The Professionals (27 page)

Pender felt his thoughts swim in and out of focus. Maybe they hadn’t screwed up, he thought. Maybe someone spotted Marie outside Beneteau’s place and that’s all they’ve got, a little bit of circumstantial evidence putting her at the scene of the crime. Pender felt better for a minute, but he couldn’t let the notion survive. They’re onto us, he thought. We’ve got to get Marie out of the mix and then get out of the country.

And what if we can’t get Marie out, the pessimist in him wanted to know. What if we never see her again? Can you walk away before it’s too late? Can you let her take the weight for the team and retire without her?

A professional would walk, he knew. A professional would be on a
plane right now, headed for a sandy beach and a hefty international wire transfer and a life of relaxation and privacy. A professional would have cut loose days ago.

So what’s stopping us from running, he thought. What’s keeping us from switching off to a private airfield, chartering a plane, and flying to South America?

Money, for starters. Money in the short term and money in the long term. Short term, they were sitting on a little more than three grand, and that had to last a week. Pender wondered how much their hypothetical Macon doctor would want, and three grand, he figured, was the absolute minimum.

Even if they got Mouse fixed and got out of the country, Pender didn’t figure on his having enough cash socked away just yet. He didn’t know the exact number, but he estimated he probably had around half a million saved up in Mouse’s offshore accounts. With Marie’s share, that meant about a million. He’d figured two would do them for retirement, so that left them a million short, and their work prospects, Pender knew, were diminishing rapidly.

Sawyer looked over from the passenger seat. “Everything all right, boss?”

“Yeah.” Pender shook his head, let the numbers vanish. “Everything’s fine.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Money,” he said. “We’re going to need some real quick. We gotta get Mouse fixed up and Marie sprung, and even with everything in the offshore accounts, I don’t know if we have enough to disappear on.”

“You’re thinking we should pull more jobs?”

Pender frowned. “I don’t know. This net is closing fast.”

“Yeah.”

“We’re going to want to get the hell out of here once we get Marie back onboard. But where does that leave us financially?”

Sawyer stared out at the road. “We’ll figure out something,” he said. “We’ll live frugally. Maybe we find jobs at a tropical McDonald’s. We’ll be all right. We get out of here, we’ll be all right.”

Pender opened his mouth to reply, but couldn’t figure a decent answer. He let it sit for a couple minutes, letting the road hypnotize him. Frugally, he thought. What happened to the Dream?

Then Tiffany leaned forward and tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey,” she said. “You said you guys need money? Maybe I can help.”

S
o,” said Windermere. “When’s the last time you talked to your wife?”

Stevens put down his fork and stared across the table at her, trying to think. “I guess it was back in Minnesota,” he said. “Just before we went to Seattle.”

They were in a steak house near the hotel in Jacksonville, dining once again on the Federal government’s dime. I could get used to this, Stevens thought. It almost makes up for all the flying around.

Windermere chewed her steak. “Your wife doesn’t know you’re in Florida?”

Stevens shrugged, smiled sheepishly. “I guess I should call her, huh?” He took a long pull from his beer, looked across the table at Windermere, watched her cut another piece of steak. He suddenly felt guilty about Nancy. He hadn’t given her much thought since the case started to turn.

“If it makes you feel better,” said Windermere, “I haven’t talked to Mark in a couple days, either.”

“There’s so much going on,” Stevens said. “It’s just tough to find time.”

He’d meant to call Nancy today, before the McAllister girl started
puking her guts out in the interrogation room. They’d gotten nothing from the interview except a good look at the girl’s lunch, and from the looks of things it was going to take the hard sell to convince her to stop puking and cooperate.

Wendy Gallant, however, had been a little more productive.

She was waiting outside the room when Windermere and Stevens exited, the rank smell of vomit behind them. “My God,” she said, gagging. “What the hell did you do?”

“It was Stevens,” said Windermere. “He has that effect on women.”

“Rejected, huh?” Gallant winked at Stevens. “I’ve got something might cheer you up.”

They followed Gallant into her office, a private room with a window overlooking the parking lot and a highway beyond. “I see you got one of these office offices,” said Windermere. “They told me I’d get something like this in Minnesota.”

“And?”

“Got me a nice little cubicle instead. Shit.”

“Ha,” said Gallant. “You come back to Florida, we’ll hook you up.”

“Uh-huh.” Windermere shook her head. “I fell for that before. What’s up?”

Gallant flashed another smile. “Miami’s up. We found that orange Trans Am on a side road in Hollywood. Anonymous tip.”

“Prints?”

“No prints. Whole car was wiped. But it was parked five or six blocks from a street full of used-car dealerships. Figure someone in the neighborhood must have sold them a new car.”

“Try running the aliases through the DMV,” said Stevens. “See if anybody registered a car under any of those names in the last few days.”

“Will do,” said Gallant. “We’ll canvass the dealers, too. Put the fear of God in them. That’s not all, though.”

“No?”

“You heard about those kids getting looked up in some Hollywood fleabag motel, right?”

“Yeah,” said Stevens. Vance had filled them in. “Trooper let them go because he didn’t have a warrant, right?”

“That’s right. The girl he talked to was on a power trip. Some hot little blonde with a rich daddy. Anyway, Miami Police got a call earlier today from a girl on South Beach, girl named, let me see, Haley Whittaker. Rich girl, pretty girl—but she’s a brunette.”

“Hair dye?” said Windermere.

“Not quite. She was calling in because her hot little blond friend had gone missing. Disappeared a few days ago. Haley figured her friend was just off with some guy somewhere, but they were supposed to head back up to Princeton today and the girl hadn’t turned up.”

