Before joining the Bureau, she had completed college and then enlisted in the Army, jumping out of perfectly good airplanes with the 101st Airborne Division. Before every mission they would smear any exposed part of their skin with multicolor camo paint. It was a difficult process, and you had to get it just right or the entire purpose would be defeated. Irregular diagonal lines across the face. Two colors on the lips, nose, chin, etc. Don’t forget the ears, neck, eyelids, hands. Done right, even if the enemy hit you with a light, you would still be invisible. You could kill them before they killed you. Done wrong, you were a sitting duck with a Hollywood premiere-grade spotlight shining on your soon-tobe dead ass.
Yet the Army had never understood or appreciated her. When the promotions didn’t come as fast as she would have liked, and after some of her extracurricular activities had drawn the ire of those in command, she’d gotten her honorable discharge and moved on. She’d then taken her talents to the FBI. She’d stayed there long enough to realize it was also not a good fit for her personal goals. So she had become a freelancer in a field she had very much made her own. In doing so, she was deploying the same skills she had gained and burnished first in the military and then at the Bureau, but making far more money in the process. And, best of all, it was a life of her own making.
While her parents had been exemplary athletes, they had truly been disasters as parents and at providing for their only child. Thus, Spector had grown up poor and physically and verbally abused by a mother and father who had never achieved their dreams of athletic glory and had taken that failure out on her. After escaping their yoke, she had worked for all she had, and never wanted to be poor or abused again.
She climbed into the passenger seat of the waiting black SUV, and as soon as her butt hit the leather, they were off.
Driving was Peter Buckley, immaculate in pearl-gray slacks, a classic navy blazer, collared shirt, and pocket square. He turned to her and said, “Good flight?”
“Beats the hell out of a jump seat on a C130 wondering whether a SAM was going to blow you out of the sky.”
“Your work in DC went well?”
“As well as possible, thanks.”
“But now you’re on my clock,” he said.
“Same terms as before?”
“Double.”
She slid her sunglasses down to peer at him. “I sometimes forget what an attractive man you are, Peter, dear. But why double?”
“Because this job, I think, will be worth it.”
“You mean doubly hard?”
“You live for the challenge, or did I remember wrong?”
She slid her shades back up and looked out the window. “You never do anything wrong, Peter, do you?”
He handed her an iPad. “On the drive read the file I’ve put together. We’ll eat in my hotel suite. I’ve already booked you a room. You still like champagne with your ni?oise salad?”
“Is there any other way to have it?”
As the SUV drove along Spector read the file once, then twice, and then a third time, which, she had been trained, was where the truly useful knowledge and nuance was gained.
“Who’s the FBI agent on the case?”
“That I don’t know.”
“Shouldn’t be hard to find out. I still have contacts there.”
“Even after what happened?”
She looked up from the iPad. “Nothing officially did happen. And I don’t burn bridges. At least not with people who matter.”
“Okay, see what you can find out, but leave no fingerprints.”
Spector smiled to herself, perhaps thinking about her last assignment. “I never do, Peter. Now that I’ve read the file, tell me what you think.”
He went through his theories about the woman named Rebecca Atkins being a prisoner in Georgia. When he showed her Atkins’s image, Spector scrutinized the screen and nodded. “Wooded area, the terrible state of her, surveillance camera, that would be my conclusion. So now she’s calling herself El Cain.”
“And she killed my brother, Ken, as I told you.”
“I never met Ken, but I’m sure he was tough.”
“He was. But with someone who knew what they were doing? Like you? He wouldn’t be much of a match. One man I talked to said Cain tore through a professional fighter with a ferocity he’d never seen before. And she pulled a gun on this same man, and he said she would have blown his head off without a second thought.”
“Tell me, why did she kill Ken?”
“Does it matter?”
“Just trying to get the full flavor. But if you’d rather not answer . . . ?”
“My brother was with a woman, Rosa. He was beating her. This woman, let’s call her El Cain for consistency, intervened. She gave him multiple opportunities to walk away, but he grew increasingly incensed. When he pulled a gun on her, well, she took it to another level.” Buckley glanced at her. “Does that make a difference?”
“No. But would it be impertinent for me to say that your brother got what he deserved?”
“It would not be.”
“So why are you doing this, then?”
“If you had grown up in my family, you might understand.”
“I might, and then again, I might not. What’s the next move?”
“Find El Cain.”
She touched the iPad’s screen. “And we talk to Leonard and Wanda Atkins, currently residents of Huntsville, Alabama, which explains why we’re here. Do you think the agent on the case has been by to talk to them?”
“I would be stunned if they haven’t.”
“And if the Atkinses won’t cooperate?”
“I have ways of making them do so—I’m talking money, of course—and if my methods don’t work, I’m sure you can think of some.”
“You appear to be all-in on this. Otherwise, I doubt you’d be taking such personal risks by going after her with the FBI already involved.”
He glanced over at Spector, frowning. “I’ve taken personal risks my whole life, Britt, just as you have. You do so when the stakes are worth it.”
“Well, you like a challenge, too. Maybe you’ve been stagnating.”
Buckley nodded, looking thoughtful. “There’s no maybe about it. I have been. The earlier years were the best, when I was building something. Even when I had nothing there was a dream in place. I guess there was nowhere to go but up, and it all depended on me. Now I go to board meetings or sit in on video conferences. I listen to stupid, boring people say stupid, boring things, and I wonder why I’m even bothering. They make their money and I make my money. But one can only make so much money.”
“Spoken like someone who has far more than he’ll ever need.”
“Then I’ll triple your fee, but don’t ever think money will replace the thrill of living, Britt.”
“I never said it would, Peter. That’s why I do what I do.”
CHAPTER
40
WE MIGHT BE TOO LATE,” said Spector as they walked up the sidewalk to the Atkinses’ front door that afternoon.
Spector had checked into her room at the hotel and had her champagne and salad in Buckley’s suite. Then Buckley had made numerous phone calls and sent texts and emails. Spector had gone to the gym to engage in her intense daily workout, which had left her sweaty and breathless. She had showered and changed, and they had then driven over here.
Spector examined the knocked-over lamppost. “That looks very recent.”
They hurried up to the front porch, and Buckley rapped on the door.
Wanda Atkins opened it and stared up at them, bleary-eyed.
“I hope you’re not selling something, because I’m not buying.”
“It looks like you need to buy a new lamppost anyway,” said Spector, pointing to the demolished one.
Atkins stared at it and her eyes bulged. “Well, damn.”