she sometimes got was normal.

“What weird feeling, honey?” Natasha asked.

“Like we’re being watched,” the 13 year old said.

“I think what you may be feeling is your sixth sense,” Natasha told her daughter; “You’ve been training with weapons for a while now, and because of it, you can sense when something’s not right or if there’s people around who mean us harm.”

“Yeah, that’s what I feel, Mom,” Vixen said; “It’s weird only that I seem to be the only one who has it.”

“I know that Sandy has it. Danica I don’t know about because she didn’t grow up in Chicago,” Natasha said; “She may, but I just don’t know.”

“What about Nikky?”

“If he’s feeling it, he’s not said anything to me about it,” said Natasha; “He keeps his feelings to himself, mostly.”

“I might ask him about it.”

“That might not be a good idea, Vix,” her mother said; “If he wants you to know, he’ll say something. He usually tells you stuff like that before he’d tell me.”

Nikolai came into the living room just then and asked his twin, “Vix, there’s something going on outside the house. Someone’s sneaking around.”

“I know, Nikky, I sensed it, too,” Vixen said; “You think we should go out and investigate, or get Danica first?”

Vixen headed up the stairs, saying, “I’m getting Danica. You call Sandy, okay?”

“But Sandy’s with Alex, Vix...”

He got out his secure phone and called Sandrina.

She’s not going to like this, Nikolai thought.

===

All he was doing was watching the hotel where the tall blonde girl had gone with her boyfriend. He knew they had to come out sometime.

His radio beeped softly, then, “DeepCon 1, status report.”

Picking up the radio, he said into it, “The girl and her boyfriend are still in the hotel. Instructions?”

“Stay put, DeepCon 1,” the voice on the radio said; “When she comes outside, follow her to wherever she goes. You are to tail her, but be discrete. She is not to know you are following her.”

“Yes, sir. DeepCon 1 out.”

He looked like any other tourist visiting the nation’s capitol. He blended in with the summertime crowd. Except he was carrying a gun, and taser, and other gear in his backpack. All to keep a protective eye on one blonde 18 year old girl, who was now the niece of the CIA Director. His partner was watching the house, where Natasha Vincent lived with her two children and two nieces, though at the moment, it was just the one niece and Ms. Vincent’s twins.

And he had no idea that any of them had a gift. One that would blow their cover.

===

“Okay, what’s this I’m hearing that you two think that there’s someone sneaking around outside?” asked Danica.

“I’m having what Mom calls the sixth sense,” Vixen explained. “Nikky says he’s having it, too.”

“We should be very careful,” Danica said; “Wait one sec, though.”

Danica went to the picture window in the living room and sat on the sill. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them. She only said one word;

“Friendlies.”

“What?” asked Nikolai.

“Whoever’s out there is protecting us,” Danica said. “They mean us no harm.”

“You have it too!” Vixen said; “Mom wasn’t sure if you did.”

“I don’t make a big deal of it, and it’s only recently that I became aware of it,” Danica said; “It was after my sister’s accident a couple of years ago that I realized that I had it.”

“Why is that?” asked Nikolai.

“Because even though we trained with weapons, we really had no need to use our skills that often,” Danica said. “After Kendria’s accident, there were all kinds of weird things going on and I picked up on them right away. I can actually see the faces of people who are out there either protecting us or stalking us. That’s why I closed my eyes. I saw that there was a man outside, mid to late 20s, medium build. He has the same coloring that I do, so he’s mixed race like I am. He’s in the neighborhood, and not right outside the doors.”

“Wow!” Vixen said; “I can’t do that, can you Nikky?”

“Nope,” Nikolai said.

“You didn’t call Sandy, by chance, did you?” asked Danica.

“I did,” Nikolai said; “but she didn’t answer. I left her a message to call back.”

“Let me talk to her when she does,” said Danica. “She and Alex may be, um, busy.”

Vixen sighed. “Danica, we know about sex, you know. How could we not with our mother?”

Danica laughed. Don’t sell these two short, world; They’re just not that dumb.

