I stripped it and cleaned it, then put an empty magazine in and checked the action. I ejected the magazine, loaded it, and was about to slide it back in when the door handle started to move.
I put the gun in an open drawer as Annie stuck her head in.
“Mike?”
“Could I get a little privacy?” I snapped at her as I blocked the drawer with my body.
“Fine,” she said, and shut the door.
I cursed myself. All this criminal garbage was getting to me, coarsening me. Brilliant move: yell at her because I was acting like a sketchy asshole.
I put the magazine in and put the gun back in the box. I locked the office door on my way out. She wasn’t in the bedroom. I headed downstairs.
“Hon?” I said.
I looked around the kitchen: my dishes were stacked in the sink, some were on the table beside a pile of mail, wedding business that I hadn’t opened yet. One of the downsides of moving up in the underworld is you don’t have a lot of time to do your chores.
Annie was sitting at the kitchen table in her robe with a grim look on her face, going through the mail, slitting each envelope with an old Swiss Army knife. CNN played quietly on the TV in the living room.
“We need to talk,” she said. “What’s up with you?”
“At St. Elmo’s? Stupid joke. I’m sorry, and upstairs, I don’t know. Bad day. I just needed a moment to myself. I shouldn’t have been such a jerk about it.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are there police watching the house?”
“No—wait. Did you see police watching the house?”
“Driving by a couple of times. Is someone else watching us?”
“It’s fine.”
“In what world is that fine? You’ve got the blinds down all the time. Did you go to New York while I was gone?”
She pointed to a receipt from Duane Reade I had left on the table.
“It was last-minute, for business.”
“You didn’t mention it?”
“When would I? I hardly see you,” I said. I was getting frustrated, and turning it back on her. It felt satisfying for a half second in a childish way, but I immediately realized it was a mistake.
“There’s no easy way to do this,” she said. “I am just going to ask straight out. Are you sleeping with someone else?”
“What? No! Why would you even ask that?”
“I saw you tonight with a woman at the Four Seasons.”
“That was Emily Bloom. I told you I was going to get help, to go to the police about my brother. She was connecting me.”
She thought for a second. “Tuck’s Bloom? Jesus. I’ve heard about her. Doesn’t she live in town? The hotel is a strange place for an appointment, Mike.”
“Were you spying on me?”
“Don’t do that. I was there with my dad, for dinner.”
Every break was going bad for me. “Nothing is going on. She has an FBI contact I’m going to talk to tomorrow about my brother. I walked her to the hotel to meet a friend. I’m trying to make sure this Jack stuff doesn’t end up hurting us.”
“Are you? Because it looks like you’re having a lot of fun. You always talked about how your brother would roll into town and get you sucked into something. I mean, look at you, Mike. You’re snapping at me. You’re out every night. You’re hiding things.”
“He’s my brother, Annie. I can’t just let him get hurt, say it’s not my problem. It’s different this time.”
“Different this time? Do you hear yourself? You sound brainwashed. Are you following him back down that path? Is he setting you up for something? Conning you again?”
“That’s not it at all, Annie.” I stepped closer to her.
“Are you sure? Think hard about it, Mike. You’re not just screwing around because you’re tired of all this, because you miss the old risks, because you’re bored with everything, with me? Just tell me the truth.”
On the TV, the news brought up a photo of Sacks. “Police say they are making progress in the brazen daylight murder of a Washington economist last week.”
I held up my hand, trying to hear. “Can you be quiet?” I asked.
“Be quiet?” Annie was very level-headed, very patient, but I recognized in the cold timbre of her voice that I had finally succeeded in pissing her off beyond all repairing. It was my tone: I might as well have told her to shut up.
“No,” I said. “Not like that. I just wanted to hear something on the news. For a case.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? In the middle of this?”
“Sorry. Things are a little tough for me right now. Please don’t make me out as some sort of frustrated thug. I get enough of that from your family.”
She threw up her hands. “You just pulled a knife on a guy at St. fucking Elmo’s.” She took a deep breath. “I’m not mad. I wish it were only that, Mike. It’d be a lot easier. But no. I’m thinking very hard about all of this. Listen to me. Really listen. You know me. I don’t like theatrics. I’m not going to scream at you, not going to make ultimatums. But this wedding, it’s taken on a life of its own. It’s getting too big to fail.”
I would have preferred screaming to Annie’s slow, deliberate talk, the boardroom voice that suggested shrewdness and calculated strength. She sounded as measured as a hostage negotiator.
“So this is the last exit,” she went on. “I hope it’s like you say. But I’m worried I’m losing you, or that you’re freaking out and trying to run away, to get out of this. We can talk about it, Mike. Just don’t lie to me.”
“No. That’s not it at all.”
“Last chance,” she said.
“Annie. About Jack—”
She slammed her palm down on the table. I saw her grit her teeth in pain. A bead of blood grew on her finger where the Swiss Army knife had cut the skin. I stood to help her.
