My mind was still on Matty and Tim when Barrett said, “Quit the case.”
I suppressed the knee-jerk retort on the tip of my tongue and concentrated on unrolling the neck of my lunch bag. “If this is about Tim Thorp’s tantrums, I can handle them. I’m a big girl, Barrett.”
“What if you weren’t?”
My heart stopped beating as I realized what he was saying. “Are you suggesting Brooke’s disappearance has something to do with Tim’s temper?”
“I’m not suggesting anything.”
Like hell. “Look, I know telling him off in his own office might have been a stupid move, but—”
“Might?”
“—accusing him of hurting his own child isn’t very smart on your part.”
“I don’t have to accuse him of anything. In the past day and a half, I’ve witnessed him body-blocking an FBI agent at the scene of a crime, crushing the bones in your wrist, throwing his executive officer to the ground, and coming after you like he’d tear you apart with his hands and teeth.”
“He can do anything he likes. I’m not willing to let Brooke go, Barrett.”
“You think I am?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Listen to me.” Barrett turned in an instant. He planted a palm on either side of me and my pulse ran riot as he caged me against the hood of his car. “You’re taking too many chances. Do you have any idea what went through my mind when Thorp came at you with blood in his eye?”
“It’s my fault he got angry. I was married to him, for crying out loud. I should know better than to push him too far.”
Such rationalization sounded pathetic even to me. I couldn’t imagine how weak it sounded to a warrior like Barrett. He could’ve belittled me. He could’ve laughed out loud. But he didn’t do either.
Barrett sighed, rested his forehead against mine. He closed his eyes. After a moment’s hesitation, I closed mine, too. I allowed my soul to sense Barrett’s nearness. I hadn’t done that in a long time—and I hadn’t felt this close to anyone in even longer.
All too soon, Barrett pulled away from me. He straightened. And his jaw was as locked as a bank vault. Whatever he’d felt a second ago, he wasn’t letting himself feel it now. And that left me feeling hollow.
“Eat your lunch,” he said. He dug into his own paper sack.
Overhead, birds flitted from branch to branch. Some hunted up insects in last autumn’s leaf litter below. The undergrowth was so dense I couldn’t see the birds, but through the slowly greening trees, I could see houses. Probably pretty in the summer months, they looked drab now, at the end of winter. Sliding glass doors stared onto peeling painted decks. Forlorn swing sets and abandoned barbeques stood waiting for sunny weather. And today, sunshine seemed a long time off.
“Tim’s temper is just another weapon in his arsenal,” I said. “It’s the way he gets things done.”
“You think Tony Padilla uses the same strategy?”
“No.” I dove into my lunch sack, came up with my BLT. Bertie hadn’t been stingy with the bacon, and the mayonnaise was tangy on my tongue. I’d have bet a dollar it wasn’t low-fat. “Padilla was drunk, Barrett. He’s probably been drunk for days.”
“Adam.”
“What?”
“My first name is Adam. Not Lieutenant. Not Colonel. Not Barrett. And I haven’t had any reports of drunk and disorderly conduct at that address.”
A squirrel joined the birds under the bushes. I couldn’t see him; I could only hear his scolding chatter and his rustling through last year’s leaves. He sounded like an army of squirrels. I thought of his cousin, stuffed into an envelope and left for me at Albert Foley’s address. I still had no idea who’d sent it and I wasn’t too keen on asking Kev for his opinion—or the results of the FBI’s tests on the thing.
Out loud, I said, “Just because you haven’t had a nuisance call doesn’t mean Padilla hasn’t gotten rowdy. Some of his neighbors have got to be in his unit. They’d never call the MPs on one of their own.”
Barrett didn’t disagree.
“And whether he’s a binge drinker or a hothead, a psych evaluation is overkill. It’ll go on his permanent record.”
“I can’t help that.”
I shook my head in disgust. “Explain that to him when he’s absolutely fine, but doesn’t make rank next time he’s eligible to test for it because his record includes a page for a psych evaluation.”
“New regulations keep that from happening, Jamie. There’s no shame in a soldier getting that kind of help.”
