Deep Sleep (Devin Gray #1)(37)
They’d slap a few trackers on her Jeep and hope for the best. Same with the car belonging to Devin’s father, who lived in a very similar Falls Church neighborhood. Hope for the best pretty much described the overall surveillance strategy at this point, since it was in no way feasible for his team to physically stake out either of the houses.
Harvey and his wife, whom he’d just dropped at a nearby Enterprise Rent-A-Car office to acquire a new surveillance vehicle, would work with Rick Gentry to follow Marnie Young. They’d most likely take rooms at the Hampton Inn less than a half mile away and wait for her tracker to start moving. That way they wouldn’t run the risk of unknowingly parking in front of an FBI agent’s house and land them all in an interrogation room at the J. Edgar Hoover Building on the other side of the Potomac River.
Logan Walsh and Nathan Clark would take up residence in the Hilton Garden Inn a few miles north of here and follow the same procedure. Mason Gray lived a quarter of a mile from that hotel, on the other side of Falls Church. It was the best they could do with the limited resources and personnel available. The biggest flaw in the plan was the inability to watch either of these target locations. Devin Gray could drive right into Falls Church and hang out with Marnie or his dad at their houses, and there was nothing Rudd could do about it. It was a huge flaw, mitigated by the assumption that Devin Gray wouldn’t risk visiting either location now that he knew he was the target of an active surveillance effort. He wouldn’t know how thinly they were spread. In fact, he’d likely assume that the effort had been expanded since he’d so easily spoofed their first attempt to follow him.
Rudd felt so sure about this that he’d almost pushed back against CONTROL’s insistence that he keep Sandy Jones and Leo Ward at the stakeout across the street from Devin’s apartment. He was glad he hadn’t, because after thinking about it for a while, Rudd realized he would have made a fool out of himself. The decision to keep Sandy and Ward in place was a hedged bet by CONTROL against the assumption that Devin Gray would stay away from any obvious surveillance traps.
What if the discovery of the trackers hadn’t triggered some kind of deep conspiracy fears? What if he’d concluded that he was being ridiculous after a day or two of hiding from the deep state and returned to his apartment? Or that it had been the FBI that had tagged his vehicle? It wasn’t unreasonable to assume that the FBI might want to track his movements for a while. His mother had recently kidnapped an elderly man for no apparent reason and shot a sheriff’s deputy in cold blood.
Pinning the cop’s murder on Helen Gray had been a stroke of genius, even if he hadn’t been given a choice in the matter. The deputy had rolled up on them too damn quickly. He’d barely gotten to the intersection in time to keep the officer from spotting the van and the pickup truck, and possibly calling it in. Rudd’s fake FBI credentials had gotten him to stop before he’d driven far enough into the intersection to see the other vehicles. He’d been especially thankful that Helen Gray had left a few rounds in her pistol’s magazine.
If he’d been forced to use his own pistol, an astute forensics team might have cast some doubt on the initial conclusion drawn by the Tennessee State Police investigators, which might have prolonged or even deepened the FBI’s involvement. Never a good thing when you were nearing retirement.
Rudd stayed just below the speed limit as he left the neighborhood, giving nobody a reason to look twice in his direction. When he reached Broad Street, he took a right and made his way toward the rental car office. Before they dispersed to stake out the coffee shops, he’d send his wife through with the rental car to make her own assessment.
She was at least twice as observant and would undoubtedly notice something important that he had missed. Like a sticker on the other side of the Jeep’s bumper that read, PROUD PARENTS OF A UNITED STATES MARINE. Wouldn’t that be embarrassing? Awkwardly, it wouldn’t be the first time he’d glossed over something that had completely changed the game. He just hoped it was the last, and that CONTROL sent them home to Tennessee after this job to pack up for another part of the country or Moscow. He’d be fine either way—as long as he was still with Jolene. Or would she want to be called Ludmilla again? He was getting ahead of himself.
CHAPTER 17
Devin left Berg alone for a few hours while he headed out to grab some essentials at a nearby Walmart and dinner from a Thai restaurant about a mile north on Greenmount Avenue. Paper goods, a case of bottled water, two full-size air mattresses, two cheap sleeping bags, and an assortment of toiletries—mostly for himself. Berg had brought an overnight bag, an idea that hadn’t crossed Devin’s mind when he’d set off on Helen’s treasure hunt yesterday morning.
Berg had already started arranging the take-out containers when he dropped the last of the Walmart bags inside the apartment. Devin shut and locked the door, breathing heavily from the back-to-back stair climbs. He wiped the thin film of sweat off his face on his shirtsleeve, suddenly remembering that he’d forgotten to buy a few changes of clothes. Tomorrow. He wouldn’t have any trouble sleeping at this point, no matter how grimy he felt.
“Looks like enough food to last us several days,” said Berg.
“I figured we’d be locked in here for a while,” said Devin, heading for the refrigerator. “Drink?”
“A beer and a couple of those waters if you don’t mind,” said Berg. “I wasn’t sure about drinking from the tap.”