He shrugged. “To save lives.”
“Not quite. To save lives no matter what the cost. I need men and women who are willing to do whatever it takes to thwart attacks on our country. Men and women who won’t break the law to get results, but who understand how some rules are meant to be bent, and some even disregarded in the name of the greater good. Take the congressman’s less-than-savory past, for example. Just any old investigator would have taken that file at face value and gone after the man, hard. You saw it and immediately began thinking around the edges of the case. That’s the kind of men and women I want on my team, ones who aren’t going to make snap judgments, but will take the time to reflect, to look beyond the obvious and find the truth.”
Fletcher raised an eyebrow. “I appreciate the sentiment, but couldn’t you have just told me that from the beginning?”
She laughed again. “I needed to know that you’d do the right thing regardless of orders. Now, are you cool with staying? Because from what I can tell, you and your friend Dr. Owens have made more headway into this investigation so far than my entire team.”
Fletcher hated games with a passion. He was tempted to just walk out on principle. But he was too intrigued at this point, too invested in the case, to just walk away.
“Was it your folks who rolled my house yesterday?”
“What?”
“Someone did a thorough job on my house. Nothing out of place, but a light was left off that I always leave on. I figured it was you.”
She actually looked surprised, and intrigued. “It wasn’t on my orders. I would never invade my team’s privacy like that. We should put someone on your house in case they come back for more.”
He watched her for a moment, trying to decide if she was telling the truth. She seemed genuinely disturbed by the news. Which worried him even more—if it wasn’t JTTF looking in the corners, then who was? No, she was lying. He could see a little muscle in her cheek twitching. A tell. Good to know.
First things first. “We can talk about that later. I’m in. But you pull another number like this and I’m gone faster than you can say bye.”
Bianco smiled. “Fair enough. Now I’m going to tell you what I know, and you need to tell me what you know, and what you’ve done, so we can all go forward together and shut this killer down.”
Chapter 27
Red to red. Black to black. Yellow to yellow. White to white. Green to green.
Blue to...careful now, this is the most important one, hold your breath, hold it...there. Blue to blue.
He took a deep gulp of air and blew it out, careful not to jiggle anything loose. Perfection. Everything was wired up now.
He sat back on his stool, away from the workbench, and allowed himself a moment to close his eyes and breathe regularly, in and out, measured, careful. The worst was behind him. All he had left was the trigger, but that was already soldered to the back of the cell phone.
He opened his eyes and without hesitating laid the last piece in place, biting his lip, watching the metal edges as they lined up perfectly. Of course they were perfect. He was careful that way. Precision was an art, one he happily engaged in with regular practice. One must hone one’s craft if one expects to be the best.
He screwed the last corner down, inserted it into the tube, carefully unscrewed the mount, then laid the finished masterpiece on his workbench.
Four identical tubes lay to the left of the current one, bringing the total to five. Five perfectly constructed bombs, any one of which could take down a large house if placed in the proper spot. All five blown together would take down a building.
By the time he hit Send on the cell phone, the world would be at a standstill, and he’d be miles away.
The perfect crime. Even better than D.C.
The idiots there still didn’t have a clue what they were looking for. All the right people were dead, all the right people were sick, languishing in hospitals, giving blood samples that told contradictory stories. Chasing their tails, while the main event was yet to come.
They thought they were in the clear. They thought someone from one of those fucking medieval countries was responsible. An enemy of the state.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Let them think it. He didn’t care who got the blame, or the credit, so long as he had time to fulfill the last part of his agenda.