Lethal People: A Donovan Creed Crime Novel

I couldn’t get over how much she looked like Kathleen Gray. Lauren didn’t have Kathleen’s spark, of course, or her gift of gab, or her capacity to be adorable. Yet she had something special going for her in a Kathleen sort of way.

After lunch, since I was paying for her time anyway and since she looked so much like Kathleen Gray, we had a little casual sex.

Then I beat the shit out of her.

We rehearsed her lines again while I waited for her bruises to bloom. Then I took pictures and got the information about her ex and asked if she had a preference how she wanted the hit to go down. She said, “Two things. First, I want him to suffer.”

“Of course you do.”

“Wait,” she said. “This is really going to happen, isn’t it?”

I smiled. “What’s the second thing?”

“I want to watch him die.”

I smiled again. “Of course you do.”

She asked, “Am I bad?”

I shrugged. “Hey, he’s got to die sometime, right? Now don’t over-think this. It’ll be fun. You’ll see.”

CHAPTER 21

One quick glance and I forgot all about Joe DeMeo.

It was Saturday, a couple hours after my meeting with DeMeo at the cemetery. I was staying in a luxury beach hotel in Santa Monica when she knocked on the door.

Jenine.

The first thing she noticed was the envelope fat with cash on the edge of the coffee table. She picked it up and her eyes widened as she riffled through the stack of hundreds. She glanced at me to see if I was serious.

I nodded.

She’d been advertising on Aspiring Actresses, the internet escort site, and had purchased enough space to display three sultry photographs and a bio listing her vital statistics and limited acting experience.

In the e-mails we exchanged, she admitted being desperate for cash, and I had agreed to share some of mine in return for what might happen when we eventually met.

When she’d called from the lobby, I gave my room number and wondered—having been previously burned in similar encounters—if the girl who showed would bear any resemblance to the photos I’d seen.

I needn’t have worried. If anything, she looked better than advertised—and that was saying a lot. Dressed casually in jeans and a halter top and sporting iridescent ear buds tethered to a surprisingly bulky MP3 player, she looked every bit the college student for whom a distinguished professor might willingly sacrifice his career.

Jenine removed the ear buds and placed the MP3 player on the coffee table before tucking the envelope securely into her handbag. She performed the obligatory small talk in a detached but efficient manner until I let her know it was time to move things along.

Standing before me in the parlor of one of Southern California’s most exclusive boutique hotel rooms, biting her lower lip, she suddenly seemed quite small and vulnerable.

Before she arrived, I had propped open the French doors leading to the balcony. A slight breeze manipulated the sheer curtains into random patterns that caught her eye, causing her to look beyond the small wrought iron seating area. From her vantage point, the Santa Monica Pier was visible, and she smiled wistfully at it or something else that attracted her attention.

On the beach below us, a guy played riffs on a saxophone.

Someone’s stunning twenty-year-old daughter began lifting her halter top for my pleasure, and I thought about what I would do to a guy like me if this had been my daughter, Kimberly. After removing her top, she covered her breasts with her arms and paused.

I asked if there was a problem.

Just that she’d never done anything like this before, she said, and she was only doing it this once in order to make ends meet until her big break came along. I gave her the nod of understanding she expected, and she unbuttoned her jeans, slid them to the floor, and stepped out of them.

Promptly dismissing any misgivings I may have had regarding her age, I appraised her pert body and caught myself saying that what she was doing was no big deal; lots of famous actresses started out this way.

“It shows how committed you are to your craft,” I said, shamelessly.

That wistful smile played about her lips again, and she wriggled out of her panties. “What do you like?” she asked, and something in the tone of her voice suggested she had in fact done this sort of thing many times before.

Demonstrating considerable expertise and a surprising degree of enthusiasm, Jenine did her best to earn the contents of the envelope, and afterward, I told her to lie on her stomach so I could get a better look at the small tattoo on her lower back.

When I aimed my camera phone, she said, “I don’t do photos.”

“Just the tattoo,” I said.

She nodded but said she’d want to check the view screen to make sure I hadn’t included any part of her ass in the shot. “I intend to be a famous actress some day,” she said, “and I don’t want any nude photos turning up.”

I told her I didn’t see any birthmarks on her body and asked if she had any I might have missed. She gave me a strange look and told me about the dime-sized rosy patch on the right side of her head, just above her ear, which would have been impossible to see without parting her hair at that precise spot.

After I snapped a close up of that area, she began collecting her clothes. I noticed her purse on the desk and brought it to her.

“Are we finished here?” she wanted to know.

“We are.”

While she dressed, I moved to the balcony to signal the saxophone player, the monstrous man with severely deformed facial features named Augustus Quinn. I watched my giant pack up his instrument and walk away, knowing he was making his way around the hotel to the waiting sedan. Quinn and Coop would follow Jenine for a couple of hours, find out where she lived, who her friends were. Then they’d come back and pick me up and we’d drive to the airfield for the return flight to Virginia. The only negative was the time difference. By the time we got back, I’d be too tired to test the ADS weapon.

Reentering the parlor, I found Jenine standing in the center of the room, fully dressed, attempting to make eye contact. There’s an art to saying good-bye in these situations, a sort of silent protocol. You don’t kiss, but a hug is nice. There’s the verbal dance you both do when neither of you want her to linger but neither wants to be rude, either.

You don’t want to be too abrupt, so you tell her it was great and you’d love to see her the next time you’re in town. She reiterates she doesn’t really do this sort of thing, but for you she’ll make an exception.

My cell phone performed a dance of its own, vibrating on the desktop. “I need to get that,” I said.

She flashed a shy smile. “Okay … thanks?” It was almost a question. I gave her a slight frown to imply I wished she didn’t have to go. She shrugged and offered a cute little pout to express the same sentiment. Then she blew me a kiss, let herself out, and closed the door behind her.

When she did that, something clicked inside my head. I thought about Kathleen Gray and felt a wave of sadness wash over me.

CHAPTER 22

The cell phone call that caused Jenine to leave had been prearranged. It was Quinn calling to let me know he was in position. I donned my jeans, pocketed the camera phone, poured myself a double whisky from the wet bar. I sat on the edge of the bed with my drink and propped my free hand on the sheets we’d rumpled moments earlier.

The scent of Jenine’s youth hung in the air, and I inhaled it fully, savoring her essence. Maybe Kathleen needed four hundred and ninety calories to de-stress, but not me.

I felt a vibration in my pocket, slid the phone open, put it to my ear.

“It’s me,” said Callie.

“You need to get a butterfly tattoo on your ass,” I said.

She paused for a beat. “Donovan, if this is how you normally start conversations, I think I may have isolated your problem with women. No wonder you can’t find a nice girl to marry.”

If Callie Carpenter had been born three inches taller, she wouldn’t have to kill people for a living. With her spectacular looks, she’d be a one-name supermodel by now. I drained my glass and placed it on the end table. I stood and walked back through the parlor to the balcony and chose the chair that angled toward the Santa Monica Pier.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Reach over the naked whore and fl ip on your TV.”

I sighed. “How little you think of me. Truth is, I’m here all alone on a hotel balcony, enjoying the unseasonably warm February temperature. Which channel?”

“Take your pick.”

I went back to the parlor, found the remote control, and pressed the power button. The words Breaking News flashed below the live feed of an interview in progress. The man being interviewed was telling reporters that the event that had just occurred was unprecedented. The electronic runner at the bottom of the screen flashed the words Homeland Security confirms unauthorized spy satellite breach.

The man identified himself as Edward Culbertson, head of Research Operations for Skywatch Industries. He said Skywatch had a government contract to provide artificial intelligence applications to enhance radar imaging. He said, “This is one of the five so-called Keyhole-class satellites that fl y above us every day. The exact specifications are classified beyond top secret, but we know a few things about them.”

“For example?” a reporter said.

“We know they travel one hundred miles above the Earth at a speed of Mach 25,” Culbertson said. “We know they cover every inch of the Earth’s surface twice a day, taking digital photos of specific locations that have been programmed into their tracking mechanism.”

“Is that what happened in this case?” the reporter asked. “Did someone hack into the satellite computer and direct it to take the pictures we just showed on live television?”

“That’s the current speculation.”

Another reporter spoke: “Dr. Culbertson, there’s a lot of argument regarding the accuracy of spy satellite imaging. What’s the truth? For example, can they effectively display a car’s license plate?”

“Under normal conditions, they have a resolution of five inches, meaning they can accurately distinguish a five-inch object on the ground.”

On the phone, I said to Callie, “Did you know that?”

“No, but if I did, I wouldn’t be telling the whole world about it.”

A different reporter asked if the surveillance satellites could be tapped by authorities to help solve other crimes.

“No,” he said. “The odds are probably impossible to one.”

“Why’s that, doctor?”

“Because,” he said, “the crime scenes would have to be programmed into the satellite’s computer at least an hour in advance of the crime.”

“So what you’re saying is, whoever’s responsible for the kidnapping—they’re the ones who breached the satellite’s security?”

“That’s what we believe, yes.”

“To what end, sir?”

“My best guess? Someone wanted to watch the kidnapping from a remote location, someone who knew ultra-secret details about the satellite’s orbit path in advance.”

“Do you suspect terrorists?”

The expert suddenly looked uncomfortable and backed away as an FBI spokesperson took over the mic. “At this time, we are unable to confirm whether the satellite breach or the abduction were terrorist events. I’m afraid we don’t have time for further questions, but we’ll keep you informed as future details develop.”

Now, back at the TV studio, the newswoman said, “For those of you who just tuned in, Homeland Security has confirmed an unauthorized breach of one of their so-called spy satellites. This particular satellite had been tracking over the Southeastern Seaboard this past Tuesday when the following images were viewed remotely by an unknown person or persons.”

On the screen behind the newswoman, they showed about forty photos in rapid sequence. For me, the pictures would have been riveting even if the abduction hadn’t involved Monica Childers, the woman Callie and I killed for Victor four days ago.

Callie said, “Do we get to keep the money for the hit?”

That was Callie, always good for a smile.

The news reporter said, “As most people in the Jacksonville area already know, Monica Childers has been the focus of one of North Florida’s most extensive searches.” Behind her, they displayed a picture of Monica’s husband, Baxter. The newscaster identified him as one of the most prominent and widely respected surgeons in North America.

“Baxter’s a big shot,” I said to Callie.

“Baxter? What channel are you watching?”

“I don’t know, one of the big three.”

“Flip till you find CNN.”

“Why?”

“They’re talking about us.”

CHAPTER 23

The station I’d been watching had shown photos that chronicled the entire event, starting with the two women jogging out of the resort entrance and ending with pictures taken from the opposite angle, as the satellite moved out over the Atlantic. The final photo showed the van turning left onto a narrow overgrown path.

But CNN had dug up a computer imaging expert who was displaying close-ups of the three people standing by the van. Baxter Childers was on a split screen with CNN news anchor, Carol Teagess.

“Dr. Childers, good as these photos are,” she said, “we still don’t have quality resolution on the faces, though we’re told Homeland Security is moments away from providing definitive photos. Are you prepared to tell us at this point whether one of these women is your wife, Monica?

“There’s no doubt in my mind,” he said. “Monica’s the one standing between the other two. The jogging outfit she’s wearing in the photographs is the same one she laid out on the chair the night before she disappeared.”

“And you said she left the hotel room early Tuesday morning while you were sleeping.”

“She always jogs around sunrise, so yes I’m usually sleeping when she gets up.”

“Dr. Childers, if you’re right, this is visual proof that Monica was kidnapped by a man and woman driving a white van.”

A third person appeared on the screen, and Carol said, “We are joined by Duval County Sheriff Allen English, the officer in charge of heading up the search team. Sheriff English, you’ve had fifteen hundred people combing the area for four days. These satellite photos clearly show the kidnappers took Monica Childers a mere six hundred yards from the hotel room the Childers occupied last Tuesday. How is it possible you missed the van or any evidence of Monica?”

The sheriff gave a withering look and said, “Because the van and Monica were gone by the time we learned she’d been missing.”

“We now know the van turned left on a small path,” Carol said. “Any chance your people missed that particular spot?”

“None whatsoever. Our search began from the beach and moved inland to AIA, so we hit that area a few hours into the search.”

“I’m told that since these photos were released, you’ve had a forensic crew working at the site. Any new evidence yet?”

“Nothing I can report at this time,” he said.

“But you’re working on it?”

“We are,” he said.

“Thank you, sheriff ,” Carol said, and I muted the sound.

To Callie, I said, “I gave her a lethal injection. There’s no way she could have survived.”

“What did you use?”

“Botulinum toxin.”

Callie laughed. “Maybe she’s been pumped so full of Botox she’s become immune!”

“Maybe Victor had someone pick her up after we drove off , someone who gave her a dose of Heptavalent.”

“Is that some sort of anti-venom?”

“It’s an antitoxin, but yeah, it works the same way. Botulinum paralyzes the respiratory muscles, but its effects can be reversed with Heptavalent. It’s not a perfect science, and it takes weeks or even months.”

“Thanks, doctor,” Callie said sarcastically. Then she added, “You think Victor’s behind this satellite thing?”

“Has to be.”

“But why take that chance? You think he just wanted to watch the hit go down?”

“Maybe. He doesn’t have much of a life, so maybe that’s how he gets his kicks. It’s also possible he tapped into the satellite so his people could find her.”

“But he knew where she’d be. He even marked the path for us.”

“Yeah, but this was our first job for him. Suppose he wanted her alive? He couldn’t be certain we’d do it exactly the way he told us to. Also, what if someone had a flat on the side of the road near the trail? Or what if someone was camping out in the area and would have seen us make the turn? A dozen things could have gone wrong that would have caused us to kill her somewhere else. If he wanted her alive, he’d want to know exactly where she was.”

“So you think he had Monica kidnapped.”

“I do.”

“Why didn’t he just ask us to kidnap her?”

“Maybe he wanted her for himself and didn’t want us to know.”

“So the midget captures the trophy wife of the doctor who saved his life.”

“It’s just a theory.”

“Why would he want to punish her?” Callie asked.

“There’s probably a lot to the story about Victor and the doctor. A lot we don’t know.”

“Think we ought to have a chat with Victor?”

“Eventually, but I want to put Lou on it first.”

“Research his connection to Baxter?”

“Right. Lou finds the connection, he’ll have Victor’s real name. Then we fast-forward his life, learn his abilities, figure out his motivations.”

“And his friends,” Callie said. “Any guy who can hijack a topsecret spy satellite…”

“Yeah,” I said. “This is no circus midget.”

Suddenly, the television had my full attention. I turned up the sound. “Are you watching this?”

She was.

CNN news anchor Carol Teagess was showing a close up of Monica Childers from one of the satellite photos. “This just in,” she said. “FBI offcials working in conjunction with Homeland Security have released the following image taken from one of the spy satellite digital photographs.” The TV screen displayed the new close up on the left, and a recent photograph of Monica on the right.

“It’s official,” she said. “The lady who was abducted at Amelia Island on Valentine’s Day has been positively identified as Monica Childers, wife of the nationally prominent surgeon Dr. Baxter Childers.”

Carol touched her ear piece and paused. “We take you now to the FBI field office in Jacksonville, Florida, where I’m told that FBI Spokesperson Courtney Armbrister is ready to begin her live press conference. Sources familiar with the story expect her to give further updates and reveal the kidnappers’ identities.”

On the phone, Callie said, “Darwin’s gonna shit!”

“Ya think?”

The TV screen showed a bunch of people milling around a large room at the FBI’s Jacksonville field office. It was clear the press conference would be delayed a few minutes, so Carol began a voice-over dialog to keep the viewers from switching channels to watch Hee Haw reruns.

Callie used the time to ask, “What were you saying earlier? About getting a tattoo on my ass?”

“I found an adorable one on the lower hip of your new body double.”

“You found a hooker who looks like me?”

“I resent the implication,” I said. “In any event, she’s close enough facially, and our people can do the rest.”

“A tattoo,” she said.

“And you’re also going to need a small red birthmark on your scalp.”

“No pubic piercings?” she said with great annoyance.

“I wish,” I said. I took a few seconds to conjure a mental image of Callie naked, but she was so far out of my league I couldn’t even fantasize it. “I’ll send you digitals when I get back to HQ,” I said.

Body doubles are disposable people we use to cover our tracks, or, in extreme circumstances, to fake our deaths if our covers get blown. We put a lot of time and effort into these people, monitoring and protecting them, often for years at a time, until something happens that requires us to place them into service.

Of course, our body doubles are totally clueless about their participation in our reindeer games of national security. If they knew about it, most civilians would disapprove of the practice, just as most disapproved of the army’s plan for wide-scale use of the ADS weapon. However, from my side of the fence, collateral damage is a fact of war, and civilian sacrifice a necessary evil. When managed judiciously, body doubles can buy us time to eliminate paper trails or change our appearance so we can get back to the business of killing terrorists.

Callie asked if Jenine was prettier than her—just the sort of crap you’d expect from a gorgeous woman. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “Remember, she doesn’t have to look exactly like you. She only needs to be the same age, shape, and height. The fact that she’s beautiful, with high cheekbones, is a plus. The tattoo and birthmark are small and easy to replicate.”

“What sort of butter��y is it?” she asked. “Is it stupid looking? A tattoo is a permanent fixture, Donovan. It sounds creepy.”

“Think of it as a shrine to Jenine’s memory,” I said. “And try to show some respect, will you? She’s putting her life on the line for you.”

“Not knowingly,” Callie said. “Not willingly.”

“A technicality,” I said.

“If we ever terminate her,” Callie said, “I’m going to be stuck with a tattoo and birthmark that my next body double won’t have.”

I let that comment hang in the air unanswered, and soon we were back to exchanging theories about the Monica hit. I wasn’t ready to completely dismiss the terrorist angle, so Callie asked if it were possible Sal Bonadello was involved with terrorists. After all, he’s the one who gave Victor my cell phone number. I told her Sal was many things, all unsavory, but a terrorist sympathizer, no. I told Callie to keep watching the news and let me know if anything interesting developed.

“This isn’t interesting enough for you?” she asked.

CHAPTER 24

I was about to turn off the TV and take a shower when I got sidetracked by Courtney Armbrister’s live update on CNN.

FBI Special Agent Courtney Armbrister was a media dream. Playing to full advantage her shoulder-length auburn hair, perpetually pouting lips, and killer body, she managed to appear beguiling despite the seriousness of the occasion. Courtney sported the obligatory dark suit favored by the bureau, though hers was obviously tailored. Her jacket framed a white blouse that appeared more silk than cotton. Her eyes glared fiercely into the camera, and when she spoke, it was with such conviction you knew she had to be telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Although in this case, she was lying like hell through those perfect, dazzling teeth.

I knew the cover-up was in full swing when S. A. Armbrister informed the CNN audience that FBI computers had identified the kidnappers as former Soviet agents with confirmed ties to terrorist leaders. On the screen behind her, the bureau displayed phony names and doctored images of Callie and me. In these photos, I was younger, smaller, and had no facial scar. Callie had been aged at least ten years, and they’d done something to her nose and eyes she wasn’t going to like. They also displayed fake profiles obtained through “classified sources” to show they were on top of things. She said the bureau was sharing these photos and documents with the public so we could be part of the process. It was a total load of crap, but as far as the Joe and Mrs. Lunchbox crowd were concerned, any words coming from that face would seem credible.

“Until we have proof to the contrary,” Courtney said, “we have every reason to believe Monica Childers is alive and being held captive. So we’re asking for your help. We want you to be our eyes and ears on this one. If you see anything, if you hear anything, please, call our hotline. There is no clue too small when it comes to saving an innocent life.”

