The Widow File (16 page)

Booker slid out the photo of the car—a four-door maroon Honda that had seen plenty of rough use. “She lives in the neighborhood. What makes you think she would check into a hotel? Maybe she had friends she’s staying with.”

“That’s not what our information suggests. Our sources tell us that Miss Britton is a loner, spends most of her time at work or working at home, and, aside from the occasional fleeting sexual relationship, her primary bonds are with her coworkers.”

“Who are all dead.”

“It seems that way, yes.”

Booker looked up at the uncertainty in the client’s voice. “It seems that way?”

R spoke up. “Your concern at this juncture should focus entirely on retrieving the missing data which was not at the si—”

Booker held up his hand to cut the man off. He kept his hand up—keeping R silent and open-mouthed—longer than was absolutely necessary, long enough to be awkward. Finally he asked in a soft tone, “Do you know why they’re called ‘search and destroy’ missions? Because that is the order in which the mission is carried out. First you search, then you destroy. Whoever is calling the shots on this job seems to be getting that backward.”

R jabbed his finger across the table. “The chain of command in this job is not yours to question. Just know that you are at the bottom of it. Do you understand me?”

Booker had been told as far back as grade school that there was something wrong with his eyes. The general consensus seemed to be that his gaze lacked a certain vitality or humanity. Or as his second foster mother had told the social workers, “That boy’s dead behind the eyes.” It didn’t bother him then and he’d come to appreciate the quality in his line of work, though never so much as when he got to level his cold stare at some underling overstepping his bounds.

Personally he always thought he had nice eyes, gentle and blue, but judging from R’s sudden paleness as Booker stared at him, he guessed the man across from him would disagree.

It saved him time in pointless discussions. Booker turned back to the client, who didn’t do a much better job of hiding his nervousness. “Why don’t you tell me what it is you think she has? If I can take care of her in a private setting, I can get the materials and return them to you with little hassle.”

“We’re not entirely sure Miss Britton has the ticket.”

“What is the ticket?”

“That’s not for you to know.” R had regained some of his starch, or maybe he was just reacting with an adolescent urge to hit back. Booker
didn’t acknowledge the outburst with as much as a blink, waiting instead for the client to answer the question.

“It is research material,” the client said with slow caution.

“Could you be a little more specific?”

“No, I cannot.” When Booker sighed, he hurried to continue. “I mean I cannot. We are not entirely sure what form the research is in. We thought we did. Our earlier intel suggested that. We know several components of critical research are not where they should be and we have good reason to believe files have been altered and/or removed from the facility.”

Booker brought his fingertips together and raised them to his lips like a schoolboy at prayer. He breathed in the smell of Thai food that lingered on his fingertips. “Let me get this straight. You hired Rasmund because you were told there was a leak in your enterprise. Then you brought me in to stop that leak. Now you have brought me back again to stop an even bigger leak within the company you hired in the first place. And now that all those leaks but one are sealed, you still don’t know what’s leaking?”

The client paled as Booker spoke, his eyes looking everywhere as if expecting a police raid at any moment, as if the innocuous phrasing would somehow damn them all. His boy assistant, R, made the point moot.

“If you had done what we paid you to do with Marcher, none of this would have happened.”

Booker leaned forward on his elbows. “Would you like to say that a little louder? The FBI didn’t quite pick all that up.” He looked back to the client. “I did exactly what you paid me to do on the first job. It’s not my concern that you dropped the ball. But I have to ask you what your plan is if this doesn’t work. Are you just going to keep hiring me? Or are you going to get proactive and just blow up the eastern seaboard? Because you know you have to have a finish line, don’t you?”

“We know perfectly well—” His boss’s hand silenced R mid-sentence. Booker didn’t even bother to enjoy the flushed look of frustration on R’s face. Was it just him or were clients getting more stupid every job? It seemed like more and more of these jobs involved more and more hand-holding and problem solving, like the clients expected him to teach them how to be dangerous men and women.

Maybe he was already too old for the job because the absurdity of it all had become glaringly obvious. Bullets and dead bodies didn’t fix everything. Bullets and dead bodies often created bigger problems that needed more money and more bullets and more dead bodies. And even then, those increasingly large body piles usually did little to solve the original problem. They just created a whole new set of problems that made the original problem pale in comparison. Booker wished he’d ordered a drink at the bar.

“What do you suggest we do?” the client asked.

He had to fight the urge to put his head down on the table.

Choo-Choo watched what he could from his bad angle. Maura on his left had made herself very comfortable against his hip and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t enjoying the attention her fingers were giving the soft skin on his back below his waistband. He continued with his tale of good fortune, some ridiculous confection of inheritance and invitations to royal functions on private islands. He knew the trigger words to keep women like this engaged. When Maura’s middle finger took an adventurous turn south, Choo-Choo realized he was going to have to make a clean break soon or someone would create a scene and, based on her apparent familiarity with the terrain, he worried that someone might be him.

“Damn it,” he whispered in Maura’s ear, not trying very hard to hide a sigh of pleasure. “My phone. Hold that thought.”

Choo-Choo pulled his phone from his back pocket, tensing as he saw Tom look out from the booth and scan the room. He typed,
“STILL HERE. CAN’T SEE WHO HE’S MEETING. DON’T KNOW IF I CAN FOLLOW WHEN HE GOES.”

