CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE

Once again, having Dean Hooper as her ASAC ratcheted up everyone’s response time to Nora’s requests. Warden Jeff Greene called her less than ten minutes after she had explained the situation to her boss.

“How can I help, Agent English?” the Warden asked.

“You have a female prisoner, a lifer, Lorraine Wright. She was convicted of domestic terrorism which resulted in the death of a federal agent.”

“Assistant Director Hooper filled me in on the basics.”

Assistant Director? She didn’t correct the warden. “I need to know if Maggie or Margaret O’Dell has visited Wright in the last two years, or perhaps even before that. Do you have that information?”

“All prisoner visits are logged into the computer. We go back fifteen years electronically. Anything older than that is on hard copy.”

“Going back fifteen years should be fine.”

“I can fax you the list of Wright’s visitors, if you’d like.”

“Thank you.” She gave him her fax number. “Is it possible you could tell me right now if O’Dell was a visitor?”

“Yes, she’s been visiting monthly as far back as we have. She’s listed as next of kin. You know that O’Dell is Ms. Wright’s daughter?”

Though Nora had thought as much, the confirmation still took the wind out of her. “Yes,” she said, her voice low. “When was O’Dell’s last visit?”

“September ninth.”

Less than three weeks ago.

“Thank you. I’ll wait for the fax.”

“Agent Hooper said that this may involve a federal crime?”

“O’Dell is wanted for questioning in an act of domestic terrorism that resulted in a death.” Nora didn’t feel a need to share all the details.

“I’ll flag her name,” he said. “If she shows up to visit her mother, I’ll detain her.”

“I appreciate it. Thanks, Warden.”

She hung up. Duke asked, “And?”

“She’s a regular visitor. Her daughter.” Before she could say anything else, Hooper walked in with a fax. At first, she was amazed at Warden Greene’s speedy response; then she saw the fax wasn’t from Victorville.

“What’s this?”

“A copy of Margaret O’Dell’s adoption records. It was an open adoption; the files aren’t sealed. Under the terms, the adoptees, David O’Dell and April Plummer, agreed to bring the child to visit Lorraine Wright at least one day each month until her eighteenth birthday.”

Nora skimmed through the documents. They confirmed Hooper’s summary. She saw who’d signed the documents. “This isn’t the judge for her trial. He told me she gave the baby up for adoption.”

Duke leaned over and looked at the name. He typed it into his laptop computer. A moment later he said, “Newman is a family court judge.”

“But don’t they talk to each other?”

Hooper said, “Family court would be county. Wright was tried in federal court. They’re not in the same building, and rarely have cause to interact.”

“Why didn’t they tell me? I assumed they wouldn’t let that woman anywhere near a child, after—” Nora cut herself off. The system always tried to keep children with their parents, even criminals. She just didn’t know that twenty years ago.

Duke asked gently, “Nora, what would you have done about it had you known? Tried to get custody? A seventeen-year-old without a high school diploma or job?”

Nora looked at Duke, stunned that he would throw that out at her. It didn’t matter that it was true—she’d never have gotten custody in those circumstances—but it hurt that he’d publicly brought out something she’d told him in private.

“I would have petitioned the court to deny the open adoption,” she said. “Obviously, Lorraine isn’t fit to be an influence on a child. Look at how Maggie turned out.”

“You don’t know that Lorraine—”

“You don’t know her, you didn’t grow up with her.” She jumped up and paced. She was humiliated in front of her boss, embarrassed at her outburst, distraught over what she’d just learned.

Hooper changed the subject. “There’s more. Donovan’s team can’t locate Scott Edwards’s truck. We’re operating under the assumption that O’Dell has possession of it and have put out an APB on both the vehicle and O’Dell.”

He stood and walked to the door. “I’d tell you to take the rest of the day off, but you won’t, so I’ll just admonish you to be alert and let me know if you need additional assistance.”

“I appreciate it,” she said, and meant it.

Hooper walked out, and Duke said, “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, Nora.”

“You used my past against me.”

“I didn’t.”

“That’s not how it sounded.”

