He glanced at her again and she seemed to pick up on the anxiety he was feeling.
“Look, when you get nervous, I get scared. What’s going on?”
“I should have followed my gut, Julie, and just left you alone. This is exactly the reason I needed to stay away from you.”
Julie started to look back, but Robie snapped, “Don’t. They’ll know we’ve spotted them.”
“So what do we do?”
“We keep driving normally.”
“That’s it? That’s the plan?”
“We keep driving normally until something happens to make us stop.”
“Okay, that sounds more like it. Then what?”
“We just have to see what happens.”
Robie tightened his grip on the wheel and cast another glance in the rearview. The car was still back there. It seemed to be driving normally too. Robie could be wrong. But he knew he wasn’t. He’d been doing this too long.
So who was following him? His people or somebody else? And if somebody else?
It couldn’t be Jessica Reel. That would break every rule in the book. But maybe that was her strategy. Breaking the rules made you unpredictable.
Well, he thought, I can play that game too.
CHAPTER
25
ROBIE KEPT AT THE PACE of the traffic, making no sudden swerves and looking like any other motorist on the road. Then he decided to cut to the chase and see if the threat back there was real or imagined. It would only be a little feint, but it would draw a response if the threat was real.
He put on his right turn signal.
“Will, my house isn’t that way,” said Julie.
“Hold tight. Just doing a little test.”
He glanced in the rearview. The third car was keeping directly behind the second one, so he couldn’t see what he needed to. That in itself was telling. He swung the car out just a hair, to get it beyond the car in between.
Still nothing. The other car wasn’t taking the bait.
Then he slowed and glanced back at a building across the street. In the reflection off the plate glass he saw the right turn signal illuminated on the third car.
Okay. Base established, he looked back up ahead as the intersection approached.
He started to turn right but then went straight through the intersection.
The car between them turned right. The second car was now exposed.
Its turn signal was no longer illuminated. It went straight ahead, but slowed to allow another car to pull in between.
Drivers in D.C. are not that nice, Robie thought.
And the decision to mimic his movements and go through the intersection had erased all doubt from his mind.
“Are we being followed?” asked Julie.
He glanced down at her. “Seat belt tight?”
She gave it a tug. “I’m good. You armed?”
He touched his chest. “I’m good.”
“What’s the plan?”
Robie didn’t have time to answer. The car following them suddenly accelerated and came up next to them. Robie was about to hit the gas and take evasive action when he relaxed.
“Vance?” he exclaimed.
The FBI agent was indeed driving the other car.
Vance motioned to him to pull over. Robie turned down a side street and jacked the car into park. He was out of the car before Vance had a chance to take off her seat belt. He opened her car door.
“What the hell are you doing?” he snapped.
“Why so pissed?”
“I spotted a tail. You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you.”
She slipped off her seat belt and got out. She looked over to see Julie standing next to Robie’s car.
“Hi, Julie,” she said.
Julie nodded at her and then looked tentatively at Robie.
He said, “Explain, Vance. Why were you following me?”
“Are you always this paranoid?”
“Yeah, I am. Especially these days.”
“I wasn’t tailing you.”
“Oh, you just happened by here at the same time I was coming through?” Robie said skeptically.
“No. I saw you pick Julie up.”
“And why were you here at all?”
Vance looked in Julie’s direction and said in a low voice, “I think she might still be a target for some.”
Robie took a step back. “What do you know that I don’t?”
“Only that the Saudi had deep pockets and lots of allies. Julie is known to them. I’m known to them. But at least I have the Bureau covering my back. What does Julie have?” she added pointedly.
Robie took another step back and glanced in Julie’s direction. He didn’t know if Julie could hear them or not, but she was looking anxious.
“She’s got me,” he said quietly.
“Not until today. I was surprised to see you at the school waiting for her.”
“Maybe I surprised myself,” Robie said in a guilty tone.
Vance took a step toward him and her tone softened. “That’s not a bad thing, Robie.” She paused. “Who did you think I was?”
He glanced up. “It’s sort of standard procedure in my line of work to be on the alert.”
“Are you sure that’s all?”
He shook his head wearily. “Why do I feel every time I’m around you it’s an interrogation?”
“Because it’s the only way I can ever get anything out of you,” said Vance in exasperation. “And even then I always come away feeling like I know even less about you than I did before I asked. So if you’re feeling frustrated, so am I.” She paused and said in a calmer tone, “I know that your agency is on high alert after what happened to Jim Gelder.”
Robie didn’t respond to this.
“And add to that Doug Jacobs and maybe you guys have a shitstorm going on.” She moved a step closer. “I didn’t buy the DTRA cover. He was agency all the way. Probably a handler or an analyst.”
