Burning Bright (Peter Ash #2)(67)

Shepard watched the tall man and the girl walk out of Nordstrom and through traffic to the green minivan. Now Shepard knew why they’d been in there so long. The man wore a crisp new black suit under an open black topcoat.

He looks good, thought Shepard. Although he could use a haircut.

The girl was light on her feet, like a dancer in hiking boots. The tall man, her protector, was moving better than he had on the hospital security video. Even with the medical boot on his left leg, his movements were fluid, his superb conditioning clearly evident.

Shepard was still amazed at the toughness of that nurse practitioner and the tired-eyed ER doctor with the crazy hair. They’d looked at his Homeland ID and pretended to be helpful and apologetic, but they hadn’t told him a thing. Patient confidentiality, federal law, of course you understand. Call the hospital attorney in the morning, now if you’ll excuse us, we have patients to attend to.

He was frustrated, but he wasn’t an animal. He wouldn’t hurt them just because they’d treated two injured patients. There were limits, even for Shepard.

And his face was all over their security system.

It occurred to him now that he might have gotten further without the government ID. Clearly some Oregonians liked to do things their own way. Maybe it had something to do with hippies and legal marijuana, he wasn’t sure. That was well outside his own experience. But he respected it. Shepard liked to do things his own way, too. Driving out of town, he found himself drawn to certain neighborhoods. The soil must be very good in Eugene. The yards had big gardens, overflowing with life.

Perhaps his trip to Oregon was another signal. Preparation for his next life.

The girl’s home base should have been extremely difficult to locate. Her social media made it clear that she lived primarily in Seattle, but there were remarkably few other available clues. Her bills went to a secure PO box, and the salesman’s technology people had been unable to find any accounts or tax information with another address. For an amateur, the girl had done a capable job of hiding.

But Chip’s client had already taken ownership of her laptop, which allowed the salesman to triangulate her cell modem’s brief ping. As long as her laptop remained on and in her possession, he could track the girl’s location in real time.

The fact that she’d stopped using the laptop might have been a problem, too, but Chip’s client had also provided her home address. The salesman, drawn to wealth and power like a moth to a flame, had bragged to Shepard about the depth of the client’s resources.

Shepard didn’t mention that he’d already had the information. Overall, he felt it was better for the salesman not to know the depth of Shepard’s own resources. The complexity of the situation would become clear to the salesman before long.

He had found the girl’s garage apartment a few minutes before she arrived home from a run in the rain. She wore a light jacket and baseball hat and running tights, and it was clear that the file photo and the security video had failed to capture something essential about her. The grace and strength, the sheer energy of the woman. Shepard felt something profound, watching her. She was captivating.

And she had poor situational awareness, not watching her surroundings, her earbuds blocking out all ambient sound. He could have taken her right then. But he didn’t.

He could have shot the tall man from forty yards while he was loading the van with what looked like camping gear, and taken the girl after.

But he hadn’t done that, either. Shepard had multiple clients, with multiple priorities. He was experiencing a conflict of interest. He was awaiting further information.

And there was something else. Something in the hospital security video, something about the girl and her protector, that he couldn’t quite pin down. He needed to learn more. He wanted to get closer.

So he followed them.

They drove from the girl’s apartment to a busy street, where they found a parking spot and walked a block to a coffee place with a black awning.

Coffee sounded good to Shepard, too.

He left his car at a hydrant and walked quickly to catch up.

Perhaps this was unwise. No, he knew it was unwise, getting this close, ten paces behind them on the sidewalk, now five, now following them into Caffe Ladro.

Shepard was highly attuned to the capacity for violence in others, and from this distance he could see it in the tall man like a phosphorous grenade on a moonless night, the killing he’d done.

The tall man was different from Shepard’s usual civilian targets. Not soft, not weak.

More like Shepard’s mirror image. A twin brother who’d taken a different path.

This wasn’t about gathering tactical information, not really.

Now Shepard was inside the crowded coffee shop, one step behind them in line, close enough to smell the girl’s shampoo. She spoke brightly to the tattooed person behind the register, placing their order while the tall man stood with his back to the counter and looked restlessly around the room. They stood close to each other, and from time to time she would glance up at him, would touch his hand with hers. They had some kind of personal relationship. Whoever he was, he was not just hired security. She was concerned about him.

Shepard wanted to know them somehow, the girl and the tall man both. How it was done, to walk through the world with another person. To have someone touch your hand, to have it mean something. He told himself it was research, for his retirement. Maybe that was it. Maybe it was something else. Another deep signal from within.