“No shit,” said Windermere. “So what do we know?”

“The blonde is Tiffany Prentice. Daughter of Andrew Prentice, who is apparently some big-shot investment banker. Anyway, the girl is rich and she’s blond and she’s missing.”

“Parents know?” Stevens asked.

“Not yet,” said Gallant. “Family’s divorced, Mom’s AWOL somewhere in California. We’re trying to get in touch with the father now, but he’s a busy son of a bitch. I don’t think this girl had much in the way of parental guidance.”

“Let’s find Daddy,” said Stevens. “If we can get him involved, we get monster publicity. Those kids won’t breathe without a witness phoning it in.”

“Hot damn,” said Windermere. “I love it when you talk like that.”

“Those kids want to stay under the radar so bad,” said Stevens, “let’s shine a spotlight up their asses.”

They’d spent the rest of the day chasing leads on Andrew Prentice and the Hollywood car dealerships, and now, after an afternoon of futility, Stevens stared across the table at Windermere and felt guilty about Nancy some more. Tried to imagine a career like this, making a relationship work through the phone lines.

He cut a piece of his steak. “You haven’t talked to Mark, either, huh?”

Windermere frowned, looked down at her meal. “I called him in Seattle, I guess. We kind of left it on a bad note.”

“Yeah?”

“He’s stressed,” she said. “He’s looking for work. And he hates that I’m on the road so much.”

“He shouldn’t have shacked up with an FBI agent,” said Stevens.

“He liked it at first. The whole FBI thing. He found it exciting. He liked telling people he was dating some cute federal agent. Like it made him a big shot or something.” She looked up and caught his eye. “I know I should feel guilty about being away for so long. I should be hoping this case will end so I can go home and be with my boyfriend. But honestly, Stevens? I don’t feel guilty at all.”

Stevens took another bite. She was right, he realized. He felt the same way.

“I’m
enjoying
this case,” said Windermere. “I mean, most of the time I’m working little bullshit files. If I’m lucky, I see a bank robbery. This is a career case, Stevens. You know that. Mark has to know that.”

“This is a blockbuster,” said Stevens. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“I mean, this is kind of why you join the FBI, right? Or the BCA? This is professional stuff. You hear guys talk about how they didn’t want a case to end and you think, that’s stupid, why wouldn’t you want to solve a case?”

“But it doesn’t work like that.”

“When we crack this thing open, we’re back to drug deals and anonymous terrorist tips.” Windermere sighed. “Back to the cubicle. It’s fun, I guess, but this is
fun
. I just wish Mark could see that. I wish he could be happy for me.”

“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” said Stevens. “You’d still feel guilty even if he was your biggest cheerleader.”

“You think?”

“Sure,” he said, taking another sip of beer. “I’ve been enjoying myself, too. I guess now that you mention it, I
am
dreading this case coming to an end. And I bet if I told my wife how happy I am out here, she’d be happy for me, too. But that doesn’t make me feel any better when I think about her home alone.”

Windermere stared across the table at him, and he felt flushed, embarrassed
by his openness and the directness of her gaze. “What?” he said finally. “What are you looking at?”

“You think she thinks there’s something going on here?”

“What, between us? There’s nothing going on.”

“That never seems to stop Mark from thinking it.” She paused. “I guess it’s natural, maybe. Us being on the road so much.”

Stevens shrugged. “People do it.” He grinned at her. “Why? Are you falling in love?”

Windermere laughed. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Big-shot FBI agent falls for small-time state policeman? I admit it would maybe give my ego a boost.”

“You’re not small-time anymore, Stevens,” Windermere told him. “Like it or not, you’re one of us now.” She straightened. “Now, what the hell are we going to do about this girl?”

Stevens drained his beer, letting the case bring him back down to normal. In truth, he’d been wondering the same thing ever since they’d left the girl in the interrogation room. “You think she’s gonna flip? She seems pretty hardheaded.”

Windermere shrugged. “Put twenty-five years in front of her and see if she changes her mind.”

“Sure.”

“What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking even if she doesn’t flip, she’s still a good bargaining chip to have,” said Stevens. “Those kids aren’t just going to abandon one of their own. If they do, they’re a lot stronger than anyone I’ve ever met. Those kids will come back for that girl, somehow. We just have to hold on to her, and they’ll turn up eventually.”

Windermere nodded. “Pender loves that girl.”

“He does.”

“They’re kids. They still believe in that stuff.”

“What,” said Stevens. “Love?”

Windermere shrugged. Shot him a half smile. Stevens was trying to think through a reply when Windermere stiffened suddenly. She felt around in her pockets and pulled out her cell phone. “Windermere. Hi,
Wendy.” She listened for a minute. “No kidding. Ryan Carew. Stevens is going to love it.”

She snapped the phone shut with a new grin on her face. “Florida state police got back to Wendy,” she said. “Guess who bought a used Dodge Durango in Hollywood, Florida, day before yesterday?”

“Don’t tell me,” said Stevens. “Ryan Carew.”

“You know it. Navy blue. Paid cash. We got plates and everything.” Windermere took a triumphant pull of beer. “I bet they were at the airport when security took down McAllister. Just nobody knew where to look.”

“We know now,” said Stevens. “Wendy put out the word?”

Windermere nodded. “No way those kids get far.”

“Right.” Stevens caught the waiter’s eye and motioned for the check. He stood. “I’ll get the paperwork going on McAllister’s extradition.”

“I’ll do the paperwork, Stevens,” said Windermere, pushing back from the table. “You go call your wife.”