The Kill Radius

by Nichole Christoff

  Like a lot of the Deep South’s surviving mansions, the place could’ve been a public space or a private concern. Without signage, it was tough for an out-of-towner like me to tell. And to my untrained eye, the house looked like two-thirds of the antebellum homes along Beauville’s Parkway. It was remarkable for having survived nearly two centuries of economic change, civil war, and hurricanes—and for its glossy green door the color of a new twenty-dollar bill. That was a standout on the wide sweep of the whitewashed veranda.

  The next picture, however, caught my interest and held it. Taken inside some kind of shop, the photo was grainy, as if the lights had been low. But just at the edge of the frame, I could make out the hair, cheek, and lips of Damon’s girl, Monique.

  The following photo was even more revealing, catching Monique in mid-motion as she strolled between the store’s shelves. She wore gauzy baby-doll lingerie with a hem that didn’t quite fall below her derriere. And from the camera angle, it was clear she had the assets to make the most of that look.

  All in all, an entire string of photos chronicled her. In some of them, Monique wore black lace and leather. In others, she wore red mesh and a smile. I gathered that the photos had been taken over time. And all had been taken on the sly. That was clear from the odd angles and poor framing. But what wasn’t clear in any of them was Monique’s face.

  Bran had been aiming for it, I was certain, because the shots of her chest and rear weren’t gratuitous. He hadn’t taken these photographs just to ogle her. He’d taken them to identify her.

  I clicked through the rest of the pics quickly, and when I didn’t learn anything more, I powered down the camera, rubbed my prints from it, and returned it to its case. I stowed the case in the lockbox and wiped that, too. Backtracking through Bran’s apartment, I swabbed my fingerprints from every surface I’d touched.

  But I still wasn’t in the clear.

  I’d just tugged the cuff of Ray’s sweater over my hand and reached for the front door’s knob when I heard the unmistakable sound of a key in the lock. I dove for Bran’s couch, wriggled between the hulking thing and the wall, and held my breath. Peering along the baseboard, I could just make out the boots of Bran himself, the lord of the manor, as he breezed into the place—and the last thing I needed was him catching me violating nine kinds of laws in his apartment.

  He said, “Hey, sugar.”

  The blood in my veins turned to ice water. I braced myself, ready for Bran to drag me from my hiding space feet first. But he didn’t.

  He said, “Nope, haven’t seen her…That’s all right…Well, it takes more than speculation.”

  And that’s when it dawned on me.

  Bran was nattering on his cellphone.

  He clomped into the kitchenette. I heard the rustle of grocery bags and the sigh of cabinet doors swinging open and closed. Bran continued his conversation as he moved to the back of the place—and into the bathroom.

  As quick as lightning, I struggled from behind the sofa and bolted for the door. If Bran emerged from the bathroom, he’d have me dead to rights. So, I didn’t hesitate. I reached for the knob and I didn’t look back.

  The stairwell, running right down the side of the building, was the quickest route to my rental car. But it was also the riskiest. A neighbor could spot me and describe me later. Or maybe Bran had heard my hasty exit and would fly out of his apartment to investigate. He’d see me, in a hurry and with no excuses.

  That left me only one option. I moved to the far end of the balcony, hoisted a leg over the rail, and balanced a toe on the lip of the decking. The alley below was blessedly vacant. And a handy downspout, clinging to the corner of the building, made an inviting slide pole. I wrapped a hand around it, planted a foot on the brick wall, and tried not to think about how far it was to the ground.

  Halfway down, the metal groaned with stress. The spout pulled away from the brackets securing it to the brick. With a screech, the aluminum ripped free of the roofline, creased just above my handhold, and swung me wide. Fighting instant panic, I let go—and dropped the remaining yard to land on my feet like a cat.

  A cat, however, wouldn’t wear flimsy, government-issued sneakers. The shoes’ soles were little protection as the shock of my landing radiated all the way up my legs. I gritted my teeth against the sting and hightailed it, limping, to my car.

