Lethal (40 page)

“As kids go, yours is okay.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but found she couldn’t, and wound up merely nodding.

“And the football? It was a rotten thing to do. I’m sorry.”

Then he was gone, his shadow moving swiftly across the littered garage floor and slipping through a narrow opening in the corrugated tin door. The wheels squeaked on the rusty track as he rolled the door shut behind himself. She’d been left alone in the darkness.

And here she had remained for more than an hour now, sitting in a stolen car in an abandoned cavern of a building, her only company the mice she occasionally heard scratching through trash, her thoughts in turmoil.

She was worried about Emily and Tori. Coburn had allowed her to call the house. After she let the phone ring once and dialed again, Tori had answered, assured her that they had safely arrived and that all was well. But that had been hours ago. Something could have happened since then and she wouldn’t know about it.

She thought of Stan, and how worried for them he must be, and how bad she felt about turning his home inside out. For all his sternness, his affection for her and Emily was genuine. She didn’t doubt that for an instant.

Would he ever understand that what she had done,
she’d done strictly in order to preserve Eddie’s reputation? In the final analysis, wasn’t that much more important than saving a box of track-and-field medals from his school days?

But she feared Stan wouldn’t see it that way and would never forgive her for invading the sanctity of Eddie’s room. He would look upon her actions as a betrayal not only of him, but of Eddie and their marriage. The relationship with Stan would suffer irreparably.

And her thoughts frequently returned to Coburn and the last things he’d said to her. For him, what he’d said about Emily had been very sweet. His apologies for involving her in the first place, for ruining the football, were significant because he rarely explained or excused anything he did. When he’d apologized to Emily for making her cry, he’d done so clumsily.

It was a rotten thing to do
. It might not have been the most eloquent of apologies, but Honor didn’t question its sincerity. His eyes, their startling qualities emphasized even more by the makeshift camouflage on his face, had conveyed his regret as well as his words.
I’m sorry
. She believed he was.

His harsh childhood had made him cynical, and the things he’d seen and done while in service to his country had hardened his heart even more. He was often cruel, possibly because he’d witnessed how effective cruelty could be toward getting results. Whatever he said or did was unfiltered and straightforward because he knew that hesitation could be fatal. He didn’t worry about future regret because he didn’t expect to live to a ripe old age when one typically reexamined the pivotal decisions and actions of his life.

Everything he did, he did as though his life depended on it.

The way he did everything—ate, apologized… kissed—was like it was for the last time.

That thought brought Honor’s mental meandering to a complete standstill, and she experienced a jarring realization.

“Oh, God.” It was a whimper, spoken in the quietness, spoken from the heart.

Suddenly flying into motion, she pushed open the car door and scrambled out. She stumbled over debris in her path as she made her way toward the door of the garage. It took all her strength to push the heavy door along its unoiled track far enough to create a space that she could squeeze through, which she did, not even considering what dangers might be lurking beyond that door.

She paused for only a second to get her bearings, then struck out in a dead run in the direction of the railroad tracks.

Why hadn’t she realized it before now? Coburn’s instructions to her had been a farewell. He didn’t expect to return from this meeting with VanAllen, and in his own untutored and unsentimental way, he had been telling her goodbye.

He’d said all along that he didn’t expect to survive, and tonight he’d gone in her place, probably sacrificing himself to save her.

But his thinking was flawed. No one was going to shoot her. If The Bookkeeper believed she had something that would incriminate him, she wouldn’t be killed until he had discovered what that something was and had taken possession of it.

She was indispensable to the criminals the same way she was to Coburn, and Hamilton, and to the Department of Justice. What The Bookkeeper perceived her to know or to have was as good as a bulletproof vest.

But Coburn had no such protection.

She was his protection.

C
oburn?”

Coburn pressed the pistol more firmly against VanAllen’s neck. “Pleased to meet you.”

“I was expecting Mrs. Gillette.”

“She couldn’t make it.”

“Is she all right?”

“She’s fine. Just tied up at the moment.”

“That’s not funny.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be. I’m just letting you and the sharpshooters who’ve got me in their night vision sights know that if they kill me, Mrs. Gillette and the kid will stay perpetually lost.”

VanAllen gave a small shake of his head. “You made yourself clear to Hamilton, who made himself clear to me. There aren’t any sharpshooters.”

“Tell me another one.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Wireless mike? Are you talking for the benefit of everybody out there listening in?”

“No. You can search me if you don’t believe me.”

Coburn deftly stepped around VanAllen, but kept his pistol aimed at his head. When he came face-to-face with the man, he sized him up. Desk jockey. Unsure. Out of his league.

Threat to him, next to nil.

Dirty or clean? Coburn would guess he was honest, because he appeared not to have either the guts or the cunning to be on the take.

Which is why Coburn believed the man truly didn’t know about the sniper on the water tower over Coburn’s left shoulder at seven o’clock. Or the one in the caboose window at four o’clock. Or the one he’d spotted on the roof of the apartment complex three blocks away.

That shooter would have to be extremely good, and the angle was lousy, but it could be done, and after blowing Coburn’s head off, the bastard would have all the time in the world to get away.

