Outcast

Ben felt his heart take an extra thump. “I can hardly wait.”

2

“How are things with the kid?” Waverly asked as he drove out of the ethnically and economically mixed Columbia Heights neighborhood toward elite Chevy Chase, Maryland, where the party was being held. Columbia Heights was becoming gentrified, forcing out the poor, but right now it was still a blend of the crumbling old and the very new. The distance to Chevy Chase wasn’t far in miles, but it might as well have been a trip to the moon, the two worlds were so far apart.

“The kid is fine,” Ben said as he reached for the rep-striped tie he’d left in the backseat with a jacket earlier in the day.

“For now.”

Ben buttoned up his shirt, slipped the tie around his neck and began to tie it. “I’m optimistic.”

“You’re naive.”

“You’re jaded.” Ben shoved the Windsor knot up to his throat.

“Maybe so. We’ll see.”

Ben hesitated, then said, “Epifanio has heard rumblings that something bad is in the works.”

“If the kid asks too many questions, they’re going to shut him up. Forever,” Waverly warned. “Don’t push it.”

“I didn’t ask for information. He volunteered it.”

“Someday somebody’s going to make the connection between you and ICE and the kid. They’ll start to wonder what he’s told you. And—” Waverly made a ragged sound as he drew his forefinger across his throat.

“I’m his Big Brother. That’s all.”

“Yeah. Right,” Waverly said.

As the man in charge of the MPD Gang Unit for the past two years, Waverly knew far more about gang behavior than Ben did. If Waverly was worried about Epifanio, Ben knew there was something to worry about.

“Have you heard something I haven’t?” he asked.

“Just the same stuff as the kid,” Waverly said. “That something is going to happen. Something big.”

“What are we talking about here?” Ben asked. “New car theft ring? Counterfeit bills? Drug shipment? Illegal weapons?”

“Terrorism.”

Ben mentally reeled. He’d chosen to work on an ICE joint task force with the MPD dismantling gangs in D.C., rather than join the investigative arm of ICE and search out terrorists, precisely because he’d had enough of war. Apparently, this time the war was coming to him.

“Terrorism,” he mused. “What does that mean? I have trouble imagining white or black or Hispanic or Asian gangs hijacking planes and flying them into buildings.”

“Maybe not. But they can help smuggle dirty bombs or biological weapons across the border from Central or South America. Or learn how to make improvised explosive devices—IEDs—and plant them in big cities across America—Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, Chicago, Detroit, New York—and of course, the District.”

“Is that really going to happen?”

“Nobody knows for sure,” Waverly said. “But you and I are going to keep a damned close eye on MS.”

Mara Salvatrucha 13, called MS by the MPD, was known to be a merciless and violent gang in El Salvador, where it had originated. Its members had brought that arbitrary death-dealing with them when they stole across the border and joined MS gangs formed in the States.

“Are several gangs involved?” Ben asked. “Or only MS?”

“MPD and ICE share info, so I’m sure you know Al Qaeda had sent lieutenants to El Salvador to recruit members of MS to commit terrorist acts. The presumption is they’ll make use of members of MS here in the States to help them, by threatening their families in El Salvador, if necessary. Which is why we’re focusing on MS.”

Ben hadn’t wanted to believe Al Qaeda would be successful in El Salvador. His job was going to change radically if a bunch of hired assassins began infiltrating across the border and joining local MS gangs to cover up their terrorist activities.

“Have you heard anything on the streets about exactly who—or what—Al Qaeda’s target might be in D.C.?” Ben asked.

“That, my friend, is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. They have a helluva lot of choices.” Waverly brought his car to a stop in front of an impressive, two-story Colonial redbrick home with white shutters and a tall, elegant front door.

“We’ve reached the end of your father’s obscenely long driveway—and this conversation,” Waverly said. “You know Julia doesn’t like me to talk about work around your mother. It upsets her.”

Ben got out of the car and dumped his leather jacket in the backseat. He grabbed a navy suit jacket from a hanger on a hook over the window to wear with his khaki trousers. He knew what really upset his mother was the idea of her eighteen-year-old daughter marrying a thirty-year-old cop. Especially since the bride and groom had only met six months ago.

And it wasn’t just the age difference, or the short time they’d known each other. His mother blamed him for the fact that in three days Julia would be marrying a man with a dangerous job that could get him killed. Worst of all, the young couple was determined to live on the paltry income of a D.C. cop.

Ben’s mother, Abigail Coates Benedict Hamilton, not only had inherited wealth of her own, but a year after she’d divorced Ben’s even wealthier father, she’d married a wealthy widower, the senior senator from Virginia, Randolph Cornelius “Ham” Hamilton, III.

Ben’s half sister Julia had been born into a life of opulence and privilege. His mother couldn’t bear the thought of Julia wanting for anything. She deplored the small apartment that was all Waverly could afford, and which would be her daughter’s first home, and had announced she was “devastated” that Julia would be attending Georgetown University instead of her alma mater, Wellesley.

Seeing that Waverly and Julia were in love, Ben had let his mother’s complaints roll off his shoulders. The fact he pretty much always fell short of pleasing his mother was something he’d learned to cope with at a very young age. Eight, to be precise.

That was the year his parents divorced. Ben had always wondered who’d come up with the idea to split up the Benedicts’ four living sons—Nash, Ben, Carter and Rhett—and give two to each parent.

Nash, who was eleven, and Rhett, who was only a baby, had stayed with his mother. Ben, who’d been a little intimidated by his father, Foster Holloway Benedict, an army officer who’d been awarded the Medal of Honor, had begged to be allowed to stay with his mother in their home in Richmond. But his father had taken him away to live in Chevy Chase, along with his younger brother Carter.

Not that Ben had spent much time with his father once he’d taken up residence in the mansion in Chevy Chase. Within a year of his parents’ divorce, his father had married a woman named Patsy Taggart. Patsy had done all the caretaking while his father was off being a soldier. At thirteen, Ben had been sent off to Massachusetts to attend Groton, an Episcopal prep school.

At the time Patsy married his father, she’d had twin two-year-old sons who lived most of the year in Texas with her former husband. But it wasn’t long before she was pregnant with Ben’s twin sisters Amanda and Bethany. A few years later, Camille had come along. Ben called the girls the ABCs, because their names started with the first letters of the alphabet.

It was hard not to love the ABCs because they so obviously adored him, and he did his best to be a protective and loving big brother.

It had taken a long time before he let Patsy fill the hole left in his heart when his mother had given him away. But his stepmother had been persistent. He loved her now far more than the mother who’d borne him.

Ben had seen the pain in his biological mother’s eyes when he’d remained aloof through the years. Diabolically, his parents had arranged for their four sons to spend time together in the same households from time to time—for holidays or vacations—so they wouldn’t lose touch with each other.

As it turned out, he and Carter were close. Rhett, no surprise, was everybody’s friend. Nash was unknowable

Ben had always been in awe of Nash, because when that Solomon-like custody decision was being made, he’d refused to leave their mother. Ben had overheard him tell their father flat out, “I’m not going.”

Of course, that meant Ben had been forced to go instead. He didn’t blame Nash. Ultimately, his mother had agreed with the decision to send him away.

Ben had never given her another chance to reject him. But he dreaded family gatherings because it dragged up all that ancient history.

He was keenly aware that he’d once again managed to disappoint her by introducing Julia to Waverly. Ben felt an ache in his chest. He focused on the peaceful forest scene that helped him quiet the demons. The last thing he wanted was to have an attack now.

He thought of how little any of his family knew about the bad things that had happened to him as a soldier. And how grateful he was that they’d never asked.