“I’m fine,” she said, watched it for a moment, then dabbed a red stain on an envelope. “This isn’t about Jack, Mike. It’s about us.” She pushed back her chair. “You know what? I’m exhausted. I don’t think I can do this now. We can talk more in the morning.”
We were both burned out on too much work and too little sleep.
“I can explain all this, Annie. It’s going to be okay.” I followed her as she walked toward the landing.
“I think I’d like to be alone.”
“Sure. I’m sorry, sweetheart. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Fine.” She shook her head, then marched up the stairs.
I cleaned up the kitchen, then went upstairs. My pillow was sitting outside the bedroom door. Things would be better in the morning. I could clear this up. I grabbed the pillow, went to my office, and folded myself up on the loveseat.
I woke from a night of fitful sleep around six a.m. Annie was still in bed. I left my office and went to the bathroom. Then I heard a bang from downstairs. I waited, listening, then heard it again. As I came down the stairs, I saw that the front door was open. I was certain that I had locked and bolted every door and window in the house. I’d been particularly good about security recently.
I went to my office and pulled my pistol from the lockbox. I locked the door behind me and headed downstairs. The front and back doors were wide open, swaying with the cold spring gusts and slamming into their frames. I worked the house room to room, following the gun to see if anyone was still inside.
It was clear.
I walked outside. Maybe the neighbors had a problem with a guy in boxers and a robe circling his property with a drawn pistol. Right now I didn’t care.
Whoever had broken into the house was gone. I went back in.
“Annie?” I said as I took a second look around the first floor.
No reply. The kitchen was empty. So was the bedroom, the sheets shoved aside where she had slept.
“Hon?” I said, louder now.
No answer.
I stepped back into the hallway. My o
ffice door was now unlocked and open.
“Annie?” I said.
Still nothing. I could feel the blood rise in me. Everything seemed brighter, clearer, with the adrenaline. I sidestepped toward the door, pistol at my side, then stepped into the office.
Annie was standing over my desk, holding a lock pick and tension wrench in her hand as she looked over everything I had assembled for the Fed job: schematics of the ninth and tenth floors, office directories, mock-ups of fake ID badges, wallets with credentials bearing my face and other men’s names, an open box of ammunition, dozens of locks and break-in tools, and a particularly nasty-looking knife.
She turned and faced me. “What is all this, Mike?”
I hid the gun by my side, stepped over, and slid it deep onto a shelf, out of her sight.
“What are you doing in here?” I asked.
“Trying to figure out what the hell is going on with you.”
“Did you open the downstairs doors?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.” She put the pick and wrench down. Then she reached for the knife, flipped the blade out, and twisted it under the light.
“This isn’t about cold feet at all, is it?”
“No, it’s not,” I said.
I looked more closely at the pick Annie had been carrying. It was the one I’d tossed when the cop had followed me to the house.
“It’s really not too hard,” she said, looking back at my office door. “Just scrape it back and forth in there, huh?”
“With the rake pick, sure.”
“You have a right to your own space, but I had to know. You never locked doors before. After everything last night, I woke up this morning and you were gone.”
“What did you expect to find?” I asked. Everything between us seemed calmer now.
“I don’t know. Worst case: some infidelity trophy room, matchbooks and receipts, a second e-mail account, a second cell phone.”
I took one of the prepaid cells I used to keep in touch with Lynch from my pocket.
“I have one, but it’s not for sneaking around behind your back.”
“Is this what you’ve been up to?” she asked as she pored over the security diagrams, the photos of the different locks and computers at the Fed. “Where you’ve been disappearing?”
I could have played up being offended by the violation of privacy, but I deserved it. I’d been acting shady for days, hiding things from her. I was surprised to feel more relieved than anything else. I needed someone to talk to.
She lifted up a forgery of a Fed document I had been working on. “This is for a break-in,” she said, and laughed. “Oh, Jesus. Maybe it would be better if it were another woman. What are you doing?”
I leaned over to the computer and started some music playing just in case anyone was listening.
“The men who are after Jack. They’re going to kill him unless he does a job for them. They’re putting pressure on me to help.”
She lifted up the license in the name of Thomas Sandella and looked at my face staring back.
“So Mike Ford, who may seem like a cool customer but is deep down a total control freak, is just helping out, taking a back seat to his brother who’s never done anything right?”
“I’m not going to go through with it, but I had to keep them thinking I would, go through the motions long enough to blow the whistle on them.”
She looked over the diagrams.
“What’s the job?” she asked.
“I don’t want to implicate you, Annie. If you were in front of a grand jury—”
She leafed through some of the renovation contracts. “New York Fed?” she said. “You’re kidding.”
“I wish.”
“Is Jack hustling you, Mike?”
“I thought so at first, but these guys will kill him.”
“Kill him? Come on.”
I couldn’t fool her, and I didn’t want to. I had to come clean.