He stood and walked across the room to her. “You would have seen the truth if you weren’t so upset. You were lied to, and that hurts. But you couldn’t have changed it then, and you can’t change the past now. All you can do is focus on finding the girl.”

“She’s my sister.” Nora could barely get out the words.

“You want Hooper to assign someone else?”

She shook her head. “He probably should. I’m too close to this.”

“That’s your greatest asset as well as your greatest weakness. You understand how Lorraine thinks, and therefore you understand how Maggie O’Dell thinks. No one else has those instincts. But you can’t think of Maggie O’Dell as your sister. She’s nothing like you.”

“She doesn’t think like Lorraine,” Nora said. “She thinks like her father. Cameron Lovitz. He was a psychopath—methodical and organized.”

Emboldened, getting a sense of Maggie O’Dell, the killer, Nora continued. “She’s different. She likely has his charisma in order to convince people to help her, but she has less control of her temper. She’s both organized and disorganized. She’s ruthless. And it’s all personal.”

Nora paced, putting herself in Maggie’s shoes. What would it be like growing up knowing your mother was in prison for trying to blow up a nuclear reactor? Visiting her every month. Hearing the stories about saving these animals and those trees and stopping a developer from building on a pristine meadow practically single-handed. And the exaggerations …

The stories.

“Lorraine romanticized everything, exaggerated the good and the bad,” Nora said. “We’d be involved in some demonstration and she’d be pushed by a cop. That night the story turned into she was beaten with a billy club and she was lucky to be alive. Or if she freed research animals, it was fifty and she found homes for all of them, rather than twenty animals she’d released into the wild. All bait for larger predators.”

And Cameron. Nora remembered exactly what Lorraine said on the stand.

“Cameron didn’t have a gun. He despised guns, just like I did. Nora brought it with her, and Cameron took it.”

A flat-out lie, but Lorraine likely believed it because she wanted to. She was a pathological liar, which had been proven during her trial. What had Lorraine told Maggie about her father? About what they’d done and how they’d lived? What had their mother said about Nora?

“You think that Lorraine convinced Maggie that before the arrest, your family had an idyllic life?”

Nora nodded. “And I stole that life from her. That’s why Maggie wrote that letter highlighting the cases where I was undercover. I had ‘betrayed’ the cause and the good people who’d trusted me. That’s also why Maggie killed her cohorts. Because they betrayed her. They wanted out, and she wouldn’t let them go. Couldn’t. If they didn’t do what she wanted, they deserved to die.”

“And what about Professor Cole?”

“He had turned Anya against her. Anya turned the others. Or at least Chris. Scott Edwards, I’m not so sure. Maybe Maggie felt if she killed the other two she had to kill him as well. Or he did something that irritated her.” She squeezed her temples.

“Headache?” He crossed the room and massaged the sides of her head.

His fingers felt incredible and she relaxed. “I’m out of my area of expertise here. I don’t understand psychopathic killers any more than I understand—” She searched her brain. “—how to launder money. Hooper gave us all a crash course when he got here, but I was completely lost.”

“You understand more than you think.”

Duke kissed her temple as if his lips could cure her pain. Maybe, with a little time and privacy, they could. Nora leaned into him, giving in to his affection just for a moment.

A rap on the conference room door had Nora jumping a foot away from Duke, blushing to the roots of her hair. The receptionist walked in without waiting for an invite and handed Nora a thick stack of paper. She mumbled a thanks and looked at the information to hide her embarrassment as the woman left. But Nora pushed her personal thoughts aside: The fax was from Victorville Federal Penitentiary.

Each page had one line entry per visit. The name, date, relationship, time entering and time ending. The print was small and there were fifty or so entries per page.

April Plummer and Margaret O’Dell. Over and over. Occasionally another name Nora recognized, a few she didn’t. Theresa Lovitz visited five or six times in the first two years. Nora didn’t know who she was, but she was likely related to Cameron. A few other people visited Lorraine in the early years: Glenda Chastain. Mina Ro. Roger Nelson. As time passed, the visits from revolutionaries diminished. April still came by, sometimes with David O’Dell. And always Maggie. By the time Maggie was ten, she was visiting on her own, sometimes more than once a month. Maggie, Maggie, Maggie …

Quin Teagan. Daughter.

