“You should keep your legs farther apart,” he said. Alex wheeled around in surprise, holding the gun out. She pointed it up when she saw that it was her father.
“Jesus, Dad,” she said, exhaling. Her face was red from the cold, which stood out against her white winter hat. “You scared me half to death.”
“Sorry about that,” he said, smiling. “I’ll be sure to make more noise next time I sneak up behind you.”
“How did you find me?” she asked, lowering the gun and holding her arms slack at her sides.
“Phone,” he said, holding up his to show her the map.
“Damn,” she said, running her left hand over the side pocket of her peacoat where he guessed her phone was. “I knew I should’ve left it back home. I guess you’re going to want some kind of explanation.”
“I was hoping you might give me one,” he said.
“Can we get out of the cold first?” she asked, shivering.
He turned back toward his car and motioned her into the passenger seat. First, she handed him the gun, which he put into the glove compartment. Then she took off her gloves—full-fingered bicycle gloves so her finger would fit in the trigger—and blew on her hands to heat them up.
“So?” he said.
She sat back and took a deep breath. “Well, I guess it’s no secret that I’m not exactly a pacifist anymore. My life, these attacks . . . things just don’t make the same sort of sense that they used to, you know?”
“What do you mean, sweetheart?”
“All this regular, everyday stuff. School, college applications, summer jobs.” She stared out into the woods. “It’s like none of that matters anymore. Like it’s all distant, from another life or something.”
“It just sounds like you’re ready for the next stage in your life,” said Morgan.
“What? Going to college? No, Dad. That’s not it. It’s the normal stuff. Picking a major, choosing a career. Going through all that stuff. All that doesn’t make any sense anymore. How could it?” She pulled her hat from her head. “There are evil people in the world. People who would kill us, destroy us completely if they could. And they’re not only abroad. They’re here. They could even be in the goddamn government. The people we’re supposed to trust. How am I supposed to go to college knowing that? How am I supposed to get a job? Have a family?” Her sharp green eyes burned with a beautiful kind of intensity as she spoke.
“Well,” said Morgan, taken aback. It wasn’t the kind of advice he’d ever give her, but he certainly saw her point. “What else are you going to do?”
“Be like you, and fight,” she said.
He really should have seen this one coming.
“Honey . . .” he began. He didn’t quite know what to say.
“What? I shouldn’t, because it’s dangerous? Is that what you were going to say?”
“It was something along those lines, yes,” he said chuckling.
“Well, save it,” she said curtly. “I don’t care that it’s dangerous. What else can I do, Dad? What can I do, knowing what I know?”
“Be safe,” he said. “Stay out of trouble rather than go out looking for it. I’m not going to tell you that you’re wrong about this, Alex. But I’ve seen a lot of things in my life. Getting involved in this sort of thing—the danger is amplified, and it’s constant. It’s always there, it never goes away.”
“I understand what you’re saying, Dad. I really do.” She looked out the passenger window, and bit her thumb. Then she looked back at him. “But just tell me this: what would you do, if you were in my place? Would you give up and live a normal life?”
He didn’t have to think too hard about that one. “No, I wouldn’t.”
“Well? Why do you expect me to?”
Morgan sighed. She really had him there. There was nothing he could say without sounding like a hypocrite—nothing he could honestly say to change her mind. Maybe that’s what it meant to let them grow up—when you couldn’t lie to them to keep them out of trouble anymore. “You’re going to finish high school. That’s final.”
“If I do, will you teach me how to shoot?”
Morgan thought about it for a second and then said, “Okay.”
“Really?” she asked, beaming.
“Yes. But we keep this just between us, do you understand? I don’t think your mother would approve of this new . . . lifestyle choice. We can tell her later. Do we have a deal?”
“We have a deal,” she said with a big grin on her face.
“All right. That’s enough for today. Let’s get home.”
She opened the passenger door. Before getting out, she turned to him and said, “I love you, Daddy.”
“Love you too, honey. Drive safely.”
CHAPTER 21
New York, January 22
Morgan looked into the window of the Laundromat. He saw Len Stuart sitting inside in one of the chairs, wearing one of those hands-free phone earpieces as he’d been told to. He was staring at a load of laundry tumbling in a dryer a few feet to his right—not quite facing away from the front door as instructed, but close enough. Morgan could still see most of the back of his head, with thinning light hair and an incipient bald spot. He was fidgeting nervously with his hands, turning his head twitchily, like he was expending a lot of effort not to turn around.
Morgan opened the door and immediately felt the dry heat coming off of the machines. Stuart made like he was going to look back, at Morgan, but stopped himself in time. Good boy. Morgan took off his hat and pulled off his gloves. The door behind him swung shut, closing off the sounds of the street. He sat down directly behind Stuart, so that each faced away from each other. In front of him, a middle-aged Latina woman was folding her clothes while a young man in baggy jeans was loading a washer. A young woman and an old man were sitting in separate chairs with their respective baskets. Morgan took out his phone, pretended to dial, and then held it to his ear.
“Hello, Len,” he said. “Don’t turn around. Do not—” Len remained still. “Good. Glad to see you here. Did you miss me?” The sound of the washers and dryers was enough to mostly drown out their voices.
