Deadly Sins (7 page)

Adam sent a considering look at his silent cell on the console below the dash and the Bluetooth headset beside it. Talking on the phone was a useful evil in his line of work, but never one he’d learned to enjoy. Using the wireless headset or speakerphone lent the act a hellish element. He needed to talk to Paulie Samuels, his right hand at the agency. But the message the man had left had been labeled only “important.” Which meant it could wait until he got home, where he could use the video chat each of them preferred. Samuels was no fonder of cell phones than Adam was.

Weaving in and out of traffic as he headed toward Manassas kept his mind occupied for the first leg of the trip. But as the traffic decreased, thoughts of the case intruded. Which would have been fine, had all those thoughts not borne the face of Jaid Marlowe.

It was a memorable one. Her features swam across his mind now, unbidden. Doe-shaped eyes, as dark as her hair, the color of mink. Delicate jaw, angled to a slightly pointed, stubborn chin. He knew from experience just how determined she was. How difficult it could be to shake her from an idea once she got it in her head.

Like when she’d been convinced the two of them had a future.

He scowled, checked the mirrors, and passed the next car. He’d disabused her of that notion finally, while still in CCU after killing John LeCroix eight years ago. It’d been weakness on his part that had led to their intimate relationship to begin with. She’d been young. Green. And achingly unguarded. But their eight-year age difference hadn’t been enough to keep him away from her.

His fingers clenched and fisted on the wheel. She was all wrapped up in the biggest mistake of his life. Late at night it was still difficult to decide if the mistake had been starting a relationship with her. Or ending it.

That line of thought was unproductive. Adam checked the rearview mirror again. Much more productive to wonder who was in the light-colored sedan that had been tailing him since he’d left the rectory.

Purposefully, he cut his speed. But the car stayed back. Sometimes four car lengths, other times allowing half-a-dozen vehicles to drift between them. But it was telling that even with the decreased traffic, it didn’t speed up enough to close the distance.

Feds most likely. Adam gave a grim smile. Maybe Shepherd had been given the duty after Jaid and he had parted. New vehicle, one he wouldn’t recognize . . . Did Hedgelin distrust him that much?

Yes. The answer to the question was automatic. Although to be fair, the idea could have originated much higher in the organization. As if this case didn’t come with enough problems without adding in this senseless paranoia about him.

Deliberately, he slowed to take the next exit. And paused long enough at the bottom of the ramp to determine whether he had company. Adrenaline spiked when his tail followed. Damn, but he was going to enjoy this. His recovery from taking three bullets in the chest a few months ago had been slower than he would have liked. He no longer healed like a kid. But the day he couldn’t take on some half-witted government drone on a surveillance assignment was the day he’d hang up his weapon for good.

He led the sedan through a series of small towns before coming to the county road he was looking for and turned on it without signaling. Unsurprisingly, his tail did the same. Picked up speed.

The headlights speared through the darkness behind him with the inexorable intent of an oncoming train. There was little traffic on this road, which was the reason Adam had chosen it. No use involving an unwary citizen in what was about to happen.

Because it was appearing less and less likely that whoever was behind him was a fed. An agent would follow orders, and those orders wouldn’t have included confronting him. He took a hand off the wheel to unsnap his shoulder holster, leaving his suit coat pushed open to allow better access. The other driver had given up all pretense of hiding his intention. The headlights bounced and swerved as they sped over the poorly lit, ill-maintained road.

Daylight would have distinguished the scenery whipping by the windows as heavily wooded, with trees crowding the roadside, their nude branches entwined in the canopy overhead. But the darkened scenery was the last thing on Adam’s mind. There was a series of hairpin curves coming up. He hoped his memory served him well.

He decreased his speed enough to allow the other vehicle to come closer. And closer still. It slammed into the back of the Beemer, hard enough to jolt Adam’s teeth together. His lips stretched in a grim smile; he stomped on the accelerator. Timing it to the second, he whipped the wheel at the last moment, tires screeching to make the first of the trio of curves.

The high-pitched screech of metal against an unforgiving century-old tree’s trunk filled the air. Lights no longer showed behind him. Slowing the vehicle, Adam stabbed at the button to lower the window. Strained to hear anything else.

But the night was silent.

He brought his car to a gradual halt, navigating the last of the curves from memory, his mind on the vehicle behind him. The Y-turn he executed was tricky on the narrow road. The back wheels left the pavement once, spun, before he was able to right the vehicle. He doused the lights before easing the vehicle back to the scene, one hand on the wheel while drawing his weapon with the other. If he hadn’t been cautious by nature, the five attempts on his life last year would have forged that trait.

The seconds dragged as he rounded the middle curve. There was still no sound. He crept around the next. Saw the taillights ahead splitting the shadows from where the car still sat, its grill kissing the trunk of a huge cottonwood.

Every muscle in Adam’s body tensed. Stopping thirty meters from the other vehicle, he lowered the window the rest of the way before easing the door open. Stepped out onto the pavement, weapon ready. Using the door between him and the other car like a shield.

“Throw your weapon out the window,” he called. “Then get out of the car, hands behind your head.” He was guessing the driver was armed. There was little point to this exercise tonight if he weren’t.

There was no answer. The vehicle remained still. Was the driver unconscious? Dead?

Adam immediately rejected the latter possibility. But there was notable damage to the front of the car. Its airbag had almost certainly deployed, which could wreak its own injuries.

He was still weighing his options when suddenly the other vehicle roared to life. It shuddered into reverse with a wrenching screech, righted itself, and leapt toward him. Muttering a curse, Adam hurried in an awkward stumble to the area behind his car, taking refuge in the trees hugging the road.