“That murder on the Mall. I was there. The victim was part of it; he was trying to go to the authorities. They killed him right in front of me. If I don’t play along, they might try to hang it on me. The man at the coffee shop is the ringleader. That’s why I flipped out on him. They’re watching me.”
“You wanted a little excitement. I guess it’s working out for you.” She stepped back. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“To keep you safe, to keep you out of it.”
She raised one eyebrow, and may as well have put me on the rack.
I leaned against the desk. “Well, let’s say your significant other comes to you and tells you some people are making him out as a murderous thug. He swears it’s not true, and you give him the benefit of the doubt. That’s mighty cool of you. But then, after everything we went through, if I were to come back a second time with a similar story, you would be a hundred-percent justified if you started to wonder, ‘Hey, what’s the deal with this guy? Maybe I can find someone with better luck when it comes to capital crimes.’ ”
“That day,” she said. “The violence…it messed me up for a while, and I never want to see you like that again. But I dealt with it. So be yourself, just don’t kill anybody. That ought to give you enough room to maneuver. I figured out a long time ago that I’m not marrying a normal guy. It’s what I signed up for. Be straight with me. I don’t scare easily.”
“I know. That’s part of the reason I didn’t tell you. I was worried you would wade in.”
She looked over my notes on the Fed computers. “Are you trying to hack them?”
“Annie, you don’t want to be an accessory.”
“That’s only if I help you.” She pointed to the papers. “The secure terminals would probably be air-gapped, not connected to the public Internet. They have their own networks. And it’s all two-factor authentication, at least. You need the crypto card and the PIN.”
“How do you know?”
“From when I was at OMB.”
“Do you have a clearance?” I asked.
“Maybe. I’ve got my own mysteries, Mike Ford.”
“What level?”
“I’m not supposed to talk about it.” She smiled.
“I’m going to the FBI this afternoon. This ends today.”
“Your date with Bloom went well?”
“No…well…yes, as far as finding some law enforcement I could talk to. But not as a date. Anyway, I’m going in to the feds. It’s all set.”
“Good,” she said, with an air of finality.
“So are we cool?”
“Cooler. You’re still in the doghouse. But at least you’re being honest with me. I know your tells by now, Mike. You told me you’ll put a stop to it, I believe you. Because this sneaking around stuff ends now. Or I’m gone.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“You’ll be careful?”
“Always.”
She wasn’t buying that one.
“I didn’t mean to bring this home,” I said. “I know everything’s crazy now, but I’m taking care of it. You’re heading out of town?”
“Yes. My dad’s house and then the spa retreat thing with the bridesmaids.”
“Good. Maybe I should come with you. With all that’s going on, it’d give me peace of mind.”
“You want to come to my ladies’ spa day?”
“I could just hang outside, keep an eye out. I’ve got the FBI thing at three. When are you leaving?”
“After breakfast.”
“Maybe I can send someone.”
“Like a guard?”
“Yeah. To keep an eye on things. Make sure nothing bad happens.”
“I’ll be fine. I can take care of myself, and my dad’s a little obsessed with the security, so don’t worry. And don’t let this get to you. You haven’t been sleeping. You’re paranoid. It’s probably not as bad as you think.”
“It’s not great. Though you seem pretty relaxed.”
“I’ve been through a lot, a
nd I don’t know—there’s something about the whole thing, about what you told me about Jack, that just doesn’t add up. Is there a chance it’s all a scam? It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, though. It’s gone too far.”
“I’m only thinking out loud,” she said. “I know you’re trying to get your family back together. I know what that means to you, but don’t let it blind you to anything. Family’s not all they make it out to be. Trust me.”
“Will you tell your dad’s security guys to keep their heads up?”
“Sure.”
“Okay.” I took back my pick and tension wrench. “Get out of town. Take it easy. You’re doing an amazing job with everything. I don’t deserve a girl like you.”
“That may be true. We’ll see how it goes.”
Chapter 30
AFTER ANNIE LEFT, I went to my office and reviewed everything I knew about Lynch to prepare for my meeting with Lasseter at the FBI. As I walked past the hall mirror on the way to the bathroom, I saw a trace of the red wine stain still on my lips. That probably wouldn’t help my credibility, so I went upstairs for a long shower. I wrapped a towel around my waist, then sat down on the bench at the foot of our bed. I felt something poking into my leg. I leaned to the side and felt the blankets where Annie had cast them off.
It was cold, small, about an inch long. I lifted it in front of me and tilted it in the light: a jacketed hollow-point bullet in .45 caliber. It wasn’t mine, and it sure wasn’t Annie’s.
I went back over the morning. I wasn’t imagining things. It had been sitting there, like a warning to back off. Someone had broken into my house, into my bedroom, where my fiancée and I slept, and laid a bullet at our feet.
I tried calling Annie, but she must already have been up in the mountains.
The next stop was my brother’s town house. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Annie had said about Jack. I had to get my story straight before I talked to the FBI, but more than that, I was pissed off and suspicious, and it seemed only fair to take it out on him.
The Directive Page 15
