David Morrell - The naked edge

"Hard to guarantee."

"Not really."

"How do you figure?"

"If I had unlimited quantities of Oxy in exchange for giving the bad guys information…" Kim's fingers kept flying.

"Yes?"

"Would I be forced to humiliate myself by paying a cheesy drug dealer to stick that plastic bag to the bottom of that table? A lousy hundred pills? I can go through those in a week."

"She has a point," Jamie said.

"Or maybe that's part of her cover story."

"I'm into the files. Tell me what you need," Kim said.

"All the GPS assignments Carl Duran was on." He watched Kim intently, checking for a hesitation, a slight narrowing of her eyes, anything that might indicate that the name meant something to her. "He was fired three years ago."

"Does the first name have a C or a K?"

Cavanaugh still detected nothing to suggest that the name was important to her. No pursing of the lips. No tightening of the cheek muscles. In his experience, most dopers couldn't repress telltales when they were under stress.

"Sorry," Kim said. "Carl Duran doesn't have a file."

"Doesn't…? You must have made a mistake."

"When it involves computers, I don't make mistakes."

"But GPS always keeps records about former employees."

Kim tapped more keys. "Nope. No assignment list. No photograph. Nothing."

"Duran must have deleted it," Jamie said.

"Couldn't have. At least, not on his own. Only three people know the codes to get that far into the system. Gerald, Ali, and-"

"You," Cavanaugh said.

"Another nasty mark against me, right? But before you get judgmental again, watch this." Kim tapped more keys. "The purging was so thorough, I can't retrieve Duran's file. But I can search every assignment we've ever had and tell the computer to isolate any that Duran worked on." Kim touched a final key. "And here you are."

The printer came to life, flipping out pages.

"Plenty of trouble at GPS," Kim remarked.

"Yes," Cavanaugh agreed. "Frank Tamblyn's the latest casualty."

"I mean new trouble."

The phone rang.

"And I'm afraid," Kim said, "that this'll be more."

The agent made sure his weapons were in place before leaving his house: his.45 semiautomatic on his hip under his suit coat, his 9 millimeter subcompact in his ankle holster, his tactical folding knife clipped to a pocket concealed by his suit coat, and another knife on a breakaway chain around his neck under his shirt.

Uneasy, he glanced back toward his wife whose eyes were filled with equal unease as she held their baby boy.

"Meg, believe me, I'll be careful."

"But what about us? I don't mean to make it seem like the risk you're taking doesn't matter. But…" The baby squirmed under Meg's left arm. He had a slight fever. "What if whoever's doing this starts attacking…"

"Not just operators but their families?"

"I couldn't bear it if something happened to the baby."

"Stay inside. Keep the doors locked."

"I need to take Bobby to the doctor."

"There's a gun on the top shelf in the closet."

"Right. I'm going to hold the baby and blast away like in that John Woo movie you watched last night where the hero's in a nursery in a hospital with kids in his arms and guns in his hands. I kind of doubt it."

"Why don't you go to your mother's? I'm off this assignment in a week. When I get back from New Orleans, we'll take a vacation, someplace we feel safe."

"Wherever that is."

"Maybe I should take a pay cut and get a less dangerous job."

"If it was just the two of us…"

"What a joke. I'm a security specialist, but I can't make my wife feel secure."

Outside, a car beeped.

"The taxi. Listen, the client's got his jet waiting. He's obsessive about maintaining a schedule. I'll call you en route to the airport. We'll try to figure a way to handle this."

Meg nodded, unconvinced.

"Love you," he said.

"Love you."

As the taxi drove away, the agent glanced back at his house. He felt encumbered by his numerous weapons, but he knew agents who'd responded to the recent attacks by carrying three guns instead of his two.

He pulled out his cell phone and called headquarters for updates. While the phone on the other end buzzed, he continued gazing through the taxi's rear window toward the third house from the corner, the one with the bright flower boxes.

A huge fireball roared, chunks of walls, floors, windows, furniture, and bodies spewing from the churning core. The neighboring houses burst apart from the force of the blast, flaming debris hurtling across the street.

The taxi wavered to a stop. A brick struck the window, bursting through, but all the agent cared about was shoving the door open, lurching onto the street.

"Meg!" he shouted, running. "Bobby!" He felt the heat of the blaze but ignored it, charging closer. "No!" His shriek threatened to tear his vocal cords. "Nooo!"

Kim's knuckles whitened as she clutched the phone. All the while she listened, the shocked look on her face made Cavanaugh and Jamie remain absolutely still.

"Yes, Ali," she said. "Yes, I understand." She took a breath. "Nothing will help him, of course, but you're right-we need to do what we can."

She set down the phone.

"Another agent's been killed?" Cavanaugh asked.

"His family," Kim answered.

"His family?" Jamie looked stunned.

"Jim Driscoll. Word about what happened to his wife and child got around fast. Now our agents are calling their duty officers to say they're sick. We hear the same thing's happening with the U.S. Marshals, the Secret Service, and the Diplomatic Security Service. Only a few so far, but the trend's not hard to predict. Why should agents protect strangers when they themselves are the targets? And their loved ones. Those reporting for duty are either unmarried or else insisting on protection for their families while they're not home. They also want twice the operators they normally have on an assignment. The system's falling apart."

Kim nervously scratched her arms. Her brow glistened with sweat. Through the open bedroom door, she saw her gym bag on the living room floor. The bag of white pills was on it.

For a moment, Cavanaugh thought Kim would move toward it. His own move was toward the Global Protective Services information that she'd printed.

Continuing to stare toward the bag of pills, Kim asked, "You think this Carl Duran has something to do with what's happening?"

Cavanaugh took the pages from the printer's tray. He tried not to allow his emotions to tighten his voice. "At the moment, he's the only lead we have."

"Well, if you're willing to allow a doper to help-" Kim turned from staring at the pills. "-we'll all see if we notice anything."

They slid to the floor in the nearly bare room, their backs to a wall, reading the material: all of Carl Duran's assignments.

"Nothing about the clients he protected draws my attention," Cavanaugh noted.

"What about where the assignments took place?" Jamie asked.

They scanned the pages.

"Washington. New York. Paris. The same places I was usually assigned," Cavanaugh said. "Nothing suspicious."

"What about incidents on his assignments?" Kim asked. "I see there was something about a female rock star and an obsessive fan he stabbed."

"That's what got him fired."

"And here." Jamie pointed. "A client died on one of his assignments. A Russian oil tycoon."

"I heard about that, but I had no idea Carl worked on it." Frowning, Cavanaugh explained to Jamie, "It happened four years ago. The tycoon was in Rome, negotiating to lease oil tankers. He believed some of his Russian competitors were conspiring to have him killed. It turned out he was right. A sniper got him." Cavanaugh scanned another page. "Who was Carl's team leader?"