“I agree, Barrett, but you know as well as I do, not everyone sees it that way. Even if Padilla’s declared fit for duty—and even though the army won’t hold the evaluation against him—some people will still look sideways at him for the rest of his career.”
“So what would you do?”
“Locate Beth Padilla, for starters.”
Barrett didn’t reply. Maybe because he’d need help with an investigation that big. State help or FBI help. Either idea wouldn’t be a military police commander’s first choice. But Barrett gave no indication of his preferences. He simply reached into his bag and came up with a dill pickle. As he crunched into it, the squirrel continued to crunch through the dead leaves.
I still couldn’t see him.
Like Barrett and the squirrel, I tried to turn my attention to my lunch. I knew soldiers got evaluated from time to time. Sometimes, going through the tests was part of the job. But Barrett wasn’t talking about a routine psychiatric exam. He wanted to know if Padilla had done away with his family.
I had a different thought on the subject. “I think Beth Padilla took her kids and ran away.”
“Just not to her mother’s?”
“No. Her husband could find her there.”
“So you think she feels the need to hide from him, but he doesn’t need a psych evaluation?”
“Maybe he needs a twelve-step program.”
“Plus a drywaller and a painter.”
Unbidden, visions of the fist-sized holes decorating the Padillas’ kitchen wall filled my head.
And then, casually—almost too casually—Barrett said, “Would you know spousal abuse if you saw it?”
Every word I’d ever known stuck to the roof of my mouth. I wanted to reply. But, for once in my life, I wasn’t sure of the answer.
Barrett didn’t push me to respond. He said, “It may be a drinking problem. It may be abuse. It may be more. Do you think he even realized his family wasn’t there?”
I frowned. “He could’ve been playing dumb. Playing normal. Playing possum.”
“Or it could be he’s not playing at all—because he could be another Charles Chapman Brown.”
At the mention of Brown’s name, my heart shuddered to a stop. “What?”
“The dead squirrel. The note. ‘Leave the girl. Come back to me.’ The FBI found no prints on the paper, no fibers on anything. We’ve all seen Brown on TV. He’s off his nut. And he’s apparently got a thing for you.”
Something large crashed through the underbrush.
It sure as hell wasn’t a squirrel.
The birds had gone still. Where they’d foraged, something snuffled through the dead leaves. Barrett plucked the hamburger from his bag, began unwrapping it.
He walked to the edge of the parking lot, stopping between the car and the Dumpster. He crouched low, extended his hand. And Barrett stayed that way. A man of stone. With a hamburger balanced on his fingertips.
Ten seconds ticked by. Then thirty. A minute passed.
All the while, Barrett didn’t move.
And just when I thought I’d be riding back to the post with a cold hamburger in the car, a dog appeared.
His coat was black and shaggy, soaked from the morning’s rain and matted from neglect. His lop ears hugged his head in fear, only to flick forward to catch any unexpected sound. His nose, a black button on the end of his long muzzle, wiggled as if the scent of food were too good to be true.
<
br /> On light feet, he approached Barrett, keeping low to the ground and ready to run.
Barrett didn’t move. He didn’t even breathe. And the dog’s need for a meal outstripped his fear.
Trembling, he closed wicked teeth over the burger, eased it from Barrett’s grasp. He slid it to the asphalt, dragged it a foot from Barrett’s boot. Then he let loose, gobbling the burger in greedy bites, snuffling the ground in search of more. With a wide pink tongue, he dabbed at crumbs, real and imaginary.
When the dog had finished and had begun to snuffle all over again, Barrett reached for him, slowly. Like a racehorse from the starting gate, the dog shot away, scrambling for the shadows. Barrett waited a moment more, then rose to rejoin me.
“How often do you feed him?” My throat felt uncomfortably tight.
Barrett shrugged. “Once in a while.”
I didn’t believe that. Not for a minute. Oh, Barrett fed this dog all right. Just not once in a while. That dog had expected the burger in Barrett’s hand. And according to Young Bertie, Barrett stopped at the deli practically every day. When he’d taken Barrett’s burger order, he’d even said, With nothing on it, right? Well, Barrett hadn’t wanted anything on it. Because he’d intended it for the dog.
