Echoes

by Laura K. Curtis

“First to San Juan. Then on to HSE headquarters in New York.”

  “Just like that? Surely, between the fact that the FBI seems interested in me and the fact that someone chasing us just blew up a boat belonging to a foreign government’s military, there will be flags on both my passport and Mac’s.

  “I doubt Nash plans to go through immigration.” Mac ceased his prowling and took the seat next to Callie’s.

  “No,” Nash agreed. “I’m afraid we have to use somewhat unorthodox methods, especially with Nikki Lewis’s body raising more questions.”

  “They found her?”

  Nash outlined the situation, and Callie, unable to think of appropriate words, reached for Mac’s hand to comfort him. Oddly, the contact soothed her as well. Mac squeezed briefly before letting her go.

  “Dollars to doughnuts once they test her blood they’ll find she’s part of whatever Callie’s tangled up in.”

  “No bet.” Nash looked over at the open side panel. “You can close her up, Joseph; Trey will keep an eye on radar, but it appears we’re clear.”

  “Yes, sir.” The young man did as ordered, then disappeared into the cockpit. Relative quiet followed.

  “The flight to the airstrip in Puerto Rico takes about an hour. The plane will be waiting, and after that it’s another four hours to New York.” Nash glanced at his watch. “We filed our flight plan last night. Barring unforeseen problems, we should be back in Manhattan early this evening.”

  “And then what?” asked Callie.

  “We have an apartment for the two of you at headquarters. A safe house, if you will. You’ll stay there while we track down the who and why of these attacks.”

  “And just how do you plan to do that?” Callie could hear the anger in Mac’s voice. He’d told her himself he wasn’t good at rules or politics. She suspected he didn’t take orders well, either. And he wouldn’t just wait around to see what Nash came up with; he’d want to make things happen. There was something else, too: despite the fact that Nash had rescued them, and that they appeared to have quite a long history, Callie got the feeling Mac didn’t trust the man.

  “My people are doing a thorough search into the backgrounds of all parties. I told them to start with Ephraim Steele. His downfall was quite public, and his financials were thoroughly examined at the time. All those records are available to the right person.”

  “And you’re the right person?” Wow, that hardly did her father’s diplomatic training credit. Mac’s aggressiveness must be rubbing off on her.

  “Nash has always been the right person. No matter the situation.”

  “No,” Nash corrected him. “Not always, not in every situation. But in this one, I know the right people and I’ve set them the goal of putting Ephraim Steele’s life under a microscope.”

  “Steele’s wife was very vocal about his prosecution being persecution, as I recall,” Mac said. “Has anyone spoken to her?”

  “Polly Steele died in a one-car accident two months after her husband’s heart attack.”

  “Another loose end snipped off.” Mac’s flat statement sent a shiver over Callie’s skin that skittered up her spine. Her shoulders twitched in response. “Someone likes to keep everything nice and tidy.”

  “Yes,” Nash agreed. “I think Ephraim Steele’s heart attack may have been the first of the killings. Steele was going down. If he knew something that could get him a shorter sentence, there’s not a doubt in my mind he’d have given it up. Someone got to him before that could happen. And just in case Polly got curious, they took her out of the picture, too.”

  “But left Ed?”

  “He was a kid at the time. Doubtful his parents would have shared anything criminal with him, and while it wasn’t unlikely that Ephraim, faced with jail time, might have a heart attack, or that Polly, a well-known drunk, would have a fatal wreck, killing their kid could have made the cops look a little harder.” Callie noticed it didn’t occur to Nash—or, seemingly, Mac, who was nodding at the analysis—that the killer left Ed alone just because he didn’t want to kill a child.

  Nash touched her knee. “Callie, I hate to ask this of you, but how would you feel about having your father’s body exhumed? I know the original exam found he had died of an aneurism, but given how many sudden deaths we seem to have here, I’d like my own people to be able to check him out.”