Almost brought a tear to my eye, she did.

Then she talked about the white van and showed her national audience a picture of it. She said police around the country were working on that lead but they could use the public’s help on this, also. Finally, on behalf of FBI agents and law enforcement officers everywhere, Courtney promised to hunt the kidnappers down and bring them to justice. She ended by issuing a special alert: “If anyone has any information regarding these two former Soviet agents, please call the FBI hotline at …”

The phone vibrated again, and I answered it.

“Creed, you son of a jailhouse bitch! What did you do with the body?” The man I knew only as Darwin had only just begun yelling at me. He told me how much trouble they had to go to in order to doctor the photographs and plant the phony Russian suspects. Darwin called me stupid, careless, and a bunch of other names that would have hurt my feelings had I not been keenly aware of his indelicate nature. So he unloaded, and I sipped my bourbon and took my lumps and waited for him to get on topic, which he eventually managed to do.

“I want to know who hired you, because whoever it was, he managed to throw a monkey wrench into our national defense system. And don’t tell me Sal Bonadello, a guy who thinks software means sweaters.”

Darwin fell silent, but only for a moment. Then he said, “I’m waiting.”

“I can’t give you a name,” I said.

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Can’t. But on the bright side, I know how to get it”

“Creed, listen to me. You’ve done a lot of stupid things over the years, things I’ve turned a blind eye to because up to now, you’ve been more valuable than the shit storms you’ve created. But this is too much. We can’t let someone hack into our national defense systems, and we can’t let the government find out that you and your people are running around taking contracts from criminals to kill people,” he said. “They’re funny about shit like that. How the fuck did you let this happen? No, don’t bother telling me. Just tell me this: what are you going to do about it?”

“I’m going to talk to an angry midget,” I said.

“What? Are you insane? You trying to tell me some midget hired you to kill the doctor’s wife?”

“Little person,” I said. “They prefer the term little people.”

“I prefer Viagra and a nice set of tits, but right now you and Callie are the only boobs in my life.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, I’m saying a midget hired me to kill Monica Childers, but I’m not sure she’s dead.”

“I know how to tell: did you kill her or not?”

“We killed her, but we left her body. Now it’s gone.”

“Wait,” Darwin said. “Maybe I should get some Roman soldiers to move the stone away from the tomb.”

“Look, I gave her a syringe full of BT. I think someone got to her in time to administer an antidote. I think that’s why Victor monitored the satellite, so he could get a chase team to pick her up as soon as we left.”

“Victor? Who’s Victor? The midget?”

“Little person.”

“Let me get this straight.” Darwin paused on the other end of the line. “You took a contract from an angry midget to kill a prominent surgeon’s wife, but she was rescued and then kidnapped by other people working for the very same midget. That what you’re telling me?”

“It sounds stupid when you say it out loud like that.”

Then, in a tight voice, he said, “Kill her again, Creed.”

“Okay.”

“Because otherwise she’ll be able to identify you.”

“Okay.”

“And kill the midget, too.”

“That I can’t do.”

“Why the hell not?”

“First, I don’t know for certain he’s the hacker. Second, if he isn’t the hacker and I kill him, I’ll never be able to find the real hacker. Third, I’ve entered into an agreement with him.”

“You’ll be entering a pine box if you don’t put a stop to this hacking business.”

“I will.”

“And don’t forget to kill Monica Childers.”

“Assuming she’s still alive.”

“Don’t assume anything. Just kill her.”

“Will do.”

“Keep me in the loop. I don’t want to have to keep calling you after the fact.”

“Got it.”

“Oh, shut up.” He hung up on me.

CHAPTER 25

I’m a Time Saver.

Time Savers are people who commit special moments to memory. A skilled Time Saver can freeze all the components of an event—the date, mood, time, temperature, lighting, sights, sounds, scents, the breeze—everything. Then we park this information in a corner of our brains and relive it whenever we wish. It’s like opening a time capsule years after an event and having all the wonderful memories spill out.

Some guys like baseball, some ballet. Maybe they’re content to grow old with memories of sweeping the Yankees or reliving the Dance of the Cygnets from Swan Lake. But me, I’d rather Time Save the memory of trysts with beautiful young ladies like Jenine.

Fully dressed now, sitting on the balcony again, I closed my eyes and began experiencing all the facets of our encounter, committing them to a permanent file in my mind. Just as I’d indoctrinated my body to survive torture and function at a high level by testing weapons and sleeping in a prison cell, I’d structured my mind to compartmentalize the significant experiences of my life. These I can relive as if they’re happening in the moment—a wonderful skill to be able to call upon the next time I’m stuck in a real prison for any length of time.

Some people plan for their retirement. I plan for my imprisonment, for I am certain to end up dead or in prison, and if it’s to be the latter, I want my body and mind to be prepared.

I began by concentrating on her voice. Then I relived the heightened awareness, the anticipation—the entire range of feelings and emotions that raced through my mental synapses and physical receptors just after she called from the lobby phone. I marked these things in my mind until I knew I could call upon them at will.

Then I re-experienced Jenine’s arrival in the doorway, my first view of her, and the immediate impressions I formed, and how I felt the moment I encountered her beauty, newness, and youth. I smiled, thinking how none of this mattered in the least to Jenine and the other beauties I’d met in my life, although I’m sure they have fond memories of the money I spent.

I focused on the way she entered the room while listening to music, just as you’d expect a college kid to do, with the ear buds, the oversized MP3 player, and …

And suddenly I realized she didn’t have the MP3 player with her when she left the room!

A cold chill rushed through me. Could Jenine have put the MP3 player in her purse while I was on the balcony, signaling Quinn? I didn’t think so. If she ever kept it in her purse, she’d have done so before meeting me. I had to assume the worst. As a trained assassin for many years, I survived the deadliest ambushes, the most terrifying physical encounters imaginable, by always assuming the worst.

I jumped to my feet and dialed the operator. A young lady answered. “Front desk. This is Jodie; how may I help you?”

“Jody,” I said in my most commanding voice, “this is Donovan Creed in room 214. I’m a federal agent. I need you to listen very carefully.”

“Is this a joke?” she asked. “If it is, it’s not funny.”

Maybe I should have told her that after spending twelve years as the CIA’s top international assassin, I ought to know a bomb threat when I saw one. Then again, the word assassin conjures up such diverse feelings. I decided to stick with the federal agent story and gave her another go.

“Jody, I repeat, I’m a federal agent and there’s a bomb in my room. I want you to activate the fire alarm, contact hotel security, and immediately begin evacuating the building.”

“Sir,” she said, “bomb threats are taken very seriously. If I report you, it could mean prison time.”

“Jodie,” I said, “I wrote the manual on bomb threats, okay? Now sound the fire alarm and make an evacuation announcement before I come down there and rip your face off !”

I slammed the phone down and ran to the door, flipped the lock latch outward so the door would stay propped open, and tore down the hall, banging doors, yelling at the top of my lungs, “Emergency! Evacuate the building immediately! Leave your things behind! Get out of the building now!”

By the time I got to the fifth door, the fire alarm started blaring, so I raced back to my room and started a frantic search. The bathroom seemed the likeliest place, so I started there. I checked behind the shower curtain, lifted the toilet bowl tank cover, looked up to see if any ceiling tiles had been dislodged, and checked the floor for debris in case I’d missed something. Then I realized this wasn’t going to work. I simply didn’t have the time to conduct a proper search. Jenine, on the other hand, had the entire length of our visit to decide where to hide it.

If she hid it.

If it was a bomb.

I ran to the balcony, felt my legs climb over the railing, felt myself hurtling through the air. I realized I’d just jumped off the second floor balcony! My legs had made the calculation without me, had hurled me as far out as possible in an effort to clear the sidewalk below.

Now, in midair, with my mind back on the job, I tucked and rolled as I hit and tried to ignore the searing pain that suddenly knifed through my shoulder. I scrambled to my feet, sprinted twenty yards, and dove behind the thick base of a giant palm, scattering twelve-inch sand tsunamis in my wake. I tucked my chin, protected my vital organs as well as possible, and waited for the explosion.

CHAPTER 26

And nothing happened.

A handful of hotel guests began filing out the side and back entrances. There weren’t many, but I supposed that during a fire drill, the vast majority would have gone out the front.

A minute passed, and the fi re alarm droned on. The speakers must have pointed to the front and sides of the hotel because the alarm was fairly muted from my position.

Some more guests joined the first group. I considered running over to warn them, but no, a discussion was bound to follow, and we’d probably all get killed while they questioned my credentials and the conclusions I’d drawn.

In the end, it didn’t matter, because someone in the group made the decision to walk toward the front of the hotel and the others followed.

More time passed, seconds I’m sure, but it always seems longer while waiting for a bomb to explode. The muffled drone of the alarm gave way to other sounds you’d expect to hear from behind a palm tree fifty yards from the Pacific Ocean: breaking surf behind me and, somewhere, hidden from view, the musical clang of steel drums rising above the traffic noise. A quarter mile to my left, I could hear the distant rumble of the roller coaster on the Santa Monica Pier.

I didn’t know how long I had before the bomb detonated, but if I had any time at all I figured I should use it to find better cover. I slowly uncoiled my body and chanced a high-speed dash to a small concrete wall fifteen yards to my right. I dove behind it face first, like Pete Rose sliding into third base, and waited. I looked up. Twenty yards to my right, on the concrete walkway behind the neighboring hotel, a young man in a bright orange windbreaker had stopped holding his girlfriend’s hand long enough to point at me and laugh.

I looked at the young couple. At what point, I wondered, had I evolved into an object of ridicule? When had I become some sort of cartoon character, a delusional mental case deserving the scorn of teenagers? Was it possible I’d imagined the bomb threat? Was I witnessing a glimpse into my future, where every sudden sound or random thought might cause me to frighten people or threaten to send me jumping out of windows or ducking for cover?

From this angle, I could see a few hotel guests glancing toward the rooftop, probably searching for signs of smoke. I followed their gaze and came to the same conclusion: there was nothing to worry about.

I smiled at the young couple and shrugged, then stood and dusted myself off. The girl smiled back and held her position a moment, as if trying to decide if I’d be safe left to my own devices. Her boyfriend, showing far less concern, gently tugged at her wrist. With her free hand, she tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. He tugged again, and she turned her eyes away—reluctantly, it seemed to me—and they resumed their leisurely stroll along the sidewalk.

Eventually, the alarm stopped. It was quiet now, and things were starting to resume their normal order. I guessed I’d have some explaining to do to hotel security and possibly the local police and bomb squad. Darwin would probably have to get involved again, which he’d hate.

The roller coaster on the Santa Monica Pier must have stopped to reload passengers because its rumble had been temporarily replaced by calliope music and the mechanical sounds of the other amusement rides. A couple of security guys came out the hotel’s back entrance, followed by a bald guy in a gray suit with black lapels—probably the hotel manager. Behind me to my left, two coeds on roller blades glided along the beach walk in my direction. Their arms glistened with sweat, and their matching turquoise spandex leggings were stretched tight over well-defined legs. As they whooshed by, I gave them a nod of approval. One of them frowned. The other one flipped me the finger.

I moved closer and glanced up at the balcony from which I’d jumped. The MP3 player had been bulky. Could it have been a bomb?

Of course.

So why, I asked myself, was I standing out here in harm’s way? The answer was simple: because it didn’t add up. If the MP3 player housed a bomb, why wait so long? I mean, why didn’t Jenine detonate it as soon as she’d gotten out of range? Or wire it with an internal timer and set it to go off five minutes after she left? I wondered if something had gone wrong. Maybe a wire got crossed or disconnected. Maybe the remote didn’t get the proper signal due to interference from the hotel wiring system.

No. In my line of work, you have to assume that everything that can hurt you will always work perfectly. Yet this seemed the rare exception because I could think of no reason for her to wait this long to detonate it.

Unless …

Something nagged at my brain, just beyond my awareness. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Something about the timing of the detonation was itching at me, trying to make sense. If I had a few minutes to work it out …

But I didn’t. I’d have to put that thought on hold and come back to it later. At the moment, I had to either wait for the bomb squad or try to disarm the bomb myself. I thought about it and decided it made sense for me to do it since the explosion was well overdue. I was sure the hotel clerk had called the bomb squad, but by the time the call got routed to the right people, by the time the right people got here, it could all be over.

I headed for the back entrance at a fast clip. As I pulled the door open, a childhood memory popped into my mind, a perfect example of how this Time Saver thing works.

I’d been twelve the summer my best friend Eddie tied a dozen cherry bombs together with a single fuse and lit it. We howled with excited laughter and dashed for cover. We waited forever but nothing happened. Eddie finally went back to investigate and when he did, the bombs exploded. Eddie lost several fingers, a section of ear, and most of the skin on the left side of his face.

I can’t explain how, but standing in the hotel doorway just then I could feel the bomb trying to explode. In my mind I pictured an old-time detonator, the kind with the big handle you push down to make contact. In my mind that handle was already in motion. I screamed for the benefit of anyone within the sound of my voice. “There’s a bomb in the hotel! Run for cover!”

I slammed the door shut, reversed my direction, and ran full speed back toward the concrete wall I’d spotted earlier, the one that bordered the courtyard. It was waist-high, and from this direction, I couldn’t just slide behind it like before. I’d have to dive over it like the commando I used to be.

So I did. I managed the dive. Then, laying flat on my chest, I pressed the left side of my body and head against the wall.

At which point, much of the hotel—and the upper third of the wall protecting me—vaporized.

CHAPTER 27

The explosion from the hotel left a residue of soot and dust hanging in the air like a mushroom cloud. I coughed what I could out of my lungs. My ears rang. All color had been blasted from my vision. I turned to check behind me and saw white sand and sky, black palm trees and water.

I shook my head a couple of times and blinked the color back into my eyes. I got to my feet, checked for injuries, but other than the nagging pain in my shoulder, I had nothing to complain about. I seemed to be moving in slow motion and wondered if I was in shock. I willed myself to snap out of it so I could focus on the devastation fifty feet before me.

The side walls of the hotel remained intact, but most of the back had been scooped out. The roof and outer walls of the penthouse floor were still there but were listing precariously. With the internal support structure weakened, it would only be a matter of time, probably minutes, before the overhang crashed into the rubble below. The balcony I’d jumped from, like the ones above and below it, as well as the adjacent ones, was history. The exterior of the hotel had been cleanly dissected in a half-circle running maybe sixty feet in diameter.

What remained looked like a scene from a war zone, with bodies and body parts everywhere. Leaping flames erupted sporadically, revealing ruptured gas lines. People screamed from within, but the massive wall of sweltering heat would surely hinder rescue efforts.

Locals, tourists, and even vagrants began rushing to the scene to rubberneck. I spotted a homeless guy heading my way wearing a decent pair of boots. I fished a fifty from my jeans and quickly traded for them. As I laced up the bum’s boots, I studied the roof. How long could it possibly hang there, defying gravity?

This was no time for heroes, I thought, and had I not felt directly responsible for the widespread destruction and loss of life, I might have walked away. Instead, I took a deep breath and entered the smoldering ruins. As my eyes adjusted to the soot and heat, I scanned the carnage and decided the far right edge of the blast perimeter offered the highest probability for survivors.

Disregarding the teetering roof structure above me, I picked my way through the mess. Within seconds I spotted the torso of an elderly man covered in soot. I tried for a pulse, but he wasn’t offering any. In these situations, you have to move quickly, put your effort where it can do the most good.

I had to focus on the living.

Working my way deeper into the ruins, I moved beyond the mangled bodies of the obvious dead. Since most surfaces were too hot or sharp to grab, I took a few seconds to search for something I could wrap around my hands. Strips of curtain remnants did the trick, and soon I was tossing broken furniture out of the way and pushing slabs of concrete aside in order to inspect the smoky air pockets below.

I found an unconscious boy with severe burns lying beneath the upturned bed that had saved his life. Next to him I found a girl, probably his older sister, who had not been so fortunate. I carried the boy out of the blast site to a clearing on the sand. Some people rushed to help. A lady said, “Bless you.” I nodded and went back to search for others.

Some who had gathered to view the scene became motivated to help. Better than nothing, I figured, but the devastation was formidable and the rescuers were unskilled and tentative. Some with rubber soles beat a hasty retreat when they felt their shoes melting.

I continued working and managed to uncover several bodies, but no survivors. Quinn appeared out of nowhere, carrying two children, one in each arm, both disfigured with horrific injuries but alive. Someone pointed and screamed when they saw Quinn’s face, mistaking him for a burn victim. We assessed each other with a quick nod and continued our search.

Soon police and fi refighters were on the scene, yelling at us to clear the area. Knowing these guys were better equipped to handle things, Quinn and I withdrew and began picking our way through the mass of people converging on the area where one of Southern California’s premier boutique hotels had stood majestically a scant fifteen minutes earlier.

“The whore did this?” asked Quinn.

“She did,” I said.

“On purpose?”

I’d been wondering the same thing while searching the blast site for survivors. She didn’t strike me as the type who would blow up a building on purpose, but she was obviously the type who would hide a bomb in my room.

Quinn’s cell phone rang with a text message. He read it silently, and his lips moved as he did so. “Coop followed her home,” he said.

“Text him and have him send us the address,” I said. “Tell him to stay put till we get there. Tell him to follow her if she moves but keep us informed.”

Quinn gave me a look that offered more attitude than a ghetto crack whore. “You see these fingers?” he said. “You know how long it would take me to text all that?”

We walked. Quinn called Coop and gave him the message. He had Coop order us a sedan from a local limo service and told him where to pick us up. Since no cars were moving, we’d have to walk at least a mile to get beyond the traffic jam.

Around us, news crews were scrambling to set up live cams. Television reporters rehearsed eye witnesses, prepping them for their big moment on live TV. Sirens blared from all directions. Above us, thwacking blades from a dozen helicopters sliced the sky.

“How’d she detonate it?” Quinn asked. “Cell phone?”

“That’s my guess,” I said. “Or maybe she just placed the bomb and someone else detonated it.”

Hundreds of locals rushed past us, jockeying for the best views from which to observe the unfolding drama. Shell-shocked tourists aimed cameras and video recorders at the human carnage, and I cringed, thinking about how these grizzly images would be played and replayed and plastered all over the news. Talking heads would speculate and argue, and politicians from both parties would point fingers and assign blame to the opposition.

I asked, “Any idea why she waited so long to detonate the charge?”

He thought about it a few seconds before answering. “She might have made me from the balcony,” he said.

I remembered how she made a funny smile when she arrived at the room, standing near the balcony. Could that have been what made her smile? Quinn? Would she have reason to know him? If so, the terrorists had infiltrated our organization much deeper than I’d thought. “She saw you behind the hotel and then made you in the car afterward?” I asked. “That doesn’t seem likely.”

“No. When she came out the front of the hotel, we got stuck in traffic. I told Coop to just follow the beeps while I jumped out of the car to follow her on foot. She probably saw me getting out of the car ’cause she took off like a poisoned pig!”

“And you couldn’t catch her? Skinny little girl like that?”

“Runs like Callie,” he said.

“No one runs like Callie,” I said. “But I get the picture.”

Quinn said, “Last time I saw her, she was passing a Krispy Kreme Donut shop. Then I heard the blast and ran back.”

“What was that, two blocks? You call that a run?”

“Hey, you’re my size, two blocks is an Olympic event.”

“So Coop the driver followed the beeps, and we’ve got the address where she stopped,” I said, patting myself on the back for placing the tracking device in her purse.

“Might take us a while to get there,” Quinn said.

