Thin Line (25 page)

"Your grandparents?"

"Yeah, the other unit on the third floor. I've left it as they had it."

I thought back to the room stuck in time. The furniture and photos depicting the happy family. "If your grandparents were around, why were you in an
orphanage and foster homes?"

"Didn't find out about them until I was eighteen and getting ready to leave for the Army. I'm sure if I had, they would have put me up, and probably taken
Reese in too. Anyway, they owned the whole building. Shortly after I left the Army, my grandmother passed. I was the only family they had left, so they
left the building to me."

I wondered which one, the boy or the girl, had gone on to have him, then abandon him.

"You said that none of that other stuff mattered. The empty building…?"

He straightened up. "I entered the apartment, and it was apparent right away that something was wrong."

"Why?"

"Things out of place, not the way I left them."

I nodded.

He continued. "And then, you know, there was McLellan, in my bed. Dead."

I took a chance. "You speak as though you knew him."

Brett took a deep breath. His upper lip stiffened. Slowly, at first, he nodded. "I did."

"Why was he there?"

"Maybe to kill me. Perhaps to warn me. Possibly to trap or eliminate you."

"That was his job, then, to kill?"

"It's one of the tasks we performed."

"You worked for the same department."

"We did. Same boss, even." He again glanced toward McSweeney. Doubts swirled around the legitimacy of the sibling story. "McLellan had been my partner at
one time. We met in boot camp when we were eighteen. Became friends. Ended up in the same company later on. Both were selected for the same special
assignment."

"Sounds familiar."

"I know your history."

"Did she know from the beginning?"

Brett said nothing.

"Did McSweeney know about the McLellan connection from the beginning?"

"No, she didn't."

I had no way of knowing whether it was the truth. Brett gave nothing away. Like a pro poker player, he'd trained himself to hide his tells. Would he lie?
Yes, if it had to do with McSweeney. He'd cover for her, and I couldn't fault him for that. At this point, it didn't matter anymore. McLellan was dead -
and with him, any knowledge to be gained from why he was there. There were three people who might be able to fill in the blanks: Brett's boss, Joe Dunne,
and Frank Skinner. I got the feeling that these men knew each other well.

"So what happened next?" I asked.

Brett explained there was a secret exit in the basement of the brownstone. When I told him I searched the entire room, he smiled, and said there was no way
I would have found it.

"Anyone else know about the exit?" I asked.

He shook his head.

"I was watching your building. I saw you go in. Never saw McLellan enter. Never saw his killer enter or leave."

"It could have taken place hours before you arrived."

"The body was too fresh."

Another deep breath. "He was my partner once. My friend until his last breath. Of course he knew about the entrance."

"Then that means whoever killed him, came with him."

Brett looked away, said nothing. He didn't have to. And at this point, we could only speculate on why the two men were sent to his apartment, and why only
one of them left. We also had no idea of the identity of the other man. Brett had names, but we didn't have the resources to conduct a proper
investigation.

"Either that," I said, "or you pulled the trigger."

He remained silent as his cheeks and ears darkened.

"Were you expecting him to be there?" I asked.

Brett shrugged. "Not really. We had plans to meet later that day and review some of the intelligence I'd gathered."

"What were you planning on doing?"

"Cutting off the head of that terrorist cell, and using it to get to the next link in the chain."

He proceeded to give me a high-level overview of the organization, and explained that it was planning to splinter into three new groups. They aimed to
eventually return to the U.S.

Brett explained that he'd hastily set up a meeting with Angela, his asset, in Paris, and traveled there under the guise of a French citizen returning for
an emergency. I was sure that somewhere in this was the connection between Pierre and Frank. Presumably, Brett had showed up on Pierre's radar; and Frank,
armed with details of the reason for the hit and aware of Brett's previous whereabouts prior to returning to the U.S., was in touch with the Frenchman.

