by Dan Ames
Tallon felt a twinge inside. He loved Pauling more than any woman he’d ever been with. He was happy she was here, but he knew how easily things could change. She could go back to New York, get roped back into some kind of investigation, and find her old life comforting. Maybe reconsider what she’d done.
Tallon was smart enough to know that he couldn’t control that kind of thing.
He leaned in and kissed her.
“Hey, do what you need to do. I’ll be here.”
Pauling smiled and kissed him back.
“I know,” she said.
6
They rode in a Mercedes-Benz motor home designed for overnight stays. It was black with tinted windows and had a bed, bath and small kitchen. There was a sink, a microwave, a refrigerator and a flat screen television. A storage cabinet held a variety of industrial-grade cleaning supplies. The bed, which was never used, was home to a collection of weapons. There were multiple handguns, assault rifles, knives, cutting tools and a nail gun.
Off to the side was a collection of plastic gloves, booties and rolls of clear plastic sheeting.
The men didn’t sleep in the vehicle, instead they chose cheap motels and paid cash.
The purpose of the motor home wasn’t for habitation, rather, as a place to clean up between jobs. It afforded privacy when the team preferred not to be seen in public.
They’d plastered the back with fake stickers from national parks and even had a bicycle attached to the rear of the vehicle. Depending on the location and setting of their “projects” they would often rent a car, paid for in cash, to get from the motor home to the job site and back again.
Now, the team had finished cleaning up after their job on Long Island and the big Benz moved down the road quietly.
Its next destination was known to only one member of the team.
The others would wait for instructions.
And then follow them to the letter.
7
Pauling settled into her first-class seat on the direct flight to New York.
She felt a strange mixture of emotions. She was torn between the abrupt departure from Tallon and the daily experience of what life was now like, and a surprisingly powerful tug of yearning about returning home.
“Home” was a term she still felt wasn’t clearly defined. Her apartment in New York was technically her home. But she’d joined Tallon out West and had felt the first tendrils of roots begin to dig into the dry, desert soil.
And then the call.
Edward Giles.
Pauling remembered him fondly as a mild-mannered, methodical FBI agent. He avoided office politics and focused on the case at hand, treating colleagues with equal respect. Giles always seemed like the kind of guy who might be a little different once he was out of the office – maybe yelling at people in traffic, or letting loose occasionally on the weekend. Pauling vaguely remembered going to his house once for a cookout and meeting his wife, Nancy. They’d made a cute couple, clearly balancing each other out personality-wise.
But as far as the Bureau went, Giles was one of the best she’d worked with. She remembered him quite fondly because he had defended her once, when a fellow agent had discriminated against her. The guy, Pauling couldn’t even remember his name, had made a derogatory comment or two. He abruptly stopped, and later she learned that Giles “had a word” with the man.
Now, he was dead.
Pauling shook her head. Giles had probably been retired, or close to it. People often talked about their retirement, what they were going to do when they were done with their professional lives. She wondered how many folks actually lived their dreams.
Pauling considered herself, too. After all, she was now somewhat retired. Or at least, out of work. She’d sold her private investigative firm and was now “seeking new opportunities.”
Whatever the hell that meant. She was now independently wealthy, thanks to the outrageous amount her competitor had paid for her firm. She really didn’t have to work again, but knew that she would.
Detective work, investigation, it was in her blood and always would be.
Pauling put it out of her mind and let her mind wander for the rest of the flight. When she touched down, the plane jolted and Pauling thought to herself, welcome to New York.
She took an Uber back to her apartment, and was pleased to see that the cleaning service was doing a fine job. The space was a loft, with high ceilings, natural wood and comfortable furnishings.
The state-of-the-art alarm system was working just fine. It was something she’d had to invest in a while back when one of her cases hit a little bit too close to home. She’d already checked the web-based video and knew that nothing had happened out of the ordinary.
Pauling unpacked, dug out a bottle of wine and poured herself a glass as she wandered aimlessly around the place.
So different than the desert and Tallon.
Looking out the window she saw a slightly overcast day, with people walking quickly along the sidewalk, taxis honking at each other, and the eternal hum of the city. She felt relaxed, pleased to be back in “her” space.
Eventually, Pauling made her way into her home office and turned on the computer. She waited and watched it come to life, then opened up her email where she found a message from one of her former colleagues.
The woman who’d sent her the message was a good friend, but the message contained a forwarded message from Arnie Steele.
Pauling groaned.
She’d butted heads with Steele on more than one occasion.
But now, she studied the message. Steele had sent it to a select few within the Bureau who had probably been tasked with helping find out who had murdered Giles.
Pauling gasped as she saw what it contained.
An autopsy.
Giles had been brutally murdered.
His wife tortured.
Worst of all, no one knew why.
