“Are the stock prices down today?” he asked.
She nodded. “Big-time. As much as a ten-percent drop. If this continues, they’ll go into free fall.”
“Then… we should be looking for someone buying a lot of airline stock at the bottom, or selling them short?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, but it’s logical. Millions for billions.”
He was following her logic. “In other words, this whole thing is built on cash.”
“Lots of it, especially when you consider that skilled covert operatives with zero morals and good shooting skills are not plentiful and take large amounts of money to hire.” She shook her head and sat back. “No… money’s behind this in more ways than one. It has to be. Maybe it’s just Saddam Hussein or some wild-eyed Middle Eastern country or, God knows, maybe Slobby Milosevic, the butcher, throwing cash around to accomplish what they can’t do directly, but somehow this feels more corporate, um… more professionally organized and impersonal and nonpolitical.”
Kat reached over and turned up the television, using the remote to surf through a dozen other cable channels, and entirely missing her own image as it flicked across the screen.
“Wait!” Robert said suddenly, pointing at the TV. “Go back.”
“What?”
“That looked like you!” he said.
Kat gave him a puzzled look as she backtracked two channels and stopped.
“There,” Robert said. “You’re off the screen now, but that’s the channel.”
The TV news reporter was standing outside FBI headquarters in Washington.
… is a current picture of Steven Delaney, age fourteen, who, as I said, is reportedly being held by well-known FBI Special Agent Katherine Bronsky, seen here in a file photo from a year ago when she accepted a national award for her efforts to solve a skyjacking over Colorado. Agent Bronsky is thought to be armed and dangerous, and is acting for unknown reasons. Once again, all attempts tonight to get the FBI to comment have failed, a fact that angers Delaney’s father.
The station cut to an interview with the senior Delaney, who was dripping concern and anger and righteous indignation at the FBI for kidnapping his son without a warrant, following his narrow escape from the carnage of a plane crash in southeast Asia. He was saying, “I just want my little boy back safely. I don’t know whether this woman has ransom on her mind, or whether she’s a sexual predator, but I want her prosecuted.”
Kat hit the mute button and turned wordlessly to Robert, her eyes huge, her mind completely stunned. Finally she managed to get her mouth to work. “Did… did… you, good grief, sexual predator? Good Lord!”
“I don’t believe that!” Robert said, his eyes still on the screen.
Kat was on her feet, pacing the floor and gesturing wildly toward the screen. “I’m screwed! Not only did he just call me a pervert on national television, he just spread my face over a hundred million households! Or was that cable?”
“No, that was a broadcast channel, but probably more like fifteen million.”
“Holy moley! I can’t believe this. Suddenly I can’t even walk outside without running a high risk some guy in an undershirt swilling a beer will look up from his TV set long enough to spot me and call in the militia.”
She sat down hard beside him on the bed. “I’ve just been checkmated.”
“Well…”
“I mean, unless I adopt a disguise or something…”
Kat shot to her feet again before he could reply and paced to the door, then returned to lean over the desk, where she began scribbling something.
“Are we a team?” she asked, her head still down as she wrote. She glanced up at him, sensing his puzzlement.
“Of course. Why?”
“I need you to go find a store and get me some things.”
“What do you need?”
She straightened up, her expression deadly serious. “You mind being seen with a blond tart?”
“A… what?”
“Will it hurt your reputation if a platinum-blond bimbo is hanging on your arm, popping gum?”
“Kat, what on earth are you talking about?”
She handed him a list. “This is what I need.”
He took it and began reading. “Leather micro-miniskirt, size six, A-size panty hose, medium-size lacy blouse, either Revlon or L’Oreal platinum-blond hair-color kit, platform shoes…” He looked at her with a blank expression.
“You know. High platforms, useless for anything other than advertising for male attention and twisting ankles.”
“Oh.”
“They should be flashy, but not too much so. You decide. The only hope we have is to change my image so drastically I can hide in plain sight. I’ve got to look so tarty, no one would believe for a second I even know how to spell ‘FBI.’ Not flashy enough to draw a crowd, but trash-flash five-and-dime tacky.”
“We’re talking Jerry Springer?”
“Oh, definitely.”
Robert was shaking his head. “Believe me, this will do it. I’ll never be acceptable in polite society again.”
“That assumes you were before,” she said, smiling.
“Ouch!”
“Seriously, can you get all that?”
He checked his watch. “If I can find the right store, but I’ll have to move fast.”
“It may be embarrassing, Robert. That’s a lot of girl stuff to buy.”
He sighed and smiled thinly as he got to his feet. “You know, Kat, I was just trying to conjure up an image of the FBI Academy course that trained you to do this.”
She smiled. “The classes were boring, but the lab work was fun.”
“I’ll bet.”
CHAPTER 39
Dallas Nielson threw open the bedroom door where Graham Tash and Dan Wade were sleeping in two of the four bunks.
“Guys, is Steve in here?” she asked, her voice urgent.
Graham raised himself up on one elbow. “No,” he replied, rubbing his eyes and looking around the small room. Dan remained sound asleep.
“Damn!” she said, shutting the door behind her.
Graham got up and followed Dallas into the main room. “What’s wrong?”
She shook her head. “He asked me earlier if I thought it was safe to go for a walk and I told him not only no, but hell no.” Dallas’s eyes were focused on the door. “I hate to be scared of my shadow, Doc, but what if those guys show up here?”
“If Steve’s outside, he shouldn’t be,” Graham said.
Dallas began pulling on a parka. “I’m planning on whupping his behind when I get my hands on him.” She finished zipping the coat and grabbed a flashlight before opening the door to a burst of cold night air. Graham held out a loaded .30-.30 from the stock of rifles. “You need this?”
She turned and smiled. “I’m planning on finding the little runt, Doc, not bagging him.”
“I’ll wait right here,” he said.
Dallas shut the door behind her and stepped off the porch carefully, listening to the squeak of the borrowed oversized mukluks as she moved through the snow. She thought of yelling for the boy, but changed her mind. Best to look quietly.
She glanced up at the moon, its stark, glowing beauty stunning as it rose radiant and almost full over the eastern ridge of the mountains, bathing the snowy landscape in a soft light that left only the deepest shadows unseen. A small, freshening breeze kicked up again, then died, rustling the branches overhead against a chorus of soft moans as a million pine needles combed the air.