Cold Silence (A High Stakes Thriller) (17 page)

Her heart jolted. What did he have? She enlarged the picture again to 180 percent and focused on the small detail. At first it looked like a tear in his shirt, and she wondered what he was trying to tell her. But as she squinted she realized it wasn't a tear at all.

She let out a stilted laugh. Thank God. Thank God for Ryan. He'd sent her a gift. And in that moment, it was the most amazing gift in the world. On a small fold of his dark shirt sat a big, ugly bug. Damn if Ryan wasn't the smartest kid in the world.

Now the question was how to find out what it was. She knew one person who might know. And right now, she'd do anything to find out.

Ryan was fighting and so she would, too. He was going to make it. She had to believe it. He was smart and he was fighting. She was more proud of him then than she ever had been before.

"Way to go, buddy. Mommy's going to find you. I swear, she is."

Chapter 15

The colonel was standing at the side of his house, peering into the hutch that held his ant farm, when he saw Cody O'Brien come around the corner toward his house. She looked behind her carefully and then ran up the twelve steps to his door.

"Don't ring that bell," he cried out, hurrying around the corner.

Cody leaped back, looking startled.

"You'll wake up Florence. She's napping." The colonel waved her toward him. "Quieter back here, anyway."

She descended the stairs and came partially around the side of the house.

He paused and looked at the white page she held in her hand. "What you got there?"

She hesitated and then stepped closer and held her hand out. "It's a bug." She shook her head. "Or a picture of a bug, I should say." She looked up and held his gaze. "I was hoping you would recognize it."

He squinted at the poor photo. It had been cut from something larger so it was barely the size of a silver dollar. "I can't hardly even see the thing. Where the hell is it?"

She took the page and turned it toward the light. "It's there. It's sort of like a red fuzzy fly."

He stared at it, squinting and turning the page until he thought maybe he could make out the shape. "It's got wings?"

"Yeah, they're black." She pointed to the top of the bug where the background was black.

He shook his head. "I can't tell anything from this picture." He looked up at her and raised his eyebrows. He'd never seen her look the least bit feminine until that moment. Her bottom lip was tucked into her mouth and her eyes were wide, her brows straight. She looked smaller, and he realized then how upset she was. He touched her arm. "Can we get a better picture? I'm sure I'll be able to tell with a better picture."

She stared at it and shook her head, the softness disappearing from her face as she did. "I don't have a better one. This is all I have."

"This about the boy?"

Her eyes snapped up to his and they were both silent.

She cleared her throat. "I appreciate your help, Colonel. Sorry to have bothered you for nothing." She took two steps away before he had a chance to speak.

"Why was that Mr. Landon over here looking for R.J.? I haven't seen the boy since yesterday morning. Why is that?"

She didn't turn for a moment, and when she did her brow and her mouth were perfect parallels. "I would just like you to identify a bug. Can you do that?"

He shrugged. "I'd like to help if I can."

She didn't move.

"I know you need help."

She shook her head. "I don't need help. I need you to ID a bug, Colonel. But if it's that much trouble, forget it."

He found himself smiling. "Damn if you aren't stubborn."

"I've got too much to do to waste my time with you." She started away again.

"Maybe you'll let me tell you what I know," he called after her.

She turned back, her gaze showing just a speck of hope. "What do you know?"

"I know your kid is gone."

She started to speak but he stuck his palm out to stop her.

"I know you used to work in law enforcement."

Her mouth fell slightly, but she stayed quiet.

"I know you're on the run from somebody."

She snapped her jaw closed and started to shake her head.

He grabbed her arm. "I don't care. I don't care if you've done something bad or if someone has done something bad to you. I can help you. I can help you find Ryan."

He watched her face. The use of the boy's name, his offer for help. He watched her double over as though she'd been hit. Damn his big mouth—he'd gone and made it worse.

She held her hand to her mouth and shook her head. "No," she whispered, the word more of a gasp.

"Yes. You could let me help. I swear it would be okay." He looked up at the heavens. "I swear to God it would."

He took a step toward her, but she backed away. "Don't," she pleaded, turning her back and wiping her face. "Please don't. I can't." She straightened and turned to face him. "You don't know anything about this. I don't know how you found out his name..." She paused and covered her mouth to hold back her emotion.

He could see her fighting to hold it back. He knew how it felt. He'd felt that same way when he'd watched his best friend get shot up in Vietnam. He remembered the pain of watching Henry die like it was yesterday. He pressed his hand to his chest.

"He let it slip one time, made me promise I wouldn't tell you."

She shook her head.

"It was an honest accident. He's just a kid. But I knew then that you all were on the run. What right-minded folks would name a kid Ryan O'Brien?"

She half laughed, half sobbed. "Oh, God. I can't. I can't do this. I have to go." He couldn't tell if she was going to run or collapse.

