Dust Up: A Thriller (10 page)

She shrugged. “Laura’s great. I like her a lot. But I kind of wish it was just you and me.”

I patted her on the knee and didn’t mention that she had invited her without asking me. Nola was a better person than I was. She might deny it, but we both knew it was true. Sometimes being such a good person had its drawbacks.

“I know,” she said, conceding my unspoken points.

“It’s just a few days,” I said.

She nodded. “What are you working on?”

“Looking over the Hartwell case file.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Are you supposed to take case files home?”

“Not really.” I told her about my day with Royce and Divock, which led to a conversation about my conversation with Suarez, which led back to what really happened at the Liberty Motel, or at least enough of it that I felt like I was no longer keeping anything important from her.

She chose to focus on the fact that I had been. “Doyle! I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about that yesterday.”

“I didn’t have a chance to tell you,” I said defensively—and disingenuously. “I didn’t want to get into it in front of Laura. And you weren’t in any shape for a serious conversation.”

She scowled at me, then softened.

“Besides,” I added. “You were having fun.”

She shook her head at me, then climbed onto the bed and snuggled up. “I guess. But we agreed you’d tell me when anything dangerous like that happens.”

“Sorry.” I took a deep breath.

“So why did she come to you?”

“Same reason he did, I guess.”

“And why’s that?”

“Ron thought he was onto something big, something dangerous, and he needed to do something about it. He was a whistle-blower. His bosses seemed like they were in on it. And the relevant authorities were all cozy with his bosses.”

“So he came to you?”

“They figured they could trust me because I’d tangled with those types before. They hoped I’d be able to tell them who to go to.”

She looked up at me. “And who’s that?”

“I’m still trying to figure that out.”

She was quiet for a moment. “And Miriam thinks this is why they killed Ron?”

I nodded.

“It would be a lot of money at stake,” she said quietly, as if that explained it all. Which it did. “So wait a second. These guys you’ve been babysitting the last few days, aren’t they from Energene, as well?”

“Yup. I was hoping to get some information out of them, but they seem pretty useless.”

“You need to be careful, Doyle.”

“I’m always careful.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

We lay there for a few minutes, and her breathing started to even out. “Don’t stay up too late,” she mumbled.

I kissed her good night, and then she was asleep.

I was tired too, but I wanted to go over the case file one more time, and I needed to jot down some ideas from what I’d read so far. I also wanted another look at the crime scene. Luckily, it was right out front.

I eased out of bed and went to the front door, out onto the front steps. I tried my best to picture it—Ron banging on the door, where the shooter must have been, Miriam’s car when I saw it, where it must have come from. For ten minutes I stood there, figuring the angles. But no matter how I pictured it, I couldn’t make it work.

27

I woke up ravenous and tantalized by the smell of bacon. It was early, but I could tell the house was empty. I put on my robe just in case and made my way to the kitchen. There was coffee in the machine and a note from Nola folded on the table.

My eyes were still bleary, but I opened it up. “Laura and I went to yoga,” it read. I put it down and laughed. The night of the wine bottles had made a bigger impression that I’d thought—they were in full-on New Year’s resolution mode.

A text came in from Royce. “Have to cancel today. Something came up.”

“Asshole,” I muttered, even as I smiled at the development.

My stomach grumbled as I poured myself a coffee, then I spotted the bacon, a whole plate of it on the counter, and the grumble became a roar.

I folded a piece into my mouth. It was perfect—crisp but not dry, still slightly warm. I sat at the kitchen table and skimmed the case file, then got out my notebook and skimmed that, too.

Ron Hartwell believed I could help him. Maybe I could find his killer and exonerate his wife. That wasn’t the help he’d originally had in mind, but it was something.

I ate another piece of bacon, then turned to a clean page and wrote across the top “federal connections” on one side, and “relevant agencies” on the other. In the first column, I listed the federal agencies I’d worked with at one point or another, where I knew at least one person:

DEA

ATF

HOMELAND (?)

FBI (?)

