As quickly as Carole Ann’s anger surfaced, she released it and replaced it with concern for Annabelle Islington. “How do you know, Ruth, that Annabelle is really missing this time, and that it’s been three days?”
Ruth hesitated. “I have a . . . somebody who keeps an eye on her for me.”
“And this . . . somebody . . . has a key to Annabelle’s home?”
Ruth nodded and flushed and ducked her head, but Carole Ann was not interested in the woman’s embarrassment at spying on her daughter. She’d been doing her own spying, and knew that Annabelle Islington hadn’t been near the town house that she owned in the Virginia suburbs, and she told Ruth as much. Ruth blushed again, then paled. Carole Ann’s pulse rate increased.
“She doesn’t live in Virginia.” It wasn’t a question.
Ruth shook her head. “In town. She bought a condo in DuPont Circle, just off Connecticut Avenue. She’s lived there for a month.”
8
RICHARD ISLINGTON KEPT THEM WAITING for twenty minutes, a tactic, Carole Ann expected, designed to induce conversation between herself and Paolo, conversation that easily could be monitored from elsewhere in the house; after all, the man had demonstrated his propensity for paranoia, which had given GGI the legitimate excuse to withdraw from the case. So, she and Paolo did chat—about the beauty of Islington’s house and the majesty of the view of the woods, and how spectacular they imagined that view would be in the spring and summer. When Islington finally put in an appearance, he was as distantly polite as he’d been on the previous occasion, joining them near the fireplace and, beyond the greeting, not speaking until, almost immediately, the “associate,” Jack, wheeling the serving cart, appeared. This time it contained only a coffeepot and three mugs.
As was the case previously, neither man spoke, and just as Carole Ann was deciding to create her own protocol and address the server, he reached across the cart with his left hand, exposing the ring on his little finger. The breath stopped in her chest, constricting it. She didn’t dare look at Paolo. She couldn’t determine whether he could see the man’s hand from his vantage point and she would not risk giving him any signal to do so. She managed to take a deep breath and used some of it to sip the coffee. She looked up at Jack, complimented the coffee and thanked him for it. He nodded, turned, and left.
Carole Ann still found it difficult to speak, and Paolo, she knew, would not until she did. So there was a very long silent interlude, broken ultimately by Richard Islington.
“Have you found my daughter?”
“We have not, Mr. Islington, and because of your actions we won’t continue looking.”
His eyes narrowed over the rim of his cup, but he took his sip without wavering. He still did not speak and she recalled his statement that the source of people’s dislike of him was his refusal to respond to situations and circumstances as they thought he should. Keeping that in mind, she extended a folder to him and held it out toward him until he accepted it.
“This is a detailed record of our activities on your behalf, some of which you’re familiar with since you were having Mr. Petrocelli followed. You obviously don’t trust us, so, just as obviously, there’s no need for us to continue. We did not locate your daughter but we did locate the attorney who managed the trust fund your wife established, and we did ascertain that he met personally with Annabelle. He transferred her inheritance to her. And he hasn’t seen her since.”
“Then where is Eve?”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me, Miss Gibson. Where is my wife?”
She paused a moment before answering, enough of a pause to let him know that she knew his true intent. “We weren’t looking for your wife, Mr. Islington, we were looking for your daughter.” She stood up. “And I had hoped that we would find her. I hope she’s well and safe whereever she is.” She placed her coffee cup on the adjacent table, picked up her briefcase, and then nodded at Richard Islington. “Good day, sir.”
Carole Ann started for the door before Paolo but his long legs provided him a distinct advantage and he reached it before she did, opening it for her. She was in the hall when she was frozen by Islington’s voice.
“Mr. Petrocelli!”
It was an order to halt and Carole Ann felt him stiffen behind her, then felt him turn around. But to his credit, he did not speak. They stood staring at each other across the broad expanse of Turkish carpet, Paolo Petrocelli with one hand on the doorknob and Richard Islington still holding his coffee mug in one hand and the GGI file folder in the other, each man scrutinizing the other and neither one hesitant to display the contempt he felt for the other.