He was right. In fact, it took an hour to get the car and another twenty minutes to fight the traffic. Finally, after what seemed like forever, we spotted the miniscule split-level ranch with the peeling yellow paint on Vista Creek Drive to which Coop had tracked Jenine. Coop had parked his car a block away from the house, so we had our driver park a block beyond that. Then we signaled Coop and waited for him to return the signal. He didn’t, which meant either he was sleeping or …

He was dead. We knew it the minute we saw the bullet hole in the driver’s window. Coop had been shot from the blind side, just behind his left ear. His head hung down, his chin resting on his sternum. His blood was everywhere. Quinn opened the driver’s side door and lifted Coop’s head.

“What’s that in the bullet hole?” he asked.

I hated putting my face that close to poor Coop’s, but Quinn was right; there was something protruding from the bullet hole. It turned out to be the tracking device I had placed in Jenine’s purse.

Quinn backed out of the car, stretched to his full height, and looked at the house. “Any guess what we’ll find in there?”

“Jenine’s body,” I said.

Quinn gestured toward Coop and said, “Good thing our limo driver didn’t see this. Might have spooked him.”

“Ya think?” I said.

“I think you picked up that expression from the new girl, Kathleen.”

“I think you’re right.”

CHAPTER 28

We entered the house and quickly found two bodies wrapped in thick plastic. Both were attractive young women, one being Jenine. The other girl seemed vaguely familiar. She could have been anyone, but with two bedrooms in the house, my money was on her being Jenine’s roommate.

What we couldn’t find in the house was anything else.

No furniture, dishes, pots, pans, or silverware. No mops, brooms, cleaning supplies, paper cups, toilet paper. No computers, printers, phones, photographs, or paper of any kind. It was mindboggling. To rid an entire house of so much evidence in such a short period of time—even a small house like Jenine’s—would require a large, experienced crew. These guys were consummate pros. One or more hit men had killed three people while a full crew of crime scene cleaners waited in the wings.

In the refrigerator, there were two unopened bottles of water.

“For us?” asked Quinn.

“Apparently,” I said.

Quinn started to reach for one. “You think they’re poisoned?”

“I do.”

“What do we do now?” Quinn asked. “Talk to the neighbors?”

I didn’t think so. Surely someone spotted the dead driver before we did. They’d have called the cops. Fortunately for us, most of the police were either at the hotel or heading there. Whoever they could spare to check on our dead driver was probably on their way but likely stuck in traffic. Still, I figured we didn’t have much time.

“You got a laptop in your luggage?” I asked.

“I do.”

“Let’s get out of here and drive somewhere we can get Wi-Fi.”

“What about the water?” Quinn asked. “Should we leave them for the cops?”

“There won’t be any prints on them. On the other hand, some rookie’s liable to get killed drinking one.” We opened them and poured the water down the sink and took the bottles with us to the car.

When we got to Starbucks, Quinn remained with the driver and I took his cell phone and laptop inside. My first objective was to access the Web site where I’d discovered Jenine’s ad. I remembered seeing lots of girls on the site, and hopefully some were local. If so, I intended to contact them and see if they knew Jenine. Best case scenario, someone might give me a lead to follow.

There were two locals on the site, Star and Paige. Star wouldn’t be talking, since I recognized her as the other dead girl in Jenine’s house.

I called Paige and got her answering service. I left a message to return my call as soon as possible. Then I left the coffee shop and climbed into the front seat and waited. I looked at Quinn and tried not to smile. Times like these—his huge form crammed into the back seat, knees bent, head bowed, shoulders hunched—made me realize the effort it took just to be him. He was so large he could barely fi t in the back seat of the town car.

“You did a good job at the hotel today,” I said. “Probably saved a half-dozen people.”

Quinn shrugged. “I was on the clock.”

In time, we would learn that local hospital personnel labored for days to service the injured, and many of the bodies they received were charred beyond identification. The initial death toll was one hundred and eleven, but within a week the final count turned north of a buck fifty.

The phone rang, and I answered it.

“This is Paige,” she said.

“You sound gorgeous,” I said.

She laughed. “Maybe we should stick to the phone then, just in case.”

“Not a chance. I’ve already seen your picture.”

“Ah,” she said. “So what did you have in mind?”

“I was hoping we could meet for a cup of coffee, maybe chat awhile, get to know each other. If we’re compatible, we can take it from there.”

“My standard donation is five hundred dollars an hour.”

“I’ll double that if you can get here within the hour.”

“Don’t be offended,” she said, “but are you affiliated in any way with law enforcement?”

“I’m not. Are you?”

She laughed. “No, but I played a sexy meter maid in a high school play a few years back.”

“That might be fun to reenact some time,” I said, trying to guess where she might be heading with the comment. I wondered if her other clients sounded this retarded.

“I still have the costume, so maybe we can talk about it when I get there,” she purred. “You’re fun; I can tell. Where would you like to meet, and how will I recognize you when I get there?”

I told her and hung up. Then I told Quinn that Paige thought I sounded fun. He rolled his eyes.

Paige was plenty cute, but she didn’t look like an aspiring actress. She didn’t look like a hooker, either. What she looked like was a soccer mom, which, as it turned out, she was. I slipped her the envelope, and she palmed it and placed it in her purse. She excused herself and went to the restroom. When she got back, she said, “That’s way more than we agreed on. Did you want to book more time?”

“Not really,” I said. “I just wanted you to know I’m sincere.”

We talked about our kids and our divorces. She talked about how different grade school had become since she was a kid. “When I was in school, if I wanted to do something after school, I had to ride there on my bike,” she said. “Or I didn’t participate. My kids have it easy. They’d never believe it, but I actually used to be somebody. These days I’m a glorified taxi driver.”

“Well, I’ve probably got ten years on you,” I said. “But one thing that was different for me: my schools never had any moms like you!”

She winked. “Maybe they did and you didn’t know.”

I let that interesting thought fl oat around in my head a minute, but the only mom I could remember clearly from grade school was Mrs. Carmodie, Eddie’s mom—Eddie being the kid with the cherry bombs. What I remembered most about Mrs. Carmodie was she had a double-decker butt. While normal butts curve like the letter C, Mrs. Carmodie’s butt got halfway through the C, then extended several inches in a straight line like some sort of shelf before finishing the curve. The shelf on her butt was wide enough to hold two cans of soda. Yet try as I might, I couldn’t envision Eddie’s mom turning tricks during the day while we were in school.

The half hour flew by, and after we finished our coffees, I walked Paige to her car. Her silver Honda Accord had sixteen-inch Michelin tires with bolt-patterned alloy rims. She noticed the limo parked beside her.

“I wonder whose car that is,” she said. “You think it’s someone famous?”

“It’s mine, actually.”

“No way!”

“Want to peek inside?”

She did, and when she did, Quinn grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her onto the seat. I followed her in and pulled the door shut behind me. Paige was breathing rapidly, and her heart was probably beating as fast as a frightened rabbit, but she knew better than to scream.

“Where’s the driver?” I asked.

“When you went in, I told him to take a walk and come back in an hour.”

That left us a half hour to find out what Paige knew. Turns out, we only needed five minutes to learn something that hit me like a left hook to the liver.

CHAPTER 29

“All of us had to share details about our customers with a man named Grasso,” Paige said.

“By ‘all of us’ you mean?”

“The local girls, the ones they consider hot.”

“Jenine would obviously qualify.”

“Yes. She’s one of the faves.”

“What can you tell me about Grasso?”

“Not too much. He works for a major gangster. I don’t want to say who.”

I peeled off another grand and placed it in her hand. She looked into my eyes. “You didn’t get this from me.”

“Of course.”

She whispered, “Joseph DeMeo.” Then she said, “Please, mister, keep me out of this. I’ve got kids.”

“I will,” I said, “but you’ve got to find another line of work. You’re not safe doing this. We won’t repeat anything you told us, but DeMeo knows you’re friends with Jenine and Star, and they’re gone now. You’ve got to get your kids and get the hell out of town. DeMeo won’t leave any loose ends. Do you understand?”

She nodded.

I kissed her cheek and let her go.

An hour later, we pulled up to the guard station at Edwards. I flashed my credentials, and one of the guards informed me that all flights had been grounded due to the terrorist attack. I got Darwin on the phone, and within minutes the guard received orders from the base commander to open the gate. Our limo driver took us across the tarmac and parked us next to the company’s jet. Quinn reminded me to pop the trunk so he could retrieve his saxophone.

“That reminds me,” I said, and sang, “You cain’t always get h’what you wa-hant!”

Quinn’s facial deformity prevented him from smiling, but you could sometimes find amusement there if you knew how to interpret it. I was one of the few who did.

“Always figured you for a Stones fan,” he said.

The pilots, who had been glued to the TV in the auxiliary terminal, were now racing across the tarmac to open the cabin door for us.

“It’ll take us fifteen minutes to get her ready for takeoff ,” one of them shouted.

Quinn and I climbed into the cabin. While he got situated, I poured us a drink. He said, “Is your cell phone broken? Reason I ask, you’ve checked it half a dozen times since the explosion.”

“I sort of thought Janet might call,” I said.

“Heard about the attack, wondered if you’re okay?” he said.

“Stupid, right?”

Quinn shrugged and held up his glass. “To ex-wives,” he said.

We clinked glasses. “I’m not sure that counts,” I said. “You’ve never been married.”

Quinn drank some of his bourbon. “Never been bitten by a yak, either.”

I held a sip of the bourbon in my mouth a few seconds to enhance the burn. “Yak?” I said.

He grinned.

I swallowed the bourbon and took another sip. “Me, either,” I said. “That strike you as odd?”

Quinn’s eyes started smiling again, or so it seemed to me. He said, “One time Coop told me he got bit by a yak. Said he was in India in a town whose name can’t be pronounced by anyone who’s not from Tibet. Said they made him drink tea made from yak butter.”

“Yak butter,” I said.

“Coop says the average man in Tibet drinks forty to fifty cups of tea every day of his life. The teapot always has a big lump of yak butter in it. You’re supposed to blow the yak butter scum out of the way before you take a sip,” Quinn said.

“That’s disgusting.”

“Same thing I told Coop!”

I nodded. “To Coop,” I said, and we touched glasses again. From the cockpit, I heard the pilots working through their preflight checklist. Quinn silently swallowed the rest of his bourbon. I followed his lead. The co-pilot opened the door and gave us a thumbs-up, and we buckled our seat belts and settled in for the long flight to Virginia. I looked out the window and for the first time it struck me that today had been clear and beautiful, just like New York City on 9/11.

CHAPTER 30

The jet made quick work of the runway. Once airborne, I told the pilot to veer toward the hotel so I could witness the scene from above. However, within seconds, an F/A-18 Hornet pulled alongside us and escorted us northeast, out of LA airspace.

The co-pilot opened the cabin door. “Sorry about that, Mr. Creed.”

“You pussy,” I said.

He frowned and went back to work, leaving me to contemplate the smoldering bodies I’d seen just hours ago. I pictured families and loved ones across the country desperately dialing cell phones that would never be answered. I wondered if, when the roof fell, how many rescue personnel had to be added to the death toll.

After we hit cruising altitude, I called Victor. When he answered, I said, “How’d you do it?”

“If … you’re … talk … ing … about the … spy … satel … lite … you can … tell … your … people … I’m … sorry. I … won’t … do it … again.”

“You’re sorry?” I said. “You’re kidding, right? ’Cause they have ways to make you sorry. By the way, where’s Monica?”

I heard a shuffling sound, and a guy with a high-pitched but otherwise normal voice took over. “Mr. Creed,” he said, “My name is Hugo.”

“Hugo,” I said.

“That is correct,” he said.

“Your voice,” I said. “I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess you’re a little person.”

“Also correct,” he said.

“Okay, so I’m supposed to believe your names are Victor and Hugo. Who do you guys hang out with, HG and Wells?”

“I do not know any HG and Wells,” he said. “I am Victor’s spiritual adviser.”

“Spiritual adviser,” I said.

“That is correct.”

In the background, I heard Victor say, “Tell … him … the … rest.” Hugo attempted to cover the mouthpiece with his hand but it was a small hand and I could still hear them talking, plain as day.

Hugo said, “He’ll laugh at me.”

Victor said, in a commanding voice, “Tell … him!”

Hugo removed his hand from the mouthpiece and told me he was something, but his voice was so small I had to ask him to repeat himself.

“You’re the what?” I asked.

“Supreme commander of his army.”

“I’m trying to think of something funny to say,” I said, “but you’ve rendered me speechless.”

Hugo said he and Victor had amassed an army of little people all over the country. “We have soldiers everywhere,” Hugo said. “Hundreds. Some are captains of industry. Others have access to information surpassing all but the highest pay grades. We’ve even got a little person on the White House kitchen staff,” he boasted.

“What is he,” I asked, “a short order cook?”

He covered up the mouthpiece again and I heard him tell Victor, “Say the word and I’ll kill the bastard. Turn me loose on him, that’s all I ask. I’ll cut out his liver and dance on it.” He was shouting now: “I want to dance on his liver!” Victor took charge of the phone.

“Mr. … Creed … you … have up … set my … gen … eral.”

“C’mon, Victor, cut the crap,” I said. “I need to know if Monica’s alive. If so, I need to kill her. Thanks to you, it’s become a matter of national security.”

“We … should … meet,” he said. “There … is much … ground … to … cover.”

We agreed to meet Tuesday morning at Café Napoli in New York City. “You got an address for me?” I asked.

“Hes … ter and Mul … berry,” he said. “In … Little … Italy.”

“Little Italy,” I said.

“You … see I’m … not … without … a sense … of hu … mor, Mr. Creed.”

“You gonna have soldiers at the restaurant?”

“Eight o’ … clock be … fore the … place … opens up,” he said.

“I’ll be there,” I said.

CHAPTER 31

After completing my conversation with Victor and Hugo, I placed a call to headquarters and told Lou Kelly that the hotel bomb wasn’t a terrorist strike. “It was a personal attack against me by Joe DeMeo,” I said.

I gave him all the embarrassing details regarding my tryst with Jenine, told him about Coop the driver getting killed and about Jenine and Star and how their house had been sterilized.

“This Jenine, she the one you’d pegged for Callie’s body double?”

“She was, and she’d have been perfect.” I didn’t tell him about the birthmark photos I’d taken. It seemed like an intrusion, somehow.

“What you’re saying,” Lou said, “Jenine and her friends, and most of the prostitutes in LA …”

“The pretty ones,” I said.

“All the pretty prostitutes in LA: working for Joe DeMeo?”

“Not working for him as in being pimped, but yeah, he finances their Web sites, has his people monitor the sites and the girls, and pays them for information.”

“Information he can use to buy influence with politicians, maybe the Hollywood elite?”

“Otherwise, how would he know where and when I was planning to meet Jenine?”

“He’d set this up even before your meeting at the cemetery,” Lou said.

“Otherwise his guys would have shot me there.”

“Not the easiest thing to do with Quinn guarding you.”

“Yeah, but DeMeo had nine guys there the night before. DeMeo told me they spotted Augustus. Still, Quinn would have killed a couple, and I might have done the same, but we were out-manned and on Joe’s turf. He could have killed us both. And should have,” I said.

“Why have a big shootout in the middle of the day? Better to use Jenine to bomb you,” Lou said. “He already knew you planned to visit a hooker in Santa Monica.”

“Make it look like a terrorist attack,” I said. “Kill Jenine, let her take the fall. They’ve got her computer, which ties her to me, and they can make it look like she was working with terrorists.”

“And Joe DeMeo gets away with pinning the hotel bombing on the terrorists.”

“Joe’s a slick one,” I said.

We were silent a moment while Lou’s mind worked it. “You tell Darwin about DeMeo yet?”

“I wanted to bounce it off you first.”

“Uh huh. Well, we better let him be the one to tell the world,” Lou said.

“Or not tell them.”

“You think he’ll try to cover it up?”

“I think he’ll keep the blame focused on the terrorists. He left the possibility open with Monica, and this is a logical extension. It’s easy to believe, and it’s good politically; it justifies his job and budget and brings the country together.”

“He’ll have to tell the Feebs something,” Lou said.

“Whatever he tells them, our focus is Monica. After we confirm her death, we’ll give them the hotel bombing and let them take the credit for solving it.”

“That’s worst case scenario,” Lou said. “We might get lucky, find and rescue Monica. Then we give the Feebs all the glory and get a ton of future favors in return.”

I said nothing.

There was a short pause and then he said, “Oh, right. I got it. There will be no rescue.”

I said, “Just so we’re on the same page.”

Lou sighed. “This business,” he said.

“Don’t get me started.”

I told Lou to get some full-timers working on any connection they could find between Baxter Childers and Victor.

“Tell me about Victor,” he said, and I told him what I knew, except for the part about the spy satellite.

Then I asked, “How long you think it’ll take to find a connection?”

Lou laughed. “Five, maybe ten minutes.”

“You’re joking,” I said.

“Donovan, you and I each have our specialties, and for both of us, some jobs are harder than others. When you tell me that on the one hand you’ve got a world-famous surgeon, on the other an angry quadriplegic midget with dreadlocks, and you know there’s a connection and want me to find it—well that’s like asking you how long it would take to kill a hamster with a shotgun.”

“So that’s a yes.”

“It is.”

I told Lou to also contact the LAPD and bomb squad techs and get back to me ASAP. The more we learned about the bomb, the more we’d know about Joe DeMeo and the extent of his power.

“No way the attack on you could have been an inside job?” Lou asked.

“I don’t think so. If our guys, including you, wanted to kill me, it would be a lot easier to just poison me.” I glanced at Quinn and noticed him watching me with amused indifference. “Of course, Quinn knew about both Jenine and the hotel,” I said, “but it’s hard to pin it on him.”

Quinn pricked up his ears.

“Not because he’s my friend,” I said, aiming a smile in his direction, “but because he didn’t know my plans for after the DeMeo meeting. I didn’t tell him about the hotel or Jenine until a few minutes before we got there. And he didn’t know her name or what she looked like until she arrived. None of that really matters, because Augustus could kill me anytime he wants when we’re testing the ADS weapon.”

Quinn nodded and closed his eyes, glad to know he wasn’t a suspect. Now maybe I wouldn’t try to murder him in his sleep.

“One more thing,” Lou said. “They’ve got your cell phone number.”

I hadn’t thought about that, but sure, if Jenine had my number, DeMeo’s team had it.

“If he’s got whores and bombs, he’s probably got connections to a radical fringe element as well,” Lou said.

“So?”

“You might want to shut down your cell phone, just in case.”

“In case what?”

“In case DeMeo’s aiming a Stinger missile at your cell signal right now.”

“Shit!” I said. I hung up and ripped the battery out of my cell phone. The jet had a secure phone, and Quinn had one, too, so I didn’t need mine anyway. I took a deep breath, thinking, Jesus, there’s so much to think about in this business! I let the breath out slowly, kicked off my shoes, and turned my attention to Quinn, hoping for conversation. However, my deadly giant was snoring away. I had to admire anyone who could fall asleep so quickly, especially at a time like this.

I couldn’t sleep; I felt trapped inside the jet’s luxurious cabin. Felt impotent, too. Stuck in this metal cocoon, I couldn’t do anything about Janet or Monica or Kathleen or the hotel bombing. I couldn’t even read the book I’d started on the flight here—it had vaporized in the hotel along with the rest of my personal items. I tapped my fingers on the burl wood table and glanced around the cabin for a newspaper. Started flipping through a People Magazine, hoping Augustus wouldn’t catch me doing so, but I couldn’t get into it. When you’ve survived a bomb blast and more than a hundred people didn’t, it’s hard to focus on rumors of a possible hickey on Paris Hilton’s neck.

