Hot Pursuit (31 page)

What reason that was? No one had a clue.

Weird and/or discouraging news item three was encouraging at the outset. A New York City webcam was positioned on the corner, looking down the sidewalk directly in front of Nicco’s, the restaurant where Maggie’s cell phone had been found.

The FBI, under Jules’s direction, had requested and obtained archived footage from that camera.

The discouraging part was that there had been some kind of glitch in the archival system and the digital recording for the past month had been scrambled, with seventeen minute segments randomly mixed and completely out of order. The footage was clearly time and date stamped, but someone was going to have to sort
through all of it and pick out the bits that were pertinent. In other words—Jules had said—they shouldn’t hold their collective breaths, waiting for a close-up of the killer’s face.

Which they might already have in a photo that Jules had gotten from the hospital where their man had been admitted but walked away. His eyes were closed, but it was a good enough likeness, and they were leaving it, with a contact phone number, at all of the shelters.

“His name’s Winston. I don’t know if that’s a first name or last. It’s all I ever got out of him. He used to be a regular here,” the tall man with the prison tatts on his knuckles told Sam now, as Jenn and Tony hovered in the background. “But not so much anymore. It’s been a while since I’ve seen him.”

“About how long?” Sam asked.

The man scrunched up his face as he thought about it. “Since New Year’s—maybe even Christmas? Sorry, I can’t be more specific. We get a lot of traffic through here.”

“I appreciate even that much info,” Sam said.

Jenn spoke up. “What does it mean?” she asked. “In your experience? When someone like Winston suddenly stops showing up?”

“Usually, it means he’s dead,” the man said somberly. “Mortality rate on the streets is high, particularly in winter. But it could also mean that he found Jesus or, more accurately, Jesus found him. That some Good Sam plucked him off the street and put him in an in-patient program. Or he caught a case—accidentally on purpose, you know?—and went up river for a little state-supported vacation for these colder months.”

“I’m sorry.” Jenn shook her head. “I don’t know. Caught a case … ?

“Got his … self arrested,” the man told her. “For something with a nice little two to three month jail term. Which someone like Win would spend in the psych ward, first detoxing, then getting his head shrunk. If the doctors are good enough, they might even find
the right cocktail of meds to bring him back to earth. Only he’ll walk out of there in the spring, with a pile of prescriptions he can’t possibly pay for—and a half-year wait for the paperwork to go through if he tries to get his meds through the VA. And by the time they get around to reviewing his file, he’ll have already slipped away again, and be back on the street, talking to himself.”

“He’s not an in-patient,” Sam said. “And he’s not in prison. I saw him just last night.”

“Another possibility is that he got himself a warm place to sleep,” the man told them. “Somewhere the police haven’t found yet—because once they find these places, they clear ’em out, regular. Could be someplace only he knows about—like there’s a broken window, lets him get into the basement of a building.”

“How well did you know him?” Sam asked. “Did he ever show you a picture of a woman—”

But the man was already shaking his head. “Took me two months to pry the name Winston outta him. And then, like I said, he’s been gone.”

“Thank you,” Sam held out his hand, and the two men shook. “If you see him—”

“I’ll give you a call.”

With that, they all trooped back out into the cold.

“That was good,” Jenn said.

Sam wasn’t as enthusiastic. “You know how many basements there are in New York City?” he asked.

And yes, the information they’d just received definitely fell into today’s
even good news is bad
arena, but wasn’t it about time they got lucky? “If we start by searching the basements near the office,” Jenn began, but Tony interrupted.

“It’s not that simple,” he told her. “Even if we find a broken window, we can’t just enter the building without the cooperation of the super or owner. So it’s not just a matter of you take one side of the street, I’ll take the other. It requires a team of at least three per building.
One person to find the superintendent, one to watch the window, and one to watch other escape routes. I’ll tell you this, if I were setting up camp in a basement? I’d make sure I’d have at least one other way to get out.”

“Well, we can check
our
basements, right?” Jenn refused to take this as a loss instead of a win. “Plus, we now have a name. Winston.”

