“That’s right.”
“Coulda been one of them.”
“No, because you’d have blown my brains out the first time you were close enough to do it.”
“They don’t like you, huh?”
“Not much. So I wondered who you were.”
“Now you know.”
“Not really. You’re a mystery, Spencer Grant.”
“
“Sure. But no more real than those you have for me.”
“It’s real.”
“Sure.”
“Legal name. Spencer Grant. Guaranteed.”
“Maybe. But who were you before you were a cop, before you went to UCLA, way back before you were in the army?”
“You know all about me.”
“Not all. Just what you’ve left on the records, just as much as you wanted anybody to find. Following me home, you spooked me, so I started checking you out.”
“You moved out of the bungalow because of me.”
“Didn’t know who the hell you were. But I figured if you could find me, so could they. Again.”
“And they did.”
“The very next day.”
“So when I spooked you…I saved you.”
“You could look at it that way.”
“Without me, you’d have been there.”
“Maybe.”
“When the SWAT team hit.”
“Probably.”
“Seems like it’s all sort of…meant to be.”
“But what were
“Well…”
“In my house.”
“You were gone.”
“So?”
“Wasn’t your place anymore.”
“Did you know it wasn’t my place anymore when you went in?”
The full meaning of her revelations kept giving him delayed jolts. He blinked furiously, vainly trying to see her face clearly. “Jesus, if you bugged my truck…!”
“What?”
“Then were you following me Wednesday night?”
She said, “Yeah. Seeing what you were all about.”
“From Malibu…?”
“To The Red Door.”
“Then back to your place in Santa Monica?”
“I wasn’t
“But you saw it go down, the assault.”
“From a distance. Don’t change the subject.”
“What subject?” he asked, genuinely confused.
“You were going to explain why you broke into my house Wednesday night,” she reminded him. She wasn’t angry. Her voice wasn’t sharp. He would have felt better if she’d been flat-out angry with him.
“You…you didn’t show up at work.”
“So you break into my house?”
“Didn’t break in.”
“Have I forgotten that I sent you an invitation?”
“Door was unlocked.”
“Every unlocked door is an invitation to you?”
“I was…worried.”
“Yeah, worried. Come on, tell me the truth. What were you looking for in my house that night?”
“I was…”
“You were what?”
“I needed…”
“What? What did you need in my house?”
Spencer wasn’t sure whether he was dying from his injuries or from embarrassment. Whatever the case, he lost consciousness.
The Bell JetRanger transported Roy Miro from the dry wash in the open desert straight to the landing pad on the roof of the agency’s high rise in downtown Las Vegas. While a ground and air search was being conducted in the Mojave for the woman and the vehicle that had taken Spencer Grant away from the wreckage of his Explorer, Roy spent Saturday afternoon in the fifth-floor satellite-surveillance center.
While he worked, he ate a substantial lunch that he ordered from the commissary, to compensate for missing the lavish breakfast about which he’d fantasized. Besides, later he would need all the energy that he was able to muster, when he went home with Eve Jammer again.
The previous evening, when Bobby Dubois had brought Roy to that same room, it had been quiet, operating with a minimal staff. Now every computer and other piece of equipment was manned, and murmured conversations were being conducted throughout the large chamber.
Most likely, the vehicle they were seeking had traveled a considerable distance during the night, in spite of the inhospitable terrain. Grant and the woman might even have gotten far enough to pick up a highway beyond the surveillance posts that the agency had established on every route out of the southern half of the state, in which case they had slipped through the net again.
On the other hand, perhaps they hadn’t gotten far at all. They might have bogged down. They might have had mechanical failure.
Perhaps Grant had been injured in the Explorer. According to Ted Tavelov, bloodstains discolored the driver’s seat, and it didn’t appear as if the blood had come from the dead rat. If Grant was in bad shape, maybe he’d been
Roy was determined to think positively. The world was what you made it — or tried to make it. His entire life was committed to that philosophy.
Of the available satellites in geosynchronous orbits that kept them positioned over the western and southwestern United States at all times, three were capable of the intense degree of surveillance that Roy Miro wished to conduct of the state of Nevada and of all neighboring states. One of those three space-based observation posts was under the control of the Drug Enforcement Administration. One was owned by the Environmental Protection Agency. The third was a military venture officially shared by the army, navy, air force, marines, and coast guard — but it was, in fact, under the iron-fisted political control of the office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
No contest. The Environmental Protection Agency.
The Drug Enforcement Administration, in spite of the dedication of its agents and largely because of meddling politicians, had pretty much failed in its assigned mission. And the military services, at least in these years following the end of the Cold War, were confused as to their purpose, underfunded, and moribund.
By contrast, the Environmental Protection Agency was fulfilling its mission to an unprecedented degree for a government agency, in part because there was no well-organized criminal element or interest group opposed to it,
