Alex navigated to his Facebook profile and searched through the latest postings. “He’s not shy about drinking,” she said. “Kind of a party animal, actually. The kind of guy that could get out of control. Doing something like that could be a real black eye for the team. Simon, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“The assistant coach is covering up his players’ bad behavior.”
“This is it,” she said. “I think we have our case.”
“Are you kidding? Alex, this isn’t a game. It’s criminal behavior. Like, felony-level. You need to go to an authority with this.”
“Oh yeah? Why haven’t they done anything yet? Plus, they won’t believe me anyway. I have no evidence except what I saw.”
“Katie—”
“Won’t talk,” Alex interrupted. “She’s been avoiding me ever since I went to see her at the health center. Plus, nothing actually happened to her. And even if they do a tox screen and find whatever he gave her, how do we draw that connection?”
He pressed his lips together and ran his hand through his shaggy hair. “But it would show that a crime has been committed. It would put the right people on alert.”
“Honestly, Simon, I don’t trust the university to do the right thing in this case. Not for a second. I mean, at least one official is complicit in covering it up. Who’s to say there aren’t others?”
“If that’s true,” said Simon, exasperated, “what do you think you can do about it?”
“Find our evidence and then make this very, very public.”
Simon shut his computer. “Alex, I think this is going too far.”
“Too far? Simon, what did you think this was all about? Homework? A hobby? It’s about getting up and doing something.”
“There’s a difference between doing something and getting ourselves expelled, or worse. And then there’s Katie. There’s a reason she didn’t want to talk. We’re just going to make it worse for her.”
“We’ll keep her out of it.”
“Whatever we do, she’s going to be a part of it. If you go poking around this particular thicket, they’re going to think she blabbed, even if she didn’t.”
“Well, what about the next girl? It could have been me. It could still be, if we don’t do anything about it.”
“Don’t try to manipulate me,” he said. “You’re not that good at it. Yet.”
She put her hand on his arm. “Simon. This is important to me. It could be the most important thing I’ve done in my entire life.”
Simon screwed up his face. “Fine. I know it’ll bite me in the ass, but I’ll help.”
Chapter 40
Conley drove his black Camaro Coupe south on I-93 while Frieze examined the wound on her arm. The elevator cable had torn her shirt to shreds. She had at least two deep cuts, but it was hard to assess the extent of the injury.
This wasn’t her first time seeing her own blood, or even the first time sustaining damage like this. Still, it made her woozy. The pain fueled a conflagration of rage inside her.
“I’m going to nail the Hornig people.”
“It wasn’t them,” said Conley. He wasn’t looking at her, which meant he was ashamed. He was hiding something.
“What?”
“Trust me. Whatever she’s hiding, it’s not this. Hornig had nothing to do with what happened to Watson or to us. Not directly, anyway.”
The bastard. What did he know that he wasn’t telling her? “Then who did?”
“It’s complicated.” His handsome face was blank. As usual, she couldn’t get anything past that wall.
“Whatever.” She wasn’t in the mood. There would be a reckoning. Later. Now, she was bleeding. “Do you have anything I could use to—?”
“First aid kit in the glove compartment. How’s the cut?”
One thing about that man: he paid attention when it mattered. “I’ll survive,” she said, opening a packet of gauze.
“That was some quick thinking back there.”
“Yeah.” She wasn’t eager to relive it. Instead, she focused on cutting what still held together of the sleeve of her shirt.
“Seriously,” he said. “I probably wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for you.”
She poured rubbing alcohol over the wound, winced, inhaling through her teeth as she cleaned away the drying blood with gauze, exposing her quivering flesh. Fresh blood welled up from the cut. “Don’t mention it.” Then she added: “Really, don’t.”
She opened another packet of gauze and held it against the gash as she rolled the bandages around it as tight as she could.
Conley pulled off the highway somewhere near Quincy.
“Where are we going?”
“We have a safe house set up for this kind of situation,” he said. “More than one, actually.”
They were driving into a middle-class residential neighborhood, all ranch-style houses and minivans. Not the first place you’d look for a clandestine intelligence operation’s safe house.
“What? I need to go into the office and file a report. I don’t have a moment to—”
“We can’t afford to be visible right now. You especially, since it seems they know you by name. If you go where you’re expected, they’re going to try again until they succeed. The only thing that saved us this time is that we knew how Watson died. Do you think they’re going to make the same mistake next time?”
“I’m in the FBI,” she said. “I don’t run from a cheap threat like—”
“The organization behind the attempt on our lives is far more dangerous than the FBI. No offense, but the Bureau won’t save you.”
He turned into a single-story house that stood out for being built out of bricks—better, she supposed, at resisting gunfire. He pulled the Camaro into the garage and punched in a code on a keypad at the door, which unlocked with a beep.
Conley held the door open for her.
On the inside, the house was furnished just as a rented house might be. Cheap pine furniture, upholstered with rough chenille. Walls whitewashed and bare. Old brown carpeting. Impersonal and depressing.
