David Baldacci - Daylight

“Financial guy with lots of bucks.”

“And a new wife and a brand-new family. Not sure how much he’ll mourn his eldest child.”

The brothers gazed at each other, silently communicating something important to both.

Puller said, “Yeah, if I had died, Dad wouldn’t have even been able to process it. He doesn’t know he has two sons.”

“That’s okay, Junior, we do.”

“How soon can I get out of here? The doc didn’t really answer me when I asked last time.”

Robert didn’t look surprised, but he said, “Not anytime soon. You are out of the game, John. Pine is carrying the torch now, just like she told you earlier.”

“She can’t do this by herself. And this wasn’t even her case. She’s working on something personal. She’s only involved because she offered, and I accepted.”

“Don’t know what to tell you. From what I could see the lady is firmly committed to this. And also from what I’ve seen about the lady, I would not try to stop her.”

“She’s going to keep working this thing with no backup at all. That is not good, Bobby.”

“John, I can hang around for a bit, but I’m in uniform. I don’t get to call my own shots.”

“I thought computer geeks could work remotely.”

“This computer geek needs a super-secret SCIF to do his nerding,” replied Robert, referring to a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. “So I can’t just hop on my Mac and get to it.”

“Am I really stuck in this bed? They had me patched up and back in the fight in Afghanistan in no time. And those wounds were worse.”

“In case you weren’t aware, you actually have blood in those veins and you lost a lot of it. Plus the surgeon and the doctor said the round did some internal damage. They’ve got you so patched up you can’t even move your left arm. You’re immobile and for a good reason. You’re looking at a long rehab.”

“To get fully back, you mean?”

Robert dropped his gaze. “To . . . just get better, John.”

When he looked up his brother was staring dead at him.

“What are you not telling me?” said Puller.

“I’ve told you everything I know. You may make a full and complete recovery—”

“—but I may not.”

“Can you predict the future? Because that gift somehow missed me.”

“Good thing I shoot right-handed, then.”

“You’re not going to be shooting anything for the foreseeable future. Seriously, little brother, if you want a decent chance at getting all the way back, you have to follow doctor’s orders.”

Puller looked away. “You said you stopped at Driscoll?”

“What?”

Puller glanced at his brother. “Driscoll was low-hanging fruit.”

“I just wanted to find a contact to help you with the investigation.”

“Can you do another search, same sort of parameters, and see what else you get?”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“If Driscoll is involved in this in some way, what if he’s just the tip of the iceberg?”

CHAPTER

50

PINE SHADOWED THE MAN and took his photo when he turned around to cross an intersection.

Then he walked into an office building.

A government building. A federal government building.

Pine waited a few seconds and then stepped up to the door, peered through the glass, and then opened it. At the security checkpoint she flashed her badge and creds to the officer there. She watched as the man got on the elevator and the doors closed.

“Excuse me, but the guy who just came through here and got on that elevator?”

“Yes, what about him?” asked the officer, a woman in her forties with short brown hair and a friendly expression.

“I could have sworn he was an old friend of mine. Special Agent Simon King, used to operate out of Newark?”

“No, that’s Adam Gorman.”

“Is he FBI?”

“No, no, he’s head of security for Congresswoman Nora Franklin. She’s from an upstate district, but she has an office suite here she shares with some other politicos.”

“Franklin? I know that name. She’s a pretty big deal, right?” said Pine.

The woman smiled. “She’s the ranking member on the House Ways and Means Committee. They write the checks, so yeah, a pretty big deal, all right.”

“Is she in her office today?”

“Yes, she came in about twenty minutes ago.”

“Well, Gorman is a twin for my buddy King. Sorry to trouble you.”

“No problem. You have a good day.”

Pine turned and left. She walked halfway down the block and Googled Gorman.

She found out he was born in Austria and had been a police officer and then a member of military intelligence there. He had immigrated to the United States when he was twenty-nine. He was now forty-eight and had earned a master’s degree in political science from NYU. He had worked on political campaigns and briefly at a K Street lobbying operation in DC.

So a big-deal congresswoman had a former Austrian intelligence officer turned security chief who one night had masqueraded as a Trenton cop and murdered Jerome Blake.

And what do I do about that? It’s really my word against his. John didn’t get that good a look at him and is in a hospital bed. Jerome is dead and can’t say. But I’m betting Adam Gorman was the guy who met with Jerome at school that day. And that means he knew all about Jewel and the encounters in the penthouse, a fact reinforced by the man’s having just come out of the place.

She looked at her phone. She had Gorman’s photo and his image from her Google search. And the last time they had met, Peanut had given her his phone number. She texted him the article on Gorman along with the photo and an accompanying message. Then she walked up and down the street waiting for his reply.

Fifteen minutes later it popped up on her screen.

Yeah, that’s the dude.

Okay, at least it was confirmed in her mind. But it was still not enough. Peanut would not carry any weight with a prosecutor against a “respected” man like Gorman. And Pine really had no hard proof that he was the man who had shot Jerome, just a brief meeting in a dark alley under incredibly stressful conditions, or so would say the defense attorney.

She next Googled Nora Franklin. The face that popped up on the Wikipedia page was an attractive blond woman in her midforties. She had an impressive résumé. Born and raised in Colorado, she went to UVA undergrad, and law school at Duke. Her father, at seventy-three, was a long-serving and respected judge on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. After law school she had moved to New York City and worked for a small law firm specializing in employment law and representing mostly workers. Then she moved to upstate New York, and then ran for city council. After that she had run a congressional campaign and won on her first try.

Since then she had won five more terms in Congress and made a swift run up the ladder. Her being the ranking member on Ways and Means at a relatively young age had surprised some, the article said, but she had been a loyal foot soldier and impressed leadership with her skills and knowledge. If the House flipped in the next election, she was expected to become one of the youngest chairpersons of arguably the most powerful committee in Congress. She had traveled widely, the article said. She had married young, but it had ended in divorce. According to her official bio she had practiced law only a few years. Pine checked an online database that listed the net worths of members of Congress. She was surprised that Franklin was listed as having a net worth of over twenty million dollars. After practicing law for a short period and in a field that was not known for huge payoffs for attorneys?

So where the hell had that kind of money come from?