Jeffery Deaver - The Kill Room

“Did they hug?”

“Not really. They brushed cheeks. That was all. He tipped me and he tipped well, even though it’s included.”

“All right, let’s head back to Queens.”

He put the car in gear and made his way east through the dense rush-hour traffic. The time was around 7 p.m. As they plodded along she asked Farada, “Did you get any sense that he was being followed or watched? Did he feel uneasy? Did he act suspicious or paranoid?”

“Hm. Ah. I can say he was cautious. He looked around frequently. But there were never any specific concerns. Not like he said, ‘That red car is following me.’ He seemed like somebody who tried to be aware of his surroundings. I see that much. Businesspeople are that way. I think they must be nowadays.”

Sachs was frustrated. She’d learned nothing conclusive about the man’s sojourn in New York. Even more questions than answers now floated. And yet she couldn’t shake the sense of urgency, thinking of the STO naming Rashid as the next target.

We do know that NIOS’s going to kill him before Friday. And who’ll be the collateral damage then? His wife and children? Some passerby?…

They were on the Williamsburg Bridge when her phone rang.

“Fred, hi.”

“Hey, Amelia. Listen, gotta coupla things. Had our people look through SIGINT down in Venezuela. Snagged one of Moreno’s voice from ’bout a month ago. Might be relevant. He was saying, ‘Yes, May twenty-fourth, that’s right…disappearing into thin air. After that, it’ll be heaven.’”

The 24th was less than two weeks away. Did he mean he was planning some attack and he’d have to vanish, like Bin Laden?

“Any ideas about that?” Sachs asked.

“No, but we’re still checkin’.”

She told the agent what Farada had explained about this being Moreno’s last trip to New York and his mysterious meeting in the vicinity of ground zero.

“That’d fit,” Dellray said. “Yeah, yeah, could be he’s got something nasty in mind and is going to ground. Makes sense—’specially when you hear the other thing I’m about to tell you.”

“Go on.” Her notebook was on her lap, pen poised.

The agent said, “ ’Nother voice-call trap. Ten days before he died. Moreno was saying, ‘Can we find somebody to blow them up?’”

Sachs’s gut clenched.

Dellray continued, “The tech geeks think he mentioned the date May thirteen, along with Mexico.”

This was two days ago. She didn’t remember any incident but Mexico was largely a war zone, with so many drug-related attacks and killings that they often didn’t rate a mention on U.S. TV news. “I’m checking t’see if something happened then. Now, lastly—I said coupla things; I meant three. We got Moreno’s travel records. Ready?”

“Go ahead.”

The agent explained. “On May second Moreno flew from New York to Mexico City, maybe to plan for the bombing. Then the next day on to Nicaragua. The day after that to San José, Costa Rica. He stayed there for a few days and then flew to the Bahamas on the seventh, where—coupla days later—he had his run-in with the fine marksmanship of Mr. Don Bruns.”

Dellray added, “Some casual surveillance was conducted on him in Mexico City and Costa Rica, where he was spotted outside the U.S. embassies. But there was no evidence that he was lookin’ like any kinda threat, so your boy was never detained.”

“Thanks, Fred. That’s helpful.”

“I’ll keep at it, Amelia. But gotta tell you, I ain’t got oodles of time.”

“Why, you have something big going down?”

“Yup. I’m changing my name and moving to Canada. Joining the Mounted Police.”

Click.

She didn’t laugh. His comment had struck too close to home; this case was like unstable explosives.

A half hour later Tash Farada parked in his driveway and they got out. He struck a certain pose, unmistakable.

“How much do I owe you?” Sachs asked.

“Well, normally we charge from garage to garage, which isn’t fair for you. Since the car was here. So it will be from the time we left to the time we arrived.” A look at his watch. “We left at four twelve and we’ve now returned now at seven thirty-eight.”

Well, that’s some precision.

“For you, I will round downward. Four fifteen to seven thirty. That’s three hours and fifteen minutes.”

And that’s some speedy calculation.

“What’s the hourly rate?”

“That would be ninety dollars.”

“An hour?” she asked before remembering she’d added the qualifier with her prior question.

A smile. “That’s three hundred and eighty-two dollars and fifty cents.”

Shit, Sachs thought, she’d assumed it would be about a quarter of that. So, one more reason not to be a limo girl.

He added, “And of course…”

“I agreed to double it.”

“That is a grand total of seven hundred and sixty-five dollars.”

A sigh. “Will you give me one more ride?” Sachs asked.

“Well, if it won’t take too much time.” A nod toward the house. “Supper, you know.”

“Just to the nearest ATM.”

“Ah, yes, yes…And I won’t charge you for that trip at all!”

CHAPTER 20

IMAGINATION OR NOT?

No.

Cruising back into Manhattan, in the Torino Cobra, Sachs was sure she was being followed.

Glances into the rearview mirror as she exited the Midtown Tunnel suggested that a car—a light-colored vehicle whose make and model she couldn’t nail down—was following. Nondescript. Gray, white, silver. Here and on the streets leaving Farada’s house.

But how was this possible? The Overseer had assured them that NIOS, Metzger and the sniper didn’t know about the investigation.

And even if they did find out, how could they identify her personal car and locate it?

Yet Sachs had learned from a case she and Rhyme had run a few years ago that anyone with a rudimentary datamining system could track someone’s location pretty easily. Video images of tag numbers, facial recognition, phone calls and credit cards, GPS, E-ZPass transponders, RFID chips—and NIOS was sure to have much more than a basic setup. She’d been careful but perhaps not careful enough.

That was easily remedied.

Smiling, she executed a series of complicated, fast and extremely fun turns, most of which involved smoking tires and cracking sixty mph in second gear.

By the time she performed the last one and stabilized the marvelous Cobra, offering a sweet smile of apology to the Sikh driver she’d skidded around, she was convinced that she’d lost whatever tail might have been after her.

At least until datamining caught up with her again.

And even if this was surveillance did the tailer represent a true threat?

NIOS might want information about her and might try to derail or slow down the case but she could hardly see the government physically hurting an NYPD officer.

Unless the threat wasn’t from the government itself but an anger-driven psychotic who happened to be working for the government, using his position to play out some delusional dream of eliminating those who weren’t as patriotic as he liked.

Then too this threat might have nothing to do with Moreno. Amelia Sachs had helped put a lot of people in jail and none of them, presumably, was very pleased about that.

Sachs actually felt a shiver down her spine.

She parked just off Central Park West, on a cross street, and tossed the NYPD placard on the dash. Climbing out, Sachs tapped her Glock grip to orient herself as to its exact position. Every nearby car, it seemed, was light-colored and nondescript and contained a shadowy driver looking her way. Every antenna, water tower and pipe atop every building in this stretch of the Upper West Side was a sniper, training the crosshairs of his telescopic sight on her back.