“Vasquez?” The one word said everything.
“No. Not today.”
“The wolf?” He looked a little skeptical at that. But he should. She’d been the one to suggest it the past several times.
“No.” Though she let Donovan drive the car, she had plans. “First, go to the hotel that Vasquez is keeping Jake Salling at.”
He was headed there, sitting behind cars, waiting at lights, and eventually running through a Jack in the Box for a disturbingly tasty and horribly bad-for-them breakfast. “Couldn’t we have called?”
She shook her head, “They’re monitoring everything, as they should be. If we call, they’ll know exactly what we ask. Exactly what he answers. I don’t want evidence.”
His eyebrows went up as he took a turn. Once he was through the next light, he spoke again. “I saw you take that stuff from Salling in with you last night. Did you get something? Is that why you want to do this?”
She shook her head again. “I didn’t get anything. Or if I did, I don’t remember any of it. All I have is a normal gut feeling that I can trust this guy. That he really hasn’t had any contact with anyone in his family for going on seven years.” Eleri felt her ribs open, her lungs taking in much needed air as she was using up her oxygen on pure anxiety. Though she was outwardly keeping it under check, her body was still burning fuel faster than she could control it. She’d been eating like a mad woman and breathing like a marathoner for the past twenty-four hours, she realized. “What do you think?”
Donovan stayed quiet for a moment. “Honestly, I think the same thing. What do you want to ask him that no one can know about?”
“The cell.” There wasn’t really time to explain, and it wasn’t really bad or good, she just needed some insight that Jake Salling might have. “The Bureau will know we were here, but we’re going to question him outside. Away from any recordings. Can you keep an eye out?”
This time he frowned at her, but she was already getting out of the car, and heading into the front lobby of the small hotel. Forcing Donovan to keep up, she climbed the steps, getting her leather wallet ready. Eleri flipped it open, holding the ID card up to the peephole as she knocked on the hotel room door. There was no real security. No agent posted outside the door, no headsets, that kind of thing. In fact, the agent was next door, in an adjoining room. Whoever he or she was, they’d drawn the short straw. But Salling wasn’t being held for anything, really. They just wanted to check out his phone, keep him around. Still, they were monitoring all his calls, his interactions. And she wouldn’t put it past Vasquez to bug the room.
When Salling opened the door, she smiled, and put the badge down. “Hello, Agent Eames from yesterday—”
He was already shaking her hand. Still a kid, she thought. A kid she had to look up to. But he was finishing her sentence for her, “And Agent Heath. Good to see you again. How can I help?”
That was it. She turned to look at Donovan, who seemed to give her the okay. “Can you take a walk with us? Just a few more questions. Please.”
For a moment she prayed silently that he would be helpful. He nodded with a quick, happy bob of his head and reached back to grab a jacket. At the Academy agents were trained to react, just like police officers, be aware that he might not be reaching for a jacket, it might be a gun. But not in here, not unless he’d gone out at night and procured one without the agent next door knowing. Eleri didn’t see that happening, as the agent was already sticking his head out the door.
Donovan turned, went back the few steps and talked to him. Showed his badge, and cleared the way for Eleri’s questions. She started asking even as she led Salling away from the other agent, away from his room and down the stairs. No one would be listening here.
“Can you tell me a few more things about your father?” She looked up into the young man’s face.
He looked saddened by the thoughts he had, but he answered clearly. “What do you need to know?”
“How did he feel about Muslims?”
This time Salling reacted. He frowned, jammed his hands in his pockets as he hit the change in the air out the front door. “I told you, he hates them. He hates everyone not like him. Is he targeting them? Is he planning something?”
This was where she broke protocol.
Massively.
“Yes. That picture last night—the one we asked you to name as many people as you could from—it’s a terrorist cell.” She should never have said that, but she needed—needed—something to work with. She needed to know how the cells were connected, besides visits from Ken Kellen.
