Innocent People's Lives
Chapter Twenty-three
Across town, Charles Keefe watched the chaos unfold on his TV. He watched Lisa, carefully put together and camera-ready, take her place and begin the accusations against him. He watched the red bloom across her chest and saw her fall.
Never once did he see Jackson Rippner. If the man was still alive and helping her, he didn't appear before the camera.
Instead, he got to watch the light go out of her eyes, see her body go still as she lay in her own blood.
If only she hadn't resisted him. He'd tried for many years to sway her to his side. He'd offered her everything and she always turned him down or joked back, saying "maybe if things were different" or "maybe in another life". But she refused all of his advances for the attention of his own man, Mark Abbott, and now was sleeping in that traitor Rippner's bed. He still couldn't think of him completely as Agent Danvers.
The phone at his desk rang and he picked it up without hesitation.
"I saw the news," the man on the other end said in lieu of a greeting.
"Yes, how unfortunate that Miss Reisert is no longer with us."
"How did she get recordings?"
"Yesterday, during our meeting. I doubt she got anything viable. It was probably a ruse."
"What about Danvers?"
Keefe sighed. "His men are all dead. Killed while they escaped. But he was wounded. It was caught on tape. He lost a lot of blood."
"Don't underestimate his abilities, Charles. He's a cold-hearted bastard, that one. He took a bullet to the chest and survived before."
"He can't survive one to the head. I'll take care of him."
"You better."
There was a click as the other man hung up, leaving him to stare at the TV again. The screen had shifted to the studio and now, audio was playing. He turned up the volume, paling as he recognized his own voice.
Lisa hadn't be been bluffing. She had caught him on tape. And he had damned himself.
"A sympathy vote?"
"Sarah. If she died in an act against me, whether it was murder or terrorism, the country would feel for me and my loss. It would up my status and again me more supporters. It was a necessary sacrifice."
The conversation looped, starting again with an earlier portion. Parts of the original recording were edited out on the newscasts, and the current parts would get edited further into sound bites. It was only a matter of time.
The public were outraged at the casual acknowledgement of murder by a government official, not to mention a presidential candidate.
It was time to get rid of Charles Keefe.
Rachel opened the office door, her blonde hair loose around her shoulders today. She had finally taken the phone off the hook. The media circus was getting out of hand. She wasn't trained to deal with situations like this.
"Charlie, what do you think—oh my god!"
She dropped the files in her hand to cover her mouth as bile filled it.
He was dead, very very dead. She didn't need to touch him to see his glassy eyes and pale skin. To see the blood across what remained of his face.
He was missing a large section of his skull. The gunshot had blown most of it away, twisting and distorting the remains.
Charles barely resembled a human, let alone the man she had loved. A man who had just hours ago been accused of arranging his wife's murder for political gain. And now he was dead and there was a gun lying on his desk. A gun she had never seen before.
Walking into the office to confront his boss would be something akin to suicide, especially in his current state. That's why he went to Gerald Cooper's Georgetown mansion and waited for him to come home. Mrs. Cooper was on a retreat with friends, which was code for a face-lift at a discreet clinic on the West Coast. They had the place to themselves, really.
His team only ever did a perimeter check. There was nothing for them to find. No reason why he wouldn't just walk into his home and lock the front door behind him.
So he did. And Gerald Cooper, deputy director of the CIA, walked right into his home office to find the barrel of a gun aimed at his chest.
"It's time for us to have a talk," Jackson said in a cool voice. "Sit down."
"Danvers, where the hell have you been? I've been trying to reach you."
"Shut the fuck up, Gerald. You're just pissed that I'm still alive. Tell me, how did you manage to turn four of my own men against me? I'm really curious about that, because honestly, I didn't see that one coming."
His boss took a seat, keeping his hands in plain view. Jackson kept his finger resting on the trigger.
"It was simple, really. I told them you betrayed your country."
He snorted. "Whatever helps you sleep at night. I do hope you have more imaginative lies for them. Especially since they died for them."
"You're wanted for murder."
"Self-defense, Gerald. No one would ever convict me."
