122 Rules (27 page)

For years, the Michaels family, the largest player in New York, raked in massive profits. As with any successful business, competition popped up trying to get a slice of this money. But unlike other businesses, turf wars abounded, sometimes lasting for years, resulting in massive civilian casualties—nothing more than collateral damage. Laven headed up the family on the east side while a man named Alphonso Delphini ran the family in the west. The two clashed somewhere in the middle. Turf changed hands—taken, taken back, and taken yet again in a perpetual cycle.

Delphini had been quoted as saying that his only wish is that justice be served. The Michaels family was “a menace and a threat to society.”

Sam took a long pull on the beer he’d been nursing and sat back staring at the article.
Local Woman Killed
…

Responsibility for her death weighed on him. Sure, Josha had given him the assignment, but he’d had his doubts and could have done this research after Monica told him about her secret life. He hadn’t, though; he’d just turned her over to his handler then put her in the crosshairs of his rifle, justifying his choices by labeling her a liar.

Told ya, Chief,
Chet said from somewhere deep in his cerebellum.

Yes, I know.

She’s dead, and now you are going to have to live with that. The bad guys won; isn’t it your job to stop the bad guys?

Yes. But why? Why was I looking for her? Was I working for these bastards, or was it a coincidence?

Why don’t you find out?

Sam picked up his Blackberry and hesitated. The very act of calling Josha—way out of standard operating procedures and going against everything in his training both in the military and with The Agency—would be impossible to justify.

You’ve already gone beyond S.O.P. just by doing this research.

Yeah, point taken.
Sam pressed the
send
button.

As usual, Josha picked up the call on the first ring. “How’s vacation?”

“Hi, Josha. So far I haven’t had much time to do anything.”

“What can I do for you?” Josha had always been reluctant to engage in any sort of small talk.

Sam took a breath, preparing to cross a line that could never be uncrossed. “So, the Monica Sable case…”

“Yep, all wrapped up. The customer is pleased. Nice work.”

“See the customer, that’s what I wanted to ask you about.”

Silence greeted him from the other end of the line before Josha said, “You know that’s confidential. Even I don’t know who it is, the assignment came from up high. I think we’re done here. Have a nice vacation.”

“No.” Sam’s voice left no room for argument.

“Sam. You need to drop this.”

“This case has bothered me from day one.”

“Your place isn’t to think about the merits of an assignment. Your job is—”

For the first time ever, Sam cut his handler off, interrupting Josha mid-sentence. “Just shut up and listen to me.”

To his great relief, the other man did, though out of respect or out of shock Sam didn’t know.

“When I got the confirmation, Monica told me about her situation. I didn’t believe her at the time. I figured it was the usual ramblings from someone trying to get away with shit, but something about it rang true. So when I got home, I researched the case, and everything she told me checks out. Did you know she was a star witness in the trial of a drug lord? That without her testimony, the guy will walk.”

“No. But what has—”

Sam stood and started pacing around the room. “How is it that we have access to information no one else does, yet somehow it slipped past our radar that she was to stand as a witness? Also, you are aware that someone killed her before I had a chance and the FBI and the police ruled the explosion an accident. They said it was a gas leak.”

Josha fell silent again. “Why would the FBI be involved in a domestic house fire?”

“Because she was in Witness Protection. They were working with the U.S. Marshals to keep her safe. I think your ‘customer’ was the goddamned mob, Josha. That’s not who we’re supposed to be working with. ‘Enemies of the state’ are who we’re supposed to be finding, remember?”

“Sam, maybe you’re just misunderstanding the information.”

“Seriously? I’ve been working for you for almost a decade. How many times have I gotten it wrong?”

“Okay, point taken. But…”

Sam made a fist, clenching his fingers until the knuckles turned white. “There is no ‘but,’ Josha. We fucked up, and this innocent girl died because of it.”

“Shit. All right, let me look into it. For now, do what I told you to do: stop. Go on vacation. This isn’t your problem anymore. I’ll take care of it. Send me your research, and I’ll be in touch.” Josha disconnected the call.

Sam sent his handler everything then went to the fridge and got another beer. Popping the top, he leaned against the counter and stared off into nothingness as he tried to force his mind to think about something else. But the damning headline dogged him, and he couldn’t escape its accusatory condemnation. He swore under his breath as he sat back down at the desk and began to go through the information again.

34

Lisa had never been one to spare herself the electronic amenities and thus had no paper maps in her car, so Angel drove with gusto in what Monica hoped to be the right direction.

“Do you know where you’re going?” Monica asked her at one point.

Angel pointed out the front window. “That way.”

Monica shrugged. “Okay, good enough for me.”

By mid-afternoon, they needed to stop, fill the Audi, and get some coffee. They survived okay on the rations Monica had bought at the all-night truck stop on her pell-mell escape from Walberg, but nothing else replaced the caffeine-infused elixir. Angel guided the nondescript car into the parking lot of Nan’s Little Big Diner and Gas.

They got out, and Monica stopped just before she pushed through the glass door. “Hey, I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll get us a table.”

“Booth,” Monica said over her shoulder. When she slid in across from Angel a couple minutes later, she held Lisa’s laptop.

“Online dating?” Angel asked her.

“No, smarts. Google Maps. We need to figure out where we are.”

When the waitress stopped for their order, Angel asked her, “Where are we?”

If the middle-aged woman with the name badge Coral pinned to her ample bosom thought the question odd, she showed no sign of it as she smiled. “You’re about twenty miles east of Burlington.”