"She was seated outside the café. I had a visual before I entered the store. The woman she sat with was another member of the cell. I thought that
maybe she was willing to turn as well, in agreement for some kind of immunity. Angela was supposed to come into the store. When she didn't show at the
predetermined time, I knew they'd been compromised in some way. As I exited, the shots were fired. I watched them bleed out from across the street."

And that explained why I'd seen Brett in a still picture taken from the video surveillance.

"I got back here, obviously, to lie low and piece this thing together. At that point, I filled Reese in on all the details. She knew the type of work I was
involved in, but she had no idea about Paris and what was going on there. She told me about you, the government investigator. Together, with the help of a
couple friends, we determined your identity."

"It was a risk sending McSweeney out after that."

"She did that on her own. Said she trusted you."

"I was sent to kill you, and I lied to her."

"Despite that, I'm still standing here."

"For now."

Brett smiled, genuinely, and glanced again toward McSweeney. "So what now, Noble?"

"No one's going to let their guard down while they think you're at large, Brett. And my concern is that they'll continue to play up this story that you
were engaged with the terrorists. They'll feed this to the local authorities, FBI, Homeland. You know how the list grows. All that, rather than working to
bring that cell down before they recoup and find a new place to operate. They still have sleepers in place. For all we know, they have dates picked and
will proceed no matter what. With the cell broken, almost all chances at gathering signals are gone."

"So you believe me. You don't think I'm working with those bastards over in France?"

"Crazy as it sounds, I believe you. But I'd like to see some kind of proof. I was told there were notebooks, penned by you, that had names and plans and
dates. Unfortunately, they were burned. Same person that found them did it."

"Why would I keep information like that?"

"It was in a safe in your apartment."

"I kept cash, IDs and passports, and backup weapons in that safe. No notebooks."

"Someone's been framing you for a while."

Brett said nothing.

"The Frenchman," I said. "He admitted to me that he fabricated the story of you working with the terrorists in order to gain my confidence and get the big
man and me to do his dirty work." I paused. "Why would someone want you dead?"

"Why not?" Same thing I would have said. "I've pissed off more powerful people than most. Lots have reasons to kill me."

"I think there's only one way to figure out who's behind this thing. Brett, how'd you like to be a dead man?"

I SPOKE WITH Pierre that night before falling asleep. Two a.m. my time, seven his. He was still distraught, but coping with the losses his department had
suffered in the bombing. He confirmed that he had no evidence Brett Taylor had any involvement with the terrorists. In fact, after we left, he'd
investigated further in an effort to occupy his mind. Another department in his agency had been tracking Brett for a few months and were fully aware of the
work he was doing. Why they hadn't shared this with Pierre, the Frenchman couldn't say. Al-Sharaa was his op. Everyone knew that. If they had information
that could help Pierre and his agents, they should have shared it. So the information he'd uncovered backed up Taylor's story. According to Pierre, Taylor
had enough to bring the cell down, but held off because he was close to getting an asset within the next level of the organization. Before hanging up, the
Frenchman pledged his support, if necessary. If we had to run, he had a place to hide. If we needed firepower in France, he had the guns.

And I felt I could trust him to come through for us.

I managed three hours of broken sleep. Story of my week, it seemed. My legs refused to settle down. After today, there would be time for rest. Either on an
island, or in a cell.

At seven, while finishing my second cup of coffee, my cell rang. I snatched it up and walked to the back of the apartment. I peeled back the curtains and
looked down at the street. People trudged up and down the sidewalk, adorned with heavy coats and gloves and hoods in an attempt to keep the arctic air at
bay. The pale gray sky indicated a strong chance of snow today.

The phone rang a sixth time. One more and it'd go to voicemail. I didn't let it.

"Good morning, Mr. Jack." There was a lightness to the Old Man's voice this morning. Perhaps he felt he had me pinned down. "Have you made your decision?
Are you in with me, or the state pen?"

"It's over," I said. "We got him last night. Found him hiding in a dive of a bar. Took him for a ride he didn't survive. Disposed of the body up north."

"Lies," he said. "I've had men on you since day one."

