“Meth?”
“That. A couple militias, survivalists... Not your kind.”
“One thing for certain. The girl’s not going to be posting any more helpful selfies.”
“Nope, that phone of hers is history. Mom ate it.”
Shaw said, “At the company? Your canvass didn’t turn up any leads.”
This wasn’t a question. Otherwise he would have heard.
“I’ve talked to a couple dozen employees. Marianne Keller — his assistant, remember?”
Shaw nodded.
“She’s helping out. But no luck. Nobody we’ve talked to knew Allison very well. She kept to herself. Worked long hours. May have been embarrassed — those times her ex showed up at the office drunk.”
Shaw didn’t think it was likely that Allison had confided to a fellow worker where she was going. He gave that twenty percent. If she didn’t tell her boss or mother where, why would she tell a co-worker? Shaw was convinced she was running to some place, or someone, her ex-husband knew nothing about. Still with so few other leads, why not pursue it?
Which was a reward-seeker’s mantra.
They ate in silence for a moment.
He said, “You can tell me if you want.”
She looked back from the front window.
He continued, “Checking horizons. Vantage points for sniper nests. A second phone — encrypted, I’m thinking — you have serious conversations on. Paying attention to unattended packages.”
“You’re quite the observant one,” she said. After a moment: “Okay. I’m not Sonja and I’m not Nilsson.”
This part was a surprise, though he supposed it shouldn’t have been.
“You’re on a list.”
“I’m on a list. I never talk about it. But now, after last night.”
The kiss, he assumed she meant.
“How big’s the risk?”
“Not high. I’m not invisible, but with a new name, new look, it’s manageable. If you saw my Army ID, you’d see a brunette who weighed forty pounds more than I do now.”
But with or without green eyes?
“Hardest part of the new identity is staying skinny when I’m a born foodie.” She gave a laugh and ate a few of the chips that nestled against the other half of her sandwich.
“Confession?”
He nodded.
“Most of my bio was fiction. No hubby. Never was. They give you a cover story, you stick to your cover story.”
“So no San Diego or Hawaii. Where in the Middle East? Can you say?”
“No. But I can tell you it was a high-value target. The shit had lots of followers. Was going to light some fuses. I took care of it. I was extracted. All was good. For a while. Then came Thomasleaks.”
So that was it. A contractor with access to Pentagon files stole and published a trove of operational documents, which included personal information on intelligence officers, U.S. soldiers, contractors and foreign assets. Shaw hadn’t followed the story closely but he recalled that three locals in Syria were killed after they’d been outed, and a dozen covert officers had had to leave their posts — quickly. There were others on various kill lists.
“They call it a fatwa. Tony Soprano’d just say ‘hit.’ Same difference. So, fair warning: last night you kissed a marked woman.”
“I wondered what made it so good.” Shaw looked over her pensive face. “So why Ferrington?”
“My handler gave me a couple of options for safe-house cities. Ferrington was close enough to home to see family regularly, far enough away from the old me to keep off the grid.”
Silence between them. Another kiss loomed, but this time it was interrupted by Shaw’s humming phone. The screen showed a local number. He answered.
“Mr. Shaw?” the man’s voice asked.
“Yes.”
“Your camper’s ready.”
Shaw said, “Thanks. I’ll be there in ten.” He disconnected, told Nilsson, then turned and waved for the check.
“Good news,” she said. “You’re back on the road.”
Marred only by the fact that he had nowhere to go.
51
Fooling them had been easy.
Because the cops weren’t thinking like he was. They were reacting.
Not being creative.
After his NASCAR race to flee from shotgun-lady Dorella Muñoz Elizondo, Jon Merritt had not sped to any highways, but instead lessened pressure on the accelerator and steered to nearby John Adams High. He parked behind the gym and examined his wounds. The bruises and welts from the rubber slugs were dark and gaudy but he could function. Merritt climbed from the vehicle, leaving the engine running and the window open. Then he’d walked away, trying to assume a normal gait, into the neighborhood of frame houses and postage-stamp yards.
The school had been on his beat when he was just starting out at FPD. The place was now populated by the same gangs and unaffiliated shits as most institutions of lower learning — kids who could be counted on to get into trouble, for no reason other than they wanted to get into trouble.
And a favorite sport was helping themselves to someone else’s vehicle.
Technically, to be convicted of grand theft auto — a category of larceny — you needed the intent to permanently deprive the owner of the car. This was sometimes hard to prove, so you’d charge the perps with the offense of joyriding, which was basically borrowing the car and planning to return it after you’d driven the vehicle to hell and back.
Jon Merritt didn’t care what the teenager would be written up for. A gangbanger would chop it for parts. Somebody else would want to see what an F-150 could do off road. Yet another would just want to cruise around until he found a good place to make out, or more, on a threadbare blanket in the bed.
Merritt was just leaving the grounds when he saw it go down. The Ford had sat, running, for merely one minute, when a skinny kid with a bad complexion and a ratty sweatshirt, emblazoned with the logo of a long-ago rock group, walked past. He paused, looked up and down the parking lot, and in a flash was inside and skidding across, then out of, the lot.
Now, head down, Merritt hiked the backpack higher on his shoulder and continued to limp along the sidewalk under the rows of elm. Now that he had a moment of peace, he looked at his phone and examined his texts. After escaping from Sunny Acres, his ex and daughter had disappeared once more. There were no clues to their whereabouts.
He sighed in anger.
This meant that he’d have to start plowing once more through the litter he’d picked up in her house. How much paper remained?
A thousand sheets and scraps.
But first he needed wheels.
He walked for another six endless blocks, when he noted an elderly woman parking her shiny dark blue Buick, an older model, in the driveway of a modest house. She climbed out, took a bag of groceries from the backseat and headed up the walk.
No one coming out to help her. So she lived alone, or at least was by herself at the moment.
Odds of dogs? At her age and frail state, any canines would be little yappers, not rotties or pit bulls.
Sidewalks deserted, the street was free of vehicles.
She walked to the front door. Drawing his gun, he followed.
He stepped silently into the living room, which hummed with the white noise of the modest HVAC system. He smelled lavender and lemon and some cleanser. Ah, it was ammonia. He recalled a case from years ago, a house not unlike this one. A wife had tried to kill her husband by mixing ammonia with other household chemicals, making a dangerous gas. She’d knocked him out then, as if he’d fallen, hit his head on the corner of the counter. She then poured the lethal potion on the floor. He remembered being impressed with her ingenuity — up to the point she neglected to dispose of the hammer she’d brained him with. Her fingerprints and his blood got her thirty years.