I was going stir-crazy. I checked my watch for the third time since Lou’s call and tried to fall asleep, but the monotonous thrum of the turbofans kept mocking me. I tapped my fingers some more and tried to think about what sort of relationship might exist between Joe DeMeo and Victor, if any. Then wondered how to go about stealing twenty-five mil from Joe DeMeo. Th en I worked on the problem of how to find and kill Monica Childers, assuming she wasn’t already dead.

I’d never had trouble concentrating on business before, but here, locked in this environment, nothing was working. Listen to me: environment! Hell, who was I kidding? It wasn’t the environment. I knew exactly what it was: whether I was having sex with Lauren or saying good-bye to Jenine or sitting alone bored out of my gourd on a luxury jet, all my thoughts eventually turned to Kathleen. There was something about her infectious laugh and winning personality that touched my heart and made me itch to know what might have been. That was over now and probably couldn’t be salvaged. In dumping me, she’d made the right decision, because in the final analysis, I was no better than Ken Chapman. We’d both managed to hurt her in our own way.

Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

CHAPTER 32

“Daddy, thank God you’re okay! I mean, I knew you would be, but whenever something like this happens, I can’t help but worry.”

We’d been in the air forty-five minutes, long enough to feel comfortable putting the battery back in my cell phone. I’d been thinking about the boy I saved earlier and the girl who might have been his sister, the one who didn’t survive. It made me think about Kimberly, how precious she was to me.

“Daddy? Are you okay?”

And how lucky I was to have her in my life.

“Dad?”

Kimberly doesn’t know the details of my job, but Janet had told her plenty over the years. She had some sketchy knowledge about the killing I’d done for the CIA, and she knew my current position had something to do with counter-terrorism. Still, I never realized until now what I’d been putting her through. I hadn’t realized that every time a bomb detonated or a bridge collapsed, she automatically wondered if I might be injured or dead.

“I love you, Kimberly,” I said. “I’m sorry you were worried.”

“Well, at least you called this time.”

I felt guilty. Up to now, I’d thought Janet would call and I’d reassure her first, then I’d talk to Kimberly. My daughter is so together, I always seem to think of her as the parent and Janet as the child.

“I’m good,” I said. “How’s your mom?”

“Daddy, I’m worried. That hotel bomb, was it a terrorist attack? Are there going to be more?”

I looked at the color monitor on the wall panel. It showed our air speed, altitude, and ETA. We were making good time. If the computer was accurate, Quinn and I should be in Virginia by midnight. “We don’t know much about the hotel yet,” I said, “but I’m sure Homeland Security is doing everything they can to stop any further violence.”

Kimberly groaned. “Jesus, Daddy, you sound just like that FBI bimbo on TV. I’m your daughter, remember? I can’t believe you don’t trust me enough to tell me what’s really happening with all this.”

Kimberly was a sophomore in high school. No way could I give her the type of inside information she wanted. If she told a friend and word spread, the wrong people could trace the story back to her and that would put her and Janet’s lives in danger. Since I couldn’t allow that, I decided to change the subject.

“How come you’re not in school?”

“I knew it!” she said. “You’re on the West Coast! It’s night time here. Not that you’d know,” she added, “but it’s also winter break.”

“Oh,” I said. “I thought that was in December.”

She sighed. “That’s Christmas break.”

I loved my daughter, but what Janet had accused me of was true. I wasn’t an involved father. Maybe someday I’d have the time to become one—at least that’s what I keep telling myself. I knew Kimberly was experiencing some abandonment issues that were pretty much all my fault, and I’d eventually get around to solving them. But that would mean committing significant blocks of time to her, time I didn’t have at this point in my life. I wasn’t completely absent; I saw her once or twice a year, but in point of fact, where Kimberly was concerned, I was pretty much one and done.

Now I was about to do it to her again, because I knew Janet was hurting and I had to ask about her. Specifically, I wondered if Janet had told Kimberly about the breakup with Chapman. I decided to jump right in. “How are the wedding plans coming?”

She paused a beat. “Okay, I guess.”

“Have the announcements gone out yet?”

“No, they’re not at that stage.”

“Have you picked out a bridesmaid’s dress?”

“That comes later.”

“Are you uncomfortable talking to me about this?”

“What do you think?” she said. “I’d rather she didn’t get married, okay? I’d rather you didn’t ask me about it. I’d rather have you both in my life. If you want to know about her wedding so much, why don’t you talk to her about it?”

I heard teenage voices in the background.

“Where are you?” I asked. “At the mall?”

My daughter made a sad sound, the kind a teenager should never have to make. It was a sound that told me that in her eyes I was not only clueless as a father, but hopeless as well.

“Just call Mom,” she said. Just like that, she was gone.

Janet regarded me as poisonous. Her take on our marriage: the single biggest mistake of her life. Had she the opportunity to do it over again, she’d have lived in sin and walked out on me the day she gave birth.

I’d be the first to admit things weren’t always perfect, but really, whose marriage is? I attribute the bad times to the crazy hours I kept, the high stress component of my job, my anger issues, the void in my chest where a heart would normally be located, the lack of sympathy and tact most people expect to find in a spouse, and the depression I suffered when the opportunity to kill people for the CIA ended so abruptly.

However, these last few years had made me a better person. I’d been far less moody lately and wanted a chance to prove to Janet how much I’d changed since the divorce. Not because (as Lauren had said) I wanted her back—I didn’t—but because of Kimberly, who was hitting the age where having an involved father was more important than ever. I just wanted to get to a place where Janet might be able to find it within her power to have some decent things to say about me to our daughter.

I glanced at the sleeping Quinn and hoped he wouldn’t wake up in the middle of an argument between me and Janet. Talking out loud to Lou about my date with Jenine had been embarrassing enough. I took a chance and dialed Janet’s number.

“What do you want?” she snapped, as if she was hours into a bad mood and suddenly turned to see me standing beside her. I ignored her tone, knowing Janet had to rev herself up in order to deal with me. I didn’t blame her for keeping her guard up. According to her shrink, she may have divorced me, but she had never been able to drain “the reservoir filled with unresolved pain from the relationship.”

Janet’s question had been a good one. What, in fact, did I want? Down deep, I guess I wondered if her breakup with Chapman could somehow provide the catalyst for friendship. Maybe she’d thought about it this afternoon and realized I wasn’t the bad guy in all this, that by making her aware of Ken’s shortcomings, I was the one who’d been looking out for her and Kimberly. If Quinn hadn’t been sitting there, I might have casually mentioned some of the good things I’d done since the marriage, like the way I helped save some lives today. I wondered if she’d develop a greater appreciation of my character if I did so.

“Did you hear about the hotel bomb in LA?” I said.

“Was that your doing?”

Or not. “Jesus, Janet.”

“So that’s a yes?”

Janet wasn’t the most classically beautiful woman I’d ever known, but she was certainly the prettiest who ever professed to love me. While some might not care for her thin, cruel lips or sharp facial features, everything about her appearance used to tantalize me.

“I’ve obviously caught you at a bad time,” I said.

“Are you for real? Any time spent talking to you is a bad time, you son of a bitch!” She screamed, “I’d rather spend ten days strapped to a machine that sucks the life out of me than spend ten seconds talking to you!” Then she hung up on me.

I thought about what she said. The part about the life-sucking machine. I wondered if such a device could be built. If so, how would it work? How large would it be? What would it cost? Would it have much value as a torture device? I couldn’t imagine anything better than the ADS weapon. It was relatively portable now, but the army was already working on a handheld version that could be functional in a matter of months. Also, with ADS, the pain is instant and so is the recovery. Now that I’d compared the two in my head, I’d have to put the ADS weapon way above Janet’s lifesucking machine idea. Then again, Janet probably hadn’t heard about the ADS weapon.

I was pretty sure she’d choose talking to me over being exposed to the ADS beam.

I thought some more about Janet and the good times we shared. Then I pressed another number on my speed dial to shake away the image of her tight body and firm, slender legs.

Sal Bonadello answered as he always did: “What.”

It was more a statement than a question.

“Tell me about Victor,” I said.

“Who?”

“It’s me, goddamn it.”

“The friggin’ attic dweller?”

“The same.”

“Where are you?” he asked. I imagined him looking at the ceiling over his head, wondering if I were up there right now. I heard he woke up from a bad dream a few months ago and pumped six rounds into the ceiling above his bedroom while screaming my name.

“Relax,” I said. “I’m in the air, somewhere over Colorado.” I noticed Quinn was beginning to stir. Maybe he’d been awake the whole time and was giving me privacy with Janet and Kimberly. You never knew for certain about Augustus Quinn or what he might be thinking at any given moment.

“I heard what happened in Jersey.”

“You sound almost disappointed.”

“Nah, not really. But hey, it’s hard to find good shooters, you know?”

“Which is why you put up with all my shit,” I said.

“Tell me about it.”

“Listen up,” I said to Sal. “You said you met Victor. Where?”

“You know I can’t—whatcha call—divulge my sources.”

“Cut the crap, will ya?”

“He needed some heavy shit. I gave him a name.”

“What kind of heavy shit?”

“Guns, drugs, explosives—shit like that.”

“And your contact required you to be there?”

“Right. Look, what about that blond of yours, the one on TV driving the van—the real one, not the bullshit picture the FBI showed. You talk to her about me yet?”

“Don’t even,” I said.

“What, I can’t dream? What, I’m not good enough for her? How about you put in a good word for me, ah? I’ll consider it a favor.”

“Do you guys go to school somewhere to learn how to talk like that?”

“Yeah, wise ass. It’s called the friggin’ school of bustin’ heads, and I’m the—whatcha call—headmaster. So, you want my help or what?”

I sighed again and realized I’d been doing a lot of sighing lately. “I’ll mention your interest to the little lady.”

“All I’m askin’.”

“Next chance I get.”

“Ask her nicely.”

“Fine.”

“’Cause you never know.”

“Right.”

“Tell her I’m a man of mystery.”

“For the love of God!” I shouted. A few feet away from me, in the cabin, Quinn did that thing where he sort of smiled. I decided to come at Sal from a different angle.

“Did you happen to catch the hotel bombing in LA?”

“What am I, blind? Everywhere I look that’s all I see on the friggin’ tube. Was that you?”

I sighed again. I should be blowing balloons for a living.

“Sal,” I said, “the hotel bombing, it was DeMeo.”

“What? Joe DeMeo? That’s nuts!”

“I had a meeting with DeMeo this morning. Afterward, I met a hooker. That bomb you saw on TV? She planted it in my room. I found out later she was one of DeMeo’s girls.”

“You sayin’ they blew up that whole goddamn hotel just to kill you? And missed? I’d a used a friggin’ ice pick.”

“That’s a happy thought,” I said.

“Hey, nothin’ personal.”

“Right,” I said. I got us back on track. “Do you think Victor and DeMeo are working together some way?”

“Why?”

“Victor gave me the hit on Monica Childers. Suddenly the pictures are all over the TV. Turns out Victor hijacked a spy satellite and downloaded the photos. Then Monica’s body goes missing. The government pins it on Russians, supposedly working with terrorists. Next thing you know, DeMeo tries to kill me and makes it look like a terrorist attack on a hotel. That sound like a coincidence to you?”

“What do I look like, Perry Mason? Whaddya think, I got a friggin’ crystal ball in my pocket? What, I’m gonna check the horoscope for—whatcha call—worlds colliding?”

I took that as a no. “Can you give me anything at all on Victor?”

“You tryin’ to find Childers’ wife? Make sure she’s gonna stay dead this time?”

“That’s the plan.”

“Might cause a—whatcha call—rift between you and the midget.”

“I’ll try to solve the one without losing the other.”

“Well, nuthin’ from nuthin’, but things go bad between you, I don’t give refunds. Anyway I already donated my share to charity.”

“Spare me.”

“The Mothers of Sicily. You should look into it. They do great work here in the neighborhood.”

I said nothing.

Sal’s voice changed to something resembling sincerity. “Truth is, I got squat,” he said. “But I’ll shake the trees, see what falls out. I hate that friggin’ DeMeo. He’s bad for business.”

“You want to help me take him down?”

He paused. “That’s the sort of question gets people killed if someone’s taping.”

“I’m not taping anything. I want to rob him.”

“You better be planning to kill him, then.”

“I won’t rule it out,” I said. “You want half?”

“How much we talking about?”

“Twenty million.”

He was quiet a moment. “Twenty for me, or all together?”

“All together. Let’s get together soon, work it out.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, then added, “But stay outta my house. I don’t want to come home one night, find you in my friggin’ living room in the dark.”

“I’ll come to your social club.”

“Bring the blond with you.”

“Sal, about the blond. She’s dead inside.”

“You ever do her?”

“She’s like a spider. If she does you, she kills you.”

He thought about that awhile. “Might be worth it,” he said.

I thought about it, too. “Might be,” I said.

We hung up. My shoulder throbbed from hitting the sidewalk a few hours earlier. The engines continued their monotonous whine. I reclined my seat and closed my eyes. I think I might have heard Quinn say, “How can you sleep at a time like this?”

CHAPTER 33

A shrill sound jolted me awake. It repeated, and I pulled the air phone from its cradle. I checked my watch. Two hours had passed.

“What have you got for me?” I asked.

“We’re guessing Semtex,” Lou said.

Semtex is the explosive of choice for international terrorist groups. It’s cheap, odorless, readily available, has an indefinite shelf life, and slides through airport security scanners like a pair of silk panties.

Lou said, “You were right; the hotel blast originated in the area of your bedroom.”

“How’d they verify that?”

“Lack of a crater. Ground floor detonation would have left one a meter deep. A charge placed above the second floor would have taken out the roof.”

“What are the Feds working on?”

“Hotel cameras, cross-referencing faces with suspected terrorists and sympathizer lists, checking for connections by address, criminal records, religious and political affiliations. Darwin said to give them Jenine, so they’re working up a profile on her as well.”

I looked across the aisle at Quinn. He appeared to be asleep again, in the exact same position as before. From what I could see he hadn’t moved a muscle since finishing his second drink. I envy any monster that can crash like that.

“I wish he hadn’t given them Jenine,” I said. “They’re going to want to talk to me about it, and we’re liable to cross wires in the field. Better to solve the case for them and let them take the credit afterward.”

“The Feebs have you on the lobby camera checking in. They’ve got your name and credit card on the registration. They’ve got Jenine twice on the lobby cameras. They know about your clearance to fly out of Edwards. Darwin said if we didn’t give them Jenine, the Feds would detain you and Quinn as material witnesses when you land.”

That made sense. Still, I hated having everyone in law enforcement know about my dalliance with a twenty-year-old escort. Every Feeb I deal with from now on will find a way to work that into the conversation.

CHAPTER 34

By surviving Joe DeMeo’s attack, I’d put my family in danger, so I asked Callie to keep an eye on Janet and Kimberly until further notice. I’d also tipped my hand by demanding money for Addie, so I put Quinn in the burn center to protect her.

“Victor’s story is a sad one,” Lou said.

It was Sunday afternoon. My shoulder was freshly bandaged, and I’d gotten caught up on my sleep. Lou had gathered a ton of information for me on Victor, but all I wanted to know was the source of his funds and his connection to Monica Childers.

“They’re both related,” Lou said.

“Enlighten me with the short version.”

“Victor was born with serious respiratory problems. About twenty years ago, he was in the hospital for a minor surgery when a nurse gave him an accidental overdose that put him into cardiac arrest. Someone wheeled him into an elevator on the way to emergency surgery and somehow managed to leave him there. Up and down he went from floor to floor in the elevator for more than thirty minutes before someone realized what had happened. They rushed him to the OR, but the surgeon botched the procedure and Victor suffered a stroke. Subsequent attempts to save his life rendered him a quadriplegic.

“Then the hospital made a feeble attempt to cover up the incident. Victor’s attorneys sued both the hospital and the drug company and managed to win the largest settlement ever paid to an individual in the state of Florida. After being released from the hospital, Victor’s parents placed the proceeds from the lawsuit into Berkshire Hathaway stock. By the time he was of legal age, he was worth more than a hundred million dollars. By then, his parents were dead, and he surrounded himself with the best financial people money could buy. He became a venture capitalist, funded several internet startups that hit the big time.”

“How big?”

“We’re talking close to a billion dollars at this point. Beyond his incredibly sophisticated computer system, state-of-the-art apartment, and cutting-edge electronics that have allowed him to function at the highest possible level, he had nothing else upon which to spend his wealth.”

“The doctor that severed his spinal cord,” I said.

“Baxter Childers,” Lou said.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have motive,” I said.

CHAPTER 35

Tourists are often surprised to learn the true size of Little Italy. The entire area runs only three or four blocks along Mulberry Street, between Canal and Houston.

One of the cross streets is Hester, where Café Napoli has been in business more than thirty years. It’s open eighteen hours a day, beginning at 9:00 am. Victor had called in a favor and got us a table an hour before the breakfast crowd.

“Thank … you for … com … ing,” Victor said. He did have the dreadlocks Sal Bonadello told me about, and they grew long and filthy and hung down the sides and back of his body like thick ropes of dust. Were he able to stand erect, at least two of the strands would drag the floor. I wondered if they ever got caught in the spokes of his wheelchair.

Speaking of which, his wheelchair was incredibly high tech. I had no idea what bells and whistles it contained, but it seemed to have enough electronics on board to launch the space shuttle. It looked like something you’d find in the distant future. The back was enclosed and swept in an arc over his head, where it attached to a sort of roll bar that was at least an inch thick.

Victor moved his index finger on a touch pad, and several small computer screens silently retracted from the roll bar and positioned themselves at various angles about a foot in front of his head. Though I couldn’t view any of the screens from my position, one of them must have displayed a digital clock, because Victor glanced up at it and said, “Time … is limi … ted so … we should … get … star … ted.”

He wore a long-sleeved navy warm-up suit with three vertical white stripes on one side of the jacket. It was very expensive looking, probably hand-tailored, which made me realize how hard it must be for little people of limited means to find clothing. It’s one of those things you wouldn’t think about until you find yourself in this type of situation.

We were in the main dining area, where the walls were brick and covered with pictures and other memorabilia from Italy. Our table was larger than the others, but they all had white, floorlength tablecloths and small vases with colorful fake flower arrangements.

Hugo had been standing when I arrived, and he continued to stand. I wondered about that until I realized he didn’t have a choice. The table and chairs were too tall to properly accommodate him. So he stood and glared at me.

I nodded at him. “Hugo,” I said.

I saw a flash of dark yellow and realized Hugo had bared his teeth at me. If intense staring could cause a person to explode, I was doomed.

A young man approached us and said, “The kitchen’s not open yet, but I can bring you a pot of coffee and a bagel or pastry if you wish.”

“No liver?” Hugo snarled, without taking his eyes off me. I suddenly realized what made his stare so intimidating: he never blinked. In fact, he hadn’t blinked once since I’d arrived.

The server seemed confused. “I’m not a waiter. I’m just a busboy, so I don’t know the menu very well. I can probably scrounge up some lox or cream cheese.”

No one said anything, so I said, “I think we’ll just talk, but thanks for the offer.” Then I thought of something and added, “Could you remove the flowers?” I didn’t think Victor would put a bug in the flower arrangement, but why take a chance?

The busboy left with the flowers, and I started things off. To Hugo, I said, “You know, for a spiritual adviser, you’re pretty pugnacious.”

“Fuck you!” he screamed.

I shrugged. I was beginning to get used to the unblinking stare. To Victor, I said, “Do you need to frisk me? Make sure I’m not wearing a wire or tape recorder?”

Victor said, “Not … neces … sary. I … scanned … you … already.” He lifted his head slightly to indicate the screens.