His phone beeped back in seconds.
“OK LEMME KNOW WHEN HE LEAVES. ALMOST DONE. MEET AT MILUM BAR?”

In his distraction Maura and the other one—Lily? Lilah?—seemed to have worked out a plan. He nearly tossed his phone into his champagne as now two hands worked discreetly and in tandem on one narrow band of his anatomy. He knew from experience there were far worse ways to spend
an evening. He also knew this evening would probably not be one of those nights.

“You’re going to hate me.”

“We could never hate you, Sinclair.” Lily/Lilah nipped at his lower lip.

He brushed his lips across her temple, watching as someone climbed from the booth in the back. Not Tom. This man was younger, with an unfortunate haircut and eyes so squinty with emotion Choo-Choo wondered if he’d been crying. Choo-Choo whispered silly words of admiration into the woman’s hair as he watched Tom watch the young man leave. Another set of shoes appeared at the edge of the booth but before he could see a face, the group of martini drinkers beside them finally broke their stalemate of rage. One shoved another, shouts and grunts pounded out from the group, and an ineffective tussle flared up and died out as soon as it started. It took only minutes but by the time the bartender threw out bar towels for the mess, Maura’s hand was gone from his ass and Tom was gone from the booth.

Dani slipped the box back into place at the top of her closet, careful to return it exactly as she had left it. It irritated her to have to use such caution in her own home but the less Tom knew about her whereabouts, the better.

She’d tried to imagine her predicament from his perspective. He thought she was alone and terrified and hunted. He thought she would return to the only safe place she knew. He was mostly right, of course. She was terrified and hunted and she had returned to her home, but she wasn’t alone and she wasn’t flying totally blind. She knew what this Tom man looked like. She could see him coming.

He’d gone through her closets. She knew this because just this morning when she’d slammed the door shut, she’d heard the ugly knit shawl slide from its hanger. Her aunt had knit her that shawl. (Poncho? Wrap? She didn’t even know what to call it.) Aunt Penny had been one of the few relatives who had been truly kind to her and Dani didn’t have the heart to throw it away. She kept it on a plastic hanger at the edge of her closet where it continually slid to the ground. Before Dani had opened the closet
on this trip, she’d seen a clump of fringe peeking out under the door. She’d picked that shawl up enough times to know it always puddled against the door, never slipped under it. Someone had opened the closet door and the shawl had spilled forward. Not just someone—Tom.

She took care not to rustle the clothes. She pulled a heavy black shirt out and slipped the hanger onto the shelf overhead. She had to assume Tom was a man of details and she didn’t want to give him any sign that she’d been here. Her phone beeped again.

“HE’S GONE. GET OUT.”

All caps. That couldn’t be good.

Dani shoved the shirt into the bag on top of the binoculars and all-purpose tool she’d gotten from the box. She’d grabbed a few other items as well, not certain any of them would be useful but she figured nobody ever regretted having duct tape. With a quick check to make sure she hadn’t disturbed anything, Dani let herself out of the apartment, opting to slip down the stairs rather than take a chance in the elevator.

The temperature had dropped at least ten degrees, the dampness of the low-lying city raw against her skin. People huddled together as they passed her, the neighborhood still busy for a cold Saturday night. Dani wrapped Choo-Choo’s blue flannel shirt around her more tightly. She’d added a few layers in her apartment as well as grabbing a set of gloves, a knit cap, and another scarf. Her now overstuffed bags banged against her hip and the smell of Thai food had awakened her hunger. She hoped the inn had room service.

Choo-Choo texted again that he had finally found a cab and would meet her at the bar. The need to see him throbbed in her. Dark, cold, alone, scared—those words banged around her head as she hurried down the dark sidewalk, watching every passing face for signs of danger or recognition. The cold combined with nervous exhaustion to make her face feel numb, her eyelids heavy and dry.

She almost missed him.

On the last block, she spied the elegant awning of the inn and knowing she’d be back with her only ally, she could feel the energy surge through her legs, wanting to hurry her those last few yards. She stopped watching the faces around her, she stopped thinking about anything other than
putting her bags down and warming up every inch of body. Night, cold, dark, and fear had turned her into a burrowing animal seeking only a warm nest to hide in.

If he hadn’t stopped at the streetlight to glance up at the facade of the inn, she would have walked right past him. She really didn’t even know how she recognized him. True, he stood out from the rest of the people on the sidewalk since he stood in just his shirtsleeves, seemingly unaffected by the damp night. But the photo Joey had taken of him had been at an angle, showing three quarters of a tense face. Under the streetlight, though, hands stuffed easily into his pockets, white shirtsleeves rolled back to reveal muscular forearms, his shoulders looked relaxed, and his profile was almost a smile. Her first reaction was recognition, a sudden irresistible “Hey!” the human brain shouted at familiarity. That he had chosen that moment to be looking anywhere but in her direction, Dani knew, was the only reason she managed to not give herself away.

He knew where she was. He’d found her hiding place.

He turned back to the sidewalk when she was less than half a block away. She’d gotten a grip on the freeze/jerk/halt motion that had kicked through her muscles, had a half-second argument with herself about running away, and managed to resume what she hoped was a normal gait. Feeling exposed and obvious, she racked her brain trying to remember what her eyes normally did when she walked, how she normally held her hands and her shoulders when she wasn’t strolling past the man who had murdered her coworkers and was now targeting her.