The tracker that Lenny Caster had stuck in the wheel well of Paul LeClaire’s Toyota had led the pair here. Probably believing police were surrounding his home, the IT man was on the run.
The device had led them only to this wing of the motel, but his room number was easy to deduce. His car sat in front of room 104, the only occupied one on this wing.
“Didn’t think to park around back?” Shaw mused.
Nilsson said, “Good at stealing parts from his employer. Not so good at tradecraft.”
“You a former officer?” he asked.
The job title in this context would mean CIA.
She said, “No. But I worked with Langley some.”
That she didn’t give the name of her former employer made Shaw wonder if she’d ever crossed paths with his brother. Russell too worked for some anonymous government security agency. But now was not the time for it’s-a-small-world conversations.
She steered around the corner and parked.
Nilsson said, “You’re carrying.”
He nodded. Like Abe Lincoln, she’d noticed this too. But it was an easy deduction by a pro. Shaw, for his part, had seen that she too was armed. Inside the waistband, like his. No woman in this line of work ever carried her weapon in a purse.
“Odds that he is?” she asked.
Shaw considered. “Ten percent. When everything was going down in the factory, he wanted to climb under a desk till it was over.”
A smile crossed her face.
“How do you want to handle it?”
He said, “We’ll get his hands up — in case of that ten percent — and let him see the money out the window. He’ll say no. We make him stay at attention. I collect the cash. Then we leave.” He looked at her. “And have lunch.”
“I like that plan.”
Shaw took the attaché case holding the fake hundred thousand and set it in front of the window for him to see. He pulled out his phone and called the hotel, then asked for room 104. The clerk said they needed a name to connect to a room. He shared this with Nilsson, who said, “Probably not using his real one. But give it a shot.”
“Paul LeClaire.”
“Yessir, I’ll connect you.”
Nilsson muttered, “Oh, brother...”
After eight rings: “Um, hello?”
Shaw said in a stern voice, “Paul, you have two options. If you hang up on me, a SWAT team’ll be in your room in five minutes. Or you can hear me out.”
“Who—”
“Two options.”
“I... Okay. I’m listening.” The familiar whimpering grew more pronounced.
“We met today at the factory.”
“You! If I come out you’ll kill me.”
“Paul. Open the drapes and window. And keep your hands where we can see them.”
“Do it now,” Nilsson called.
After a brief pause the curtain parted. LeClaire stood, a deer in headlights, staring out the window into the parking lot. His hands raised, like a stickup victim in an old Western. He wore the same clothing he had on earlier. His white shirt was stained from the yellow smoke. Shaw approached. He examined the room. It appeared clear.
Shaw then explained the offer to buy back the S.I.T.
In a quivering voice the man said, “I don’t know anything about it.”
Shaw sighed. “Paul... Mr. Harmon wants it back.”
There was no answer for that. “I...”
“That’s a hundred thousand dollars. No questions asked.”
“I...” The pronoun stretched out this time. Quite lengthy.
“It’s out of the country, isn’t it?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
Which was enough of an answer for Shaw.
His eyes met Nilsson’s and she nodded. LeClaire, and the others, now had confirmation they’d gotten the real S.I.T.
She kept her hand near her weapon while Shaw stepped forward and collected the attaché case.
As they walked toward her Range Rover, LeClaire shouted, “Wait! Can I move now? Can I lower my hands?”
Disconnecting the call, Shaw said to Nilsson, “So how about that lunch?”
14
Don’t think about the damn thing, she told herself.
Allison Parker, doing the ungainly and adored butterfly stroke, finished her laps and climbed from the backyard pool. She’d done a mile today.
Do. Not. Think.
The forty-two-year-old brunette, tall and in taut athletic shape, was wearing a blue Speedo one-piece. She pulled off the matching swim cap and snagged a towel. The cap helped but wasn’t a tight seal. Her hair, long and curly, dripped, tickling. This she blotted first, and then dried the rest of her body.
Don’t think...
Swimming occasionally came with a memory: of another pool, the one in the backyard of the house she’d recently sold. Their marital home. Former marital home. She could picture the lapping water, the comforting blue tiles, the stonework of the deck, the mismatched metal and plastic furniture on the stone patio.
But those images were overshadowed by what she’d been thinking of today, while trying not to. The white cement sculpture, a shallow three-dimensional relief in the wall of the rinse-off shower beside the pool.
A seahorse.
The creatures can be comical or eerie or sensuous. The one at their old house was supposed to be the last of those, smoothly curved and with a seductive eye.
Don’t think... But think she did.
She sees the snowflakes falling delicately, landing on the creature’s head and back and tail. Flakes melting. It appears to be crying.
Mid-November. The family is in the kitchen. Parker is thinking of Christmas baskets and baking. Jon and Hannah are working on a school project.
But then he rises and, with that damn look in his eyes, says he has to go out. He won’t be long.
“No, please,” she says. Not a woman who begs, she is begging now.
The night has been good. It doesn’t need to go bad.
Parker brought herself out of the memory and finished blotting, hung the towel on a rack, to dry in the sun, pale though it was. She wrapped a glaring-yellow SpongeBob SquarePants towel around her, stepped into her orange flip-flops.
Her hair drooped, stringy. Center parted, it ended at her shoulders.
She glanced at her reflection in the glass patio door. This’s quite the look. She laughed. She untucked the towel, rearranged it. The cartoon character’s wide gaping eyes had exactly covered her breasts.
Then into the small house, ranch-style, three bedrooms. It was nondescript to the point of being invisible, built to rent, not own.
The clear autumn day was warm, but the AC was going full blast, as Hannah had set it, hardly necessary. Maybe if the girl didn’t wear sweats all day, she wouldn’t have to push the boundaries of the electric bill.
But some battles you fought, some you didn’t.
Allison Parker would never waste parenting capital on the trivial.
The sixteen-year-old sat on the brown leather living room couch. She had a pretty, round face, framed by shoulder-length center-parted hair; she was her father’s blond. Currently a red streak dominated the right side. She was huddled, lost in her phone, texting. Her feet were bare. She’d been painting her toenails — a deep mahogany — and had apparently been interrupted by a vital message.
Six piggies down, four to go.
“You’ve got math,” Parker said.
“I did it.”
“All of it?”
Fingers moving on the phone’s keypad, fast as startled hummingbirds. “Yeah.”
Parker finger-combed her curls. “Let me see.”