The Bone Chamber

7

“Damn it, Tex!” Zach Griffin paced his office as far as his landline would allow without pulling the phone from the outlet. “You were supposed to be tailing her.”
“We were. She left the Smithsonian. Archer was on her like white on rice.”
“Apparently not close enough.”
“Close enough to hear the security guard telling her that there was some fight between lovers, maybe that was the assault she was asking about. He wanted her to talk to some other security guard, but she left, went straight from there to the police department. She was getting reports on towed cars. That was when we lost her. Delivery truck got between us and her car, and Archer lost the point.”
He had to figure out Fitzpatrick’s logic if he was to have any hope of finding her. “The police have been kept out of the loop, she’s got to know that by now, so why go there at all?”
“Because she’s thinking like a cop, a Fed, not a spy.”
Zach paced in the other direction, but the phone cord stopped him from moving farther. “A cop…Towed vehicles…”
Hindsight forced him to see the consequences of letting Fitzpatrick believe she had recommended Tasha for the job, all because he didn’t want Tasha’s connection to his agency known. But as a result, Fitzpatrick believed she was responsible for recommending Tasha for the drawing, which meant guilt over her death. And if a by-the-book FBI agent wanted to allay that guilt?
Bring the killer to justice.
By looking up towed cars…? For what?
She used to be a cop, so think like one…
She had reason to believe Tasha’s murder was connected to the drawing. If so, she’d realize she needed to identify her Jane Doe—Alessandra—to determine if there was a connection. But his agency had taken over the investigation, had kept it from the local police once they realized the connection and what it could do to their operation. In essence, there were no records of the case at the police department.
Unless they’d overlooked something…
But what?
Towed cars…
Hell. “Get back to MPDC. Run an audit on every towed car that clerk ran.”
“What kind of connection could she possibly make?”
“If Alessandra was in a car before she went missing, that car might very well have ended up towed, because she never got back to it.”
“But Alessandra didn’t own a car.”
“No, but she certainly could have borrowed one. And who the hell knows what happened to the person she borrowed it from. Maybe they’re watching that person now, to see who comes calling.”
“I’m on it.”
He stared out the window watching the bright headlights zip down Twelfth Street. No doubt they’d been hasty when they’d chosen Fitzpatrick, even though she had been the logical choice because of her preoccupation with her father’s killer in San Quentin. Once she completed the sketch, he’d firmly believed that she’d want to get back to San Francisco and her family for Thanksgiving, which meant she probably wouldn’t give the sketch more than a passing thought.
Her former relationship with Special Agent Scott Ryan was another factor. The guy was heading to the top of the administration ladder, liked to do things by the book, and liked his women the same, just what Zach needed for this op. Administration says jump, subordinate says how high. Tasha had led him to believe that Sydney Fitzpatrick had been cut from the same cloth as Scott Ryan.
Apparently she was wrong.
And now, because of this miscalculation, Sydney Fitzpatrick was out there, God knew where, playing cop in a game that was out of her league. A game that had one rule: Kill or be killed.


The only escape route Penny’s ex had ever truly planned was the attic. Penny, however, refused to go up there by herself. So Plan B it was, and Sydney hated Plan B. It was such a misnomer, like one had some other plan waiting, ready to go. She stood just inside the slatted closet door, peering out, cell phone in one hand, weapon in the other, hoping this didn’t get them killed, because there wasn’t enough time to think of something else. Before someone even answered the 911 call on her cell phone, the front door crashed open downstairs. After that, the only thing Syd heard was the pounding of her heart. Cops announced their arrival. These guys weren’t cops.
And no one was answering the damned 911 call on her cell.
She looked between the crack in the closet door, to the stack of boxes, the bulky figure—a decoy—covered by a blanket behind the boxes. She prayed Penny would keep quiet.
Someone moved downstairs. She heard the opening of doors. One man or two?
And then the quiet footfall. Someone ascending the steps. The squeak of a floorboard down the hallway. Closer. Now outside the bedroom. On the threshold.
“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
The voice sounded like a loudspeaker. Unable to talk, she shut the phone, aimed her gun.
She peered through the closet door slats. Saw the man take a step in, knife in one hand, assault rifle in the other. He spied the thick bundle behind the boxes, brought the rifle up, then suddenly swung it toward the closet.
Syd fired through the slats. Wood splintered, the blast deafened. The man hung in the air, then crumpled to the floor as Penny screamed.
“Quiet,” Syd ordered. She used her foot to push open the closet door, kept her gun trained on the body.
“Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod.” Penny stared through the closet door in horror, sank to the ground, started rocking back and forth.
“Shut up…please,” Syd added, figuring no matter how paranoid the girl’s boyfriend had been, killing someone in their apartment was probably never part of their discussions. To Penny’s credit, she clamped her mouth shut, stifled the sobs, and Syd listened to the house. Tried to. There were no other footsteps, no sounds coming from below, but off in the distance, she heard a siren from an emergency vehicle, figured it was too soon to be related to their shooting.
Syd stepped from the closet, kept her gun trained on the man she hoped was dead. She moved closer, caught sight of his face, his lifeless eyes. The uniform beneath his overcoat.
The security guard from the Smithsonian.