I didn’t believe for a minute that he had the ability to scan me or he would have mentioned the gun I’d taped to the small of my back.

Victor said, “Just … don’t … reach for … the gun … behind … you.” Then he said, “Hu … go will … do most … of the … talking … for ob … vious … reasons.”

“That’s fi ne,” I said, wondering what else his wheelchair could do. “So tell me: how did you hijack the spy satellite?”

“That’s proprietary,” Hugo snapped. “Military experiment. Need-to-know basis only.”

“Yeah, well I need to know,” I said. “I’ve been ordered to find the people who breached the satellite’s computer system, and kill them. I’m asking you nicely here, but this is nonnegotiable.”

Hugo sneered at me as if I were an insect. “Is that a threat?”

I sighed. “I came here hoping to strengthen our relationship, but if it’s not to be, I can always just snap your necks.”

Hugo still hadn’t blinked, but he turned to face Victor. “May I approach?” he asked. Victor nodded. Hugo unzipped Victor’s jacket. Victor’s entire torso was covered with explosives.

I tried to act unaffected, as if this sort of thing happened all the time. But I don’t think I fooled anyone. Still, I pressed on. “Where’s the detonator?”

Hugo looked down at the table. At first I didn’t understand. Then I said, “You’re joking.” I slid my chair back a couple of feet and slowly lifted the tablecloth. There were two midgets under the table. One had a .38 pointed directly into my crotch. The other had a detonator taped to his left hand. His right index finger hovered just above a large red button. I took a deep breath and nodded to the two midgets under the table. “Relax, okay?” I said. Then I put the tablecloth back the way I’d found it.

“Actually,” I said, “I don’t care how you hijacked the satellite. I just want to be able to tell my boss why it won’t happen again.”

“He already knows. They installed a patch to block us.”

“Does it work?”

“It does,” Hugo said. He smiled and added, “For now.”

Victor said, “We … won’t … breach it. I pro … mise.”

I studied my vertically challenged employer a moment. He had a boyish face, made puffy from what I assumed to be years of drug use. I was about to say something when he suddenly flashed a smile. Not just any smile, or a creepy one, but a full, genuine, winning smile. Encountering it this way, in such an unexpected manner, startled me more than seeing the explosives on his body or the midgets under the table. Victor scrunched up his face in a way that reminded me of kids on a playground, him being the last kid hoping to be chosen for a team, the kid no one wants to pick. Then, in a small, vulnerable voice, he said, “Can we … just … be friends?”

It was an amazing moment to witness, an instant transformation from deadly to helpless. At that moment, he seemed sweet, almost adorable. If Kathleen had been there, I’m sure she would have said, “Aw, how cute.” But Kathleen wasn’t there, and she didn’t have a gun aimed at her crotch.

“Good enough,” I said. “I’ll try to keep my people off your backs. So what happened to Monica?”

Hugo said, “You know Fathi, the diplomat?”

“Father or son?”

“Both. But the father, the UAE diplomat, we sold Monica to him.”

Victor and Hugo were full of surprises, so why should I have been shocked? But I was. In fact, I was so stunned, I couldn’t think of a sensible question. So instead I said, “Was she alive at the time?”

Hugo laughed. “He wouldn’t have much use for a dead sex slave.”

I tried to wrap my brain around it. “Is she still in the country?”

“Her body is.”

So she was dead after all. Darwin would be pleased. But something still didn’t compute. “You hired me to kill Monica, and I did. Then you tracked me on spy satellite, grabbed her body, brought her back to life, and sold her as a sex slave. Now she’s dead again, right? Well pardon the pun, but that seems like overkill. Why didn’t you just hire me to kidnap her?”

Hugo said there were two reasons. First, it would have been a conflict of interest, since they planned to sell her to terrorists and I’m a counter-terrorist. Second, they wanted to see if they could bring her back to life after a trained assassin had done his best to kill her.

“So I was what, part of a medical experiment?”

“Yes.”

Hugo reminded me that their army of little people included scientists, microbiologists, and specialists in almost every field of research. One of their people had developed a revolutionary antidote to botulinum toxin, and since they had targeted Monica anyway, she would be their first test. They figured I’d give her the most potent injection possible, which I did. If she survived, they’d sell Monica to Fathi. If not, they’d keep working on the antidote.

“And it worked,” I said.

“That is correct. We intend to make one hundred million dollars selling the antidote to the military.”

“Our military?”

“Ours, theirs, whoever.”

“Back to the conflict of interest,” I said. “I’m not comfortable working with you if you’re also working with terrorists.”

Hugo sneered. “That is absurd. Your government works with terrorists every day. They call it infiltration. We do the same. We infi trate them for our own purposes, which shall not be revealed to you.”

Though my head was swimming, I managed to ask him about the two other targets they wanted me to kill. Hugo said they were part of a social experiment.

“First a medical experiment, now a social experiment.”

Hugo said, “That is correct.”

“Can you give me the Cliff s Notes on that?” I asked. Hugo looked at Victor before answering. Victor nodded. Hugo turned back to me and said, “Victor wishes to understand the true nature of evil. Before you injected Monica, we gave her a chance to name two people who caused her pain in her life. You will kill those two people and get two names from each. Victor believes we all have at least two people who have caused irreparable harm in our lives. You will exact vengeance for all the victims.”

“He started with Monica because of her husband, the doctor.”

“Yes. We could not have you kill the doctor. It would be too easy to link Victor to the crime. There is a saying: ‘If you would hurt your enemy, punish the one he loves.’ Since Monica was innocent, we gave her a choice: live in captivity or die in the van.”

“And she chose life.”

Victor and Hugo nodded together.

“But you knew the Fathis planned to kill her.”

Hugo and Victor nodded together. Hugo clarified, “We knew they would not use proper restraint. We knew they would not give her time to recover.”

“So why have you involved me in all of this?” I asked.

“We’ve got big plans for you, Mr. Creed.”

“Such as?”

“You’re going to help us take over the world.”

“Well, why not,” I said. Then, for whatever reason, I thought of Joe DeMeo. I said, “I’d love to help you take over the world and all, but I’m going to be busy robbing and killing a very powerful crime boss.”

Victor said, “Maybe … we can … help.”

I thought about that a minute and said, “You probably could. You hijacked a spy satellite. Do you have access to drones?”

“Killer drones?” Hugo asked. “Loaded? That is impossible.”

I laughed. Maybe they weren’t as crazy as I’d thought. “I was thinking maybe you could divert one of the weather drones off the coast of California or a surveillance one flying between Alaska and Russia.”

“To where?”

“Hills of LA,” I said. “Just for a few minutes.”

Hugo walked to the other end of the room with his cell phone. He was gone a couple of minutes. When he came back, he looked at Victor and nodded. Victor nodded back. “Yeah,” Hugo said, “we can do that.”

“Really?” I asked.

Hugo nodded.

“What will it cost me?”

“What’s … the … take?” Victor said.

“Tens of millions, I think. If we do it right.”

Victor thought a moment before replying. “We … don’t want … the … mon … ey,” he said. “We’d … ra … ther bank … the fa … vor.”

“Works for me,” I said. Then I dialed Joe DeMeo’s number.

“Well, you said you’d call,” DeMeo said. “So it must be Tuesday.”

“You killed a lot of people in that hotel trying to blow me up,” I said.

“Creed, listen to me. If you’re still worrying about that ten million for the burned kid, I got a better idea. I did some checking,” he said. “Turns out she’s got all kinds of life-threatening injuries, so I’m wondering maybe we should see if she survives before you and me ruin a good relationship.”

“She’s well-protected, Joe.”

“Yeah, I heard your giant was there. A face like that, he ought to fit in with the rest of the burn patients.”

We were quiet awhile. Then he said, “Are we done here or is there something else you want to say?”

I said, “I’m coming to get you, Joe.”

“Oh yeah?” he said. Then he laughed. “You and what army?”

I looked at Victor and Hugo, thought about the guys holding the gun and detonator under the table, thought about the mini scientists who could hijack spy satellites and create an antidote for the deadliest poison known to man. I thought about the dwarf who worked on the White House kitchen staff.

I nodded at Victor. He winked at me and nodded back.

“I got a hell of an army,” I told Joe DeMeo.

Hugo’s posture went ramrod straight, and his chest swelled with pride. He saluted me.

I hung up the phone. Hugo said, “Well? What did he say? Did he laugh when you said that part about the army? I bet he laughed. Tell me he laughed. Just say it, just tell me he laughed and I’ll kill the son of a bitch with my bare hands. I’ll rip his ears off his head. I’ll …”

“He laughed,” I said.

Hugo looked at Victor. “They always laugh,” he said. He seemed to instantly deflate.

“Don’t let it get you down,” I said. “They don’t know what they’re up against.”

“Ac … tually … they … don’t,” Victor said.

CHAPTER 36

There is no scent of freshly baked bread in Little Italy, no Italians singing love songs or speaking boisterously while flapping their arms in the air. Still, enough charm remains to inspire a walk, if you’ve got the time. I did, so I told my driver to wait while I headed down Mott, and Mulberry, and Elizabeth and Baxter.

The area is gradually being swallowed up by Chinatown, and most of the people who can speak Italian have long since moved to the Bronx. But the streets are still lively and colorful, and the fire hydrants are painted green, white, and red, the colors of the Italian flag.

I didn’t find anything to buy, but I had a decent lunch and managed to clear my head after the meeting with Victor and Hugo. I didn’t think for one minute Victor and Hugo’s army of little people could take over the world, but I was gaining confidence that they could help me take down Joe DeMeo.

A couple hours after lunch, I found my driver and had him push his way through the traffic to the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where I got a room at the Hotel Plaza Athenee. By five, room service had delivered an incredible panini sandwich filled with fresh spinach, mozzarella, and roasted red peppers. They also brought me a bottle of Maker’s and a heavy glass tumbler. I ate the sandwich and washed it down with three fingers of bourbon. By six, I’d had a hot shower and was freshly shaved and dressed. I watched the news on Fox for twenty minutes and still had more than enough time to walk the quarter mile east, to Third and Sixty-Sixth.

It was Tuesday, after all.

“For me?” she asked.

There was an empty chair waiting for her at the tiny table I’d staked out at Starbucks, and Kathleen had instantly spied the raspberry scone on the small square of wax paper across from me. To my utter surprise, she rewarded me with a radiant smile, removed her coat, and joined me at the table.

“Who’d a thought it?” she said.

“What’s that?”

“There’s a romantic component at work here,” she said, “one that might even rival your desire to separate me from my panties.”

“The mystery never ends,” I said.

“Do I want to know where you’ve been since Wednesday, what you’ve been up to?”

The angel on my shoulder urged me to tell Kathleen everything and let her run out of my life so she could find true happiness. Of course, the devil on my other shoulder said, “When in doubt, just smile and change the subject.”

“Can I get you a coffee?” I asked.

Kathleen frowned and shook her head. “That bad, eh?”

“I’ve had worse,” I said, and immediately realized I was telling the truth. I thought, What a rotten thing to have to admit, even to myself. I looked at Kathleen across the table. Her eyes were locked onto my mouth, as if she could read my thoughts by watching me speak the words. If that could possibly be true, I wanted to give her something better—a happier thought, one she might enjoy hearing. It would have to be something sincere.

Lucky for me, I had one. “I missed you,” I said. I’d wanted to say more about it, wanted to say it better, but at least I’d said it.

Her eyes remained fixed on my mouth while she processed the validity of my comment. Then she slowly twisted her lips into a smile, and I felt that thing I always felt in her presence.

Hope.

Maybe I still had it in me to be a better person than I’d been. Maybe I hadn’t yet descended so deeply into the pit that I couldn’t experience a woman’s love, capture her heart, have a decent life.

She took a bite of her scone and made a production of licking the sugar from her upper lip. She gave me a sly smile. “You really like me, don’t you!” she said.

I laughed. “Don’t get cocky.”

“Oh, I can get cocky,” she said. “Judging by the way your tongue is hanging out of your mouth, I can get cocky anytime I want!”

“That’s pretty big talk,” I said, letting my tongue hang out of my mouth.

“Pretty big what?” she said, laughing.

“Keep talking like that and you’re never going to get me in bed.”

“Oh, yes, I will!” she said.

CHAPTER 37

The Arabelle is the Plaza Athenee’s signature restaurant. It was also far too ostentatious, Kathleen felt, for the way she was dressed. “However,” she said, cocking an eyebrow at me, “the Bar Seine was voted ‘Best Spot for Romance’ by the New York Post.”

“Then we’re in the right place,” I said. We strolled across the lobby and entered the Bar Seine. I pointed across the leather floor to an empty couch that was covered with an animal print fabric.

“Wanna cuddle over there in the private alcove?” I said.

“Slow down, Romeo, and get me a sandwich first.”

“You can think of food at a time like this?” I said.

She winked. “I need to build some strength for later, you lucky dog.”

We sat beside each other in overstuffed chairs with ridiculously high armrests. There was a small octagonal coffee table in front of us. “Maybe I’ll order a bottle of courage,” I said.

“They don’t serve bottles here silly,” she said. “This is a highclass joint.”

I looked around. “They’ve got a signature hotel, a signature bar, probably got a signature drink,” I said.

“Here we go again,” she giggled. “Actually, they do have a signature drink!”

“As long as it doesn’t contain the words venti or doppo,” I said.

“If I tell you the name, promise you’ll order it?”

“Is it really pretentious?” I asked.

Her laughter started bubbling up, spilling out into the room.

“More puffed up than the coffees at Starbucks?” I said.

She feigned a snooty look. “Those are bush league by comparison,” she huffed. “Mere pretenders.”

I smiled. “Okay,” I said, “hit me with it.”

Our waitress came, and we ordered a watercress sandwich for Kathleen. “And to drink?” she asked.

“I’ll have a pomegranate martini,” Kathleen said.

The waitress smiled and looked at me. “And for you, sir?”

I looked at Kathleen.

“Say it,” she giggled.

I sighed. “I’ll have a crystal cosmopolitan,” I said, and she howled with laughter.

The drinks came, and I didn’t want to ruin the moment, but I had to know what happened to make her change her mind about seeing me.

“Augustus,” she said.

“Augustus?”

“You sent him to guard Addie.”

“I did.”

“Even though you and I were through at the time.”

“So?”

“So you really cared about Addie and wanted to keep her safe. That warmed my heart, Donovan. It says everything about your character.”

I remembered how I’d ruined the moment with Lauren the week before and was determined not to react or say anything that could turn the tables on what promised to be an epic evening. I thought I’d stick to a safe topic.

“You had a chance to spend some time with Quinn?” I asked.

“I did,” she said. “Augustus is wonderful with the children—so loving and gentle.”

I couldn’t recall ever hearing the words Augustus and loving and gentle in the same sentence before.

“Did you talk to him about me?” I asked.

“Of course!” she said, her eyes sparkling.

“And?”

“And I told him I thought you were seriously flawed.”

I nodded. “And what did he say?”

Kathleen grew serious for a minute and paused to give weight to her words. “He said you were chivalrous. That you’re always on a quest.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes. That you’re a good friend to have.”

“Did he mention I liked puppies and butterflies, too?”

“No … thank God!”

An hour later, we entered my suite, and she mugged me with kisses before I got the door shut. Our hands were all over each other, racing to see who could touch the most skin in the shortest period of time. I pinned her against the wall in a full body embrace, and our mouths worked hard to keep pace with our passion.

Then Kathleen broke away and dragged me to the bedroom. She spun me around and pushed me onto the bed. I sat up and reached for her, but she slapped my hands away.

I said, “Damn, those pomegranates are amazing!”

“You mean these?” she said. She ripped off her bra, and my brain circuits spun like tumblers in a slot machine.

“Now, Donovan!” she said.

“Now?”

She stepped out of her clothes. Licked her lips.

“At your cervix,” I said.

We made love like teenagers, wrecking the sheets, rolling all over the place. At one point, she started moaning like a porn star, and I said, “Hey, calm down. We both know I’m not that good!”

CHAPTER 38

The wind in Cincinnati whipped and swirled under a gunmetal sky. Bits of paper came to life on currents of air. A bus stopped at the corner of Fifth and Vine, and a young lady stepped off, wearing a short gray sweater dress with pleats. The sudden gusts played havoc with her dress, causing it to flutter and dance about her legs in a way that revealed more than she’d intended. A cellophane wrapper rose from the gutter and became part of a tiny swirling cyclone that covered some twenty yards along Vine Street before coming to rest on the sidewalk in front of the Beck Building.

The Beck was an austere building located a stone’s throw from the Cincinnatian Hotel, where I’d spent the previous night. It was also the building that housed he law firm of Hastings, Unger, and Lovell.

According to the concierge, my corner suite on the second floor of the legendary hotel was tastefully flamboyant. Still, the kitchen and parlor offered a great view of downtown Cincinnati, as well as the Beck Building’s front entrance, so I did my best to ignore the décor while waiting for Augustus Quinn to call me.

Quinn had arrived in town an hour earlier, carrying only a duffel bag. Now he and the duffel were locked in the trunk of Sal Bonadello’s black sedan.

I could only hope he was still alive.

Actually, I was almost certain he was alive, because that was part of the plan.

Every city has a rhythm, and I absorbed what I could of the sights and sounds of downtown Cincinnati from my window, trying to get a feel for it. Half a block away, a homeless person sat on a frozen park bench in what passed for Cincinnati’s town square: a block-sized patch of green with a gazebo and enough open space to accommodate a small gathering for outdoor events. It was practically freezing outside, but he had a couple of pigeons hanging about, hoping for a bread toss. I wondered if he’d had a better life at some point, and hoped so.

I didn’t expect Quinn’s call for at least ten or fifteen minutes and didn’t plan to worry unless a half-hour had passed without hearing from him. As I stood at the window, I was thinking that I had no reason to believe Sal would double cross me, and yet I had just bet Quinn’s life on that assumption.

I was also thinking what a fine target I’d make standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows.

I shut the blinds, moved to the interior of the room, and—to take my mind off the wallpaper pattern—went through my mental checklist one more time.

We were in battle mode, and I had things wrapped pretty tight. Callie was still in West Virginia keeping an eye on Janet and Kimberly. Quinn had spent the night at the burn center and had been relieved early this morning by two of our guys from Bedford. Kathleen was at her office, and Lou Kelly had put a guy on her just in case. Victor and Hugo were assembling the assault team and working out the final details for hijacking a government surveillance drone.

Sal Bonadello was on the seventh floor of the Beck Building with his bodyguard and two attorneys, hatching a plot to kill me. The attorneys were Chris Unger, whose private suite was located there, and Chris’s younger brother, Garrett, who had formerly represented Addie’s parents, Greg and Melanie Dawes.

Normally attorneys wouldn’t be involved in discussing—much less planning—a criminal activity. But because I am known by the underworld as a counter-terrorist, Joe DeMeo wanted to be extra careful with the hit, wanted everyone to be on the same page. The attorneys were deep into organized crime but they couldn’t afford to be seen meeting with Sal Bonadello and his bodyguard Big Bad—as in Big Bad Wolf—which is why I thought we had a good chance of pulling off the plan I had hatched the night before.

Sal had gotten the call from Joe DeMeo to oversee the hit on me, but Sal claimed my status with the government required a sit-down. DeMeo refused, wanting to lay low until he knew I was dead, but he sent his emissary from New York City, Garrett Unger. Since Sal lived in Cincinnati, and Garret’s older brother, Chris, had his own law practice here, they decided to meet in Chris’s private suite on the seventh floor.

