Free The White House: A Flynn Carroll Thriller by Whitley Strieber Page A

journey, and you’re the only one on it, and that is your weakness.”
    Her voice was a melody, but the words scorched him. Was ego really why he couldn’t train anybody, and why the only person who could actually give him meaningful support in the field was Mac, a professional criminal so compromised that he’d never dare to take any credit for anything?
    â€œI have to go,” he said. “You will not be harmed.”
    She leaned back in the chair, exposing her perfect breasts to the room’s night glow. “Slay the dragon,” she said. “Save the damsel.” A grin spread across her face, gleaming with fear. “Save the world.” She pitched forward, stuffed her fist into her mouth, and screamed, forcing the sound back into her throat. In a house without privacy, it was what you did.
    He went to her and touched her heaving shoulders. She looked up at him and all the smiles were gone, there was nothing here but a woman in raw dread.
    â€œGet out of here,” she said.
    â€œI won’t let them hurt you.”
    â€œGet out! OUT! GET OUT OF HERE!”
    He spent the rest of the night in the Closet Hall. When he heard Lorna and her friend stirring, he slipped out, walking quickly off into the thin, cold light of dawn.

 
    CHAPTER SEVEN
    FLYNN WAS becoming clearer and clearer about what he had to do. The autopsy he was about to witness would tell him more. If he was right, his plan couldn’t be revealed to anybody, not even Diana. If Aeon was watching, they were watching very closely, and the least word could reveal his plan to them.
    She would need to figure it out on her own, and he planned to leave as many hints as he dared. If she failed to understand his signals, he was heading for a hard death.
    This coroner’s facility was far better equipped than the one in the Navy Yard and, because its use would be so unexpected by Aeon’s surveillance experts, safer than Langley.
    The bodies of Al Doxy and the two medical service personnel lay on gleaming metal slabs in the freezing cold. Doxy’s head was where it ought to be, except for the fact that it wasn’t attached to the neck. One of the two kids had something in his face that Flynn had often seen in the faces of the dead, a kind of sad peace. The other one was not at peace at all. Her glazed eyes were filled with horror. Her mouth was opened as if in a terrible sort of rapture. One fist was clenched, the other a bloody mess.
    She’d been in the back of the wagon with the body, and had hammered with all her might on the doors as the vehicle filled, but hadn’t been able to prevail against the pressure of the water that was flooding in.
    She had drowned in full consciousness, slowly, breathing her last against a tilting ceiling. Had she seen her life pass before her eyes? What sort of a life had it been? Like all lives, hers was at once of little consequence to the world and, to her, a vast ocean of consequence. She mattered, if only to herself. Parents? Maybe. Boyfriend? Could be.
    She also mattered to Flynn Carroll. She mattered a very great deal, just as did all his dead. These kids now added to the tally.
    â€œI need an MRI of the severed head,” he said.
    â€œSure, Officer.”
    Flynn wasn’t surprised at the assumption. He looked so much like a cop that even plain clothes didn’t help. When he walked down a street, perps and wanteds just faded away. And, in fact, they were right to do so. He’d started as a street cop, then a small-city detective working meth labs and car boosts, the occasional murder. His current job was still cop work, and their unit was listed under policing organizations.
    They did Doxy first, confirming that he had died of a severed spine. The massive blood loss that followed had not been a cause of death. Cut the head off, and both parts are dead within a minute, blood or no blood.
    Because this was a forensic autopsy, primary attention was paid to