“You wanna talk about Christopher, I guess.” His voice roughened. “How’s he doin’? They moved him to that place in D.C. where they said I could come visit if I wanted, but I wasn’t able to go see him. And he can’t take calls.” He hunched his shoulders as despair flickered in his gaze.
Chaya’s lips parted to answer him when a knock sounded on the door.
“I got it, Clay.” Zeke moved from the kitchen, casting Chaya an impatient look as he moved to the door.
“Hey there, Zeke. Fancy seeing you here.” Natches pushed past him and moved into the room. “And Agent Dane. You’re looking nice today.”
Chaya rose slowly to her feet. “Natches, you’re not supposed to be here.”
She had to speak between clenched teeth. She couldn’t believe he had barged into this interview.
“That’s my fault.” Clayton’s shaking hands reached out to Natches as Natches knelt beside his worn recliner. “I called him when gossip came around you was askin’ questions. I asked him to be here.”
Chaya’s lips thinned. Sitting back down slowly, she glared at Natches. “You didn’t mention that to me,” she stated, her voice clipped.
“We didn’t get a chance to discuss it. You left.” The accusation in his voice had her breathing in deeply.
“Natches can stay if that’s your choice.” She turned back to the old man, watching how he held on to Natches’s hand with his gnarled fingers.
“Another good boy with a lousy sire.” Clayton’s voice trembled. “I used to sneak him sweets when ole Dayle wasn’t lookin’.”
Chaya watched Natches’s face, his eyes. This old man meant something to him, and there were few known people that Natches cared for.
“Natches, get in here and help me with the coffee,” Zeke snapped.
“I’ll be in the other room, Clay.” Natches rose to his feet, staring down at the grizzled, gentle giant who watched him fondly. “I’ll hear every word. Okay?”
Clayton nodded as Natches threw Chaya a hard, warning look and moved back into the other room.
“Do you think I’m going to accuse you of anything, Mr. Winston?” she asked him softly. “That’s not why I’m here.”
His lower lip trembled for the briefest second before he seemed to suck it back in and his shoulders squared.
“Christopher’s my boy. What he became, it’s on my shoulders, Agent Dane. I realize that. But—” He lowered his head and shook it. “Sometimes I don’t think as clear as I used to. I asked Natches if he minded being here to make sure, if I was arrested, that my cat was taken care of.”
The cat was curled along the back of the couch and blinked at her lazily. The cat looked as old as Clayton Winston, and as tired.
“I’m not here to arrest you, Mr. Winston, for no reason,” Chaya told him gently. “I’m not here to accuse you of anything, because what your son did was his choice. You chose to defend your country, sir. Your son made other choices. I’m trying to find out why he made those choices and who else may have influenced him there. That’s all.”
From the corner of her eye, she watched as Zeke walked out with two cups. He sat Chaya’s coffee cup on the table in front of her. The other, a closed thermal cup, he put in Clayton’s hand.
“It’s just good and warm, Clay. I put ice in it, just like you like.”
Clayton nodded, and Chaya’s throat tightened with emotion. She couldn’t remember an interview she had ever done that was quite like this one. Natches and Zeke were as protective over this old man as a mother with a child.
“Clayton, I told you Miss Dane would take good care of you,” Natches told him from the doorway.
“He did.” Clayton nodded. “But I feel better, Natches, with you and Zeke here. If she has to arrest me, then old Hisser here might go hungry; we can’t have that.” He reached up and stroked the cat’s tail as it curled over his shoulder, and Chaya wanted to cry.
“Mr. Winston, I just have a few questions. If you prefer not to answer them, or if Mr. Mackay feels it’s not in your best interests to answer them, then I want you to know now that there will be no repercussions. I’m not here to see you hurt further. I merely need to clarify some things and make certain I didn’t leave any loose strings.”
Clayton nodded to that as he lifted his cup, both hands wrapped around it, and sipped from it.
This man, so patriotic and kind, was facing what had to be his greatest nightmare. The questions Cranston had given her weren’t recriminating or accusatory. They were simple—asking about Christopher’s friends, if he was part of a hunting group, or if his friends were military. She asked him about his son’s teen years, his friendships then. Strangely, he and Johnny Grace hadn’t been friends. Yet he had ended up involved with Grace in the theft of those missiles.
“Christopher was always preaching about America and politics and how all this nation lives for is money.” Clayton shook his head wearily. “Said we needed a revolution to wake the people up. That boy, he never understood.” A tear tracked down his cheek as he stared back at her. “I lost friends and a brother in Vietnam. I was willing to give my life to provide this great nation for him, Agent Dane. Many, many great men shed their blood for my boy, and I never realized how little he appreciated that sacrifice. I raised him wrong. I should be in that cell.” His chin wobbled. “Locked away like that, and I can’t even hear his voice, see if anything of my boy remains.” Another tear fell as Natches moved forward and took the thermal cup before Clayton dropped it. “I didn’t teach him right,” he whispered. “And I’m sorry about that.”
Chaya had to blink back her own tears. Ignoring Natches and Zeke, she reached out, covered the old man’s hand, and waited until he could focus on her.