There was a thunderous crash as the other vehicle pushed the Beemer off the county road. Adam dove out of the way to avoid having his car roll on top of him.

The squeal of the departing vehicle’s acceleration rang in his ears like a schoolyard taunt.

“Don’t bleed on my leather seats.”

One of Paulie Samuels’s best qualities was that he didn’t fuss. “I’m not bleeding anymore.” But Adam kept his handkerchief pressed to the wound on his forehead, just in case. The scrapes on his hands were minor. And the head injury had settled to a sullen ooze that he’d already testily refused to have stitched.

“I’m not even going to mention the card hand I threw in to come out here.”

Adam laid his head against the rest and closed his eyes. “Thank God for small favors.”

“Three ladies.
Three
.” It was too much to hope that Paulie would make good on his word. “Three thousand on the table, and the pot would probably have doubled before it was over.”

“Are you telling me you want six thousand dollars for coming out here to pick me up?”

Paulie’s response was swift. Vaguely insulted. “It’s not about the money.”

Amazingly, Adam felt a smile tug his lips. “It’s about winning. I get it, believe me.”

Nothing about the night left him feeling like a victor. Not when it was his car dangling from the tow truck whose taillights even now winked ahead of them. It still rankled to recall the difficulty he’d had returning to the vehicle. His thigh was seizing and cramping from the punishment it had taken. His chest felt as though it were on fire. Hobbling unaided to the vehicle had been a further indignity. Most of the time Adam managed to forget the physical limitations his three days in LeCroix’s captivity had cost him. Intellect trumped physical prowess nearly all the time. But tonight those limitations had been particularly impossible to ignore.

The sheriff’s deputy that had responded to the scene had looked a bit dubious at his story of a hit-and-run but had agreed to investigate the car’s description and partial plate that Adam had managed to see before taking cover.

“I know there’s a lot more to the story than the stingy details you gave the deputy.”

Feeling Samuels’s gaze on him, Adam straightened and faced him. “You could say that.” In a few terse sentences, he filled his friend in and waited for his response. He trusted this man like no one else. Which was odd, since Adam wasn’t a person to whom trust came easily. But with one decision eight years ago, he had aligned his fate with Samuels. He’d never had cause to regret it.

“Not feds then.” There was a slight frown on the shiny brow beneath Paulie’s balding dome. “Send a tail, sure that’s their style. But they wouldn’t try to kill you.”

“If the driver was armed, he never fired. He might have been ordered to just get me out of the picture for a while. Long enough for the case to proceed without me.”

There was a long pause. One he read as surely as if the other man had spoken. “You don’t agree.”

“I might, had it not been for uncovering this earlier today.” Paulie reached into his wool jacket. Since he’d come from a “friendly” game of cards, he wasn’t clad in a suit, so he was sans tie, which was usually adorned with some sort of gambling scene. Instead he wore a hideous sweater in eye-popping green and red argyle. Each diamond in the fabric showed a royal flush.

Unfolding the papers his friend handed him, Adam frowned down at them, immediately irritated. He hated dealing with techy details. That’s why he had men like Samuels working for him. But he was able to get the gist of the information on the first page. “You discovered who paid the shooter in Philadelphia?”

“Not exactly. But I was able to do a backward trace of the payments through a front of false overseas accounts to one that rang a bell. It’s there on the second sheet.”

But Adam had already found it. And the info had the recently healed bullet wounds in his chest throbbing anew. “I’ll be damned.”

“Most likely, but beside the point. Payment for your shooter came from one of the accounts I tracked the ransom money through last winter for the Mulder kidnapping.”

Adam didn’t need the reminder. In January he and a couple investigators from his agency had been called to find an eleven-year-old girl snatched from her father’s estate in Colorado. They’d found and killed Vincent Dodge, the man who’d abducted her. But whoever had hired Dodge had managed to clear three million of the ten he’d demanded in ransom. Paulie had diverted the rest and devoted a great deal of time and energy to following the three million as it skipped from bank account to bank account across the globe.

“Interesting.”

Paulie snorted, sent him a quick look. “Interesting? That’s all you’ve got to say? It’s fucking unbelievable. Not only that I was genius enough to find where the accounts intersected—and your awe and gratitude is duly noted—but this means that whoever ordered the girl’s kidnapping last January has a hard-on against
you
. Enough to want you dead. Damn near succeeded, too. What were there, four attempts before Jennings turned you into a human sieve in May?”

As usual the man’s frank speech relaxed something in Adam. He narrowed his good eye in concentration. “If you count blowing up my town house.”

“And why wouldn’t that count since you were supposed to be in it?” Without waiting for a response, Paulie continued. “The guy is probably pretty pissed he got less than a third of the ransom he was demanding for the Mulder girl. Decided to go after the man who cost him the remaining seven million.”

“Actually, since you were the one with the skills to divert the rest, it’s you he should be targeting.” Dark humor filled Adam. He looked over at his friend. Noticed the way his hands were clenched on the steering wheel. And was touched by the unspoken concern. “It’s actually satisfying to have some evidence that we were right. Neither of us believed the feds’ version that Jennings was working alone to avenge his ex-girlfriend’s father’s death at my hand a decade ago. This makes more sense. Now we’ll yank on this connection you’ve found between the shooter in Philly and the Colorado kidnapping, see if we can finally figure out who was pulling the strings in the Mulder case. But you’re grasping at straws if you’re suggesting tonight had anything to do with those cases.”