she gets her bowels to turn over.”
Joe spoke without turning his head. “Stephanie, check all the travel agencies and airlines on the off chance that she’s already made reservations or he’s made some for her.”
“Sure,” she said, her voice barely over a whisper.
“When she moves, we have to be ahead of her,” Joe said. “And, Stephanie, run any tickets in names that might be obvious aliases,” Joe said.
Stephanie did a slow burn. Stephanie, please do some shit work far me while Larry and Walter sit on their asses.
“Eve hasn’t seen Stephanie or Larry yet. They’ll provide close cover. She’s seen you other two, but if we alter you enough, we should be okay. She’s almost blind. Martin would recognize me. We’re closing in on E day, kids-let’s stay alert,” Joe said.
An hour later Stephanie came into the room and held up the pad she had been writing on. “I have it. In two days.” Stephanie put her notes down on the table. “She’s flying to Dallas/Fort Worth with a change for Denver.”
“That was too easy,” Joe said, frowning.
“That’s what I thought, so I looked closer. There’s a suspicious reservation on a flight to Miami on a different airline one concourse over, a few minutes later. And I called the charter services, and there’s a private charter booked under that same name from Miami to Orlando. To be paid for in cash. And there’s a reservation at one of the hotels at Disney World for two days and three nights.”
“Too close for coincidence?” Joe said.
“Well, I didn’t give up there. Seems the Evelyn St. Martin return is back here, Charlotte,” Stephanie said proudly. “Also, while I was checking, I discovered mirror reservations exist in remarkably similar names over the three days following.” She looked at the paper in her hand. “E. Martindale, Milton Martin, and Eve Farmingdale. The others have charters scheduled at different services at Miami International. Haven’t checked the hotel reservations on those yet.”
“All right!” Joe slapped his hands together. “She’s planning to ditch the tail at Dallas/Fort Worth and double back to Miami. Figures we can’t follow the charter. And she could change the destination in the air, I imagine. God, we’re good,” Joe said. “Do the hotels, but once she’s on the ground, she may change all that. Besides, she’ll be transmitting.”
Aren’t we good, Stephanie thought to herself. You’re welcome, asshole.
Then Joe did something out of character: he hugged her and spun her around in the small room. “You are brilliant, Stephanie,” he said. “With minds like yours on our side, the bad guys don’t have a fuckin’ chance.”
Until that moment Stephanie had felt as though she had been doing the lion’s share of the work on the team and that he’d take the credit as most of the superiors in the agency did. It was part of paying dues, she’d been told. Now she knew he was using her so much for the detail work because he thought she was the one who’d get results. His motives were simple-he just wanted Martin Fletcher’s blood on the floor, and he loved anyone who could help him draw it.
24
As soon as Reb stepped down off the bus and passed through the gate, the agents watching him could relax. But he didn’t climb down from the bus and go into the house as he was supposed to. Instead he stood beside a large oak, holding his backpack, and stared at Alice Walters’s house across the street. Thorne Greer trained the binoculars on him and waited. As Thorne watched, Reb began walking toward the Walters house. Woody sat up from the monitors and stood behind Thorne.
“Shit!” Thorne said. “What in hell’s he up to?”
Reb crossed the street and didn’t stop until he was halfway across the lawn. When he stopped, he looked up at Thorne and yelled, “Hey, Mr. Greer, I want to talk to you!”
“What’s going on?” the local agent, Alton Vance, who had been following the bus, asked over the radio. He was down the street watching from the Volvo.
“I don’t know,” Thorne said. “He’s yelling that he wants to see me.”
“Better do something,” Woody said, entertained.
“Wish I was in on your joke. This is shit. With my luck Martin will drive by and see-”
“A boy talking to a house?” Woody laughed again.
“I’ll open the front door,” Thorne said.
“Do you imagine that Martin doesn’t know we’re here? I assumed he was supposed to see us,” Woody said.
“What do you mean?”
Woody shrugged. “I assumed you wanted him to know we’re here. That it’s just supposed to look like we’re trying to stay secret.”
“What are you saying?”
“We did everything but take out billboards. We could have stayed invisible, but you had us doing close cover. Hell, we were spotted by kids! You’re too good to be that sloppy.”
Thorne walked to the door. “Orders shouldn’t be questioned. I don’t know exactly what Paul’s thinking, but I trust his judgment.”
“So did what’s their names-Hill and Barnett, was it?”
Thorne was in the hallway, but he whirled and cast a look of pure fury back into the room.
Woody opened his hands and shrugged. Then, when Thorne was clear, he smiled.
Thorne stormed down the stairs to the front door. He waved Reb inside. Reb stepped to the edge of the front steps and no farther.
“Reb. You aren’t supposed to know we’re here. Remember? See, if you don’t know we’re here, then you can’t be yelling at me or standing in the yard. Because someone could see us. Remember?”
The boy stood firm and fixed his eyes on Thorne. “I want to see my father.”
“Reb, that isn’t something I can control. I mean-”
“Then I won’t cooperate. I’m going to wave at Woody and Sean and you, too. Every day I am going to stand here until I get to talk to him. He’s in there, isn’t he?”
“No, he isn’t. Come on in,” Thorne said. “We can talk.”
“After I see him.”
“After you satisfy yourself that he isn’t here.”
25
Rainey Lee seated himself across from Paul and locked his long fingers together on the conference table. “The Buchanans will be at home tomorrow night. I told them I’d call them then to see if they’d changed their minds. I’ll pop over then.”
Paul started to tell Rainey about the hit on the brochure when the telephone rang. Before Paul could pick it up, Sherry did. She lifted the receiver to her ear. “Yes?” She listened for a second and then held the receiver in the air. “It’s Agent McLean in Charlotte.”
Paul lifted his receiver. Rainey sat forward. “Joe. What is it?” Paul listened, smiled, and stuck his thumb up in the air so Sherry could see it from her desk. “Just now? Great. Miami to Orlando. Okay, that’s possible. Don’t close any doors unless you’re two hundred percent sure. By the way, I’ve been thinking about the other prints on the brochure.” He listened for a moment. “Forward them all to D.C. Sherry has the address for someone I want to take a look at them.”
Paul had thought maybe Tod Peoples could find out if any of the other prints belonged to a possible accomplice. A lot of people Martin knew from the old days might not have prints in the normal files, but might have
