“You didn’t give him a chance to lie. You just shot him. Alex is alive. Jesse failed.”
He shook his head as though trying to grasp the concept. “Then I’ll just have to be his friend again. When Evans takes you, I’ll wait a couple of days and then I’ll call him. I’ll let him lean on me. I’ll pretend to try to find you. He doesn’t know anything.”
Eve shook her head as Warren opened the door and shoved her in. “No. He’ll figure it out. He has everything he needs to know. He knows someone erased a file at the FBI. He knows Carmen Garcia’s name. He’ll start checking into her. He’ll put it together and he’ll be at your doorstep one night. He won’t be any more merciful with you than Evans was with me.”
Warren hurried her along. “You were always the brains of that operation, Eve. Without you, Alex is just a big piece of meat. He’s nothing without you. I saw the way he disintegrated the first time. He’ll be worse now. He won’t be able to think about anything except you, and I’ll find someone to finally take him out. And Eddie will be safe. When he wins the White House, I’ll have a place at his side. Like it should be.”
She was dragged into the hanger. The building was large, easily housing a small Learjet. Evans had come up in the world. She counted eight men walking around the hanger, including one of the men who had watched her the other day in Chazz’s office.
She felt a savage sense of satisfaction. Her Master was going to owe her big time. He was still wearing the same shoes, the very ones she’d attached the GPS to. Oh, she was never going to let him live that down.
And then she saw something that chilled her to the bone.
Stack after stack of what looked to be fertilizer lined the long walls of the hanger. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe it was something for the farm that seemed to be attached. They were stacked ten bags high and the hanger went on for thirty yards. There must have been hundreds and hundreds of bags. That many bags could be turned into a bomb of unimaginable force.
Evans walked up to her, holding his hands out as though inviting her to a great event. “Welcome, Eve. The last time we were together, I was a small operation. I think you’ll find my brief time in prison has refined and refocused my passion. How do you like me now, whore?”
“Not any better than I did before.” God, what was he going to do with all that fertilizer? She was afraid she knew damn well. And Warren was going to let it happen? She wasn’t sure who was the bigger monster—Evans, who was a sociopath, or Warren, who knew better and still allowed it to happen.
Evans seemed to enjoy having an audience. “I’ve got bigger plans than before. Do you have any idea how long I’ve had to take to gather this much ammonium nitrate without the feds coming down on my ass? I’ve gathered it from all over the country, using all of my followers. McVeigh used forty fifty-pound bags in Oklahoma City. I have three hundred.”
Three hundred bags of pure grade-A death when used in the most improper way. “I’m sure Warren here helped you hide that. How are you going to justify that, asshole? Do you know how many people he can kill with a bomb that big? Do you really think you can hide your ties to him forever?”
Evans grinned, a smile that on anyone else would indicate genuine joy. His joy was killing people and getting away with it. “I think that SAC Petty will continue to do what he needs to do. Or he’ll lose everything. Besides, his brother plans to run on a law and order platform. I’m giving him something to rail against. Everyone wins, Eve.”
Everyone except the people he killed. She knew who the true monster was. There was something deeply wrong with Michael Evans that began in his childhood. She’d studied him. His mother had fled her abusive husband, using a women’s shelter to hide from him. But she’d left her son behind. Michael had grown up listening to his father rail against whores and turning his abuse on his son.
Warren had grown up wealthy, with parents who doted on him. He knew exactly what he was doing. Evans was sick and deserved to be put down, but Warren was simply greedy. There was no defense for him. “You’re a traitor. Not just to your friends and your job. You’re a traitor to your country. I will not stop until I out you and your brother.”
“It won’t work.” Warren sounded like he was trying to convince himself.