Jeffery Deaver - Edge

“His vehicle?” I asked.

“Nothing yet. The Bureau’s got a team canvassing the motel and restaurants around town.”

Ellis: “This Kessler, what does he know that the primary’s so interested in extracting from him?”

“No clue,” Westerfield said.

“Who exactly is he, Kessler?” I asked.

“I’ve got some details,” Teasley said.

As the young attorney dug through a file, I wondered why Westerfield had come to us. We’re known as the bodyguards of last resort (at least Aaron Ellis refers to us that way in budgetary hearings, which I find a bit embarrassing, but apparently it plays well on the Hill). The State Department’s Diplomatic Security and the Secret Service guard U.S. officials and foreign heads of state. Witness Protection cloaks the noble or the infamous with new identities and turns them loose in the world. We, on the other hand, handle situations only when there’s an immediate, credible threat against a known principal. We’ve also been called the ER of personal security.

The criterion is vague but, given limited resources, we tend to take on cases only when the principal is involved in matters like national security-the spy I’d just delivered to the CIA gentlemen yesterday-or public health, such as our job guarding a whistle-blower in an over-the-counter tainted-drug trial last year.

But the answer became clear when Teasley gave the cop’s bio. “Detective Ryan Kessler, forty-two. Married, one child. He works financial crimes in the district, fifteen years on the force, decorated… You may’ve heard of him.”

I glanced at my boss, who shook his head for both of us.

“He’s a hero. Got some media coverage a few years ago. He was working undercover in D.C. and stumbled into a robbery in a deli in North West. Saved the customers but took a slug. Was on the news, and one of those Discovery Channel cop programs did an episode about him.”

I didn’t watch much TV. But I did understand the situation now. A hero cop being targeted by a lifter like Henry Loving… Westerfield saw a chance to be a hero of his own here-marshalling a case against the primary, presumably because of some financial scam Kessler was investigating. Even if the underlying case wasn’t big-though it could be huge-targeting a heroic D.C. police officer was reason enough to end up on Westerfield’s agenda. I didn’t think any less of him because of this; Washington is all about personal as well as public politics. I didn’t care if his career would be served by taking on the case. All that mattered to me was keeping the Kessler family alive.

And that this particular lifter was involved.

“Alors,” Westerfield said. “There we have it. Kessler’s been poking his nez where it doesn’t belong. We need to find out where, what, who, when, why. So, let’s get the Kesslers into the slammer fast and go from there.”

“Slammer?” I asked.

“Yessir,” Teasley said. “We were thinking Hansen Detention Center in D.C. I’ve done some research and found that HDC has just renovated their alarm systems and I’ve reviewed the employee files of every guard who’d be on the friendly wing. It’s a good choice.”

“C’est vrai.”

“A slammer wouldn’t be advisable,” I said.

“Oh?” Westerfield wondered.

Protective custody, in a secluded part of a correctional facility, makes sense in some cases but this wasn’t one of them, I explained.

“Hm,” the prosecutor said, “we were thinking you could have one of your people with them inside, non ? Efficient. Agent Fredericks and you can interview him. You’ll get good information. I guarantee it. In a slammer, witnesses tend to remember things they wouldn’t otherwise. They’re all happy-happy.”

“That hasn’t been my experience in circumstances like these.”

“No?”

“You put somebody in detention, yes, usually a lifter from the outside can’t get in. And”-a nod toward Teasley, conceding her diligent homework-“I’m sure the staff’s been vetted well. With any other lifter, I’d agree. But we’re dealing with Henry Loving here. I know how he works. We put the Kesslers inside, he’ll find an edge on one of the guards. Most of them are young, male. If I were Loving, I’d just find one with a pregnant wife-their first child, if possible-and pay her a visit.” Teasley blinked at my matter-of-fact tone. “The guard would do whatever Loving wanted. And once the family’s inside there’re no escape routes. The Kesslers’d be trapped.”

“Like petits lapins,” Westerfield said, though not as sarcastically as I’d expected. He was considering my point.

“Besides, Kessler’s a cop. We’d have trouble getting him to agree. There could be a half dozen cons he’s put inside HDC.”

“Where would you stash them?” Westerfield asked.

I replied, “I don’t know yet. I’ll have to think about it.”

Westerfield gazed up at the wall too, though I couldn’t tell at which picture or certificate or diploma. Finally he said to Teasley, “Give him Kessler’s address.”

The young woman jotted it in far more legible handwriting than her boss’s. When she handed it to me I was hit by another blast of perfume.

I took it, thanking them both. I’m a competitive game player-all sorts of games-and I’ve learned to be humble and magnanimous in victory, a theory I’d carried over to my professional life. A matter of courtesy, of course, but I’d also found that being a good winner gives you a slight advantage psychologically when you play against the same opponent in the future.

They rose. The prosecutor said, “Okay, do what you can-find out who hired Loving and why.”

“Our number-one priority,” I assured him, though it wasn’t.

“Au revoir…” Westerfield and Teasley breezed out of the doorway, the prosecutor giving sotto voce orders to her.

I too rose. I had to stop at the town house and pick up a few things for the assignment.

“I’ll report from the location,” I told Ellis.

“Corte?”

I stopped at the door and glanced back.

“Not sending the Kesslers to the slammer… it makes sense, right? You’d rather get them into a safe house and run the case from there?” He’d backed me up-Aaron Ellis was nothing if not supportive of his troops-and would go with my expertise on the question. But he wasn’t, in truth, asking for reassurance that it made tactical sense not to put them in protective custody.

What he was really asking was this: Was he making the right decision in assigning me, and not someone else, to the job of guarding principals from Henry Loving? In short, could I be objective when the perp was the one who’d murdered my mentor and had apparently escaped from the trap I’d set for him several years before?

“A safe house’s the most efficient approach,” I told Ellis and returned to my office, fishing for the key to unlock the desk drawer where I kept my weapon.

MANY GOVERNMENTAL AGENCIES are wedded to initials or acronyms to describe their employees or departments, but in ours, for some reason, nicknames are the order of the day, as with “lifter” and “hitter.”

The basic bodyguards in our organization are the close protection officers, whom we call “clones,” because they’re supposed to shadow their principals closely. Our Technical Support and Communications Department is staffed by “wizards.” There are the “street sweepers”-our Defense Analysis and Tactics officers, who can spot a sniper a mile away and a bomb hidden in a principal’s cell phone. The people in our organization running surveillance are called, not surprisingly, “spies.”

I’m in the Strategic Protection Department, the most senior of the eight SPD officers in the organization. We’re the ones who come up with and execute a protection plan for the principals we’ve been assigned to guard. And because of the mission, and the initials of the department, we’re known as shepherds.