The 6:20 Man(20)

Cowl’s gaze roamed the room. As it did so, he was waving, nodding, grinning, scowling, growing serious, then laughing and waving again.

It was as if to say, Look everybody, your king is here on a Saturday in the summer instead of on my yacht or at my country club playing golf . . . or banging my employee on a cheap desk, while I have an even better-looking lady skinny-dipping in my Olympicsize pool.

And then Cowl’s X-ray beam came lurching over to Devine. And the man’s features became unreadable. He lingered, one, two, three beats. He took in the injuries and the man himself. Probing, digging, creeping into unopened pathways that Devine might unknowingly have, like back doors on firewalls. Cowl had built a serious empire. To do that, you had to be smart and ruthless, more of the latter than the former, actually, because you essentially had to take what someone else had and not give a crap when they financially croaked.

And then Cowl’s gaze moved on, as he was laughing, scowling, grinning, waving, and even playfully flipping one man off. But he didn’t come back to Devine. And Devine wondered two things: why the look had landed in the first place, and what would come of it. Or maybe Cowl was seeing right through Devine and wondering about some problem in the Japanese bond market, or whether a tax audit was going funny, or whether the blond princess would find out he was screwing young, nubile financial whizzes on the fifty-second floor.

But, no, Devine had seen enough assholes in the world to know that Cowl was staring at him and seeing him, and there was a good reason for it.

And it was then that he realized his mistake, the one that had been nagging at him the whole ride in.

Sweet cheeks. He had called Stamos that.

The same term Cowl had used after screwing her barely a half hour before. Heat-of-the-moment thing on Devine’s part, bravado. And stupid, which bravado almost always was.

Stamos had told Cowl all of this, and Cowl, smart and paranoid asshole that he was, had put two and two together and decided that Devine had seen things last night he should not have seen.

Thus the stare. And in that stare, he read decisive action coming.

So Devine went back for seconds because this actually might be his last decent meal.

Retired General Campbell would probably have to recruit a new spy.





CHAPTER





15


“TRAVIS?”

He had just left work when the person had called out to him. He turned to his left and there was Jennifer Stamos.

“Yeah?”

She drew closer. She was dressed more casually than he was. Newbies struggling not to drown had no latitude in their professional appearance. But her casual was not that casual. Black jacket and skirt, white blouse with a bit of cleavage exposed. No stockings because of the heat, revealing smooth skin. Sensible low-ride pumps instead of the jacked heels from the previous night.

“About what happened last night?” She eyed his facial injuries, but made no comment.

He didn’t know which “about what happened last night” event she was referring to, so he kept silent. You learned more by listening, and by speaking less your words tended not to come back to bite you. He had already made one error on that score. He just stared at her blankly.

“The fight?” she prompted.

“What about it?”

“How did you do that to those guys? They were all bigger than you.”

“I was in the Army. They teach you how to fight.”

“That’s right, you told them you were in the military. A Ranger.”

“Those guys got their shots in on me, for sure. But they knew nothing about really hurting another guy. I do. And I did, last night. But it was their choice, not mine. I walked out, they came after me. I gave them another chance to back off and they didn’t take it. So I had no choice.”

“I . . . I feel a little guilty. I could have deescalated things.”

“And I chose to defend myself and walk out of that alley with my brain still intact.”

“I . . . I couldn’t believe what was happening.”

“So what happened to them?”

“I called an ambulance, like you told me to.”

“And the police?”

“I didn’t say I called the cops.”

“Someone sure as hell would have.”

“Okay, the cops did show up, but I sort of snuck away before that.”

“Before you ‘snuck’ away, are you sure you didn’t tell anybody my name?”

She looked surprised at the inquiry. “No, I wouldn’t do that.”

“Why not? What does it matter to you?”

“Boy, you sure don’t make it easy for someone to like you.”

He composed himself and reloaded. Just dial it down, Travis. You need info and she can provide it.

“I do appreciate you not giving my name away and for warning me about the sneak attack by Rick. But when those guys’ egos act up on them and they get all pissy, they could go to the cops with a whole different angle, where they were the victims instead of being merely stupid and alcohol fueled.”

“I guess they might.”

He stared down at her. She looked very small in her two-inch satin pumps. And he looked very big in his cheap suit.

“Why were you asking all those questions about Sara?”

“Because she’s dead and I was curious,” he replied.