Betrayal dh-12

by John Lescroart

  At once, she was all the way with him again. Her expression now relaxed, she moved a few steps toward him, her arms crossed over her chest. "I can do simple factual," she said. A smile played around her mouth.

  "Okay. Do you remember when you first heard about me getting hurt?"

  Her quizzical look stayed on him for a long moment, as though she were surprised that he would have to ask that question at all. "Sure," she said. "I ran into your mom at the grocery store one night. I think it was a few days before Christmas. I know it was a few days before I called you."

  "You mean called me at Walter Reed? When I didn't talk to you?"

  "Right."

  "You're sure of that? The time, I mean. Just before Christmas."

  "Of course. That's when it was. When else would I have heard?"

  "How about back when it happened? Say, September?"

  "No way, Evan. How could I have known then?"

  He shrugged. "Well, when did you start seeing Ron Nolan?"

  "What does Ron have to do with that?"

  "I would have thought he'd have mentioned it, that's all."

  "He never knew about it, Evan. You guys all got transferred out of his base the week he got back."

  Evan canted his head a bit to one side. Studying her expression, he read only sincerity, openness, perhaps a bit of confusion. But one thing was clear-she was telling him the truth as she knew it.

  "We got transferred?"

  "That's what Ron said."

  "Where'd we get tranferred to, Tara? Did he tell you that?"

  "No. I don't think he knew."

  "Right. He didn't know. You know why? Because we weren't transferred. We ran our last mission out of Baghdad Airport, where we'd been with Ron all along. You can look it up."

  The germ of confusion spread like a plague over her features. Mouth tightened, brow furrowed, eyes darting, seeking a place to land. "But…" The word hung in the room between them. Her arms hung down, inanimate at her side. "I don't get this."

  "Ron was with us in the convoy, Tara. He was in my Humvee. He was next to me when I got hit."

  "No. That can't be true."

  "Why would I make it up, Tara?"

  "I'm not saying you're making it up, Evan. Although I could see a reason why you might. But I don't think you'd do that."

  "I wouldn't. I'm not making it up," he said. "It's what happened."

  She held his gaze for a minute, and then, her voice barely audible, grabbed at the next straw. "Maybe…I mean, I'm just thinking, could it be with what happened to your head…maybe you don't remember it all exactly?"

  He nodded-sober, patient, restrained. "That's a legitimate question. I have forgotten some stuff. I don't remember whole days and weeks from when I woke up. But Ron was with us in that convoy. I remember everything about that. If you still don't believe it, you can look it all up on the Web. Just Google Masbah." He spelled the name of the neighborhood in Baghdad. "It's all there. He's the reason it all went down. And that's the reason he had to get out of Iraq so fast. They were starting the investigation, and he knew it led straight to him."

  The color had drained from her face. Her eyes flitted to the corners of the room as though she hoped to find some answer there. She brushed a strand of hair from her forehead. Placing her hand flat on one of the students' desktops for support, she lowered herself into the connected chair. "He told me he had no idea you'd been hurt," she said, "that he found out about it from me after I ran into your mom that night and she told me."

  "Christmastime."

  She nodded. "Definitely."

  "And he told you he knew nothing about it before?"

  "Nothing. I swear, Evan. No, he swore. He'd never heard a thing about it."

  "He didn't have to hear about it, Tara," Evan said. "He was there. He fired the first shots."

  Spinoza poured them both a cup of coffee and took Evan out into the backyard so they wouldn't interrupt the movie Leesa and their four young kids were watching in the family room. The day, with at least another half hour of light in it, continued warm and fragrant. The two men sat down at a picnic table under a vine-covered trellis. "So," Spinoza began, "did you get your dope dealer yet?"

  "Not yet," he said. "He's out of town."

  "Timing's everything," Spinoza said.

  "I don't know," Evan replied. "Timing's important, but I'd give points for location too. A quarter inch either way and my story's different. That's been pretty good nightmare material."

  "I'd imagine so." Then, going back to his original subject, Spinoza said, "You know he's out of town?"

