The Last Oracle Read Online Free Page B

elbows, Director Crowe shoved through the door. His expression was stormy. Though ten years older than Gray, Painter still moved like a lean-muscled wolf. The director must have assessed the risk to be minimal. Or maybe, like Gray, he merely sensed that the sniper had already fled.
    Still, what didn’t the man understand about desk job ?
    Painter crossed to him as sirens sounded from the distance. “I have local P.D. locking down the Mall,” he said in clipped tones.
    “Too little, too late.”
    “Most likely. Still, ballistics will narrow down a trajectory radius. Figure out from where the shots were fired. Was anyone following you?”
    Gray shook his head. “Not that I could assess.”
    Gray read the calculations in the director’s eyes as he surveyed the Mall. Who would attempt to assassinate Gray? On their own doorstep. It was a clear warning, but against what? Gray had not been active in any operation since the last mission in Cambodia.
    “We already pulled your parents into security,” Painter said. “Just as a precaution.”
    Gray nodded, grateful for that. Though he could imagine his father was not too happy. Nor his mother. They had barely recovered from a brutal kidnapping two months ago.
    Still, with the immediate threat waning, Gray turned his attention to who might have tried to kill him—and more important, why . One possibility rose to the forefront: his current line of inquiry. Had his investigation into his friend’s fate struck a nerve somewhere?
    Despite the death here, hope flared in Gray.
    “Director, could the assassination—?”
    Painter held up a hand as his brows pinched with worry. He sank to one knee beside the homeless man and gently turned his face. After a moment, he sat back on his heel, his eyes narrowed. He looked more worried.
    “What is it, sir?”
    “I don’t think you were the target, Gray.”

    Gray glanced to the sidewalk and remembered the sparking strikes at his heels.
    “At least not the primary target,” the director continued. “The sniper may have tried to eliminate you as a witness.”
    “How can you be so sure?”
    Painter nodded to the dead body. “I know this man.”
    Shock rang through him.
    “His name is Archibald Polk. Professor of neurology at M.I.T.”
    Gray cast a skeptical eye upon the man’s jaundiced pallor, the grime, the scrabbled beard, but the director sounded certain. If true, the fellow plainly had fallen on hard times.
    “How the hell did he end up like this?” he asked.
    Painter stood and shook his head. “I don’t know. We’ve been out of touch for a decade. But the more important question: Why would someone want him dead?”
    Gray stared down at the body. He readjusted his own internal assessment. Gray should have been relieved to learn he wasn’t a target of an assassin, but if Painter was correct, then Gray’s investigation had nothing to do with the attack.
    Anger surfaced again—along with a certain sense of responsibility.
    The man had died in Gray’s arms.
    “He must have been coming here,” Painter mumbled and glanced to the Castle. “To see me. But why?”
    Gray held out his hand, remembering the man’s urgency. The ancient coin rested on his bloody palm. “He may have wanted you to have this.”
    2:02 P.M.
    As sirens sounded in the distance, the elderly man walked slowly down Pennsylvania Avenue. He was dressed in a dusty gray suit. He carried a beat-up traveling valise on one side and held the hand of a girl on the other. The nine-year-old child wore a dress that matched the older man’s suit. Her dark hair was tied back from her pale face with a red ribbon. The polish on her black shoes was marred by a drying splash of mud fromthe playground where she’d been playing before being picked up a moment ago.
    “Papa, did you find your friend?” she asked in Russian.
    He squeezed her hand and answered in a tired voice. “Yes, I did, Sasha. But remember, English, my dear.”
    She shuffled her feet a bit at the