“What's this about?” Sam asked calmly.
“You're under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder. Among other things.”
“That's a state rap.”
“We're getting the first bite on the federal charges. The state can dine on the crumbs after we've boxed you up for life.”
“Whose murder?” Sam demanded.
“You hired one Dylan Devlin to come to Louisiana and kill two of your competitors' employees: Austin Wilson and Wesley Jefferson. You are charged with paying Devlin to murder an additional ten people.”
“That's crazy! I don't know no Dylans, period.”
Florence trembled as the four men hustled Sam out. Sam, sensing that she was upset, stopped in his tracks, forcing the agents to do likewise. He smiled at Florence and then winked, dropping the lid over a bright-blue eye. Florence Pruette relaxed instantly, certain that everything was going to be just fine.
“Miss Flo, do me a favor and call Bertran Stern. Tell him to get to the Federal Building and straighten these birds out.”
3
JFK Airport, New York City
Two weeks later
Since she had left Buenos Aires she had been holding on to a mental picture. She would be in a throng of people walking down a wide corridor and he would be standing framed in the throat of the hallway, in the waiting area with a hundred other anxious people. He would be wearing an Italian blazer. His red hair slightly damp from the shower, he would have rushed to the airport, parked, and walked in as close to the customs area as he could get. After a year of marriage, he was still romantic. He might be holding flowers behind his back, or he'd have a small gift in his pocket. He would beam at the sight of her. After two weeks apart, he would be more attentive than ever and they would end the evening in bed, making noise. That part of the image made her smile-in fact, blush.
She caught her reflection in a glass panel. The glove-leather jacket, tailored to accentuate her shape, was an Argentine purchase, as were the matching boots. Her shoulder-length dark hair was combed back and the glasses she wore made her feel-and look-like a model. She was young enough to be one, had been told that she had the bone structure, the figure. She was aware that she turned heads, but the only head she was interested in turning was her husband's.
Her customs agent was a woman with stiff bleached hair. The tightly cinched belt around her waist made her look like a wasp. Her fingernails were an inch long and had stars painted on them. She stared at the passport picture and back at Sean.
“Anything to declare?”
“This jacket and the boots,” Sean said, handing the agent the American Express receipt.
“That's all?”
“Yes,” Sean said.
The agent looked into her eyes, then handed Sean her passport back. She opened Sean's briefcase. “What about this computer?” The woman had Sean lift out the Apple laptop and turn it on.
“It's mine. I took it with me. I don't have the receipt because it was a gift.”
Satisfied, the woman nodded. A man wearing a skycap jacket strode up and placed Sean's bags on a dolly. “Mr. Devlin asked me to escort you outside,” he said.
There were people waiting in the lobby, staring down the corridor, checking for arriving travelers. Several livery drivers stood in a receiving line, each holding up a sign containing the last name of their fares. Moving rapidly, the porter stayed just ahead of her.
They moved through the length of the terminal, passing empty ticketing counters for commuter airlines. They walked across an expanse without seeing anyone except a janitor polishing the floor. They kept going until they were at the last set of doors at the very end of the terminal. “We're just about there,” he told her.
The porter pushed the cart outside. The sidewalk was deserted. She didn't see her husband's black BMW 750 or her prized 1991 Buick Reatta convertible that had belonged to her mother. Sean looked down the covered walk to where, some fifty yards away, vehicles were picking up and letting off passengers.
“You'll be safe if you just do what we say, Mrs. Devlin.”
When she turned, the porter was standing beside the cart. His right hand grasped the handle of a machine gun, its barrel concealed under his jacket.
A battered blue van raced up and stopped, its tires screeching in protest. A back door flew open and a young woman wearing a black jacket and jeans jumped out. Sean saw the bulge of a gun inside her jacket. A scruffy man leaped from the front passenger's seat. The woman grabbed Sean's right arm firmly below her shoulder as the man seized her other arm, immobilizing her. They pushed Sean toward the van as the “fake” porter tossed her suitcases in the rear, then leaped into the van's front seat.
Sean's panic diminished sufficiently for her to try to break away.
“Help!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. The people down the walk didn't hear her-couldn't hear over the noise of the airport. She started kicking and flailing at her assailants, hoping at least to get someone in a passing car to notice and help-take down the license number, anything.
“Get in now!” the woman snarled as the pair strong-armed her into the van and slammed the door. Sean was trapped between them. The skycap jerked his wig off, leaned back over the seat, and snapped Sean's lap belt.
“Who are you?” she asked. “Let me go!”
“Any tails?” the woman asked the porter.
“Didn't see any inside.” The tires screamed again as the vehicle sped away.
“What's going on?” Sean demanded. “What in God's name are you people doing? Where's my husband?”
“You'll find out soon enough,” the woman beside her said.
“We're federal agents,” the porter said, as he stared over Sean's shoulder to study the traffic behind them. “We're all alone,” he told the driver.
Sean Devlin didn't believe for a second that these people were cops.
4
Concord, North Carolina
Winter Massey had visited the tombstone at his feet countless times in the past three years, most often at night. Tonight it was cold for October, and the wind whipped the black raincoat against his legs while icy rain stung his face. He wore a wool baseball cap and clenched a single long-stemmed rose in his gun hand. He had bought the rose, along with eleven others wrapped in tissue paper, from a young couple outside the airport for ten dollars. He suspected the pair were cult members because they wore identical, vacant smiles.
Winter twisted the gold band on his finger. The vow said until death parted them, but he couldn't let her go even now. Maybe, he thought, that's because the time they had lived together, only fourteen years, was so terribly short… flying by like clouds in a fast-moving thunderstorm.
He should have gone straight home, not driven five miles out of the way to the cemetery. He had spent two months tracking a fugitive, Jerry Tucker, the last two weeks never quitting the trail. After the capture, Winter had spent a full day processing Tucker-working to match the stolen property to descriptions of things known to have been taken from his victims-with homicide detectives from five jurisdictions and three FBI agents. He was tired, irritable, but he was also filled with a sense of accomplishment, knowing he had put a multiple killer on the long march toward the needle.
The fact that a young female deputy marshal had invited him home with her earlier in the evening had spooked him. How could he? Maybe that's what had made visiting this place so important. Or perhaps he held out a faint hope that in coming to this desolate spot he might see his wife one more time, hold her tight against his chest and perhaps fill, if only for an instant, the aching void inside him.
Winter remembered how hard he had prayed in those hours before she stopped breathing. Those prayers had done no more good than a wish tossed with a penny into a fountain. He knew that visiting her grave was tantamount to visiting a pair of her shoes, or a dress she could no longer wear. But he couldn't escape her memory. He would wander from it for a time, but a thought of her, triggered by a scent, a sensation, a sound, or a random feeling, would always slam him back to the past like a rifle shot.