“Slade, it’s Molinari. I’m outside.”
The suite was on the ground floor and looked modern and fairly new. Three men were sitting around a TV watching CBC News without sound. They were regular-looking guys of medium height and weight, one balding, another with coarse red hair, the third pale with glasses; he looked like a guy with a desk job.
Christopher Knightly, the big straw-haired man I’d met for the first time in my apartment, was in the kitchenette, popping the tab on a beer can.
He was surprised to see me and not in a good way.
Joe said, “Knightly, you’ve met Lindsay. Everyone else, this is my wife, Sergeant Lindsay Boxer, SFPD, Homicide Squad. I asked her to come because she’s intimately involved in the Four Seasons murders. She was at the crime scene. She’s also the lead investigator in that takedown op on Stockton. So this is her case, too.”
Knightly put the can down hard on the counter and said, “Christ, Joe, talk about breaking protocol. No offense, Sergeant. This isn’t San Francisco and this isn’t your homicide case. Muller’s not just a killer. She could well be a traitor, not just to us, but to the country, for God’s sake.”
“Chris. It’s my decision,” Joe told him, “and my ass if things go wrong.”
The man wearing the glasses got up to shake my hand, introduced himself as Agent Fred Munder, while the redhead got into Joe’s face, saying, “Are you serious? It’s not just about you. Our butts are on the line, too.”
“It’s done, Geary,” Joe snapped. “Let’s get on with it.”
I used the bathroom, and when I came back Agent Munder was saying to the others, “There’s been no activity for three hours. Muller is still at the house. Looks like she’s in for the night.”
“She was always a little too sure of herself,” said Knightly. “Smart, yes, I’ll give her that. But she’s arrogant and, I’m gonna say, twisted. She just loves all the attention she gets from men. Did you ever ask yourself, Joe, why she’s so eager to climb into bed with the enemy?”
It was a dig at Joe, and if he was meant to answer this question, he didn’t get a chance. Knightly’s phone chirped. He grabbed it from his shirt pocket and said, “Yeah?” He listened for a second or two, then said, “Got it. Stay with her.”
He clicked off and announced, “Muller’s on the move. Something’s gone wrong. She’s in one of three cars heading north. Was she tipped off? Who did she get to this time?”
Knightly was looking at Joe, and because I was standing next to Joe, he was also staring at me.
CHAPTER 90
THERE WAS A quick shorthand discussion between Joe and the other men in the team. Routes and a timetable were roughed out. Then the motel room emptied. Knightly and a partner drove out of the lot first. Munder and his wingman took the second car, and Joe and I took the third position out to the Sea to Sky Highway.
I could imagine that this roadway must be gorgeous in daylight, but the empty two-lane highway was unlit, and the impenetrable woods to the left and the steep, treed cliffs rising a hundred feet straight up on our right seemed menacing.
Joe’s phone was in a holder attached to the vents in the dash, and he was in ongoing communication with Knightly. Knightly was also on the phone with the two CIA cars ahead of us, the truck and the sedan that had been following Muller’s convoy from the moment they left her safe house.
Word came down the line that Muller’s three cars had split up. Knightly’s voice crackled over the speaker.
“They made us, goddamn it. We don’t know which goddamned car she’s in.”
New plans were hatched, and Knightly reported to Joe that our team had now also been split, assigned different routes with hopes that someone would locate Alison Muller’s car.
Joe punched coordinates into the GPS and stepped on the gas. The car leapt forward, and Joe drove fearlessly, hugging curves and speeding at eighty through blackness and dark shades of gray.
I was frankly scared out of my mind, watching the needle bounce around the dial as we shot through the wilderness. Joe was gunning it over ninety when our headlights flashed on a sign for Whistler Resort.
Joe spoke over the phone to Knightly. “We’re passing Whistler now. On track to that airfield in Pemberton.”
More conversation ensued, Knightly saying, “I’ve notified the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. If we don’t catch up with her shortly, we’ll see you at the airfield.”
Joe slowed to a steady seventy miles per hour, and when an intersection came up on our right, he whipped around to make the turn too fast. The car fishtailed on the empty roadway, then regained traction, and we headed east and picked up speed. Starlight and a sliver of a crescent moon revealed the ghostly shapes of trees looming alongside the road and a glimpse of the Lillooet River.