Chris Mooney - World Without End

Just like Angel Eyes, Conway thought.

"Worse, the prick fingered Soviet double agents. Fucking blew major operations we had going on," Rombardo said. He shook his head and sighed.

"This thing's going to be a real pisser to figure out."

Conway looked back at Rombardo.

"Now let me give you the rest of it the reason why I'm here," Rombardo said.

"The fire gutted the entire fourth floor. They were lucky to get you out when they did. Praxis is shut down indefinitely. The press doesn't know you were inside the lab, and they don't know that you were at the skydiving school they don't know any of it, and they won't because my job is to keep them off the scent. Fortunately, Dixon charged his jump. We wiped the charge off the database, and changed the owner of your Saab to some bogus name out of Dallas. There's no way to connect either you or Dixon back to the school which, incidentally, burned to the ground. But the press knows about the bomb threat, and they're connecting it back to the bombings at the airport.

They're blaming in on Angel Eyes."

"Angel Eyes," Conway said.

"That's right, the press is using that name," Rombardo said.

"I don't know how they found out about the name, but the story's gone national. They're calling it a terrorist attack. This story… it's taking on a life of its own. You know how it is. The problem is that we're not equipped to deal with this. Technically, we don't even exist."

"Where's Dixon?"

"Disappeared like the rest of them. And before you ask, yes, we checked. His body hasn't turned up. As for the suit… well, that's gone too."

If what Rombardo was saying was true, that meant that Harring and his Hazard Team hadn't intercepted Angel Eyes's men. But there was no way to know not unless Conway called Bouchard.

Rombardo scratched the back of his head. His small fingers were swollen, his eyes puffy from lack of sleep.

"Look, Steve, I don't want to overwhelm you. You're tired, you need your rest. I'm here to let you know that you're protected. You're not going to take the fall."

"The fall?"

"If I wasn't on your team, the Austin police would be hauling your ass down to the station for questioning. When they brought you in, your clothes were covered in blood. I confiscated them and had them destroyed you don't want the DNA tests to come back and say that the blood on your clothes matches the blood of the charred bodies they found at the skydiving school. Same thing with the gun. Your Clock, the one you had hidden in your car, they used it to execute the people at the skydiving school. We found the gun and a bag full of wallets and money belonging to these people in the back seat of the stolen Pathfinder. Don't worry, I took care of it. You're in the clear."

Rombardo's voice and body language seemed so honest and natural that Conway wanted to believe him.

Conway said, "How did I get out of the lab?"

"A fireman picked you up off the floor."

"Picked me up off the floor," Conway repeated, and felt a cold hard truth spring to life inside his chest.

"Several witnesses saw a man with a shaved head carrying you along with a fireman to the ambulance. Fortunately for you, the lab door was left open best way to feed the flames. Another minute or so and you would have become a real crispy critter."

Conway had been glued to the floor by the rubber foam; he couldn't have been just picked up.

Rombardo was lying. He wasn't from the IWAC group and he hadn't been sent here by Bouchard. Conway felt a cold sweat break over his body.

Smiling, Rombardo said, "So, what really went down inside the lab?"

He won't kill you here, Conway thought. He'll pump you for information first and then report back to Angel Eyes. Just play it cool and make him disappear, and then get on the horn to Bouchard.

The keypad with the nurse call button was lying just inches from Conway's hand. He didn't take his eyes of Rombardo.

"Steve?"

"What?"

"What happened inside the lab?"

"I don't know," Conway said and then thought, Too quick, I should have paused.

"You must remember something."

"I just woke up. My head… it feels like a fog."

"Well, take a minute or so and think it through. This is important."

Conway took a few minutes. He thought about Jonathan King's suspicious heart attack in the middle of the night. So many chemicals existed that could mimic a heart attack and then disappear in your blood. The autopsy report would never catch it. That's what those two dicks were saying in the air, remember? Inject him behind the ear so it looks like a heart attack.

"I can't remember," Conway said.

"What's the deal?"

"The deal?"

"Yeah, why are you being so evasive?"

"I've never met you before."

"I just told you who I was."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Rombardo's head tilted to the side, his eyes narrowing, his face quizzical. When he turned to put the coffee cup down on the tray, Conway grabbed the keypad, shoved his hand under the blanket and pressed the call button for the nurse.

Rombardo stood up, his knees cracking, and sat down on the bed next to Conway's waist.

"I think you're failing to grasp the reality of your situation here,"

Rombardo said, his tone low.

"You're supposed to be in our morgue looking like something left on the grill too long. Only you lucked out. You survived. Now what, exactly, do you think is going to happen next? You think, what, you're going to go back to sleep and when you wake up it's all going to be over? That you're going to walk out of here? Angel Eyes doesn't leave loose ends, Steve. He knows you're alive. You need me to help you. I need some answers. Now."

The door opened and the nurse walked in all bright and sunny.

"Everything okay, Mr. Conway?"

Conway didn't say anything, didn't take his eyes off Rombardo.

"Everything's fine, nurse," Rombardo said.

"Will you excuse us for a moment."

"You can stay right here," Conway said.

"Detective Rombardo is on his way out."

Rombardo took in a deep breath through his nose and sighed. Then he ran his tongue over his front teeth, making a sucking sound. He stood up.

"Nurse, do me a favor. Call the doctor and ask him to examine Mr.

Conway's head. I think he's suffered some serious brain damage."

Rombardo removed a business card from his shirt pocket. He placed it on Conway's chest and then leaned into his ear. Conway could smell the coffee and sour milk on the detective's breath.

"Call me when you find your brain," Rombardo whispered.

"But if I were you, I wouldn't take too much time. I have it on good authority that Angel Eyes and his boys are still in town. The next time you close your eyes might be your last."

Rombardo winked, straightened up, and sauntered out of the room.

Lunch was a dry tuna salad sandwich on rye bread served on a plate with a bag of chips, the obligatory soggy pickle, and a brownie so dry it crumbled like dust in his mouth. He ate it eagerly and washed the awful taste away with a Dr. Pepper. When he was done, he read the past three editions of the local Austin paper.

The airport explosions were being called "a random act of terror" generated by what was believed to be the elusive leader of a global terrorist unit, a man who counterterrorism experts from the CIA and FBI called Angel Eyes. Sources close to the investigation revealed that the random attack was done to "wake America up to their vulnerabilities," and that the FBI and CIA were in the process of exploring a number of different leads.

The papers didn't mention any specific reason for the attack, but compared it to Oklahoma. Without any specifics on Angel Eyes, the papers and media tried to keep interest in the story alive with bold, dramatic color photos and recorded footage of the airport carnage and close-up pictures of the terrified, shocked, and crying faces of the wounded and the lost. Personal profiles of the sixteen people who died from the explosion were written. None of the people mentioned were Delburn employees.