Cold Pursuit

Thirty-Six

Grit entered Myrtle’s favorite D.C. bar, which had pale pink walls and a lot of pictures of movie stars from before his time. He found her in an ornately carved wooden booth with a lit votive candle in the middle of the table. She was drinking Perrier with lime and obviously hating it. “Hey, Myrtle,” he said. “Got a place to stay tonight?”

She shrugged. “Here. The owners like me. I can sleep under the table.”

“Bet you booked yourself a room at the Four Seasons.”

“Not me. I hate spending money on fancy hotels. But I’m not sleeping on your sofa, so don’t invite me. I couldn’t take the rats.” She tipped back her glass and took a big swallow of her water, then set it down and stared at it as if it had answers. “The arson investigator says the fire started in my office. Probably electrical.”

“It wasn’t an accident.”

“No, but killing me wasn’t the main goal. A bonus, maybe.” She peeled the little lime off its toothpick and dropped it back into her water. “I had a lot of source material that went up in flames. I think I just got too close to these bastards.”

“What do the police say?”

“Nothing. Your FBI friends aren’t talking, either.”

“Everyone’s tight-lipped on this one,” Grit said. “This network’s been flying under the radar. It could be a guy in his basement with a computer, hiring killers on behalf of people who want someone killed.”

“Like Andrei,” Myrtle said.

“Yeah. You and Petrov were an item?”

“I loved him. He loved me. We weren’t ever going to be together. I’m not the marrying type, and he was a worse workaholic than me.” She looked away, her pretty eyes shining but tearless. “Paid killers aren’t easy to find. There’s no connection to the victim. No passion. No reason. It’s all about money. Sometimes I don’t know which I detest more-the killer for hire or the one who hired him.”

“I’m sorry about Petrov,” Grit said simply.

“Yeah. Thanks.” She cleared her throat and turned back to her water. “I have a feeling Drew Cameron and Alex Bruni were killed for the same reason my house got torched. I think they got too close to these bastards. This network of assassins.”

Grit considered her words a moment, then said, “I think you’re right.”

But she didn’t respond, and a slim, pretty waitress in an outfit a slightly darker pink than the walls came for Grit’s order. Scotch. No water for him. When she left, Myrtle rolled her eyes. “What is it with you and women?”

He paid no attention. “You know, Myrtle,” he said, “you could have been killed today.”

“They teach you that in SEAL school-that a fire can kill someone?”

“It’s not called-”

“Don’t start with me. You know what I mean. I wasn’t killed today. Neither were you.” She raised her eyes, a dark purple in the dim light. “You weren’t killed in April, either.”

“Should have been.”

She reached down to her side and produced a printout of a color photograph, which she pushed across the table at him. “That’s Moose Ferrerra’s baby boy. Ryan Cameron Ferrerra. Three months old. Adorable, isn’t he? His mother named him after two men who fought with his father in his last hours in this life. Two men who were also badly wounded and could have died that same night.”

Grit didn’t look at the picture. “Don’t turn Elijah, Moose and me into a human-interest story.”

Myrtle squeezed her lime into her water. “His widow chose the name for their son after his father was killed. Not before, Grit. Give me a break, okay? You know what I’m saying. This baby carries the names of three good men.”

“April shouldn’t have turned out the way it did. Moose had a family. I didn’t.”

“Elijah Cameron doesn’t have a family.”

“He does,” Grit said. “Just different. And he wasn’t a SEAL, and he wasn’t supposed to die. I was.”

“You still are a SEAL, Grit. And Moose’s widow doesn’t think that way. You think that way.”

Grit’s drink arrived. He flirted with the waitress and pretended Myrtle wasn’t there. But the waitress had to go back to work, and Myrtle was hard to ignore.

She said, “Elijah set up a trust fund for Moose’s two kids-a two-year-old boy and this little guy. Contribute to it. Be there for those boys when they want to know what their dad was like.”

“You need to stop, Myrtle.”

She didn’t. “Let Moose go. Let him be at peace.”

Grit drank some of his scotch and wondered about the tragedies in her life, what ghosts she’d had to face. The dead Russian. Others.

“Come on.” She took one more sip of her water and shoved the glass to the middle of the table. “Let’s walk over to the Lincoln Memorial.”

“Did you know Lincoln?”

“Is Cameron as big a pain in the neck as you?”

“Yeah.”

“Fun, because after we talk to Lincoln, we’re going to Vermont. You’re a one-legged SEAL and I’m a lonely reporter with cat pictures in her wallet. Let’s go see that other ghost you’re friends with-Cameron-and talk assassins.”

“I like Vermont maple syrup,” Grit said. “That’s about it.”

He had to slow down for her on the walk to the memorial, then a couple of times up the steps to the massive statue. It wasn’t a lack of fitness on her part, he knew. It was the fire at her house. The Russian. Assassins. Maybe Charlie Neal.

He was on the top step when he felt Moose ease in next to him, but when Grit turned to say something, his friend and teammate-the man who’d saved his life-was gone.