Джеймс Паттерсон - Killer Instinct

We walked in. Every inch of his floor was covered with sand. Actual sand. Like from an actual desert.

As for interior walls, there weren’t any. There was no second or third floor either. The townhouse had been hollowed out and fitted with an angled glass ceiling for a roof. You could see the night sky.

To the left of us were a standing punching bag and a full-size boxing ring. Behind the ring was a large military tent from Operation Desert Storm. It was the exact same tent Pritchard slept in as a land component commander.

That of course leads to the question How do I know that?

Meanwhile, Elizabeth was looking at me with her own question. What the hell did we just walk into?

The short answer was Pritchard’s happy place.

After the liberation of Kuwait, Pritchard returned to the States as a warrior without a war. He cashed in as a bodyguard for a Saudi prince attending Columbia Law School. Thus, he was able to afford a Manhattan townhouse. He then joined the CIA with a fast-tracked application courtesy of a four-star general. It was a brief stint, followed by what’s been a long tenure with the FBI and the JTTF.

But at no time was Pritchard more “alive,” as he put it, than when he was on a battlefield. So instead of returning to a Middle Eastern desert, the terminal bachelor decided to install one in his Upper East Side townhouse.

Had it been anyone else, the word crazy would’ve come to mind. For Pritchard, it somehow made sense.

“All right, Reinhart,” he said, folding his thick arms as he turned around to face us. “What do you want?”

“I need your file on the mayor,” I said.

He laughed. “What file?”

“The one you compiled after Elizabeth was assigned to your unit.” I glanced at my watch. “When you’re done pretending it doesn’t exist, let me know.”

So much for his fake laugh. It was as if Pritchard had suddenly remembered my PhD from Yale wasn’t in the field of classical banjo or underwater basket weaving. I was inside his head. I knew how he operated. There’s a fine line between paranoid and protecting your ass, and Evan Pritchard walked it every day like a Flying Wallenda.

“Okay, let’s pretend for a second—hypothetically, of course—that this imaginary file on the mayor somehow exists,” he said. “What specifically would you want to know?”

“Deacon has a guy feeding him intel,” I said. “I imagine it’s not happening at City Hall, and wherever it is happening it’s probably one-on-one. He’s Middle Eastern. That’s all we know.”

Apparently, that’s all we needed to know. “Give me a minute,” said Pritchard.

He walked off, disappearing into his commander tent.

Elizabeth turned to me. “How long ago was he in the CIA?”

“The less you know about that, the better,” I said.

“Why does he owe you? At least tell me that.”

“Okay, but you’ll need to wait until after.”

“After what?”

“Eighteen more years,” I said. “That’s when it gets declassified.”

That earned me an epic slow burn that would’ve probably lasted for days were it not for Pritchard returning. He had a black-and-white photo in his hand, courtesy of a super-long lens.

“Is this him?” he asked, holding it up.

“Yes!” said Elizabeth. “Who is he?”

“He’s former Mossad,” said Pritchard. “Goes by the name Eli these days.”

“Where can we find him?” I asked.

“Good question,” said Pritchard.

Huh? “You were able to find out his name and that he was former Mossad, but—”

“But exactly,” said Pritchard. “No known address or phone number. The agent I had tailing the mayor saw him only one time. He was entering Deacon’s limo early in the morning. When he got out, it was as if he’d turned into a ghost. After two blocks my agent lost him.”

“So we know who he is. We just don’t know where he is,” said Elizabeth. “We can work with that.”

Pritchard shook his head. “You’re not working with anything, Needham.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“You know exactly what that means,” he said.

Chapter 51

ONE SECOND, they were talking. The next, they were screaming at each other.

It was only fitting that we were next to a boxing ring, as I practically had to separate the two and send them to neutral corners. Pritchard was laying into Elizabeth for “going rogue” and not bringing any backup to the house in Pelham, as well as avoiding him and his repeated calls after she “nearly blew up the damn neighborhood.”

Elizabeth was countering with how she couldn’t know if the tip from this guy, Eli, at Starbucks was for real. The mayor couldn’t even fully vouch for it, after all. “And it was his goddamn source!”

The bottom line was that Pritchard wanted to suspend Elizabeth until further notice. He couldn’t trust her. Sure, she’d saved his life, but he was convinced she’d also gotten the kid, Gorgin, killed. Gorgin could’ve been the key to eliminating the cell responsible for the bombings. Now they had nothing to go on, said Pritchard. Everything and everyone was reduced to ash in the blast. Forget dental records. “And that AK-47 you grabbed? It came back clean from the lab. We don’t even have one fucking fingerprint!”

“Yeah, but we do have this,” said Elizabeth, reaching into her pocket. She pulled out a folded piece of white paper, handing it to Pritchard. “This was on the guy with the AK-47.”

I craned my neck to look. It was an ATM receipt from Chase Bank.

“Do we know the branch?” asked Pritchard.

Elizabeth knew that and then some. “Penn Station, main concourse,” she said. “I’ve spoken with their security office already. We should have footage matching the time stamp by tomorrow morning.”

Pritchard nodded. It was definitely a step up from his yelling at her but well short of anything approaching a compliment. Nice work, for instance. After all, it’s not like the guy with the AK-47 handed her the receipt before trying to kill her. I figured the least I could do for Elizabeth was to point this out.

I turned to her. “So with the house about to explode at any second you still stayed behind to search this guy’s pockets?”

“Shut up, Reinhart,” said Pritchard.

Mission accomplished. I shrugged. “Just saying.”

“It doesn’t change anything,” he said.

“Actually,” I replied, “it could change everything.”

“I’m not talking about the investigation,” he said. “You know what I mean.”

I did. So did Elizabeth. Pritchard was talking about her suspension, and she was about to take the reins back from me to argue it. We all understood what she wanted—the chance to track down the mayor’s informant, Eli, and find out how he’s connected to Gorgin and what else he knows. It made sense.

Still, Elizabeth had barely gotten her first word out when I interrupted her. She wasn’t going to win this battle with Pritchard. He was stubborn. He was pissed. Plus, he had home-field advantage. Who the hell turns his Manhattan townhouse into Operation Desert Storm?

A guy who lives to fight. That’s who.

Elizabeth could’ve either fallen on her sword or waved the white flag. At least, that was the conventional way to look at it.

Screw conventional.

Chapter 52

“WHAT THE hell was that?” asked Elizabeth.

She was hopping mad. Literally. The second we reached the sidewalk outside Pritchard’s townhouse she was right up in my face, rocking up and down on the small heels of her flats so fast she actually got airborne a few times.

“That was a compromise,” I said. “Pritchard doesn’t have to look at you for a few days, but you’re not actually suspended.”