“He should have sent me photos of that last area of the factory, and he didn’t do it.” He looked back at the brick building. “He was… interrupted.”
“And the car?”
“He would have had to drive here. It’s possible that whoever killed him searched for his car, found it, and any other evidence Rye had discovered.” He shrugged. “And the vehicle might be found in the Thames in six months.”
“Possible?”
“You know how sharp and professional Rye always was. He never just left his vehicle on the street when he went on a job like this. He’d park it close, but it would be out of sight and not easy to spot. There’s a chance that it’s still out there somewhere.” He was on the street now. “So let’s go find it.”
Kincaid nodded. “Where do we start?”
He hesitated, then started across the street toward the pub. “We start with a new friend of Rye’s…”
“I NEVER NOTICED HIS CAR at all,” Dorothy Jenkins said as she gazed out the back window of Lynch’s rental car. “I guess I was too excited and interested in what was happening at the factory.” They had driven slowly up and down the four streets of the town directly before the factory, with Kincaid following behind. But they hadn’t seen anything that appeared promising. “What kind of car did you say it was?”
“A gray Aston-Martin,” Lynch said. He pulled over to the curb and got out. “I think I need a closer look.” He started to go house to house, peering into backyards and garages.
“You’ll get knocked on the head if someone sees you doing that.” Dorothy was suddenly beside him. “They’ll think you’re casing the joint. If someone comes out of the house, let me talk. Most of these people know me.”
“I’ll leave it entirely up to you. That’s why I asked you to come along. I’m relying on you to protect me.” But so far, there had been no sign of Rye’s car, and Dorothy was right, he’d be lucky if he didn’t get arrested or assaulted before this was over. As they reached the end of the block, he turned to Dorothy. “Any ideas? It’s your town.”
She blinked. “Yes, it is.” She thought about it and smiled. “Turn the next corner and go down that block. It has a bunch of deserted homes that people just left when they lost their jobs. That might be a good place to look.”
“Right.” He turned at the corner and strode down the street. Nothing in the first three houses. The fourth house was almost falling down. No garage.
The fifth house had heavy shrubbery and a garage.
And a gray Aston-Martin.
“Yes.” He phoned Kincaid. “Get over here. I’ve got it.”
Dorothy had run up beside him, her cheeks flushed with excitement. “We found it? I helped?”
“You were magnificent,” Lynch said. “You did it all, Dorothy.” His hand squeezed her shoulder. “And now you’d better get out of here because I’m going to break into my old friend’s car, and I don’t want you to be an accomplice.”
She looked a bit disappointed. “But it’s not really a crime. You’re one of the good guys?”
“In this case, I’m definitely a good guy. But it gets complicated.”
“Like James Bond.”
He grinned. “Something like Bond.”
She nodded. “Then I’ll go back to the pub.” She started down the street. “You’ll let me know if I can help again?”
“I certainly will. Many thanks, Dorothy.”
“No, thank you. It made me feel good to help.” She called back over her shoulder, “And I promise I won’t tell them you broke into the car…”
When she’d disappeared around the corner, he turned back to the Aston-Martin. It took him three minutes to break into the car, and by that time, Kincaid was beside him.
“You know we should wait for forensics before we search the car,” he said. “We might destroy evidence.”
“No crime was committed in this car. Don’t be a dick.”
“Well, when you put it like that. What are we looking for?”
“Anything that could help.” He was inside the car. “I have no idea. Maybe Rye’s tablet. He had his phone with him when he was killed, and that was never found. But he probably wouldn’t have had his tablet. It’s not portable enough when he had to travel really light.” He opened the glove box. He saw a gleam of gray lying beneath piles of receipts and envelopes. “And here it is,” he said softly as he took the iPad out and opened it. “Come on, baby. Talk to me…”
“Who are you talking to?” Kincaid asked, his gaze on Lynch’s flying fingers on the keyboard.
“The cloud. The magic cloud,” Lynch murmured. “Rye had a private cloud account connected to his devices. I’m hoping that there might be something on it that he didn’t manage to transmit to me.”
“Do you think he could-”
“Yes.” Lynch had managed to bring up those first photos he’d received from Rye. He flipped through them quickly, and then froze. His gaze was on the last photo, one that he had never received on the night Rye had died. “Holy shit.”
Kincaid moved closer, staring at the photo. “It’s that lab at the factory.”
Lynch nodded. There was no doubt that area was a lab now. In this photo, the space was no longer empty but filled with equipment and workstations with over a dozen incubators.
He stiffened, his gaze narrowed on those incubators. He enlarged the picture, zeroing in on close-ups of what those incubators contained. He gave a low whistle. “My God.”
There were human organs in those incubators-hearts, livers, kidneys…
Kincaid swallowed. “What the hell was going on there?” he asked hoarsely. “Were those sons of bitches harvesting organs?”
That had been Lynch’s first thought, too. But it didn’t feel right with what he and Kendra had pieced together about what was going on. So now his eyes were narrowed intently on the photo, and he was studying it more carefully. “I don’t think so,” he said slowly. “I think this is something else entirely…”
Los Angeles
Figuroa Street
Kendra and Jessie arrived at Ted Dyle’s downtown office building after a customarily hellish weekday morning drive up the I-5 freeway. For most of the trip, Jessie used her iPad to read aloud about several news stories and blog posts about Dyle’s history of backing ideas that had made him billions of dollars. None of the stories made any mention of the Night Watch Project, but Dyle apparently functioned as a silent investor on many of his endeavors.
At one point in the journey, Jessie cast a quick glance back.
Kendra tensed. “See something?”
“No black panel van. That doesn’t mean they aren’t switching vehicles.” She paused. “I did see a white utility truck a block from your condo. And I caught sight of one about four miles back on the freeway.”
“Utility trucks are all over the place in Southern California.”
“Which would be an excellent reason to use them. But if you’re still being followed, they’re very, very good.”
Kendra smiled. “You know, there’s a thin line between protectiveness and out-and-out paranoia.”
“Paranoia is good. If I’m wrong, we take a few precautions we don’t really need to. But if I’m right, it can mean the difference between life and death.”
Kendra couldn’t argue with that. Particularly since that life was her own.
Jessie glanced at her and nodded. “I guarantee Lynch would approve.”
“At the moment, I don’t give a damn what Lynch would or would not approve.”
“Oops. You were a little less antagonistic toward me this morning. But I gather Lynch is taking the full brunt?”
“You’re not out of the woods yet,” she said coolly.
Jessie nodded. “Well, you didn’t let me drive. I figured that was a punishment.”