Lopez spoke up. “Chief Karmody's still in surgery, and Sophia didn't see much. From what I understand from her recall of the attack, she was covered in the chief's blood, so Dr. Malkoff starting shouting about how she was shot, too. I think he believed the gunmen were intending to kill her. He actually hit her—knocked her out so she would appear to be dead. They grabbed him, and ran.”
“ Dave knocked Sophia out?” Decker repeated. “Jesus.”
“It saved her life,” Lopez said somberly. “Oh, and Chief?” He handed Decker a pair of envelopes that looked like they'd been through a war zone. They were crumpled and stained with blood. “Karmody has these in his pocket. Best guess is he was holding on to them for Dr. Malkoff.”
One of them had Decker's name on it. The other had been opened, and it looked as if it were … Yes, it was Dave's will. Crap.
As Decker opened the second one, Jules could see even from several feet away, that like the first, Dave had handwritten it in his nearly illegible scrawl.
As he watched, Decker skimmed it, flipping the page over and …
“Oh, Jesus,” Deck said. He glanced up at both Jules and Lopez as he jammed it back into the envelope, and pocketed it. “It's personal.”
Jules cleared his throat. “I'm going to have to ask you to—”
“Yeah,” Deck said shortly. “I know. I'll let Alyssa see it. If she feels it's necessary to share it with you … That'll be up to her.”
Jules nodded. Worked for him. “I've got some information that falls into the bad-news department,” he said. “Can we go into your office or…”—he glanced again at Dr. Heissman, who was sitting quietly off to the side—“somewhere else we can shut the door?”
“I'll hang here,” Lopez volunteered.
“My office,” Decker said, leading the way.
He was silent as they went down the hall, silent as he led the way into his office.
Jules closed the door behind him. The small room had a lived-in smell—common among law enforcement and counterterrorist specialists, who didn't exactly keep bankers’ hours.
Jules couldn't count how many times in the course of his career he'd slept in his clothes in his office—on the couch or sometimes even on the floor. You'd sleep, you'd eat, you'd sweat, you'd change your shirt, maybe wash up in the sink if you felt you could take a few minutes’ break.
But mostly you just sat there and got more and more ripe.
Except the gym locker fragrance in here had a soupçon of something lovely mixed in. Perfume.
And sure enough, as Jules looked around, he could see that the somewhat Neanderthalish Decker had been sharing his cave, so to speak.
A sweater was on the floor along with some notepads filled with loopy handwriting, a blanket was on the sofa, and a pair of high-heeled sandals had been kicked under one of the chairs.
Huh. And Deck's desk was curiously, absolutely clear.
And—oh, ding—something small and white and silky and just the right size to be a style of underwear that absolutely would never fit Decker peeked out from behind a throw pillow that had landed on the floor in the far corner of the room.
Well, you go, D-Dawg.
Jules worked to keep his expression neutral, instead of wide-eyed and openmouthed in amazement. Tracy—and it had to be Tracy. Those shoes did not belong to Jo Heissman or Jay Lopez. And, yes, Tracy was pretty dang cute, but probably the dead-last person in San Diego Jules would have ever imagined hooking up with someone as grim and perpetually, quietly angry as Decker.
Except, this fiasco with Dave aside, Decker currently didn't seem to be quite as angry. Way to go, Tracy.
“What have you got?” Deck asked as he sat behind his clutter-free desk. “An address from the plate numbers on Tracy's picture of Michael Peterson would be nice.”
Jules sat in one of the chairs instead of on the sofa, where, despite the clear desk, the aura of a recent happy-fun-time lingered. “Yeah, a friend of a friend in San Diego PD. I pulled some favors and she ran the plates, completely on the lowdown. We got a name—Karen Michaelson—and an address. An empty apartment in Spring Valley. I got Yashi and Deb out here—both on their own time—seeing if they can't track her down.”
“Michaelson, huh?” Decker shook his head. “Girlfriend? Wife?”
Jules shrugged. “No idea. But in the event that she is? I'm going to want to show her those photos of our man Peter-slash-Michael doing the naked thang with the doc.”
