“Works for me. Walk you to your car?”
“Think I can’t make it there on my own?”
“I’m parked close to you,” he said. “In case I fall down, you can help me up.”
She laughed again. He liked making her do that.
“You used to be married, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “Yes, ma’am. She passed away a while ago.”
“I was married once myself. But my husband was more interested in work than me. Twenty years ago, he took off and went out to conquer the music world.”
“Did he? Conquer the music world, I mean?”
“He did, actually. His instrument is the cello. He can sit on the same stage and keep up with Yo-Yo Ma. Played first cello with a couple of major European orchestras, formed his own chamber group that puts out a recording now and then, usually goes pretty high up on the classical charts. Married three more times since we split. I believe his current wife is a twenty-six-year-old daughter of some German baron. Beautiful woman, and if I had to guess, probably can’t keep time in a waterproof basket—Armand prefers to be the only musician in a marriage.”
Kent heard just a trace of bitterness, and a hint of ugly history, but then she laughed again, and that seemed real enough. “Lotta water under that bridge,” she said. She turned and headed for the shop’s exit. “No reason to go back there and fall in.”
He didn’t speak to that, only followed her to the door. Maybe he would check on-line and see what he could find about this “Armand” character. Might be interesting to know what kind of man would leave a woman like Jennifer Hart. The more he was around her, the more relaxed he felt. That was interesting, too. . . .
10
Carruth knew he should get rid of his handgun. They’d recover the slugs, and ballistics would cook him if they ever got hold of the revolver. There probably weren’t that many fifty-caliber handguns kicking around, and fewer still of the custom-made Reeders. But the gun had cost almost three grand, and he liked it. And now there was certainly no doubt that it was effective. It had dropped the cops fast enough, even with vests.
So the trick was to make sure the police didn’t get the gun until he could afford to buy a new one to replace it.
The bored waitress, a skinny twenty-something with short hair, nine earrings in each ear, a nose stud, plus an eyebrow- and a lip-piercing, refilled his cup of bad coffee. She didn’t smile at him.
Must be a lesbian, he figured. Or a doper. Or both.
It had been a freak accident, the cops coming on him that way. What were the chances that would happen? What were the chances it would happen twice?
Yeah, he’d left the rental car, but even while he was on the boogie in the police cruiser, he had called one of his men and had him haul butt there to fetch the rental before the cops had time to shut the whole neighborhood down, so no grief from that. The car had been leased under a shell-company name anyhow. He had never been to that neighborhood before, and God knew he was never going back there again.
A first-class snafu, but he was clear.
So, yeah, the gun would have to go away, eventually, but it ought to be safe enough for a while.
He was rationalizing, he knew that, but he liked the piece a whole lot.
It wasn’t as though he’d never shot anybody before. He’d knocked over a few “insurgents” as they called themselves—aka “terrorists” to the rest of the world—on his second tour, but never a civilian, and certainly not a cop. That was bad business. Cops pulled out all the stops to catch guys who took out one of their own, but even with their fire lit, they had to have some place to start, someone to focus all their righteous anger on, and they didn’t know to come looking for him.
The big thing was, Lewis couldn’t know anything about any of this. Nada. She was twitchy enough as it was. If she had any idea he was the guy who had cooled two of D.C.’s finest and made the front page of the papers and the Six O’Clock News on every local channel, he’d be in a world of trouble. She couldn’t turn him over to the law, he knew too much about her and their mutual business, but she wouldn’t want him risking the project. And she would really have a heaving fit if she knew he hadn’t ditched the gun he’d used. . . .
The cops, that had been a one-in-a-million thing, not his fault, there was no way you could have planned on it. It would never happen again. No point in worrying about it.
He looked up and saw Lewis come in. This was another crappy mall cafe thirty miles away from the last place. She was careful—and he didn’t really mind that. No three-on-a-match business for her. You didn’t want to be working with somebody who wasn’t careful when it was your ass on the line. Carruth didn’t mind cowboys, as long as they didn’t shut off their brains when they went rodeo-romping.
Lewis sat down. If the waitress were true to form, it would be ten minutes before she noticed enough to bring Lewis any of the crappy coffee. That’s how long he’d sat there waiting. Easy enough to see why the place was empty except for him and Lewis and an old guy sitting at the counter. Probably all the old guy’s taste buds were dead.
“You look nervous,” Lewis said.
“Nah, just tired. I worked out this morning, maybe pushed the weights a little hard.” That was actually true. Whenever he got himself into trouble, he’d hit the gym and try to burn out the tension. Sometimes it worked. Not this time, though. “What’s up?”
“Our buyer wants a little more convincing. We need to fetch something that will make him drool.”
“Yeah? What?”
“I know just what will do the trick.”
The pierced waitress hustled over. Hustled. Jeez, that hadn’t taken long.
The waitress gave Lewis a big smile. “What can I get for you, hon?”
Yep. Definitely a lesbian . . .
When the waitress was gone, Lewis told him.
“Damn, that’s ballsy. You think that will sell it?”
“Oh, yeah. This guy is so macho he makes you look like a sissy. If we pull this off—meaning if
“I’m up for it. When?”
“Soon as we can. Plug the stats into your VR program and run it a couple times. Whenever you’re ready, we’ll go.”
He nodded. It was good to have something to do. Take his mind off the other stuff. Dead cops and all . . .
“Can you get off work, Tommy?”
Thorn nodded at the image of Marissa on his desk’s phone screen. “I don’t see why not. The DoD can breathe down my neck just as easily over my virgil if I’m in Georgia as they can if I am here.”
“Good. I’ll tell my grandparents we’re coming.”
“You want to take the jet?”
She laughed. “The jet? Oh, yeah, they get a lot of those landing on the red clay road running to the Pinehurst farm. Chickens would stop laying eggs for a year. Jet, right. We’ll take my car—I wouldn’t want your pilot or
