Free Vanishing Act by Fern Michaels Page A

himself out of the house, his cell in his hand as he called Espinosa and Dawson. His watch told him it was 4:20 as he slammed his way out to the street just in time to see a
Post
truck roll by with the Sunday papers for the citizens’ early perusal.
    Now that he was wide awake and freezing his balls off as he jogged his way to the paper, he had to admit that everything Maggie had just said made sense. He wished he had half her instincts.

Chapter 8
    C harles found himself slipping into what he called a “neutral zone” as he waited for his bank of computers to boot up and the faxes that he expected to spew forth. Outside, he could hear a savage summer rain pound at the windows. When he was in the war room in the underground tunnels at Myra’s farmhouse back in McLean, he never knew what the weather was unless he ventured up to the main part of the house. Here, in their mountain fortress, the elements were front and center all day long every day of the year. He wasn’t sure if he liked it or not. Not that he had a choice.
    His eyes felt like they were full of grit, and they probably were. He’d been in the war room for the past two days, venturing forth only to cook meals and listen to his chicks—that was how he thought of the Sisters, his chicks—berate him, ignore him. They were now making demands on him, impossible demands no human could keep up with. He was trying to placate everyone, especially Myra, but it didn’t seem to be working. Yoko was demanding immediate help for Harry Wong and accepting no excuses. Gradually, the Sisters were creeping to her side and voicing questions he didn’t have answers for. It was a sad state of affairs.
    In a little over an hour they would all meet to discuss, one more time, what they could do to make Harry Wong’s life whole again.
    Once upon a time, the Sisters had had patience and deferred to him one hundred percent. Since his return to the mountain, they’d treated him like an alien visitor. What Isabelle had said to him, words that wounded him to the core, ricocheted inside his mind.
“We found out the hard way that we don’t need you. Back in the day, we may have wanted you…”
    It was true that his chicks had bumbled their way through two missions, but when he read the final reports they’d drawn up, he had cringed at how close they had all come to getting caught. What bothered him more than anything was how cocky they had become. He could feel beads of sweat form on his brow when he remembered how they’d gone back to Paula Woodley’s house, then been brazen enough to drive the residents of Evergreen Terrace from the White House back to their homes.
    As if that weren’t bad enough, they’d…what they’d done was…piss off the Secret Service, the FBI , and local law enforcement. Now they expected him to pull a rabbit out of a hat and get them all back into the nation’s capital to help Harry Wong.
    Charles shook his head to clear his thoughts when a streak of lightning zipped past the window of the war room. Seconds later, a loud crack shook the building he was standing in. No one needed to tell him the lightning had felled one of the tall pines. From past experience, he knew that more trees would fall before the storm was over. It was inevitable.
    The bank of clocks on the wall told him, at a glance, the time all over the world. At the moment, though, he was concerned only with local time and what it meant as far as his culinary duties were concerned. He still had an hour till lunch. At four o’clock in the morning he’d found himself in the kitchen preparing a delectable shrimp and crab casserole and cutting up greens for a salad. He’d also prepared a delicious pink ham and some honeyed yams for dinner. He’d showered and consumed a gallon of coffee that was now having its effect on his nerves. Once, a lifetime ago, he’d been nerveless.
    Charles realized suddenly that the war room was quiet. All the faxes he had been waiting for had arrived, his