Abandoned

“Callie, let’s get her fingerprints and run them. Maybe we’ll get lucky and she’ll be in the system somewhere.” I look at her and blink at her wedding gown. “Do you have a change of clothes?”

She taps her cell phone and smiles. “I’ll call Kirby. She’ll bring me everything I need.”

“Still at your beck and call even after the wedding? That’s hard to believe.”

It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that Kirby is governed by her own self-interest.

“We have something she needs,” Callie says. “What’s that?”

“People who know all about her but like her anyway. Even assassins get lonely, Smoky.”

“I suppose.” My cell phone rings.

“Barrett.”

“Smoky, I need you to come to the office.” It’s AD Jones.

“Now, sir?”

“Right now.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll just stop by my house and change and—

“No stops on the way. Get here soonest.”

I glance down at my sun-yellow maid of honor dress and sigh.

“Yes, sir. I’ll be right there.”

CHAPTER FIVE

The man stares at the email on his screen and begins to shiver. He can’t help it. The terror is instant and absolute. The email says:

You’ve run out of chances. I left you something in your backyard.

There’s no signature to the email, but none is needed. He knows who sent it.

God, oh God, why didn’t I do what he asked?

He glances toward the rear of his home, where the sliding glass door leads into his backyard. A feeling of dread speeds up his heart, making it thud in his chest. Hard, too hard.

Am I having a heart attack?

He glances at the email again, then back at the sliding glass door. He closes his eyes.

Pull yourself together.

He stands up and walks away from the computer in his downstairs office. He leaves the email up on the screen. He’s aware of every step he makes across the walnut hardwood floor. He’s almost counting them.

This little piggy had a nightmare, this little piggy stayed home, this little piggy burned in hell forever … It’s going to be bad.

He knows this because he knows the man he’s dealing with. Well, no, that’s not quite accurate. If he really knew, in that deep-down kind of way, he would never have failed to hold up his end of the bargain. He edits the phrase: He knows the man he’s dealing with now.

He arrives at the sliding-glass door and peers through it. It’s late morning, and the sun is wrestling the clouds for dominance. He has a large backyard, filled with the overwatered green grass that Californians favor. He sees it right away and squints.

What the hell is that?

It looks like a black vinyl bag, with a … straw? Is that a clear straw poking out of it?

The thudding in his chest gets harder, if that’s possible. Something worms around in his brain. Black vinyl bag … he has a word for a bag that looks like that, doesn’t he? Yes, he does. Yes, indeed.

Body bag.

He swallows bile and slides the door open. He walks across the concrete of his patio. He’s barefoot, and the grass is damp and cool against the bottoms of his feet. He hardly notices. The bag holds all his attention.

It is shiny in the sun. A heavy-duty zipper runs the length of it. The straw (because he can confirm that now) is clear tubing, poking through a hole that was made in the bag.

Don’t open it!

The voice in his head is loud, a fearful shout. It’s probably good advice.

He gets down on both knees in the grass, oblivious to the dirt and water stains that are soaking into his khaki pants. He reaches for the zipper. His hand hesitates above it.

Last chance. You can still turn back.

He gulps down a breath, grips the zipper, and opens it halfway before he can think about it any further.

He sees her face and he staggers on his knees, almost swooning. “Dana!”

The words expel from him in a kind of low gasp, as if he’s been punched in the stomach.

She’s there. The straw is taped to her mouth, the tape covering her lips. There is something very, very wrong with her eyes. They’re clear but empty. Nothing intelligent stares back at him.

“God, oh God …” he whispers.

She was supposed to go on a spa trip yesterday. Two-day affair, a little getaway. She didn’t call last night, but he hadn’t been worried. He’d had too much on his mind.

“Sorry, honey, God, I’m sorry, let me get that straw out of your mouth.” He’s babbling and he knows it but is helpless to stop.

He removes the tape as gently as he can, and pulls the tubing from her mouth.

Her mouth falls open and stays there, slack. Drool runs from it as she stares, unblinking, at the sky. There is a smell coming from the bag. It takes him a minute to place it. He recoils when he does. Urine and feces.

“Dana?” he askes, not really hoping for an answer. Her throat works a little, and he thinks she might be responding. He leans forward, ignoring the stench from the bag. “Honey?”

She belches, once, long and loud. She smacks her lips and resumes her drooling.

He skitters backward on his hands and feet, trying to put distance between himself and the horror of it. He falls onto his back in the grass and finds himself staring up at the sky, which is blue, and the sun, which has broken from the clouds. It’s shaping up to be a beautiful day in Southern California.

He flips onto his hands and knees and begins to vomit into the over-green grass.

CHAPTER SIX

Weekend or not, the FBI is a beehive. I ride up on the elevator to AD Jones’s office with three other people. They all stare openly at the dress. Nobody cracks a smile. I guess they realize it might not be all that funny. There are only so many reasons for an FBI agent to get ripped away from a wedding, after all.

I think about the woman as the numbers climb toward my destination. The look of terror in her eyes has stuck with me. It was such a desperate expression. I shake my head to clear it and focus on why AD Jones would have called me here with such urgency. He’s not the type to make up emergencies.

He’s been my shepherd, my teacher. He saw something in me from the start and fostered it. That’s his way. He’s one of those rare things in the FBI executive strata: someone more interested in results than in politics.

The ding tells me we’ve arrived. I take a deep breath and head out into the hallway. I make a right turn and see Shirley, his longtime receptionist. She’s about ten years older than I am and is a short, professional woman with twinkling green eyes that belie her stern outward demeanor.

“How was the wedding?” she asks, not missing a beat.

“It was great. Right up to the point when the car pulled up and dumped the screaming woman out onto the parking lot.”

She gives me an uncertain smile and a shrug, as if to say, What can you do?

“So who’s in there, Shirley?”

The smile grows sour. “Director Rathbun.”

My eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Really? Do you know why?”

“Not a clue. Good luck, though.”