“Mr. Winston, your sacrifices and the sacrifices of your friends ensured his choice. What he did with that choice is on his shoulders, sir, not on yours.”
“You believe that?” he whispered.
“I believe that with all my heart. You, sir, are, and have been, one of our nation’s greatest assets.”
“You’re not going to arrest me?” he asked then.
“Not in a million years,” she whispered. “But I am going to arrange that phone call for you. I promise you that. I’ll make sure you get to talk to your son.”
It wasn’t for the son, who she’d just as soon see flayed alive. It was for the father. The soldier who had saved countless others, who had given all but his life for the freedom his son had never cherished.
Clayton blinked and his eyes filled with tears again. “I’d like that,” he whispered. “Just for a minute. To hear my boy’s voice.”
She nodded to that and rose, making another promise to herself. When this was over, if he could make the trip, if he wanted the trip, she would make certain he got to see his son. And she would make damned sure that son showed him the respect this man deserved.
“She’s a good girl, just like you said, Natches.” Winston looked up at Natches, a shaky smile crossing his lips. “Don’t you let this one get away. She’s tough enough to put up with you.”
“That she is, Clay.” He gripped the other man’s shoulder gently as he stared back at her, and she didn’t want to feel the warmth that bloomed through her at that look. “That she is.”
Chaya straightened and nodded, heading for the door.
“Agent Dane.”
She turned back to Clayton as Natches moved aside behind her.
“Yes, sir.”
He frowned, his rheumy eyes thoughtful as he rubbed at his whiskered chin. “I just thought—Christopher, he wasn’t friends with Johnny a’tall. Or that Bedsford fella. But he mentioned some friends once, called ’em by something. Called ’em his compatriots, said they were starting their own club or some such stuff. Freedom boys or something. I don’t remember right off.”
“If you remember, could you contact me? Just let the sheriff know, and I’ll come right over.”
He nodded to that. “I’ll think on it. See what I remember.”
“Good-bye, Mr. Winston.”
“And you’ll remember to get that phone call for me?” His voice was filled with hope. “Just for a minute. Just so I can hear his voice one more time.”
She was going to cry. Oh God, don’t let her cry here, in front of this proud old man.
“Department of Homeland Security will be contacting you tomorrow, Mr. Winston. I promise.”
He nodded again, reached for his coffee cup, and brought it to his shaking lips. She wanted to howl at the unfairness of it, and she couldn’t. All she could do was walk out the door and move to the sheriff’s car.
“I’m going to stick around and make sure Clay gets dinner.” Natches caught her arm and pulled her to a stop. “I’ll see you tonight.”
She shook her head. “Not tonight.”
“Like hell. Tonight, Chay, and that’s final. I didn’t know Miss Willa wasn’t coming over here every evening to take care of Clay’s dinner, and I have to fix that now. But you can bet on the fact you will be seeing me this evening.”
She pulled away from him and followed Zeke to his car, getting in and slamming the door behind her as she continued to fight her tears. She would rather interrogate a roomful of terrorists than ever have to face that old man with so much as one more question regarding his son.
She was losing it. There was a time when she could have questioned him and pushed back her sympathy, her compassion. It was what she had been trained to do. She was an interrogation specialist. She knew how to do her job without worrying about the consequences.
At least, she used to know how.
“One more to go,” Zeke said as he got in the car and looked over at her. “I believe it’s the widowed mother of another of those boys.”
She nodded. A man who had paid his mother’s bills, bought her food, and took care of her, and now his mother was suffering.
Her fingers curled into a fist, and fury spiked hard and hot inside her.
“No. We’re finished for the day.”
Zeke paused as he slid the car into gear. “It won’t be any easier tomorrow, Agent Dane. Trust me, I can tell you that one for a fact.”
She stared out the window, ignoring her own reflection, afraid of what she might see. She knew tomorrow wouldn’t be any easier.
“I’ve interrogated dozens of terrorists. I’ve interrogated suspects’ families. I’ve been a bitch and remembered what I was fighting for, for years now.” She was twenty-eight years old. She had come into Army Intelligence right after boot camp and worked her way up. She knew what she was doing, she knew how to do it, and she couldn’t stand the thought of one more parent forced to face the choices his child had made.
“Yeah, I hear you’re real good at your job,” he murmured.
“Am I?” she whispered, refusing to look at him as he pulled out of the driveway.
The yard around the Winston house was overgrown. Clayton Winston’s only son used to keep it mowed and trimmed. The trees needed trimming, and there was no one to do that now.
“You know, you didn’t make the choices those boys made any more than Clay did,” Zeke told her as they headed away from the house. “It’s our job to stop them, your job to make sure we stop all of them. It might hurt like hell; it might cut us up until nothing helps but a shot of whiskey and a tear or two. But we do what we have to do.”
“For as long as we can stand to do it,” she said softly. “Take me back to my car, Sheriff. I told you; I’m finished for the day.”
She returned to her hotel and ordered a bottle of wine. She showered and changed into a robe and curled up on the couch, where she put in a call to Cranston. Two hours later, suffering the effects of a furious, heated argument over the phone call she had promised Clayton Winston, she’d arranged it. At noon the next day, he would have ten minutes with his son.