“Did you find out anything that you didn’t put in this report?” Islington asked, tapping the file against the mug.
Paolo’s face became pensive. It was without anger or hostility; his face said that he really was thinking of how to respond. Finally, he spoke in as pensive a tone as his expression conveyed. “It seems that the people you know and do business with feel the need to accept your rudeness. But since I’m lucky enough not to be one of those people, I’ll repeat what my boss already said: good day, sir.”
That exchange helped Carole Ann continue the effort of calming herself, and by the time they were in the truck and halfway down the winding drive, she felt composed enough to speak. But the moment she opened her mouth, before any sound emerged, Paolo put a finger to his, signaling that she was to remain silent. She understood instinctively and immediately why and was chilled by the thought. A listening device. Attached to their vehicle, or directed toward them? Not an unreasonable speculation given that Paolo already had been followed by someone he believed to be employed by Richard Islington.
Before becoming partners with Jake in GGI, Carole Ann’s knowledge of surveillance devices was as good and as current and as accurate as that of any spy- or murder-mystery movie buff: that is to say, woefully inaccurate and inadequate. Partially by osmosis, and partially by design, she had learned quite a bit about security and surveillance, enough to know that it was not difficult to access the lives of others without their knowledge or permission. Expensive, it could be, but it was not difficult. She therefore had not the slightest doubt that Richard Islington could be privy to their conversation in their own truck, now a couple of miles away from his home.
When they drove into the GGI parking lot, Paolo parked the truck at the far end and, when they entered the coded door, asked one of the security specialists to thoroughly check it. Then he asked that both he and Carole Ann be checked. She submitted. She removed and gave the technician her overcoat and scarf and blazer. She relinquished her purse and briefcase. And she stood stark still while a sensor was passed over her body. The entire time her every nerve ending was tingling and pulsating. All the work she’d done in recent days to rid herself of the paralyzing fear that served to remind her of her perilous mortality vanished in a second. She felt stripped and vulnerable. And frightened. And angry. And, finally, relieved not to have been violated and invaded by a hidden recording device.
“Sorry,” Paolo said, looking and sounding extremely apologetic, “but better safe than sorry.”
She dismissed the apology—and the need for it—with a wave of her hand, left him to deal with the inspection of the truck, and returned alone to her office. It was time to make some sense of this mess, to bring some order. The man who had abducted Grace Graham, the man wearing the woman’s ring on the baby finger of his left hand, worked for Richard Islington in some capacity: certainly he did more than pour coffee for guests. She removed from the safe in the floor next to her desk all the files Patty Baker had compiled on OnShore, OffShore, and Seaboard—the file that was to have been destroyed but which had grown almost daily as information from Patty trickled in from a wide variety of sources.
Carole Ann locked the door to her office, then spread the folders out on the floor. She added the Islington file to the pile, then sat on the floor herself. What, exactly, was she looking for? Did Richard Islington rea
lly have anything to do with the murder of Harry Childress and the destruction of OnShore Manufacturing? And if so, why? There was no disputing the man’s wealth, next to which OnShore was less than insignificant. And what did Annabelle Islington have to do with any of it? What did Ruthie Eva Simmons have to do with any of it? Where was Annabelle if not with either parent? Who was John MacDonald? Who was Richard Islington’s “associate”?
There were too many questions for which there not only were no answers, but for which any feasible or plausible answers made a mockery of reason. And the only available connecting link between and among all the answerless questions was GGI. And since GGI was, essentially, an entity of two, that raised the possibility that she or Jake somehow had something to do with whatever was going on, and that was as absurd as any of the Islingtons having anything to do with OnShore and Seaboard. She surveyed the paper surrounding her, choosing to begin with the most recent addition: the report from the GGI operative reassigned from Annabelle Islington’s Falls Church, Virginia, town house to her DuPont Circle condominium.
