Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30)(58)

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LUCAS CALLED BOB, who was working out with Rae: “You guys get ready to move,” Lucas said. He told Bob about the arrest, and Bob said, “Waterboard the motherfucker.”



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LUCAS WAS IN THE SHOWER when his phone rang again. He’d put it on the bathroom sink and he stepped out, dried his hand, and picked it up. Not Chase.

“Davenport.”

“Davenport! This is Charles Lang! Somebody’s murdered Stephen! He’s dead! Shot in the head! There’s a lot of blood, I just, I just . . .”

“Where are you, Charlie?” Lucas asked.

“I’m at home. When Stephen didn’t come down from his apartment—he lives over the garage—I went looking for him. He’s in the garage, on the floor. He has a bullet hole in his forehead and there’s this red . . . halo . . . around his head, it smells bad, like . . . I dunno.”

“Where are you in the house?”

“In the den, I ran to get my phone . . .”

“Have you called the police?”

“No, I called you . . .”

“Okay. Don’t go back to the garage. Sit down in the den. Don’t do anything. The cops will be there in five minutes. Tell them the FBI and the Marshals Service will be working the case and are on the way. Just sit there, okay? Sit there.”

“I’m afraid there might be somebody here in the house. What if he’s still here, the killer?”

“Do you have a safe room? A room where you would feel secure?”

“I could lock the dressing room. It’s got a solid door.”

“Go there. Right now,” Lucas said. “Stay on the phone talking until the door is shut. I’ll be listening.”

“I’m going now, I’m running.”



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TEN SECONDS LATER, Lang said, sounding out of breath, “I’m in the dressing room. The door is locked.”

“Stay there. The cops will be coming . . .”

“I’ve got a pistol in my dresser.”

“No! Leave it there. You don’t want to be handling a gun, especially if a couple of patrolmen show up and a man’s been shot. Sit there, Charlie, do nothing, and we’ll be coming.”

He called Bob: “Where the fuck are you?”

“In my room. About to take a shower. What?”

“One of the men we’re looking at got murdered. We’re on the way. Call Rae, tell her ten minutes in the garage. No. Seven minutes.”

“Got it.”



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LUCAS CALLED CHASE: “What? I’m not there yet,” she said.

“Charlie Lang just called me. Somebody murdered Stephen Gibson at Lang’s house. We’re going. We need some FBI backup and I need you to call the cops. He lives in Potomac.”

“Oh, shit! Shit! I’m on my way. I’ll turn around and head that way. Give me his address . . .”

Lucas clicked on his phone’s navigation app and read Lang’s address for Chase. He heard her giving orders to somebody, probably a driver, and he said, “I’ll see you there. I gotta run.”

Jeans, shirt, jacket, gun, cross-trainers. Running.



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THEY TOOK THE TAHOE, which had lights and a siren, with Lucas driving, because he more or less knew the way. He briefed Bob and Rae on his interview with Lang and told them about his last conversation with Gibson, in which he ordered him to find the ANM training camp. He didn’t know what kind of research Gibson had done, but now he was dead.

“We’ve got a guy we can go after, a Thomas Aline. Jane might not like it, because they want to use him as a wedge to find out more about ANM, but, he might be a wedge we need to use now.”

The lights and siren on the Tahoe helped, but it still took twenty minutes to get to Potomac. At Lang’s house, two Montgomery County patrol cars were parked outside along with a well-used and unmarked sedan that looked like nothing more than a cop car.

They didn’t need much ID; the Tahoe’s lights were still flashing as they turned the corner a block from Lang’s house. A uniformed cop pointed at the curb, they parked, and a plainclothes cop came out of the house to look at them.

“Marshals Service?” The cop was tall, burly, weathered like an addicted golfer—and he dressed like one, in no-wrinkle slacks and a golf shirt, except for the sport coat that covered his gun.

“We were working with Charles Lang and Stephen Gibson on the 1919 investigation,” Lucas told him. “Lang called me, I called the FBI.” A dark SUV, lights flashing, turned the corner, and they all turned to look. “That’s probably them. Her name is Jane Chase and she has some clout. She called you.”

“Anybody else coming?” the cop asked. “CIA, NSA, NC-double A?”

“Could happen,” Lucas said. “Secret Service, maybe ATF.”

“You’re shittin’ me . . .”

“Not really. The Secret Service and FBI and some local cops busted a guy this morning who was apparently planning to shoot a senator’s son at his grade school.”