take his practice someplace where they’d never have to clean up after him. Last Harry had heard, Tim had sobered up and was doing very well.
“Okay,” Harry instructed, “give Tim a call. Tell him I send my regards and that I’ll need him to put up some friends of mine in the next couple of days.”
Thorne jotted notes on a scrap of paper.
“And if he can manage to make himself scarce while they’re there, so much the better.”
Thorne smiled. “Want me to roust your pilots and get the planes ready?”
Harry had to think for a moment on that one. “No, we’ve got the FBI watching us,” he mused aloud. He snapped his fingers as the solution came to him. “Tell you what. Does Universal Waste still owe us a favor?”
Thorne laughed. “Didn’t we guarantee Peter van der Horst’s debt?” He didn’t wait for a response. “I’ll give him a call and see if he’ll let us borrow a couple of planes and pilots.”
“Just the planes,” Harry corrected. “We’ll use our own pilots.”
Thorne nodded approvingly and jotted some more. “I trust you want me to go to Washington?”
Harry shook his head. “No. I’ll go to D.C. I want you to make the pickup in West Virginia.”
Thorne seemed appalled. “You’re going to talk to the EPA guy yourself? Forgive me, sir, but I don’t think-”
“There’s no choice,” Harry interrupted. “You can’t be in two places at one time, and I want the fewest possible people involved in this.”
Thorne shook his head vigorously. “With all due respect, Mr. Sinclair, I’m much more persuasive than you-”
“And much more resourceful. I need you to be with Sunshine.” Harry ended the conversation by turning away, his ample gut heavy with the press of time. “I want to be in Washington this afternoon.”
Thorne considered arguing but knew better. There was much to do.
“Oh, and Thorne?”
“Yes, sir?” He’d already stepped into the hallway but now returned.
Harry regarded him for a long moment. “You know how much Sunshine means to me…”
“I’ll take care of everything…”
“No, listen to me. Don’t go overboard, okay?”
Thorne bristled. He knew how to do his job. He said nothing as he left.
Alone again, Harry tried to sift through it all. It had been fourteen years, for God’s sake! Without a snag. Now, at the first glitch, Sunshine and her dipshit husband wanted to throw everything away on this crazy plan. Unbelievable. Maybe it was just the panic talking. If he could just speak to Carolyn personally, then he’d be able to talk some sense into them.
But, of course, he could do no such thing. As much as he wanted to see his niece again-what did she look like now, as she closed in on middle age? — he understood that such a meeting was out of the question. Maybe if the kid hadn’t called the house directly, but certainly not now. With the connection made at the FBI, the risk was too great.
Jake started the van as soon as he saw Travis walk back outside. He considered driving up to meet him but didn’t, fearing that it might somehow attract attention.
“Where have you been?” Carolyn barked, the instant the door slammed shut. “We were almost ready to go in there after you.”
“Sorry,” Travis replied with a patently unsorry shrug. Over the next ten minutes, as they searched with progressively greater urgency for a place to ditch the van, Travis told them every detail of his chat with Uncle Harry.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Special Agent John Carnegie shifted position uneasily, daring to look away from his scope for just a few seconds.
He liked his work, on balance. It reminded him of his teenage years, when he and his father found true camaraderie hunting deer in the fall. Every Thanksgiving, they arose in the middle of the night and drove for hours before dawn, finding a spot to sit and wait, remaining still for hours at a time until their prey wandered in close enough to be taken.
So it was this morning, in every detail but the prey and the weaponry. From his spot on the edge of the woods, he sat perfectly still, watching the Sinclair compound for unusual movement or activity. Several cars had arrived over the course of the morning, but none of them contained anyone remotely fitting the description he’d been given of the Donovans. Those same cars had subsequently left, only to be subjected to a search a mile or so down the road. So far, the Donovans remained invisible.
By ten o’clock, he’d been on station for six hours, and his mind was beginning to play tricks on him. He’d heard noises that didn’t exist; seen flashes of light in his peripheral vision. He knew that such things were merely meaningless exercises commenced by otherwise unchallenged senses, yet they unnerved him, anyway. These were the times he hated most-when he’d been on for longer than his attention span, yet still was several hours from relief. Back in the old days, when he did similar stints for the Marine Corps-only then with a rifle-he enjoyed the benefits of a young man’s brazen cockiness. Now, as he approached his thirty-fifth birthday, he worried about what might get past him as his mind wandered.
His legs and his back screamed for relief, for a brief stretch; but Carnegie was too well trained for that. Harry Sinclair-paranoid tycoon that he was-enjoyed a reputation for countersurveillance, and he was manic about personal security. If Carnegie moved, he knew in his heart that Sinclair’s men would see him.
To keep his mind active this morning, Carnegie had practiced his times tables, through 25 times 25. When that grew boring, he tried factoring four-digit numbers in his head. After a while, though, that one gave him a headache.
About forty-five minutes ago, he’d been told on his radio that the targets had contacted Sinclair by phone, bringing a brief rush of hopefulness, but now the adrenaline had bled away, and he was bored all over again.
Movement. Carnegie rolled his wrist to get a glance at his watch and marked the time at 10:24. Returning his eyes to his spotter’s scope, he watched in fifty-power magnification as Harry Sinclair himself walked out of the front door of his mansion and lowered himself into the waiting limousine. Three staff members climbed in with him, and the vehicle took off for the gate.
Carnegie thumbed his radio mike. “Target is moving toward checkpoint one,” he whispered. Despite the four hundred yards separating him from the compound, he feared that the fall breeze might carry his voice across the field.
“Checkpoint one’s direct,” a voice crackled from his earpiece. “Attention all units, you’re cleared to follow but not to intercept.”
Way to go, Sinclair, Carnegie thought. Be as stupid as you look.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Nick Thomas’s day had already been a bruiser, and it wasn’t yet two. Mesmerized by this whole business of the Donovans’ renewed flight from the law, he’d been unable to pull himself away from the early morning talk shows, thus destroying any chance he had of getting to work on time.
By the time he finally got on the road, forty-five minutes behind schedule, his mood had soured enormously. Then, to top it all off, a tractor-trailer had overturned on Route 66 at Gainesville, closing down all but the shoulder lane of traffic into the city.
It was already past eleven when he finally staggered into EPA headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue at 13th Street, and his boss spent fifteen minutes pointing out that had he left on time, the traffic jam would never have been an issue.
