The Hit

Chapter





7





ROBIE IMMEDIATELY CONTACTED Blue Man and told him what had happened. A trace was put on the email Robie had received. The report came back thirty minutes later and it was not good.

Untraceable.

For Robie’s agency to concede something was untraceable was a big deal. Whoever Reel was working with, they weren’t slackers.

The other point to consider was how Reel had gotten Robie’s email address. It certainly wasn’t public knowledge. Blue Man was probably thinking the same thing.

Reel might have a con federate in the ranks of the agency. A leave-behind who was feeding information to the woman. That information might include that Robie had been assigned to track her down, a fact that was only hours old. Whoever the insider was, he had access to a lot.

Robie once more began reading the file on Jessica Reel contained on the USB stick. Reel had had some impressive hits over the years. She, like Robie, operated at the highest level and had taken down people in situations that would have challenged Robie to the fullest.

He’d never doubted that Reel was good. But he was a little surprised that she was that good.

And she may have a spy on the inside telling her all she needs to know to get enough of an advantage to take me out before I get to her. Which means my own agency is a threat.

Robie kept reading until he came to the hit on Doug Jacobs. Quick, clean, ingenious really. Nail the handler while he thinks you’re about to take out someone else.

And a sniper’s nest had been found in the hotel in the Middle East. The gun muzzle had been placed perfectly so that when Jacobs did the satellite zoom Reel had suggested, he could see the gun barrel. But there had been no sniper.

There was no evidence that Reel had been the shooter who had ended Jacobs’s life. But the email Robie had just received left no doubt that she was involved somehow.

So the woman was supposed to be in the Middle East, but she might have been in D.C. drawing a bead on the man talking to her through a headset. Other things being equal, it probably was Reel who took the shot on Jacobs. If it were Robie, he would want to make sure the kill was done correctly. He wouldn’t have wanted anyone else pulling the trigger.

Which meant he had to go somewhere right now, before he met Vance for dinner.

Robie barely glanced at the three-story building where Jacobs’s life had ended. He knew what had happened there, at the end of the bullet’s path. Now he needed to understand the beginning of that path.

The old town house was only a few failed support columns from collapsing. Built in the late 1800s, the five-story building had been used for many different purposes over the years. These included a private school and a men’s club that had ceased to exist over fifty years ago. But no one famous had ever lived there, so it would never become a historical registry building. In the coming years it would probably be knocked down if it didn’t tumble down on its own first.

Robie gazed up at the building’s front. Staring back at him were aged brick, scraggly vines clinging to the walls, dead grass, and a rotted front door. He walked gingerly up the steps, avoiding the holes in the porch planks. The building had been secured, but stealthily. There were watchful eyes that had already cleared Robie to enter the premises. He used a key he had been given to open the front door and entered. The electricity had long since been turned off, so he pulled a flashlight from his pocket and walked on, clearing piles of rubble and giving a wide berth to missing floorboards.

The building was hundreds of yards from the agency outpost where Jacobs had been working. It was a long-distance shot certainly, but manageable ten times out of ten by a capable shooter.

Robie took the stairs up to the fifth floor. He had already been told that that was from where the shot had come. It was the only position in the town house that provided a clear sight line to Jacobs’s office.

He heard raindrops starting to fall more heavily as he reached the fifth floor landing. He walked down the hall. He felt the chill from the outside reach him through innumerable chinks in the building’s walls. He might be able to see his breath if it weren’t so dark.

He shined his light ahead of him, taking care to avoid weak spots in the floor. It would have been dicey setting up your shot from here, despite the clear sight line. You had no way to know if the floor would collapse under you.

But it hadn’t and Jacobs had died.

Robie slowed his walk as he approached the room. It was in a turret on the right side of the building.

He knew the place had already been gone over by agency personnel, but he also had been told that nothing had been disturbed. And the police hadn’t been told about this building yet, but no doubt their investigation would get here at some point. But for now Robie had a small window of opportunity.

He opened the door and stepped inside.

There was only one spot in the room from where the shot really could have been made. The turret room had three south-facing windows. The one in the middle had the truest sight line to Jacobs.

Robie drew nearer and shined his light around. On the windowsill was a narrow disturbance in the dust pattern. That was where the rifle muzzle had rested. Another disturbance of dust on the floor represented the shooter’s knee.

There was a slight discharge from the rifle on both the sill and the floor. The suppressor would have vented the propellant gas out just about there.

No shell casing had been found, so the brass had been policed, as Blue Man had pointed out. But the dust disturbances could easily have been covered up as well.

Only they weren’t, which told Robie that the shooter didn’t care if the sniper’s nest was discovered.

He picked up a long piece of shoe molding that had broken off, knelt down, and, using the molding as an imaginary weapon, drew a bead on Jacobs’s office.

Fifth floor looking down on third floor. The reverse wouldn’t work, of course, because of the angle of the shot. You couldn’t fire up and nail your target. You had to fire down. If Jacobs’s building had been taller than five stories and he had been on a higher floor, the old town house would not have worked as a shooting nest.

But they would have just found another place that did work.

Robie assumed that bulletproof glass was being added to the windows of many agency buildings right this second.

It was clear that Reel, or whoever the shooter had been, was in possession of the layout of Jacobs’s office. Back to the window, computer screen in front. No obstructions to the flight path of the killing round. Chest shot, wrecked the heart, clanged off a rib, and exited the body, hitting the computer.

Robie was guessing about the collision with the rib. If the bullet had passed right through the body it would have hit the top of the desk most likely, not the computer. The angle was too extreme. Ribs were hard enough to change a bullet’s flight path. He hadn’t seen Jacobs’s autopsy results, but he wouldn’t be surprised to see that sort of internal damage.

So the shot was fired. Jacobs was dead. If Reel were the shooter she would have heard through her headset the window breaking, the impact of her round with Jacobs, and Jacobs dying. Confirmation of a kill. It was always nice to have when you were firing blind through a window.

And she would have had possession of the layout of Jacobs’s office. Reel wouldn’t have actually been shooting “blind.”

Inside info again.

Like my email address.

She might be following me right now. Or she might be here waiting for me, figuring I would come to the town house at some point.

Robie scanned the street below, but saw nothing other than people scurrying along to get out of the rain. But people like Reel wouldn’t show themselves so carelessly. Robie looked down at his shoe. Something white was sticking out from under the sole. He picked the item off. It was soft, falling apart. He held it to his nose. It had a scent.

Then Robie forgot about that when he heard a disturbance outside the house. Raised voices. Sounds of footsteps on the front porch.

He raced out of the room and down the hall. He reached a window where he could see the front door. There were people clustered out there. An argument was going on. Robie could see people he assumed were from his agency.

And he could see other people who were not.

They were easy to tell apart. The ones not from his agency were wearing blue windbreakers with gold lettering on the back.

There were only three gold letters. But they were three letters Robie did not want to see.

FBI.

And when he saw who was heading up the FBI agents he turned and moved as quickly as he could toward the rear of the house.

He was meeting Nicole Vance for dinner at eight.

He did not want to meet her inside this town house in the next two minutes.