“Google that,” Sam said dryly, “and see how many million hits you get.”

“I absolutely
will
see,” she responded, undaunted. “Winston, Vietnam vet, New York. You never know.”

Sam stopped at the top of the stairs, clearly bracing himself for the jarring trip down them, and Jenn stopped beside him.

“Do not,” he said, “ask me if I’m all right.”

“I was actually thinking that it’s time for lunch,” she lied. “We’re right around the corner from the office. Why don’t we go in, get warm and … maybe order pizza?”

“Nice save,” he said.

“Is that a yes?”

“It’s a hell yes,” Sam told her.

She smiled back at him, and he added, “I can see why Danny Gillman likes you so much. I mean, aside from the obvious fringe benefits.”

His words made her face heat, but he wasn’t finished.

“It’s been awhile since I’ve kept up with who he’s dating,” Sam continued, “but you’re pretty different from his usual victims, I mean, girlfriends.”

And, yes. He’d completely meant
victims
.

“Most of his exes,” he told her, “had an IQ just a little higher than a mushroom.”

Jenn laughed at that. “And I’m at
least
as smart as a rutabaga. Or maybe … a stalk of celery?”

Now Sam laughed, too. “Nah, you’re much higher up the evolutionary chain.”

“Have you and Dan been friends for a long time?” she heard herself ask. Oh, God, was she really doing this?

Sam thought about it as he went down the stone steps, one at a time, leaning heavily on the railing. “It’s going on eight years now,” he said. “We were both in Team Sixteen for a while.”

“Dan’s SEAL team,” she clarified.

“It was mine first,” he said, taking the edge off of his words by smiling. “Back when I was a junior officer, he was an FNG—an effin’ new guy. He was enlisted, I was older, so … We were never really friends.”

“That’s too bad,” Jenn said as he hit the sidewalk and started moving a little faster. “He could use a friend like you. Someone who’s got their shit together.”

“You’ve got your shit together,” Sam pointed out.

“But I’m just a temporary friend,” she told him, and at his
oh really
look, she added, “I went into … whatever this is that we’re doing, well aware of that.”

“So … what?” he asked, his incredulity all but dripping off of him. “You’re just gonna let
him
define the parameters of your relationship? His head’s so far up his ass he doesn’t know if it’s night or day.” He paused, then added, “Unless, of course, you’re
good
with it being temporary. ”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. She’d met Dan, what? Just over twenty-four hours ago … ? God, the thought of what they’d done—twice—last night still made her blush. “I don’t really know him that well.”

Except she
did
know him—enough to know that he listened when she talked. And that he was capable of expressing his honest emotions. God, when he’d cried …

He’d nearly broken her heart.

Sam stopped outside of Maria’s office, and Jenn realized that Tony had given them some distance to talk privately. He now stood several yards away, speaking to someone on his cell phone.

“What do you like on your pizza?” Jenn asked Sam. It was a polite way of signaling that the personal part of their conversation was officially over. She added punctuation by starting up the stairs.

“Jenn.” Sam gestured her back over to him with a tilt of his head. And although she stopped, she wouldn’t move toward him, so he came to her, exaggerating the degree of pain it caused him to climb each step.

It was meant to make her feel guilty, which she refused to do. He was going to have to climb these stairs anyway, if he wanted lunch.

“I don’t mean to scare you off,” he said, which was right up there with
I’m not going to lie to you
and
I’m telling you this for your own good
when it came to things people said that were the exact opposite of what they meant.

“I don’t scare easily,” she told him, “so you should probably save your breath.”

But he was bound and determined to say his piece. “But if you notice Danny acting oddly or erratically—”

“You mean
more
oddly or erratically than his hooking up with someone with a higher IQ than a mushroom?” she asked.

He looked surprised, but then laughed. “Touché.”

“You know, I don’t really know what I’m doing,” Jenn told him, “but I
do
know that it would be a lot easier without everyone butting in.”