Decker nodded. He clearly understood that jealousy was often right up there among the possibilities when it came to making a family member of a suspect spill the proverbial beans. “Dr. Heissman's been cooperative, so let's be careful not to let those pictures get distributed too widely.”
“Of course,” Jules said.
“What else?” Decker, perceptive as always, asked. “You said bad news.”
“Yeah.” Jules sighed. “When the lab report on the knife Liam Smith used to stab Dave came back, it sat on CIA Special Agent Bill Connell's desk. He was supposed to notify both Dave and the hospital, but he says it allegedly slipped through the cracks. Guy's a total dick, by the way, and if Dave dies, I'm going to make sure he's looked at for negligent homicide. I may do it anyway—throw an attempted in there. Motherfucker.”
“Bill Connell,” Decker repeated.
Jules nodded as he watched Deck store the name in his permanent memory banks. Bill didn't know it yet, but should anything happen to Dave? The man was totally fucked. “Bottom line, the weapon was a biological nightmare. The amount of bacteria was… Well, knives are rarely antiseptic, but this one?” He shook his head.
“It was intentional,” Decker said. It wasn't quite a question, but Jules answered it anyway.
“Had to be,” Jules agreed. “The other knife on the scene contained normal trace amounts of ick and germs. Alyssa has a copy of both lab reports, if you want to see them.”
“I do,” Deck said.
“It's a hard copy. Don't spill your coffee on it. We're not sending anything via e-mail that's not completely scrambled,” Jules said, “and there wasn't time to fix this document. Speaking of there wasn't time, we brought Tess back with us, to check out Tracy's computer.”
Decker was not pleased. “What the fuck?”
It was clearly a rhetorical question, but Jules tried to answer it anyway. “There was no way we could risk bringing that computer to the safe house, and it may hold some answers.”
“And you think Nash is just gonna sit still while—”
“Yes,” Jules said. “He is. He's walking, but not without a cane. He's in no condition to jump onto the roof of a speeding train, or whatever it is you former Agency operatives do to catch your suspects. And he knows it.”
As an agent with the FBI, Jules usually did a lot of math in the course of an investigation. And then he drove to the address of the suspect in a really nice car, put on a bulletproof vest, and followed the SWAT team inside. It wasn't every day that he was actually the one to kick in the door. Of course, having done it more than once, he could understand the appeal.
He could also understand how excruciating it would be, to be injured and forced onto the sidelines while his life partner took incredible risks.
But the words Tess said to Nash had apparently resonated. They were a team. Not just Tess and Nash, but all of them. They were in this thing together. And wasn't that the truth?
“I gotta call him,” Deck said.
“I'm sure he's not sleeping,” Jules again agreed.
Decker brought himself back to the issue at hand. “Theories on the knife?” he asked.
“I'm thinking our bad guys were shaking the tree, seeing what fell out. They target Dave—known to be a friend of Jim Nash, with the hope that, after being attacked, Dave would either run to Nash, or Nash would reach out to Dave. But if nothing happened within a certain time frame, even if Dave went underground, by using that extra-dirty knife, they could pretty much bank on him resurfacing for a return trip to the hospita
l. Which is where he needs to be, by the way. Intravenous antibiotics. As soon as possible.”
“You think they're going to contact us?” Deck asked. “Attempt a trade? Dave for Nash?”
“Nash thinks it's more likely that they'll try enhanced interrogation first. Gosh, that sounds almost lovely, doesn't it. Enhanced.”
Decker swore. “Dave doesn't know where Nash is. Torturing him won't… Shit.”
“He wouldn't tell 'em even if he did know,” Jules said. “He's Dave. So. What do we do, Chief? Do we tell Sophia about the knife or… ?”
“We tell her,” Decker said, nodding grimly. “I tell her.”
Jules nodded, too. “That's not going to be much fun. If you want, I'll—”
“No.”
Jules sighed. “All right.” He stood up. Looked at the door. Looked back. “Chief, do you think of me as a friend?”