Salling stopped dead on the sidewalk. He stared into space for a moment. “A real terrorist cell? Like from nine-eleven?”
She nodded.
“I never thought he’d go that far.” The kid almost had tears in his eyes. “I came now because I figured if you put the effort in to bring me back, he must have done something bad. And I can’t let him do it. I can’t stand back while he hurts people.” He sucked in a deep breath, his hands still jammed in his pockets. “Ironically, he’s the one who taught me to stand for what I believe in. He made me understand that sitting back and letting the world go to hell is the same as sending it there. Only . . . Only now I see that he’s on the wrong side, and if I stand, I have to stand against him.” Jake Salling turned on the sidewalk, he saw Donovan coming up behind her, but he looked her in the eyes. “If I’d thought it was this bad, I would have said something sooner.”
“I understand.” Eleri tried to be as empathetic as possible, but she was judging, questioning herself, wondering if she’d made the biggest mistake in the world and was being taken in by an Oscar caliber actor. She wanted to look to Donovan, get his take, but she couldn’t. “You’re helping now. That’s what we need. So what would it take for your father to work together with Muslims or Jews?”
It broke the spell. Apparently just the thought was too much for Salling; he was already shaking his head. “He wouldn’t.”
“So say he was, what would it take?” She struggled, “What if they shared a common goal?”
Eleri sensed Donovan going rigid beside her. He had to have suspected this. She had to know she was throwing it all out there, rolling her dice. She wouldn’t know if she’d hit jackpot or craps until the whole thing was over. Luckily for her, he stayed silent and let Salling answer. Probably he guessed the damage was already done.
“No. He wouldn’t do it.”
“Would he convert?” He hadn’t. That was one thing Eleri was sure of; the group in Calabasas was clutching their Bibles as tightly as they could. If they were secret Muslims or Hindus, she’d eat her sneakers. Or she’d blow up along with the rest of the city.
“He would never convert. And he hasn’t. He couldn’t have.”
“How do you know?” The kid seemed so sure.
“Because, if he had, he would have contacted me. He would have told me that I’m wrong. Used it as a tactic to bring me back. He tried for several years.”
“Was that what we saw on the monthly calls on your cell phone?” Salling looked startled, but as he shook it off, Eleri pressed. “The calls were longer in the beginning.”
“Yes, in the beginning, I just left home one day. I believed I only needed to get out from under his thumb. So when he called to tell me what a horrible son I was, I talked to him. I thought I could explain.” He looked off to the side, into the trees, toward the subdivision beyond the small forest built to keep the people on the sidewalk from seeing into the houses. They didn’t quite do the job, but Eleri left them all to their illusions. “When I quit explaining, he tried to recruit me back. He was right, the longer I was away the more I left the church. Then he got worse, and I quit answering at all. Finally, he said I was dead to him, and I was glad.” He paused. “What kind of son does that make me?”
For a moment, Eleri contemplated her mother’s Vegas anniversary party and she vowed to not complain again. “It makes you the kind of man who sees the future and the kind who’s
strong enough to do what’s right. It’s impressive that you can see the good things he gave you and sort them out. Most people throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
“I did at first.” He pointed to the holes in his ears, his eyebrows. Then he focused somewhere off into space, before turning back to her. “If he converted, to anything, it would be big. It would be a chance to bring his only son back. He believed my bad behavior—even as a child—was why they didn’t have any more sons, so bringing me back was important. Failing with me was a huge failure for him. So, no, he hasn’t converted to any other religion. I’d bet everything I have and everything I know on it.”
And that was what Eleri was looking for.
She turned to Donovan who seemed to catch the gist. He tipped his head, conceding that she’d gotten something important. She turned their walk back toward the hotel. “Agent Vasquez may have some more questions for you. It’s important that you not repeat this conversation with anyone. If anyone asks you these same questions, answer them honestly, but don’t tell anyone what we talked about today. If it ever becomes okay to do so, it will be obvious.”
