“I’ve never heard of Bureau assets being used that way. It would give away our biggest advantage—we come in hordes.”
Talbot concentrated on navigating the next set of hairpin turns.
“Yeah, well,” he said.
“Farnsworth said Kreiss got involved with the Agency’s sweepers, who supposedly are all lone wolves.”
“
“Sweepers’? What do they do?”
“They’re a group of manhunting specialists in the Agency Counterespionage Division. They’re supposedly called in when one of their own clandestine operatives gets sideways with the Agency. Farnsworth said they were ‘retrieval’ specialists. Supersecret, very bad, et cetera, et cetera.”
Janet winced when Talbot went wide on a blind curve.
“Never heard of them,” she said.
“Sounds like another one of those Agency legends—you know, ghost-polishing for the benefit of the rest of us mere LE types.”
Talbot looked sideways at her before returning his attention to the winding road.
“I’m not so sure of that. But anyhow, this was four, five years ago. Farnsworth said he was at the Washington field office when Kreiss was stashed over at headquarters, so this is all nineteenth hand.
But, basically, I was relieved when Kreiss said he’d stay out of this case.”
Janet snorted.
“What?” Talbot said.
She turned to look at him.
“There is no way in hell that guy’s going to stay out of it. Didn’t you pick up on that back there?”
Talbot seemed surprised.
“No. Actually, I didn’t detect that. I think he’s just pissed off. Besides, whatever he used to do at the Bureau, he’s retired now. He’s a parent, that’s all. I think he’s just a guy who screwed up at the end of his career, got kicked out, moved down here to be near his kid, and now she’s gone missing, and here’s the Bureau backing out. He’s old, for Chrissakes.”
“I think you’re wrong,” she said, shaking her head.
“And he’s not that old.”
Talbot laughed.
“Hey, you attracted to that guy or something?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Larry,” she said, looking away, afraid of what her face might reveal. It hadn’t exactly been attraction. She’d been scared and embarrassed. Eight years in the bureau and some veteran stares her down.
“Well, just remember, Janet, there’s still no evidence of a crime here.
You know RA Farnsworth’s rules: no crime, no time. He’s right: We shop it to Missing Persons and move on. Hey, where do you want to stop for lunch?”
Janet shrugged and continued to stare out the side window. Gnarlybarked mossy pines, some of them enveloped in strangling vines, stared indifferently back at her. They were going down now, but another steep hill filled the windshield in front of them. It didn’t take a huge leap other imagination to visualize Edwin Kreiss slipping out of that cabin and disappearing into the woods. Her heart had almost jumped out of her chest when he had loomed over her like a tiger examining its next meal. She had never had such a powerfully frightening reaction to a man in all her life.
“Wherever,” she said.
“I’m not that hungry.”
Barry dark got off the shuttle and hurried through the rain toward his apartment building in the student ghetto behind the Kroger shopping center. He held his backpack over his head in a futile effort to keep his flaming red hair dry. It was nearly dark, and he was, as usual, pissed off.
He reached his ground-floor apartment, checked the battered mailbox cluster, which always got wet when it rained—stupid, dumb damn place to put the damn mailboxes, anyway, mailmen getting lazier and lazier-and then went into the concrete hallway, which stank of fried foods, cat piss, and laundry soap in about equal proportions. A single bulb threw minimal light on the trash accumulated in the hallway corners. He unlocked the flimsy door to his apartment, pushed aside some of the junk and litter that filled his so-called living room, and closed the door behind him. The curtains were drawn to discourage campus thieves, and with the wet gray evening outside, the room was dark and gloomy, perfectly matching his mood. He dumped his wet backpack onto the floor and hit the light switch, which produced absolutely nothing. He swore out loud.
The breakers in the kitchen power panel were probably wet again. Jesus!
Would nothing go right on this miserable day?
He ran a hand through his mop of hair and was starting across the room when a very large figure with no head rose up out of a chair and hit him high on the right side of his chest, just inside his right shoulder, so hard that he staggered sideways. The pain was incredible and he almost stopped breathing. Then the headless figure delivered another stunning punch, this one to the same point on his left side.
Almost without realizing it, Barry began sinking to his knees, then squatted back on his haunches on the floor, eyes teary, trying to make a sound but only managing a whimper. His arms were paralyzed right down to his fingertips, and the pain was making him sick. When he opened his eyes, the figure was not visible, but then he sensed that some thing was behind him. He tried to turn around, but it wasn’t possible with his frozen arms, and then a viselike hand gripped him by his hair and lifted him straight up to his feet.
It hurt like hell, but what really scared him was that the man was able to do that with one hand: Barry weighed over 160. The headless man frog marched him over to the interior living room wall and pushed him back down to the floor, onto his knees, pressing Barry’s face to the wall before letting go. When Barry’s head came off the wall, the hand pushed his face back against it, hard enough to mash his nose and start a small nosebleed.
Even Barry, who wasn’t into following orders, understood: Don’t move.
He stopped moving.
The fire in his upper arms threatened to envelop him. He tried to understand what he had seen: a large dark figure in a full-length coat, black gloves, and no fuckin’ head! Reviewing the image scared him again, and then a very large polished chrome blade flashed up along the right side of his face, its edge resting casually one millimeter from his right eyeball.
He flinched automatically, ducking his head away, but that iron hand came back and pushed his nose up against the wall again, where a dark blotch now bloomed. The man pressed the edge of the blade against Barry’s right cheekbone and he felt a sting on his skin. He began to tremble uncontrollably. He wanted to say something, but he couldn’t figure out what was happening to him, and besides, his throat was dry as paper.
“We can make this long or short. Your call.” The man’s voice was a hoarse, accentless whisper.
Barry tried again to say something, but he managed only another croak. He felt the man’s body settling down behind him, a huge presence, what felt like a knee pressing in against his back. That knife blade had not moved. He suddenly felt an extreme urge to urinate. The pain in his shoulders was getting worse, much worse.
“Here it is, sonny,” the man whispered.
“I want to know where Lynn Kreiss and her friends went camping.”
Barry blinked in the semidarkness. Lynn Kreiss? Who was this fucker?
He’d been all over this with the cops. He had blown them off, of course.
Barry dark didn’t give cops of any variety the time of fuckin’ day, not after all the hassle they gave him with traffic stops and parking
tickets. He had also feigned total ignorance because Rip had made him swear not to tell anyone, but then that knife did move and there was a sudden cold draft on his skin as the man sliced open the back of Barry’s shirt from waist to collar. As Barry was trying to assimilate this development, the man took him by the hair again, hoisting him all the way up on his toes.
This time, Barry yelled with the pain. And then that huge knife pressed for an instant against the small of his
