Shepard wasn’t going to admit he’d watched the whole thing from a neighbor’s yard. He’d wanted to see the girl’s protector in action. And it didn’t hurt to thin the ranks of Chip’s men. Shepard thought of it as tidying up in advance. It would make things easier, when the time came to clean house.
“I had other obligations,” he said. “With cameras on the house and the beacon on the car, I could pick her up any time I wanted. Until Bertram’s team got noticed. You can see it in the footage. Just one man. But a substantial threat.”
“A substantial threat?” asked Chip, eyebrows high, the drink forgotten in his hand. “That’s your professional opinion? A substantial fucking threat? Bert’s team was armed and armored, four trained killers, and he went through them like a hot knife.”
“Yes,” said Shepard. “Just like in California.”
Chip looked at him. “What the fuck is going on with you? Something’s out of whack here. It’s not like you to hold back. I know you’re not scared, ’cause I’ve never known you to actually get scared. As far as I can tell you don’t actually feel anything at all. So what the fuck is different today?”
Shepard didn’t want Chip to speculate about what might be different.
The man was far more than a salesman. Yes, Chip’s primary attributes were self-interest and greed, but he wouldn’t have succeeded in Iraq and leveraged himself into his current business without a great deal of insight and mental acuity. Chip was quite capable of making an intuitive leap.
So Shepard allowed Chip to see something else, something inside him that Shepard would ordinarily have kept hidden. It had the added credibility of partial truth.
“Ohhh,” Chip said, smiling wide. “I get it now. It’s the guy. He’s different. He’s not just another simple civilian contract, an insulin overdose or hit-and-run. You think he’s worthy of your skills. You’re flirting with him.”
Shepard didn’t respond. Configured his face in such a way as to allow the salesman to believe Shepard was annoyed. It served to reinforce the salesman’s conclusion.
“I always suspected you might be human,” said Chip. He drained his drink and set the tumbler down on the bar. “So where the fuck are they now?”
“The van stopped broadcasting twenty minutes ago,” said Shepard. “Last known location is south of downtown. Perhaps they found the beacon. Or parked the van in an underground structure. Or burned it to the frame like the Tahoe. It doesn’t matter. They’re gone.”
“What a clusterfuck,” said Chip.
The salesman wasn’t angry enough, thought Shepard. He had something planned.
“The other teams,” said Shepard. “Where are they?”
“On the way. They’ll be here day after tomorrow.” He waved Shepard out of his chair. “Move your ass,” he said. “Let me see what I can pull off these cameras. I still have some friends back East.”
Chip sat behind his desk and ran his fingers across the keyboard like a concert pianist.
Without taking his eyes off the screen, he said, “Go make yourself useful. See if you can find the van. And the next time you have a shot at this guy, you better fucking take it.”
The salesman definitely had something planned, thought Shepard.
He left Chip’s office, the door closing silently behind him.
It wasn’t quite time for tomatoes, he thought.
Not quite yet.
42
JUNE
June’s phone alarm woke her in the half-light of early morning. A warm spring wind blew hard off Puget Sound, and giant raindrops rattled the tent fly. She closed her eyes and snuggled deeper into her sleeping bag, wishing for another hour of sleep.
She’d been up half the night digging into Charles Dawes IV, also known as Chip.
The other half she’d spent sexually harassing her bodyguard.
He didn’t seem to mind.
They were camped in a sheltered pocket on the edge of a bluff in Discovery Park, a five-hundred-acre natural area where Seattle met the ocean. It wasn’t exactly a suite at the Four Seasons, but she couldn’t ask Peter to sleep in a hotel, not now. Maybe never.
She heard him unzip the tent to let in some fresh air, then the sound of the little backpacking stove firing in the tent’s vestibule. “Coffee in ten minutes,” he said quietly.
“Let’s go out to breakfast,” she said, yawning. “Eggs Benedict, bacon, hash browns.”
“That sounds nice,” he said. “I can offer you trail mix and a banana.”
“I had your banana last night.” She smiled sweetly. “Twice, in fact.”
“I regret to inform the young lady,” he said, bending to brush his lips against the side of her neck, “that was no banana.”
The coffee water boiled over the top of the pan.
? ? ?
EVENTUALLY PETER stuffed the pack with their sleeping bags and the sodden tent, then followed her up the broken bluffs to the wide undulating plateau. The hard rain had diminished to a thin drizzle. A narrow trail led through high grass and wildflowers to the parking lot, where a silver Escalade waited, idling silently.
The driver’s window hummed down and the rear hatch floated up.