The Beck Building tenants and customers were well aware of the four parking levels attached to the building, but they’d have been shocked to learn that the double-wide garage door labeled “Emergency Exit” actually led to a private parking area for the law partners and their underworld guests. The partners changed the access code before and after every meeting with their criminal clients.

Sal Bonadello was the key to my plan working. He and Big Bad had been met by Chris Unger’s bodyguard and escorted to the private suites moments earlier.

The suites were soundproofed, surrounded by empty offices. No one who worked at the law offices knew of the existence of the private suites, nor could they access them from the occupied offices. The walls of the suites were heavily concreted to provide a high level of safety and privacy.

When a driver dropped off a mob client, the protocol was to stay put, in his car, until the meeting was over. The only other person in the suites during this or any other meeting was Chris’s secretary, whose job was to keep an eye on the private parking area from a monitor at her desk.

The way I’d planned it, Sal would create a diversion and signal his driver, who would pop the trunk. Quinn would get out and call me with the access code. Then I would join him and put the plan into action.

My cell phone rang. I answered it, and the lady on the other end said she’d thought about me all night and wanted to know if I’d been studying how to be a better lover. Then she laughed.

“I confess, I haven’t had time to bone up on the subject yet.”

Kathleen laughed again, and I pictured her eyes crinkling at the edges. “That’s perfect,” she said, “because I can’t wait to teach you!”

“I’m still trying to recover from the exam you gave me last night.”

“Well, be forewarned,” she said.

“Why’s that?”

“The next test is oral!”

“Wow! You promise?” I said.

“Mmmm,” she said.

I could have gone on talking like this a bit longer, but not without putting on a dress.

I flipped on the TV, found the headline news channel. They were hitting the hotel bombing four times an hour, so I couldn’t help but see it again. For the millionth time, they dragged out the footage showing rows of body bags lined up on the sand, waiting to be loaded into ambulances that were in no hurry to leave. There were mangled men and women, family members sobbing for loved ones, expressionless children with bloody faces—all the typical crap you’d expect from the nightly news crews that made shock and horror a dinnertime staple.

When they’d sucked every ounce of pathos from that story, they turned to Monica’s husband, Dr. Baxter Childers, surrounded by shouting reporters as he made his way to a car.

Until recently, Baxter had gotten a free pass from the press, but I knew that wouldn’t last long. Murder-for-hire speculation gives fresh legs to stories that have run their course. For this reason, some talk show hosts had begun digging into possible connections between Baxter and the kidnappers. One moron was even trying to make a connection between the names Monica and Santa Monica. Maybe the next victim would be Monica Seles, he speculated. Yeah, I thought, or maybe Santa Claus.

Even more delicious to newsrooms across the nation, rumors were circulating about a possible love triangle involving Monica Childers and a yoga instructor.

I already knew what was coming for Dr. Childers, it had all been prearranged. Abdullah Fathi and his son had gotten their money’s worth from Monica until there was nothing left to enjoy. Then either she died or they killed her, and now Victor’s people would plant enough phony evidence to get Baxter convicted. In the end, Baxter would get a life sentence and Victor would have his revenge.

News crews were standing by in Washington, waiting for Special Agent Courtney Armbrister’s press conference, during which she planned to name persons of interest to both investigations. I suspected Courtney was delaying her press conference in order to build interest for a future career in broadcast journalism.

Mercifully, Quinn sent me the access code, which meant he was in position. I took the stairs to the lobby and crossed the street to the Beck Building’s parking entrance. I walked to the end of the ground-floor parking lot, looked around to make sure I hadn’t been observed, and entered the code. The big garage door opened slowly. Quinn was inside, waiting for me by one of the elevators. I joined him, and up we rode.

CHAPTER 39

The elevator doors had barely opened before Chris Unger’s secretary let out a blood-curdling scream and jumped below her desk.

“Poor dear,” said Quinn. “I should comfort her.”

“That work for you in the past?” I asked.

The musclehead who was obviously Chris Unger’s bodyguard suddenly appeared. He looked at Quinn, did a double take, and said, “Jesus H. Christ!” There was something about the guy I couldn’t place. Up close, he looked familiar. Perhaps he came to earth with powers far beyond those of mortal men, at least that’s how he comported himself. In any event, he was a big, heavily muscled guy, built thick like a fireplug. His head was shaved completely smooth and on his forehead, above the bridge of his nose, someone had carved XX.

Quinn sat his duffel on the floor.

“What’s in your purse?” asked Musclehead. “A tampon?” He pursed his lips and smacked a kiss in Quinn’s direction.

Augustus noticed my left leg had buckled. He shot me a look.

“I’m okay,” I said.

He nodded. Nobody moved. The musclehead kept his voice calm. He said, “Miss, come on out and get behind me.”

She scrambled out from the desk well and shielded her eyes as she ran behind Mr. Muscles. From what I could tell, she had a nice enough figure, but I wasn’t a fan of the tight, angry bun she wore in her hair. She was hyperventilating, and her voice made a funny huffing sound as she struggled to get herself under control.

“Your severe reaction toward my associate suggests poor training,” I said, trying to be helpful.

To Augustus, she shrieked, “You keep away from me!”

The musclehead whispered something, and she backed up a few steps and slowly circled around us and disappeared through the elevator doors. I could have stopped her, but I knew Sal’s driver would handle it.

Now that he was alone in the room with us, the body builder let us hear his street voice.

“Who the fuck’re you turds and what do you want?”

“We’d like to see Garrett Unger and his brother Chris,” I said, trying to be polite about it.

“I work for Chris Unger,” he said, “and you don’t talk to Chris Unger without my okay. You got something to say to Chris Unger, you say it to me.”

“Very well,” I said. “Tell Mr. Unger his body guard is a pussy.”

The musclehead kept a watchful eye on my giant and the space between them. Then he said, “Okay, so you know who I am, right?”

I looked at Quinn. He shrugged.

“We don’t know,” I said, “but you look familiar to us.”

“You always speak for the dummy?” he asked.

I noticed that he noticed my limp as I took a step toward him.

“I’m Double X,” he said, as if that explained everything.

Quinn and I exchanged looks again.

“You carve that in your head when you turned twenty?” asked Quinn.

Double X frowned. “It’s my nickname. On the circuit.”

“The circuit,” I said.

Double X sighed. “Hello-o, the UFW circuit? Ultimate Fighting Warriors?”

“Oh, that circuit,” I said.

I took another gimpy step toward him. He shifted his weight into a fighting stance and said, “I’m the former heavyweight world champion.” He said that part with a healthy measure of pride. “How nice for you,” I said. “Maybe we can talk about it after I see Mr. Unger. Would you be a good little warrior and take us to him?” Double X sneered.

I’ve had tough guys sneer at me lots of times, but I was pretty sure not many had sneered at Quinn. I glanced at my monster. He didn’t appear to be offended.

Addressing me, but pointing at Augustus, Double X said, “I don’t know your boyfriend, Mr. Ass Face, but I know who you are. You’re the guy who kidnapped Monica Childers.”

Quinn said, “Ass Face?”

To me, Double X said, “You’re pretty tough when it comes to assaulting skinny, middle-aged women, but in me you’ll find an unbeatable foe.”

I said, “They teach you to talk like that in the UHF?”

“That’s UFW, asshole.” He appraised me as if he were sniffng an onion. “You got some size on you, and you may have kicked some untrained butt in your day, but you can’t fathom the stuff I’ve seen. You wouldn’t last thirty seconds in the quad.”

“Quad?”

“That’s right. They stick you in a cage with a world contender and you don’t walk out until one of you is basically dead.”

He let that comment sit in the air a minute, then added, “You guys are going to stay right here till I say you can move.”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Mr. Unger’s secretary is at this very moment talking to a member of organized crime about you. You guys are already dead; you just don’t know it yet.”

A good martial artist will always attack your weakness, and Double X didn’t disappoint, rushing me the way I knew he would, leading with his right leg to sweep my gimpy leg out from under me.

Unfortunately for Double X, I didn’t have a gimpy leg, and I easily moved inside his kick before it could do any damage. Double X suddenly found himself in a strange position, slightly off -balance, vulnerable, his leg still rising toward a target that wasn’t there.

Before he had a chance to regroup, I punched the former quad cage heavyweight champion of the world in the neck, with full leverage behind the blow. I followed it up with a left hook to the other side of his neck, and his eyes went white. He tried to fall, but I caught his Adam’s apple between my thumb and index knuckle and crushed it until his mouth formed a perfect O shape. When I released my grip, Double X fell in a heap and grabbed his throat. He made an attempt to speak, but the effort proved too great. He rolled onto his side, and his legs began twitching involuntarily, like a sleeping dog dreaming about chasing a rabbit.

I looked at Quinn. “Just before I crushed his larynx, he patted my shoulder several times. Why do you suppose he did that?”

“I think he was tapping out. It’s what they do in the quad cage when they’ve had enough.”

“Oh. He should have said.”

I stepped over him and went through the door from which Double X had appeared a moment earlier.

Quinn found Double X’s gun and put it in his duffel. Then he grabbed Double X by the collar and dragged him and his twitchy legs through the door and down the hall until he saw me enter Chris Unger’s suite.

First thing I noticed going in, Chris Unger was at his desk, his back to the windows. Three client chairs faced him. The first was occupied by Chris’s brother, Garrett. The second chair was empty. Sitting in the third chair was my favorite crime boss, Sal Bonadello.

Sal nodded in my direction and said, “Hey, this is—whatcha call—serendipity. We was just talking about you!”

I recognized Sal’s bodyguard, leaning against the far wall.

“I guess Joe said it’s okay to bring Big Bad.”

Sal nodded. “I was takin’ a leak just before you got here. Takin’ a leak always makes me think of Joe. So I called him.”

Big Bad had his hand inside his jacket.

“You still use the 357?” I asked.

Without changing the expression on his face, Big Bad glanced at Sal through reptilian eyes. Sal said, “It’s okay; they’re with me.”

Both Ungers gave him a look. Then they looked at each other. Garrett seemed more nervous than his older brother.

All eyes suddenly turned to the doorway as Quinn entered, dragging Double X behind him. Double X continued to hold his neck with one hand while pawing the air with the other. Still trying to tap out, I figured. Quinn released his prey, and Double X hit the floor face first. Quinn locked the door behind him.

Sal jumped to his feet, suddenly excited. “Wait a minute!” he said. “I seen this before! At the movies, right? Weekend at Bernie’s, right?” He pointed at Double X. “You’re the guy! You’re Bernie!”

From his post across the office, Big Bad watched with amused ambivalence.

By contrast, Chris Unger was outraged. “What’s the meaning of this?” he demanded. Unger stood tall, assuming the defiant stance befitting his status of legal heavyweight. His hair was silver and gelled, and he wore it combed straight back. He had on a navy Armani suit, a crisp white broadcloth shirt, and a bright red silk tie.

Those who fear attorneys would have been shaking in their boots at the sight of him, but this was a different crowd. Unable to get the reaction he’d expected, Unger sat back down at his desk, which probably cost more than the house I grew up in. It wasn’t just the desk that was intimidating—everything in his office exuded power, from the dark cherry paneling to the trophy wall littered with photos of Unger posing with presidents past and present, not to mention the Hollywood elite. Clearly, this was a man willing to pay the extra fee at fundraising events to secure the vanity shot.

“I need to speak with your brother,” I said. “It’ll just take a minute.”

Chris Unger opened his mouth to protest, but saw Double X trying to tap out and changed his mind.

Chris obviously spent a lot of time admiring Double X’s fighting ability on the circuit in the quad cage, because he was visibly shaken to see the former baddest man on the planet reduced to his current state.

Double X must have caught a glimpse of the disappointment in his employer’s face, because he tried to form the words “sucker punch.” It sounded more like “suction pump.”

Chris Unger suddenly found his voice. “Garrett, don’t say a word. I’m calling Joe DeMeo.” He reached for the phone.

“Augustus?” I said.

Quinn picked up the unoccupied chair and used it as a battering ram to smash the window. He put the chair down and picked Chris Unger up like a rag doll and carried him to the window.

Garrett Unger jumped to his feet.

“Put him down!” Garrett yelled.

Chris waved his brother off , tried to keep the calm in his voice. “Let’s all just relax,” he said. “Look, gentlemen, we’ve all seen this a hundred times in the movies. You can threaten me all you want, but in the final analysis, we all know you’re bluffng. You have no intention of throwing me out the window, so let’s just sit down and—”

Quinn threw Chris Unger out the window.

CHAPTER 40

Sal raised his eyebrows and said, “Holy shit!”

I addressed Sal while keeping my eyes glued to Big Bad. “Are we going to have a problem with you over this?” I asked.

“Fuck no,” said Sal. “Tell him to toss Bernie, too!”

Double X’s eyes went wide. He stopped gasping and lay perfectly still, trying to make himself as small as possible in the room. I wondered if this type of behavior was acceptable in the quad cage.

Garrett Unger, Greg and Melanie’s former attorney, remained where he stood, ashen-faced, dumbstruck. He grabbed the corner of Chris’s desk for support and stared at the window, his mouth agape. This was a man whose source of power derived from thoughts and words—which might explain why his lips and mouth were moving a hundred miles an hour as he mumbled sentences none of us could understand.

Garrett Unger slowly eased himself down. Though his body quickly conformed to the contours of the chair, I wasn’t convinced his mind was suitably focused.

Quinn turned to face him.

“Wh-wh-what do you want to know?” Garrett asked.

“Think about it,” I said.

“B-But … I c-c-can’t.”

I looked at Quinn. “Augustus?”

Quinn took a photograph out of his pocket and tossed it into Unger’s lap. The picture had yesterday’s date stamped on the lower right-hand corner, along with the time the photo had been taken. It was a simple photograph, depicting a typical family scene: an afternoon lunch at Denny’s, a small boy sitting at the table playing Nintendo DS while his older sister sat beside him, lost in her teenage thoughts, their mother talking to the waitress.

In other words, Garrett Unger’s wife and children.

“Wait!” said Garrett Unger. He’d just lost his older brother, but the photograph helped him understand he was a brother second, a husband and father first. He began collecting himself. He took a couple of deep breaths and said, “This information doesn’t leave the room, okay?”

I don’t know what type of people Unger was used to dealing with, but I hoped to hell they occupied a higher rung on the honesty ladder than Sal, Big Bad, Quinn, and me.

“You have my solemn word.” I said, solemnly.

Big Bad laughed out loud.

Quinn said, “Yeah, sure. Whatever.”

Sal said, “Talk or fly.”

Unger nodded. “Okay, okay. I can give you his name.”

That comment surprised me. “Whose name?” I said.

“Arthur Patelli.”

“Who?”

“The guy who set fire to the house. That’s what you’re after, right?”

I shook my head. “You can’t be this stupid, even for a lawyer. But I don’t have the time to straighten you out right now.”

I looked at Sal. He held up his hands and said, “Lawyers, Christ Almighty. What you gonna do, huh?”

I said, “Garrett, look at me.”

He did.

“You want to save Joe DeMeo or your family?”

“What?”

“DeMeo or your family. Which one?”

He looked down at the picture in his lap. “How can you even ask that question?” he said.

“Well, you’re an attorney.”

He nodded. “I’ll do anything to save my family. Please don’t hurt them. Just tell me what you want.”

Sal said, “Guys, I don’t wanna—whatcha call—eat and run, but you just tossed a law partner out the window, and even if no one in this fancy shithole saw it, someone on the street did.”

I looked at him. “Good point. We’ll take Garrett with us and trust you to come up with a cover story for DeMeo.”

Sal asked, “You brought a car?”

I shook my head. “We’ll take Chris’s car.”

Sal said, “If you had his car keys you could.” He laughed. “Who’s gonna jump out the window and get the keys?”

“My guess, they’re in his desk drawer,” I said. “In my experience, a man who wears an Armani suit doesn’t want bulging pockets.”

Big Bad slid the desk drawer open, fished out the car keys, and dangled them from his ham-sized hand.

“Good call,” Sal said. “Don’t forget the cameras. They get us coming and going.”

“Quinn will take care of the cameras,” I said.

Speaking to Quinn, I said, “Augustus, will you do me a favor and clean this mess up while I get Garrett in the car? I’ll send the elevator back up for you in a minute.”

I grabbed the mumbling Unger, and we followed Sal and Big Bad into the private elevator and down to the partners’ parking garage. Big Bad found Chris’s Mercedes by pressing the remote and following the chirp. He opened the trunk and helped me toss Garrett inside. I scanned the garage for external security cameras and found none. I guessed the partners didn’t want video proof of their meetings with criminals or perhaps dalliances with call girls. I didn’t ask what happened to Chris Unger’s secretary, but I had a feeling Sal’s car had plenty of traction in the back.

Augustus joined us a moment later, and we drove out of the garage and into traffic. I called Beck Building security and said there was a bomb in the building set to go off in two minutes.

“Who are you!” the security guard demanded.

“In the quad cage, I’m known as Double X,” I said.

I gave them a few minutes to complete the evacuation of the building. We hit the interstate heading north on 75, and Quinn placed a call to the detonating device.

From the interstate, we had a wonderful view of the top of the building as it exploded and burst into flames.

Big Bad called and said, “Double X gone to that big quad cage in the sky.”

CHAPTER 41

“What about my family?” Garrett Unger asked.

We were at headquarters in Bedford, Virginia, in the interrogation room. Lou stood by the door with his arms crossed, wearing a bored look on his face. Quinn was listening to a jazz mix on his iPod. I tossed Unger a disposable cell phone.

I said, “You’re going to stay here as my guest until you get a call from Joe DeMeo. If Joe’s smart, he’ll give you a password to some of his numbered off -shore accounts. Lou already set one up for me. When you get the passwords from DeMeo, you’re going to transfer the funds from DeMeo’s account into mine. When Lou gets confirmation that the money’s where it should be, I’ll remove the threat to Mary and the kids.”

We all waited for him to ask the question we knew was coming. He didn’t disappoint. “What about me?” he asked.

“That’s a toughie,” I said. “On the one hand you were plotting to kill me a couple hours ago, and that displeases me. On the other hand, I need you alive in case someone at the bank requires oral or written confirmation for the transaction. As DeMeo’s attorney, I’m sure you can produce whatever is needed to affect the transfer.”

He was looking at me in a pitiful way.

“I won’t lie to you, Garrett,” I said. “You were a major player in the killing of Greg, Melanie, and Maddie Dawes. Because of your participation, Addie’s life has been shattered.”

“Killing me won’t bring them back,” Unger said. “All I did was allow it to happen. If I hadn’t, DeMeo would have killed my family.”

“You were in a tough spot,” I said, “and you’re still in a tough spot. As you say, killing you won’t bring them back. But money’s the great healer, and enough money will help all of us cope with the loss.”

“I’ll do whatever you ask,” he said.

I thought about that for a minute. “Garrett, we’ll see how it all plays out. If you help me get at least twenty million dollars from Joe DeMeo, I won’t kill you.”

He looked at Quinn. “What about him?”

“Same thing.”

“You’ll let me walk?”

“Hell, I’ll even have someone drive you home.”

“Can I take a cab instead?”

“That’s fine, whatever.”

“Can I call my family?”

“Not until this is over.”

He nodded. “In the meantime,” he said, “where will I sleep?”

I said, “Quinn and I are going out of town in a couple hours. Until I get back, you can sleep in my bed.”

“That’s very generous,” Unger said. “Thank you.”

I waved my hand in a dismissive manner. “Think nothing of it,” I said, wishing I could be there to see his face when Lou escorts him to my subterranean prison cell for the night.