“Will,” called out Julie. “I’d like to get home. I’ve got a lot of home work to do.”
Robie said, “One sec.” He turned to Vance. “The less you know about all of this, the better. I’m asking as a professional courtesy that you back off on this.”
Vance was shaking her head before he’d finished speaking. “Doesn’t work that way, Robie. You should know I can’t back off. I’ve got a job to do. No punches pulled. Just the way it is.”
She looked over at Julie before continuing. “And if it is a shitstorm then I’d follow your gut and keep far away from Julie. Taking out the number two at the agency? I don’t think those types of people will balk at snuffing out the life of a fourteen-year-old.”
She got back into her car and drove off. Robie watched her until she turned the corner and was gone.
Julie walked over to Robie. “What was that all about with super agent Vance?”
Robie said nothing, and Julie looked away in disappointment. “Just take me home, Robie,” she said curtly.
They got into the car and drove off.
Behind them a car pulled around the corner from where it had been parked and started to follow them.
Jessica Reel was driving.
CHAPTER
26
REEL KEPT HER DISTANCE, figuring that Robie would still be on alert, but not as much as before. She had gotten quite a gift when Vance had shown up and started following Robie. That had allowed Reel to shadow him while he believed it was only Vance.
So now she had some breathing room and some observation time. She could find out things about Robie. More things.
As she followed him at a leisurely pace her mind drifted to the mental list of names.
Jacobs, done.
Gelder, done.
Sam Kent, a total disaster on her part.
She had one more name on the list. Kent would have communicated with the person by now. Gelder and Jacobs might have been chalked up simply as attacks on American intelligence. By missing Kent, she had clearly exposed h
er hand.
She had watched in admiration as Robie forced Vance to show her intentions with the traffic light feint. She would have done the same thing. Reel wondered if she could read Robie that easily by just assuming they would react to the same situation in the same way. Then she discarded that simplistic idea. Robie would probably figure that out soon enough and deliberately zig instead of zagging.
Then I’m dead.
About thirty minutes later she pulled to the curb as Robie stopped and Julie Getty climbed out of the car. She didn’t look happy, thought Reel. Julie hurried up the steps to the most imposing four-story town home in the affluent neighborhood.
Reel nodded in approval as she looked around at the high-dollar homes. The foster care child had climbed far.
Then she returned her gaze to Robie. He was still in the car, still staring at Julie. When the door closed behind her, he pulled away.
Reel took a photo of the town home with her phone, waited for Robie to get a bit ahead of her, and then followed.
This was clearly Robie’s Achilles’ heel. He cared about somebody. He cared about this young woman. He had broken rule number one in their line of work.
You don’t care about anyone. You have to be a machine because you have to kill without remorse. And then move on to the next one after quickly forgetting the last.
Yet Reel could understand Robie making that mistake, for a very compelling reason.
I made it too.
She followed him back into D.C., where Robie pulled into the underground garage of an apartment complex.
Reel didn’t go into the garage. That would be too obvious. She stared up at the nondescript eight-story building. It looked like a place where young people just starting out or older people downsizing might live mixed in with a healthy dose of middle-aged people who had simply never fully realized their goals in life.
It was totally unexceptional.
So that meant it was perfect for Robie.
He could hide in plain sight.
She had locked down his base and there was nothing more to be gained from staying here. Robie’s place might be watched. There were enough traffic and pedestrians around that she wasn’t overly worried about being spotted, but the longer she hung around the greater the risk.
And now Reel was confronted with a new problem.
She thought her list had been complete. But her gut was telling her there was someone else out there whom she hadn’t accounted for.
Jacobs was a small fry.
Gelder was a big fish.
Kent was in the mix because he was a special sort of judge who perhaps wasn’t simply a judge.
And there was a fourth person on her list.
But she sensed there was a fifth person, perhaps the most important one of all.
She needed more information. She needed to track the catalyst for all this right to its source. To do so she needed help.
A particular sort of help. And she knew right where to get it.
In the most unlikely of places.
Not the corridors of power.
She would find it at a local shopping mall.
CHAPTER
27
REEL DROVE OFF HEADING WEST. It would be tricky and delicate and perilous. But so was everything she did.
She gripped the steering wheel tighter. Not from nerves. She didn’t really possess them, not like normal people. When she entered the danger zone she actually grew calmer, her heartbeat grew slower, and her limbs became supple. Her field of vision seemed to gain such clarity that everything around her slowed, allowing her to analyze every factor seemingly at her leisure.
And then it was usually over in a blink of an eye.
And someone lay dead.
The drive took over an hour. The traffic was bad, with rain that alternated between bucketing and merely falling.
She liked shopping malls, particularly because they were filled with people and had many entry and exit points.
