by D. L. Line
“What?” Bobby answered quickly, never taking his eyes off the road as he changed lanes to stay close to the motorcycle.
“You said that you knew it. What were you talking about?”
“Remember when I had you go into the library. The part when I told you that she was cruising your butt? I was concerned that she was following you, and not just because you have a great butt, which you do, by the way, but that’s not the issue.”
“What is the issue? Do you think she pegged me as a cop?”
“That’s exactly what I think. She was watching the college kids, spotted you, and for whatever reason, decided that you were something she wanted to check out, but not in a good way, you know?”
Terri had no idea what to think about this revelation, other than to be relieved by the fact that Faith seemed more interested in screwing around with, and perhaps losing, the FBI on her tail. That meant that Jen and Denny would have been able to leave and go home stress-free, a fact which made Terri feel immensely better. Not that this wasn’t a huge fucking mess, but Jen’s safety gave Terri one less thing to worry about.
Her moment of relief was short lived as she noticed the blip on her receiver take a hard left turn several blocks ahead. “She made the left onto K Street.”
“Yeah, I’m on it. God, I wish I knew where the hell she was headed.” He hit the intersection fast, slowing just enough to make the turn, while Terri silently thanked the light for staying green and held on for dear life. After only five blocks, the blip turned right, making things immensely more complicated.
“Bobby, she turned right on Twelfth, but that’s one-way the wrong way. Shit. I think I know where she’s going.”
“Where?” Bobby asked as he crossed 12th and headed for 11th in order to make a right turn.
“Considering that she stopped to wait for us means that she’s aware that we have a tracer on her bike. Metro Center is on Twelfth and it’s the height of rush hour. She’s got three train lines to choose from and a huge amount of people to get lost in. Plus, it’s only two blocks from headquarters, and I think she wants to poke us.”
“Crafty bitch.” Bobby snarled as he made the turn on 11th in order to circle down and around to get on 12th going the proper direction. “Where is she?”
Terri looked closely at the GPS receiver. “She’s stopped on the corner of Twelfth and F Streets. Take a right on F and head that way.”
Bobby made the sharp right onto F Street, followed by a second right turn to get onto 12th Street, and pulled to a stop just outside the entrance of the station. Terri spotted the bike, parked illegally on the street. Terri didn’t see Faith anywhere, but motion on the receiver drew her attention.
“Shit, Bobby, she has the tracer. She must have found it under the seat before she left the parking lot up at the college. I knew it was taking her too long to get moving again.” She tossed the receiver toward Bobby and jumped out of the van, closing the door behind her, talking through the open window on the passenger side. “If that blip goes any direction other than straight ahead, let me know.” Before Bobby had a chance to protest, Terri was moving fast, headed directly toward the escalator that led to the tracks below street level.
She ran down the escalator, elbowing her way past people as gently as an FBI agent in pursuit of a suspect could, digging in her pocket for her identification and badge. She hit the ground running, past the ticket machines, and made a beeline toward the stationmaster’s glass booth. She skidded to a halt on the grimy brick floor, knocked on the window with one hand, holding her open identification wallet to the glass with the other, and urged the startled guy in the booth to open a ticket gate for her. As she quietly thanked the stationmaster, the closest gate whooshed open, admitting her into the mass of people and convergence of tracks that was Metro Center. She spoke into the sleeve of her jacket as she stopped long enough to look around and see if Faith was anywhere within view.
“Bobby, anything?”
She heard her earpiece crackle, a little noisier than usual, but there was a lot of concrete between her and Bobby. “Negative, Terri. She should be straight ahead, no more than fifty yards from your location. She didn’t make any turns that I can see from up here.”
“Copy that.” Terri answered as she calculated fifty yards in her head. Her trip down the escalator and into the station was perhaps only about half that, and she hadn’t made any turns to use the escalators for the Blue or Orange Lines, so Faith had to be on the upper platform for the Red Line. Terri watched over the railing as the Shady Grove train pulled out, but not before depositing a large number of arriving commuters onto the already extremely busy platform. Still no sign of Faith.
It only got worse as the Glenmont train arrived, offering a ride in the opposite direction from the first train, adding more commuters to the throng, as well as a touch of panic to Terri’s agitation.
“Bobby, anything yet?”
“Negative. Suspect is not moving.”
“Please repeat. Did you say not moving?”
“Roger that, Terri. She’s dead center on the platform and not moving at all.”
“Understood.” Terri finally started moving, walking slowly down the escalator to the upper platform. There were plenty of people on the platform, but one stationary object caught her eye. Terri realized that her worst fears had come true, and that one stationary object made her wonder how the fuck she was going to tell McNally that she had lost the suspect. The damn thing just sat there, taunting her.
One very tiny red blinking light stuck to the rim of a trashcan.
After one last quick glance around the station, Terri plucked the tracer from its resting place and slipped it into the pocket of her jeans. As much as she wanted to, Terri fought the urge to kick the living shit out of the trashcan. Not like it would fix anything, and as mad as she was, she’d probably wind up breaking her toe or something equally as stupid.
