“Gordon wants to talk to you now. We need to know where you’re getting your information. What sources do you have that we don’t know about?”
He looked down at her and almost felt sorry for her. As ambushes went, it wasn’t exactly a victory. “Be patient. Let me work, okay? And then I’ll let you know.”
“Derek—”
“Good run, Liz.” He squeezed her shoulder. “Thanks for the invite. Anytime you want to work up a sweat, just give me a call.”
“You’re making a mistake here.”
“Oh, and don’t bother tailing me.” He smiled over his shoulder as he headed to his truck. “I’d lose you in a heartbeat.”
* * *
“He just turned left,” Elizabeth told Lauren over the phone. “Now it looks like he’s parking.”
“You want me to wait?”
“Yeah, somewhere close but out of sight.” Elizabeth glanced around as she pulled into a parking lot that had potholes the size of bathtubs. “Be sure to lock your doors.”
She parked her rental sedan at the end of a row of pickups. The neighborhood would have been sketchy even during daytime, but late at night it looked downright dangerous. To her west was a boarded-up strip center tagged with gang graffiti. To her east was a vacant lot overtaken by weeds and littered with rusted shipping containers.
Elizabeth slid from the car. Practically every pickup in the parking lot looked like it was on steroids. Derek’s fit right in. He was inside it talking on the phone, and she felt a surge of satisfaction at goosing him for a change.
Only he didn’t get goosed. His gaze narrowed when she yanked open the door, but he didn’t even flinch.
“Okay, thanks,” he said as she slid inside. “I owe you a beer.” He ended the call and frowned at her.
“What?”
“I know for a fact you didn’t shadow me from my folks’ place,” he said.
“You’re right, I didn’t.”
He looked at her. He wouldn’t acknowledge that she’d one-upped him by asking how she’d found him, but it didn’t matter. She knew she’d done it, and she also knew it irked him that he’d missed something.
She turned her attention to the glowing red sign above the Pussycat Lounge. “Channelview’s Premier Gentleman’s Club,” she recited. “Nice hangout.”
“Ameen thinks so.”
Her heart lurched. “He’s here?”
“Was here,” Derek said. “Three nights in a row. Showed up at ten and stayed till closing.”
She checked her watch. It was after eleven.
“No sightings tonight,” Derek said. “And he wasn’t in yesterday.”
“How do you know?”
“The bartender’s my new best bud. She filled me in over lunch today at the bar. Four-ninety-nine steak platter, by the way, ’case you’re interested.”
“She’s sure about this?”
“ID’d the picture. Not by name, but she definitely remembers him. Said he pays for everything in cash and he’s a good tipper.”
Elizabeth glanced around the parking lot, her mind spinning. Ameen had been here. But was this witness reliable? She looked at Derek. “How’d this bartender see his car?”
“She didn’t—one of the dancers did,” Derek said. “Apparently, he offered her a ride home when she was leaving work, but she declined. Said he seemed skeevy.”
“Skeevy?”
“Her word, not mine.”
They needed to get a team here, pronto. “How’d you find this place?”
He looked at her. “You really don’t know?”
“If I knew, we’d be here.”
He watched her for a moment, probably debating whether to share, as she waited, biting her tongue. She’d gotten over her frustration from earlier. She’d talked herself out of it because he so obviously got a perverse thrill out of pushing her buttons, and she was done letting him do it. Or at least letting him know he was doing it.
“The pat-down,” he told her.
“You mean Rasheed?” She tried to remember it, but everything on the rooftop had happened so fast. “What—”
“I turned his pockets inside out. He had a matchbook with the Pussycat’s logo.”
“You stole crime-scene evidence?”
“I didn’t steal anything. I noticed it.”
“Then why didn’t we recover this matchbook?”
“Beats me. Your CSIs must have missed something. Or maybe it blew off the roof.”
She took a deep breath and glanced around. A tall man in a cowboy hat emerged from the club and crossed the lot to his vehicle. He was followed by a shorter man in an Astros cap. “Hey, isn’t that your friend?”
“Cole offered to cover for me so I could go jogging.” He looked at her. “And no, he didn’t see him inside tonight.”
“I’m sure he’s sorry you wasted his evening.”
Derek’s phone rattled in the cup holder, and he picked it up. “Vaughn.” He smiled. “Hey, how’s it going? Seen my guy around?” He shot Elizabeth a look, and she knew he had news. “Gimme a description.”
She looked around for the maroon Sentra, but it was all trucks and SUVs.
“You happen to see his ride?” Derek turned the key in the ignition and thrust the truck into gear. “No, don’t worry about it. I think I saw him. Thanks, babe. Appreciate it.” He shot backward out of the space.
“Someone saw Ameen?”
“No, but the guy he was hanging out with all three nights just left. Tall build, cowboy hat.”
“The Avalanche,” Elizabeth said. “He just pulled out of here. Where are we going?”
“Don’t you want to know who he is?”
“Yeah, but what about Ameen?”
“He’s not here. This guy is.” He jammed to a stop at the edge of the parking lot. “Make up your mind, Liz.”
“Follow him.” She took out her phone and called Lauren. “Are you nearby?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you pull into the Pussycat and stake out the lot? Keep an eye out for the maroon Sentra while I follow up on something else.”
“Got it.”
Derek was speeding down the road now, and traffic was light, which was both good and bad. He neared an intersection.
“There he is, three cars up,” Elizabeth said. “Can you get closer?”
“Not without getting burned.”
“I need the license plate.”
“I’ve got some binoculars in back.”
She twisted in her seat and scrounged around in the back of the cab, where he’d stashed cowboy boots, a duffel bag, boxes of ammo. She grabbed the binoculars as he turned the corner.
Derek cursed.
“What?” She straightened in the seat and looked for the Avalanche. It was a distant pair of taillights getting farther and farther away. “Can you close the gap?”
He didn’t answer, just kept a steady thirty-mile-per-hour pace. They bumped over a set of railroad tracks. She glanced around. The area was industrial—chain-link fences and warehouses and grassy lots filled with heavy machinery.
“We’re near the ship channel,” she said.
“I noticed.”
His tone was clipped, and she understood why. The Houston Ship Channel was one of the country’s busiest waterways and served as headquarters for America’s booming petrochemical industry. It was on the FBI’s short list of targets for a terrorist attack.
The Avalanche hung a left. Derek hit the gas. He neared the corner, then switched his lights off as he swung into the turn.
They were on a dark dead-end street, no traffic whatsoever, only a few signs glowing in the distance.
Derek smacked the steering wheel.
“Keep going,” she said. “He turned in somewhere.”
They passed the first sign, which was spotlighted from the ground. EastTX Shipping, it read. Up the road she spied another sign for Amfreight. She couldn’t read the third sign, so she lifted the binoculars.
“Oil Trans.” She looked at him. “Okay, we have three options. What do you want to do?”
He swung into the first driveway. A security guard stepped from a gatehouse, clipboard in hand, as Derek pulled over.
“Now would be a good time to flash your badge,” he told her, but she was already getting out of the truck.
“Special Agent Elizabeth LeBlanc, FBI.” She approached the guard. “We’re in pursuit of a suspect. Black Chevy Avalanche. Anyone pull in here in the last few minutes?”
No one had. Same verdict at Amfreight. They neared Oil Trans, which had not only a guardhouse but also a ten-foot security fence topped with razor wire.
“Gotta be door number three,” Derek said, pulling over again.