Either VanAllen was really good at playing dumb, or he truly was in the dark, which was even more alarming.

“Where are Mrs. Gillette and the child?” he asked. “They’re my chief concern.”

“Mine, too. Which is why I’m here and she’s not.” Coburn lowered the pistol to his side.

VanAllen followed the motion, looking relieved that he was no longer staring into the bore. “You didn’t trust me?”

“No.”

“What reason have I given you not to?”

“None. I’d just hate to leave you out.”

“You mistrust everybody.”

“A life-preserving policy.”

VanAllen nervously wet his lips. “You can trust me, Mr. Coburn. I don’t want this fouled up any more than you do. Is Mrs. Gillette all right?”

“Yes, and I want to make damn certain she stays that way.”

“You believe she’s in danger?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Because she has incriminating information on The Bookkeeper?”

On the outside chance that VanAllen had lied about wearing a wireless mike, Coburn wasn’t about to answer that question. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to order the local P.D. to call off the manhunt for me. Like you, I’m an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in performance of my duty. I can’t have a bunch of trigger-happy yokels on my ass.”

“Crawford isn’t going to shrug off eight murders.”

“Homicide detective?”

“For the sheriff’s office. He’s investigating Fred Hawkins’s murder. He sort of inherited the warehouse murders when Fred—”

“I get the picture,” Coburn said, cutting him off. “Talk this Crawford into granting me a reprieve until I can bring Mrs. Gillette in safely. Then I’ll thoroughly brief him on the warehouse shootings and Fred Hawkins.”

“He won’t go for it.”

“Twist his arm.”

“Maybe if you gave me some exculpatory information that I could pass along—”

“Thanks, but no thanks. Your office leaks like a sieve and so does his.”

VanAllen sighed, looking worried. “It all relates to The Bookkeeper, right?”

“Right.”

“And it’s big?”

“Right again.”

“Can’t you tell me anything?”

“Can. Won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because if you were supposed to know, Hamilton would have already told you. He would have started by telling you about me.”

The man winced, as though it pained him to hear that. He also must have sensed Coburn’s resolve and decided that trying to bargain was pointless. “Okay, I’ll do my best with Crawford. What are you going to do?”

“Disappear. I’ll bring Mrs. Gillette in, but no one will be given notice. I’ll choose my time and place.”

“I’m not sure that’ll fly.”

“With who?”

“Hamilton. He said to tell you that time is up.”

“Hamilton can go fuck himself. Tell him I said so. Better yet, I’ll tell him myself. I’m still on the trail of something, and I intend to finish the job that he assigned me. If you need to go back to him with something, tell him that. Now, let’s get in the car.”

“What for?”

“We’re gonna make it look like I’m going peaceably.”

“Look like?” VanAllen glanced around, and again, Coburn thought that if he was faking his ignorance, he was good at it. “Look like to who?”

“To the snipers who’ve got me in their crosshairs.”

“Who would want to shoot you?”

Coburn frowned at him. “Come on, VanAllen. You
know who. And the only reason they haven’t taken me out already is because they still wouldn’t know where Honor Gillette is. You and I will get in the car and drive away.”

“Then what?”

“At some point between here and your office in Lafayette, I’ll get out. When you arrive, surprise! I’m no longer in the car with you. Whoever balks first is the person you arrest immediately, because that’s the person who had the snipers in place. Got it?”

VanAllen nodded, but Coburn hoped he felt more certainty than his nod demonstrated.

Coburn said, “Let’s go.”

VanAllen turned and walked to the driver’s side of the car and opened the door. The dome light came on, convincing Coburn yet again that the agent had no field experience. But he was glad of the light because it afforded him a check of the backseat. There was no one crouched between the seats.

He opened the passenger-side door and was about to get in when he sensed motion in his peripheral vision. He turned toward the train. A shadow streaked past the gap between two of the freight cars. Coburn dropped to look beneath the train and saw a pair of legs on the other side of it sprinting away. He started crawling in that direction and was almost under the train when a cell phone rang.

Coburn swiveled his head, caught VanAllen as he reached for the ringing telephone attached to his belt.

Coburn looked beneath the train and at the man fleeing from it.

Then to VanAllen, he shouted, “
No
!”

Honor was winded and her left side was cramping, but she continued to run at full tilt. She hadn’t thought the train
tracks were that far from the paint and body shop garage until she began covering the distance. Running in darkness over unfamiliar ground made it even more difficult.

This was an industrial area of town comprised of warehouses, machine shops, and small manufacturing plants, all of which had been deserted for the night. Twice she plunged down blind alleys and had to retrace her steps, which became slower the farther she ran.

Only once did she allow herself a few moments to try and catch her breath. She put her back to a crumbling brick wall that formed one side of an alley. She gulped air. She pressed both hands into her side to try and ease the cramp.

She didn’t linger there for long, however. Rats scuttled nearby. She couldn’t see the dog that snarled at her from behind a cyclone fence at the dark end of the alley, but the sound conjured up menacing images.