Frieze was sticky with blood, smelling of iron. First order was to wash her hands. The pipes hadn’t been used in a while, and it took a few seconds after she opened the faucet before the water in the bathroom sink sputtered out, and yet a few more for the brown rust to turn clear. She washed her hands and arm and examined her face in the mirror. Somehow she had gotten blood on her face and neck, too.
After washing up as best she could, Frieze emerged from the bathroom. She felt light-headed, as if, having done everything there was to do at the moment, her mind found its opportunity to check out.
She collapsed onto the scratchy couch.
A strange euphoria crept up on her. When faced with death, it had a way of coming into sharp focus. She was alive. It was beautiful. It was a miracle. Colors grew more vivid and her whole body tingled with sensation. Even the sting of the gash on her arm felt glorious.
And the world itself seemed transformed. Usually, being alive was usually just a background fact, like sunlight, and everything around her receded into the background, all but whatever was relevant to her current objective. But now, she was noticing everything. The colors and the texture of the faded furniture, the cracks on the walls and spiderwebs in the corners, the way the sunlight that peeked into the room and projected onto the wall flickered as the wind outside moved the branch of a tree.
She was filled with the beauty and exhilaration of it. She was high on being.
Peter Conley came out of the bedroom, where he had been washing up in the second bathroom.
“You’re going to need stitches on that paper cut.”
Frieze couldn’t take her eyes off him.
“What?” he asked. “Do I have something on my face?”
Without breaking her gaze, Lisa Frieze got up and kissed him, running her hands through his hair. Startled, he settled into the kiss, putting his arm around her waist.
She wa
s breathless when she broke away from him.
“Lisa, I—”
“Shut up.” She pressed her lips to his. This time he leaned into it, pulling her in close.
She tugged at his shirt, breaking the buttons, fumbling in her haste to open the last ones without breaking from their kiss. He reached behind her and undid her bra through her shirt with a swift practiced motion.
She ran her lips over his neck, kissing him, tasting his skin salty with sweat. She pulled his shirt down off his shoulders, revealing his lean and sinewy upper body, scarred by past violence, and the tattoo of the cougar on his arm, curled and ready to pounce.
She gasped as he kissed her ear, grabbing at the skin on his back and feeling the movement of his powerful muscles.
Every touch, every scent, all her senses were magnified by their near death. With Peter Conley, she lost herself in a whirlwind of sensation, in a state of grace of being alive.
Chapter 41
The university athletic building bore all the signs of its recent renovation—shiny new floors, flags and pennants hanging from the ceiling, a ten-foot-tall graphic of the Springhaven Raptor. Straight through were the athletic facilities. Through a set of glass doors on the right was the athletics office. Its walls were adorned by team pictures, recent and vintage, and a trophy shelf ran along the entire extent of the room, a few feet off the drop panels of the ceiling.
“I’m here to see Coach Groener.”
The student receptionist, a junior or senior whose muscular frame told that she was an athlete, checked a list on a clipboard. “You’re from the Inquirer, right?”
“Right.”
“I have a friend in the Arts and Entertainment section. Isabel. You know her?”
“Yeah, definitely,” she said. “I mean, she doesn’t know of me. Just a freshman and everything. And we’re in different sections. But her new haircut looks great.”
Alex had done her homework.
“Doesn’t it though?” She smiled. “Go right ahead. He’s expecting you. Just knock on his door before you go in.”
Alex crutch-walked over the new carpets to a door that read ASSISTANT FOOTBALL COACH ADAM GROENER and knocked.
“Come in!” said a gruff voice inside.
She opened the door. The coach, sitting behind his desk, was a thickset man in a polo shirt bearing the school’s colors, maroon and gray. His square face, sitting on a thick neck, was accented by a buzz cut, still a full head of hair, but the first gray hairs appearing on his temples. He extended a meaty paw to invite her to sit down.
“So you’re from the Inquirer?” he asked.
Alex leaned the crutches against the desk and sat. She was all smiles. “That’s right.”
“They have a website, you know,” he said, making a show of scrolling through a website on his computer. “You’re not on the masthead.”
She took his suspicion in stride. “I’m a freshman. Started this semester. Reporters don’t get on the masthead until induction, and that’s not until April.”
“I thought that might be the case.” He fixed his gray eyes on her. “So I called the office. And you know, it’s the darndest thing. They’ve never even heard of you.” He leaned forward and hissed. “So what is it you want?”
That’s what it was going to be. She dropped all pretense of friendliness. “I’m here to talk to you about Katie Kesey.”
“I’ve never heard the name.” He stood up. He was short but broad-shouldered and barrel-chested. “And I don’t like liars. It’s time for you to go.”
“What did you say to her in the hospital?”
“I’d really rather not call security on a girl with crutches.”
“So you didn’t go see her in her hospital room? Your name’s not on the guest log?”