CHAPTER 42

Colby, California, was a small town, and it wasn’t unusual to spot Charlie Whiteside coming out of his shrink’s office on Ball Street. It was no secret that Charlie’s depression had gotten him washed out of the Afghanistan war. Used to be, pilots of unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs, had it easy. Charlie could sit in an air-conditioned room at Edwards Air Force Base and launch remote-controlled killer drones while munching fast food. He’d put in a day’s work studying live surveillance footage, lock onto the occasional target, press the button on a joy stick—and be home in time for dinner with the wife and kid.

In fact, it seemed such an easy way to fight a war that in the early weeks of therapy, it had been difficult for his shrink to understand just what it was Charlie was whining about.

“You’re a guy,” she said, “who’s had to deal with frustration and ridicule your entire life.”

Charlie had closed his eyes as he ran the highlight reel through his mind. “And much worse.”

Charlie wasn’t exaggerating. While his parents had been normal, it had taken Charlie many years to grow to his full height of thirty-two inches. His father, having dreamed of spawning a scholarship athlete, found it impossible to derive joy from any of Charlie’s accomplishments. For her part, Charlie’s mother had accepted his condition from the beginning—but with a stoic detachment and much embarrassment. While neither parent clinically abused him, neither did they embrace or nurture him. They took care of him in a casual way, met his physical needs. But had anyone cared to notice—and none did—it would have been clear that Charlie’s role in the family dynamic had been relegated to that of accessory in his parents’ lives.

It was in public school that Charlie Whiteside first learned true pain and suffering. But that was a different issue, and his shrink, Dr. Carol Doering, had been satisfied early on that Charlie had made peace with his childhood. He’d overcome the neglect, the taunting, the bullying on his own, without therapy, and had somehow managed to put those terrible formative years behind him without carrying any serious emotional scars into his adulthood.

Which is why this whole depression thing about flying killer planes from a comfortable armchair five thousand miles removed from the action seemed out of whack with Charlie’s coping mechanism.

In the early sessions, Dr. Doering had found it difficult to identify with Charlie’s condition because she had an emotional connection to the very subject of his complaint. She tried to keep her personal connection out of the therapy, but one day she let her guard down and it just popped out.

“Charlie,” she said, “let me tell you something. My brother’s an F-16 fighter pilot stationed in Iraq. He dodges enemy fire all day, and at night he sleeps in a tent in blistering heat under constant threat of attack.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Charlie had said. “I’m not meaning to compare my service to his. He’s a true patriot. While I love my country, I’m simply not physically able to serve overseas, so this is the only job I could take where I felt I could make a difference.”

Carol Doering felt her face fl ush. “I didn’t mean to imply …”

“It’s all right ma’am, I know what you mean. Does your brother have a wife and kids?”

“He does. Let me just apologize for my temporary lack of professionalism and get us back to your situation.”

“It’s connected,” Charlie said.

“How so?”

“I understand that your brother is putting his life on the line every day to help preserve our freedom, and I mean him only honor and no disrespect.”

“But?” Carol said.

“But when your brother approaches a target at six hundred miles per hour, he drops his payload and keeps flying and never sees the result.”

Carol cocked her head while pondering the thought. She still didn’t have a grasp on his point. After all, no one was shooting at Charlie when he fired his missiles from a desk at Edwards Air Base.

“When I fire my missiles,” he’d said, “I watch them from release to impact. They’re quite detailed, ma’am. I see the actual result of what I did.

“I see them all,” he continued, “the bodies of the guilty and the innocent. The terrorists and the elderly. The women and the children.

“Then I drive straight from work to my daughter’s piano recital.”

That had been their breakthrough day, and Charlie punctuated the event by adding, “We all serve in our own way. I’m just having trouble with my way.”

Dr. Doering helped Charlie get reassigned to a civilian job, where his experience could be put to good use. Charlie’s attorney threatened the military into helping with the transition. They installed in Charlie’s guestroom, free of charge, all the computer equipment necessary for him to fly UAVs for the California Coastline Weather Service.

In return, Charlie signed a release. It had been a rare concession on the military’s part, but Charlie’s attorney explained what would happen if Charlie wound up on a witness stand: military records would be opened to public scrutiny, particularly classified photographic evidence depicting the graphic details of Charlie’s armchair service.

Charlie settled into his new career with enthusiasm but quickly found the job excruciatingly boring. While the horror of his military job had taken its toll on his emotional well-being, he now realized that being a significant part of the War on Terror provided a constant adrenalin rush he was not likely to find studying cloud formations.

Which is why when Charlie was offered an interesting proposition by a fellow little person, it wasn’t the financial component that caught his interest so much as the idea of adding excitement to his professional life.

Two hours after accepting Victor’s proposition, Charlie verified his checking account balance and thought, Now that’s what I’m talking about! The next morning, he flipped the switches and fired up one of the company’s weather drones. His drone began the flight in the usual way, following a typical coastal flight pattern, filming video, capturing raw data for analysis by the weather crew. Charlie had been with the company long enough to know when the ground guys were just going through the motions, when they took their breaks, what they found interesting and what they didn’t.

He knew he could divert the drone ten miles inland, make several passes over the DeMeo estate, and be back chasing clouds before anyone was the wiser. Just to hedge his bet, Charlie had previously videoed thirty minutes of boring coastline that he now transmitted directly to the ground crew while his drone was recording footage of Joe DeMeo’s estate. The DeMeo job would take less than ten minutes, which would give Charlie almost twenty minutes to get the drone back to the area of coastline where the fake footage had been recorded. Then he’d replace the fake footage with live shots from the drone.

CHAPTER 43

“It’s a large area to cover,” Charlie Whiteside said, “and there appears to be a lot of activity.”

We were at his place, reviewing the surveillance videos and stills he’d downloaded from the weather drone.

The photos revealed a nice setup for Joe, what I’d call a luxury fortress. His twenty-thousand-square-foot residence was situated on top of a prominent hill. If you’re picturing a target, the house would be the bull’s eye. The next ring of the target would be the ten-foot-tall reinforced concrete wall that protected the main house and two guest cottages and enclosed about two acres of land. The target’s next ring was cordoned off by a chain link fence that guarded roughly ten acres. That fence was surrounded by more than two hundred acres of wooded scrub worth tens of millions of dollars.

The land ranged from gently rolling to steep drop offs. The outer acreage was thickly wooded with sparse underbrush, a cleared forest with a carpet of soft grass and pine needles.

According to Lou Kelly, it had once been a top-flight corporate retreat due to its proximity to the old highway, its raw physical beauty, and its isolated, tranquil setting.

Joe’s residential compound was accessed by a dirt and gravel road maintained by the state. The entrance to the property was a scant eight miles south of Ventucopa, fourteen miles northeast of Santa Barbara, near the center of what most people think is part of Los Padres National Forest.

Charlie was right about the level of activity. Joe DeMeo was running scared, and the proof could be found in the number of gunmen guarding his compound. From what I’d heard, Joe’s place had always been well guarded, but this was a ridiculous amount of security. We knew he had about a dozen guns, nine of which had surrounded the cemetery where I’d met him less than a week ago.

The drone showed he had another eight men stationed between the chain link and concrete fences. These eight had guard dogs on leashes, which told me they were on loan from a private security company. Joe was paying the big bucks and taking no chances.

It would have been nice to have someone on the inside, so I had Sal offer Joe some of his shooters. But Joe wasn’t in a trusting mood and felt it wouldn’t be prudent to invite a rival crime family inside his inner walls.

Especially one that had recently survived a bombing.

After the Beck Building went up in smoke, DeMeo voiced concerns about Sal’s loyalty. Sal gave an Oscar-winning performance of indignation, replete with threats. In the end, Joe DeMeo had no good reason to doubt his story, and one reason to believe it.

Sal had told DeMeo that I must have followed Garrett Unger all the way from New York to Cincinnati, because by the time Sal’s driver got him and Big Bad to the Beck Building, the place was in flames and the whole block had been roped off .

Joe DeMeo cursed extensively before saying, “You telling me you weren’t even there? You never made it to the meeting?”

“That’s what I’m sayin’,” Sal said. “You don’t believe me, you can check the tapes. I been there before, and Chris had cameras all over his private suite area. You call security and check the tapes. I ain’t on them.”

“That’s a pretty convenient test,” Joe DeMeo said, “considering the security cameras were destroyed by the explosion.”

“No shit!” said Sal. “What a rotten break.”

DeMeo’s reason for believing Sal’s story: just before the meeting, Sal had called Joe and said he wanted to bring Big Bad to the meeting, since the Ungers had a bodyguard.

“I just want—whatcha call—détente.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Joe had said.

“You need to clear it with the Ungers first?”

“Fuck the Ungers. Just get to the meeting.”

“I’m on my way,” Sal had said.

A few minutes passed, and Sal had called Joe to tell him he was sitting in his car a block away from the Beck Building but the area was roped off because the Beck was on fire.

“I just called Chris Unger,” Sal had said, “and he ain’t answering.”

Joe had tried with the same result.

It was a plausible chain of events. The way Joe figured it, Sal wouldn’t be making demands about bringing his bodyguard if he didn’t intend to show up at the meeting. But that didn’t mean he trusted Sal.

A few hours later, they had had another conversation.

DeMeo said, “According to witnesses, Chris Unger jumped—or was thrown—out of his window.”

“You think he jumped like them people in the World Trade Center?” Sal asked.

“My stooge in the CPD says their witness puts Unger on the sidewalk more than a minute before the bomb goes off .”

Their conversation had gone on like that awhile, according to Sal, but the bottom line was, Joe DeMeo was starting to panic. So he put together a small army and stationed them in and outside the walls of his estate. It would be a formidable challenge, but I was gearing up for it.

My phone rang.

“I’ve got the architect,” Quinn said. “I’m in his house right now.”

“Good. Bring him to the campground.”

Quinn paused.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“What about the wife?”

“I thought she was out for the afternoon.”

“Bad timing. She forgot something and came back to retrieve it.”

“Retrieve,” I said.

“Yup.”

“Bring her, too.”

Quinn paused.

“Jesus,” I said. “What else?”

“He doesn’t have the plans.”

“Why not?”

“It was part of the deal. Joe made him turn over all the blueprints.”

I sighed. “Bring him and the wife, anyway. We’ll tease them both with the ADS beam until he remembers what I want to know.”

“You got the Hummer yet?” Quinn asked.

“I’ll have it by the time you get there.”

CHAPTER 44

Darwin bellowed and blustered and raised nine kinds of hell when he heard what I was up to, but I believed he was secretly pleased I was planning to bring down Joe DeMeo. I decided to test the theory.

“I can kill him,” I said, “but I can’t take him alive without your help.”

“Why should I care if he’s dead or not?”

“If I take him alive, you can turn him over to the FBI for the hotel bombing, along with all the evidence we’ll find in his house.”

“There won’t be any evidence. Anyway, when the time comes, I’ll grab the other guy, the one who works the whores.”

“Grasso? He’s one of Joe’s guards. Lives in one of the cottages. Again, without your help, he’s not going to come out of this alive.”

“What about the whore?”

“Paige. Her name is Paige,” I said.

“Whatever.”

“Paige is probably dead by now.”

“Maybe not,” he said.

“I hope not. Even so, her testimony alone won’t be strong enough to put him away for the bombing.”

Darwin thought about it. “What do you want from me—and it better not be much.”

I knew whatever I told him would make him blow his stack, but really all I needed was a Pulsed Energy Projectile System (PEPS) weapon mounted on a Hummer.

“You’re insane!” he shouted.

“You can fly one to Edwards in a cargo plane,” I said. That’s just down the road from me.”

“I know where fucking Edwards is,” he said. “Didn’t you just fl y there with three ADS weapons?”

“Yeah, but I need the PEPS.”

“Let me guess: you want it by tomorrow.”

“Actually, I need it by six tonight.”

“You’ve lost your fucking mind.”

“Oh, c’mon, Darwin. There’s nothing you can’t do.”

“Except keep you on a leash.”

“Look, I know it’s not going to be easy and no one else in the country could do it—but you’re Darwin!”

“Fuck you!” he said. “It can’t be done. Period.”

“I’ll be there at six tonight,” I said. “Impress me.”

“Go to hell!” Darwin said.

CHAPTER 45

Hugo and his army of little people had made their base camp six miles east of Highway 33, near an ancient forest ranger lookout stand. I brought the Hummer to a stop about thirty yards from their campground and waited for Quinn.

“The fuck is that?” Quinn said as he pulled up alongside the Hummer.

“These are circus people,” I said. “That’s one of their circus wagons.” To be completely honest, it was a bright red Winnebago covered from one end to the other with circus paintings.

“I thought you were kidding about them being a circus act.”

“Nope.”

He looked at me. “We going in or what?”

“Hugo’s a military man,” I said. “He’ll probably want to invite us into the camp.”

“Victor and Hugo and the circus people,” Quinn said.

“And us,” I said.

Some of the little people started milling about in the distance, staring at our strange-looking vehicle. They were wearing colorful shirts and baggy trousers. They were pointing and chattering as others joined them.

“What do you suppose they’re saying?” asked Quinn.

“Follow the yellow brick road,” I said.

Quinn stared in disbelief.

“Are you in fact telling me we’re going up against Joe DeMeo, twenty shooters, and eight dogs with this bunch of clowns?” Quinn asked.

We looked at each other. They were in fact clowns. We burst out laughing. I don’t know, maybe it was the stress, maybe we were just glad to be working together again on a major assignment.

“I can see it now,” Quinn said. “The little people put a big flower on their shirts. When the goons bend over to sniff the flower, it’s really a squirt gun!”

I said, “When they shoot their pop guns, a big sign comes out that says BANG!”

“And Joe says, ‘Who are these clowns?’ and someone says, ‘The fuck do I know? Ringling Brothers?’”

I said, “Joe DeMeo, captured by midget circus clowns! Any chance they’ll make fun of him in prison?”

Hugo approached. “What the fuck is that thing?” he asked.

The PEPS weapon—pulsed energy projectiles—like ADS, was originally developed for crowd control. Accurate up to a mile away, it fires directed bursts of pulsed energy to vaporize solid objects. If fired near a target, it heats the surrounding air until the target explodes. The resulting shock wave will knock down anyone in the vicinity and render them helpless for a minute or more.

After explaining this to Hugo, he said, “If we have that, why do we need the ADS weapons?”

I explained that while PEPS would knock down walls and disorient people, it wouldn’t necessarily disarm them or render them helpless.

“The ADS weapon is different,” I said. “It offers an instant, permanent solution to the problem of resistance.”

Hugo turned his attention to Quinn. “You are one ugly bastard,” he said. “No offense,” he added.

Quinn said, “I got this way from eating shrimps. No offense.”

Looks were exchanged between the two.

“You want a piece of me?” Hugo snarled.

“Looks like that’s all there is.”

“Hey,” I said, “we’re all on the same team here.”

Hugo noticed the architect and his wife tied up in the back seat of Quinn’s car. “Who are they?” he asked.

“They’re going to tell me two things: the layout of Joe’s house and how to breach his panic room.”

CHAPTER 46

I’d completed my chat with the architect and his wife and just begun the final run-through with the circus army when Sal Bonadello called.

“Joe’s making a move on your wife and kid.”

I’d expected that. In a normal world, I would have had Callie take Janet and Kimberly to my headquarters for safekeeping, but this wasn’t a normal world; it was Janet’s world. I trusted Callie to protect them, but I feared Joe might firebomb the house from a distance.

So last night I’d placed a call to Kimberly and explained the situation. I told her to find a way to get her mom out of the house until I called. I told her wherever she went, she’d be safe because Callie would follow them.

“You got enough guys to handle the threat?” I asked Sal.

Besides getting me into Chris Unger’s office, this was the part of the plan where I needed Sal’s help. I wanted his men guarding Janet’s house in case anything went wrong.

“DeMeo put a contract on you for a million bucks. Told all the families, then called me, said grab your family and hold them hostage.”

“You think he sent some of his guys anyway?”

“I do. It would be just like that rat bastard not to trust me.”

“You running that charity and all.”

“The Mothers of Sicily,” he said. “So, did you get your family somewhere safe?”

“I hope so.”

“Is your wife pissed at you?”

“Ex-wife. And yeah, she’s pissed. Like always.”

“Ain’t they all,” he said.

I finished briefing the circus performers. Quinn checked their equipment. Hugo and I called Victor and gave him an update.

Next, I called Kathleen.

“How’s it hanging, cowboy?” she asked.

“Boring stuff , these Homeland conferences,” I lied.

“Anyone famous there?”

“Besides me? Not really.”

“You’re probably hanging out with one of those pretty high school girls who couldn’t get into the movies.”

“Like, that’s so totally random,” I said.

She laughed. “Don’t work too hard, lover boy. I’m expecting the full treatment when you come home.”

“And you’ll get it,” I said.

“Speaking of which …”

“Can’t say yet. Sometimes these things last a couple days, sometimes more.”

“Until then,” she said, and we hung up.

And so it was time.

CHAPTER 47

There was no getting around the noise. Between the Hummer and the Winnebago, we were screwed if we tried to drive within a mile of the chain link fence.

That’s why I needed the PEPS weapon.

Hugo, Quinn, and I were in the Hummer. The architect and his wife were in the trunk of Quinn’s rental car, and the little people were in the Winnebago. Quinn was a tight squeeze in any car, and tighter than normal in the Hummer.

“Try not to breathe on me,” Hugo said to Quinn.

“Why did you bring a Winnebago?” Quinn asked. “There are only ten of you. I thought you could get at least thirty in one of those little clown cars.”

“We could,” said Hugo, “but where would we fit the net and trampolines?”

“Good point,” Quinn said.

I drove slowly to the highway, the Winnebago close behind me. Then I headed south while the clowns sat tight. I drove past the dirt and gravel road that led to Joe DeMeo’s place, and Quinn caught a glint of something: a belt buckle, gun barrel, or cigarette butt. Whatever it was, there were probably two of them guarding the road.

The highway curved a half mile beyond the DeMeo entrance, and I drove a quarter mile farther, cut my lights, and turned around. I didn’t expect any traffic, since Highway 33 cuts through the national forest and it was well past closing time. Still, I angled the Hummer several yards off the shoulder just to be safe. We eased out of the vehicle. Quinn and I took rifles and camouflage blankets. Hugo stood behind the Hummer to keep an eye out for any oncoming cars or cagey DeMeo soldiers.

Quinn and I moved soundlessly up the road to the area where the curve began. There, we set our rifles down, put on our night vision goggles, and dropped to our bellies. We slid the next few yards quietly and waited.

We spotted the dots of light at the same time.

Cigarettes.

We reversed course, picked up our rifles, and checked to make sure the silencers were tight. These were state-of-the-art CIA silencers, which meant we could shoot the guards and make less noise than a mouse peeing in a cotton ball.

We separated. Quinn began moving silently through the forest, circling behind the men guarding the road, while I made my way slowly through the high ground, opposite DeMeo’s entrance. If everything went according to plan, we’d catch them in a crossfire. But these things never go according to plan, and I didn’t want to take a chance on one of us snapping a twig or rousing an otter or making some other sound that might alert the guards.

When I was in position, I covered my head and shoulders completely with the blanket and texted the signal to Quinn and Hugo and the circus clowns. Then we went dark with the phones but set them to twitch. I placed mine in my shirt pocket.

My night vision goggles made it easy to keep an eye on the guards while they smoked, but I was too far away to trust a shot.

It took two minutes for the Winnebago circus wagon to arrive. As the lights washed over the highway, the guards stubbed out their cigarettes. The Winnebago made a clanking noise and stopped about fifty yards from the entrance. After a moment, two little people climbed out with flashlights and lifted the hood as if to check for trouble. I had hoped at this point that the guards would approach the Winnebago so I could shoot them in the back, but they were well trained. They stayed put.

