“You made it,” Dom said.
Charlie pulled back a chair, and Beckett passed her a glass of wine. “You sound surprised.”
“I’ve seen that piece of shit you drive,” Dom said. “You should be surprised you made it.”
“True,” Charlie said.
Beckett lifted his glass in a toast. “To a successful mission. Wasn’t easy, but we got it done.”
The three of them clinked their glasses together, but Dom shot him a dubious look.
“I risked going to prison, and Charlie threw herself into a glass shelving unit,” she said. “You just had to stand guard outside the door and flirt with the man’s assistant.”
“And that is why I’m picking up the tab tonight, to show my deep appreciation. Besides, it wasn’t a total cakewalk on my end. I had to look at cat pictures.”
“Poor baby,” Dom said.
“Twenty minutes of cat pictures. The same cat. She makes it wear costumes.” Beckett sipped his wine and nodded at the laptop. “So. We got something?”
Dom snatched a breadstick from the basket and chewed on it while she fired up the laptop. It dangled from the corner of her mouth like an oversize cigar. Charlie followed her lead. The bread, soft as a marshmallow and fresh from the oven, was buttery sweet on her tongue. She leaned closer to Dom, scooting her chair over, and watched windows and waterfalls of green type scroll across the screen.
“Not as useful as I hoped, but it’s something,” Dom told them. “Someone called and left a message on Ellis’s phone at 5:12. Not sure if he missed the call or just didn’t feel like picking up. Anyway, the incoming number is blocked, so we’ve got no easy way of tracing it back.”
“Can’t you, you know, hack it?” Charlie asked.
“Me?” Dom glanced her way, a little surprised. “Oh God, no. I’m not a hacker; I’ve just got surveillance training. The malware I used, this intrusion suite, it’s all total off-the-shelf software, brewed up by people who are way better at it than me. Plug and play.”
“So what’d our anonymous caller have to say?” Beckett asked.
Dom rattled off a few quick keystrokes, and the answer, soft, filtered through faint static, crackled over the laptop’s speakers. The voice belonged to an older man, breaking at the edges and carrying a furious hiss.
“Answer your phone, you son of a bitch. We are done playing around with you. Do you think this is a joke? We want what’s ours. And we’re not going away until we get it.”
“Knew that much,” Beckett muttered.
“You like the little present we left you?” the man’s voice asked. “Just a reminder. We can get at you anywhere we want, anytime we want. So stop dicking around and tell us what you did with Kimberly’s share. All we want is what’s rightfully ours. We paid for it. You didn’t. Be. Fair.”
Charlie listened intently with her eyes closed. Marking the name, listening to the stresses in the man’s voice.
“This is your last chance to do the right thing,” the recording warned. “If you don’t, we might just take everything you’ve got. The surprise under your chair was a wake-up call. Next time, that bomb’s going to be real.”
The recording ended with a dull click.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Charlie said. “The bomb was real.”
Dom eyed her over her glass of chardonnay. “I don’t want to second-guess you; I wasn’t there, and bombs aren’t my bag, but . . . is there any chance it was a dud? Like, maybe it wouldn’t have really gone off?”
“None. Trust me; this was my MOS for the last eight years. If there’s one thing I know about, it’s explosives, and that one was built to succeed. The pressure trigger was rigged to splatter Ellis all over his trophy collection if he stood up. And on top of that, the bomber built a timer in as a backup, just to make absolutely sure.”
“It jibes with what we noticed earlier,” Beckett pointed out. “Trying to kill the man and then extort him didn’t figure. He said we an awful lot too.”
“Think the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand’s doing?” Dom asked him.
“The assassin and the extortionist aren’t two different threats,” Beckett mused. He sat back and contemplated his wine. “They’re on the same team. At least, the extortionist thinks they’re on the same team.”
Charlie walked back through her memory. “That thing he said about ‘Kimberly’s share’ lines up with what I heard Ellis say, last time he was on the phone with this guy. He said, ‘Did you think I didn’t look?’ and mentioned a ‘treasure that doesn’t exist.’”
