Phillip Glasier. And The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright. Joe felt his neck get hot.
“What?” she asked. “Do they mean something to you?”
“I’ve seen them all before,” he said. “At Nate’s place. They read the same books. It was our man, all right.”
Joe sat down heavily at his desk and reread the message from Nate on the screen. There was no other way to take it than Nate wanted them to hit the road.
He looked through the three books again. Both The Art of War and Falconry and Hawking seemed too specialized and unrelated to provide much insight. But The Looming Tower? Joe opened it and turned straight to the index, looking for the names Nemecek or Romanowski. He found neither. But he agreed with Marybeth: something in the book had meaning to them. But where to start?
He rubbed his face and tried to think of alternatives to leaving-some kind of action he could take to try to help Nate and protect his family-but there were simply too many unknown variables. He felt impotent, useless, and cowardly.
When Joe tried to figure out how White/Nemecek knew so much about his family, his whereabouts, and the investigation, there were few people he could rule out. There were dozens of people privy to the proceedings: deputies, dispatchers, reporters, administration, maintenance, visiting state and federal agents, even McLanahan’s coffee group that met every morning at the Burg-O-Pardner. He could rule out only the sheriff himself, because without solving either the murders or the missing-persons cases, the man was circling the drain of his own career. He’d do whatever he could to stop the spiral by making arrests, Joe knew.
He leaned back in his chair and sneaked a long look at Mike Reed in the other room. Reed thumbed through a hunting magazine and sipped the last of his coffee on the couch. The man was affable and good-natured. By all rights, he should be the next sheriff. And although he certainly wanted to win the election, could he possibly be predatory enough to assist a killer so his opponent would go down in flames? Joe couldn’t conceive it.
Who else would know?
Then he thought about the password-protected text thread on Brueggemann’s phone.
When Lucy entered his office rubbing her face from sleep, she said, “Mom said we’re going on a trip.” She didn’t sound happy about it.
“That’s the plan.”
“What about my play?” she asked. “I can’t let everybody down. I’m the lead. This really means a lot to me, and Mom doesn’t even want to talk about it. I mean, I could stay with Heather until you got back.”
Joe didn’t have a good answer. “Maybe we’ll all be back in time.”
“But I’m the lead,” she said again. “If I’m not here they’ll give the part to Erin Vonn or somebody else.”
“I’m sure they’ll take you back,” Joe said, not sure about it at all.
“Mom won’t even tell me why we’re leaving.”
“For your safety,” Joe said. Lucy rolled her eyes in response.
“I have a life of my own, you know,” she said, folding her arms in front of her and striking a pose very much like Marybeth had a few minutes before. “You and Mom treat me like your property.”
Joe said with some sympathy, “You’ve got to get a few more years on you before it’s otherwise.”
“You sound just like her,” she said, meaning Marybeth.
“We’re a team.”
“Yes,” she said, her eyes flashing. “An evil team trying to destroy my life.”
“That’s a little dramatic, isn’t it?” he asked, stifling a smile.
“I’m in drama!” she cried. “That’s the point!” But her anger was diffusing.
Joe said, “Before you pack, I need your help. I don’t understand how Facebook works, and I know you’re an expert. You spend more time on it than you do sleeping or eating.”
She rolled her eyes again, and said, “ Thanks, Dad.”
“Everybody around your age is on it, right?”
“Yes. Everybody.”
“Everybody in college, right?”
“Yeah.”
He said, “What I’d like you to do is use your laptop to find the page or the profile or whatever it is for Luke Brueggemann, my trainee. See if there are any comments from his girlfriend, if he has one. See if he’s sharing things about his new assignment.”
She asked him how to spell the name, and he did.
“I may not find much,” she said. “It depends on how much he’s got his profile set up to share. I’m not his friend or anything.”
“Just find whatever you can,” Joe said. “Let me know what you find.”
She sighed, and said, “At least we’re going to Disneyland. I can’t believe it.”
“Neither can I,” Joe said.
It was midnight when the house phone rang. As always, Joe ignored it. He was talking with Mike Reed and waiting for Lucy to come back and tell him what she’d dug up on Brueggemann and his girlfriend.
Marybeth came into the living room holding the handset, and the moment he saw her face he knew something momentous had happened.
She handed him the phone with concern in her eyes. “You’ll want to take this,” she said.
As he reached for it, she said, “In your office.”
She followed him back in and again closed the door behind them. “It’s Nate,” she whispered.
“Where are you?” Joe asked immediately, careful not to use his name.
“We can’t talk long,” Nate said. The connection was clear, but from the airy tone of it, Joe assumed Nate was speaking from somewhere outdoors. Maybe a pay phone, he thought.
“Gotcha,” Joe said. “Where…”
“No,” Nate said. “We can’t go there right now. Our friends might be listening.”
“Right.”
“It’s time to fly,” Nate said. “Take the entire nest. Don’t think about it, and don’t play hero. Just go.”
“I understand,” Joe said, glancing up at Marybeth, who nodded.
“The threat is on top of you right now.”
Joe hoped he didn’t have to respond to Nate in falconry terminology. Instead, he said, “Yup.”
“At least three of the Peregrines are still out there,” Nate said. “One may be a young female.”
“Only three?” Joe asked, wondering how many men Nate had taken out of the game.
“At least,” Nate said. “But there could be more I don’t know about. Leave them to me.”
“Are you sure about that?”
Nate laughed bitterly. “So far, so good. But the cost has been too high and the collateral damage has been heavy.”
Joe thought, So many questions. He said, “Is there any way we can talk more?”
“No,” Nate said, no doubt measuring the time of the call and trying to end it quickly. Joe wanted to tell him it didn’t matter: If the call was being traced, it was already too late. But he didn’t dare say it.
“Just remember,” Nate said, “these creatures won’t return to the fist no matter how much you’ve done for them. They kill, they eat, and they move on. Do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
“They might be right next to you, but you can’t trust them. Just get away now.”
And he hung up. Joe listened to the dial tone for a moment, then cradled the phone and picked it back up and dialed star sixty-nine. The phone rang on the other end, but no one picked it up.
“He’s gone,” Joe said.
“Is he okay?” Marybeth asked.
“I guess he is.”
