Jeffery Deaver - Edge

One department that doesn’t have a nickname is Research Support, to me the most important of all our ancillary divisions. A shepherd can’t run a personal security job without good investigative research. I’ve often lectured younger officers that if you do research up front, you’ll be less likely to need tactical firepower later.

And I was lucky to have as my protégée the person I considered the best in the department.

I called her now.

One ring. Then: “DuBois,” came the voice from my earpiece.

It was the woman’s secure mobile I’d called, so I got her work greeting. With its French origin, you’d think the name would be pronounced doo-bwah but her family used doo-boys .

“Claire. Something’s come up.”

“Yes?” she asked briskly.

“Loving’s still alive.”

She processed this. “Alive?… I’m not sure how that could happen.”

“Well, it has.”

“I’m thinking about it,” she mused, almost to herself. “The building burned… There was a DNA match. I recall the report. There were some typos in it, remember?” Claire duBois was older than her adolescent intonation suggested, though not much. Short brunette hair, a heart-shaped and delicately pretty face, a figure that was probably very nice-and I was as curious about it as any man would be-but usually hidden by functional pantsuits, which I preferred her wearing over skirts and dresses. The practicality of it, I mean.

“It doesn’t matter. Are you in town? I need you.”

“Do you mean did I go away for the weekend? No. Plans changed. Do you want me in?” she asked in her snappy monotone. I pictured her having breakfast as the September morning light slanted through the window of her quiet town house in Arlington, Virginia. She might have been in sweats or a slinky robe but picturing either was impossible. She might have been sitting across from a stubble-bearded young man looking at her curiously from over a sagging Washington Post . That too didn’t register.

“He’s after a principal in Fairfax. I don’t know the details. Short time frame.”

“Sure. Let me make some arrangements.” I heard a few brief clicks-she could type faster than any human being on earth. Half to herself: “Mrs. Glotsky, next door… Then the water… Okay. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

I suspected duBois had a bit of attention deficit disorder. But that usually worked to my advantage.

“I’ll be on the road with the principals but I’ll call you with the assignments.”

We disconnected. I signed out a Nissan Armada from our transportation department and collected it in the large garage beneath the building. I drove up King Street and then through the quaint and narrow avenues of Old Town Alexandria, on the Potomac River, the Virginia side, not far from Washington, D.C.

The SUV wasn’t tell-all black but a light gray, dusty and dinged. Cars are a big part of the personal security business and, like all of ours, this Nissan had been modified to incorporate bullet-resistant glass, armor on the doors, run-flat tires and a foam-filled gas tank. Billy, our vehicle man, had lowered the center of gravity for faster turning and fitted the grille with what he called a jockstrap, an armored panel to keep the engine protected.

I double-parked and ran inside the brownstone town house, still smelling of the coffee I’d brewed on a one-cup capsule machine only an hour earlier. I hurriedly packed a large gym bag. Here, unlike at my office, the walls were filled with evidence of my past: diplomas, certificates of continuing-education course completions, recognitions from former employers and satisfied customers, including the Department of State, the CIA, the Bureau and ATF. MI5 in the UK too. Also, a few photos from my earlier years, snapped in Virginia, Ohio and Texas.

I wasn’t sure why I put all of this gingerbread up on the walls. I rarely looked at it, and I never socialized here. I remembered thinking a few years ago that it just seemed like what you were supposed to do when you moved into a good-sized town house by yourself.

I changed clothes, into jeans and a navy windbreaker and a black Polo shirt. Then I locked up, set the two alarms and returned to the car. I sped toward the expressway, dialing a number then plugging the hands-free into my ear.

In thirty minutes I was at the home of my principals.

Fairfax, Virginia, is a pleasant suburb with a range of residential properties, from two-bedroom bungalows and row town houses to sumptuous ten-acre lots ringed with demilitarized-zone barriers of trees between neighbors’ houses. The Kesslers’ house, between these extremes, sat in the midst of an acre, half bald and half bristling with trees, the leaves just now losing their summer vibrancy, about to turn-trees, I noted, that would be perfect cover for a sniper backing up Henry Loving.

I made a U, parked the Armada in the driveway, climbed out. I didn’t recognize the FBI agents across the street personally but I’d seen their pictures, uploaded from Freddy’s assistant. I approached the car. They would have my description too but I kept my hands at my sides until they saw who I was. We flashed IDs.

One said, “Nobody paused in front of the house since we’ve been here.”

I slipped my ID case away. “Any out-of-state tags?”

“Didn’t notice any.”

Different answer from “No.”

One of the agents pointed to a wide four-lane road nearby. “We saw a couple of SUVs, big ones, there. They slowed, looked our way and then kept going.”

I asked, “They were going north?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s a school a half block away. They’ve got soccer games today. It’s early in the season so I’d guess it was parents who hadn’t been to the field yet and weren’t sure where to turn.”

They both seemed surprised I knew this. Claire duBois had fed me the information on the way over. I’d asked her about events in the area.

“But let me know right away if you see them again.”

Up the street I saw homeowners mowing late-season grass or raking early leaves. The day was warm, the air crisp. I scanned the entire area twice. I’m often described as paranoid. And I probably am. But the opponent here was Henry Loving, an expert at being invisible… until the last minute, of course, at which time he becomes all too present. Thinking of Rhode Island again, two years ago, when he’d just materialized, armed, from a car that he simply couldn’t have been inside.

Except that he was.

Hefting my shoulder bag higher, I returned to the Nissan and noted my reflection in the window. I’d decided that since Ryan Kessler was a police detective, what it took to win his confidence was looking more like an undercover cop than the humorless federal agent that I pretty much am. With my casual clothes, my trim, thinning brownish hair and a clean-shaven face, I probably resembled one of the dozens of fortyish businessmen dads shouting encouragement to their sons or daughters at the soccer game up the street at that moment.

I made a call on my cold phone.

“That you?” Freddy asked.

“I’m here, at Kessler’s.”

“You see my guys?”

“Yes. They’re good and obvious.”

“What’re they going to do, hide behind the lawn gnomes? It’s the suburbs, son.”

“It’s not a criticism. If Loving’s got a spotter on site, I want him to know we’re on to him.”

“You think somebody’s there already?”

“Possibly. But nobody’ll make a move until Loving’s here. Anything more on his position or ETA?”

“No.”

Where was Loving now? I wondered, picturing the highway from West Virginia. We had a safe house, a good one, out in Luray. I wondered if he was driving near it at the moment.