Michael Prescott: Next Victim

She could not break out of the box. Not here.

Her best shot was to get back on the freeway and continue south. LA was a bigger city. It offered more possibilities for countersurveillance action. And she would have hours to sort out her options, reacquaint herself with her intel training, and determine her next move.

They hadn’t beaten her yet. They had her in a corner, but she could fight her way out of a corner if she had to.

And if they tried to take her down, she wouldn’t go alone.

That had been six hours and four hundred miles earlier. Now, rigid at the wheel, fatigued after the daylong drive and the 360 miles covered on Thursday, operating on no sleep and almost no food, Amanda Pierce drove into Los Angeles.

She took the 405 freeway when it branched off from I-5. It carried her through the San Fernando Valley, over the mountains toward West LA.

In the darkness she could no longer see the vehicles in pursuit, but she knew they were behind her and ahead of her and probably pacing her in other lanes. She’d made no effort to lose them after leaving Sacramento. By now, her friends from the FBI might have been lulled into thinking that her evasive actions had been merely a precautionary measure. They might believe that she actually had no idea she was being followed.

She hoped so. Their complacency might give her an edge. An edge she desperately needed, since soon she would have her last chance to break free.

The dashboard clock read 10:15. She was expected to be at the hotel by eleven. It would be tight. Would her contact wait for her if she was delayed?

"He’d better, God damn it," Pierce muttered, her voice raw from the tension stiffening her vocal cords.

She had risked everything for this meeting. And now that she was exposed, her cover blown, she needed it more than ever.

The freeway crested the low range of the Santa Monica Mountains and descended. The basin of Los Angeles slid into view, a huge bowl of light cupped by the black fingers of hills and desert and sea.

Pierce thought she’d come a long way from Hermiston, Oregon.

And whatever happened tonight, however things worked out, she wasn’t going back.

The assistant director’s office was tidy and almost sterile, not unlike its occupant. His desk was uncluttered, the walls all but bare. There were none of the usual accoutrements of power-plaques and certificates, photos of the agent shaking hands with the president or receiving a commendation. In the bureau this sort of display was known cynically as an I-love-me wall. Nearly every office had one. But not this office.

"Evening, Tess," Andrus said as she and Larkin entered. "I suppose you heard some of that phone call."

"The tail end," Tess admitted, before Larkin could deny it.

"Typical bureau infighting. This guy flies in from outside the division and wants to do everything his own way. I have to ride him hard just to get him to check in with me. It’s just one of many hassles you’ll have to deal with when they make you an SAC one day."

He said this without focusing his gaze on either of them in particular, but Tess felt sure the comment had been intended for her. Then again, maybe Larkin felt the same way, and maybe Andrus had meant to keep them guessing. He enjoyed little power plays of that sort.

"Anyway," Andrus added, "I’m glad you’re here, Tess. I just hope this isn’t a false alarm."

She felt her optimism fizzle just a little. "You think it is?"

"It’s thin."

"There must be something to it, if Agent Larkin called you in."

"Actually I never left. Working late. If I’d been gone, I doubt Peter would have buzzed me."

"Not on something this preliminary," Larkin said. Tess looked at him, and he pasted a smile on his face. "I’m sorry, Agent McCallum. Didn’t I make myself clear?"

He’d been playing her, she realized. It had amused him to build up her hopes.

"Have a seat," Andrus said, oblivious to the interplay.

Tess felt too restless to sit, but in the long run it was always quicker to do things Andrus’s way. That was a lesson she had learned in Denver, when for three years Gerald Andrus had been the special agent in charge, supervising her on a daily basis, before moving on to bigger things.

She sat across from the AD, hunching forward, while he leaned back behind his desk. Larkin settled into a chair in a corner.

"So," Andrus said, "you want the long or short version?"

"Just the basics."

He nodded. For a moment he said nothing, and she knew he was organizing the relevant facts in order to present them with maximum efficiency. Everything about Andrus suggested a spare, abstemious discipline, from his gaunt physique and erect posture to the steel-framed glasses riding on his pinched nose. He was unmarried, a workaholic in his early forties, a man sketched in shades of gray-ash-gray eyes, silver-gray hair, and a pale, unlined face.

"They picked him up at the safe house at nine-thirty," Andrus said finally. "He was carrying a roll of duct tape. Tried to use it on Tyler."

"Same brand of tape as before?"

"No."

"How about the knife?"

"Either he didn’t have one, or he ditched it. I have two people scouring the safe house now."

This sounded less and less promising. Wrong brand of tape, no knife…

"Does he fit the profile?" she asked, looking for a reason to be hopeful.

Andrus waved off the question. "Profile. You know how much confidence I have in that psychobabble crap. I’ll trust my gut instinct every time."

Tess did her best not to smile. If there was one thing Assistant Director Andrus lacked, it was gut instinct.

He had never been much of a street agent. His skills were managerial, bureaucratic. He was a paper pusher, a desk jockey. He knew how to cut overhead, allocate resources, do more with less. These talents had made him popular with his superiors on Ninth Street-bureau-speak for FBI headquarters-but had done nothing to endear him to agents in the field.

Then there was the family connection. Andrus’s father had been a top man under Hoover, part of the inner circle of those days. It was generally assumed that if his daddy hadn’t been a bureau man, Andrus would be pushing papers for a blue-chip corporation, not working for Uncle Sam. Tess found it admirable, in a blanched, joyless sort of way, that Andrus had devoted himself to law enforcement when he might have been happier and wealthier pursuing other goals. Other agents merely resented him for the fast career track that came with being a privileged son.

"Well," she said evenly, "sometimes Behavioral Sciences gets it right. Does he fit the profile or not?"

"He fits," Andrus conceded. "Of course, we hardly need a profiler to tell us the more obvious things-residence in Denver at the time of the last murders, above-average intelligence, knowledge of mathematical concepts."

"This man is from Denver?"

"Colorado Springs," Larkin said, wanting to join the conversation. "And he’s a civil engineer."

Tess looked at them both. "An engineer."

Andrus nodded. "Worked on the Metro Red Line, the subway system, or so he says. But before you get excited, let me reiterate what I said earlier-it’s thin."

"Because of the tape and the knife?"

"Yes. And the assault on Tyler. It was clumsy, tentative. Not what we would expect from Mobius."

Mobius.

Even now, Tess hated to hear that name spoken aloud. The three syllables seemed to hang in the office’s recirculated air like a death rattle.

"Nothing about this case," she said softly, "is what we would expect. Not in a rational world."

Andrus shook his head with paternal benevolence. "Who ever said it was a rational world, Tess?"

Larkin allowed himself a little laugh.