"Then where am I now?" No one had followed me home, other than Bear, and at fifty yards, he would have spotted a tail.

The Old Man hesitated a beat too long.

"Don't bother," I said. "I know I wasn't tailed."

"Do you think killing him the best course of action?" He spoke quickly, slurring words. The call wasn't going the way he'd expected. "After all, I still
have the footage that shows you killed McLellan."

"Push that all you want, but since we got our man, anything you give up will be buried. Collateral damage. Anyway, guy was just a spook. No one's gonna
miss him. No one important, at least. You seem to have an idea how these things work on the inside, so you know what I mean. He might have one backer,
someone who wants to see justice done. But a lone voice carries no weight in a room full of hot air. It floats on the currents of bureaucracy and gets
absorbed into the sea of deception."

"Eloquent."

"So's this." I paused, took a sip of coffee. "I will not be working for you. If you try to push that footage, it'll be the biggest mistake you've ever
made, and I'll go back on a promise I made and personally ask for a position in whichever agency will have me spearheading the effort to bring you and your
organization down. I will attack you non-stop, ruthlessly, until you're backed into a corner with nowhere to go but through me. And I can guarantee,
you won't make it past."

The Old Man remained silent for several seconds. I imagined the thoughts going through his head. When was the last time someone had dared to speak to him
like this? Had anyone ever? Certainly if they had, they weren't alive to tell about it. A burst of laughter broke the silence.

"Do you know how bad I want you right now, Mr. Jack? My God, with you on my payroll, we'd be unstoppable."

"Don't hold your breath." I hung up, tossed the phone onto the couch.

"Sounds like it went well," Bear said.

I shrugged, jutted my chin in Brett's direction. "Old Man thinks he's dead. One down, one more to go."

The next phase would be tough. Frank wouldn't accept our word that Brett had been neutralized. He'd want proof, and a photo wouldn't suffice. Brett didn't
particularly care for the idea of giving up his finger, and though Reese said she could get one from the morgue, we settled on delivering Brett's phone as
proof. He left some sensitive material on it, things probably known by whomever Frank was working with, as well as some info that could clear Brett's name
as a traitor and turn him into a private martyr. We wiped the rest of the data on the device.

Bear started a fresh pot of coffee. We sat around the table in silence, waiting for it to finish brewing. It was as though we couldn't think through the
rest of this without a fresh mug in front of us.

"We've got a place," I said, "about an hour north of the city, in the country. I want you two to go there."

Brett waved his arms and shook his head. "She's going, but I'm not. I'll be with you two."

"Can't let you do that," I said.

"And I can't hide out. I need to be out there, trying to solve this. Clearing my name."

I looked at Bear. The big man shrugged, indifferent.

"You realize if we so much as get pulled over, the whole thing is ruined, and the three of us are likely headed for a cell in the kind of place they
reserve for people who they plan on making disappear?"

"Travel separate," Brett said. "You find out who was behind this, and I'll take it from there."

"We ride together until we are thirty miles from the meeting point. I know Frank. He's a distrustful bastard, and he's going to want to meet with me alone.
He'll push for the office, but I'll talk him out of it. After he departs, so will I. Opposite directions. He'll insist. We'll need a way to follow him.
Plan A will be a bug."

"If that fails?" Brett asked.

I pointed two fingers at him and Bear. "You two will follow him."

"He'll spot us," Bear said.

"I've got an idea for that," I said. "And besides, it might not be necessary. A trackable device can follow him places we can't."

"It will be, and you know it, Jack. Ain't no way that man's gonna let you get a bug on him."

"Maybe in him?" Brett said.

"A beacon?" Bear said.

"Sure, why not?"

"Well, for one, and in general with this bug technology, we'll need someone capable of tracking."

"I can get that," I said.

Bear shook his head. "Two, we need to get it on him, or for him to ingest it. This ain't the year 2107, man. There aren't nanobots or something ridiculous
like that we can drop into his OJ. You ever seen one of those things?"