  Evan shrugged. "His car's gone. Nobody answers the door."

  "Don't do anything stupid, Ev," the lieutenant said. "If you think there's really something to this guy, send him to the narcs." Spinoza blew on his coffee and took a sip. "And in other news, you know Mr. Khalil, who we talked about at lunchtime? As of a couple of hours ago, Mr. Khalil is officially a joint-jurisdiction case. You remember the frag grenade issue we talked about? Well, the feds have conclusively determined that that's what blew up the room and started the fire. So they're in the case, in spite of the fact that it also looks like Mr. Khalil and his wife were first shot in the head with a nine millimeter bullet."

  Evan's face must have betrayed something. Spinoza abruptly put his coffee cup down on the table. "What?"

  "Nothing," Evan said.

  Evan left Spinoza's home in great frustration. He'd planned-hoped-somehow to get the picture from Nolan's computer in front of Spinoza, but there was no way he could tell his lieutenant how he'd gotten it-that he'd broken into someone's home-and that rendered hopeless his entire ill-conceived plan. But cruising down to the Khalils' ruined house, Evan had satisfied himself that the house in the picture was in fact theirs, then decided that the thing to do would be simply to send the disk to the FBI. The Bureau would have Nolan in their database and know all about his history. The advantage to his new idea was that both the ATF and the FBI were known to play fast and loose with due process and probable cause. If they came to think that Nolan had killed the Khalils, especially if there was an Iraqi or terrorist connection, they would find a way to question him and perhaps even get inside his house, where they would discover the grenades, the other pictures, the guns. In any event, after they got the disk, Nolan would be on their radar. After that, it would only be a matter of time before they could take him down.

  Now night had fallen. In his kitchen, Evan's head throbbed and again the pinpricks of bright light at the edges of his vision presaged the onset of a migraine. He'd already taken a couple of Vicodin, and as soon as he finished the last of his business, he had to get to bed if he was going to work tomorrow.

  Wearing blue latex gloves, he pulled the self-adhesive manila envelope over closer to him. It had taken a while, left-handed, to write down both Nolan's address on a piece of notepaper and the FBI's address on the envelope. But now he was satisfied-the writing was legible yet unidentifiable as his own. He slid the slip of paper with Nolan's address into the envelope along with the disk, then pulled the paper strip from the adhesive and closed the top. He peeled off ten self-adhesive stamps from the roll he'd bought and stuck them on. Tomorrow he would stop off in another neighborhood and drop the envelope into a mailbox.

  Now he set the thing on his table and gave it a quick once-over. Satisfied that it couldn't be traced back to him, he walked back through his apartment to his bedroom, turning off the lights as he went. Lying down on the bed, his clothes still on, he pulled a blanket up over his shoulders, turned on his side, and closed his eyes.

  A little while after it was truly dark, Tara called Evan's mother, Eileen, and got his address. She waited and thought and second-guessed herself and eventually left her place sometime after eleven o'clock and drove. Parking out in the dark street across from his apartment, she sat for another five minutes or so with her car windows down, her hands in a prayerful attitude in front of her mouth.

  By the time she got to the door, she
barely heard her own timid knocking over the beating of her heart. After a minute, she knocked again, harder. And waited.

  A light came on inside and hearing his footsteps, she held her breath.

  The door opened. He'd been sleeping in his clothes. His hair was tousled, his eyes still with that sleepy look she remembered so well. She looked up at him, realizing that she loved having to look up, had missed that; loving the size of him, so different from looking across at Ron Nolan. Everything was so different and so much better with Evan. How could she have forgotten that?

  She couldn't get her face to go into a smile. She was too afraid, the blood now pulsing in her ears, her hands unsteady at her sides.

  He just looked at her.

  "Is it too late?" she asked. "Tonight, I mean."

  "No."

  "I needed to talk to you some more. Would that be all right?"