“Let’s see,” spat Stuart. “You sent a whore to my apartment to drug me. Then you tied me up, threatened me, and beat me. What do you think?”
“I think you knowingly profited from a terrorist attack that killed a lot of innocent people,” said Morgan. “Apart from that, you’re a creep and an asshole. What of it?”
“You were the one in the red mask, weren’t you?”
“I’d advise you not to speculate too much about who I am,” said Morgan. “It could be hazardous to your health.”
Stuart sighed impatiently. “The bitch gave me a concussion. Did you know that?”
“I’m sure you suffered terribly,” said Morgan with mock-concern. A woman across the room started a dryer, which whirred softly. “How about I give a call to someone who was orphaned by one of the attacks you profited from, and you can cry on their shoulder?”
“How about we just get this over with?”
“I’m sure you’re very eager to do your part to set things right. That would set your conscience at ease, wouldn’t it, Len? Just remember, if you turn around or try to sneak a peek in any other way, I break your nose.”
He raised his voice slightly in that last phrase, and the Latina looked up and gave him a sidelong glance, but then went right back to folding a man’s white dress shirt.
“How could I forget, when you put it like that?” Stuart said bitterly.
“Good boy,” Morgan said. “So, the man. He made contact with you again?”
“Yeah. A letter. I found it in the mailbox in my building, inside an envelope.”
“No return address, I take it?”
Stuart scoffed, but Morgan noticed that beads of sweat were forming on the back of his head. “He sent it by courier. There’s a name and a signature.”
“Helpful. Did you bring the envelope?” asked Morgan.
; “Yeah, I got it right here. Thought it might be useful. See, I’m looking out for you. You beat me, you threaten me, and still I do right by you.”
“You’re a paragon of selflessness,” Morgan said. “All right, Len, let’s have it then. You’re going to pass it to me under the chairs, on your right-hand side. Understand?”
“Got it,” he said. “Now?”
“On my mark. Three, two, one, go.”
Morgan reached down, and searching with his hand, he found the proffered envelope. It was light cardboard. He brought it up to his lap. He looked down at it and saw that it had the label of a courier company. He opened it and drew out the paper inside. Holding it at his lap, he unfolded it carefully to glance at it.
“Are you kidding me?” he said when he saw its contents.
“That’s what I got,” said Stuart. “Exactly as it was delivered to me.”
Morgan looked at the note again and then said, “I’ll be in touch.” He tucked the note into his jacket pocket, got up, and put his hat on. The bell on the door rang as he pushed it open, and walked back out into the cold.
Morgan waited down the block from Stuart’s building, conspicuously holding a manila envelope in his gloved hand. The sun, already low in the sky, shone off the windows of the buildings overhead. Morgan looked at his watch, then up to see the bicycle approaching. Right on time, a lean young man in full gear rode along and stopped in front of him, skidding for two feet on slush as he did.
“Hey, man, are you the pickup?” he asked without getting off his bike. He had blond stubble on a dopey face and curls peeked out from under his helmet.
“Yeah,” said Morgan. “Listen, I need to have a word with you.”
“A word? Hey man, I got less than fifteen minutes to make it all the way to Canal Street. Is that the package there?” He began to reach for the envelope.
“Stay,” said Morgan, pulling back the envelope and offering him a folded fifty instead. “I’ll make it worth your while.”
The man looked backwards and forwards nervously. Morgan could tell he wasn’t used to taking bribes. He looked like he’d gone to college, one of those granola health-freak types, doing this as a day job while trying to make it in the city. But apparently, his need spoke louder, because he took the proffered bill and got off his bike. “All right, what’s up?”
“You delivered something earlier today to that building down there. Ring a bell?”
“Hey, what is this?” he said, frowning and leaning back. “I deliver a lot of things. I don’t remember anything about particular pickups.”
“It’s very, very important that you tell me everything you can about the delivery of this envelope.” Morgan pulled out of his jacket the envelope that Stuart had given him.
He looked at it, then looked around at the street, careful to keep his eyes averted from Morgan’s. “Look, we don’t look at the documents we send, and we don’t look too hard at the person sending it either. A little thing called privacy? Customers tend to value that. And they put that stuff on the Internet these days, you know? If they’re not satisfied, they’ll write us up. If it gets out that we’re not treating their stuff the way we say they do . . .”
“Come on, I’m sure you can tell me something about the man who sent it.”
“Are you with the police or something?” he asked, getting more nervous by the second.
“No. Not police. Just someone who’s really interested in finding the man who sent this.”
“Look, man,” he said, “all we need is a name and a signature, and those you’ve got on that envelope there.” That he did. The name on the package was James Helfer. Shepard had halfheartedly looked it up in the database and found only two in the city—one who was eighty-four years old, and another who was seven.
“You took the package from him, didn’t you? Is there a rule against describing him for me?”
“Technically, no,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean it won’t cost me my job if someone finds out.”
“Nobody’s going to find out,” said Morgan. “What harm could it be? Look,” he went on, lowering his voice, “the thing is, I’m a PI. This guy’s been blackmailing my client. It’s a thing from his past, nothing major, just a minor indiscretion, but it could cost him his job and his relationship. If you come through for me here, it could make a big difference in this guy’s life.”
