Every movement made the wire cut deeper; the struggle made the end come that much quicker. Thirty seconds later, Lawlor collapsed and died.
Varjan let go of the wire and fell to her hands and knees, chest heaving, her fingers numb, sweat boiling off her brow. She stayed that way, panting, for several moments before her instincts kicked in.
The gunshots had changed everything. She was aware of time and of the impending threat. She glanced at her watch: 4:12 p.m.
Still breathing hard, she went to her purse, which had fallen to the ground in the struggle, and retrieved the latex gloves and the shower cap. She stripped off the leather gloves as she hurried back to the apartment door and put on the latex gloves and the shower cap while taking glances out the peephole and listening. No doors had opened. No one was in the hall looking. But what if people downstairs had heard? What if they’d made a call?
She looked at her watch again. A minute and forty seconds had passed since she’d checked, and it had been perhaps a minute before that when the pistol was shot twice. She left the door, crossed to the drapes, and looked out; she saw a few pedestrians on the sidewalks below but heard no sirens.
Just in case, she pushed up one of the sashes so she could hear the street and returned to stand in front of Lawlor, who was bent over to his left, his eyes dull and bugged wide, his face a pallid blue.
The piano wire had severed his carotid at the end. The blood was all down the front of him, pooled in his lap.
She used the lint brush to quickly remove any strands of hair or flakes of skin she might have left on his clothes. Then she went to the sink cabinet and found kitchen garbage bags.
Varjan plucked out two and left one on the counter. She brought the other one to Lawlor’s side, removed the piano wire from his neck, and bagged it.
She went to the front door and looked out the peephole. Nothing. She listened at the window. Quiet.
She found an abrasive cleanser with bleach in the bathroom, and she used it and a damp sponge to wipe down the places she’d touched the dead assassin, even those places already covered in blood. She also wiped the rug where she’d knelt and sweated, then she put the sponge in the bag with the piano wire.
Nearly fifteen minutes had passed since the shot, and still she heard no sirens.
Emboldened, Varjan quickly searched the rest of the apartment and found a high-dollar thermal-imaging rifle scope in the nightstand drawer. She put it in her purse along with Lawlor’s cell phone and passport. She examined the contents of his wallet, took five hundred in cash, and left the rest.
Varjan was about to put Lawlor’s laptop in the other garbage bag but decided to raise the lid first. To her surprise, the screen showed not a password prompt but a bank account in Panama that held more than one million euros and a million British pounds.
When she realized the link to the account was open and active, Varjan almost laughed out loud. Within five minutes, she had emptied the account and transferred the funds to an account of her own in El Salvador.
When she figured in the payment for killing Lawlor, it was easily the most profitable day of her career.
Her cell phone rang. She started, but answered.
“We are good?” Piotr said.
“We are good,” she said, dropping the Southern accent as she signed out of the bank’s website and erased the history. “I’m just about to leave.”
“The phone? His laptop?”
“Already packed. I’ll drop them where you left the coat.”
“I like that.”
“Piotr, should I be looking over my shoulder now?”
“I do not understand.”
“Of course you do. He wasn’t just here for fun, and I pay attention to the news.”
“You were strictly cleanup, and there’s no reason to clean up the cleanup.”
Varjan didn’t trust Piotr because she didn’t trust anyone, but she let it slide. “Payment?”
“Within the hour?”
“Fine.”
He cleared his throat. “Are you committed to leaving the States, or would you consider other proposals?”
She thought about the money she’d just looted from Lawlor’s secret account, the money she’d receive within the hour, and the money she had stashed in various places around the world.
“Depends on the time frame,” Varjan said. “And the money.”
“Four days from now, seven-figure payday, specifics to follow,” Piotr said. “I am sure you can amuse yourself somewhere on the East Coast in the meantime?”
She smiled and headed toward the door. “Yes, this I am sure of.”
Chapter 13
As a crowd of people moved past us toward the Verizon Center in Gallery Place, I looked incredulously at Bree.
“You’re kidding me,” I said. “Michaels actually told you to solve Walker’s murder in order to prove you were worthy of being COD?”
“I’m supposed to serve his head to Ned on a platter,” Bree said, upset. “I don’t get it. I thought I’d been doing a solid job.”
“You’ve been doing a great job.”
“I think he wants me to replace you, and you’re irreplaceable.”
“Well, thank you for that, I think, but you’re a damn fine investigator, Bree. If he’s redefining your job, go with it.”
“And how exactly am I supposed to find Walker’s killer?” she said, crossing her arms. “Charge in, tell you and Ned and the FBI and the Secret Service and the Capitol Police, ‘Butt out, Chief Stone is here’?”
I grinned. “I could actually see you pulling that one off.”
“Big help you are,” Bree said, and she looked so forlorn I hugged her.
“We’ll get through whatever comes our way,” I said, rubbing her back. “As long as we’re together, we’ll be—”
“Dad, c’mon! The game’s gonna start!”
I looked up the sidewalk toward the Verizon Center and saw Jannie in a blue down parka waving at me.
“Be right there!” I said, and then I put my knuckle under Bree’s chin. “Let’s set this aside for the next hour and a half, okay? Our boy’s in town.”
Bree nodded and smiled. “And I’m grateful for that.”
“Me too,” I said, putting my arm around her shoulder.
We walked to the Verizon Center, a massive athletics complex in Northwest DC, and gave the ticket taker our tickets. Pounding techno music poured out of the speaker system. We found Jannie, Nana Mama, and Ali sitting in a cluster in the tenth and eleventh rows above center court.
“How’s it looking?” I asked, taking a seat beside my grandmother, Bree sitting down behind me with Jannie and Ali.
“Davidson versus Goliath,” said Nana Mama, who’d been a basketball fan forever. “And I hate to say it, but with a few notable exceptions, Davidson wasn’t looking too strong during warm-ups.”
“Where’s the faith, Nana?” Jannie said, sounding irritated. “We could see the breakthrough tonight. Anything’s possible once things start.”
“The way Georgetown’s been playing?” said Ali, who watches a lot of basketball with my grandmother. “Davidson’s going to get stomped.”
The music changed, the recording taken over by a live pep band playing, “Final Countdown.” Members of the Georgetown University Hoyas men’s basketball team charged onto the court with a full light show in progress.
The local crowd went wild, clapping and stomping their feet while the Hoyas went through a few last-minute layup drills.
“Here come the Wildcats!” Jannie said.