  I shoved the vehicle into gear in a second. Pulling onto the street, I schooled myself to drive at a reasonable rate so as not to attract attention. Mission accomplished, I allowed myself to breathe and glance in my rearview mirror toward Bran’s apartment. But unless I was mistaken, I distinctly saw the slats of his horizontal blinds twitch—and I knew that Bran had seen me as well.

  Chapter 12

  Overly tired and quite bad-tempered, I returned to my hotel. Discovering Bran’s photos of Monique Wells had been solid work, but I didn’t know why he’d taken them or for whom. And I didn’t know what had become of Monique herself, let alone Eddie.

  I wondered if she’d caught a glimpse of Damon, once the spark that had made the man had flown. It wasn’t any of my business, of course, but I wondered if she missed him. And I wondered if she mourned him.

  I certainly couldn’t ask her because I didn’t know where she’d gone. That she’d disappeared as efficiently as Eddie Jepson—moments after the explosion and well before the authorities arrived—troubled me deeply, and I intended to do something about it. First, however, I’d have to battle the hotel’s front desk.

  The night before, during my adventures in the government’s secret decontamination facility, my room’s key card had been confiscated and destroyed along with the rest of the things I’d been carrying. To get another one at any security-conscious hotel, I’d need photo ID. But of course, that had been confiscated and destroyed, too.

  The hotel’s manager, however, was waiting for me, thanks to a phone call from Lieutenant Colonel Adam Barrett, Acting Commander, 405th Military Company, Fort Donovan, Mississippi. As a result, she herself produced a key card for me on the spot. And she offered any additional assistance the hotel could render.

  As it always did, Barrett’s thoughtfulness caught me off guard. I’d been raised to believe an American serves others and then serves some more, but to never expect anyone to go out of their way to help in return. Yet, Barrett did, time and again.

  “This package arrived for you as well,” the manager told me, pushing a Same Day Air envelope across the desk.

  “Thanks,” I replied.

  The return label bore the address of my Georgetown office. Because Laura Rygaard had worked miracles once again. Happily, I tucked the package under my arm along with the jumpsuit containing Ray’s notebooks, and, room key in hand, I made tracks for the elevator.

  Just as the lift’s doors were about to close, a man stepped aboard. Dark-haired and hard-eyed, he could’ve been mistaken for an archangel who’d fallen from grace. But maybe such an assumption wouldn’t be a mistake at all.

  “Which floor?” I asked him as the doors slid shut, sealing us into the small space together.

  “Yours will be fine.”

  I punched in the number, sent him a sideways look. “You know, if you go around saying that to women in random elevators you’ll end up in jail.”

  “I’ll risk it.”

  He leaned against the mirrored wall of the elevator like he didn’t have a care in the world, and shoved his handsome hands into the pockets of his jeans. His leather jacket gapped as he did so. And gave me a good look at the handgun holstered at his side.

  “Speaking of jail,” he said, “I leave you by your lonesome for four months, and what happens? You end up in Mississippi with a jumpsuit under your arm like you just got your release papers this morning.”

  “There’s no connection,” I told him rather peevishly—and clutched my folded overalls more tightly.

  “I beg to differ.”

  The elevator swayed to a halt. Its doors slid open. We got out. I swiped my new key card
through the electronic lock on my door and the indicator light blinked from red to green. I entered my room—and the man followed me inside.

  “Babe,” he said as the door clicked shut behind us. “Are you okay?”

  Yes. No? Maybe.

  These thoughts and more must’ve flashed across my face in rapid succession, because my visitor, Special Agent Marc Sandoval of the Drug Enforcement Agency, drew me into his arms.

  Marc and I had met the previous autumn when I’d accidentally walked into one of his cases. At the time, he’d made the mistake of thinking I was single. I’d set him straight right away. But not long after, when Barrett was at his worst and had declared our relationship over, Marc had turned up again. And when he’d had the chance, he’d let me know how he felt about me in no uncertain terms.