My plan didn’t require them to approach the little people. The whole circus wagon ruse was designed to create enough noise so Quinn and I could get closer. As the clowns took turns trying to fire up the engine and hollering directions to each other, I inched my way closer and knew Quinn was doing the same. Finally, the hood slammed shut and the clowns climbed back in the wagon and started revving up the engine with gusto. I probably covered twenty yards undetected during that sequence. Then the clowns turned their radio up full volume and started singing circus songs as they rode steadily down the highway, past the entrance, through the curve, and out of sight.

While they did that, I covered another fifty yards, maybe more. Now I was close enough to attempt a kill shot. I lined up my rifle and waited for the cigarettes to light.

And waited.

Two minutes passed. I had expected at least one of the guards to walk out onto the road to make sure the clowns hadn’t stopped, but neither of them moved or made a sound or relit their cigarettes. These were some incredibly well-trained guards, I thought.

Then my cell phone twitched.

I slowly slid my camouflage blanket back over my head, eased my cell phone out of my pocket, and brought it up to my face under the blanket. Making absolutely certain no light would be emitted from the keypad, I held my breath and opened the phone. I didn’t dare speak, not even a whisper.

“You can come out now,” Quinn said. “I killed both of them.”

I let out my breath. “Did you check to see if there were any others?”

“You didn’t just ask me that,” Quinn said.

“Right. What the hell was I thinking?”

We made our way back to the Hummer and congratulated the clowns on their performance.

“And then there were eighteen,” Hugo said.

“So far as we know,” I said.

I started the Hummer’s engine but kept the headlights off . The Winnebago turned around and got behind us and followed us back up the road to the entrance, where we headed down the dirt and gravel road toward Joe DeMeo’s place.

CHAPTER 48

There was only one entrance leading to Joe’s house, and you had to pass through the chain link fence to get there. Charlie Whiteside and I had calibrated the distance to the first fence pretty carefully, so I stopped when I got three-quarters of a mile from it. Any closer and I would probably give away my position.

Quinn had both the guards’ walkie-talkies, and so far we’d been lucky. No one had asked for an update. I figured we were due, since most security firms go with a fifteen-minute crew check and we’d used all of that and more.

We all slid out of the Hummer and listened for barking dogs. Hearing none, Quinn took his rifle and headed east of the compound. Hugo took mine and headed west.

I climbed on top of the Hummer and gave my gunners time to get as close as they could before the dogs picked them up. I’d hoped they’d get at least halfway there, but the dogs were very alert and the barking started almost immediately. I fired up the PEPS weapon and signaled the circus wagon to make tracks.

Suddenly, the walkie-talkies crackled and came alive with the sound of frantic voices. We’d caught them off -guard, so score one for us, but we were still a long way from winning.

The circus wagon veered off the road to give me clearance for a shot. I took it and heard screaming and yelping. I set my cell phone to speaker and turned up the volume. Then I jumped back in the Hummer, flipped on the headlights, and started the engine. The clowns kept their headlights off and continued making their way to their position, left of the hole in the fence I’d just created.

I cranked the Hummer to about forty and barreled down the road and came to a stop a quarter mile from the entrance. I climbed back onto the roof and gave my clowns time to get their equipment together.

Quinn told me he was in position. We figured Hugo would take longer. His legs were much shorter, and the gun was pretty heavy for him. Still, he was feisty as a rooster, and I knew he’d do well.

I heard some shots, which meant DeMeo’s security team had oriented themselves enough to make me their target. The dogs, being smaller, would take longer to get to their feet. The shots continued. There was a protective shield of bulletproof plastic surrounding the front of the PEPS weapon, so I wasn’t overly concerned about being hit. Quinn must have squeezed off a couple of silent shots because his voice came over my cell speaker, saying, “Two more down—security guards.”

The clowns were taking more time than I anticipated. I wondered if any had been hit. I aimed my weapon to the right of the circus wagon and fired off another burst. I yelled at the circus people to hurry, though it would have been impossible for them to hear me.

The circus clowns had brought several small trampolines and a giant net used to catch falling trapeze artists. Hugo checked in just as the clowns dragged the net across the road, covering the hole I’d made with the initial blast. They tied the ends to the posts and pulled the center of the net away from the hole to make a large chute. Then they ran back to the Winnebago and grabbed their trampolines and knives, for these were knife-throwing midgets.

I climbed into the Hummer and drove another hundred yards. Then I climbed back onto the roof and waited for the remaining security guards to make their stand and for the dogs to make their charge.

Nothing happened.

“I got one,” said Hugo.

“Two more on my side,” said Quinn.

The dogs charged through the fence and got tangled up in the circus net. I fired a burst near them, which heated the air and knocked them all down again. I didn’t think there would be much fight left in the dogs at this point, but I couldn’t take a chance on being wrong and having them kill some of the clowns. I could have shot them, but why kill the dogs if I didn’t have to? The guards were different. They were here by choice, so they were fair game.

The clowns untied the net, closed it off , and dragged the dogs behind the Winnebago, out of the line of fire.

“There’s one guard missing,” I said into my cell phone. “Anyone got a bead on him?”

They did not.

I climbed into the Hummer and used the walkie-talkie. “Joe, I’m coming to get you and your men. Seven security guards are dead. One remains alive. I’m directing this to the guard: Come out unarmed with your hands up and we’ll not harm you. This is not your fight, and you’re in way over your head. You’ve got thirty seconds to let us know where you are. Then we’re going to kill you.”

The clowns got the main gate open and carried their trampolines in, flanked on both sides of the chain link fence by Quinn and Hugo.

The last guard came out with his hands up. Hugo put a plastic twist-tie on his wrists and looped several more around his hands and a support pole to secure him to the chain link fence.

Then Hugo and two of the clowns went back to the Winnebago, fetched the ADS weapons, and carried them into the area we had captured. They stopped while we regrouped. Our next barrier was the concrete wall. The problem for Joe and his men was that we had effectively made them prisoners within the wall. Our problem was the entrance gate gave Joe and his men opportunities to pot shot us. My biggest concern before getting the drone photos was if Joe had thought to put ledges on the inside of the walls. Had he done so, his men could have manned the walls and shot us as we approached, but the drone confirmed there were no ledges.

I drove the Hummer very slowly through the main entrance and aimed the pulse ray at the entrance gate. Quinn and Hugo flanked me from thirty feet on either side and trained their rifles on the same target. They squeezed off a few rounds to discourage Joe’s men from trying to take advantage of the clowns’ momentary vulnerability. If they tried to drive through the gate, I’d blast them with the PEPS weapon. Otherwise, I meant to keep them bottled up. I wasn’t worried about them using their cell phones because who were they going to call? Not reinforcements. Joe already had all the shooters he could trust. Not the police. If they showed up they’d be able to search his house and no telling what they might find in there.

But on the chance Joe might call the police anyway, Darwin and Lou had notified local dispatchers and 911 operators that Homeland Security was on the premises and any calls requesting aid to Joe’s address should be diverted to Lou Kelly.

I had Hugo turn around and keep an eye out behind us, just in case.

The clowns carried three trampolines and three ADS weapons, keeping the Hummer between them and the entrance gate. On each trampoline were throwing knives and electric drills with extended circular concrete drill bits measuring an inch in diameter.

Here’s what we had: three clowns at each of three stations on the right side of the residential entrance gate. Each station had a drill and a trampoline, a cache of knives, and an ADS weapon. Quinn was guarding the front, Hugo the back. I had the PEPS weapon trained on the front entrance gate.

The clowns started drilling holes in the wall.

My cell phone rang.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Joe DeMeo asked.

“The deadline for my money came and went,” I said.

“All this because of the little kid who lived?”

“That and the hotel,” I said.

“You might want to rethink it,” he said. “I’ve got your wife and kid.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I’ve got their house surrounded. One word from me and they’re dead.”

“What’s the address?”

He told me.

“That’s not my family’s address,” I said.

“They’re at a friend’s house. I’ve got it wired to blow.”

CHAPTER 49

“You probably don’t believe me,” Joe said, “so hang on and I’ll conference you with the guy who’s going to kill Janet and Kimberly tonight.”

I listened to the high-pitched whine of the drill bits while waiting for the connection to go through. I didn’t think Janet and Kimberly were in trouble because Callie was with them and she hadn’t called. Sal’s men were guarding Janet’s house, where Joe’s men would have gone first.

On the other hand, it always gives you a sick feeling when someone threatens your child’s life.

Joe came back on the line. “Sal, are you there?”

“I’m here,” said Sal Bonadello.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Then Sal said, “Creed, it’s over. I got your blond trapped inside with your bitchy ex and your bratty kid and the family that owns the house. I got gasoline all over the outside walls and Molotov cocktails ready to throw.”

I didn’t say anything.

Sal said, “You think we got a deal, like I’m—whatcha call—monitoring Janet’s house, but your blond followed your kid to a friend’s house. Then your wife showed up, and now they’re all inside and the blond is so busy trying to keep everyone calm, she don’t even know we’re here. So this is payback time, my friend. For livin’ in my attic and jumpin’ through the fucking ceiling and shooting up my bedroom and scaring the shit outta my wife, you lousy prick.”

“I saved your life.”

“The life you put in danger in the first place.”

I didn’t say anything. Joe DeMeo said, “Creed, you’ve taken a shine to that girl in the burn center. So I’ve decided to burn your kid, too. And if she tries to run out the door or jump out a window, we’re going to shoot her.”

“Unless?” I said.

“Unless you put down your weapons and come to the front gate. All of you.”

Two of the clowns had gotten their drills through the wall. The third drill made a shrieking sound as it hit a steel reinforcing rod. That clown moved the drill a few inches to the left and started over.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Joe.”

“You’d let your wife and kid die?”

“Ex-wife.”

“Still,” he said. “Your kid?”

I sighed. “You’re going to kill them, anyway, Joe. And me, too, if you get the chance.”

“It’s your little girl, for Christ sake!”

“Which will give me that much more incentive to boil your body with the special weapon I’m bringing into your home.”

“Say good-bye to your family, Creed.”

“You tell them for me,” I said. “I’ve got work to do.”

The first two clowns put the nozzle of their ADS weapons into the holes they’d drilled. The third clown was nearly finished with his second attempt. We all waited for him.

Hugo walked over to me while keeping his eyes trained on the area behind us. “I heard that bastard on your speaker phone,” he said, “and I heard what you said to him.”

“And?”

“Are you okay?”

“That’s the question I’ve been asked all my life.”

The last hole was completed, and the last ADS weapon was fitted to it. At each station, a clown attached the power packs and flipped the switches. At the same time, a second clown jumped on each trampoline several times until he could see over the wall. When they felt safe enough, they angled their jumps and landed on top of the wall. Then the remaining clown at each station tossed them six knives, two at a time. The clowns on top of the walls placed the knives in their knife belts and scampered along the wall top until they reached the area where the second-floor roof overhung the wall. They jumped on top of the roof and got into position behind each of the three back gables.

Then I climbed down from my perch, pulled a tear gas gun from the back seat, and tossed it to Quinn. While I covered the entrance with the PEPS weapon, Quinn made his way to the gate. Once there, he started pumping tear gas into each window in the house.

I was surprised by the lack of gunmen in the yard. Once the fighting started, they all must have hidden in the house. The PEPS weapon will do that to people. Even so, why wouldn’t they station themselves at the upstairs windows? Maybe they were all hiding in Joe’s panic room. I hoped so. That would make it much easier for me.

I heard a scream. “Got one,” said one of the rooftop elves. “Trying to climb out the back window onto the roof.”

I heard several blasts of gunfire coming from the front of the house. Quinn ducked behind the wall just in time. Then I heard the types of screams one can only make when exposed to the ADS beam—except there were four of them.

“Got one,” said another rooftop elf. “Same idea, different window,” he added.

We heard an engine start up in the garage.

“Stay at your posts,” I yelled into my cell phone.

Quinn sprinted back to his post where he’d set his rifle down. He picked it up and aimed it at the front gate.

When the gate started to open, I fired up the PEPS weapon. Joe’s car came flying toward the entrance at an angle, and I gave him a full-power blast that melted his tires and caused his car to flip and slam into the corner of the gate. Several men jumped out and started to run, including Joe DeMeo.

They got about two feet before the ADS beam found them.

“Shut off the beams!” I yelled. I drove the Hummer through the gate, slamming Joe’s Mercedes out of the way to clear a path for Quinn and the three clowns who were standing by with the rest of the knives. There were four guys on the ground. We gutted the two who had followed me and Joe at the cemetery the previous Saturday, and twist-tied Joe and Grasso’s wrists behind them.

Joe spit at me and missed. “I should’ve stayed in the panic room,” he said.

“It wouldn’t have made a difference,” I said. “I’d have taken that machine off the truck and aimed it at the wall. You saw what it did to your car. Imagine what it would have done to your panic room.”

“If you knew where to aim it,” he sneered.

“You got me there, Joe.”

“By the way,” he said, “your family’s dead.”

“So you say.”

The first four that were hit by the ADS ray were dead, which was to be expected, having been exposed for several minutes. My personal best was less than twenty seconds, so I could only imagine their suffering.

We guessed we’d gotten all of them, and if not, I didn’t care. We gathered up all our equipment and headed back to the campground. We’d beaten nearly twenty armed men and eight attack dogs without taking a single hit in return. That’s a hell of a campaign, I thought.

Back at the campground, there was just one thing left to do: humiliate Joe.

It has never been my style to humiliate my vanquished enemies, but Hugo insisted it was a time-honored clown tradition, so I didn’t stand in their way. He grabbed a seltzer and sprayed it in Joe’s pants while the other clowns formed a circle, interlocked arms, and sang, “A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants!”

They had so much fun they all took a turn spraying Joe and Grasso. Before long, their pants were a soggy mess.

“You’re fuckin’ nuts!” Joe screamed again and again. “But I got you, Creed. I killed your kid!” he shouted. “I killed your fuckin’ wife!”

“Ex-wife,” I said.

CHAPTER 50

Of course, Joe hadn’t killed Kimberly or Janet, and neither had Sal Bonadello. Sal’s conference call with Joe and me had been part of the plan. It gave Joe what he thought was a bargaining chip, gave him a false sense of security. When I kept coming after him in spite of the threat to my daughter, he came to the conclusion I was certifiable. He reasoned, if I didn’t care enough about my own kid to try to save her, what chance did he have with me? Joe, already in a panic, must have felt like a trapped rat. At least I thought he’d feel that way, and I hoped to flush him out.

Because, truth is, I really didn’t know where his panic room was hidden, and he had a hell of a big house. As it turned out, the architect and his wife knew nothing about a panic room. If Joe had one, the architect guessed it had been added by the second architect, the one who revised the original plans and completed the construction effort. That guy had disappeared shortly after completing work on Joe’s house.

Lou had pulled the building permits and gave us the name, but apparently DeMeo had told the second architect not to file the revisions. Quinn and I felt terrible about kidnapping and torturing our architect and his wife with the ADS ray, but they were okay now. Hopefully they’d be able to look back on the experience some day and laugh about it. If not, who would believe their story anyway, right?

Our captured included the architect, his wife, the security guy, Joe DeMeo, and Grasso. That’s a lot of people to deal with, so I did what I always do when I’ve got a mess to clean up.

I called Darwin.

Darwin sent a company cleaning crew to Joe’s house, and the clowns kept an eye on the architect and his wife and the security guy until the cleaning crew could round them up. Meanwhile, Quinn and I tied DeMeo and Grasso to the sides of the Hummer and made them run a few miles with their pants around their ankles to amuse the clowns. When we got tired of that, I pulled over to the side of the road and put a gun to Joe’s head and made him call Garrett Unger at headquarters. Joe claimed he couldn’t remember the passwords, so I made him run a few more miles. Unfortunately for Joe, he kept falling and spent most of the time being dragged. Then I repeated the process again and again until he remembered enough to make me square with Addie and Quinn and Callie and Sal Bonadello.

After Joe came through with the passwords, Quinn tied him and Grasso to the PEPS weapon on the roof. Then I hauled them off to Edwards to meet Darwin’s plane. Darwin couldn’t understand why it took so long to drive thirty miles to the base. I told him we got a late start.

Joe and Grasso had been dragged half to death, and their faces and bodies showed the effects. Darwin took one look at them and said, “Relatives of yours, Augustus?”

To me, he said, “Do I want to know why their pants are sopping wet?”

“I wouldn’t think so,” I said.

“You got any dry clothes they can wear so they don’t ruin the jet seats?”

Quinn and I gave Darwin our camouflage blankets and watched him wrap them around the two waifs. I remembered the two thousand dollar suit and tie Joe wore last week at the cemetery and thought, You never feel the splinters on the ladder of success until you’re sliding back down.

Darwin took Joe and Grasso back with him to Washington, and Quinn and I took one of the company’s Gulfstream jets back to headquarters.

This time, we both slept the whole way.

When I got back to headquarters, I kept my promise to Garrett Unger and let him go back to his wife, knowing in a week or so the police would arrest him along with Arthur Patelli, the guy who torched Addie’s house.

CHAPTER 51

“It was the suit, man. I swear to God, she loved the suit.” This was Eddie Ray, telling his story about the girl he met in sporting goods. “Words can’t describe her.”

“You were probably drunk,” said Rossman, and the others laughed. The old friends were hanging at Daffney Ducks, the neighborhood watering hole. Eddie Ray had grown up and lived his entire life—forty-six years—within five miles of this place.

She’d been shopping for a birthday present for her dad. A fly rod. It couldn’t be just any rod, had to be the best. Eddie Ray was so stunned at her beauty, he’d just stood there without saying a word. She’d said, “That’s a great-looking suit you’re wearing. Is it an Armani?”

“Laugh all you want,” he said to his drinking buddies, “but I’ve got a lunch date with her tomorrow.”

“Tell us where,” said Lucas, “and we’ll all give her a ride.” He made an obscene gesture with his hands and hips.

More laughter.

“She ain’t like that. This is a high-class broad. Seriously.”

The blond beauty had asked about his suit, and he couldn’t just stand there and say nothing. Eddie Ray had choked up the courage to say, “I’m not sure of the label, but I got it at the JC Penney’s.” She’d nodded, impressed. Things were going good, so he tried for a joke. “But it cost a hell of a lot more than a penny!” he’d said, then added, “Pardon my French.” It hadn’t mattered about the profanity. “I like that,” she’d said. “You’re funny.”

Now, back at the bar, buying a round of drinks for his skeptical buddies, Eddie said, “I’ll take a picture, and you can judge for yourself.”

“Make sure you get the front end,” said Rossman. “I’ve always wanted to see lipstick on a pig.”

“I’ll take a picture, all right,” said Eddie Ray, “and when you see it, you’re gonna shit!”

They’d talked a few minutes, and he’d picked out the best rod in the store for her. She’d been impressed by his knowledge of the sport. He’d asked her name, and when she said, “Monica,” he said, “I knew a girl named Monica once, back in high school. Real pretty, she was.” Monica had smiled a sly smile and said, “I bet she was your girlfriend,” and he’d winked and said, “You’d win that bet for sure.” They’d laughed, and she’d said, “You probably had lots of girlfriends in high school if you had that cool mullet back then,” and he’d modestly said, “No more’n my share, I expect.” Then he’d told her about being on the football team and how he blew out his knee that last season, and by then they were checking out and he couldn’t help but give her the employee discount, meaning, he bought the rod and let her reimburse him, which she did with cash. Cash he was now blowing on drinks for his friends.

“Hold up,” he said to his friends. “I can only do the first round. I gotta save my dough for my date tomorrow.”