  Callie had to swallow twice before she could answer. “My father was cremated. Both he and my mother. That’s what they wanted. I scattered his ashes the same place we’d taken hers.”

  Chapter Eight

  By the time the town car that had met them at the charter gate at New York’s JFK airport pulled up in front of a building on the lower west side of Manhattan and waited for the metal garage gate to roll up, Mac could see the exhaustion in every drooping line of Callie’s body. On the ground in Puerto Rico, they’d hustled from the chopper straight into a private jet. The opulence had impressed Mac—though he’d die before he said so—but Callie seemed to take it in stride. He supposed with her background, she’d been on more than a few.

  They’d used the flight time to thoroughly reexamine the information Vince had passed along. Callie had stuffed the papers into her oversized handbag before coming to find him on the Lady. He found her presence of mind admirable. Actually, he found a number of things about her admirable.

  Like the fact that she’d noticed Ephraim and Polly Steele had died the same way Mark and Ava Lewis had. Even Nash had been impressed with that observation.

  The car rolled slowly forward down a ramp, and the steel door began to descend. At the bottom, a second gate, this one in steel lattice, waited until their driver, whom Nash had introduced as Dylan, entered a code into a box before it slid smoothly to the left. Past the gate, two cars were parked to the left and two to the right. Dylan backed into the single remaining spot on the right.

  “Home, sweet home,” said Nash, hopping out and offering a hand to Callie. “Welcome to Harp Security.”

  “Quite a place,” Mac remarked as he followed her out of the vehicle. Cement and steel loomed around them. Judging by the ramp’s length, he estimated they were ten feet underground, but the ceiling was twenty feet above them, and his voice bounced off the walls a bit.

  “There’s a street-level entrance around the front of the building. Two-story lobby, with an elevator that takes you to the public offices of HSE the floor above. From here, you can get to both the public and private floors.” He patted the car’s hood. “Go on home, Dylan. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Yes, sir.” The driver waited until they’d crossed the garage and punched the elevator button before heading back to the ramp. He stopped at the bottom, entering a code and waiting for the gate to open again before proceeding.

  “Different codes to come and go?”

  “Of course. We’re also being watched.” Nash pointed out several cameras. “If Dylan had entered the wrong numbers, or anything unexpected had occurred, he wouldn’t be able to get out and we wouldn’t be able to get in.” The elevator doors opened. “But all is well, so up we go.”

  The elevator stopped on the second floor. As they stepped out into a spacious antechamber, a perfectly groomed blonde woman shifted position from behind a large desk to greet them. She smiled as they approached, but the expression never touched her level gray eyes. Not a receptionist, then. An agent.

  “Any problems, Lexie?”

  “None. Seventh floor is still working on the project you assigned.”

  “Seventh floor is computers and intel,” Nash explained. “This is Lexie Morton. She was good enough to come with me when I left the DEA. She runs the office and all our internal security. If anyone’s scheduled to come in or out of the office, either Lexie is here or I am. Usually, we both are.

  “Lexie, this is Calliope Pearson and Mac Brody. They’ll need ninth-floor access.”

&nb
sp; The woman withdrew two sets of keys from the desk and handed them over. “The smaller keys work in the elevator. This is the third floor. All you have to do to get here is push a button. Same for four, which is the gym. Every other floor requires a specific key, and some an additional combination. If you wanted to go visit the geek squad on seven, you’d come here and I’d open the elevator for seven for one trip and punch in the right code.”

  “And if you weren’t here?”

  “Then someone with a seven key and the correct code would have to come down and pick you up. You’re on nine, which has the guest apartments. We’ve put you both in A. The larger key will open the front door. We keep it available in case someone needs to stay overnight.”

  “How many floors are there?” Callie asked.

  “Twelve.”

  “I live on twelve,” Nash explained. “Nine, ten, and eleven have two apartments each, occupied by HSE operatives between assignments or clients needing a safe place to stay. Eight is the lab.”