"They will if I introduced all your prior bad acts."
Jackson laughed. "Those are classified missions. All inadmissible. Plus they were all on your orders. I acted to protect my cover, same as hundreds of others. No one would convict me. No one."
"But they will burn Lisa Reisert at the stake."
He stood up, keeping the gun trained on his boss. "No, they won't. Lisa Reisert died a goddamn hero and that's how it stays. She never hurt a fucking fly. It's because Keefe had a hard-on for her that she's even part of this mess. Ten years ago, you were convinced she was his mistress. Remember?"
Cooper huffed, clearly annoyed. "She was."
"She never slept with Keefe. It was all in his head."
"It's cute, Danvers, watching you try to defend your dead girlfriend."
"Keefe is the reason she's dead. You are the reason she is dead. So give me a reason why I shouldn't go ahead and blow you away right now?" He moved toward him in a menacing fashion, doing his best not to limp.
"Charles Keefe is dead. He committed suicide."
"I know. I caught CNN while waiting for you."
"Congratulations then. You won. Keefe is gone."
"I'm not just trying to take down Keefe. I'm going to take you down, too."
His boss laughed now. "Me? How do you plan to pull that off?"
"I know you chose me for the Keefe job. What I don't know is why. Why sic me on a guy who's in your pocket? What did you have to gain?"
"Leverage, Danvers," he said with a slow grin. "You see, I never thought you would last this long. You were supposed to die. An unfortunate accident, not unlike Miss Reisert's. But you had to go and get yourself shot. Other field agents would notice if I pulled the plug, so I wasted the resources to bring you back to keep their confidence. It worked."
"And kept my cover with Keefe."
"Precisely. And when I started to put the bug in his ear, he brought your name forth. He suggested you kill the Reisert girl. And it was perfect. With any luck, she would kill you while you killed her and I'd be rid of both of you."
"But it didn't exactly go to plan, now, did it?"
Cooper shook his head. "No, it did not. I miscalculated your feelings for her. Your compassion. Your… humanity. It's why you haven't gone higher in rank. You can't make the necessary decisions. One life against many. You can't. You never have."
"As much as I enjoy the free therapy session, I do have other plans this evening." He was only five feet away now. He steadied the gun with his other hand. "Any last words?"
"This is bigger than you, Keefe, and the girl. We are everywhere. We won't go away so easily. We are immortal. You can kill us one by one, but you will never find us all."
"I have nothing better to do with my time."
"They will hunt you down and destroy anyone you ever knew."
"All you have to do is admit that you framed her. That's it. That this was all a conspiracy."
"Or what?"
He fired.
A bullet tore right through the other man's leg and he howled in pain, clutching his bloody leg as he cursed.
"I have twelve more where that came from and another clip in my pocket. Should I continue?" Jackson asked, dark and clipped.
"You're fucking insane!" Cooper snarled.
"Lisa Reisert. She was a pawn. A victim. She died a hero."
"That's right, Danvers. She died. She's dead. You led her right to her death, like you should've ten years ago. You were supposed to kill her. It was really a simple plan. Get her to order the room change, frame her, and kill her. But you had to go and fuck that up."
"And now?"
"All you had to do was kill her. Then you would've been granted a quick death."
"So you admit to working with Charles Keefe. You donated money to his campaign in exchange for favors? You gave him the idea to kill Sarah Keefe, didn't you? To ensure that your puppet was in the White House. And Lisa was going to take the fall for it. You wanted her to die in the bombing."
"That was the plan."
"That's all I needed."
He fired again, this time the bullet smack in the middle of his forehead.
Jackson lowered the gun and turned to face a security camera. Right to the blinking red light, he said, "It ends here or I will hunt you down one-by-one and kill you. And I will humiliate you. This is your last warning."
He fired again, destroying the camera.
Author's Notes:
I almost didn't have Jackson in this chapter, but I didn't want to drag it out too much or you'd be turning up with pitchforks.
Actually, you still might turn up with pitchforks…
But here I am, posting in the parking lot at work before my Sunday shift starts. We have about two chapters left at this point. I'm almost done with the next one. Pinky promise.