He nodded at her, his eyes looking askance at her, then to Donovan. Suddenly, he was wary and she was sorry she’d done that to him, but then she set him free. Told him she’d have Marina get him a burner phone, return his real phone. If the burner phone rang, it meant they had questions. She said the other agent would come back, but she’d take him to his home later in the morning. Then she and Donovan left him back at the hotel with the other agent and headed to their car.
When she closed the passenger door, Eleri spoke. “I think that’s as close as we’re going to get to confirmation that the cells are definitely not working together. They probably don’t even know about each other.”
“So none of them have been following Ken Kellen then.” Donovan added another conclusion. “Well, it seems Aziza and/or Alya may have. But that would mean Kellen shook them before he did anything important.”
“I’m guessing they didn’t follow Kellen or they didn’t get very far if they did.” She thought for a moment as they headed into the Valley to meet up with Walter and her “guy.” “Rollins and Kellen were in Fallujah where the two women started. They knew these girls there, as radicals. They supplied the arms that wound up in their hands. So chances are, the women trust Kellen and maybe Rollins.”
“I’d agree with you there.” He turned the corner, spotting Walter just as she spotted them.
For a while, Eleri harbored fantasies about knocking on the window and startling the former Special Forces operative. Nope. Walter was a Marine. She’d been with MARSOC. She was trained. So Eleri didn’t get to sneak up on anyone in her life these days. Her thoughts turned to the text from Avery Darling that she hadn’t yet returned. His team had won two games and lost one. She’d love to look up the stats or the highlights or even have a moment to figure out anything about the game beyond ‘puck goes in goal,’ but she didn’t have the spare minute to do it. She stole two seconds to type back the words, “Yay, boo, yay,” then turned back to the case.
Eleri closed the car door behind her as Walter did the same, the three of them meeting up casually beside Walter’s rented micro-SUV.
As usual, Walter didn’t stand on any real ceremony. “Have we got some good shit for you.”
She didn’t grin. ‘Good shit’ was just solid intel. But these days, anything was good. Walter’s assessment was right.
Eleri just nodded. “Do you want to bring your guy in to brief us? Is it a good time for that?”
Walter nodded. “We’re pretty sure Kellen’s headed to ground for a bit now. He’s been up for twenty-four hours straight. We’ve taken turns tapping out, but he hasn’t. Plus, there are good signs that this is the last stop. I’ll have my guy tell you about it.”
Eleri nodded again, in unison with Donovan. “Bring him in.”
With the faintest turn of her head and lift of her shoulder, Walter brought her mouth closer to her collar. Her lips almost didn’t move, but Eleri didn’t have to read her lips. She heard the words plain as day.
“Rollins, come on in.”
34
Donovan’s heart stopped for a second. Walter Reed had just called in to “Rollins.”
He took a moment, and when he decided he’d really heard that—partly supported by the stunned look on Eleri’s face—he asked. “Is that Cooper Rollins?”
“Yes.” No waffling about it. No apologies. Just “yes.”
“Why?” It was all he could do not to shout it. Had she really just set up Cooper Rollins to tail Ken Kellen? Had she lost her fucking mind?
“No,” she was calm. “I have not lost my fucking mind.”
Shit. That last part must have been out loud. The way Eleri was looking at him, it had been. For a moment, Donovan closed his eyes. He stood at the gas station, trying to catch a reasonable breath and wondering if everything had gone to hell. If he tried, he could conjure the smell of a fresh corpse on his table. He could smell the liver as he removed it. Pick up the tangy edge of metal from his instruments. He could believe his life was made up of simpler mysteries. Or at least ones that didn’t leave entire major cities dead over a fuck up like this.
He opened his eyes.
No, he was still standing next to a ridiculous looking SUV type car, and Walter Reed was still looking at him like he was the one who’d lost his mind.