  “Nice setup.” Mac had never been to New York, but even in Atlanta a building like this one wouldn’t come cheap.

  Nash shrugged. “My mother’s family owned the building, turned it from a factory warehouse into retail and rental apartments in the sixties. It was fully leased in 2001, but after 9/11, we lost both galleries that took up the bottom floors, and even once the area was cleared, people didn’t want to come back. I’d been with the DEA for a couple of years and was already thinking of getting out. I let anyone who wanted to terminate a lease do so without penalties, then waited for the two who didn’t want to leave to run out their leases, and began renovating. We officially opened our doors in January of 2010.

  “Give me a few minutes to get them settled, Lexie, and I’ll be back.” He led them back to the elevator, taking a key from his pocket and slipping it into the spot next to the button for the ninth floor. The button lit up and he pressed it.

  “I had Lexie stock your apartment. There should be clothes for both of you and plenty of food. We’ll talk in the morning; with a little luck, my guys will have come up with something by then. The phone lines in the apartment are completely secure, and there’s an office with Internet access, also secure.” Mac wasn’t keen on waiting, but he accepted Nash’s ruling because Callie needed the rest. He’d use the time to call Vince and do some of his own research. He might not have the same quality of insider information Nash did, but he was good enough at connecting the dots.

  The front door to the apartment opened into a large living room with an oversized galley kitchen separated by a marble-topped counter. Nash opened a door on the left to show them the bedroom and bathroom.

  “The couch in the living room folds out into a queen-sized bed,” he explained. “It’s fully made up. Pillows, extra sheets, blankets, things like that are all in the closet.”

  “You said the phones were secure?” Callie asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  “So I can call my roommate, tell her I’m okay?”

  “Yes. But keep it short, and don’t tell her where you are. In fact, it’s better you don’t even mention leaving the island. Chances are good that her phone is being monitored, at least by the FBI if not by whoever tried to take you out of the game this morning. She should go stay with a friend for the duration.”

  “She won’t.”

  “When we were only concerned with simple robbery and vandalism, she wouldn’t.” Mac had understood Callie’s explanation of Erin’s feelings on the matter. He and Erin appeared to come from the same background, one that dictated you didn’t give up your place to the first guy who tried to chase you off. But the explosion that morning had upped the ante. “It’s not safe anymore.”

  “If someone wanted to hurt her, all they’d have to do is go to the restaurant.”

  “I’ll send someone up to keep an eye on her,” Nash offered. “I doubt she’s in any real danger, but if someone thought they could get to you through her, they might try.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you. For any of this.” Callie gave Tommy’s full name and address to Nash, though she didn’t really expect Erin to be willing to leave the Chappaqua house for Tommy’s studio apartment in Yonkers.

  “I’m sure we can think of something.” Not even the slightest hint of anything sexual colored Nash’s reply, but Mac bristled just the same.

  “Nash enjoys having people owe him,” he said.

  “Is that what this is all about? Creating favors?” Callie cocked her head to one side, examining Nash. Damned if he hadn’t been wondering the same thing. He couldn’t figure out Nash’s agenda. Not that that was anything new, but it bugged him.

  “Favors make the world go around. So, yeah, I like having people owe me. I can call them when I need information. I’m expending more than one finding out about Ephraim Steele, so I’m not sorry to be gathering a few more in return. But, as Mac can tell you, I need more than one reason to take any action.”

  “And your other reasons?”

  “Ah, I prefer to keep those to myself. Although I admit, I’ve been trying to get Travis to join HSE for years, and involving him and Mac in an op makes that more likely. Which reminds me, I do have to get back downstairs and make certain everything with his ‘renters’ went off smoothly. Sooner or later, their cover will fall apart. Someone will go through the records and discover they didn’t actually pass through St. Barths last week, the way their passport stamps and the paperwork they signed with Travis indicate. They never took a ferry from St. Barths to St. Martin, couldn’t have met with Trav and boarded the Lady in Marigot and taken her out last night. We need to have this situation cleared up before that happens.

