“Woodling,” Hale called out.
FORTY-ONE
WYATT WAITED BESIDE THE SPRING GUN AS A KEY WAS INSERTED into the lock on the other side of the door.
He watched the knob turn.
Andrea Carbonell was about to enter her residence. Was she oblivious to the fact that the simple act of coming home would end her life?
The door opened.
Nylon whined as it tightened through the screw eyes.
Hinges pivoted thirty degrees, forty, forty-five.
He’d already determined that at least a sixty-degree arc would be needed for the trigger to engage.
His foot stopped the door’s advance and he snipped the line with scissors.
He withdrew his shoe and the door fully opened.
Carbonell stared at him, then the gun, the nylon swinging in the dim light. Not a hint of surprise flooded her face.
“Was it a tough choice?” she asked.
He still held the scissors. “More than I thought it would be.”
“Obviously not your doing. Who?”
He shrugged. “A man came, did his thing, and left.”
“Whom you did not stop.”
He shrugged. “Not my business.”
“I suppose I should be grateful you’re here.”
“How about grateful that I snipped the string.”
She stepped inside and closed the door. “Why’d you do it? You have to be angry about what happened last night.”
“I am. You wanted me dead.”
“Come now, Jonathan. I have a much greater respect for your skills.”
He lunged at her, his right hand clamping tight on her neck, slamming her thin frame into the wall. Framed pictures nearby rattled on their hangers.
“You wanted my skills to kill me. You wanted me to get Voccio out of there. Flush us both to the car, then blow us up.”
“Did you come to kill me?” she breathed out, his grip still tight. Not a hint of concern seeped from her.
He’d made his point. He released his grip.
She stood and stared at him, composing herself. Then she caressed the spring gun, admiring its workmanship. “High caliber, automatic fire. How many rounds? Thirty? Forty? There would have been little left of me.”
He could not care less. “You have the cipher solution.”
“Voccio emailed it to me a few hours before you arrived. But I suppose you already know that. Hence, your anger.”
“I have more than that to be angry about.”
She apprised him with a long gaze. “I suppose you do.”
“That solution will not remain a secret for long.”
“Jonathan, you have such little faith in my abilities. I had it emailed from outside the institute. Only Voccio knew from where. Now he’s dead.”
“Isn’t that convenient?”
She caught his drift. “You believe those men there last night came from me.” She pointed to the spring gun. “You probably believe that I planted this here, too.”
“Both are entirely possible.”
“It would do no good for me to deny either. You wouldn’t believe me. So I won’t.” She relieved him of the scissors, which he still held. “From my desk?”
He said nothing.
“I like you, Jonathan. I always have.”
“I didn’t know you liked cigars.” He’d caught the lingering scent in the air and found three antique humidors, each filled with smokes.
“My father once made them. My family lived at Ybor City, in Tampa. Many of the 1960s Cuban immigrants settled there. Florida was like home. It was once quite a place. Ever been?”
He shook his head.
“Spaniards, Cubans, Italians, Germans, Jews, Chinese. We all coexisted, thriving off one another. What an exciting place. So alive. Then it all ended, and they built an interstate highway straight down its middle.”
He kept silent and let her talk. She was buying time. Okay. Buy it.
“My father opened a cigar factory and did well. There were many in Ybor back in the 1920s, before the Great Depression, but gradually they all disappeared. He was determined to bring them back. No machines for him. All of his smokes were hand rolled, one at a time. I acquired a taste for them early in life.”
He knew that her parents had fled Castro in the 1960s and that she’d been born and raised here. Beyond that, she was a mystery.
“Have you always been a man of few words?”
“I say what I need to say.”
She stepped around the gun and came closer. “My parents were quite wealthy when they lived in Cuba. They were capitalists, and Castro hated capitalists. They left everything they owned and came here, starting over, intent on proving themselves a second time. They loved America, and at first this country gave them another chance. Then bad economies and bad choices took it all away. They lost everything.” She paused and stared at him through the dark. “They died broke.”
He wondered why she was telling him this.
“The opportunists who fled Cuba in the 1980s? The Mariel boat people? They tried to buy into Castro, and when it didn’t work out they decided to come here. All they did was make it hard for the others, my parents included. They should be sent back to live with what they embraced.” She paused. “I worked my way up. Every step. No one gave me anything. When my father died I swore to him that I would not make the mistakes he made. That I’d be careful. But unfortunately, I made an error today.” Her eyes locked on him. “Yet you gave me a reprieve. Why? So you could kill me yourself?”
“I’m going after the Jefferson Wheel,” he told her. “If you interfere, I’ll kill anyone you send, then I will kill you.”
“Why do you care? This really doesn’t concern you anymore.”
“A man died last night for no reason other than he did his job.”
She laughed. “And that affects you?”
“It affects you.”
He saw she understood. He could cause her problems. Change all of her plans. Screw up her life.
“Malone has the cipher key, too,” she said. “He emailed it to himself last night from Voccio’s computer, then deleted it from the institute’s server. There is no other record of the solution. Only you, he, and I have it.”
“He’ll go straight to Monticello.”
He stepped around her toward the door.
She grabbed his arm, her face only inches away. “You can’t do this alone and you know it.”
That he did. Too many unknowns. Too much risk. And he was not properly prepared.
“You don’t fool me, Jonathan. This isn’t about me and what happened last night. It’s Malone. You don’t want
