“Nothing on the black cube, but maybe something on the building.”
Rogers said, “Maybe?”
“‘Maybe’ because, weirdly enough, I’ve got two buildings that match the photo Bryson took.”
Reeder said, “Seems like a list we could run through easy enough.”
“Not from here,” the computer guru said, “although they’re both on the same property in an industrial park... on the outskirts of Charlottesville.”
Rogers said to Reeder, “What the hell was your friend Chris doing in Charlottesville?”
“One way to find out.”
She smirked at him. “What, drive to Charlottesville to look at two buildings in the middle of the night?”
“Or,” Reeder said, “we can wait till morning when the media platoon is an army, who can clearly see that it’s us.”
She thought about it.
“Road trip?” she asked.
“Road trip,” he said.
Thirteen
“Wars are. . often the products of conflicting intentions of decent men who have lost the patience to negotiate.”
Joe Reeder had never harbored any sexist notions about women drivers, but tonight he might have asked Rogers to drive in any case.
The old shoulder wound from the bullet he’d taken for Bennett was really acting up. Earlier, when he’d tackled Adam Benjamin, getting him out of harm’s way, Reeder had landed hard on that shoulder. He’d already taken a double dose of Patti’s over-the-counter naproxen.
Anyway, she had a heavier foot than he did, and once the media was no longer an issue, the flashers had come on and she had gone for it.
They were in a Bureau car from the motor pool, since Reeder’s Prius was still back at the Constitution Hall parking lot. The unmarked gray Ford Fusion was anonymous enough — looking that the camped-out media paid little or no heed when it had emerged from the underground garage.
As they headed south on snow-cleared I-95, Reeder adjusted his position in the passenger seat, trying to find a spot his shoulder liked. He hadn’t said anything to Rogers and felt sure she hadn’t noticed.
“How’s the shoulder?” she asked.
“Like new.”
“Like hell.”
The woman didn’t miss much. It pleased but also mildly annoyed him that she’d picked up so much from him. Not that she hadn’t come equipped with formidable skills from the start.
“Too bad I’m driving,” she said.
“Why’s that?”
“It’d make a great drinking game, the way you’ve moved that seat belt around since we left.”
“I spy with my little eye,” Reeder said, “a big pain in the ass.”
She grinned at the road, taking one hand from the wheel to flip him off in the dashboard glow.
“So that was the first time for you,” he said, after a while. “Taking a life.”
She nodded.
“How are you doing?”
“Fine. If I could skip the damn counseling, I would.”
“Don’t.”
She glanced at him. “Oh?”
“It’s going to hit you. Maybe when you try to sleep next, maybe in a month or two, when your guard’s down.”
“Joe, really. I don’t relish killing that man, but the circumstances made it necessary.”
“Different issue. That shooting board would clear you, even without the Director nudging them. All I’m saying is, don’t blow off the counseling. And when this does hit, don’t think less of yourself. Nothing to do with mental toughness.”
“... Does it get easier?”
“With luck, you’ll never find out.”
Even though I-95 was more direct than, say, veering over to I-81 and down the west side of the state, this route was usually slowed by traffic and what seemed like endless construction.
But tonight they’d gotten lucky and Rogers had made good time, only having to drive on the shoulder twice, a major victory, even with flashers going.
Off the interstate now, she wound around to Virginia 20, hurtling south toward Charlottesville. She hadn’t slowed much for the two-lane, but he was fine with that — no sign of ice, just snow lining the shoulders — and he trusted Rogers implicitly. She was a hell of a driver.
Just before Charlottesville, two vehicles in the oncoming lane, less than a car-length apart, caught Reeder’s attention, the rear one getting ready to pass perhaps. He figured Rogers might slow a little, but she didn’t. She blew by them and he had just enough time to make out two black SUVs with tinted windows. Not a passing situation, but a two-car caravan.
“I’d say those boys were going just under the speed limit,” he told her.
“Yeah? So?”
“Kind of a rarity here in Dukes of Hazzard country.”
“Dukes of what?”
In the side mirror, the taillights of the two SUVs were barely blips in the night, then gone.
Reeder said, “Counterfeiter I busted early on told me, ‘Never commit a misdemeanor while committing a felony.’ We’d just tracked him down on unpaid parking tickets.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Maybe nothing.”
Rogers made the last turn onto the two-lane to the industrial park.
“Should be coming up on the left,” she said, slowing to something less than the speed of light.
They passed a service road lined with trees. A car was parked along there, lights out, pluming smoke, condensation from the exhaust on the cold night. Reeder looked back but the row of trees blocked his view.
She turned into the industrial park. A cluster of buildings were on the right side of the road, but only two on the left, their silhouettes in the moonlight tallying with Bryson’s photo of one such building. She swung into a drive that took them into a snow-covered parking lot between the pair of concrete bunker-like structures. These buildings didn’t seem to get a lot of traffic, but tire tracks said someone had been here, and recently.
She shut off the engine.
He asked her, “Did you see a car parked back there?”
“Where?”
“On that service road — just sitting there in the dark. Engine running?”
“What service road?”
“Never mind.”
“Joe, we can go back and check it out if you like.”
He considered that. “No, just me being jumpy, I guess. I get that way after ducking bullets.”
She half smirked. “Then maybe you should stop jumping into the line of fire.”
“I’ll try to remember that.”
She opened her door and crisp cold air came in. But she glanced at him and asked, “You’re sure you don’t want to go back for another look?”
“What,” he said, opening his own door, “and interrupt some kids playing hide the salami? Let’s do what we came for.”
He joined her on her side of the Fusion, a building on their left and right. There was a compact battering ram in the trunk but first he and Rogers would check the buildings out. By current rulings, they had enough probable cause and needed no warrants.
“Which one first?” she asked, patting gloved hands, her breath visible. “Joe?”
That parked motor-running car he’d seen — what kind was it? He’d gotten just a glance, not even a glimpse of plates... but was it a Nissan? An Altima, like the rental he’d seen at Bryson’s office? He grabbed Rogers by the arm and threw her to the snowy cement and fell on top of her.
“What the hell?” she said, from under him. He would have explaining to do, if he was wrong; one minute from now, he would seem some aging letch or maybe paranoid over-the-hill former man of action, on edge from what had gone down at Constitution Hall.