Whatever Ron and Miriam suspected had something to do with food, health, science, maybe trade, so in the second column, I wrote:

USDA

FDA

FTC

CONSUMER PROTECTION

CDC (?)

The lack of any overlap was striking. I’d met a couple of people from CDC back in Dunston, but I didn’t know them well enough to trust them with something like this.

FBI was the closest to any relevance, but I had more enemies there than friends and no one I could really trust. Except Danny, and he didn’t count.

I ate some more bacon while I tried to coax the lists into overlapping, but it was useless. By the time I gave up, I felt physically sick. At first I thought it was a reaction to the situation. Then I realized I had eaten the entire plate of bacon. As I poured myself another coffee, I saw that Nola’s note continued below the fold. Then I felt even sicker.

Laura and I went to yoga

then to get fish for chowder

do not eat the bacon!!

That last line was underlined three times. Beneath it was a pretty decent drawing of a piece of bacon with a circle around it and a line through it.

Crap.

I called Nola, hoping to reach her before she left the market so she could get more bacon, and so she wouldn’t still be mad at me by the time she got home. But as I waited for her to pick up, I heard a buzzing sound and saw her phone sitting on the coffee table.

I downed my coffee, grabbed my keys, and hurried out the door. I needed to get some replacement bacon at the deli and cook it before they returned.

I was halfway down the block when a black Dodge Charger pulled up next to me. The driver’s window slid down and a guy I didn’t know said, “Do you want to talk to Miriam Hartwell?”

If I’d been unsure about getting into Miriam’s car, I was even less sure about getting into this guy’s. When I paused, instead of threatening to drive off, he said, “She wants to tell you the rest of her story before she disappears.”

“Where is she?”

“Someplace safe. But she won’t be there long. I can take you there, but we need to go now.”

He was in his late thirties, short blond hair. Good-looking, but not so much you’d hold it against him. Hard around the edges, like he’d seen some action, but he didn’t scream active military, and he didn’t have that douchey, private-army vibe. “Who are you?”

“A friend. A friend without a lot of time to waste.”

If he’d wanted to kill me, he could have shot me on my front steps, like someone had shot Ron Hartwell.

For some reason, I trusted him, and not just because he wasn’t shooting me. Most people didn’t want to shoot me until they’d known me for a little while.

I hooked my thumb toward the front door. “Let me leave a note for my girlfriend.”

He shook his head. “You can call her later.”

I frowned and raised an eyebrow.

“That’s how it has to be.”

I looked back at the house one more time. Then I got in the car.

28

For the second time in just a few days I was being driven by someone I didn’t know to a place I didn’t know. I didn’t like it.

“David Sable,” he said, reaching out his hand.

“Doyle Carrick,” I said, shaking it.

He smiled. “I know.”

Okay, maybe a tiny bit douchey. Or maybe I just didn’t like him knowing more than I did and not sharing.

I didn’t want to keep asking questions and being put off, so I kept them to myself. But my curiosity surged as we turned onto 95 South and even more when we left it, curving between the marshy banks of the Delaware and the back of Philadelphia International Airport.

“The airport?” I laughed as we pulled up to a back gate. “You’ve got to be kidding me. I need to get to work. I’m late as it is. Where the hell are we going?”

“Can’t tell. But we’re hoping you’ll come. Miriam is hoping you’ll come.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

He smiled. “People who care about the same things you do.”

“And what’s that?”

“Making sure powerful people don’t get away with doing bad things.”

“I need to call my girlfriend, tell her where I am.”

He shook his head. “Sorry.”

“I need to at least let her know I’m okay.” And apologize for eating the bacon.

We were driving toward a line of airplanes on the tarmac. He sighed. “Okay,” he said, keeping one eye on me as I called Nola.

“Doyle!” she exclaimed. “You ate the bacon!”

“I know. Sorry. I was going to get more, but … something came up.”

I could hear the beginnings of an exasperated sigh, then it was cut short. “Wait, are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I just … something came up, and I have to deal with it. I can’t tell you any more than that.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes. Don’t be mad about the bacon.”

