“We fish-tanked it, along with the car he came in. They aren’t going to find a damn thing.”
“So why are the cops here now?”
“I don’t know—hold on.” There was some muted conversation at that point. “Matthias is with me. He says it’s the bullet Mels took when she came out to the garage—she had it analyzed, and of course it matches the casings in the basement of the Marriott. You can draw the conclusions from there.”
“Great.”
Now Ad’s voice dropped to a whisper also. “By the way, your old boss is good with a computer.”
“What’s he up to?”
“I think he’s going to blow the lid off of the whole XOps operations.”
“He’s doing what?” Jim nearly forgot to keep his voice low. “How do you know this?”
“He and I left the hotel room together, and on the way to the exit, he made a little detour into Toshiba territory. He’s got a SanDisk with a lot of information on it—I was right behind him when he loaded up the damn thing.”
What was he going to-—
The reporter, Jim thought. He was going to give it to her, and tell her to do her job.
Man, talk about your one-eighties. Matthias had devoted his life to keeping XOps hidden. Had killed for it, tortured for it, turned on friends and allies for it. He’d bullied the White House and frightened worldwide leaders; he’d leveraged money and sex; he’d double-talked, double-crossed, and buried the quick and the dead.
And now he was letting it all go?
“We’ve done it,” Jim breathed. “This is the crossroads.”
“Looks like it.” Ad’s voice resumed normal volume. “Anywho, he’s all worked up about you—he doesn’t want you shanked and told me to call.”
Which was another surprise. “Tell him thanks, I can take care of business here. Where’s he going?”
“Won’t say, and he wants privacy.”
“Well, give it to him, but stick around.”
“You got it, boss.”
Jim hit end and scrubbed his face. It appeared as if he’d won the round…because the crossroads could be any number of things requiring a choice or a decision that revealed the quality of the soul in question.
And that man was giving up his seat of evil—not by stepping down, but by blowing the place the f**k up.
Jim would have spiked something at the goal line…but he didn’t want to upset his visitors: Down below, the cops were sniffing around, checking those locked doors where the F-150, the Explorer, and the Harleys were kept. Their next move was to head for the stairs, and as they ascended, he was grateful that Dog stayed silent.
Knock. Knock.
“Caldwell Police,” came the shout. “Anybody home?”
Knock. Knock.
“Caldwell Police.”
One of the pair cupped his hands together and leaned into the glass, peering inside.
Jim raised his invisible palm and gave the guy a little wave just to be neighborly—but what he really wanted to do was flip his middle finger. This visit probably meant he and his boys needed to decamp—peace and quiet were going to be impossible to come by after this, particularly when the police followed up with his landlord.
But he had other problems at the moment
Especially as the police decided to throw civil rights out the window, and jimmied the lock.
“Mels Carmichael.” Mels frowned. “Hello?”
When there was no answer, she hung up and checked the time. One o’clockish. Grabbing her coat, she got to her feet and gave Tony a wave.
As she left through the newsroom’s front door, she wondered if she shouldn’t have had her buddy get off his phone and come with her. Last time she’d done this, she’d nearly died.
Then again, she wasn’t meeting Monty anywhere near the river. And how many people had kicked it in an urban Barnes & Noble?
Stepping over to the curb, she measured the traffic and the temperature, and decided to hoof it instead of take a cab: Monty wanted to convene at that same open-air mall where she’d met Mr. Ballastics the day before, and it was only five blocks away—besides, maybe the walk would clear her head.
Not.
She spent the entire trip looking over her shoulder, wondering if she was being followed.
On the plus side, there was nothing like a good shot of paranoia to get someone over the afternoon hump. The stuff was better than a shot of espresso, and free.
The street mall was busy again, people out in the April sunshine, hustling between the shops and those chain restaurants where you could eat a huge plate of food as well as a dessert for fifteen bucks. The bookstore was at the far end, and when she walked in, she casually strolled through the stacks.
One good thing about getting out of Caldwell would be never having to deal with Monty and his stupid-ass, pseudo-spy crap again.
As instructed, she went to the back, passed the magazine section, mounted the three steps up into the Romance and Fiction area, and then headed farther down to Military.
Naturally. Because when you were pretending that you were sharing intel of national security-level importance, you didn’t want to do it in the Health & Beauty section: A background of picture books of guns and wars were much more manly. Yup.
“You’re here,” came the hushed voice.
As she turned to Monty, she braced herself—but this was actually him. Same big forehead, same pinchy little mouth, right pair of sunglasses, which he kept on—because wearing something like that made you much less noticeable indoors. Another great plan.
God, her Ray-Bans…Matthias had kept them, hadn’t he.
“So what have you got for me?” she said roughly, forcing herself to plug into the conversation.
It was so tough to concentrate. The blowup with Matthias had scrambled her so badly, anything that had gone on before it seemed like ancient history. But those two women were still dead, and she was determined to finish the story before she left town.
Monty took a book on WWII aircraft off the shelf and idly flipped through the thing. “You know the victim who was found on the library steps? My pictures match what was on her stomach.”
“Her abdomen was marked as well?”
“Yup.”
“Well, that’s interesting.” And highly suspicious. “But they still don’t match the first victim’s actual body—which is the problem.”
“Don’t you think that’s curious, though? Two dead women with identical inscriptions in their skin, in the same place on the belly—and they were killed in the same way.”