“Can you explain this, Walter?” Eleri asked. Apparently she remembered to use her big girl words. Donovan still hadn’t found his yet.
Walter pointed to a restaurant down the street, away from the neighborhood they’d been casing. “How about we head in there and I’ll tell you everything.”
By the time Donovan slid into a booth next to Eleri and ordered coffee just to rent the table, Walter shuffled in across from them and he was feeling a little better. For a moment he wondered if the booth was hard to get into for her, then he squelched it. One—he didn’t care and two—Walter wouldn’t want special treatment.
“I hired him because he’s the best.” She didn’t waste time.
Donovan had always admired her; he just hadn’t been ready to disagree with her so thoroughly. “But he’s also on the watch list.”
Walter nodded. “Yes. Guess what I’ve been doing? Watching him.”
“Except when you were asleep.” Eleri pointed out. Donovan could tell she was as angry as he was, but she hid it a hell of a lot better than he did. Must be that Southern Belle training.
“No.” Walter countered. “I was watching him even then. I put a tracker on him.”
Not good enough. “What if he left it somewhere? Do you really think Cooper Rollins couldn’t slip a tracker? Did you do it without him noticing? And do you really think you got one past him?”
Donovan petered out, and Walter waited until he was done, paused a beat, then answered. “No. None of us can get one past Rollins. Not really. So, no, of course I didn’t try to hide one on him. And yes, of course he could slip a tracker.” Her gaze went back and forth between the two of them, daring them to challenge her, to find a weakness. “That’s why I handed it to him and watched him swallow it.”
She folded her good hand over her metal one and sat at the table staring at them.
Donovan thought for a minute. Aside from field surgery, or a ton of ex-lax—which probably wouldn’t have really worked quite yet, and would be beyond detrimental to the job—Rollins wasn’t slipping that tracker.
While he thought, Walter pulled out her oversize phone and turned the screen to face him and Eleri. She pointed to a dot on the map. Two blocks from where they were. “He’s almost here.”
Donovan blinked.
“How did you get him to agree? Why did you even trust him?”
This time she relaxed and started to speak more freely. “I’ve been following him. Some of it for you—” she looked back and forth between them. “—some of it because I’ve been following Ken Kellen.”
“H
ow does that—”
Her grin interrupted his. “Well, guess who I ran into following Kellen? Rollins, that’s who. He’s trying to track his old army buddy just like us.”
Us.
That’s when he realized he was partly angry about her call to use Rollins because he wasn’t in the loop. Not because it was bad—though he still wasn’t convinced it was good—but more because he wasn’t allowed to be part of it. He was also partly mad because it was the second time it had happened this morning. Eleri had simply told him they were going to talk to Salling without telling him what she was going to spill.
He’d had enough. If the city burned, he’d burn with it as surely as they would.
But he didn’t yell the way he wanted to. “Go on.”
“Rollins is on his own side. He’s not in it to blow anything up. In fact, he confronted Kellen yesterday. I was there, and I stepped in because I was tailing him at the time.”
Donovan had seen that in her report, but he and Eleri hadn’t been able to figure out what it meant. Maybe Walter had.
This time when she looked at her phone, she leaned in, as though telling secrets. “I told him that he was trying to do the right thing, but that if it went down badly, or even if he went down with it, he’d get branded a traitor. He didn’t care. Then I told him his wife and kid would live with that, and exactly how they would live with it. I quoted him some stats about kids who grow up with a parent in prison or famous for a crime. It’s not pretty.”
She was right. Cooper Rollins had been on his own side for a long time.
Just then the man in question pushed through the front door and spotted them. Inside three seconds, he stood at the table, face to face for the first time since they’d brought him in for questioning. This time, when he looked them in the eye, he looked ready to talk. “If you want to come out with me, I’ll drive you over and show you where Ken Kellen has been in the past fifteen hours. And I’ll tell you everything I know.”
The NightShade Forensic Files: Fracture Five (Book 2) Page 30