===

III

Hmm, Sandrina thought as she looked at her phone. “Why would Nikky call me? Is there something wrong at the house?”

“Sandy, what are you mumbling about?” asked Alex as he shaved in the bathroom. They were going to out out and get dinner, then stop by Natasha’s.

“Nikolai called me,” Sandrina said; “He only left a message for me to call back.”

“You going to call him back?”

Dialing the phone, Sandrina said, “I’m doing it now. I hope everything’s okay at the house.”

Instead of Nikolai answering the phone, however, it was Danica.

“Danica why are you answering Nikky’s phone?” Sandrina asked.

“They thought there might be a problem, but we got it under control,” Danica said.


“What was it?”

“Vixen’s sixth sense kicked in and told her there was someone near the house,” said Danica; “It’s a friendly, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

“You saw him, didn’t you?” Sandrina said; “In your mind.”

“I’d know him if I walked past him on the street, yes,” Danica said.

“I think you’re the only one who has that particular gift,” Sandrina said. “And it took you long enough to realize it.”

“Yeah,” Danica said; “But everything’s under control here.”

“Alex and I were just heading out for dinner and thought we’d stop by later,” Sandrina said.

“If you do,” Danica said, “You know what to bring.”

“Pizza, sodas and ice cream?”

“You got it!”

“Let me run it past Alex, and we may just join you,” Sandrina said. She looked over at Alex and he gave her the thumbs up sign.

“We’ll be there in half an hour. Alex thinks it’s a great idea!”

“See ya then, cousin.”

===

Suddenly, his target emerged from the hotel. Finally, he thought, she and the boyfriend stopped fucking long enough to get some fresh air!



“I’m glad I rented the car now,” Alex was saying. “Or getting to your aunt’s house would have been impossible.”

“Danica is the only one between the two of us who has her own car,” Sandrina said; “I don’t want to buy one here in DC. I’d rather go home and get one there and drive it back.”

“We could do that before classes start in August, Sandy,” Alex said; “Or I can drive my car up here instead.”

“We’re not going to have the same schedules, I’m sure,” Sandrina said; “Maybe it’s best we each have a car. I’ll have Dad or Uncle Jere keep an eye out for one.”

“Good idea,” Alex said. “When we look for a place to live, we’ll need to find one with adequate parking.”

“Or, we can...” Sandrina stopped mid-sentence because something caught her attention.

“We can what, Sandy?”

“Wait...” Sandrina said, putting up her hand to silence Alex. She scanned the crowd of tourists briefly until she laid eyes on a man who was about her height, dark hair. Blue jeans and a t-shirt, wearing a backpack. He’s a friendly, she thought, but why are we being watched?

“Sandy?”

“Something caught my attention, Alex,” Sandrina said; “We’re being watched. It’s a friendly, but I don’t know why.”

“Weird,” said Alex. “So we should act like nothing’s wrong.”

“Yeah,” said Sandrina. “Let’s go get the pizza and stuff and head over to Aunt Tash’s. I want to see if he follows us there.”

They walked to Alex’s rental car and got inside. Sandrina guided Alex to the pizza place the twins liked, then to the market to get the sodas and ice cream. Aunt Tash is going to kill us, Sandrina thought as she paid for the groceries.

The feeling she had back at the hotel was still with her. She and Alex were still being watched. I wonder why friendlies are watching us, she wondered. Are they CIA and want to make sure their Director’s new family is safe, or what?

Soon, with Sandrina’s help, Alex drove them to Natasha’s house. Danica and the twins had already set the table and got out glasses for the soda. The ice cream went immediately into the freezer. A fun time was had by all.

And the friendlies were still watching.

===

A smooth, disc-jockey like voice came on the line where Jeremiah was waiting for the man who wrote the article on DeepCon. “Lawrence Carr,” he said.

“Mr. Carr, I’m Jeremiah Donovan. I write for the Times-Tribune in Chicago,” Jeremiah began; “I read your piece on DeepCon on CIA’s website, and I had some questions for you about it.”