“Look, man, I don’t want any trouble. I’m not supposed to be giving out customer information like this. It could cost me my job.”
“What if I sweetened it a little more?” Morgan offered him another fifty. The man hesitated nervously. “Hey, this guy’s a blackmailer. Do you really want to go out of your way to protect him? Scout’s honor, nobody ever finds out about this.” He took out another fifty and offered it to the man. “Come on. Take it. All I want is a description.”
The courier looked around again, then took the money without looking down and stuffed it into his shorts. “He was a small guy. He was wearing a Yankees hat and big sunglasses, but I could tell he looked Chinese or something. Young, I think. Like under thirty. Black hair, looked like it was cut short, like a couple inches.”
“Anything else?” said Morgan.
“That’s all—no, wait. I just remembered. He had this bandage on his forehead, just peeking out under his hat. I swear I saw a little bit of red, like there was blood seeping through.”
“What do we make of this?” said Bloch, standing at the head of the conference table in the war room at Zeta headquarters. Morgan was sitting at the table, along with Shepard, O’Neal, and Bishop. Shepard, wearing the same plaid shirt over a grey graphic tee he’d had on the day before, had his face buried in a laptop, as usual. Bishop had pushed his chair a few feet away from the table, and sat with crossed arms and extended legs. Together, they were trying to figure out what their next step would be.
The note that Stuart had passed Morgan had been scanned, and the image was now up on the big monitor. Like the previous one, it contained a date, a time, a location written on it—this time, a restaurant downtown—and a dollar amount. It was much the same as the previous note, except that it demanded fifty thousand in cash, and that it was handwritten.
“I had the computer analyze the handwriting,” said Shepard. “But it won’t help very much unless we have something to compare it to, which means it will not help us find our guy.”
“Did you gather anything at the address he provided for the handoff?” Bloch asked Bishop, who’d been down to scout the place.
“It’s an Asian cuisine place,” he said. “It’s nothing fancy, and there doesn’t seem to be anything shady about the people who run it.”
“Their finances are clean,” said O’Neal, resting her chin on her hand with a sigh. “Nothing fishy in their income taxes, at least, and the cash flow seems pretty standard for a business that size.”
“So there’s nothing special about this location,” said Bloch, walking pensively along the length of the table, her heels clicking on the dark stone floor. “What do we make of the fact that the note was handwritten?”
“It’s definitely far more personal than anyone in this situation should be comfortable with,” said Bishop. “Not what you’d expect for a guy who prizes anonymity so much. But maybe there is some upside to the handwritten note that we’re not seeing. . . .”
“Hard to see what that would be,” said O’Neal. “If he’s got access to the same typewriter, why make it different?”
“You’re assuming he did have access to it,” said Morgan. “You’re looking at this the wrong way. The bandaged forehead, the courier delivery, the new number. And look at this handwriting.” He pointed at the screen. “It’s shaky as all hell, written in a rush. This doesn’t have any of the careful style from before. No, something’s different. Something’s happened. Gone wrong. He’s lost his footing. He no longer has some of the resources he had before. For some reason, he can’t go back to wherever he stored that typewriter.”
“So,
what?” said Bishop, sitting up and leaning forward, suddenly interested. “You think the feds caught up with him or something?”
“Not likely,” said Shepard flatly, without looking up from his computer. “There’s nothing up on the system. My guess would be someone on the other side of the law is after him.”
“So the fact that he’s still trying to get this money means he’s desperate,” said Bloch.
“That would be my guess,” said Morgan. “Something happened, and he needs the money. My guess is that he needs to disappear off the face of the Earth, and fast.”
“Which means . . .” started Shepard.
“. . . that we need to capture him,” said Bloch, setting two hands down on the table and looking at the assembled team intensely. “And we’ll have exactly one shot to do it before we lose him for good.”
CHAPTER 22
New York, January 28
They had prepared for the operation as much as possible given the time constraints. They had each separately scoped the place, which was a small unpretentious family-owned Vietnamese restaurant called the Lucky Noodle. It wasn’t normally too busy, they found, but hardly ever empty either. It wasn’t the ideal spot, but it had no security cameras. There were also two ways in and out, the front and the back, and the street outside was clearly visible from the main dining room inside. The tac team, however, had it all covered. There was no way they’d lose him if he went into that restaurant.
Morgan arrived early in his GTO. Diesel had parked a truck overnight across the street from the place. They timed it so that he pulled out just as Morgan arrived, leaving an ample parking space behind. Morgan was going to hang back on this one, act the lookout and wheelman so they had somewhere to usher their target when they got him, and be ready to give chase if he had to. It was a long wait, during which he sipped on hot tea from a thermos and pretended to read a newspaper he had propped up on the steering wheel, but kept an eye on the street. It was just after 11:30, late enough that the restaurant was open but early enough to miss the lunchtime crowd. Finally, he saw Rogue walk by and then enter the restaurant through the front door. A few moments later, giving no indication that they were together, Bishop did the same.
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