“So he claims,” Dom replied, “but the voice on the recording sounds pretty convinced. And as I recall, you didn’t entirely buy Ellis’s act either.”
Charlie shook her head, slowly, and sipped her wine.
“Whatever it’s about, it’s bad news.” She gestured with her glass at the laptop screen. “Look, we know Ellis is freaked out about the very idea of cops digging into his life . . . freaked enough that he’d rather risk being blown up than invite a detective into his office. Then there’s this guy. He scrambled his number, but beyond that . . . no attempt to disguise his voice, and naming names on tape? Either he’s insanely overconfident, or he knows Ellis won’t go to the police. I’m betting on door number two.”
“So we need to dig deeper into the man himself.” Beckett picked up his menu and rapped it on the table. “Find out where he’s been and what he’s been into, before our angry caller takes his next shot. But first, dinner. Can’t invade a client’s privacy on an empty stomach.”
TWENTY-THREE
The next morning, Charlie’s phone lit up while she was halfway ready for work. With her wet hair bound up in a towel and a fresh bandage wrapped around the cut on her arm, she leaned over the bathroom sink and spat a mouthful of toothpaste. Her image was a ghost in the steam-fogged mirror as she scooped the phone off the sink’s rim and held it to her ear. The pulled muscle in her hip twinged with a dull ache.
“Morning,” Jake told her. “Got an important assignment for you today.”
“Not being anywhere near Sean Ellis?”
He chuckled. “That’s a given, until he forgets he’s pissed at you. But no, got a special request. I need you to go down to the District A-7 police station, over on Paris Street, and talk to a detective named Riley Glass. They picked up that guy you turned away at the banquet, you know, the one you thought might be carrying a piece? Well, they think it’s him, anyway, and they need you to make an identification.”
Best news she’d heard in days. Her gut told her the guy wasn’t their primary threat—he was driven by moral outrage, not money, and Charlie had been able to talk him into walking away—but it’d be good to rule him out for certain. Now that they knew the person threatening Ellis on the phone was connected to the bomber, and that something between the two suspects had apparently gotten lost in translation, anything to clear these muddy waters might help.
Next time, that bomb’s gonna be real. Those words had bounced around in her head all night, wrenching her brain awake. She felt like she’d spent the last six hours standing outside a club offering slumber and peaceful oblivion, just on the other side of a velvet rope, and the recording was a beefy-fisted bouncer keeping her out.
In the end, she only saw two possibilities. Either the bomber had misunderstood the caller’s instructions, planting a real explosive device when a fake one was required—and that was one hell of a mistake—or the people conspiring against Sean Ellis had opposing agendas, and at least one of them didn’t even know it. There had to be a way to capitalize on that. She just wasn’t seeing how. Not yet, anyway.
“Will do, boss,” she said to Jake. “And after I’m done?”
“Eh, give me a call, but don’t expect you’ll get out of there anytime soon. They didn’t want Deep Country holding that banquet in the first place, and Sofia’s calls with the station have not been, shall we say, mutually respectful.”
“You think they’re going to take it
out on me? Keep me sitting on a bench for a few hours while they play solitaire?”
“Do me a favor,” Jake said. “Don’t break their trophy collection.”
“No promises.”
He snickered and hung up on her.
The district house was all business, the entrance steps flanked by dour Ionic columns like a temple to some stone-faced god of justice. She asked the desk sergeant for Detective Glass, was unceremoniously waved to a hard wooden bench, and sat. And waited. And kept waiting. She watched the slow, steady stream of humanity passing in and out through the double doors. People looking for help, some of them just needing someone to listen to them. The desk sergeant was gruff, terse, but Charlie could tell he cared. He lived here. These were his people.
She had considered going into police work after her discharge. There were always recruiters at the job fairs on her base, looking for vets; she figured it was easier to train someone who already had the assertiveness and discipline elements of the job down. The dangerous, dirty parts of the policing life didn’t scare her off—after Afghanistan, she couldn’t imagine much else they could throw at her—and she liked the idea of helping people. Being a positive part of a community. Setting down roots she could be proud of.