He caught her arm, then, for fear she'd go off and he'd never get to explain. "I'm not helping to be some kind of hero, Cody. I never intended to go liking your child, but damn if he didn't grow on me. I care about him." He dropped her arm, cleared his throat. "I got a grandson that age. A daughter your age, too, and I never met him." He shook his head. "Never met my own grandson. Little Ryan's the closest I've got."

She surveyed the street. "Please don't call him that."

He nodded. "Never again. But let me help you find him."

Cody collapsed into herself then, curling her arms across her chest and her hands over her face as she leaned down to sob. She was fighting it, but he knew she'd think clearer once it was all out. He'd been that way, too, after his friend Henry's death.

He took a step forward and put one arm around her, patting her back. "Don't you worry. He's a smart kid. If there's anyone can get out of this, it's R.J."

Just then, the sobs hit harder and she leaned into him. He let her, using whatever soft words he could find in an attempt to calm her. For a moment he imagined it was Roni he had in his arms. One day he hoped he'd get to hold his own daughter. Boy, he'd screwed that up. He pushed it aside and focused on Cody.

When she was done, she stood back and wiped her face. "I'm sorry," she said, as though some alien being had possessed her body for the past few minutes.

He shook his head. "Don't you apologize. Sometimes getting it out's the best thing."

She wiped her face again and nodded.

He put his hand on her arm and motioned toward the street. "Now let's go take a better look at this bug."

Chapter 16

Mei turned her wrist and glanced at her watch for the tenth time in twenty minutes. Maybe the eleventh. Since she'd told him she was going to be in the office on Saturday anyway, Andy Chang from the Office of Professional Responsibility wanted to see her at 3:30 p.m. off premises. He had called late last night on her way out and it had been all she could think about since. Then he'd left her a message this morning asking her to meet him at a local coffee shop. He had even described what he was wearing so she'd be able to pick him out.

There was little discussion around the Bureau about the protocol of firings. Terminations were few and far between, and seldom discussed. In the ten years since Mei had started, people had left, but Megan Riggs was the only person Mei had known to go into the Federal Witness Protection program.

Megan had crossed Mei's mind three or four times in only a few days, and Mei began to wonder why she'd come back into her thoughts. Mei's mother had always said that people crept into your mind for a reason. Mei wasn't sure if that was Chinese superstition talking or something her mother had picked up all on her own. If Chinese were considered superstitious, Mei's mother was superstitious even by their standards. Every time Mei had to go to a job, her mother would appear with a sack of things Mei needed to pack to make for a safe journey. She'd explained to her mother that her job wasn't dangerous. It was computer crimes, not drug enforcement. But her mother would hear nothing of it. "It pays to be cautious."

Mei thought maybe Megan had been on her mind because of Jennifer's increasingly strange behavior. At least Megan would be someone Mei could confide in. The rest of their group was male and mostly single, making them a difficult bunch to relate to unless you were willing to hang at Tommy's Pub and shoot pool. Mei had gone once and beat most of them, and that had been her last invitation to Tommy's.

Mei missed the times when there had been easy banter in the office and even a bit of camaraderie between her and Jennifer. She didn't remember much of either since Megan had left. Megan had a raw, smoky voice, similar, she realized, to the way Jennifer's sister had sounded on the phone. She'd sounded upset, desperate to reach her—and oddly not like the cool debutante sister Mei had imagined from the photo she'd seen.

Mei looked back at her watch. She still had time before she was due to meet Chang at the little coffee and sweet shop, Baccione, around the corner.

Jennifer had called in sick, and though her absence saved Mei some stress, the fact that she was gone also made Mei wonder if Jennifer didn't have something to do with the mysterious meeting with Chang. Jennifer was capable of a lot of manipulation, and Mei wondered if she hadn't convinced someone that Mei, rather than herself, was the weak link.

Mei had asked Jennifer if she knew Chang, and she'd answered that she had no idea who he was.

Mei had also spent more time thinking about Jennifer's bruise. In hindsight, she thought maybe she'd seen suspicious marks before. Purplish green shapes around the cuffs of her shirts, turtleneck sweaters a couple times in the summer in Chicago—even once when there had been a power outage and the air-conditioning wasn't working in the building. There had been one occasion when they'd met for a case in Philadelphia and Jennifer had a bluish black mark under one eye that she'd sworn was from some stupid beginner in her tae kwon do class.

As much as Mei had seen and done as a child compared to her sisters, she'd always been gullible and she chastised herself for not picking up more. She knew Jennifer didn't trust her. Once she'd even implicated Mei in leaking Megan Riggs's whereabouts to the Russian mob who had come after her in New Orleans. Mei had been dumbfounded.

She'd heard Jennifer refer to her as a Chink on several occasions. Mei had met a lot of people who felt that way, more as she grew older. But Mei was American-born Chinese and for her, America was home and China was more mythical land than reality.