Again.
“Come on,” Barrett said. “I’ll drive you back to your car.”
I nodded, began to slide from the hood of the cruiser. Barrett grasped my hand to help me down. With one stumbling step, I found myself toe to toe with him.
Without warning, he swept back the dark ponytail that pooled on my shoulder, exposing the collar of my turtleneck. And the edge of the bandage covering Charles Chapman Brown’s carving. Barrett frowned when he saw it.
“This isn’t the first time you’ve been hurt, is it, Jamie?”
I shrugged a shoulder, tried to pretend he was talking about life on the job. Professional consequences. Occupational hazards.
But we both knew he wasn’t.
Barrett brushed the flat of his thumb along the curve of my throat. He grazed the corner of my bandage, skimmed the line of my jaw. And found the swell of my lips.
Barrett’s breath grew short. My own breathing came quickly. His touch had me tingling.
Until my BlackBerry hummed.
Barrett released me so I could answer it.
“Jamie.” Frank Marcotti’s voice was a bumblebee’s rumble in my ear all the way from Philadelphia. “Thought you’d want to know. The docs are done with Brown. They say he can stand trial.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me! He’s mentally ill.”
“You’ll get no argument from me there. But the shrinks disagree. His arraignment’s tomorrow.”
“I’ll be there.”
“I figured.” Frank cleared his throat. There was more. “You know, afterward, maybe we could have dinner. Or lunch if it’s early. I know this great Italian place off Broad.”
I closed my eyes, tried to get creative about letting him down easy once again. I came up blank. Barrett had moved off to toss our trash in the Dumpster and I was glad. I didn’t want him to hear me break Frank’s heart.
“Thanks, but I’ll have to head back to Jersey as soon as Brown’s arraigned. You’ve heard about the child abducted from Fort Leeds? Two more are gone.”
“But you gotta eat, right?”
I heard the hope in Frank’s voice and felt like the Wicked Witch of the West. “I’ll just grab something on the way back—”
“That fast-food crap? That’s no good for you. Gotta keep your strength up, Jamie. Gotta keep the mental pistons firing. Have dinner with me.”
“I can’t. Really.” Because it would mean so much to him. And to me, it would mean only friendship.
Since my divorce, there’d been men who’d offered friendship, men who’d offered sex. Several had offered to combine the two with a third thing—relationship. Frank was one of them.
But none of them could give me what I really wanted.
“Yeah, well, I guess I’ll see you in court tomorrow anyway.” Frank’s voice came over carefree. But it cost him to sound that way.
I felt awful. “You will. Thanks again, Frank.”
I ended the call.
When Barrett returned to the cruiser, I said, “I’ve got to go to Philadelphia.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.” And I told him what Frank had told me. “Unless something breaks here, I plan to be in the gallery when they bring Brown in for his arraignment. But I should be back by evening.”
He nodded.
“Will you call me? If anything happens? With Brooke or with the Padillas?”
My face flashed red in case my request came across as personal. It wasn’t. To tell the truth, though, the idea of a late-night phone chat with Barrett on the other end of the line held a lot of appeal. But it wasn’t what I was gunning for. So I rushed to make my intentions clear.
“I’d ask Kev, but he’s not big on sharing information. Of course, I know you’re not either. But I’d appreciate it in this instance, Barrett.”
“Adam,” he corrected, and his spectacular smile lit the rainy afternoon. “My first name is Adam.”
Chapter 15
Darkness came early to Fort Leeds that day. Kev’s continuing canvass of East Coast pharmacies turned up nothing that led to Brooke. Barrett put a trace on the Padilla credit cards, hoping for a shortcut to Beth and the kids, but that yielded zilch as well. Desperate for anything that would point the way to Tim’s daughter, I revisited the copse of pines where Tim’s sniper had taken shots at him, then fired on Barrett and me. The rain had washed away any evidence Kev’s feds or Barrett’s MPs might’ve missed; all I got was soaked to the skin.