And yet, she thought. And yet here she was, gravitating to private security like a moth to an open flame. In the last two days she’d had a sit-down with an illegal arms dealer and helped to plant spyware on her own client’s cell phone, all in the name of getting the job done. She’d done everything but follow the rules. And after eight years of having every aspect of her daily life governed by rules and regulations from sunrise to sunset, she was strangely okay with this.
Maybe I just like being a mercenary, she thought. Something to ponder, later, when people weren’t trying to blow her client up and she had the luxury of being able to relax.
A man crossed the scuffed-up tile floor and held out his hand. She rose to greet him.
“Ms. McCabe?” he said. “Detective Glass. Sorry to keep you waiting.”
Despite Jake’s predictions of being snubbed, he seemed genuinely apologetic. Riley Glass made her think of foxes, with a sharp, angular face and a shock of unruly ginger hair. He was young for a detective. He wore a yellow button-down shirt and a black tie that dangled a little loose, crooked at the collar.
“It’s fine,” she said. “Happy to help. My boss says you found the guy who we turned away at the hotel?”
“Technically, I can only say that we found a vehicle with Kentucky plates and a number matching the one your colleagues wrote down, and we’ve taken the registered owner of said vehicle into custody.”
“So . . . you found the guy.”
Riley nodded for her to follow, leading the way up a dusty side hall. An overstuffed corkboard hung on the wall, accumulating layers of tacked-up bulletins. Faded and yellowed papers poked out from beneath like the strata of an archeologist’s dig.
“Normally I’d sit him in an interview room, walk you up to the mirror, ask for an ID, and send you on your way,” he told her, pitching his voice low. “Unfortunately, he drew Mason for a public defender, and Mason thinks his first name is Perry. So I have to run a full-on lineup and waste all our time. ’Cause, y’know, I didn’t have any real work to do today.”
“Public defender?” Charlie asked. “So he is being charged with something.”
“Technically I can’t tell you that he was pulled over for driving under the influence, the morning after you folks reported him trying to crash the party. I also can’t tell you that the arresting officer found an unlicensed thirty-two revolver in his glove compartment and a fistful of newspaper clippings about Deep Country, along with pictures of the board of directors.”
“Just a gun?”
He tilted his head at her. His fox nose twitched, just a little, catching a scent.
“You were expecting more than that?”
Charlie watched her footsteps, deciding how much to give away. “We had some bomb threats, but we weren’t sure how credible they were. I was concerned a former employee might steal some mining explosives and make a go at it.”
“Nah, not this guy. Just the gun, and it’s kind of a sad gun—looks like he bought the thing at a flea market and never learned how to clean or oil it.”
“I didn’t think he really wanted to hurt anyone,” Charlie said. “He thought he did, but even if he’d gotten past me, I’m not sure he would have pulled the trigger.”
“That’s my take, after talking to the guy. Between you and me, he got pulled over on I-93 South, trucking toward the interstate.”
Charlie drew a map in her head. “He was going home. Back to Kentucky.”
“That’s what he says, and I believe him. It’s our collective bad luck that he downed half a six-pack first. Anyway, right in here.”
He ushered her into a claustrophobic booth, swimming in shadow. The station’s anemic air-conditioning didn’t quite reach this far; the box was sweltering hot and stank of dry sweat. They had company, a tall and balding man with bushy eyebrows that formed improbable, inverted-V arches. Perry Mason, she thought.
On the other side of a pane of one-way glass, a line of tired, slump-shouldered men shuffled in before a white wall marked with height lines. She spotted her guy the second he came into view. He’d stopped shaving after his poor attempt at a corporate disguise, whiskers already growing out over the nicks and cuts that marred his face, but his bloodshot eyes hadn’t changed one bit.
“Number three,” she said.