*
Faith laughed to herself as she hid behind the biggest guy she could find, watching out the window from the safety of the Glenmont train. That was one very pissed off cop out there doing the traditional dance of frustration. God, that was fun.
It really was too bad about having to ditch the bike, but she had bigger fish to fry. Faith needed to find out exactly who those cops were and why the fuck they were following her. And she had to find out who had tipped them off.
Chapter Sixteen
Things fell apart, and when they did, it was often difficult to put them back together. Right now, Terri knew this fact better than anyone.
After a short conversation about what they should do next, Terri agreed with Bobby that staying with the motorcycle was probably futile. Since it was parked illegally, the Metro Police would deal with it soon enough, and take it away to wherever it was that they took abandoned vehicles. That left her with the problem of Faith. Rather, it left her with the problem of how Faith managed to elude them, leaving her with no suspect and the even scarier prospect of how to broach the subject with McNally. Pissed would be a gentle term for what she was expecting from her boss. Furious and enraged were probably better words, and Terri didn’t want to think about that too much right now. She voiced her concerns to Bobby and came to realize, rather quickly, that furious was a good word to describe his feelings at the moment too.
“Yeah, I told you that McNally would have your head, Terri, and I told you that if this went south...”
“Don’t you think I know that?” The van had never felt quite so small and cramped. “I get it. I fucked up.”
Terri’s admission of responsibility seemed to calm Bobby. He whistled long and low. “Yeah, you did, but I let you go. That makes it my responsibility, too. It’s still going to cost you way more than a pot of chili to make this right.”
“Yeah, I get that too. I suppose a promise of cornbread with your chili isn’t what you’re talking about, right?”
Bobby actually managed a small laugh. “No, Terri, it’s not. Besides you know as well as
I do that cornbread is a given when chili is involved, so no, that’s not what I’m talking about at all. What I’m talking about here is deep shit, Terri. You freaked out because of Jen and you bolted on me. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been defending you for months. I’ve had to listen to all the locker room bullshit about ‘Defective Agent McKinnon,’ and you know what? I’m beginning to think that they were right about you.”
She tried to answer, but nothing would come out. The only thing she could do was stare back, dumbfounded, unable to untangle the knot of confusion in her head, and quickly decided that maybe Bobby was right. Maybe she couldn’t do this anymore. Maybe she was just one of those people who couldn’t mix this kind of business with a personal life. She certainly wouldn’t be the first one, but that thought only added to her confusion about what it all meant.
Bobby pulled into the garage and threw the van into park. “So, yeah, we need to talk about that, but right now, we need to go check in, and I have no fucking clue about how to deal with McNally. I don’t suppose you have any bright ideas, do you?”
“I’ll tell him the truth. All of it. How I argued with you and took off...everything.” She held a hand up as Bobby tried to interrupt, stopping him before he could actually get the words out. “Yes, everything. Including the USB drive and the bioterror shit...all of it.”
“Are you sure?”
“No, Bobby, I’m not sure, but what else can I do? This whole mess is complicated enough, and I really don’t think that making up some fictitious story is going to help us now, do you?”
“No, it’s not.”
Terri removed her own sunglasses and met his gaze head-on. “Bobby, this is all on me and that makes it my problem to fix. Not yours. Yes, I know you’ve been my greatest supporter here in the office, but I can’t do this to you anymore. It ends right here, right now.” She pulled the handle on the door and climbed out of the van. After reaching across the seat to retrieve her computer bag, she slammed the door and urged Bobby to follow. “Come on...let’s get this over with. He can’t take away my birthday, right?”
*
“You lost her?”
Terri had been right. The word “pissed” didn’t even begin to cover McNally’s reaction to her tale about hackers and Kazakhstani terrorists and car chases through downtown traffic. She cringed as he began to change colors, his face becoming the same remarkable shade of scarlet as his tie. “Yes, sir.”
“You lost her.” Not a question this time, but a simple statement of fact. Terri said nothing. “You took off, she figured out that you were following her, and you lost her.” McNally sat down hard in his office chair, removed and tossed his glasses onto the surface of the desk, and glared at Terri in a way that actually frightened her. She was granted a moment’s reprieve as McNally turned his attention toward Bobby, simultaneously pointing toward Terri. “And you just let her go?”
“Yes, sir, I did. I just thought—”
McNally held up a hand to silence him. “You know, Agent Kraft, right now I really don’t care what you thought.” After rubbing his face with both hands, McNally looked straight at Terri. “So what’s this information that you found?”
Terri handed over the USB drive, tentatively, and started to explain, “There’s some disturbing—”
McNally held a hand up to stop her. “You know something else, Agent McKinnon? I really don’t want to talk to you right now either.” He practically snatched the drive from Terri’s hand and sat back in his chair. “Why don’t we do this? I need a full report from both of you. While I would normally need that as soon as possible, I want you both as far away from me as would be reasonable at the moment, and I’m pretty sure you both probably feel the same way. I think you both need a day or two to think about how badly you fucked this up today, so I want your reports on my desk in forty-eight hours, and I don’t want to see either of you until then. Understood?”