“He had a head injury recently,” Sam told her flatly, “and several incidents in which he blacked out. I think it’s related—that the blackouts are a result of the injury. But they might be a symptom of PTSD instead, which could end his career. I apologize for
butting in
, but I thought you’d want to know.”

With a nod, he moved past her, and went inside the building, leaving her standing on the stair with Tony watching her, out in the cold.

•   •   •

Jennilyn came into the office.

It wasn’t until she did that Dan realized he’d practically been holding his breath, waiting for her.

She was dressed down in jeans again today. They suited her far better than the ill-fitting business clothes she’d been wearing yesterday.

When they’d first met.

Huh.

It felt as if a full week had passed between his walking into Assemblywoman Bonavita’s office for the first time and Jenn coming through that door, but it had barely been twenty-four hours.

It was Day Two of Fourteen, and Day Two should’ve started with them waking up in her bed, legs intertwined. She’d stretch and smile at him sleepily, and he’d smile too, and pull her close, spooning her back against him, and they’d both say
Good morning
, and he’d murmur into her ear about how great he’d slept and how she shouldn’t go anywhere, because he was going to get up and make some coffee and bring her a cup, but in truth the coffee would have to wait, because with very little effort, he’d be getting his happy on all over again.

Only, he’d woken very much alone on the couch in the living room of that hotel suite, after having another one of his goddamn blackouts.

Which was a crying shame, on so many levels.

“We were thinking about ordering pizza,” Jenn told him as she took off glasses that were fogging from the tropical heat, adding, “Oh,” as she saw the pizza boxes that were already on the conference table.

She also seemed a little taken aback by the fact that the room was nearly filled to overflowing by a large group of people, all wearing dark suits.

“FBI agents, from the local office,” Dan told her. He leaned closer, lowered his voice. “I can’t remember their names. I think
there’s at least one John and maybe a Matt and a Carol. The cool thing is they all answer to
sir
or
ma’am.”

She smiled at him. “Good to know.”

“We were a step ahead of you with the pizza,” Lopez pointed out. “There’s plenty left. You may have to reheat, though. It might be a little cold.”

Jenn opened one of the boxes. “Might be … ?” she asked, shooting Lopez a questioning look as she slid a slice on a paper plate, maneuvered around a man in a dark suit, and put it in the microwave. “It’s stone cold. What time did you guys eat lunch? Nine thirty?”

“Ten forty-five,” Dan admitted. “We were up early.”

“I can see,” she said, looking around the room at the security equipment—movement detectors, window alarms, the control panel they’d installed right by the door. “You gonna tell me how this stuff works, or just let me guess? Maybe trial and error it, until the neighbors complain?”

“Not a chance,” Lopez told her with a smile. “But we’ll wait until we can show it both to you and the assemblywoman at the same time. Over the next few days, you’re not going to be in here without one of us. Excuse me. I have to …”

He dodged several of the suits on his way into Maria’s inner office, where the Troubleshooters and FBI team leaders, plus Sam Starrett, were giving each other sitreps, aka situation reports, aka discussing the big nothing they’d uncovered since the day began.

Jules and Alyssa had been talking earlier about how they expected Maggie Thorndyke’s killer to contact them. But Dan had been here for most of the morning, and the phone didn’t ring. And it still didn’t ring. And it apparently didn’t ring over at the hotel where Maria had her cell phone, either—although she
had
found out that her mentally ill brother had gone missing, so they were now searching for him, too.

But the Troubleshooters team was in wait mode—his least favourite
part of an op. Although truth be told, Dan
had
given Sam his official resignation. So technically, he wasn’t part of this op anymore. Which meant that wait mode was about to become his new favorite time of year.

“If you want,” Dan said, praying that Jenn did, “after you eat your pizza, I can take you back to your place and show you how
that
system works.”

She looked at him, but before she could answer, the microwave dinged and Lt. Starrett came out of Maria’s office and used his outdoor voice.

“All right, we’ve got interviewees coming in, in about fifteen minutes. Who’s supposed to be here and who’s not?”

Jenn looked to Dan for guidance, which was nice. “I don’t think I’m supposed to be here,” she said.