Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30)(67)

“What’s awful is that she did it,” Lucas said. “Anyway, I don’t think you want to have heard what you just heard.”

“Lucas . . .”

“This can’t get out,” Lucas said. “The Senate will go batshit, or at least half of it will. If something happens and you have to claim later that you didn’t know about this, I’ll back you up. I’ll lie. I’ll say nobody knew but me. ’Cause this is about to get desperately political. If it gets out, then everybody who knew about it, about a cover-up, which is what we’re talking about, is going to carry a little stink.”

“What about you?”

“I’ve got forty million dollars in my investment accounts,” Lucas said. “If it turns into a huge deal, I could maybe lose my job, but so what? I’ll take the chance, and if I lose, I’ve got a pillow to fall on. What do you have?”

She bit her lower lip and then said, “Probably be a county prosecutor, but it’d be a small county in a cold place.”

“Exactly. So, you know, but you don’t know. You might be able to direct some traffic that you wouldn’t if you didn’t know. Take the emphasis off uncovering 1919 and put it on finding any lone wolves who are rattling around. But that’s only because you’re really, really smart—not because you know who put the site up.”

Chase stepped back: “You’re right. About all of it. I know, but I don’t know.”

She walked away, glancing back only once.





CHAPTER

FOURTEEN



Lucas pried Bob and Rae away from the SWATs, said, “I need the truck, but you guys can’t come. What you need to do is, get a ride from Jane. She’ll give you a warrant to search Cop’s car down at the UPS center. Call me when you get it done.”

Rae: “We can do that, but why?”

“Because this is about to get political and you don’t want to know about it. You want to be able to look a Senate investigating committee in the eye and say, ‘Davenport never told me about it.’”

Bob and Rae looked at each other, and Rae shrugged: “You usually know what you’re talking about,” she said. “But it sounds bad.”

“It is bad.”

Lucas called Chase, who was standing fifty feet away, and fixed a ride for Bob, Rae, and their guns, first to the UPS center, then back to the Watergate. Then he headed south, the late-afternoon traffic beginning to congeal, but most of it was coming toward him, rather than with him. On the way, he called Senator Elmer Henderson on his private line.

Henderson picked up on the fifth ring and said, “I’m in a meeting—on a scale of one to ten . . .”

“Ten.”

“Give me a second to get out in the hall,” Henderson said. There were some shuffling sounds and a door closed, then Henderson said, “I assume you cracked it. Did you kill anyone?”

“I’ve cracked part of it. I’ll know for sure in an hour or so.”

“What is it?”

“We’re talking on radios and I’m told it’s child’s play for somebody to listen in, if you’ve got the right child,” Lucas said. “I’ll want to see you in, say, two hours. But not with your Minnesota sidekick. Just you.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I do have a certain level of trust in my sidekick,” Henderson said, referring to Porter Smalls.

“Then you can tell him—or call him and I’ll tell him, but I want to talk to you first.”

“You’re at the Watergate, right? What room?”

Lucas told him and Henderson said, “Two hours. See you then.”



* * *



—

THE TRIP SOUTH, across the Potomac, was mostly on interstate highways, and traffic wasn’t terrible; Lucas made it to the Winston house in exactly one hour. He was met at the door by an angry Mary Ellen Winston, who said, “I find this whole thing . . . despicable, including Blake’s part in it. I’ve told him so.”

“You’ve heard that the FBI arrested a sniper outside the school of a senator’s child?” Lucas asked. “Depending on how this breaks out, your kid could be saving the lives of other children.”

“Blake is betraying a friend—”

“To save lives,” Lucas snapped. “Tell the truth, Mrs. Winston, I don’t want to hear some bullshit about how this is an ethical complication. You ever look at somebody who’s taken a bullet in the head? I have, and just this morning. That was bad enough: if it’d been a kid, I’d be having nightmares.”

She froze up at the tone, then said, “Blake’s in the tennis room.”



* * *



—

LUCAS WALKED THROUGH THE HOUSE, with Mary Ellen Winston trailing him, and the place smelled improbably like fresh-baked bread and cinnamon; he thought it might be a spray of some kind, because he didn’t see anybody baking and Winston didn’t seem to be in the mood for anything so mellow.

Blake was looking as frozen as his mother, sitting on a couch looking out over the tennis court, an Apple laptop on the table in front of him, the bright Apple logo glowing from the back of the machine. When Lucas walked into the room, he looked up and Mary Ellen said, “Blake, I’ve told you . . .”