Max Collins - Executive Order

In fact, in this instance, he hoped Trevor would spot him, and also hoped he didn’t miss the guy if Trevor parked somewhere out of sight, the apartment building having no parking garage.

He got out the burner phone to text Evie that he didn’t know when he’d be home. She wouldn’t recognize the number, but she’d see his text: *A wn ts # Cs, J*, his personal shorthand for “answer when this number calls, Jerry.” The use of that shorthand would confirm it was him at the new number.

Evie was Evelyn Sullivan, the lovely brunette he’d met at a Georgetown bar a little over a year ago. Evie seemed the opposite of Carol, his ex-wife; this forty-something gal had a bawdy sense of humor and a go-with-the-flow attitude that included putting up with his weird work hours — all she ever asked was that she be kept in the loop. Not doing that had been a big factor in the breakup of his marriage.

As he waited, Bohannon sent his eyes up and down the street, which had been dead when he got here and still was. The apartment buildings had cars parked out front, and traffic was light. A couple was strolling at the other end of the block, and a dog across the street was barking at them. That was it for excitement.

Wishing Evie would call, he got out his tablet and went through the information he’d gathered on Secretary of the Interior Amanda Yellich. Her personal life was clean, her professional life exemplary, and the one thing he’d turned up was something of a happy accident.

Earlier in the day, he had visited Yellich’s condominium. The building’s doorman had told him the condo was empty, the Secretary’s things in storage in the basement waiting for some distant family member to claim them.

His FBI badge and a twenty had bought Bohannon ten minutes in the storage room with furniture, clothing, and boxes and boxes of books, the latter including a handwritten journal he almost missed. This he’d stuffed in his back waistband.

Bored in the Ford, he got out the journal and picked up where he’d left off. He took no pleasure out of paging through the dead woman’s private thoughts, which were frankly not terribly interesting much less revealing, and just cryptic enough to be irritating. One entry had caught his attention: JR hopeless case, still in love with his ex. Could JR be Joe Reeder, and was Reeder’s connection to the woman what sparked Rogers to send them digging into Yellich’s death?

Good God, was this shadow government Rogers imagined some offshoot of Reeder’s love life? Bohannon grunted a laugh.

Just then he came to an entry that made him sit up a little: My turn to sit out Camp David trip. Maybe I can kick back at home for a change .

So Amanda Yellich had been the designated survivor, left behind when the President and Vice President gathered with the cabinet at a single location. Now with Yellich dead, someone else would stay behind. Probably meant nothing, but the back of his neck was tingling — this was worth telling Miggie Altuve about.

He was about to send Mig a text when the phone vibrated — Evie was texting: *K*— okay. Quickly he switched screens and typed *AY not CD*and sent it to Miggie. He’d explain more fully as soon as he had a chance to call Evie and say that he’d be late, that in fact this case might tie him up for days.

That was when someone approached his window quickly, probably Ivanek.

Reeder and Rogers went over to Lawrence Morris, who was duct-taped in a chair on the kitchenette side of the big room; he wore a gray duct-tape strip over his mouth and a swath of black cloth over his eyes, the wire-frame glasses on the kitchen table nearby, his buy-two-for-the-price-of-one suit hardly rumpled.

Their guest appeared to still be out from the Mickey Finn that had been administered at the Mont Blanc bar by Reggie Wade, who watched nearby on another kitchen chair, looking loose-limbed in dark gray sweats.

“He really out?” Reeder asked.

Wade shrugged. “Could be. Johnnie Walker and roofies make one sweet cocktail.”

“Know anything that might bring him around?”

Another shrug. “Light a match behind his ear, maybe.”

A micro-expression passed over Morris’s face at the prospect, though with the blindfold, it was hard to be sure, his chin down, touching his chest.

“Well, let’s try this,” Reeder said, and ripped the duct tape gag off.

Their guest howled. It rang off the brick walls.

Reeder pulled around another chair. “That was your wake-up call, Lawrence.”

The man was breathing hard now, chin up, obviously awake. Reeder left the blindfold on the man.

Rogers, standing just beside Reeder, a hand on the back of his chair, said, “Joe — maybe we made a mistake grabbing him.”

“How so?”

“What if he doesn’t know anything? What if he’s too lowly a grunt for the other side to trade Nichols?” She was smiling at Reeder in a way that didn’t go at all with her tone.

“Good point,” Reeder said, voice solemn, smiling back. “That puts us in a bad place. I don’t want to end up with this son of a bitch on our hands.”

Reggie, amused, put plenty of nasty into his voice as he said, “That’s what they dig holes in the forest for, bossman.”

“I know things!”

Morris had joined the conversation.

“The only thing that really matters right now,” Reeder said, “is where our friend Anne Nichols is. Who has her, and what we have to do to get her back.”

“I don’t know anything about Agent Nichols.”

Rogers said, “You know she’s an agent.”

The blindfolded man nodded, still breathing hard. “But that’s all. I’m what you’d call... middle management. I don’t know every move. There are cells working various aspects.”

Reeder and Rogers exchanged looks.

She asked, “Aspects of what?”

Morris strained at his bonds, leaning forward. “I’m valuable to them! They’ll trade for me.”

Reeder asked, “Who will trade for you, Lawrence?”

Nothing.

Wade said, “You want me to get the shovel, bossman?”

“ The board! ” he blurted.

Immediately their captive’s face drained of blood; his mouth was hanging open like torn flesh. He had said too much and he knew it.

Reeder said, quietly, “What board would that be, Lawrence?”

“They’re... they’re powerful people. And they, they value me. That’s all you need to know.”

Reeder scooched his chair closer, the feet making a fingernails-on-a-blackboard scrape. He got the anonymous nine mil from his waistband and he racked the weapon, letting the mechanical music of it sing to the captive.

“You and your people,” Reeder said, “have sacrificed at least six Americans to whatever this cause is, and whoever these powerful people are. Do you think that hypothetical hole in the forest that my friend here mentioned couldn’t become very damn real?”

Lawrence shook his head. “I don’t... I don’t doubt you. But you people aren’t the only ones who can dig a hole.”

“Maybe not,” Reeder said pleasantly, “but we seem to be first in line.”

Reeder tore the blindfold off and the accountant blinked rapidly as his vision adjusted to the loft’s muted lighting. Morris’s eyes moved from face to face.

“You were saying, Lawrence,” Reeder said. “The board? Would that be a board of directors of some kind?”

Morris drew in a deep breath and let it out shudderingly. He was shaking. He seemed near tears. The information this minor figure had was clearly major.

Very quietly, he said, “A board of directors oversees certain activities.”

“That, Lawrence,” Reeder said, “is just a little vague.”