Cody McFadyen - Abandoned

“We’ll look into it.” I hold my hand out for Cooper to shake, which he does. “Thank you, sir. I appreciate the insight.”

“My pleasure. What’s your next move, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I’m going to talk to someone I know who could do exactly what our perp does without breaking a sweat.”

“He’s ex-military, I take it?”

“She’s an ex-something.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

Kirby comes into my office and takes a seat without being asked. She’s dressed in jeans, a white button-down shirt, and tennis shoes. She puts her feet up on the desk and smiles as she chews her gum.

“What’s up, boss woman?”

“I need the perspective of a professional.”

“Professional what?” she asks. I can’t tell if she’s teasing me. Kirby lives in a state of perpetual unconcern, and, as usual, the only hint of what lies inside her floats transiently through her eyes. A certain watchfulness. A certain deadness.

“Operative. Killer. Whatever.”

She grins. “Oh that. Sure, shoot.”

“We’re chasing a guy who could have had some training. It’s just a theory, but I’d appreciate your perspective.” A hint of interest. “Tell me about him.”

I brief her on Dali. Kirby is technically a civilian, but I imagine there are times in the past that she’s had a security clearance higher than anything I’ll ever see. She asks no questions throughout, just listens, intent. When I finish, she leans her head back and stares at the ceiling, chewing her gum.

“Well,” she says finally, “I’d agree with your assessment that he might have had training. Smooth abduction in an urban environment, batting a thousand on not getting caught or noticed?” She nods. “That’s some highly effective activity. You could learn stuff like that in the Special Forces branches, though it’s always possible that he went directly into the private sector, like I did.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re really funny about women in those branches of the military. It’s the law, boss woman. No fems allowed. But I knew what I wanted to do from an early age, and if you’re really extra-special motivated to get that kind of training—the kidnap and interrogate and kill kind of training—there are places you can find it, for a price.”

“Like?”

“Central and South America. The Middle East. Israel. Shucks, right here in the good old USA. The CIA has a program or two, but you have to be a little bit too true-blue for my tastes.”

“Let’s say he did go the military route. How long does that take?”

She considers it. “Minimum of four years after joining, as an average. You have to be Mr. Perfect Soldier, be in tip-top shape, and pass various and sundry physical and psychological tests. Even then there’s no guarantee of placement.”

“Which branch would be most likely to prepare you for abductions?”

“Who knows? The truth is, it could be any one of them, depending on how they’re tasked. Not to mention that someone in the Green Berets, for example, could always be cherry-picked for recruitment into the CIA.” She grins. “It’s all one big happy family in the end. Common goals and all that cool stuff.”

I think about everything she’s told me, factoring it in with my current picture of Dali.

“We know he’s been operating for at least fifteen years, probably longer,” I muse. “If he joined the military before he started his current ‘career,’ he’d be … what? Forty-five?”

“If he was lucky.”

“The question is, did he decide to get trained so he could become a criminal or did the idea come after his training?”

“From personal experience, people like Mr. Nut Job and me tend to know what we are from an early age.”

I cock my head at her. “You think you’re the same?”

“Pish. There’s no way he’s as good as me.”

I smile. “There’s more difference than that.”

“Maybe, maybe not. How are you so sure?”

“Two reasons. One, I trust you with my daughter. Two, you’d never do something like what was done to Heather Hollister, an innocent, a civilian, a mother. You have limits, Kirby.”

She assesses me with those oft-dead eyes. “Once, down in South America,” she says, her voice low and reasonable, a talking-about-the-weather voice, “the team I was a part of was captured by a group of paramilitaries. I’d been doing recon prior to the attack and capture, so they didn’t get me. One guy stayed behind to guard their rear.” A wink. “His mistake! I reached out and touched him, just like the old phone commercials. I needed him to tell me where they were, but, gee, he was against the idea, soooo … I pulled out his teeth with pliers until he changed his mind.” She grins, and I force myself not to recoil. I’m disturbed less by what she’s saying than by the lack of madness I see in her eyes. She’s lucid now, she was lucid then; Kirby is entirely present in everything she does.

“He was a tough one; he held out through ten teeth. Marathon Man in spades. He told me what I needed and then I put a bullet in his head.” Her gaze goes distant. “I caught up with them and found out that they’d executed the rest of my team.” She shrugs. “So I executed them too. All ten of them. It took me five days, tracking them through the jungle. Picking them off at night, catching some while they were taking a pee pee, others while they were sleeping. One of them was yanking his little pud when I crept up behind him. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen. I let him finish and then I watched him beg and cry like a baby before I blew his brains out.”

She smiles, and it’s a normal Kirby-grin again. The blue eyes that had been so dead and empty just a second before sparkle with mischief.

I’ve sat in badly lit rooms looking across the table into the eyes of a man who strangled children in front of their mothers. I’ve watched psychotics have involuntary orgasms as they related the grimmest details of rape and murder to me. These people have a darkness to them, a terrible gravity that cannot be faked. Kirby is Kirby, I have no illusions about what she is, but I know what she is not.

I reach over and pat her cheek, once. “You may be twisted, beach bunny, but you’re not evil.”

A space of silence, a drop of time where, for just a split second, I think I see something akin to gratitude roll through her eyes. It’s there, maybe, then it’s gone. She grins and pretends to wipe sweat off her brow. “That’s a weight off my shoulders.” She stands up. “We done here, boss woman?”

“We’re done.”

“Catch you on the flip side,” and she’s gone, leaving something always strange but definitely not evil in her wake.

My cell phone rings.

“Barrett.”

“We got a bite,” Alan says.

“The guy’s screen name is Dali,” Alan says. “He approached Leo via private message.”

Dali types:

Do you hate your ex-wife?

It’s asked without preamble or introduction.

“What do I say?” Leo asks. His voice is low, hushed. I understand. Dali can’t hear us, but it’s a visceral thing.

“I don’t know,” Alan says. “Something’s off with this. It’s too soon. Smoky?”

Alan’s right. Everything that we’ve learned about Dali tells us that he’s careful, a planner, driven by pragmatic necessity, not desire. Leo’s been on this site for less than twenty-four hours. Why the rush?

“Maybe it was your story,” I say. “Hell. I don’t know. Take it slow. Answer him with a question.”

“Like what?”

“Trust your instincts,” Alan says. “Don’t sweat it, son. I’ll let you know if you start fucking up.”