Death Angel

10

NEVER PISS OFF A SMART WOMAN.

Given the timing, he didn’t have to be a genius to understand what had happened. Drea had been more than upset by Salinas giving her away; she’d been furious. This wasn’t just an “I’m leaving you” message, but an “I’m leaving you and take that you bastard!” gesture. As gestures went, it was an attention- getter.

Amused, he took another lick of ice cream. He was more inclined to applaud her than go hunting for her. Still, a job was a job. “Make your best offer,” he drawled. “What’s it worth to you?” He couldn’t decide if he’d take the job until he knew how much was on the table.

Salinas looked around and thumbed the volume on the radio even higher. The people passing by gave him annoyed looks, not that he gave a shit. “The same amount she stole.”

Two million, huh? That definitely put a different light on the situation. He’d have to think about it, but in the meantime he didn’t want Salinas looking for anyone else to take care of the situation. If he didn’t take the job, his delay would at least give Drea a better chance of getting away clean, and the thought gave him a certain satisfaction. He didn’t have to like his clients, but he had nothing but contempt for Salinas.

“Half up front,” the assassin said. “I’ll let you know where to wire it.” Then he tossed the rest of the ice-cream cone in a nearby trash can and strolled away, his manner relaxed, though his eyes never stopped searching his surroundings. He spotted someone who was almost certainly a fed, too suit-and-tie for his surroundings, stooping to tie his shoe while keeping his head slightly turned in Salinas ’s direction. That would be Salinas ’s tail, hurrying to catch up.

The assassin wasn’t particularly concerned. His meeting with Salinas had taken less than a minute, not enough time for a tail to get in place and snap some photos. By the time the tail had arrived, the meeting was over and he was already walking away. He went across the Bow Bridge, then into the heavily wooded Ramble, where there was plenty of cover. Though the day was hot and humid, the temperature hovering close to ninety, there under the thick shade the air was cooler, and he could feel a slight but pleasant breeze against his skin.

He deliberately didn’t think about the offer; time enough for that later, when he was certain he wasn’t being followed. As a matter of habit he focused intensely on the right now, aware of everyone around him, whether or not anyone was approaching him from behind, what his ever-changing avenues of escape were. Paying attention to details had kept him alive this long, so he saw no reason to change his habits. That was why he spotted the second tail almost right away; this guy wore jeans and running shoes, so he wasn’t the fed who’d been following Salinas.

The assassin calmly analyzed the situation. Just because this new tail wore casual clothes, didn’t mean he wasn’t a fed. It just meant he was better prepared. The FBI wouldn’t have any reason for having him followed other than his meeting with Salinas; it was possible they were exploring any and all contacts. Or the tail could be one of Salinas ’s goons, following him for God knows why. Maybe Salinas was pissed because he’d had to walk to the park, and he thought an attitude adjustment in the form of a beating was needed-though, in that case, he’d better send more than one man. Maybe he wanted to know where the assassin lived, no more than that, on the theory that there was no such thing as too much information.

He kept a steady pace. Up ahead the path took a sharp turn, and the tail’s view would be blocked by trees and shrubbery for…he considered how far behind him the tail was…about seven seconds, which was plenty long enough. The tail must have noticed the same blind spot, because he picked up the pace. The assassin didn’t respond by speeding up, which would have telegraphed his awareness he was being followed. He was close enough that it didn’t matter, though his time was down to about five seconds.

He made the turn, whirled, stripped his white shirt off over his head and crumpled it in his hand as if it were a towel, then burst into the steady, loping pace of a runner as he rounded the turn going back in the direction from which he’d come.

The tail didn’t even glance at him as he loped by; instead, the guy was hurrying to get around the turn and get him back in vision.

Good luck with that, he thought as he cut off the path and disappeared into the thick growth. He was just another shirtless runner, among hundreds, maybe thousands, who were sweating through their routines in the park that day. His dark gray pants, at first glance, would resemble sweatpants enough that no one would think twice about him. Only his shoes would be a giveaway, because who went jogging in Gucci loafers? Evidently he did, but it wasn’t something he recommended.

When he was a hundred yards away, he paused to pull on his shirt. The humid heat had caused sweat to sheen his skin, and the fabric stuck to him as he tugged it into place, but he wasn’t breathing any faster than normal. Keeping a leisurely pace, he made his way out of the park.

“DID YOU GET a shot of the meet?” Rick Cotton asked, his expression calm as he listened to the answer.

Xavier Jackson marveled at Cotton’s forbearance. He hadn’t said, “Did you at least get a shot of the meet?” and there was nothing in his tone that implied any hint of impatience. Most SACs would have been biting heads off left and right, but not Cotton. He was always fair, even when the results weren’t what he’d hoped for.

They hadn’t been prepared for Salinas to walk anywhere, much less into Central Park. By the time the agent on the street had realized Salinas wasn’t being picked up by a car, he and his entourage had already been halfway down the block. Then, though he’d been hurrying as unobtrusively as possible to catch up, a traffic signal had caught him and forced him to wait before he could cross the street. As a result, the meet had already happened before the agent could catch up, and all he could give them was a partial description of the man Salinas had gone to meet, for all the good it did them. About six-one, two hundred pounds, short dark hair described at least a hundred thousand men in the area, if not more.

“I think it was the same man on the balcony with the girlfriend,” Cotton said when he hung up.

Jackson thought so, too. The big question was, where was the girlfriend? She’d left four days ago, and hadn’t been seen since. They had stopped following her months ago, because their budget and manpower was limited and using it to follow Salinas himself had been deemed more productive. Besides, she’d never done anything interesting, at least not until that scene on the balcony.

Maybe her absence was due to nothing more dramatic than a breakup with Salinas, but something was going on. Salinas and his men were stomping around as if they were spoiling for a fight with someone, anyone. If it were just a breakup, Salinas might-might-be upset, but his men wouldn’t be.

And now Salinas had met with probably the same man who’d been on the balcony making love to Salinas ’s girlfriend. Something was going on, but it was more than likely personal crap, and they weren’t interested in that. Unless they could use it against him somehow, Salinas ’s love life was his problem, not theirs.

THERE WERE OVER twenty-three hundred known street surveillance cameras in New York City, and God only knew how many hidden ones. If anyone was on the street in the city, odds were he, or she, would be caught on camera, which was why he was always so careful to change his appearance on a regular basis. Even if he happened to be tracked on camera, his trail would be lost when he entered a building as one person and left as someone else. Only extensive analysis would, with a lot of luck, pick him up again, and he went to great pains, in this country, to ensure he wasn’t worth taking that much trouble.

Drea was smart enough to change her appearance, too; he took that for granted. What he didn’t know was where she’d changed, or how she’d looked afterward. He could’ve asked Salinas what was known about Drea’s movements on the day she disappeared, but where was the fun in that? Finding her without Salinas ’s help would keep him sharp, sort of like doing math in his head instead of using a calculator.

He had considerable computer skills, but in this case the cons associated with doing his own hacking outweighed the pros. There was no point in taking the chance of setting off an alarm when he could find out what he wanted to know by another avenue. A lot of things truly did revolve around the old truism that it wasn’t what you knew, it was who you knew-and it so happened he knew someone who worked for the city of New York, someone who owed him a debt so huge it could never be repaid, and who could access that network of security cameras.