Fair Warning (Jack McEvoy #3)(55)

Soon he heard footsteps in the house and then the rattle of a set of keys being dropped on a table or counter. He noted this sound, thinking that he might need those keys and the car that was parked outside. He hated to part with the Tesla but he might not be able to risk returning to it through the neighborhood in daylight. He had not planned to be in the house past dawn and now the quick escape might be the best escape.

The overhead lights in the lab came on and a man took five steps into the room before stopping short when he noticed the intruder sitting at the lab table.

“Who the fuck are you?” he said. “What do you want?”

The seated man pointed at him.

“You’re the one who calls himself the Hammer, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Listen to me,” Hammond said. “I work for the LAPD and I don’t know how you got in here but you need to get the fuck out right now.”

Hammond pulled a cell phone from his pocket.

“I’m calling the police,” he said.

“You do and they will know all about your little side business of selling female data on the dark web,” the intruder said. “Particular female data. You don’t want that, do you?”

Hammond put his phone back into his pocket.

“Who are you?” he asked again.

“You sent me an email,” the intruder said. “An archaic method of communication. It was fair warning about a reporter from FairWarning. Jack McEvoy?”

Hammond’s face had started to turn pale as he understood his situation.

“You’re the Shrike,” he said.

“Yes, and we need to talk,” the intruder said. “I want you to sit in that chair there.”

He pointed to a chair he had prepared for Hammond. It was a wooden chair he had taken from one end of a table in the kitchen. He chose it because it had armrests to which he had attached zip ties, each with a very wide loop.

Hammond didn’t move.

“Please,” the intruder said. “I won’t ask you again.”

Hammond tentatively went to the chair and sat down.

“Put your hands through the plastic loops and then pull the tabs tight around your wrists,” the intruder said.

“I’m not going to do that,” Hammond said. “You want to talk, we can talk—I’m on your side here. We sent you that email to alert you. As a warning. But I’m not going to tie myself up in my own house.”

The Shrike smiled at Hammond’s resistance and spoke in a tone that suggested that Hammond was being a bit of a nuisance.

“You’re going to do it or I’m going to go over there and snap your neck like a twig,” he said.

Hammond looked at him, blinked once, and then started putting his left hand through the loop on the armchair.

“Now pull the tab tight.”

Hammond pulled the loop closed around his wrist, not even having to be told to make it tighter.

“Now the other.”

Hammond put his right hand through the loop.

“How do I tighten this one? I can’t reach it.”

“Bend down and use your teeth.”

Hammond did as he was told and then looked up at his captor. He waved his hands to show he was securely locked to the arms of the chair.

“Okay, now what?”

“Do you think I would bind you if I meant to harm you?”

“I don’t know what you would do.”

“Think about it. If I wanted to hurt you it would have already been done. But now we can comfortably talk.”

“I’m not comfortable at all.”

“Well, I am. And so now we can talk.”

“Talk about what?”

“The email you sent about this reporter—how did you know to send it to me?”

“See, that’s the thing. This is why you don’t have to worry about me. I don’t know who you are. We just have the email you used when you joined the site. That’s it. No way of knowing who you are, so this—”

He shook his arms against the plastic bindings.

“—is completely unnecessary. Really. I mean it.”

The Shrike stared at him for a long moment, then got up and went to a printer that was on a table in the corner. He pulled a stack of documents out of the printer tray. He had been printing things through the night that had caught his interest on the lab’s computer.

He returned to his seat and held the stack on his lap.

“You miss the point,” he said without looking up from the documents. “How did you arrive at the decision to send me an email?”

“Well,” Hammond said. “You were the only one who downloaded the ones who died.”

“At Dirty4.”

“Yes, at the site.”

“That is a problem. Your site promises full anonymity, but now you are saying you identified me through my interactions on the site. That is disappointing.”

“No, wait, we did not identify you. That’s what I’m saying. Right now I could not tell you your name to save my life. We looked for anybody who had downloaded details about those whores who got killed. There was only one client. You. We sent the email in good faith. To warn you because you have a reporter on your trail. That’s it.”

The Shrike nodded as if accepting the explanation. He had noticed that Hammond was becoming more animated as his fear grew, and that was a problem because his wrists would chafe against the plastic bindings and that would leave marks.