Wormhole (The Rho Agenda #3)(93)

No hint of blonde remained in her hair and her cheeks looked tugged down by the weight of the world. Perhaps it was the reflection of the dark clouds behind him, but her eyes seemed to have dulled to gray.

“Mrs. Riles?”

“Yes. How may I help you?”

“I don’t know exactly. I’m hoping you can tell me.”

She studied him for several seconds. Then, with a questioning look, she opened the door.

“Please come in. I was about to pour myself some tea. Would you like some?”

“That would be nice,” Freddy said, removing his raincoat and hanging it on the coat rack.

“One lump or two?”

“Black...er, plain is fine.”

Freddy moved to the mantle, studying the photos in their frames, neatly arranged from left to right in chronological order. Mary and Jon, arm in arm at a Naval Academy formal, cutting their wedding cake, a kiss at a promotion party, the two of them standing on the deck of the USS Ronald Reagan, and finally the same photo Freddy had found online.

The tinkle of fine china behind him caused him to turn to see Mary Beth setting two cups and saucers on the coffee table.

“We were a lovely couple, wouldn’t you say?”

“I would.”

Freddy felt out of his element. It wasn’t the old sea captain’s house that was messing with his head. It was this old woman. Mary Beth carried an aura of pain and grace that sapped his wit, leaving him little better than a muttering simpleton.

“Please, come and have a seat beside me.” She patted a spot on the sofa.

Freddy maneuvered around the low table, his bad leg making the turn awkward. Mary Beth noticed.

“How’d you lose it?”

“A bad encounter with an industrial saw.”

“Sorry to hear it. Losing a part of yourself is hard.”

Picking up the teapot, Mary Beth poured, first his, then hers, her hand surprisingly steady. Freddy reached out, pinching the tiny handle between forefinger and thumb, feeling as if he would snap it off before the cup reached his lips.

“Well, Mister...”

“Hagerman. Freddy Hagerman.”

“Well, Mr. Hagerman, if you’d be so kind, I’d like to hear why you came to see me.”

Freddy took a sip, burned his lip, and set the cup back on its saucer. For once he wished he were better at this tact shit.

“Mrs. Riles, I came to talk about your husband.”

Her face showed no change.

“Go on.”

“I’m an investigative reporter for the New York Post. There’s really no way to say this other than to come right out with it, so here goes. I have good reason to believe your husband didn’t commit suicide.”

Again, he detected no change in Mary Beth’s expression.

“I believe Jonathan was murdered by a group of people bent on stopping his investigation into the Rho Project.”

Her eyes were definitely blue now. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t know.”

For a moment Freddy was speechless. “You knew? Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

The laugh bubbled off Mary Beth’s lips but didn’t make it to her eyes.

“Oh, I told them all. Told the investigators. Told his superiors. Told everyone. But I’m a grieving widow, an old woman, blinded by love for my dead husband, unwilling to see anything bad in him, clueless to the goings-on in the real world of men and politics. I finally quit banging my head on that wall. But you know something, Mr. Hagerman? No matter what they say, it didn’t feel better when I stopped.”

“So will you help me?”

“I don’t know how.”

“Do you know a man named Jack Gregory?”

For the first time since he’d met her, a genuine smile graced Mary Beth’s lips.

“Let me tell you something, Freddy. Jonny always said I was the best natural judge of character he’d ever seen.”

There it was again, that nice smile.

“It was the reason I invited you in.”

She reached for her cup, took a small sip, dabbed her lips with the back of her hand.

“Jack Gregory is a young god. Jonny would have given his life for him. So would I.”

“I think he did.”

Setting her cup back in its saucer, Mary Beth locked her eyes with Freddy’s.

“Then I’m happy.”

“Jack’s not.”

Her left eyebrow rose a quarter of an inch.

“Tell me about it.”

For the next half hour Freddy related the abridged version of what Jack Gregory had told him that night in the Maryland hotel. When he finished, Mary Beth Riles dabbed the corners of her eyes with a kerchief.

“So my Jonny was trying to save the world.”

“And Jack still is.”

“One thing about Jonny. He always had a backup plan. You up for helping me look through his old things?”

“Thought you’d never ask.”

Rising to her feet, Mary Beth held her hand out to Freddy.

“Then let’s go save our saviors.”





Eileen stared at the computer screen in disbelief, a chill crawling up her spine from just between her shoulder blades to the base of her skull. What had started with her obsessive search for clues to the technology underlying the two missing Gregory devices had taken a nasty turn into a very dark place. If she continued on her current track, the knowledge lurking in that darkness was likely to chew her up and spit her mangled corpse into some Potomac backwater.