  "Everything's all right, Tara. You can do whatever you want. You want to come in?" Stepping back away from the door, he gave her room to pass and then closed the door quietly behind her as she kept walking through his living room, stopping by the counter that delineated the kitchen and turning back to face him. Her shoulders rose and fell.

  From over by the door, he said, "I can't guarantee talking too well. I've been having some trouble sleeping, so I'm a little doped up. Plus I've had a couple of drinks. I'm drinking too much. I need to stop."

  "Are you in such pain?"

  He managed a small shrug. "Sometimes, but that's not it really." He took a second to continue. "I know that whatever they say, I'm not all the way back. Maybe I'll never be. To tell you the truth, it freaks me out sometimes. When I'm alone mostly. But I don't want to have anybody feel like they have to be with me all the time either."

  "Your mom?"

  "For one example, yeah. Anybody, really. But it's"-he shrugged again-"it's just what I'm doing now, Tara. Holding on. Getting better, I hope. Getting over what happened."

  Evan still stood by the door, making no effort to close the space between them. She felt the distance tugging at her, causing a pain of its own, and took a step toward him, then another.

  "But that's all just me," Evan said. "What did you want to talk about?"

  "Ron. I never…I wanted to tell you that it was never like it was with us. It was just a completely different thing."

  "Was? Past tense?"

  She let out a heavy breath. "Yes. After what you told me today."

  "Okay. And how was it with us that was so different?"

  Tara put her hands together at her waist. She deserved that question. And he deserved the real answer. "Because we connected, Evan. So basically."

  He nodded. "I know."

  "I don't think that ever goes away."

  "No. Me neither."

  She looked across the living room into his eyes. "Why are you staying over there? It's almost like you're afraid of me."

  "I am. As much as I need to be."

  "How much is that?"

  "That depends on how much being done with Ron means you're back with me."

  She waited another few seconds and then closed the space between them. Looking up at him again, now the smell of him so close. "Does it hurt you to touch the scar?" she asked.

  "It's just a scar." But he inclined his head so that she could see it. Almost a perfect circle, slightly indented.

  Slowly, she reached out her hand and brought it up to his head. As soon as she touched it, she felt something give in her legs. As she traced the shape of the scar, tears sprang into her eyes and she made no effort to stop them. Evan brought his head down, leaning into her.

  Bringing her other hand up into his hair, she cradled his head in both her hands.

  Holding on to her, his arms behind her, he went to his knees in front of her, his face first pressed to one side against her thigh. But then, her hands on his head now directing him, she turned him to be up against her, his hands gripping her from behind, pulling her into him, while she pressed herself against him. She pulled him gently away for an instant, only long enough to let her step out of her clothes, and then brought him back to where he'd been.

  Beyond any time, then, she was on the floor with her legs around his neck, until the surge of blood and heat she'd only known with him took her and then there was the taste of her on his mouth and his own cry as everything between them came back and came again and left them both flung out on the floor, wasted and sated, and connected in every part.

  15

  The relevant portion of the e-mail from Jack Allstrong that had put Nolan on the road had read: "When the CPA hands over the government to the Iraqis, Uncle Sam is going to be shipping over $2.4 billion-that's right, billion-in shrink-wrapped 100s. That's twenty-eight tons of greenbacks, Ron, almost all of it earmarked for infrastructure and rebuilding, which means us. My standing directive to you is to recruit as many qualified personnel as you can find. Starting now."

  Now Nolan was just getting back home from a productive couple of days. Frequenting the bars around some of California's military bases-Pendleton, Ord, Travis-he'd recruited four men for Allstrong's ongoing and growing operations in Iraq. Though Allstrong's security work was dangerous and demanding, ex-officers who were bored or broke or both in civilian life often jumped at the chance to resurrect their careers, their self-esteem, and their bank accounts, and to once again utilize the special skills that had served them well in the military.