Nora had to go back and look again. She couldn’t be reading the logs right.

Quin Teagan. Daughter.

Nora flipped rapidly through the pages in disbelief. She went back, counted. Counted again. Twenty-three visits in the last eleven years. Twice a year Quin visited Lorraine. The first time the month she turned eighteen.

Nora wanted to believe it was a mistake. But of course it wasn’t. It was here in black and white. Quin had lied to Nora. She’d been seeing their mother all these years and had never said anything.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Duke asked, looking over her shoulder.

“Quin,” she mumbled. She shoved the papers at him, hitting the stack with her fist as he took them. Nora was shaking, her knuckles white. “My sister. All these years. Going down there to see her.”

“You mean Lorraine?” He put the papers down. “You didn’t know?”

“Damn straight I didn’t know! I told her never to talk to her.”

Duke didn’t say anything, and Nora whirled around, willing herself to stop shaking. She didn’t know if she was more angry or scared. Duke looked closely at her, uncertainty in his eyes. He still didn’t say anything. “What?” she snapped. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You told Quin not to have contact with her mother.”

“Mother? That’s rich. What mother has her nine-year-old daughter making bombs? What mother has her daughters playing decoy on the docks of San Francisco at midnight while she and her friends spray-paint graffiti on the storefront of a furrier? What mother tells her daughters to throw red paint on women wearing fur coats?”

“Nora—Quin was nine when Lorraine went to prison.”

“What difference does that make?”

“She wasn’t old enough to understand.”

“Cameron left her alone in the middle of nowhere at night and my mother went along with it. Quin was always terrified of the dark.” Duke didn’t understand. Maybe he never could. Suddenly, Nora was alone again. Deeply, irrevocably, alone. She’d been lonely most of her life, and she knew better than to think that would ever change.

She turned away from Duke. She had to protect her sister. Quin was all she had. “I need to talk to her.”

“Nora, you’re not in this alone. I told you earlier—I’m not walking away.”

Duke tried to pull Nora to him, to hold her, just for a minute, to prove to her that he meant what he said. She pulled away, took several steps back. From the look on her face, she didn’t believe him. Righteous anger began to creep up within him, but dissipated when Duke realized that Nora was scared. She’d taken so very long to let him inside, even just a little, because she was terrified. She’d been alone for thirty-seven years, practically since she was born, raising herself and then Quin and never having anyone to count on.

She’d even said that the FBI agent who’d been her handler had lied to her. That must have hurt her almost as much as her mother’s selfish behavior. Maybe more, because she must have deeply trusted him in order to be his informant.

Duke watched Nora storm out of the room. His heart twisted with her pain. But there was no way he was letting her leave alone. He followed.

She needed him, whether she acknowledged it or not.

Maggie sat at the bus stop and ate an apple as she watched Quin leave her downtown Sacramento office building and walk down the street with three people from the state fire inspector’s office. Even if Quin happened to glance her way, she wouldn’t recognize Maggie. She’d put her long hair up in a baseball cap and wore sunglasses. Hardly incognito, but the disguise didn’t stand out. The sun was bright and a lot of people wore sunglasses and caps.

She tossed the apple core into the trash can chained to the bench and followed her sister with her eyes until Quin turned the corner and disappeared from sight.

If it wasn’t for Nora English, Quin would have been her sister. Her full sister. They would have grown up together, been best friends, done everything together. Inseparable.

Eleven years ago, April brought Maggie to visit her mother. At the prison, Maggie told April to leave them alone. She didn’t like her listening in on her private conversations with her real mother. April was dumb as a doornail and always said such stupid things.

April was happy to leave. Said she’d be back when the hour was up.

Mother and daughter met in the recreation room. It was where the female prisoners with good behavior could meet with their children. Sometimes, when Lorraine was in trouble, Maggie had to go to a small room with a table and hard chairs and a mean guard glaring at her through the window. Maggie hated that. She hated being in a box with no windows and no sun. At least in the rec room there were windows that opened—even though there were bars on them—and lots of light.

They sat on a stiff couch with rough fabric. Her mom was happy today. She said, “Guess who visited me last week?”