  “Since I haven’t heard otherwise, I suspect everything’s fine for the time being, but I do want to be positive. I’ll arrange for your roommate’s protection at the same time. Her full name is Erin Campbell?” Callie nodded. “Shall we agree to meet at eight tomorrow morning in reception?”

  Callie and Mac agreed, and Nash left them alone. Callie immediately went into the office to call her friend, and Mac stepped toward the wall of windows overlooking the West Side Highway and the Hudson River. A mirror film had been applied to the inside, preventing prying eyes from seeing into the apartment, and he suspected the glass was bulletproof. Still, the huge expanse of it made him feel unprotected.

  But the view was magnificent. Across the river, an enormous clock sat on a promontory, glowing red in the fading light, and boats and helicopters lined the river on both banks. A flock of pigeons strutted self-importantly around an all-but-empty parking lot, while seagulls bombed the Hudson.

  “She’s not answering.” Callie came up behind him. “She’s probably at work. I left her a message, told her to go stay with Tommy, that I was fine and would call her.” She fidgeted. “Can I make you some dinner? We didn’t eat much on the flight, and I need to be doing something.”

  “Great idea. Let’s go see what Nash has given us to work with.”

  They settled on steaks, which Callie slid into the broiler while she washed, diced, and stir-fried fresh baby broccoli and asparagus spears. Though the kitchen was large for its style, it only accommodated one person, so he went into the bedroom while she worked and called Vince, who’d texted Mac’s disposable cell with his own new number at some point while they were en route to New York.

  “Good to hear your voice,” Vince said when Mac identified himself.

  “Same here.”

  “Where the hell are you?”

  “Can’t tell you.”

  “How did I know you were going to say that? You’re all over the news. You know your friend Vichy wasn’t aboard the launch that got blown up, right?” Mac did. Nash had received a radio call while they were in flight to tell him that the boat, which belonged to the Gendarmerie Maritime, had come from Guadeloupe at Vichy’s request the previous evening. Vichy himself had hea
ded to their meeting in a car; the launch had been backup, in case Mac and Callie had tried to get away by water.

  “I’m all but locked out,” Vince continued. “The feds only humor me because they think I can lead them to you. They’ve got boots on the ground in the Caribbean, now, too.”

  “Which will serve no other purpose than to irritate the locals, who just lost their brothers. It doesn’t pay to forget that the gendarmes aren’t American police. They’re the law-enforcement branch of the French military, and will be even less appreciative of outside interference than you or I would be.”

  “Yeah, well, no one ever said those guys were smart.”

  Mac laughed. “You got anything else?”

  “One thing. And I don’t know how reliable it is, so take it with a grain of salt.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “A week before her death, Robin Cory attended a fund-raiser in support of an organization devoted to fighting AIDS in Africa. So did your brother-in-law. That part is fact, backed up by photographs of the event. But none of those pictures show them together, so the gossip about the two of them possibly hooking up is unsubstantiated. It may also be completely meaningless, since he was at another well-photographed event—with a different woman, in a different country—the night the Masters women disappeared.”

  “Still, an oddity.”

  “I thought so. I guess there’s no point in asking whether there’s anything new on your end?”

  “Nothing I can tell you.”

  “Understood.”

  Callie tapped at the door to let him know the food was ready, and he rang off with Vince, promising to call as soon as he could.

  They ate sitting on the black leather couch in front of the enormous flat-screen television. Mac had turned on CNN, which was running their story—complete with video of the burning boat, though not the explosion itself, that some tourist had taken from the shore—almost nonstop. The anchor announced breathlessly that both French and US officials had become involved in the search for Callie and Mac. Nikki’s dual citizenship, her American marriage, and the fact that both Mac and Callie were US citizens accounted for the involvement of the American authorities. But Nikki carried a French passport. A French landowner, she’d been murdered on French territory, which put the case squarely in the hands of France’s legal system.