He leaned forward, hands on the desk, the weight of his upper body resting on his shoulders. “I’ll remind you that patient files are confidential, and it’s a crime to look at them without permission.”
“How many players have you protected? How many rapists did you get off the hook by threatening victims?”
“I’m calling security.” He picked up the phone.
“But you made it your business, didn’t you?” she said, standing. She leaned forward so that their faces were inches apart. She could hear his tense breathing, see his flaring nostrils. His cheeks bloomed red with anger. “You wanted to make sure she wouldn’t get any ideas about going to the police about your star cornerback.”
“That’s enough. Get out of my office. Get out!”
Simon was waiting for her in the door niche outside the athletic center, cowering from the cold.
“Did you get anything?” he asked as they walked together back to the Prather House.
“No. He’s careful. A hidden recorder isn’t going to be enough to hang him. We’ll have to find some other way. But you had to see his reaction, Simon. We’re on to something.”
Chapter 42
Lily waited at the corner of Garden and Philips, travel bag in her hand, shivering in the cold. Baxter sent an executive taxi to pick her up—he would never take time out of his busy schedule to come himself. She was delivered like a parcel to the airport, where she was whisked past security and out onto the runway into the company Learjet 85—three thousand–mile range, Pratt & Whitney Engines, expensive as hell.
Baxter sat with a glass of whiskey in his hand, ice tinkling as he swirled. Next to him was a thickset man in a light gray suit and a cowboy hat.
“About time,” Baxter said.
“Now, that’s no way to treat such a pretty lady,” said the man. “What’s your name?”
“Lily, sir.” Baxter insisted on the sir, even when it wasn’t addressed to him.
“A Brit! How about that?”
“This is Duke Bertrand,” said Baxter.
“And this is the new toy,” he said, leering at her. “The plane, I mean.” Lily knew what he meant.
“She gets the job done when properly motivated.”
Baxter felt up her dress. The flight attendant closed the cabin door.
It was going to be a long flight to San Francisco.
Baxter left the hotel room for whatever business he had in town early the next morning, leaving her with his credit card and “Get yourself something pretty. Show it to me later.”
Lily took a long shower, scrubbing whatever she could of him off her, rubbing the sponge against her skin until it was red and raw. She spent an hour working out her anger on the treadmill in the hotel gym, then took another shower—a quick one to get the sweat off.
Next she called Zeta on her secure cell phone.
“No luck yet,” she said. “He won’t let his cell phone out of his sight.”
“Keep trying,” Kirby said.
“I don’t know how long I can keep this up,” Lily said.
“We’re counting on you.”
She hung up.
Alone in the empty room. She looked at Baxter’s credit card on the desk. Shopping with it felt slimy, like a tacit acceptance of this filthy bargain.
“Sod this.”
She took out her phone and made another call.
“Scott? I’m in town. Let’s do this.”
“I was in the middle of a meeting of upper management.”
“Oh, sorry, shall I call back?”
“That’s all right, upper management is basically three of my old college buddies. Our meetings tend to devolve into hanging out anyway, and we’re just about at that time. Shall I send a car?”
Lily didn’t want anyone at the hotel seeing her leave with another man, so she took a cab to the nearest Best Western, where she waited in the lobby until Scott pulled into the drop-off area in his Infiniti Q60. She opened the passenger door, but he climbed out and tossed her the keys.
“I figured you might drive this time. If you can manage driving on the correct side of the road, that is.”
She grinned.
Lily tore down Interstate 280 in the tight little
coupe. It was a wonder—a feisty, sensitive little thing, responsive to the slightest turn of the wheel.
“So where are we going?”
Scott just shrugged. She laughed.
“You and your secrets.”
“You’ll like this one, I promise.”
“Hey, I loved the aquarium. All those fish and . . . more fish. I think I saw a penguin, too.” She laid her right hand on his knee.
“Well, today’s going to be a bit of a change of pace.”
She turned off the highway at his direction and took another right until they were on a narrow desert road. On this flat expanse was an oval racing track. Lily brought the coupe to a drifting stop and got out, not quite believing what she was seeing.
There, waiting for them, were two Formula One cars.
Lily was speechless.
“So. Want to take one for a spin?”
Chapter 43
“I count three hundred that I can see,” Morgan said.
Morgan passed the binoculars to Honoré, who was leading the reconnaissance mission. He was an excitable and idealistic young man who had lost his family to Madaki’s soldiers. He might have been handsome if his face wasn’t disfigured by a scar, extending from the corner of his lip up to his right temple.
They were lying prone on the crest of a hill, overlooking the house Madaki had occupied for his base of operations. It was a French colonial mansion, paint peeling, wood falling to pieces. The perimeter of the estate was marked by a crumbling wall that had collapsed in two places that Morgan could see. The jungle reached into the long-untended estate toward the house. The preliminary survey was encouraging. Plenty of cover, not much need to fight out in the open.
By the fading light, Morgan saw Madaki’s men walking around their camp, eating their dinner. The convoy of trucks, four in all, was parked near the house.
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