Дэвид Балдаччи - Long Road to Mercy

She had screwed up. Meeting Priest in public had seemed the safest route. But she had underestimated whomever they were up against. Her mistake might have cost both men their lives.

Blum interrupted her thoughts. “It takes some juice to get a road shut down, Agent Pine.”

“Yes it does.”

“Are you thinking that the FBI knows what’s going on? I mean that they know what happened last night, and they’re calling you off the case before you get hurt?”

“Or before I discover the truth.”

Blum shook her head, her features angry. “I’ve always been able to rely on the Bureau, even if I didn’t agree with everything it did. I mean, we’re the good guys.”

“I joined the FBI to do two things: protect good people and punish bad people. Pretty simple. But that makes things black and white.”

“And this situation is obviously not black and white,” said Blum. “So where does that leave us?”

“I can’t work this case within normal parameters.”

“Options are limited, then. What are we going to do?”

“ We ?” Pine shot her a glance. “No, that won’t be happening. If I do this and get canned and they find out you helped me, it’s over for you, too.”

“But I’m your secretary. It’s my job to assist you.”

“Carol, this is not in the normal course of your job. I’m talking about going off the grid. I can’t let you go down that road with me.”

“Why not? I’m certainly old enough to make my own decisions.”

“But it could be career suicide for you.”

“Well, I’ve actually been thinking about a job change. My husband divorced me so he could be with some floozy. My kids are all grown and living all over the place, except near me. I’m not really sure what to think about that, but I guess I’m at the age where I don’t let it bother me too much.”

“What were you thinking about doing?”

“Well, becoming a private detective. I mean, after all these decades at the Bureau, I’ve seen it all, from case files to postmortem and forensic reports. I’ve observed cases investigated well, and cases investigated deplorably. And hell, I’ve written enough reports that agents were supposed to write, to understand how things are put together. And held enough newbie agents’ hands while they tried to understand the Bureau’s eccentricities. And I listened to everything and remembered everything. And physically I’m perfect for the role. I mean look at me. No one would see me as threatening. And I can just listen and observe all I want.”

“I’m seeing a side of you I didn’t know existed, Ms. Blum.”

Blum gave her an incredulous look. “Well, it’s about time, Special Agent Pine. Frankly, I expected you to be a little faster on the uptake.”

Pine was combing out her hair and staring in the mirror of her bathroom.

She had showered and washed the blood off the wound near her temple. Her head still throbbed from the impact with the truck window and the effects of the concussive device.

She had covered the wound with a Band-Aid, and then let her dark hair cover it, and the bruising there.

But on the other side, she lifted her hair and stared at the scar from her other wound.

The one from long ago.

The permanent one. Courtesy of the man who had taken her sister.

It was dark outside now. Blum had driven Pine up to the Grand Canyon to pick up her truck, and both women had returned to the office and worked there for the rest of the day.

Pine glanced away from the reflection of the scar on her temple, took out her phone, and studied the image on the small screen. This was the digital sketch that Jennifer Yazzie had done for her. This was the image of the missing man, the imposter Ben Priest, at least according to the recollection of Mark Brennan.

There were facial recognition databases that the image could be run through, but if Pine accessed those platforms using her FBI passwords, they would know what she was doing.

And if Clint Dobbs was true to his word, she might no longer be an FBI agent. So, right now, this image, this lead, was no use to her, until she found a workaround. Which she intended to do as soon as possible.

She put her phone down and traced the scar with her finger.

A cracked skull had once lurked under this fissure.

A six-year-old with a cracked skull. That was a serious thing indeed, more so since she had lain all night, bloodied, battered, and unconscious with the cracked bone and bruised brain.

Yet Pine had never once complained about that. She had been the lucky one.

Mercy had not.

She wanted to know, for absolute certain, that Daniel James Tor had been the one who had taken her sister. Pine needed to know this, because it was apt to be the only closure on her sister’s disappearance that she would ever receive.

She had just undressed to get into bed when her phone rang.

It was Sam Kettler.

“Sorry to call so late,” he said.

“No, it’s fine. What’s up?”

“Just wondering if you had time for a beer?”

“I don’t think Tony’s is open now,” she said.

“I know. But I’m only about twenty minutes from your place and, well, I thought you might like to hang out for a bit. It’s a nice night.”

Pine didn’t answer. She was about to embark on a journey that might possibly be the beginning of the end of her career at the FBI.

Talk about lousy timing.

He said, “Hey, Atlee, it’s okay. Look, I was a knucklehead for calling out of the blue and so late, too. Don’t know what I was thinking. I’ll just—”

“No, it’s okay. Come on over. A beer sounds good right now.”

It actually does. And who knows when I’m going to get another chance?

“Hey, are you sure? I don’t want to pressure you into anything, and I sort of feel that I am.”

“You’ll come to find out that I’m sort of immune to pressure like that. But let’s drink in your Jeep. My place is sort of messy.”

“Oh, absolutely. I wasn’t thinking of inviting myself over like that. I thought we could just sit on the steps or something.”

She smiled. “Old-fashioned, I know.”

She gave him her address and put on shorts and a T-shirt. She kept watch out her window, and when she saw him drive in, she went downstairs without bothering to put shoes on. That turned out to have been a bad choice, since she had to hop across the asphalt because of the day’s heat retained there.

They sat in his open Jeep and cracked open two cold beers. The temperature was still around eighty at nearly eleven p.m.

“Damn, that is good,” she said, draining about half of her bottle.

He grinned and stared out the windshield. “Simple things in life, right?” Then he looked at her and frowned. “What happened there?”

He was pointing to the side of her face, near her temple, where her hair had fallen away when she turned.

She touched the Band-Aid there. “Just me being clumsy.”

“You don’t strike me as the clumsy type.”

“Yeah, well, you might be surprised. But, really, it’s nothing, Sam.”

He nodded and fidgeted.

She noted this and said, “What?”

His gaze on the steering wheel, he said, “There’s a... a concert tomorrow night in Phoenix. I switched to the day shift for it. It’s Santana. You interested?”

He looked over at her.

Pine felt very uncomfortable. “Um, thanks for the invitation. But I can’t make it. I’m sorry.”

He quickly looked away. “Hey, no sweat. Short notice. Don’t know what I was thinking.” He chuckled. “Always wanted to play guitar like Carlos. Me and a million other guys. Only problem is I can’t even hum without being off-key.”