“What else, Ethan? You aren’t here unshaved and unwashed to tell me that Bobby Tatro might be mad at me. He’s been mad at me for four years.”
“It’s not important,” Ethan said, suddenly regretting the whole trip. “Forget it. Go eat vegan food with your niece.”
“Ethan—”
“I shouldn’t have come here. Just watch your back for Tatro.”
Juliet sat back, studying him. “You didn’t need to come to New York to tell me that. Where do you go from here? Back home to Texas to play rich rancher?”
“I’m a soldier. My father and brother are the ranchers.”
“Bet you’re in the will.”
“I’ve never asked.”
Ethan eased off the stool and pulled out his wallet, laying a few bills on the counter to cover the beer and the water. He left a reasonable tip. If he lived in the neighborhood, he’d want a suspicious bartender.
Juliet touched his upper arm, but he couldn’t feel her fingertips through the leather of his jacket and found himself wishing he could. Her eyes had softened. Not much, but enough for now. “Get some rest, Ethan. Don’t worry about me.”
“I’m sorry we couldn’t grab Tatro. It wasn’t that other priorities prevented it. He just wasn’t there.”
“I want to be able to reach you.”
He plucked a pen from a cup on the counter, jotted his cell-phone number on a paper cocktail napkin and handed it to her. “Call anytime. Day or night.”
The napkin disappeared into her jacket pocket. “I’d invite you up for leftover vegan Thai food—”
“Nice try, Longstreet. You’re on your own with the weepy niece.”
“She’s a great kid.”
“Looks it.”
“Your bosses—will they object to what little you’ve told me?”
He grinned at her. “I’ve never been much of an ass-kisser.”
“Much?”
“See you around, Deputy.” He resisted an urge to kiss her and totally spoil her chances of becoming a regular at the cute neighborhood restaurant. But as she started out the glass door, Ethan grabbed her arm, tucking an envelope into her pocket. “Don’t open it in front of your niece.”
“What?”
“Or here.”
She thumped his chest. “Be where I can find you.”
He waited until he saw her walk past the restaurant windows on the corner, toward her apartment, before he headed outside.
Bobby Tatro had been a busy boy in the past few weeks. He’d gone from federal prison to snatching an American contractor—an unlikely covert agent—in Colombia. Tatro had left a photograph of Juliet behind in the bleak Colombian shack where he’d held Ham Carhill. Ethan had spotted the picture and grabbed it, as if it were a warning of some kind—an omen.
When Juliet opened the envelope and saw the photo, she’d understand why he hadn’t taken the time for a decent shower and shave, never mind to decompress from his mission, before getting on a plane to New York and finding her.
The night air had turned downright cold, and the city lights obliterated any sign of the stars and moon. As Ethan stepped off the curb to hail a cab, he tried to remember when he’d last seen the big west Texas sky. A long time ago.
You should go home.
Instead, he was taking an evening shuttle to Washington, D.C.
It took Ethan several tries before he could get a cab. Halfway to LaGuardia, his cell phone rang.
“You didn’t add the horns and the blood-dripping eyes yourself, did you, Brooker?” Juliet asked dryly.
She’d opened the envelope. She’d seen the photo, a digital shot of herself coming out of her apartment building. Bobby Tatro added his own sick, childish artwork.
“No, ma’am.”
“I didn’t think so. Tatro. You want to tell me how a picture of me came into his possession?”
“If I knew, I’d tell you.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
She hung up, and Ethan wished he could press some kind of rewind button that would take him back in time. He could arrive at Tatro’s camp an hour earlier and capture him, shove his grotesque photo of Juliet down his throat—demand answers. Where did he get the photo? Had he taken the picture himself? If so, when—how? If not, who had?
He’d find out why Tatro was bugging out of his camp and leaving his hostage behind—he’d find out who’d tipped Mia O’Farrell off that Ham was being held by a blond female marshal.
Then, Ethan thought, he wouldn’t have the painful feeling in his gut that he did right now, that he’d missed something—just as he’d missed something, everything, with Char when she’d told him she was going to Amsterdam on “holiday.”
A few days later, his wife had turned up in a Dutch morgue.