McKinnon was developing. We didn’t get it that night. What happened, after I left? All I heard was that it was never recovered.”
Munro nodded. “His laptop—”
“I know, that I heard. Two strikes and it fried itself.”
That night, we’d managed to bring back the two things McKinnon had packed: a laptop and a tattered old leather-bound journal. The journal had apparently proved worthless—according to Corliss and some agency analyst, it held the ramblings of a Jesuit missionary called Eusebio something from God knows when, handwritten in Spanish and half-faded. The laptop, where his research was presumably stored, turned out to be not only password- and fingerprint-protected, but with some heavy-duty 256-bit Blowfish protection software on top. The software fried its hard drive at the second incorrect password attempt. Two attempts. Not five, not ten. Talk about ruthless. The agency’s top techies couldn’t break it beforehand or recover anything off it after it was wiped. That level of security wasn’t surprising, given that these chemists are often working on new drugs that can be worth billions of dollars— but it didn’t help our cause.
“But you guys went after Navarro in a big way after he came at Corliss,” I told him. “You didn’t get anything then either?”
“Dude, Navarro didn’t have it either. Why do you think he came after Corliss? The formula for the drug died with McKinnon. That’s what made Navarro freak out. That’s why he went berserk and moved on Corliss—a move he knew would bring the DEA down on him like a ton of bricks and make him the cartel enforcers’ number one target at the same time.”
It was all crystallizing, but I could also feel something urgent close by, clawing away at me from some deep crevasse in my mind, desperate for my attention.
“Okay, so the formula is gone—but they think we have it,” I said. “Someone does. That’s why Navarro came after Corliss back then. That’s why whoever’s behind all this got the bikers to kidnap the scientists. And that’s got to be why they went after Michelle.”
“But Michelle wasn’t part of our task force,” Munro reminded me. “She had nothing to do with the raid on Navarro’s lab.”
“No, she didn’t,” I told him. “But I did.”
The realization tumbled down to the pit of my stomach like a cluster bomb, then ripped me apart from the inside out.
“They didn’t want anything from her,” I added, the tumblers in my brain falling into place and lining up with brutal clarity. “They wanted me. That’s why they came after her. They knew I was the guy who took out McKinnon. They must think I know something.”
I saw Michelle get hit again, saw her looking at me with death closing in around her, saw her lying there on the sidewalk with life seeping out of her, saw her mouth those last words to me with her dying breath—and I wanted to tear myself apart.
It was me they were after, all along.
They came after her to get to me.
She died because of me.
My blood turned to acid, a torrent of it rushing through my body and scorching everything in its path. I guessed that they must have come after Michelle because they didn’t know about Tess. Or maybe New York was too far out of their reach, and they needed to draw me here, to their turf, a short hop from the border.
And if that wasn’t enough, I then realized something else.
“They weren’t just after Michelle,” I hissed, feeling short of breath. “They were after Alex. They must know he’s my son. That’s why they came after them. To grab him. To use him as leverage. To get to me.”
Which had to be why they were still following me. Not because they didn’t know Michelle had been hit. Because they wanted me. They wanted something from me, and they wanted to use Alex to make me get them whatever the hell they’re after.
Which meant Alex was still a target.
He was at risk.
As was Tess.
My vision went all blurry at the edges as the whole plan played itself out at fast-forward speed in my mind, and I pulled my phone out and stabbed Jules’s speed dial.
43
“Wow, look at that one,” Alex screeched and pointed excitedly as he stared at the planes outside the Air and Space Museum.
They were standing under the Lockheed Blackbird that towered over them from its mount on three metal columns at the museum’s entrance.
“This is the fastest one. It’s like a rocket,” he said, marveling at the sleek black spy plane that had first taken to the air from the salt lakes of Area 51 in Nevada. He was all bouncy and animated, his gaze darting back and forth from the Blackbird to the smaller Convair Sea Dart that also flanked the entrance.
Jules saw the delight on Tess’s face as they watched him run around, and she couldn’t help but smile, too. She knew how Tess felt. Seeing Alex happy like that after everything he’d been through, even if for a fleeting moment, was as warming and intoxicating as a tumbler of fine aged single malt.
Tess glanced over and flashed Jules a smile that was loaded with gratitude before turning to Alex and asking, “How about we go inside?”
He was already scooting off ahead.
The circular museum was made up of an outer ring jam-packed with aircraft of all shapes and sizes that were set around a central pavilion, the entire display dominated by a huge, World War Two–era seaplane. Alex had told Tess he’d been to the museum before, but he hadn’t yet seen any of the 3-D animated films that were showing at its Zable Theater, films that had added physical effects that some marketing wiz had decided to call 4-D, even though, strictly speaking, all 3-D movies were already being screened within an Einsteinian four-dimensional manifold.
They walked around the exhibits, with Alex leading the way, gesturing excitedly from one aircraft to another, the excitement spilling out of him effusively. The place was buzzing, as busy inside as on the promenade outside, and as they ambled through, Jules found herself unconsciously surveying the scene around them. People from all walks of life seemed to be there—families, couples, locals, foreigners, old, young, a hugely diverse cross section of humanity that had converged around an outstanding sampling of man’s genius at conquering his primal urge to fly.
They’d been in there for about half an hour and were waiting to go into the screening room when a man caught Jules’s eye. He was a Latino with dark olive skin and wore jeans, a Windbreaker, and cowboy boots. A hands-free cell phone cord dangled from his ear, and he was talking into its mike. Jules wasn’t sure why her eye lingered on him for that extra little beat. Something about him just struck her as odd, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. He just seemed out of place. Didn’t look like a tourist. Seemed uncomfortable in his surroundings, like he wasn’t really there to check out the planes. But after watching him for a few seconds, Jules decided that she was overthinking. He hadn’t looked over at them once. He was probably just taking a work call. Or maybe he’d been forced to go on an outing by his new girlfriend and her kid and he didn’t want to be there. Whatever his story, Jules decided he didn’t merit more of her attention and chose to ignore him.
She chided herself about the episode. Yet another demonstration of how she could never relax, not entirely. She’d been at the job too long to allow her guard to drop completely. She could picture her friends rolling her eyes at her, but the fact was, she loved being an agent for the Bureau. Her college roommate and best friend, in particular, took great pleasure in goading her about marriage and children, but Jules laughed off both her barbs and her encouragement. She kept promising she’d work on lightening up and allowing the rest of what life had on offer to seep in, but they both knew it was just wishful thinking.