Carole Ann knew the neighborhood and the elegant turn-of-the-century mansion whose top floor now was Annabelle’s new home. Because she’d lived there just a month, she wasn’t yet a readily identifiable presence in the area, but the other residents of her building knew her, the occupants of one of the second-floor units better than the others because they, too, were young and single: twenty-three-year-old twins Kim and Kathy Rodgers, grad students at George Washington University.
Carole Ann read quickly through the report, impressed both with the amount of information the operative had gathered in a short period of time, and with the quality of the information: Annabelle was polite and friendly; she was assumed to be wealthy since she didn’t work, but she didn’t flaunt her wealth; she had walked the first-floor resident’s dogs when he was sick with the flu; she frequented a bakery in the neighborhood and always bought cookies or pastries to share with everyone in the building. C.A. was musing over the twins’ belief that Annabelle had a boyfriend named Sandy with whom she’d recently argued and skimming over the last few paragraphs of the report when her eyes locked on the words “white Range Rover.” She read the paragraph twice before its implications took root.
A tall, thin man whom the twins described as “pretty old,” but who was judged to be “probably about my age” by the forty-year-old on the first floor, was a frequent visitor to Annabelle’s top-floor condo, whether or not she was home: the man had a key, and several residents, including the twins, thought him related to Annabelle. He often wore dark glasses and he drove a white Range Rover.
Carole Ann felt the fear rise in her but instead of resisting it this time, she allowed herself to feel it and the reasons for it; she pushed herself to see beyond it, to remember that, despite having been terrified, she had actually managed to expose murderers and smugglers. She’d had no plan of action, just instinct and hunches and a burning, seething anger that had masked the fear. She’d also had no support. That is, Jake was at home in D.C. while she was in New Orleans and Los Angeles, and when she found herself in trouble he’d sent Tommy to help her. But she’d been essentially on her own. That no longer was the case. Jake was her partner. Tommy was her partner. And they had resources. She didn’t need to fear the man in the white Range Rover, or anyone.
Jake sat in the chair behind his desk, reclined as far back as possible, black loafer–clad feet crossed at the ankles atop the desk, hands characteristically interlocked behind his head. He watched her pace back and forth before him, speaking clearly and concisely, as if addressing a jury. She enumerated points on the fingers of one hand, using the fingers of the other to do the counting. She stopped and stood still before him to add emphasis to a point. She used her lean, elegant body like an instrument, bending and swaying, shrugging and strutting. He was enthralled and entranced. And appalled. What she was proposing was nothing short of madness and he told her so.
“But brilliant madness, don’t you think, Jake?”
They looked at each other for a long time across the desk, she standing there in her black jersey knit, arms crossed over her breasts, and he leaned back, truly relaxed and at ease in the presence of his friend. She was the only person in the world to whom he could admit fear, to whom he had admitted fear. And she was the only person in the world whose madness, brilliant or otherwise, he would accept. He grinned at her finally, widely and fully, the grin that transformed his cop’s face into a thing of beauty, and picked up the phone on his desk. He sent for Bob, Marshall, Paolo, Patty, and a new hire whom C.A. had met just once, Jocelyn Anderson. Jake had known her as a rookie on the D. C. Police Department. Though she’d worked a variety of assignments, from fugitive squad to bunco, her success, Jake said, hinged on her ability to transform completely her appearance.
“You know how old hat it is to dress a female officer up as a prostitute,” he said dismissively. “No big challenge there. But how many female officers have you transformed into pimps? Into Jamaican drug dealers? Into sixty-year-old Georgetown matrons? Into a Wilson High cheerleader?” He chuckled. “Jocelyn Anderson has done that and more. She’s amazing. Really amazing.”
Within fifteen minutes, they all were assembled in Jake’s office and seated around the conference table in front of the window. Jake signaled to Carole Ann, like a stage manager cuing an actor, and she delivered, practically verbatim, the same speech she’d given an hour earlier. When she was finished, there again was a lengthy silence.
