I wasn't comfortable with Karen seeing any communication from Sara as I needed to have freedom of action, but there wasn't much I could do. She had a wi-fi card and she also knew my two main e-mail addresses. I logged on to them with a display of reluctance that turned out to be irrelevant. There was no message from Sara, in any form or guise.
"What now?" I asked.
"Give me your cell phone," she said. "Please, Mr. Wells."
She wasn't joking. I was an ordinary member of the public to her now. Again, I didn't have much choice.
"What's the password?" she asked. "And don't even think of saying no, if you want to stay out of the cells."
"2LZ7," I said.
Karen hit the keys and scrolled up and down. "What are 'GreenBoy' and 'Seven Emperor'?"
"Alarm codes-to my agent and editor."
"They'll have gone into hiding, will they? Along with Lucy and Fran, and your ex-wife?"
I nodded. Christian Fels, my agent, had been a target of the White Devil, and had sold The Death List to my editor, Jeanie Young-Burke. Given that the book didn't exactly paint flattering portraits of Sara and her brother, I was pretty sure she would go after them if she could.
"You can't do this, Matt," Karen said, tossing the phone to me across the table. "You can't take the law into your own hands."
"I didn't know going into hiding was illegal," I countered, my voice weak. I felt terrible and I needed to get out of Dave's house.
"It is if you've left the scene of a crime."
"Christian and Jeanie haven't done that." I sat up. "Can I go now?"
She shook her head. "You're staying with me. For a start, you need to be fingerprinted. Then I want a full statement."
I shrugged. I was safer with her, but I wouldn't be able to find Sara. Even if the VCCT started looking for her, I didn't have any confidence they'd be able to track her down. I was the only person who could attract Dave's murderer, my former lover. What she felt for me now was the polar opposite of love, not that I was surprised.
Then Taff Turner came in and said that Dave's wife and kids had arrived. I'd spoken to Ginny on her cell phone and told her to come home as quickly as she could. Now I had to tell her what had happened to Dave. Karen would have done it, but it was up to me. That was what Dave would have wanted.
Contrary to the agreed procedure, the Cherokee and the Hornet rendezvoused at the burnt-out remains of the Cutty Sark in Greenwich. Andy Jackson got off his bike and got into the front seat of Pete's vehicle, then looked over his shoulder. Roger van Zandt was bent double in the backseat of the Grand Cherokee, his head between his knees.
"Deep breaths, Dodger," the American said. "Remember that try you scored against the Lambeth Lions? You went past four players and touched down under the posts. Remember what it felt to go over the line." He glanced at the driver. "You remember that try, don't you, Boney? Must have been the season before we retired."
"No. It was the year after I was voted off the committee."
"Jeez, I'm trying to distract him," Andy said, in a loud whisper.
Rog mumbled something.
"What?" Andy said.
"It was.it was Dave who passed the ball to me."
Pete groaned. "Look, Rog, we're all shocked, but we've got to be strong now. We're targets of that madwoman and we've got to get her before she picks us off."
"Yeah, that's really gonna help, Boney," the American said under his breath. He glanced at the dirty gray river. Sometimes he wondered why he'd settled in the U.K., not that the part of New Jersey he'd grown up in was any better. He had run with a street gang when he was a teenager and if he hadn't had a dedicated football coach at high school, by now he'd either have been a low-level dope dealer or dead. His parents had kicked him out when he was fourteen, and they didn't want to know what became of him, even when he almost made the NFL. His suspect knee had let him down, though it had been good enough for eleven seasons of amateur rugby league. His folks hadn't believed human beings could change or that everyone had some innate goodness in them. They worked in a meat-packing plant, until they'd both got cancer and died within a few months of each other. Andy had left the States to find a new life, having finished basic training as a chef and able to work anywhere. The fact that he'd met a stunning Englishwoman in Central Park had made the move easy, even though she'd ditched him a month later.
Andy scratched the light-colored stubble on his chin. His mom and dad had been wrong about people. The world wasn't full of assholes. Matt and the others were stand-up guys-even Rog, whose curly hair and slim build made him look like a typical computer nerd, despite having put in some of the most bone-shuddering tackles Andy had ever seen. As for Dave, he'd been a hero and he had the medals to prove it, even if he wasn't allowed to talk about his old SAS operations. But Sara Robbins-it didn't matter if she'd killed him herself or paid some other fucker to pull the trigger, she was the exception that proved the rule. Poison ran in her veins like it had when she'd killed with her brother, and her mind was still a hive of hate and perversion.
"All right," Rog said. "I'll do what I have to do." He glared at Andy. "But after we've finished, I'm going to mourn Dave any way I like. Is that okay by you, Slash?"
"Sure," Andy said with a loose grin. "We'll have a wake. Dave would have gone for that." His expression hardened. "In the meantime, are you both clear about what you've got to do?"
Rog and Pete nodded. They'd practiced the drill. No one told the others what they were up to in case they were caught. Everything each of them discovered about Sara or any other adversary would be uploaded daily to a special site that Rog had set up.
Andy opened his rucksack. He unscrewed the silencers from his and Matt's pistols, and ejected the magazines.
"Okay, my men. I hope we see each other soon." He punched Rog lightly on the shoulder, then squeezed Pete's thigh. "Maybe some of us thought Matt was overdoing it on the planning side, but we all knew that Sara would be back eventually. Let's get the bitch. For Dave."
"For Dave," the others repeated.
"Don't forget to take the SIM cards from your cell phones and drop them down a storm drain," Andy added. He got out and went over to his bike.
Rog watched him go. "What do you think Matt's got him doing?"
Andy started the engine and drove away from the heritage site. "We're not supposed to think about that, but it's pretty obvious."
"Is it?"
"Anyway, it doesn't matter what he's meant to be doing. He'll be watching Matt's back."
Rog nodded. "Yeah, that makes sense."
Pete nodded. "Fuck!" he said, spittle flecking the inside of the windshield. "I can't believe it! Dave, of all people. She knows what she's doing. He's the one we would depend on most in a situation like this."
"I suppose Matt will have to pick up the slack."
"Matt will have enough trouble staying alive, Dodger. It's up to us to track the murdering cow down."
Rog nodded. He had hacked into enough sites over the last two years to have an idea of what Sara was doing with the large amounts of money and the investments left her by the White Devil, even if she was always at least a week ahead of him. He'd passed that information regularly to Pete, who had used his contacts in the business world to find out more-at one time, he'd even invested in the same company as Sara. She had bailed out a few months later, presumably by chance, since Boney had used a false identity. The fact was, they weren't so far from Sara, but they had deliberately held back to avoid spooking her. Now she'd made the first real move, the game had changed.
Rog stared out into the rain and felt a wave of loneliness break over him. He shivered at the prospect of spending every night in a different hotel, all of them chosen for their cash-only policies and laxity about registration details. But he would manage because he'd be spending every waking hour on the laptop with Internet access that he would buy later on from one of the shops in Tottenham Court Road. He had no doubt that Pete would be doing something similar, though he couldn't believe he'd be roughing it. There were luxury hotels that were just as prepared to guarantee anonymity, if you could pay for it.