Carr laughed, which set Jeremiah’s teeth on edge. He then said, “I wrote that piece years ago, son. It originally appeared in the magazine that used to be put out by the Crime Institute. But I’ll answer any questions you may have, Mr. Donovan.”

“First and foremost in my mind, Mr. Carr, is how do you know so much about an organization that officially doesn’t exist?”

“I used to be part of it,” Carr said; “It was supposed to be part of the CIA, for whom I’d worked for since the end of the Occupation. It was authorized by then Director Michael Caminito. He’d been appointed by Interim President Collins-Ross, God rest her soul; his number two man was Kenneth Deukmejian. Those two put the team together, and asked me to run it. After Caminito retired and Deukmejian took over and made Darren Dixon his number two, the new president ordered that DeepCon be dismantled. Caminito and the President came to a compromise, making it a secret organization within CIA, but would tell the world it no longer existed.”

“So, you wrote the piece as a grudge?” asked Jeremiah.


“No, not really,” Carr said, his voice as smooth as oil on a naked body; “I just put the bug in the reader’s ear that DeepCon may still exist.”

“Who would you recruit to work for a super secret organization?” asked Jeremiah; “It’d have to be someone with impeccable skills and can keep a secret.”

“We recruited a lot of sharpshooters from the Resistance corps,” Carr said; “They had to be single with no children; they had to be willing to give up everything, including their true identities. And they had to agree to plastic surgery to alter their appearance. A lot of people weren’t willing to do that. Just five years ago, we recruited someone who had a family, but other than that, they had the skills, qualifications, and the willingness to leave their old lives behind. Including a spouse and children.”

“Wow, what would make someone give up their family?”

“Revenge,” said Carr. “We only had one person refuse us, and that’s because she wanted to start a family. She had her reasons for that, I suppose.”

God, I wonder if it was Julia they tried to recruit, thought Jeremiah.

“I shouldn’t even be telling you this, Mr. Donovan,” Carr said; “This is strictly off the record. I know you work for CIA in addition to your duties to your publication.”

“How could you possibly know that!” Jeremiah said in shock; “The only people who knew were Dixon and the President.”

“Don’t forget Nikolai San Marco and Julia Summers,” Carr said; “I know more about the three of you, and Darren Dixon’s new wife, than you think I do.”

Jeremiah said, “Are you about to threaten me, Mr. Carr?”

“Heavens no, Donovan. I’m not that type of man. I know those kind of men, but I am not one of them,” said Carr. “All I ask is that you don’t publish an article about this. I know you’ve never been sued for libel, but I could have you in a shitload of trouble before you can rattle off the names of your four children.”

“Leave my children out of this, Carr,” Jeremiah said without a hint of anger or fear in his voice, though he felt both; “All I wanted was information for my own use. I was not planning an expose’ on DeepCon.”

“All I know about their activities now is that they covertly provide protection to certain members of the government, and their families. I haven’t been involved with them in many years. That article I wrote pretty much ended my career,” said Carr. “And I needed a way out.”

“Your real name isn’t Lawrence Carr, is it?”

“Actually, it is,” Carr said. “There’s only a handful of people in DeepCon who were allowed to keep their names. One had been part of DeepCon since his early 20s. He wants to leave, though. He gave up his marriage to work for DeepCon. The money they offer is pretty good, especially to young guns like that. Would you have picked money over your wife, Donovan?”

Jeremiah didn’t even have to think about it. “No, Carr, I wouldn’t picked money over my wife. My wife is worth more to me than any amount of money. I’m a journalist because I want to be. She’s a doctor because that’s what she wants to be.”

“Ah, yes...” said Carr thoughtfully, “Dr. Jasmine Cantrell Donovan. General Practice. Loyola Hospital. See, Donovan, your life is an open book to someone with the right tools. I know San Marco’s wife is a nurse; and Julia Summers’ husband was a computer expert who passed the majority of his knowledge on to her and their children.”

“I’m not sure what else about my family you know,” Jeremiah said; “but it’s more than I’m comfortable with.”

“You might want to ask your sister, Julia, about the father of her oldest daughter,” Carr said; “I know who he is, or rather, was.”