  Marc and I hadn’t done anything too stupid—or too carnal—and it was thanks to him that Barrett hadn’t had the book thrown at him for going AWOL. Marc had arranged the favor that had kept Barrett from a court-martial and a certain end to his career. But in my heart of hearts, I knew Marc had arranged that favor for me.

  Against Marc’s strong shoulder, I mumbled, “Please tell me you’re here to bust a guy named Bran Laurent for drug trafficking.”

  “No, I took some time off. I saw your pretty face on the news this morning and I boarded a plane.”

  I frowned, pushed my way out of his embrace.

  “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Probably not,” he agreed cheerfully. “But since I came all this way to be sure you’re all right, the least you could do is buy me breakfast and fill me in on last night’s excitement.”

  “Breakfast? It’s dinnertime. Besides, I always had you down for black coffee and antacids as your morning meal.”

  “There are a lot of things you don’t know about how I spend my mornings, babe. But I’m willing to give you the chance to discover every last one of them.”

  I shook my head, smiled reluctantly.

  I didn’t want to admit it, but it was good to have Marc here.

  “Let me change into my own clothes,” I told him, “and I’ll buy you the biggest bowl of grits we can find.”

  “It’s a deal,” he said, and something sweet sparkled in his obsidian eye.

  Eight minutes later and feeling much more like myself, I met Marc in the lobby. I’d changed into ankle boots, deep indigo jeans, a royal-blue lamb’s-wool sweater, and a tweed blazer with my brand-new belongings, shipped from my office manager, tucked into the pockets. Laura had procured a cellphone for me, and according to her note, had it programmed to ring with my old number. She’d sent along my business cards and a couple of credit cards, too, including one with a tall limit and a fake name I sometimes used embossed on the front of it. Laura had tucked in a thousand dollars in cash from my Sinclair and Associates petty cash account, as well. Last but not least, she’d even enclosed a case bearing a spare pair of square-rimmed tortoiseshell glasses. Those glasses could make any down-on-her-luck security specialist resemble a rocket scientist and they worked wonders on me.

  “Well,” Marc said, abandoning a wingback chair and rising to his feet when I approached him in the lobby. “There’s the Jamie Sinclair I know and love.”

  I chose to overlook that last remark and slipped my arm through his. “If I recall, there’s a mom-and-pop diner a few blocks over that serves breakfast twenty-four hours a day.”

  “I’m your man.”

  We left the hotel and walked up the strip crammed with other high-priced high-rises and casinos. Black clouds crowded the setting sun from the sky and ushered in a chill. Hungry gulls circled close, bossing us with their cries.

  We passed the marina where the Lady Luck had been moored before her final voyage. Traffic crawled slowly along the Parkway as people rubbernecked by the carload. Not that there was much to see. The tiny ticket office still stood on the pier, looking dejected. A police cruiser kept the peace in the parking lot where I’d left Barrett’s truck. It was gone and so were the rest of the survivors’ vehicles. Even Damon’s Ford had been towed or driven away.

  “How close were you,” Marc asked, “to the kill radius?”

  “About four feet. Barrett and I were on the observation deck. His commander and a young soldier at the rail were hit by the blast. One of them died and the other was severely injured.”

  Marc’s mouth hardened. “You’re lucky you weren’t killed.”

  According to my father, men and women made their own luck.

  But I didn’t point that out.

  Marc and I turned away from the waterfront, headed into the everyman’s district where the rents were much more reasonable. Tucked behind the hotels, we found the diner right where I remembered it to be. It hadn’t changed a bit.

  All pink and aqua, its interior was like something from the set of a Miami Vice rerun. Here, however, real people worked and ate and did the dishes. Where the fancy hotels with their flashy casinos were all about fantasy and fun, the folks at this establishment operated in the real world, did real work, and knew the real value of a dollar.

  The cashier invited us to sit anywhere, so I chose a booth and slid into one side of it. Marc took the other. The menus were stiff laminated cards printed on both sides, and breakfast was indeed available twenty-four hours a day.