8
The FBI team assembled in the office’s biggest conference room. Despite their collectively vast experience with crime, the hardened agents were all in a state of shock.
Details about the murder of Giles and his wife had leaked throughout the office and everyone had wanted to play a role in catching and punishing those responsible.
Reluctantly, SAC Steele had assembled a slightly larger group than he had originally intended. They were all present, save for William Tisdale, Director of the New York’s Bureau.
Just when Steele was about to kick off the meeting, Tisdale entered. He was a short, taciturn man with silver hair in a neat buzz cut. He wore neatly tailored suits, rimless eyeglasses and a Patek Philippe watch on a black alligator band.
He sat down at the head of the table and nodded to Steele.
Tisdale had always been a man of few words and Steele often wondered if it was his nature, or if he preferred to limit the amount of things he said that were ‘on the record.’
Despite his reticence, Tisdale was a man who knew how to get things done. While not overtly political, his elegant manner simply prevented him from engaging in the skullduggery so often present in bureaucracies.
Steele respected his superior and knew that he had control of this investigation.
“Okay, here’s what we know,” Steele said.
He walked the team through the preliminary autopsy findings, not shirking the worst of the descriptions, but not elaborating any more than necessary.
Steeled focused his gaze on a balding man with a red goatee.
“Sullivan, I want you, Mendez and Jackson to pore over all of Giles’ cases for the past five years. Bring everything up to date. Where the players are now? Was anyone released from prison? A conviction overturned? New evidence? Appeal granted? Anything new or unusual, pounce on it.”
Sullivan nodded.
Steele turned to a woman with short, honey-colored hair, gunmetal gray eyeglasses and prominent cheekbones. Her name was Wyman.
“Agent Wyman, I want you, Rawlins and Gerike to focus on the
same things, except I want them to be cases not related to Giles. Anything new with our active cases? Or cases going back the past five years. Meaning – maybe somebody wanted to hit the Bureau, and they just picked Giles at random.”
“Got it,” Wyman said.
There was a pause.
It was Tisdale who broke the silence.
“For Reacher,” he said. Technically, it wasn’t a question, but Steele knew what the Director wanted.
“I’m handling that,” Steele answered, his voice unable to disguise his anger.
9
It was a clear, blue-sky morning with only a firm, chilly breeze to take the edge off of what would ordinarily be a beautiful day.
For Pauling, she was glad the cold wind was bearing down on the cemetery and the funeral procession.
It somehow didn’t seem right to have a friend lowered into the ground on a picture postcard kind of morning. Frankly, Pauling wished it was brutally cold and raining so that the sight of Giles and his wife being lowered into the earth would almost feel like protection for them.
Instead, it felt as if they had been victimized yet again. The living allowed to savor the warmth of sun, the sight of an azure sky overhead, while the dead remained oblivious.
Pauling turned into the wind, let it blast her with its cold and although not a religious person, she prayed for the souls of the dead, and asked the powers-that-be to help law enforcement catch the bastards and put them away for life.
She sensed someone by her side and turned. FBI Special Agent Rose Wyman nodded to Pauling.
The two of them had gotten to know each other years ago at the Bureau. Wyman was at least ten years younger than Pauling, and Pauling had been a bit of a mentor to the woman. In fact, it had been Wyman who’d gotten the message to Pauling about Giles, along with the autopsy report.
“Pauling,” Wyman said.
“Hell of a thing,” Pauling answered. “Any progress?”
To the outside observer, their interaction might have seemed distant, maybe even a little cold. But they were both FBI agents, one current, one former. The businesslike demeanor rarely changed.
“Roles assigned, that’s it so far.”
“Steele?”
Wyman nodded. “Yep.”
Pauling and Steele had been competitors during Pauling’s time at the NY Bureau. It had also been a slightly different time, when women were still fighting for their footing and Pauling had been on the front lines of that battle. She often joked that she had “trained” Steele, although it had probably cost her in the long run.
Pauling could never be certain, but she assumed as Steele rose above her in the Bureau, that he had actively stunted her career growth.
She saw him standing to the left of the priest. The Gileses didn’t have any family, save for a sister who lived in Europe. There was no one present other than friends and co-workers.
Steele looked a little older, but Tisdale looked exactly the same. Pauling almost smiled – Tisdale would probably look the same at ninety years old as he did now.
Pauling felt eyes on her and glanced back at Steele. He was staring directly at her.
She nodded at him.
He didn’t nod back.
10
The Mercedes-Benz motor coach parked outside the chain hotel and the men inside quietly discussed their strategy.
They had made the drive to the outskirts of Atlanta and their target was only a dozen miles away, just outside the upscale community of Buckhead, on the north side of the city.
The big vehicle was equipped with high-speed Internet and the team leader had downloaded a dossier on the target, complete with high-resolution photographs, video, schedules and an analysis of response times should any alarm be sounded.