“You really think Annabelle Islington is tied up in this somehow?” Paolo asked.
“Strange as it seems, that’s what it looks like,” Jake responded. “We get this mess untangled and I bet we’ll find her. Just keep everything you know about her in your head while you’re working with us on this big picture.”
“I haven’t finished the specs on that L. A. job yet,” Marshall said.
“Harvey can finish,” Jake snapped. He looked around the table. “Any more questions?”
There were none. But Patty Baker supplied a tension-breaking chuckle. “I thought I had heard of shaking the tree to see what fell out, but y’all are rocking the whole damn orchard.”
The laughter quickly spread around the table, like a platter being passed. It was good-natured and tension-releasing. And short-lived. Which suited Jake. He stood up, finally, and came from behind the desk to stand in front of the table. He began talking, not as dramatically or as fluidly as his partner, but with equal intensity. Not that anyone at the table needed to be reminded of the gravity of the situation, but he reminded them anyway. Then he assigned tasks and explored aspects and angles of every task until every person at the table understood not only his or her job, but that of every other person at the table.
Carole Ann listened, impressed by his condensation of her presentation and amazed at how he delineated responsibilities and assigned tasks. And she was humbled by the fact that she was the bottom line. Every operative would report to her every day. She would be the keeper of all information, of all discovery of fact or innuendo or piece of information that didn’t yet have a place in the puzzle; and she would be the primary analyzer of it all, the one who would determine whether and where a piece fit. And she knew that this was her job because she was good at it and not because she was the only one of them who was not a trained investigator, who was not a law enforcement officer; the only one of them with only a self-taught experience of working the angles on the street.
Each of them was comfortable with his or her assignment; each of them was ready to get started. But Jake wasn’t yet finished with his instructions.
“I want every one of you who’s weapons qualified to be armed at all times from now on. You, too, Patty.”
“Jake, I haven’t used a weapon in I don’t know how long,” she protested. “I’m too rusty!” Unwittingly, Jake and Patty had just blown her cover and they both realized it in the same instant; and they also realized that it didn’t matter.
“Then
you’d better grab some WD-40 and head on out to the range and loosen up,” he retorted, utterly humorless. Then he turned toward Carole Ann. “And you go get yourself qualified.”
She looked at him, horrified. “I hate guns, Jake. You know that. I won’t shoot a gun.”
“Then you might as well pack your bags and head on out to L.A. or some place warm until we get this thing finished.”
“You can’t do that to me!” she hissed at him.
His head snapped a nod. “Watch me! We put this plan in motion—your plan—and every one of us is in danger. Two people are already dead, my wife was snatched, a business was destroyed, a girl is missing, and we don’t know for sure who the bad guys are or where they are. Any one of us could be ambushed at any time. Being ready, willing, and able to fight back is the only possible defense against an unseen enemy, C.A. And that’s not just my opinion. That’s fact.”
She looked around and received confirming nods from all of them, including, grudgingly, from Patty. She heaved a great sigh. Where would she go to learn to shoot a gun? And who would teach her? With whom would she feel comfortable learning to do something she loathed?
As if her thoughts had been telegraphed, Jake offered, “There’s a firing range in Waldorf. I know the owner, former D.C. cop. I’ll take you out there myself.”
“My partner is a firearms instructor at the Training Academy. She’d be happy to work with you off-hours. And she’s really good with people who aren’t comfortable with guns.” This from Jocelyn Anderson, her first words since entering the room, spoken in such a warm, reasonable tone that one could almost miss the undercurrent of total assurance. No wonder Jake called her a chameleon.
Carole Ann nodded her thanks and asked Jocelyn to make the arrangements. She thought she’d rather learn how to shoot a gun from a woman, if she had to learn at all. And there seemed no doubt about that. She forced herself to swallow the fear that threatened to resurface, and forced her attention outward.
The Step Between Page 15