  I ordered scrambled eggs, a dish of fruit, and grits. Grits were a rarity on the New Jersey military installation where I’d spent my formative years, but I’d developed a taste for them during my residency in Beauville. Consequently, I loved mine with butter and gallons of maple syrup.

  “I made some calls while you were changing,” Marc said once he’d given his order to our waitress. Though the dinner shift had barely started, she hobbled from our table as if her arches ached already. “A guy I know at ATF says the bomber probably didn’t build his own hardware, and that the bomb’s configuration was a new one on them.”

  Well, the men and women at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives would know. Not only do they have the experts who analyze recovered bomb components, they also keep an incredibly detailed database of the findings from each case. They chronicle the nitty-gritty bits about everything from the type of wire used all the way down to the slant at which that wire was cut. Such particulars can add up—and can link a bomb-maker to his product. Best of all, with such evidence, prosecutors can convict a bomber when he’s apprehended.

  I said, “I knew the bomber—at least, I knew him fifteen years ago. He wasn’t into explosions back then. And his involvement doesn’t make sense to me now.”

  I went on to tell Marc about Eddie Jepson’s rocky road, his penchant for ladies and larceny, my role in locking him away, and how he’d recognized me on the Lady Luck. I explained how he’d cornered Ray’s new partner, Bran, just as Bran cornered Monique Wells. And I filled Marc in on how Eddie and Monique both managed to disappear before the authorities boarded the disabled vessel.

  “Now, here’s the kicker,” I told Marc once our food arrived. “This afternoon, I learned Bran’s been surveilling Monique Wells, which means—”

  “—their confrontation on the riverboat was on behalf of a client—”

  “—or Bran took the opportunity to exploit her for his own gain, which was like blood in the water to a small-time shark such as Eddie.”

  Marc regarded me over the rim of his coffee cup. “You don’t think this Bran guy is operating on the up-and-up?”

  “I don’t know.” My scrambled eggs suddenly lost their appeal. I pushed them around my plate. “Marc, Ray taught me everything I know about being a PI. But he’s older now. I think he may be sick. He’s certainly not the firebrand he used to be. And it’s killing me to think Bran is abusing his trust professionally—and maybe personally.”

  “Personally?”

  I shrugged a shoulder, came clean about how I’d found Bran with Corinne.

  Marc sat back in the booth, eyed me for a long moment.

  “Want my advice, b
abe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Quit while you can.”

  But here was the pure, unadulterated truth. Ray’s situation had me roiling inside. The explosion on the Lady Luck made me sick. Bran, Eddie, Monique Wells? None of it was right.

  “I can’t quit,” I said, “because it’s all wrong.”

  And Marc reached across the table to cover my hand with his. “I know.”

  Chapter 13

  The waitress chose that moment to arrive with our check on a skinny plastic tray. And that gave me the perfect excuse to slide my hand from Marc’s. But the second I snatched up the tab, he plucked it from my fingertips and reached for his wallet.

  “You think this Bran is rotten,” Marc said as he counted out bills. “And you think this business with him, the bomb, Eddie, and Monique are interconnected. How are you going to prove it?”

  “I’m going to find Monique Wells. Damon said his girlfriend was a model, and having seen her, I believe him. Plus, in Bran’s photos, she was strutting her stuff in satin and lace. So here’s a trick question: do you know anyplace around here that employs live lingerie models?”

  “Who, me?” Marc’s face imitated the innocence of a choirboy’s. “No, but I’ve heard rumors.”

  “I bet you have.” And it took an enormous amount of willpower to squelch my smile. “Anyway, it’s Saturday night. All the models will be working the lingerie shops along the Back Bay.”

  “Excellent. I’ll drive.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, you can’t go by yourself.”

  “Can’t?”

  Having grown up under the roof of a major general who’d moved on to a second career as United States senator, I had to say the notion of can’t never flew very far in our house.

  “Think about it, babe. Think about most of the customers who visit places like that. You don’t have the requisite chromosomes.”

  Marc had a point.

  And I couldn’t argue with it.