Sable glanced at me and then looked away.

“I’m not,” she said. “Keep in touch, okay? Let me know what’s going on.”

“I will. Love you, babe.”

“Love you too. Be careful out there.” She already sounded far away.

“Always.”

I tucked away my phone as we pulled up to a shiny, twin-engine turboprop, maybe forty feet long. The hatch was open.

I followed Sable up the steps, and as soon as we were inside, the engine started. The interior was plush but tight, filled by four roomy leather seats and a couple of foldout tables.

Sable sat in one of the seats and said, “Buckle up.”

“Where are we going?”

“I’ll tell you once we’re in the air.”

29

The plane eased forward and picked up speed. I couldn’t help thinking that none of my friends had the kind of money for a private plane.

But my enemies did.

I reminded myself that if Energene or anyone else wanted me dead, there were plenty of ways to kill me that didn’t require a private plane.

We climbed steeply for ten minutes, and as we leveled off, Sable turned to me and said, “Florida. That’s where we’re headed. We have Miriam in a safe place, just for the moment.”

“You’ve got a private plane and a safe house. What do you need with me?”

He smiled, acknowledging the point. “You’ll have to ask Miriam.”

The door to the cockpit opened, and a guy came out wearing jeans and boots and an open yellow oxford shirt over a white tee. His face looked anywhere from a sprightly mid-sixties to a haggard forty-five. I guessed around fifty, with a medium dose of haggard. His eyes were gray, tired but intense.

He and Sable exchanged a nod, then he turned to me. “You’re Carrick,” he said as he walked over to a cooler strapped down behind the seats. He took out a plastic-wrapped sandwich and a bottle of orange juice. “I’m Charlie. The pilot.” He clamped the juice against his ribs with his elbow while he opened the sandwich and took a bite.

“Good to meet you,” I said.

He nodded and went back into the cockpit.

Sable leaned forward, his eyes serious. “The people after Miriam are probably the same people who killed Ron. We can’t risk them finding out where she is or what she’s doing. That’s why all the secrecy.” He sat back. “We won’t be gone long. You’ll be home in time for dinner.”

“Who’s paying for all this? Who are you working for?”

He studied my face, like he was trying to decide how much to tell me and how much of it should be the truth. “We know what you did in Dunston. Martha’s Vineyard too.”

“What are you talking about?”

He smiled. “You made some powerful enemies, right? Well, you made a few friends too. Friends who want the same thing you want.”

He kept saying that. “And what is it that you think I want?” I wanted to turn the plane around, go home, and get into bed with Nola. I hoped that wasn’t what he meant.

“You want to see that when bad people do bad things, they don’t get away with it.”

“Everybody wants that.”

He laughed. “No, they don’t. The bad guys don’t. Or the people making money off the bad guys. Or the people who think the bad guys are a necessary evil.” He cocked his head. “Do you like being a cop?”

He asked like it was a choice, like it wasn’t simply part of me. “It has its moments. I wouldn’t mind a slightly lower bullshit-to-accomplishment ratio, but as I understand it, that’s a problem with most jobs.”

He laughed at that.

“How about you?” I asked. “Do you like being a … Actually, what the hell are you?”

He laughed again. “Do you know the name Gregory Mikel, of the Mikel Group?”

It took me a second to realize I did, then another to realize how. “The billionaire?”

He nodded. “I work for him.”

“Gun for hire?”

His smile flattened out. “Sort of. Mikel has a vast business empire, but he also underwrites a group called Beta Librae. We work quietly to try to counter some of the damage being done by his fellow billionaires and the corporations they control.”

“So he’s a good-guy rich guy?”

“Something like that.”

“And I’m sure he’s never strayed from the straight and narrow while accumulating his billions.”

He sat back. “I didn’t say that. And he hasn’t lost the billions he’s made, so I don’t think he’s undermining his own interests. But he’s a good guy. He’s uniquely placed and trying to do the right thing. And he’s never asked me to do anything I disagreed with.”

“Helping Miriam Hartwell flee prosecution is doing the right thing?”