Jeffery Deaver - Edge

That always appealed to me: generations living together.

An image from the past: of Peggy and her mother and father.

I realized now that in appearance, and because of her quirky side, Maree reminded me of Peggy. None of Maree’s darkness, of course, or the irritations and unsteady nature.

Mr. Tour Guide …

Peggy had once called me a bad boy but it happened after I realized we’d been given a large order of fries at McDonald’s instead of the regular and I said, “Let’s sneak out without telling them.”

More memories I didn’t want.

I stretched, feeling the pain in my calves and joints from the pursuit of Henry Loving at the flytrap and in my back from the retreat at the hotel. I forced myself to play a few mental rounds of the Chinese game Wei-Chi against an invisible opponent I sometimes imagine to help me banish unwanted thought.

Then I decided it was time to sleep and rolled over on my side. In two minutes I was out.

DOING NOTHING.

It’s not such a problem for us shepherds; we’re used to it. We’re like airline pilots, whose life is routine 99 percent of the time. We expect this and-though we train for the rare moments of action to avoid calamity-we understand that most of our lives on the job will pass in a waiting state. Ideally so, at least.

But for our principals, time spent in a safe house often becomes a nightmare. They’re plucked from their active lives and have to spend hour after hour in places like this, cozy though they may be, unable to work, unable to pursue projects around their houses, unable to see friends. Few phone calls, no email… Even TV is unsatisfying; the programs remind them of the world that exists outside their prison, fading reruns of our existence they may never see again, frivolous shows, both drama and comedy, that mock the tragedy they’re living through.

Doing nothing…

One consequence of which is that they often opt for the oblivion of sleep; there’s no reason for principals to wake early.

At 9:30 Sunday morning, I was sitting in the den at the desk, where I’d been since five, when I heard the snap of a door opening and creaks in the floorboards. I heard the voices of Ryan and Joanne, saying good morning to Lyle Ahmad, making small talk. He gave them details about coffee and breakfast.

I sent some more emails and then rose, stretching.

The night had passed in peace and a new spec in West Virginia told me in a deeper voice, though with a twang identical to that of his associate, that scans of the property had revealed nothing of concern. A car had driven by at midnight but it was taking a route that was logical for a local returning from dinner in Tysons Corner or the District. In any case, our GPS had measured his speed and he hadn’t slowed as much as one mile per hour when he passed, which took him off the threat list, according to our algorithms.

I joined the Kesslers in the kitchen and we exchanged greetings.

“Sleep well?” I asked.

“Well enough, yeah.” Ryan was bleary-eyed. He was moving slowly-because of the limp and, perhaps, a hangover. He wore jeans and an Izod shirt, purple, with his belly hanging over the belt buckle. He still wore his weapon. Joanne was in jeans too and a black T-shirt under a floral blouse. In a round compact mirror she inspected her lipstick-the only makeup she was wearing-then put it back in her purse.

Ryan said he’d talked to Amanda for a long time earlier and everything seemed okay at Carter’s place. The girl had enjoyed fishing yesterday and they’d had dinner with neighbors last night, a barbecue.

I’d called Bill Carter too, that morning. I told the Kesslers this and added, “He said there hasn’t been anything suspicious. Just that your daughter was still bothered about missing school tomorrow and her game and some volunteer job.”

“A student counseling hotline,” Ryan explained. “She practically runs the place.”

Knowing what I did about the girl now, I wasn’t surprised.

“Let’s hope she won’t have to miss anything,” Joanne said.

It was still early on Sunday. If we got Loving and the primary soon, the Kesslers’ lives could return to a semblance of normality by suppertime.

“What do we do today?” Ryan asked, looking outside. I’d seen golf clubs in the garage and I guessed he’d miss what might be a warm fall day on the links.

“You just relax,” I said. I couldn’t help but think of Claire duBois, who’d once commented to me as we were flying to Florida to collect a principal, “The pilots always say that, ‘Now just sit back and relax and enjoy the flight.’ What options are there? Do handstands in the aisles? Open a window and feed the birds?”

The Kesslers too had no options. I knew they weren’t going to like my further instructions, which I now delivered, that they had to stay inside.

“Inside,” Ryan muttered, peeking out through a slit in the curtain at a band of sun on leaves just beginning to color. He sighed and knifed butter onto an English muffin.

Doing nothing…

My phone rang and I glanced at caller ID. “Excuse me.”

I headed back to the den, clicking ANSWER. “Claire.”

“I’ve got some information.”

“Go ahead.”

Her youthful voice offered enthusiastically, “The electronic trackers? This’s interesting. They’re made by Mansfield Industries. The small tracker has a range of six hundred yards, the big one a thousand. That sounds impressive but they’re older models. The new trackers, like the ones we use, are GPS and satellite based, so you can sit in your office and track. The ones planted on you were cheap. That means they’re used by police departments.”

Yes, that was interesting. “And the model numbers-”

“-are the same used in the MPD.” Ryan Kessler’s employer.

“Serial numbers?” I asked.

But she said, “No serial numbers. So we don’t know the specific source.”

“Prints or trace evidence on them?”

“None.”

I considered this information. A principal who was a detective and hardware that might have come from the same police department he worked for.

Another piece of the puzzle.

I asked, “Graham?” The Department of Defense employee whose checkbook was stolen. The man who’d surprisingly dropped the charges.

Her voice lost its lilt as she said, “Okay. About that.”

Didn’t sound good. “What?”

“I think I may need some help.”

“Go on.”

“A teeny problem…”

An adjective I never quite got.

She continued, “I was researching and making some headway. I found that the chief of detectives-”

“Lewis.”

“Right. COD Lewis got a call from ‘somebody powerful.’ That’s a quote, though I have no idea what ‘somebody powerful’ means. It sounds like what a scriptwriter would say when he’s describing a bad guy, the nefarious character. Anyway, this power person had Lewis make sure the case wasn’t being pursued.”

“Somebody from the Pentagon?”

“I don’t know. Then I got some numbers. Graham makes ninety-two thousand a year. His wife fifty-three. They have a six-hundred-thousand-dollar mortgage and two daughters in college, in addition to their son, Stuart. The girls’re going to William and Mary, and Vassar. Their collective tuition is about sixty thousand a year. Room and board probably not too bad. I mean, with all respect to Williamsburg and Poughkeepsie. You ever been there, either of them?”