Maggie frowned. Why was someone else visiting HER mother? She pouted.

“Don’t be sad, Maggie.” Lorraine beamed. “You should be happy like me! Quin came to see me! And she’s coming back, she promised. I can’t wait for you to meet her.”

A sliver of jealousy cut through Maggie. Her mother talked about Quin all the time, how she was stolen from her. Did her mom love Quin more? Why did it take so long for Quin to visit? She was a bad daughter. When Maggie didn’t want to come one day last year because Lorraine had made her mad, the next visit Lorraine told her she was a bad daughter for missing their scheduled visit.

“Why? She’s never been here before.”

Lorraine scowled. “Nora kept her from me. All these years, I thought Quin didn’t want to see me. But it was Nora all along. She wouldn’t let her come. Quin turned eighteen and came right away to visit. And she’s coming back.”

Maggie knew who Nora was. Nora had killed her father. Maggie hated her. If Nora hadn’t betrayed her own mother, Maggie would now have a real family. Not the stupid April and the sickly sweet David. She called them her stepparents. She didn’t like them, but she’d figured out how to do pretty much anything she wanted.

“Why so sad?” Lorraine asked.

“Do you still love me? Even though Quin came back?”

“I’ll always love you the best. You never left me. You’re a good girl.”

Maggie smiled. “I want a sister.”

“Quin is lovely. She’ll like you. Someday you can meet her.”

“When?”

“She has to be very careful. Quin said Nora would be furious if she found out, and I don’t want her to find a way to stop the visits. She’s an FBI agent now. She can probably stop me from having any visitors.”

Maggie’s stomach felt sick. Lorraine was the only person she could really talk to. Her mom was the only person who talked to Maggie about her father, about all the incredible things he had done to save the earth, to save animals, to change things.

And Nora had killed him. She had sent their mother to prison, and had stolen Quin away.

“I hate Nora.” Inside, Maggie felt her emotions raging.

“Don’t say that. Hate is a negative emotion. It turns us inside out and we make mistakes. Nora doesn’t know better. I don’t know what I did wrong, I don’t know why she set your father up to be killed by the police. They must have lied to her, brainwashed her. She’s even so misguided she’s become part of the Establishment. But not Quin. Quin still has me in her heart, and I know we’ll be great friends, the three of us.”

Maggie wasn’t so sure. But her mother was happy, and Maggie liked it when her mother was happy.

Maggie frowned as she stared at Quin’s office building. Quin had gone off with friends to lunch. Laughing, living a normal life with a normal job, Maggie’s sister never called her anymore. The last time Maggie had seen her was two years ago, when Maggie had decided to go to Rose College. Maggie had shown up at Quin’s town house to surprise her. Quin wasn’t happy. She said that Maggie and Lorraine were another part of her life, separate from her job and friends here in Sacramento.

Maggie had hated her then, had very much wanted to hurt her. But then Quin had apologized, said she was sorry, but Nora couldn’t know.

Nora stood in Maggie’s way.

She’d always been in Maggie’s way. Basically, from Day One, Nora had ruined her life. After killing her father, imprisoning her mother, and stealing her sister, Nora became one of them, the Establishment. Maggie had learned a lot about Nora English, and was determined to find the very best way to make her pay. To make her suffer. To hurt her more than she’d hurt Maggie. She could kill her the way she’d killed Scott and the others; she could kill Nora the same way. Watch her get sick and fall over paralyzed and in pain and lie there for hours suffering until she croaked.

But then she’d be dead and out of pain. There had to be something worse than death, and Maggie had spent months figuring out what that was.

Now she knew.

She rose from the bench and walked down Eleventh Street until she hit O Street, then turned west. She’d been to Quin’s town house before. Quin was now at lunch. Maggie would break in and make herself at home while waiting for her sister.

Nora would kill Quin. It would be her fault. And how she would suffer! She’d feel so guilty. So angry. Full of revenge. And then, Maggie could make her suffer even more. Push in the knife and twist, twist, twist it.

Nora would pay with her own life for killing Maggie’s father. But not until she was emotionally and physically devastated.