The Chaos Kind (John Rain #11)(39)

“I asked him about exactly those subjects. He’s keeping me in the dark. Telling me just enough to make me frustrated, but not enough to make me useful.”

“I can imagine,” Kanezaki said. He couldn’t resist, but he immediately regretted it.

Rispel chuckled. “Fair enough. As I learn more, so will you. In the meantime, see if you can get in touch with Dox. Try to find out what he knows. If there’s a storm coming, we want to batten down the hatches.”





chapter

thirty





RISPEL


After Kanezaki had left, Rispel considered.

He’d been lying, of course. The team leader had described the men in the park, and one of them fit the photographs Rispel had of Dox from when he’d been a Marine. The leader also described him as having a Texas accent.

Of course, in theory it was possible Dox was lying to Kanezaki rather than Kanezaki lying to her. But there was no way a contractor like Dox could have independently developed the intel to track Manus. It had to have come from Kanezaki.

But how could Kanezaki have acquired it?

By tracking Manus’s phone? But the man wasn’t carrying his own phone. Only a CIA-provided burner. And Manus’s exceptional surveillance consciousness was the very reason Rispel had wanted such a large team on the ground to monitor him.

Through Diaz, then?

Diaz was easy to track. If Kanezaki had keyed on her, he would have considered the park a likely nexus, just as Rispel had.

Why, though? What was Kanezaki’s interest?

She couldn’t answer that. Couldn’t imagine what advantage he would see in thwarting her.

All right. Forget why. How?

She couldn’t answer that, either. Diaz wasn’t difficult to track, but how would Kanezaki even have known to do it? Unless . . .

Guardian Angel.

No. She’d deleted all the searches related to Diaz. Deletion was unlawful, of course, but Rispel had people, trusted people, she could rely on to circumvent the safeguards.

But given that there were ways to get around the no-deletion protocols . . . could there also be a way to log the deletions themselves?

My God.

She reminded herself that she was only speculating. There was no reason to panic. She didn’t really know.

But nothing else made sense.

Who, though? Kanezaki couldn’t have done it himself. He didn’t have the technical chops, any more than Rispel herself did.

She had her people. Who would be Kanezaki’s equivalent?

She didn’t know. What she did know was that no one could get in and out of Guardian Angel without leaving footprints. And her people were excellent trackers.





chapter

thirty-one





DOX


The rain had stopped, and while they waited for Diaz to come out, Dox wiped off the sideview so he could better watch for tails. The other hand he kept on the butt of the Wilson. He didn’t expect any problems and didn’t see any, but he wasn’t taking chances, either.

Diaz came out, and Dox held the door for her as she jumped in back. He got in, and Labee was pulling away from the curb even before he had the door closed. She made an immediate right, checking the rearview as she drove.

“You,” Diaz said. “You’re the one I saw outside the park.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Dox said. “I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to properly introduce myself. It’s been a hectic morning. You can call me Dox.”

“Did you kill those people?”

Dox glanced at Labee. She made a left, again checking the rearview, and said nothing.

“I’m just glad you’re safe,” Dox said. “And I hope you’ll believe me when I say, I’d like to keep it that way.”

Labee made another left, then a right into something that was more alley than street, squeezing past a delivery truck on the way. As soon as they were past the truck, she gunned it, throwing Dox back against the seat and making him wonder whether he’d exercised good judgment in leaving his seatbelt unbuckled in case they ran into opposition. She turned the wrong way onto a one-way street, gunned it again, and cut back onto a main thoroughfare. Dox checked the sideview. As far as he could tell, they were clean.

Twenty minutes later, they were sitting on the mats in one of the martial arts academies where Labee taught her women’s self-defense classes. Classes were at night, and for the moment, the place was empty.

“What did Schrader tell you?” Labee said to Diaz. “About the videos.”

Diaz looked at Dox as though uncertain of what to say. That was fine. He felt uncertain about her, too. He wasn’t in the habit of chatting with federal prosecutors right after gunning down a bunch of bad guys in a public park.

“You can trust him,” Labee said. “And not just because you have to.”

There was a long pause. Diaz said, “I tried to scare him. I mean, I did scare him, obviously. I told him that people had tried to kill me, and failed, and that now I was going to be untouchable. Which meant the next move by whoever sent the people in the park would be to silence him. I told him one word from me, and the BOP—” She glanced at Dox. “The Bureau of Prisons would remove all the protection he was getting. No more cameras, no extra guards. He said no one would hurt him, because he has videos of various powerful men having sex with underage girls.”