Killer Instinct (Instinct #2)(24)

I’d already sent the text, asking if he was still awake. It was a formality. Julian and Dracula kept the same hours. I didn’t want to show up unannounced, though. The secret to a lasting friendship? Don’t abuse it.

“What have we gotten ourselves mixed up in now?” asked Julian in his thoroughly British accent, greeting me at his steel door that was ten feet behind another steel door that was past the security gate to a warehouse for a medical supply company in Fort Lee, New Jersey, that nobody had ever heard of, primarily because it didn’t actually exist.

“Mixed up? Do I look like I’m mixed up in something?” I asked.

“It’s past four in the morning,” he said. “You bloody well better be.”

I followed Julian back to his office, smiling at the familiar sight of his giant desk made from the wing of an old Fokker Eindecker, the first German fighter plane.

“Is that Vegas?” I asked.

All the walls still doubled as seamless projection screens carrying a live feed from Julian’s latest hacking conquest. I was looking at a busy casino poker room through its own security cameras.

“No, it’s Macau,” said Julian. “I’m trying to pick up some tells on a couple of regulars. I’ll be there next month.”

“I didn’t think you took vacations.”

“You’re right, I don’t,” he said. “But enough about me, right?”

That was Julian’s version of Don’t ask, don’t tell. I shouldn’t bother asking why he was going to Macau because there was no way he was telling.

“Here,” I said instead, handing him my phone. “There are five women in total. You’re looking at the first. Swipe left to see the other four.”

“You came here in the middle of the night to show me how Tinder works?”

“Yeah, like I would actually know.”

Julian looked at all five screenshots from the hotel’s surveillance footage. Once, then twice over. “Okay, now what?”

“Does one of them look familiar to you?” I asked.

“Before I answer that, answer this,” he said. “How did you get involved in whatever this is?”

“You remember Elizabeth, right?”

Julian rubbed his chin sarcastically. “You mean, the pretty detective and only unauthorized person—other than yourself, of course—to ever set foot in this office? Oh, and the woman who was just all over the news for saving her boss’s life? Nope, can’t say I recall her.”

“Yeah, well, Elizabeth is why I’m here.”

“Interestingly enough, though, she’s not. I’m guessing that’s because of the possible identity of one of these five women. You’re thinking she might be CIA. Elizabeth might even be thinking that, too. But if one of them actually is an operative, Elizabeth can’t know her identity.”

I once saw Julian solve a Rubik’s Cube in less than fifteen seconds. With one hand, no less.

“Okay,” I said. “Go ahead and say it. If you recognized one of these women as being an operative, you sure as hell couldn’t tell me, right?”

Julian smiled. “Still, here you are asking …”

“I don’t have to anymore,” I said. “You don’t recognize any of them.”

“How do you know?”

“Your shoulders are relaxed. They tense up whenever you lie.” I motioned to the wall and the casino in Macau. “Like a player who’s bluffing.”

“Remind me never to play poker with you, Reinhart.” Julian glanced at my phone again. “No, I’ve never seen any of those women before. Then again, it’s not like the Agency puts out a yearbook. And if you’re about to ask me to hack—”

“Into the Agency’s files? No, of course not,” I said. “But I do need to identify all five of them.”

“I’m guessing that would require something beyond DMV and criminal databases. In other words, the kind of facial recognition software that doesn’t officially exist.”

“You tell me,” I said. But he already had.

As only Julian could.





CHAPTER 32


I TURNED to look at one of the walls again. Gone was the poker room in Macau. In its place was me. Everywhere.

I was so busy watching Julian’s shoulders I hadn’t seen his hands. He’d opened all the photos on my phone, transferring some of them to his computer. His entire office was now covered with different shots of me. Me with Tracy. Me with Annabelle. All three of us together.

“That’s a nice one, all of you there in Central Park,” said Julian, pointing.

Yes, it was a nice shot. Some woman had offered to take it after telling us in true Upper West Side fashion that she supported gay adoption 110 percent.

Only looking at the picture now I was barely recognizable. My face was contorted, and that was just for starters.

“What’s with all the red explosions?” I asked.

“I know,” said Julian. “It sort of looks like a pimple commercial.”

“Yeah, if it was directed by Michael Bay,” I said. Red spots were blowing up all over my face, one after another in rapid-fire succession. “That looks like more than measuring going on.”