No Way Back: A Novel by Andrew Gross Page B

still couldn’t quite believe it had actually happened.
    “Joe, he was trying to make it seem like the guy had pulled a gun on him.” I told how I’d identified myself as an ex-cop and how, instead of putting down his weapon, he made a move. “He was one hundred percent intending to kill me too. I’m sure of that. He might have been a government agent, but this was a murder, Joe. An execution. And I watched it happen.”
    “Did you happen to see what agency the guy was from? No one’s saying.”
    “You sitting down?” I told him how, before I left the room in panic, I pulled his ID. I sucked in a breath, knowing exactly how this was going to go over. “Homeland Security.”
    There was a pause. I heard him blow out a breath. “Nice work, Wendy.”
    “I know . . . Joe, all I could think of was that my life was about to fall apart if anyone found me there. When I ran out in the hall I ran straight into the guy’s partner. He took a shot at me and I panicked and ran. I went down the fire stairs. I don’t even know how I managed to get away.”
    “You took the train home. Why didn’t you go straight to the police?”
    “Because the police would have brought me right back there. I’d just seen someone murdered in front of my eyes! The killer’s partner had just tried to kill me too! I was scared to death. I didn’t know what I’d stumbled into. Not to mention, all I could think of was that my whole life was about to fall apart. If I hadn’t run, I’d be dead! I’d be dead,” I said. “But Dave . . . Dave would be alive . . .” A wave of guilt mixed with shame rose up in me. I started to sob again. I couldn’t hold it back.
    “I know. I know, Wendy. I know exactly what you’re feeling. I know this is hard. But these are only questions someone else is going to put to you. And with a lot more at stake behind them. Why did you take the gun?”
    “I didn’t take the gun,” I said, wiping away the tears.
    “They’re saying Dave was shot with a weapon they’re matching up against the one in the hotel.”
    “I’m telling you I didn’t take the gun, Joe. That’s all a frame-up. I left it back at the hotel.”
    “So how did Dave get killed?”
    I took him through how I’d made my way home, and how I realized I’d left my tote bag and that they had to know who I was. “I grabbed Dave and told him we had to get out of there. We were actually heading to the police, in the car about to leave, when all of a sudden these lights flashed on from behind us. It was them!”
    I went through the rest. Not the police, but the agent who had shot at me at the hotel. “I knew we couldn’t just give ourselves up. That’s why they were there, at the house, instead of the cops—to finish the job. And I never took that gun from the room! I left it on the bed, I swear!”
    “So Dave was with you? In the car? Not inside the house?” His tone contained an edge of incredulity.
    “Yes, he was in the car, trying to leave with me. They started shooting and killed him as we drove away. The door was open and he fell out. I stopped and stared at his face, Joe. I knew he was dead. Then they started shooting at me. But if someone took that gun from the hotel room, it damn well wasn’t me.”
    Joe grew silent, probably trying to absorb what I was telling him. I knew much of it sounded like a stretch. It was one thing to say I was unjustly accused, another thing entirely to fight back against a government cover-up trying to put the blame on someone else.
    “I give you my word, Joe, they’re trying to frame me for Dave’s murder, just like they were trying to frame Curtis in that room. To make it look like he had drawn a gun first.”
    “All right. I got it. Wendy, exactly what do you know about this guy Curtis?” he asked me.
    “I don’t know a thing about him. He claimed he was a journalist. That he was in New York on a story. I took his cell phone. I thought I might need to find out something if I ever had to