Burning Bright (Peter Ash #2)(84)

When it dimmed again, it had acquired a pink tint.

“Blood on the lens,” said Shepard. He’d seen the effect before.

Through the fractured pink perspective of the broken windshield, they watched a new vehicle arrive and the black figure with the rifle and the medical boot slip inside the passenger door.

“Fuck me with a hot poker,” said Chip. He looked at Shepard. “Where the hell were you during all this? I thought you were hot on her trail.”

“I told you,” said Shepard, “to let me handle it. I had her locked down. Eight cameras at her house and a GPS beacon on the vehicle. I followed her on and off for most of the day trying to get a read on her security.”

“Maybe I’d have known that,” said Chip, his tone deliberately reasonable, “if you weren’t playing this so goddamn close to the vest. If you’d answer your fucking phone, you’d be in the loop on operations.”

Shepard hadn’t answered his phone because he was balancing his obligations to his other clients. There was a certain amount of overlap, conflicting requirements. Perhaps it was by design, he didn’t know. He didn’t have all the information. The primary client had always played a very deep game. Shepard rotated the possibilities in his mind as he waited for the salesman to get back to it.

It took him a minute. Chip shoved himself to his feet, stalked to the little bar, and poured himself a short tumbler of brown liquor from a heavy crystal decanter. He made a point of not offering one to Shepard. Then he turned, as if the thought had just occurred to him.

“If you had her locked,” Chip said, gesturing with his glass, “where the fuck were you when this shit went down?”

Shepard wasn’t going to admit he’d watched the whole thing from a neighbor’s yard. He’d wanted to see the girl’s protector in action. And it didn’t hurt to thin the ranks of Chip’s men. Shepard thought of it as tidying up in advance. It would make things easier, when the time came to clean house.

“I had other obligations,” he said. “With cameras on the house and the beacon on the car, I could pick her up any time I wanted. Until Bertram’s team got noticed. You can see it in the footage. Just one man. But a substantial threat.”

“A substantial threat?” asked Chip, eyebrows high, the drink forgotten in his hand. “That’s your professional opinion? A substantial fucking threat? Bert’s team was armed and armored, four trained killers, and he went through them like a hot knife.”

“Yes,” said Shepard. “Just like in California.”

Chip looked at him. “What the fuck is going on with you? Something’s out of whack here. It’s not like you to hold back. I know you’re not scared, ’cause I’ve never known you to actually get scared. As far as I can tell you don’t actually feel anything at all. So what the fuck is different today?”

Shepard didn’t want Chip to speculate about what might be different.

The man was far more than a salesman. Yes, Chip’s primary attributes were self-interest and greed, but he wouldn’t have succeeded in Iraq and leveraged himself into his current business without a great deal of insight and mental acuity. Chip was quite capable of making an intuitive leap.

So Shepard allowed Chip to see something else, something inside him that Shepard would ordinarily have kept hidden. It had the added credibility of partial truth.

“Ohhh,” Chip said, smiling wide. “I get it now. It’s the guy. He’s different. He’s not just another simple civilian contract, an insulin overdose or hit-and-run. You think he’s worthy of your skills. You’re flirting with him.”

Shepard didn’t respond. Configured his face in such a way as to allow the salesman to believe Shepard was annoyed. It served to reinforce the salesman’s conclusion.

“I always suspected you might be human,” said Chip. He drained his drink and set the tumbler down on the bar. “So where the fuck are they now?”

“The van stopped broadcasting twenty minutes ago,” said Shepard. “Last known location is south of downtown. Perhaps they found the beacon. Or parked the van in an underground structure. Or burned it to the frame like the Tahoe. It doesn’t matter. They’re gone.”

“What a clusterfuck,” said Chip.

The salesman wasn’t angry enough, thought Shepard. He had something planned.

“The other teams,” said Shepard. “Where are they?”

“On the way. They’ll be here day after tomorrow.” He waved Shepard out of his chair. “Move your ass,” he said. “Let me see what I can pull off these cameras. I still have some friends back East.”

Chip sat behind his desk and ran his fingers across the keyboard like a concert pianist.

Without taking his eyes off the screen, he said, “Go make yourself useful. See if you can find the van. And the next time you have a shot at this guy, you better fucking take it.”

The salesman definitely had something planned, thought Shepard.

He left Chip’s office, the door closing silently behind him.

It wasn’t quite time for tomatoes, he thought.

Not quite yet.





42





JUNE



June’s phone alarm woke her in the half-light of early morning. A warm spring wind blew hard off Puget Sound, and giant raindrops rattled the tent fly. She closed her eyes and snuggled deeper into her sleeping bag, wishing for another hour of sleep.