She also hated shopping malls, particularly because they were filled with people and had many entry and exit points.
She parked her car in an underground garage, then walked to a stairwell and up to the mall entrance. She moved past a group of teenage girls carrying multiple bags from a variety of stores. All were texting on their phones, oblivious to what was going on around them.
Reel could have killed them all before they could even hit send on their phones.
She walked into the mall and slowed her pace. She kept her glasses on, her ball cap pulled low. Her gaze darted everywhere, her mind a microprocessor clearinghouse of potential problems and what to do about them. She could never again simply go into a building, take a walk or a drive without engaging this part of her brain. It was like breathing. She couldn’t not do it and expect to live.
She slowed even more as she neared the store she wanted. She walked past but not into the store. She made eye contact, flicked a finger under her chin, gave a slight nod, and kept going. She continued farther down the hall and then stopped, looking over some items in a kiosk. She looked up in time to see the person she had nodded at leave the store and turn in her direction.
Reel immediately walked in the opposite direction, eventually turning down a hallway toward the restrooms. She opened the door for the family restroom and closed it behind her. She entered the stall, pulled her gun, and waited. She didn’t like cornering herself in this way, but there wasn’t much choice.
The door opened a few seconds later. Peering through the space between the stall door and wall, she saw who it was.
“Lock the door,” Reel said.
The person locked the door.
Reel came out, gun in hand.
The man looked up at her. He was short, maybe five-six and a hundred and thirty skeletal pounds. Physically he would have no chance against her, even without the gun. But she hadn’t come here to pick a fight. She needed information.
The man’s name was Michael Gioffre. He worked in a GameStop store at the mall, principally because he was an expert gamer and loved the thrill of the competition. He was in his early forties and had never really grown up. He wore a T-shirt stenciled with the title “Day of Doom.”
He also had been a spy. He could talk out of both sides of his mouth glibly and could sell sand to a man dying of thirst. Now retired, he looked out only for himself.
And for Jessica Reel.
Because she had saved his life, not once but twice.
He was her gold card, one of the few she possessed.
Gioffre eyed the gun. “Serious shit?”
She nodded. “Is there any other?”
“Wouldn’t have recognized you without the chin flick signal. Nice plastic surgery, by the way. Very becoming.”
“When someone’s cutting you, only go with the best.”
“I’ve heard the official story. Gelder and another guy dead.”
“That’s right.”
“Your doing?” His expression showed he did not expect an answer. “What can I do for you, Jess?”
Reel put her gun away and leaned against the sink. “I need information.”
“Big risk you coming here.”
“Not as big as three years ago. You’ve been off the grid for a while, Mike. I know where your cover team sets up. They’re not there. In fact, they haven’t been there for six months.”
Gioffre folded his arms and leaned back against the door. “I have been feeling a little naked out there. But I guess they figured I was really retired after all and am officially into my retail gaming career. So no more cover. What information?”
“You knew Gelder?”
He nodded. “Lots of us did. He’d been there a long time.”
“What about the other dead guy, Doug Jacobs? Cover was at DTRA?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“They knew each other. And not just in agency circles.”
“How do you know that?” asked Gioffre.
“Not relevant. But it’s true.”
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“Nothing, but I need you to do something for me,” said Reel.
“What?”
“Like I said, information. Not anything you know. Something you have to find out for me. And I need it right away.”
“I don’t have many contacts left inside.”
“I didn’t say it was on the inside. At least not anymore.”
CHAPTER
28
ROBIE SAT BACK AND RUBBED his eyes. Janet DiCarlo hadn’t yet sent him new files electronically, so he had gone over the redacted ones several times looking for things that might have escaped his notice before.
But there was nothing.
Reel’s last several missions had all been outside the country. Robie could travel to each of them, but he wasn’t convinced it would benefit his investigation.
He would have to go back the two years in her life that he had set as the outside time parameter. The only problem was, that would take time too.
How many more people would she kill in the interim?
If she kept the body count going, Robie could imagine himself being dismissed from the task of finding her. And maybe that would be perfectly fine with him.
He had called the number DiCarlo left him, but it had gone to voice mail. He wondered about the rose petals and what they might mean. He doubted Reel had left them as symbols of her pious lifestyle. Had she left them as symbols of bloody deaths with funerals certain to follow? That also didn’t make sense to him, which meant he was looking at the issue in the wrong way.
So what was the right way? he asked himself as he poured out a cup of fresh coffee. He checked his watch.
Two a.m. He poured the coffee into the sink.
It was time to go to sleep. Without some shuteye he was going to be of little use to himself or anyone else.
Five hours later he awoke reasonably refreshed. He spent several hours going back over the files he had been given. Even with the redactions he felt there might be something in them that could help.
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