The Escape (John Puller, #3)(81)

The shooter, dressed as a police officer, was behind the enclosed repair site. He had aimed and fired his suppressed pistol through a slit in the curtain. He holstered his weapon, exited out the other side of the work site, and started yelling at people not to panic but to move away from the site of the shooting. Most people obeyed since he was in uniform.

Still, hundreds of people were screaming and fleeing in all directions, abandoning their luggage and trying to get away from the murdered man. Police, guns out, rushed toward him. Union Station was instantly transformed into a nightmare scenario.

Only two people walked calmly out of the station that day.

One was Robert Puller.

The other was the person who had just killed Niles Robinson.





CHAPTER





42



AT SEVEN A.M. the next morning Knox and Puller sat at breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Rays of cheery sunlight were coming through the window facing the street. People walked in and out of the restaurant, and cars motored on their way. It seemed improbable that someone had tried to murder them a few hours ago and only a short distance from here, but improbable or not, it had happened.

She said, “I have to tell you I had trouble going to sleep, at least for the three hours of sack time I had.”

“Why?”

“I shot a man, Puller. Maybe that’s routine for you. Not so much for me.”

“Shooting someone is never routine. At least I hope it never becomes routine.”

“We’re on the same page there. But we must be making some people nervous. That’s progress.”

Puller paused with his cup of tea halfway to his lips. “We’ve covered a lot of ground but we have no answers, Knox. That is not progress. Not in my book.”

“I disagree. We’ve discovered that two people were lying their asses off and got your brother sent to prison wrongly. We figured out–well, you did–that some Croatian snuck a bogey into Fort Leavenworth who was sent there to kill your brother. We’ve accomplished a lot. We really have.”

“But we really don’t have answers yet. Not for the important questions. Namely, who and why?”

She fiddled with her spoon. “Obviously your brother is out there right now trying to figure it all out.”

“You sound like you’ve been giving that some thought.”

“I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, actually.”

“And what do you think?”

“That he’s maybe ahead of us on some things.”

“Why?”

“He’s super smart. He was set up. He was in the intelligence field. And he’s trying to prove his innocence. Lots of motivation there.”

“I’ve started to think that he was the one who saved my butt when those goons snatched me. It’s really the only thing that makes sense.”

Knox looked at him in surprise. “I hadn’t even considered that. But I guess that would make sense. So you might have been a few feet from him that night?”

“I might have been, yeah. As it turned out, it might as well have been a few miles. He’s gone, and I’m no closer to finding him.”

“You were really tight with your brother, weren’t you?”

“For a long time we were all each other had. Our mother was gone and our dad might as well have been.” He nudged a roasted potato on his plate. “That may be one reason I never took the plunge.”

“What? Marriage?”

“Yeah.”

“Why? Afraid you’d be a crappy father?”

“Crappy husband too.”

“I don’t see that, Puller, I really don’t. You’d make a great catch. And a great dad. Teaching your kids right and wrong, how to color in the lines, throw a ball, execute a room breach, fire a sniper rifle, take out four bad guys with a piece of rope and a stick of chewing gum. All good life lessons.”

“You ever think of getting hitched?”

“Actually, I did.”

Puller hiked his eyebrows. “You mean you thought about it?”

“No, Puller, I mean I walked down the aisle, exchanged rings, and got married in front of a licensed preacher.”

“When?”

“Long time ago. We were both eighteen. High school sweethearts. It lasted all of fourteen days. Big friggin’ shock there, right? I mean, we both knew exactly who we were and what we wanted in life at eighteen, right? Well, turns out we were clueless. So we did a bookend. And got it annulled. So there’s no record of it even happening.”

“Did a bookend? What does that mean?”

“That means we were married in Vegas and divorced there, all within the span of two weeks. We returned our rings and signed the necessary papers and went our separate ways. I never even told my parents. They thought I was at a college prep retreat.”

“Why do I not picture that at all? I mean, you marrying at eighteen in a wedding chapel in Sin City?”

“I told you I liked to live my life fast. But the fact is I was a straight-as-an-arrow, straight-A student, three varsity letters, did everything right back then. Never walked off the line my parents laid down for me. I won all the awards, got into all the best schools. Then something snapped and I went psycho right after high school graduation. Like I said, it lasted for two weeks. After that I got back on track. I got a top-notch education at Amherst while also servicing my athletic side, earned a master’s, decided to serve my country on the intelligence side, and the rest, as they say, is history.” She gazed over at him. “You ever do anything like that?”