Disappear for forty-eight hours? What did that mean? Absently, she nodded and saw Bobby do the same.
“Good. Then please get out. Now.”
Terri wasn’t about to stop and ask any more questions. She turned quickly, reaching for the door, bumping into Bobby in their shared haste to get out of the way of their incredibly pissed off boss. Bobby stepped back, pulling the door open to let Terri out first, and scooted in behind her, pulling the door closed on the way out.
“What the fuck was that all about?” Bobby asked. “We just got handed two free days off, and your head is still attached to your neck. I don’t get it.”
“I wish I had a clue, but he just gave us an out and I think we should take it. So, why don’t you drive me home, I’ll feed you, and we can try to sort everything out with Jen and Denny. Sound good?”
“Yeah, Terri, that sounds great. Let’s go be lesbians and process everything.”
With a fairly forceful smack to Bobby’s arm, Terri conveyed her feelings about his last comment. Crossing the hallway out to the elevator, she allowed her thoughts about the day to flow, noticing pretty quickly that things were beginning to tangle up again. She stepped onto the elevator, watched Bobby push the button for the basement parking area, and wondered what the hell was going to happen next.
*
“They lost her?”
Skip couldn’t quite believe what he had just been told. As he reclined in the chair of his home office, he shook his head in disbelief. All of Bulldog’s assurances of assistance had just flown out the window, and now he wanted to talk. More talk. But not on the phone. What the hell did he find out? More importantly, what would he do with the information?
Since Bulldog wanted to meet “as soon as possible,” Skip prepared to do just that. He considered calling his driver and having the car brought around, but thought better of it. “Better do this yourself, Skip.” While he wasn’t quite sure what Bulldog was so upset about, besides the miserable failure of the two agents that he’d chosen to trust with a personal task, Skip was well aware that the information that the agents had uncovered wasn’t something that his oldest and dearest friend would like.
“It’s really too bad, now, isn’t it, Bulldog?” Skip reached into the lower right drawer of his desk, pulling out a small box of ammunition and his Glock 29. “This could have been so easy.” He loaded ten bullets into the clip, slid it into the small handgun, felt the reassuring click as it locked into place, and stood to slide the small weapon into the back of his khaki pants.
On the way out the door, Skip stopped to grab the keys to his black Porsche 911 and opened the closet to retrieve his black bomber jacket, shrugging into it on the way out the door. One last steak dinner at Artie’s would have been a nice way to say good-bye, but sometimes necessity dictated other plans. Business of this nature required privacy, and what better place for that than a nondescript parking garage in the basement of a nondescript office building. The fact that Skip had chosen his biggest competitor’s parking garage was simply an ironic touch. Sometimes he really amused himself. He pulled the door to his house closed behind him and stepped out into the early darkness of the chilly fall evening.
The drive from his house in Great Falls to Arlington only took about thirty minutes. Skip contemplated the chain of events that had led to this point. Bulldog’s agents had fucked up, but that wasn’t of great concern since the bimbo on the bike had eluded them. Good to know that the large sums of money spent to procure her services hadn’t been wasted. Faith was as good as her reputation touted her to be. Well, maybe not that good. She had sure fallen for his ruse. Kazakhstani terrorist indeed. He’d managed to make a street-hardened tough-babe-for-hire believe that a simple kid from Oakton, Virginia, was an overseas terrorist. He’d also managed to make the FBI, in the form of his oldest pal, believe that there really was a Kazakhstani terrorist. And he’d been doing that for years. It was fun to fuck with people, wasn’t it?
Skip pulled his Porsche off the main road, down the side street, and into the parking garage. A short succession of right turns le
d him to the third basement level. He spotted Bulldog’s little blue Ford immediately, mostly because it was the only car parked on the lowest level of the garage. He pulled past the other car, turning his Porsche into the spot next to the driver’s side of the Ford, and killed the engine. He looked over at Bulldog, noticing the furrowed brow that told him that Bulldog was upset. Skip pulled the door handle to get out of his own car, pulled his jacket down to make sure that the Glock was fully concealed, and crossed the space behind both cars to open the passenger door and join Bulldog in the Ford.
As he folded his full six foot two inch frame into the compact car, Skip offered a small greeting, but decided that he was uncomfortable and needed to get this done quickly. “So, Bulldog, what’s your big problem?”
“This,” McNally answered quickly, holding up the USB drive that he’d been fiddling with. “Skip, my agents got this from a hacker that the motorcycle babe hired to break into your system. What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“What?” Skip decided that feigned innocence might work. Worth a try anyway. “What’s on there?”
McNally shook his head as he handed the drive to Skip. “Okay, we’ll play it that way. Someone in your company has evidently decided that it might be fun to dabble with a little bioterrorism.” Skip reacted quickly by pasting a fake look of shock on his face, sliding the drive into his pocket, while McNally talked. “C’mon, Skip. You can drop the surprised corporate mogul thing anytime. I know very well that you are aware of everything that goes on in that company of yours, and I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that I’m just as guilty as you are right now. Please don’t continue to insult me.”