Jeffery Deaver: The Devil's Teardrop

"Where are you?" she muttered. "Where?" She rocked slightly, feeling the pain of pressure on her hipbones. She was muscular but thin, with very little padding to protect her from the ground. She compulsively scanned the field once more though Geller's complex sensors would have picked up the unsub long before her blue-gray eyes could spot him.

"Hmm." C. P. Ardell, a heavy-set agent Lukas worked with sometimes, squeezed his earphone and listened. Nodded his bald, pale head. He glanced at Lukas. "That was Charlie position. Nobody's gone off the road in the woods."

Lukas grunted. So maybe she was wrong. She'd thought the unsub would come at the money from the west-through a row of trees a half mile away from the expressway. She believed that he'd be driving a Hummer or a Range Rover. Would snag one of the bags-sacrificing the other for the sake of expediency-and disappear back into the woods.

"Bravo position?" she asked.

"I'll check," said C. P., who worked undercover often because of his unfortunate resemblance to a Manassas drug cooker or a Hell's Angel charter member. He seemed to be the most patient of all the agents on the stakeout; he hadn't moved his 250-pound frame an inch since they'd been here. He made the call to the southernmost surveillance post.

"Nothing. Kids on a four-wheeler is all. Nobody older than twelve."

"Our people didn't chase 'em away, did they?" Lukas asked. "The kids?"

"Nup."

"Good. Make sure they don't."

More time passed. Hardy jotted notes. Geller typed on his keyboard. Cage fidgeted and C. P. did not.

"Your wife mad?" Lukas asked Cage. "You working the holiday?"

Cage shrugged. It was his favorite gesture. He had a whole vocabulary of shrugs. Cage was a senior agent at FBI headquarters and though his assignments took him all over the country he was usually primary on cases involving the District; he and Lukas worked together often. Along with Lukas's boss too, the special agent in charge of the Washington, D.C., field office. This week, though, SAC Ron Cohen happened to be in a Brazilian rainforest on his first vacation in six years and Lukas had stepped up to the case. Largely because of Cage's recommendation.

She felt bad for Cage and Geller and C. P., working a holiday. They had dates for tonight or wives. As for Len Hardy she was happy he was here; he had some pretty good reasons to keep himself busy on holidays and this was one of the reasons that she had welcomed him to the METSHOOT team.

Lukas herself had a comfortable home in Georgetown, a place filled with antique furniture, needlepoints and embroideries and quilts of her own design, an erratic wine collection, nearly five hundred books, more than a thousand CDs and her mixed-breed Labrador, Jean Luc. It was a very nice place to spend a holiday evening though in the three years she'd lived there Lukas had never once done so. Until her pager had signaled her ascension to the METSHOOT command she had planned to spend the night baby-sitting that Board of Education whistle-blower, Gary Moss, the one who'd broken the school construction kickback scandal. Moss had worn a wire and had picked up all sorts of good incriminating conversations. But his cover had been blown and the other day his house had been firebombed, his daughters nearly killed. Moss had sent his family to stay with relatives in North Carolina and he was spending the weekend in federal protection. Lukas had been in charge of his protection as well as handling the investigation into the firebombing. But then the Digger arrived and Moss was, at the moment, nothing more than a bored tenant in the very expensive apartment complex referred to among law enforcers as " Ninth Street "-FBI headquarters.

She now scanned the field again. No sign of the extortionist.

"He might be staking us out," a tactical agent crouched behind a tree said. "You want a perimeter sweep?"

"No."

"It's standard procedure," he persisted. "We could use five, six handoff cars. He'd never spot us."

"Too risky," she said.

"Uhm, you sure?"

"I'm sure."

Abrupt responses like this had earned Lukas a reputation in the Bureau for being arrogant. But she believed that arrogance is not necessarily a bad thing. It instills confidence in those who work for you. It also gets you noticed by your bosses.

Her eyes flickered as a voice crackled in her earphone, speaking her name.

"Go ahead," she said into the stalk mike, recognizing the voice of the deputy director of the Bureau.

"We've got a problem," he said.

She hated dramatics. "What?" she asked, not caring a bit about the abrasion in her voice.

The dep director said, "There was a hit-and-run near City Hall a little while ago. White male. He was killed. No ID on him. Nothing at all, just an apartment key-no address-and some money. The cop who responded'd heard about the extortion thing and, since it was near City Hall, thought there might be a connection."

She understood immediately. "They compared prints?" she asked. "His and the ones on the extortion note?"

"That's right. The dead guys the one who wrote the note, the shooter's partner."

Lukas remembered part of the note. It went something like:

If you kill me, he will keep killing.

Nothing can stop the Digger…

"You've got to find the shooter, Margaret," the deputy director said. There was a pause as, apparently, he looked at his watch. "You've got to find him in three hours."

Is it real? Parker Kincaid wondered.

Bending over the rectangle of paper, peering through his heavy, ten-power hand glass. Joan had been gone for several hours but the effect of her visit-the dismay-still lingered, trying though he was to lose himself in his work.

The letter he examined-on yellowing paper-was encased in a thin, strong poly sleeve but when he eased it closer to him he did so very carefully. The way you'd touch a baby's red, fat face. He adjusted the light and swooped in on the loop of the lowercase letter y.

Is it real?

It appeared to be real. But in his profession Parker Kincaid never put great stock in appearances.

He wanted badly to touch the document, to feel the rag paper, made with so little acid that it could last as long as steel. He wanted to feel the faint ridge of the iron-gallide ink, which, to his sensitive fingers, would seem as raised as braille. But he didn't dare take the paper from the sleeve; even the slightest oil from his hands would start to erode the thin letter. Which would be a disaster since it was worth perhaps $50,000.

If it was real.

Upstairs, Stephie was navigating Mario through his surreal universe. Robby was at Parker's feet, accompanied by Han Solo and Chewbacca. The basement study was a cozy place, paneled in teak, carpeted in forest-green pile. On the walls were framed documents-the less valuable items in Parker's collection. Letters from Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Bobby Kennedy, the Old West artist Charles Russell. Many others. On one wall was a rogues' gallery-forgeries Parker had come across in his work.

Parker's favorite wall, though, was the one opposite the stool he sat on. This wall contained his children's drawings and poems, going back over the past eight years. From scrawls and illegible block letters to samples of their cursive writing. He often paused in his work and looked at them. Doing so had given him the idea about writing a book on how handwriting mirrors children's development.

He now sat on the comfortable stool at an immaculate white examination table. The room was silent. Normally he'd have the radio on, listening to jazz or classical music. But there'd been a terrible shooting in the District and all the stations were having special reports on the slaughter. Parker didn't want Robby to hear the stories, especially after the boy's flashback to the Boatman.

He hunched over the letter, eagerly, the way a jeweler appraises a beautiful yellow stone, ready to declare it false if that's how he saw it but secretly hoping that it will turn out to be rare topaz.