The information had been supplied to him.
The alarm system in question was middle-tier, meaning it would not be a challenge to the men inside the Benz.
A plan of attack was put into place, weapons dispensed and placed into innocuous-looking roller bags, and the men took turns checking into the hotel, leaving a gap of at least thirty minutes between each.
They would not reconvene until approximately three in the morning, so they could reach the target by 3:30. It was their favorite time of day to attack, when guards were lowered.
The last thing the team leader did was to check the supplies.
Plenty of nails for the high-powered nail gun.
And more than enough plastic gloves and booties.
11
“Pauling.”
She turned and saw Arnie Steele approaching her. He was dressed in a black suit, white shirt and black tie. He was powerfully built, and Pauling knew he was a workout fanatic. Everything Steele did, he tended to do it with maximum intensity. He had a reputation for wearing out agents who were in the unfortunate position of working beneath him.
The service was over and Pauling had been about to climb into her vehicle and head back to the city.
“Hello Arnie,” Pauling said. She decided to be casual, just because she could. No longer a part of the Bureau, she felt no need to continue organizational protocol. Plus, she knew it would probably get under his skin.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” he said. “I’d heard you’d moved out West.”
Pauling wasn’t surprised Steele had kept tabs on her. The sale of her firm and the eye-popping numbers were fairly big news in the world of private security and law enforcement circles. She was a little disappointed he’d obviously kept tabs on her personal life, too.
But that was his point. He was trying to get under her skin, too.
“Giles was a good man,” she said, ignoring the line of his conversation.
“He was.”
They stood in silence for a moment as a vehicle passed them. Pauling caught the sight of Tisdale in the passenger seat, looking at her. He nodded as they passed.
“Wyman fill you in?” he asked. Pauling knew she had to be careful. Steele could be an asshole, she didn’t want to get her friend in any kind of trouble.
“No, NYPD actually,” she said. It was a lie, but she actually did have a lot of contacts within the NYPD and it was plausible.
She doubted Steele would buy it.
“How long are you in town for?” he asked.
“Long enough,” she said. “Are you going to catch them?”
“Of course,” he replied.
He hesitated as if he wanted to say more, but he didn’t.
Pauling opened the door to her vehicle and glanced at him.
“Make sure you do,” she said.
12
Henry Lee had long come to terms with being the sole African-American in a neighborhood as white as rice. He often felt like the token black, for there had been no recriminations, no rocks thrown through the windows. In fact, everyone had been as nice as could be.
Perhaps it was because he, too, was wealthy. The Bentley in the driveway. The fact that he was a bachelor without kids. But deep down, he felt like he’d been sheltered from any kind of racism by the fact that he was the only one.
Now, if suddenly, an influx of blacks into the neighborhood could be attributed to him then he was pretty sure there would be problems.
But for now?
He was fine.
Golden.
Henry was in his home office where he spent the majority of the day analyzing spreadsheets on his computer. He was a financial advisor for a select group of very wealthy clients who had found him by referral only. If one were to look for Henry Lee’s company online or in the phone book, you would be out of luck.
In fact, he rarely used the actual name of his service. It was only needed at tax time when he had to file his return.
Other than that, his clients knew him by his name, as opposed to a business entity.
Now, he studied the financial charts with an acumen that was well beyond ordinary. Henry had always been gifted with numbers and once he’d been introduced to the financial markets, it had
all made sense to him. So much so that by the time he was in his early twenties he was so well off that he would never have to work again.
But that was the thing.
This wasn’t work to him.
It was fun.
It was what he was born to do.
The numbers enveloped him like a warm blanket and he became oblivious to everything around him.
In fact, he had no idea that someone had entered his home.
Or that they were now in his office.
When the man stepped up behind him and clamped a hand over Henry’s mouth, he was caught completely by surprise.
When a second man entered the room with guns, knives and sheets of plastic, Henry Lee knew that he was a dead man.
He just didn’t know why.
13
Michael Tallon studied the sit rep – or situation report – from a friend of his working private security in Australia. It seemed that a splinter terrorist group had set up shop down under and was planning a series of potential attacks on American tourists.
The Australian government had reached out to Tallon’s former colleague and asked for a proposal to provide supplemental surveillance and possible intervention, should the need arise.
Tallon’s buddy had submitted a proposal with an outrageously high fee that the Australian government had instantly approved.
Now, his friend was trying to put together the right team and the first person he had reached out to was Tallon.
The sit rep was very thorough, as he had expected. His former colleague’s name was Caldwell and his nickname was “All Well” because of his meticulous nature. When Caldwell did something, he did it very, very well.
Hence, the moniker.
Tallon was able to discern that the job required he travel to Australia and spend about a month there, maybe two, and for his time, he would be paid approximately one hundred thousand dollars.