“Yes, I do,” Decker answered, no hesitation.
“I'm having a hard time with the murdered seven-year-old,” Jules confessed. “When we find the guys responsible, I'm going to kill them. I thought you should know that. I don't give a fuck if it's the head of the Agency or the Queen of England. No quarter, no mercy. They are fucking dead.”
Decker nodded. “I hear you.”
“And when it's all said and done? I'm probably going to need a new job,” Jules told him. “If my marriage is recognized in California after November … I may be knocking on your door.”
“You're welcome here,” Decker reassured him. “Always.” “Thank you,” Jules said. “So. In the spirit of our excellent friendship? You definitely need a few tips on how to 24/7 it in your office. One, air freshener. Two, put your shit back on your desk, so that you and everyone else in the office can pretend you weren't using the surface for non-work-related activities. Three, there's no such thing as an underwear elf. Even when it goes missing, it's somewhere in the room. So make sure you find it.” He pointed to the corner.
“Oh, hell,” Jules heard Decker say as he firmly shut the door behind him.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
Jimmy was sitting in the panic room with the actor and the sleeping baby, listening to Robin's theories as to why Sam and Alyssa had named the kid Ash instead of after Sam's Uncle Walt—a member of the illustrious Tuskeegee Airmen and a WWII hero—who'd been the father figure and positive role model in Sam's life.
Apparently there was some spooky little boy named Walt on the TV show Lost, and neither Sam nor Alyssa wanted people thinking they'd named their kid after him.
So they'd gone for their second choice, which was a nod not to the punk who'd married Demi Moore, but rather to the Bruce Campbell character in the classic Evil Dead movies.
At least that was Robin's current theory.
“How are you doing?” Robin interrupted himself to ask.
“The helicopter should've gotten them there by now,” Jimmy said.
“Yeah, I know, I'm watching the clock, too.” Robin nodded. “But they're not going to walk in and say, Excuse me, Elite Task Force, I must go call my significant other.”
“Yeah, I know that,” Jimmy said tersely. “It's just hard.” Especially knowing that the bastards—whoever they were—had Dave.
“I wish I could tell you that you get used to it.” Robin sighed. “But you don't.”
Their phones both rang, almost simultaneously. And yes, it was Tess calling him. Jimmy opened his phone.
“Look, I've been thinking,” he said, going point-blank as Robin, who was more mobile, took his call from Jules out in the hall. “We've gotta get Dave back and—”
“We're going to.” Tess's voice was filled with conviction. “You're going to have to do your job there, while we do ours here.”
He closed his eyes, because he didn't want to be a helicopter flight away from her. And it was driving him crazy to think about where Dave surely was, right now. “Yeah, I'm working hard.”
“Well, it's good I came back here.” She ignored his sarcasm. “The security cameras’ signals have been pirated.”
Pirated meant the signal was going out to another receiver. And yes, dealing with that kind of problem was right up Tess's extremely talented alley.
“One of the SEALs—Lopez—noticed a glitch in the system, and when we checked it out, sure enough,” she continued, with that note of thrill in her voice that happened when she was in techno-nerd mode. It was another reason to curse the fact that he wasn't there, because he loved watching her when her eyes lit up and she glowed with the excitement of a challenge. “It's creepy, I have no idea how long they've been watching us, because it wasn't something that would've been noticed on a standard system check. But there's been some kind of short, which makes the digital signal from the camera freeze—which is what brought it to Lopez's attention. After I get off this call, I'm going to pirate the pirate and give ourselves the ability to send our watching friends only those images we want them to see. It's tricky: I can't just create a simple loop, because the sun's going to come up. I have to get creative.”
“Damn that pesky dawn,” Jimmy said.
“Yeah.” She laughed. Paused. “You sound almost okay.”
“I'm not,” he admitted. “I know what they're doing to Dave, and it's making me—”
“We're one step closer to finding him,” Tess said. “Remember Russ Stafford? On the flight over, I figured out why that name sounded so familiar.”
Jimmy sat up. “You think Russ is our man?”