Carr then broke the connection, leaving Jeremiah staring at the phone.

Ryan was Miri’s father, Jeremiah thought. It’s not possible it could be anyone else.

Nik and I might have to take this guy out, he thought.

Jeremiah was certain Lawrence Carr was not on the same side as he was.

He decided that he would find out everything he could find about this Lawrence Carr. Then maybe plan his demise.

Ryan had written a lot of the software that made searching for things that people kept secret easier. The government had a lot of it, and Ryan made sure it was hack proof. Trust a former hacker to know how stop guys like him from getting to your info, Jeremiah thought. He was certain that Julia didn’t know that about her late husband. How he hacked into the Illegal government’s computers, and passed the info on to Dan Donegan.

A call to Summers Tech Systems was in order.

===

IV

“Dude, where have you been? I thought I was going to this dance alone,” Bryan Costner said to his partner Cobain Richards.

“Waiting on the San Marco girl and her boyfriend to emerge from their love nest,” Richards said. “They spent damn near all day holed up in a room, doing Lord knows what.”

“Well she’s obviously here now, Coby, because you are,” Costner said; “Have anything on the boyfriend?”

“Alexander Springer. Twenty-three, Army Reserves as of July 1; from Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina,” Richards said. “He and the San Marco girl have known each other about a year or so. They both shoot at the Capitol Area Gun Range, or at least until Springer took a TDY to North Carolina to help with the big floods there in the spring. Will be attending Georgetown in the fall, majoring in Military Science and History. I suppose that’s the reason he went from regular Army to the Reserves.”

“And to be closer to the girl, I suspect,” Costner said. “Speaking of girls, one of the girls that live in Ms. Vincent’s house is biracial, and she’s a stunner, brother. Her name is Danica Donovan; she’s 18; from Kittery, Maine; business major at Georgetown; about 5 foot nine, and cute as can be.”

“We’re not here so you can get some tail, Bryan,” Richards said; “But I can see why you like her. She’s just like you. Mixed race.”

“Well, the black girls don’t want me, the white girls are too uptight about me, so the search goes on for Ms. Right 2.0,” Costner said.

“Your wife, what was she?” asked Richards.

“She was mixed race, but she was hispanic and white. And she’s my ex-wife, thank you,” Costner said. “Found some other guy who didn’t work for the government to play house with. Thank God we didn’t have kids! Weren’t married long enough for that.”

“How long were you married?”

“A year, then she filed for divorce; said we had irreconcilable differences. We spent most of our marriage fighting so I didn’t question it,” Costner said; “We dated for three years in high school. We thought we’d be great as a married couple. Her parents were a little pissed that they threw this huge wedding, and it was their little princess who initiated the divorce. They don’t speak to her. It’s been almost ten years, and they still don’t speak to her. I still get a birthday card from them every year.”

“That’s weird, man,” Richards said. “At least your parents didn’t name you after a dead rock star.”

“Weren’t you and your sisters all named after dead rock stars?”

“Yeah,” Richards laughed; “Jimi, Janis and Amy. The fuckin’ ‘27 Club’. Hell, if that don’t put you up for ridicule, I don’t know what does. Maybe it’s a good thing that most people our age don’t know who those dead rock stars are.”

“I do, but I’m weird that I like pre-Occupation rock...all the stuff the Occupational government banned,” Costner said.

“Yes, Bryan, you are weird like that, but that’s what makes you who you are,” Richards said.

“Yeah, whatever,” Costner said; “Let’s keep this house under watch; after that report we got today about the thwarted attempt on the life of the CIA director and his bride, we need to be on our toes.”

===

Heh, heh, thought Pike, I had that Jeremiah Donovan prick fooled. He’ll never find out anything about poor dear, dead Larry Carr. Just let him try.

Pike was rather pleased with himself. He’d imitated Carr’s voice to a T. Donovan had no idea that Lawrence Carr had died months before after he threatened to take Pike before the New York Attorney Review Board. Dead men tell no tales, Pike thought.

Pike didn’t count on Jeremiah Donovan finding this out. Pike didn’t hide the body well enough.

===