Jeffery Deaver - Edge

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“He put you in the hospital.”

“Enough!” Maree snapped, waving her hand.

After a dense silence both women turned toward me.

I said, “I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes, tell you what’s happened.”

Joanne looked once more at her sister, a glance both sorrowful and frustrated, and turned to me, dropping onto the couch.

“Where’s Ryan?” I asked.

“Here,” he said, walking into the living room. He was drinking coffee, it seemed, though I supposed it could have had whiskey in it. I couldn’t smell any, though. He walked past his sister-in-law and his wife and took a straight-back chair in the corner of the room. He ignored the women and kept his attention on me.

I called Lyle Ahmad and Tony Barr in as well and told the assembly, “We’ve got the primary and Loving’s on his way out of town. We confirmed it was Zagaev. Not a terrorist issue, not directly.” I looked toward Joanne. “He was trying to extract information from you and then sell it.”

Ryan Kessler said nothing, didn’t even look at his wife.

“So it’s over with,” Maree said. Then she added, “I’d like to go home-go back to their house-and get my things.”

I said to her, “I’m sorry, not quite yet. We don’t have Loving or the partner in custody yet. I’m ninety-nine percent sure it’s okay but I want to keep you here, until we do.”

I expected to receive a taste of the testy attitude Maree was serving up to her sister, or at least another Tour Guide comment, but she looked me over with a softening face. “Whatever you think best.”

I didn’t know what to make of her agreeable nature.

Or the coy smile.

Ryan asked, “And my daughter?”

I noted the singular possessive. Joanne must have too.

“She can join us. Bill Carter too. I’ve already called him, and one of the guards I know there is driving them to a pickup location. I’ll go get them myself and bring them here.”

Joanne’s eyes grew still and I guessed she was thinking that either she or her husband would have to have some serious discussions with the girl about Stepmom’s former career.

I went into the den and sat in the office chair, which gave a comforting squeak. I learned from Freddy that the chopper had landed at the Philadelphia airport with the Bureau tactical team and that they were deploying in the garage and inside and around the terminal to begin surveillance. Assuming Loving was driving at legal speeds to the airport in Philadelphia, which I was sure he would be, he’d arrive within about ninety minutes.

I then called Aaron Ellis, to whom I gave the final details of the case.

He said, “Guess congratulations are in order.”

The word seemed to jar. I heard gravity in my boss’s voice when he asked, “Corte?”

“Go ahead.”

“Senator Stevenson.”

“Yes?”

“He called me.”

I asked, “Directly? Not Sandy Alberts?”

“That’s right. He called about you.”

“Hold on.” I rose, shut the door to the den and sat down again. Took a deep breath. Another. Then: “Go ahead, Aaron.”

“He was asking me questions I didn’t know the answers to.” Ellis paused. “I need the truth, Corte. Are you in Stevenson’s sights?”

I couldn’t forestall it any longer. “I’m in his sights.”

“Go on,” Ellis said grimly.

I organized my response. Finally, I said, “After Abe was killed, I wanted to get Loving really bad. But he operates off the grid better than anybody I’ve ever seen. So I managed to get Loving’s name on some lists.”

“So?”

“It wasn’t just watchlists. I added him to some wiretap warrant databases.”

“You added him.” Ellis was nearly whispering. “You mean, there was no judge involved?”

“No. I got into the integrated system myself. If I’d waited to go to a judge until we found him, it would have been too late. Look, it wasn’t to collect evidence, Aaron. It wasn’t for trial. It was just to find him.”

“Jesus… In the meeting on Saturday with Westerfield? He said they picked up the go-ahead order on a warranted tap. That was one of yours?”

My illegally warranted tap.

“That’s right.”

“So when Alberts came in to my office to talk to you, what? He was fishing?”

“I would guess so.” I’d covered my tracks pretty well but in my zeal to get Loving I would have left behind trails about what I’d done. “He or Stevenson are probably tracking down instances of dicey warrants and some of them must’ve pointed to me. Alberts called Freddy too. About me specifically.”

I heard a creak. I pictured my boss rocking in his office chair. His shoulders were exactly as wide as the leather back.

I said, “It’s not going to matter to Stevenson that the Kesslers’d be dead now if I hadn’t had the wiretap orders in place. I’ve been reading up on him. He’s ideological. He’s not holding the hearings because of reelection and he’s not doing it to boost his party or for the press. He genuinely believes in law and order. And warrantless surveillance is a crime.”

As was, of course, forging warrants.

I remembered my dismay when I read what I’d learned about Stevenson and realized he was the worst possible enemy: a powerful man with a deeply held conviction that he was in the right. Especially when the person he was targeting, me, was so clearly wrong.

I’d felt dismay too at the fact that I’d found myself searching for a scandal or impropriety in Stevenson’s life, anything I could use to discourage him from subpoenaing me-no, I’m not above using an edge like that myself. But there’d been nothing. He liked dating younger women, but he was single, so there was no problem there. His campaigns were largely funded by one of the biggest conservative political action committees in Washington. But all politicians’ campaigns were backed by PACs; his just happened to be more flush than many others. Even his aide, Sandy Alberts, had been meticulous about severing all ties to all lobbying firms before coming to work for Stevenson.

No edge to threaten him with.

And there was nothing I could offer him to make him forget about me. I was exactly what he wanted to expose: an agent of the government working for a shadowy organization and playing fast and loose with the laws of the country.

“Where did Stevenson leave it?” I asked.

“He wants to know about cases you’ve run in the past few years, where perps went to trial.”

To find out if any lifters or hitters I helped arrest were convicted on the basis of illegal taps. I told my boss, “It was only Loving. There weren’t any others.”

“Apparently that won’t matter to him.”

No, it wouldn’t. A single incident of a crime is still a crime.

Aaron said, “You know if I don’t deliver case files, he’ll subpoena them. And he’s going get you on the stand in the hearings.”

Which would be the end of my career as a shepherd.

And perhaps the start of a very embarrassing trial, which would possibly end in a prison sentence.

“We’re so close to Loving,” I said, sitting forward tensely in the chair. “Please. Do the best you can to keep Stevenson-”

My boss, normally as calm as I was, now snapped, “I’m doing a lot of fucking interference-running for you on this job, Corte.”

“I know. I’ll cooperate with Stevenson completely-when Loving’s in the can. I’ll take whatever the consequences are.”

“You know this has put the whole organization in a real awkward position. We can’t afford to be public, Corte.”

“I know, yes.”

“I’ll stall for a day or two, if I can. But if the subpoena’s delivered, there’s nothing I can do.”