“Is that in Tennessee?”

“What? No.” Monica admonished. “You never did study in school did you? Tennessee and Arizona aren’t exactly neighbors.”

“Whatever.
Some
of us didn’t graduate top of our class and go to NYU.”

Monica stuck her tongue out at her.

“Is that where you’re headed, darlin’? Well you still gotta ways to go then. No, dear, you’re in Colorado. Where are you from?”

“Phoenix,” Monica answered.

“Well sugar, I think you’re going a bit out of your way. There’s a more direct route than coming through this neck of the woods. But generally speaking, you’re headed in the right direction. Let’s see.” She squinched up her pleasant face. She indicated to the highway through the big, tinted windows at the front of the restaurant. “This here is the Seventy. Take that to St. Louis.” She arched an eyebrow at Angel. “That’s in Missouri.”

Angel rolled her eyes.

“Then,” the waitress continued, “turn right on…on… Hmmm, the Fifty-five, I think. Then…well then you’d better stop and ask for directions. That’s about as far as my mental map goes.” She smiled. “So, what can I get you?”

They placed their order, and Monica started up the computer.

* * *

Sam lay on the couch. A brigade of empty beer bottles littered the floor and coffee table, and he considered adding another to their fallen ranks when his computer pinged. He had gone through Monica’s case for the thousandth time and lain down to rest his eyes. The machine sat across the room, and in spite of having just been thinking about getting up for something else to drink, he decided against trekking across the chasm between his comfortable couch and the desk. When his phone started buzzing from beside him on the floor, he groped for the little device, never taking his arm from across his eyes.

He used both the Mac and the Blackberry only for work, not that he had any semblance of a personal life—hence being at home while on vacation, drowning his sorrows in Budweiser. Finally, his hand happened upon the phone, and he lifted it, looking at the little screen. His heart stopped at the message. Someone had started up the laptop with his tracker app installed. He’d never bothered to turn off the alert.

He got up, stumbling over fallen glass soldiers, and made his way to the desk, sobering with each step.

* * *

“So, I think we are about here,” Monica said, looking at the screen. Angel’s attention seemed to have wandered, the history of the little diner in the place card on the table capturing her interest instead.

“Ang?”

“Hmmm?” she said.

“Got a minute?”

“Oh, ah sure.” She put down the small bit of trivia and came around the booth, sliding in. She bumped hips with her friend. “Oops.”

Monica tried to convey her disgust with a look.

Evidently oblivious, Angel stared at the little screen.

Monica turned back to the task at hand. “So, like I was saying, we are about here.” She pointed to the screen. “The waitress was right. If we continue down the Seventy, we could go to St. Louis, maybe check out the Gateway Arch, then on down here.” She started tracing another highway then stopped. “You know what the Gateway Arch is, right?”

“You keep this up, and I’ll turn you over to the mob myself.”

Monica grinned and turned back to the computer screen.

* * *

Sam double-clicked the flashing icon in the task bar. The tracker app contained four separate sections:
Monitor
,
Root
,
Camera
, and
Control
. He chose
Monitor
then clicked
Locate.
The machine thought for a minute, then a map of the United States appeared. A bubble indicator pointed to a spot in eastern Colorado.

Why would someone take Monica’s laptop to Colorado?

He minimized the window and clicked
Camera
. Within a minute, he connected to the laptop and an image materialized. Two women, cheek-to-cheek, peered back at him in rapt concentration.

Sam’s eyes widened with disbelief. Despite the poor picture quality, he recognized the face he remembered from Walberg. Marilyn Monroe mole, a smattering of freckles, dark hair with blonde roots. Monica. She had survived.

The other girl looked familiar as well. He pulled out his folder, rifled through the images and information it had taken him six months to gather, and found it: Angel Humbolt, childhood friend and apparent co-conspirator.

Sam clicked the plus next to the speaker icon, turning up the volume.

He caught Monica mid-sentence. “So, then we take the Forty into…”

“Here you go ladies,” someone interrupted. Both women looked up, and he watched Monica’s hand reach over and close the laptop, disconnecting the app.

“Shit!” Sam switched back to the maps screen, found their approximate location, and traced until he found highway forty. Following that, they could be headed to Nashville or on to North Carolina, or who knew where else?

Relief flooded him; Monica had somehow survived the explosion in Arizona. He didn’t know how, but he would figure it out. First, he needed to know where they were going.

* * *

Barry stared at the
Connection Terminated
message on the screen in front of him. After his meeting with Laven, Barry had re-enabled the app’s alert feature. While he worked through the legal issues, the alarm went off. He had stared at the image of the two women—one he knew and the other he did not—on his laptop. He caught their conversation mid-sentence and thought he’d been poised to hear where they intended to go when one of them closed the computer, severing the connection. He backed up the video feed, took a screen shot, pasted it into an email, typed up the information provided by the little program, and clicked send.

A minute later, his screen flashed the reply. “On it.”

He didn’t know who had been killed in Arizona—in the end, it didn’t really matter—but there would be no mistakes this time. He would not allow this loose end to destroy all he had risked his life to build.

35

Sam threw some clothes in a bag. He hadn’t even been home twenty-four hours yet. He opened a bottom drawer and pulled out a small wooden box. The familiar scent of gun oil took him back to his days in the military, when he’d spent hours cleaning and maintaining his weapons. Someone else had already tried to kill Monica. He wasn’t going in unprepared.