  And nowhere were they needed more than in Anbar. As Jack Allstrong had predicted in August, the rebuilding of the electrical tower infrastructure in that province was turning out to be a gold mine for the company, albeit a costly one in terms of human life. Allstrong had by now put more than five hundred men to work on this latest contract, which initially bid out at forty million dollars, although it had grown to more than one hundred million in the past seven months. Allstrong Security, Jack liked to point out, was in 2003 the fastest-growing company in the world, outstripping Google, compliments of U.S. largesse and Jack's ability to surf the chaos of the reconstruction.

  But in Anbar, the company also had already lost thirty-six of Kuvan Krekar's men, and Kuvan's supply chain of bodies was growing thin and dispirited. Beyond that, Kuvan had been facing severe competition from another broker named Mahmoud al-Khalil, who was not only supplying cheaper workers but was perhaps terrorizing and even killing Kuvan's people to discourage others from signing on. Why? So that Mahmoud and not Kuvan could pocket the extremely lucrative cash commissions. Well, with the recent untimely demise of his paterfamilias in Menlo Park, Mahmoud would hopefully soon conclude that competing directly with Allstrong's chosen subcontractor was not a sound business decision.

  Hefting his duffel bag, Nolan let himself into his townhome through the garage door to the kitchen. He walked through the living room, stopped in his office and turned on his computer, then went into his bedroom, where he dropped the duffel bag on his bed, then returned to his desk and checked his e-mail and-first things first-made sure he'd been paid. He had.

  With that taken care of, Nolan went back into his bedroom and started to unpack. Grabbing a pair of pants, he turned and opened the closet, and stopped short.

  Something was not right.

  Nolan didn't spend much time thinking about his military-ingrained penchant for order, but when he woke up in the mornings, he automatically made his bed with hospital corners so that the covers were tight enough to bounce a coin off them. The spare shoes were always shined and perfectly aligned on the floor of the closet. He hung his shirts and pants in order from light to dark, the hangers spaced with an automatic and practiced precision.

  Now he stared at the row of hangers. He didn't specifically remember taking down the shirts and pants that he'd packed for his trip, but could not imagine that he would have taken down his clothes and left the hangers spaced unevenly as they were now. His eyes went to the backpack on the top shelf. He had lined it up exactly with the break in the hangers between his shirts and his pants, and now it wa
s clearly centered over the shirts. Reaching up, he pulled it toward him, relieved by the familiar weight. He opened it and saw that nothing-not the grenades, the gun, or the ammo-was gone.

  Which was weird.

  Maybe he'd imagined that the hangers had been moved. It didn't seem possible that someone would have broken in here and not taken the grenades and the gun.

  But it wouldn't be smart to take chances. Reaching into the backpack, he removed the Beretta and slammed one of the clips into place, then racked a bullet into the chamber. He dropped the backpack next to the duffel bag on his bed and went to check the bathroom, where an intruder might still be lurking. Finding no one there, he went back out into the living room to the front door, where the piece of Scotch tape that he'd laid over the connection between the door and its jamb was now stuck under the jamb.

  Somebody had definitely been here.

  Methodically now, he went back out to the garage, where he patted down the empty backpacks hanging against the wall. He was about to start opening the drawers when he straightened up, stopping himself.

  He didn't see how it could be remotely possible, but it occurred to him that if one of the members of Khalil's extended family could have somehow traced the patriarch's execution back to him, their method of retribution might include a bomb-open a drawer and it goes off. By the same token, his experience with IEDs in Iraq told him that if there was a bomb, someone would have been hiding somewhere outside, seen him drive up, and sent an electrical pulse to detonate the device after he was inside. Alternatively, Nolan could trigger the bomb himself by switching on any one of a dozen electrical connections in the house. But any of those scenarios contemplated the possibility that someone had identified him as the Khalils' killer.

  Which from Nolan's perspective was flatly not possible. He'd made no mistakes. Therefore, there was no bomb. He'd also already turned on his computer, and several lights. Walking back out to the garage, this time he opened all the drawers. Back in the kitchen, he did the same. Opened the refrigerator. He had no idea what, if anything, he was looking for, but someone had been in his house in his absence, and if it hadn't been to take something, what did that leave?