After a quick trip to my room at the Pines for a shower and a change of dry clothes, I returned to Fort Leeds in the heavy twilight, counting on the early evening gloom to work in my favor. Because I had another task to see to. And that task involved surveilling Tim.
His daughter, that sweet baby Brooke, had now been missing for forty-one hours. So it was make-or-break time, as every American with a television and a penchant for true crime stories could testify. An investigation’s first forty-eight hours were truly the golden window. Once it closed, witnesses grew forgetful, evidence dried up, and trails grew cold. Well, for Brooke’s sake, I’d keep that window open if I had to wedge Tim’s secrets into the gap to do it.
Halfway across Fort Leeds, I slowed to give wide berth to troops trotting in formation with full packs on their backs. It was after 5 P.M. Very likely they were headed to clean up after a hike—and, in a few days, to active combat zones half a world away. I found myself studying the faces of the young soldiers I passed. Most of them weren’t old enough to drink. All of them were plenty younger than me. Some of them wouldn’t come home alive.
I shook off a sudden sadness that pressed in on me and, a few miles farther on, I turned onto a side road cloaked by wilderness. I pulled over and popped the Jag’s trunk. From a compartment built beneath the spare, I extracted a silver hard-sided case. It was the size of a briefcase. I levered it onto the lip of the trunk, then opened it.
Black foam padding, carved with slots and divots, filled the container. Nestled in the divots were six black wafers and six white wafers. All were about the size of postage stamps and as thick as a quarter.
James Bond would’ve identified these things in a heartbeat. After all, the use of listening devices hadn’t changed much since 007 had chased down Dr. No. The technology, on the other hand, certainly had.
The devices in my case could transmit farther, stronger, and clearer than those fictionalized in the 1960s. Their power sources were smaller, infinitely more compact. So were their microphones. Crystals and miniature ribbon mics had given way to new know-how, making these bugs more durable. Unfortunately, though, they still relayed every sound they detected via radio signal. According to their specs, these wouldn’t interfere with military frequencies, broadcasting well below that range. And I knew they�
�d better not—or I’d be in a world of hurt.
In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission must license everything that sends or receives a signal. The little gems in this case, however, were not licensed in the United States, and were, frankly, illegal. Detection could lead to my arrest, prosecution, and, if not jail time, a hefty fine that could ruin me.
In addition to the disks, two more objects lay nestled in the foam. Each was the size and shape of a deck of cards. They were a dull silver and had short, black antennae sticking from one end. I lifted one of the contraptions from its packing and flipped it over. On the back, shiny paper covered two strips of peel-and-stick tape.
“I hope that’s industrial strength,” I murmured.
What I held in my hand was just like LoJack. But designed for the do-it-yourselfer. Or the private investigator.
I loaded one of these devices and all of the bugs into my jacket pockets, then stashed the case in its space in the trunk. When I slid into the Jag’s driver’s seat, Brooke, cheeks dimpling, smiled her approval from her photo on my visor.
Two blocks from Tim’s, I spotted Matty’s old Bronco parked just short of a street lamp. As far as I could tell, he wasn’t in it. He’d be nearby, though, and watching the house. Once he verified he could get a signal from the gadgets in my pockets, Matty would take off. He’d play advance man when I went to meet my anonymous caller.
In front of Tim’s house, a Military Police cruiser kept watch at the curb. Two of Barrett’s cops sat in it. In all likelihood, they could only see the vehicle in Tim’s driveway. The other, under the carport, was hidden from their view. But the car in the carport this time was the one I didn’t intend to tag. It was Brandy’s little Jeep Liberty.
Tim’s BMW sat in the drive.
In plain sight of the MPs.
I’d have to forget all about the GPS, because not even nightfall would hide me from their observation—and I had no intention of waiting until then. Disappointed, I rolled to a stop in the thickening shade of a towering fir tree, tucked the tracking device between my seat and the floor. No sense getting caught with it on my person.
The Kill List Page 10
