“Ah. Good. That will give us plenty of time to get acquainted. What’s your name?”
“Toni,” she said.
“Wife or girlfriend?”
“W-w-wife.”
“Well, don’t worry, Toni, I’m not gonna hurt you.” He looked at her. “Got a bun in the oven. How far along are you?”
“Five months.”
“Congratulations. You do what I tell you, you and the kid will live to get to know each other. You can call me Tad. Why don’t you take me on a tour of the place, since we have some hours to kill?”
“Okay.”
The com chirped.
“Don’t answer it,” he said.
Toni’s thoughts ran at top speed, banging into each other as she tried to keep them straight. She had to get word to Alex somehow. This man had come here to kill him, she was certain of that, and he might or might not kill her and the baby. She had to go along with whatever he wanted until she could figure out a way to stop him.
Tad followed Michaels’s wife as she led him through the condo, where he made sure there weren’t any surprises waiting for him. It was an okay enough place, nothing special, and there were some pictures of her and her husband here and there, other images of their families, easy to see the resemblance in those.
Every five minutes or so, the phone would ring, and he’d just shake his head at her. He didn’t want her talking to anybody, especially her husband, and maybe giving him some secret code kind of clue.
In the garage was an old Chevrolet convertible, the hood up, and parts of the engine laid out on a workbench.
“Very nice,” he said. He walked over and put one hand on the car’s fender, rubbed it lightly. “Your old man is into cars.”
“Yes. He rebuilds them. It’s his hobby.”
Tad needed to work off some of the Hammer’s bubbling and insistent energy, and while he was horny again, a pregnant woman didn’t do it for him. He looked around for a pry bar or a hammer. A little drum work on the Chevy would do fine. He’d be sure to let Mr. Michaels see his project car was gonna need a lot more effort to bring back to cherry condition before he did the same deconstruction on him.
He saw a ball peen hammer hung on pegs over the workbench and went to get it. The Hammer working a hammer, he liked the symmetry in that.
But when he got to the bench, he noticed something else. Little pieces of ivory, needles, a microscope. Scrimshaw.
“Your husband has a lot of time on his hands,” he said. He nodded at the bench. “Cars and art. That’s when he’s not having guys murdered.”
“My husband doesn’t have people murdered,” she said. She glared at him.
He smiled. She had balls, this pregnant woman did. She’d seen what he could do, and she knew he could kill her with a backhand, but here she was defending her old man anyway. Tad had never heard his mother ever say a kind word about his father. “That fucking asshole,” was about as good as it ever got. Give Toni here a point for loyalty.
“Tell that to my friend Bobby,” he said. “He was standing in the middle of the road with his hands in the air, and the feds gave him an instant craniotomy. Blam! Blew his head apart.”
“My husband didn’t order that. Net Force does computer investigation, they aren’t field operatives on drug busts. And they’d never shoot a prisoner, anyway.”
“Yeah, well, he was there, I saw him on the evening news. He should have stayed at his desk on this one.”
He twirled the hammer in his fingers, was about to go do the car, when he saw the capsule. He looked at it, saw that it was open under the microscope, and the powder emptied out. He put the ball peen hammer down and moved to look.
He shook his head. “That fucking Bobby. He was too smart for his own good sometimes.” He turned to look at her. “You know about this? Your old man talk to you about his work?”
“Yes. Sometimes.”
“Bobby was a genius, you know. Certifiable, high MENSA grade, smarter than almost everybody. Even when I’m Hammering and all my edges are sharp, Bobby could still think circles around me. He had contempt for the feds, ’cause of his father. You don’t know about that part, but his father was with the FBI for like a hundred years. He and Bobby didn’t get along. So Bobby left clues in every fifth cap: little riddles, each one different.” He waved at the cap. “That’s how they found him, isn’t it? Some geek at your husband’s computer farm turned the machines loose on this and figured it out, didn’t he?”
She didn’t say anything.
“C’mon, you might as well tell me. I can’t kill him any deader than dead, can I?”
“Please don’t kill him.”
“Bobby might have fucked up and gotten caught because he underestimated his opposition — you tend to do that when you are always smarter than them — but he should be alive. Somebody has got to pay for that.”
He was really ready to pound the car now, and he reached for the tool to do it with, when the doorbell rang.
“Don’t answer it,” Bershaw said. “They’ll go away.” He considered it for a second. “No, maybe we ought to see who it is.”
The security cam Alex had installed showed two men in uniform, with holstered pistols. Net Force troopers.
“Cops?”
“Net Force Security.”
“I thought your husband was a desk jockey.”
“He is, but they have some special teams for certain situations.”
“Yeah, like executing drug dealers.”
The two at the door rang the bell again. And again. They weren’t going away, and she wondered why they were here. The missed phone calls, maybe.
Toni felt a surge of hope, but she quickly quelled the feeling. The two men at her door were in immediate danger. Bershaw was a killer, and he had a drug-driven rage that couldn’t be easily stopped. A wrong word, and he might go off like a bomb.
“Get rid of them, some good reason to go away, and you better not give them a fucking hint,” Bershaw said. “You do, they die, you and the kid die, and I might get bored waiting here alone for hubby to come home, but that’s how it will go down.”
“I understand.”
Bershaw stood behind her and to one side, out of sight, as Toni opened the door. He didn’t have a weapon that she could see, but he didn’t really need one.
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Michaels. We’re sorry to bother you, but Commander Michaels has been trying to contact you.”
“Oh. Oh, yes, I’m sorry about that. I was working out, doing my aerobics, and then I took a long hot bath to relax.” She was in her bathrobe. “I turned off the ringer and let the computer take messages.”
“Yes, ma’am. If you would call Commander Michaels at your convenience, that would be very helpful.”
“I will. I’m going to go take a nap, and I’ll call him when I wake up. Sorry to have caused you any trouble.”
“No trouble at all, ma’am. Have a good day.”
When they were gone, Bershaw said, “That was all right, except for the part about calling your husband. Now you’ll have to do that. But I’m gonna write a script for you. You will make the call, and you will say exactly what I tell you to say, not one word more or less, you understand?”
“I understand.”
“Good. We have a little time to work on it, since you are going to take a nap and all. Tell me about your family, brothers, sisters, like that. I’ve seen some of the pictures, so don’t lie to me. If I think you’re lying, I’ll just kill you, okay?”
Toni felt her heart pounding harder than usual. He was being very cautious, and she might not get another chance to warn Alex. She had to hope he would get the message she had been able to send.
They had almost finished breakfast when Michaels’s virgil announced an incoming call. He had it off his belt and thumbed to receive in two seconds. “Yes?”
“Sir, this is Chris Carol, military ops. We just spoke to your wife at your house. She seems fine, sir.”
Michaels blew out a sigh. Thank God!
“Did she say why she wasn’t answering the phone?”
“Yes, sir. She was taking a bath, sir, and had the ringer turned off.”
He shook his head. Of course. It had to be some piddly thing like that.
“We’ll remain in the area on surveillance, sir, as per General Howard’s orders.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Ask Toni to call me as soon as she can, will you?”
“She says she will call you, sir, after she has a nap. She must be tired from her workout.”
“What? What did you say?”
“Sir?”
“About her being tired?”
“Sir, I just assumed she might be. She said she had been doing her aerobics, before her bath, sir.”
Michaels felt a shard of icy steel stab deep into his bowels. He looked at John Howard. “He’s there,” he said. “He’s got Toni.”