Perry Mason glared daggers at her. “Please wait until everyone has lined up.”
She looked at Riley. Riley gave her a helpless shrug. She waited. Eventually, six men stood in the lineup, facing the glass.
“It’s still number three.”
“Take your time,” Mason told her. “Don’t identify anyone unless you’re absolutely certain.”
Charlie leaned closer to the glass. Her eyes widened in sudden shock, and her mouth hung open.
“Oh, wait, I see it now, wait—” she gasped. Then her voice suddenly became deadpan. “Nope, sorry, it’s still number three.”
Perry Mason was not amused by her antics. The detective, on the other hand, squeezed his lips together to keep a smile off his face as he led her out of the booth.
“Okay, that was almost worth the pain in the ass,” Riley told her once they were alone. “Thanks again for coming out.”
“No problem. What happens now?”
“Now?” He pointed his thumb back toward the door. “Depends on whether we’re really going to go after this hump for ‘terroristic threats’ and whatnot, or just charge him on the unlicensed gun and the DUI and call it a day. Seeing as he didn’t actually do anything illegal at the hotel, and your boss tells me you didn’t see a weapon on him, I don’t imagine anybody’s going to make a big production out of this. I generally run across two kinds of criminals: bad and stupid. This guy’s not bad; he’s just stupid.”
“Pretty much what I thought,” Charlie said. “Do you want my phone number, just in case you need to follow up?”
“I would love to have your phone number,” he said.
She caught a rakish twinkle in his eye. Charlie felt like she had just managed to stumble a step, while standing perfectly still.
“Are you—I mean, do you mean—”
“For follow-ups,” he said. “I mean, we can reach you through your employer if something official comes down; it’s completely voluntary. But you know, it’d be good to have in case something unofficial comes up that I need to see you about.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, trying to get a read on his intentions. “Like . . . dinner?”
“Like dinner,” he said, snapping his fingers. “That’s an excellent idea. I mean, I might need to follow up on the facts of the case. Just you and me. Very informal.”
She gave him her phone number. He jotted it down on a spiral pad, gave her his card, and thanked her for her service to the commun
ity. Charlie left the station house with a curious smile on her face. A hot summer breeze ruffled its fingers in her hair.
She called Jake on her way back to the parking lot and gave him a recap, leaving out the bit about trading phone numbers with the ginger-haired detective. “Good,” he said, “one less problem to deal with. Tell ya what—Sofia’s out of the office, which means I’m in paperwork hell at the moment, and I don’t really have anything for you today. Why don’t you take the afternoon off? Meet me at HQ tomorrow morning, around seven, and I’ll set you up with another training assignment.”
She wasn’t going to say no to a little off-the-books time. If nothing else, she could hit the public archives and dig up anything she could on Sean Ellis. He had a giant skeleton in his closet, a skeleton connected to someone named Kimberly; it was a thin lead, but better than nothing.
“Hey, McCabe.”
She paused, gripping the pickup’s door handle, as a gruff voice sounded at her back. She looked over her shoulder. Malloy, the towheaded bodyguard who’d picked a fight with Dom at their first briefing, was standing in the parking lot behind her.
“Tell me something,” he said. “Did you really think you’d get away with it?”
TWENTY-FOUR
A flood of reactions hit her at once, taking her on an adrenaline-fueled roller-coaster ride. Should she deny, argue, misdirect? Malloy just stood there with a borderline smirk on his face, waiting in expectant silence. Finally—it had only been a second or two, but it felt like a lifetime—she chose her retort.
“Are you following me, Malloy?”
He nodded at the looming stone face of the district house. “Nah, it’s my day off. Dropping by to chat with some buddies of mine. Just happened to see you across the parking lot and figured I’d say something.” He jabbed a finger at her, the smirk blooming. “Gotcha good, though. For a second, you looked like you got caught with your hand in the cookie jar.”
The tension drained from her shoulders. He doesn’t know anything, she thought. He’s just a jerk who thinks he’s funny. Good.
The Loot Page 15