“I do,” Tess said. “His name sounded familiar because it was. It came up during an assignment in 2003.”
Which was back when she'd worked, like him, for the Agency. Only she'd worked a desk down in Support.
“But there's something I need to ask you first,” she said. “Have you ever skimmed funds from money that you seized while working an Agency op?”
“Define skimmed,” Jimmy said. “Because when you're out in the field, and you need to make a quick escape, you take what you need to survive.” Which sometimes included the contents of someone else's wallet. “A trip to the ATM isn't always prudent, so—”
“No,” she said. “I'm talking about significant amounts of money. Like, enough to slow you down while you figure out a way to transfer it into some offshore account.”
“Slow me down?” he said. “Not a chance. Most of my assignments were in places where if I was found—by anyone—I'd be killed. Arranging to transfer money takes time and contacts who don't want to kill you. Although if I saw a situation where large sums of money were going to fall into, say, al Qaeda's hands? I'd intervene. Maybe push it in another direction. An anonymous donation to the local orphanage.”
“Okay,” she said. “Maybe that's what happened, which is too bad because it means I'm probably wrong about Stafford.”
“How much money went missing?” he asked, knowing that this was where this conversation was going.
“Fifteen million dollars,” Tess told him.
“Shit,” he exhaled on a laugh. “No. That would require a truck to move. That's not a slip-an-envelope-through-an-orphanage-mail-slot deal. Can you give me details?”
“Abida Talpur,” she said. “September 1999. His deletion was on your list.” She managed to say it without the pause that most people added before the word deletion, but then she added, “For his terrorist activities—”
“I know what he did,” Jimmy interrupted her. Abida Talpur was responsible, in 1998, for taking out an Air Kazbekistan jet carrying the K-stani minister of defense—and two hundred and twenty other men, women, and children, all of whom had died. Talpur had planned it, paid for it, and celebrated it. And so, in 1999, Jimmy was assigned to erase him from the surface of the earth. Which he'd done, gladly and, as it turned out, rather easily.
He'd gone in, done the job, and gotten out.
“I didn't get close to Talpur,” he told Tess now. “I took a sniper shot from a mountainside. I didn't even go into the city. I hiked out, across the border.”
> “Okay,” she said. “Good. Then Russ Stafford's back on our list. Because when Talpur died, he had assets of close to forty million dollars. I don't know if you paid attention to the political and financial ramifications of Talpur's death—”
“I did,” Jimmy said. “But it's been a while.”
“Talpur didn't have a son, didn't have any surviving male relatives,” Tess told him, “except for this one brother who'd been exiled. So Hersek Khosa, the friendly warlord next door, moved in and absorbed Talpur's property and holdings. His empire, so to speak. But in the spring of 2003, Talpur's brother manages to get back into the country, and he cries foul— claiming that Abida was killed by a squadron of U.S. soldiers, who were in league with Khosa.”
“Not a soldier in sight,” Jimmy confirmed.
“By 2003, we'd pulled our embassy and all troops out of the region, and the borders were locked down, pretty tightly. We were looking for a reason to get operatives in, so we sent an ‘official’ team to investigate. I was on support for that assignment. And here's where it gets really interesting.
“I was digging through intel,” Tess continued, “just doing my job, collecting all the information I could find for the agents in the field, and I come upon a discrepancy in Talpur's bank records. We'd been watching his assets pretty closely before his removal, because of his terrorist ties, and we had what seemed to be a very accurate accounting of his funds— which, like I said, totaled about forty million, give or take a few hundred thousand.
“But we're also watching the assets of Hersek Khosa, because we're keeping track of everyone in the region who has money, and I notice, huh. Khosa absorbed Talpur's assets, but the numbers are off by fifteen million dollars. It's just gone. And I check and I recheck and I pull all sorts of files and it's just not there. And I'm getting worried, because a terrorist can do a lot of damage with that much money. So I write up a complete report, including all kinds of information like the name of Khosa's Agency handler—and okay, the fact that Khosa even had an Agency handler alone is something of a surprise—”
“Not to me,” Jimmy said.
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