“I want you out of my house.”
“But-”
“Get out.” Pedro grabbed Buchanan’s arm and tugged him along the hallway. “How much plainer can I make it? Out of my house.”
“Pedro!” Anita hurried from the living room into the hallway. “What are you doing? Maybe he can help us.”
“Out!” Pedro shoved Buchanan toward the front door.
Buchanan pretended to resist. “Why? I don’t understand. What did I do? A couple of minutes ago, we were talking about how to help Juana. Now all of a sudden. .”
“There is something not right about you,” Pedro said. “There is something too convenient about you. I think that you are with the other men who came to look for Juana. I think that you are her enemy, not her friend. I think that I should never have spoken to you. Get out. Now. Before I call the police.”
Pedro unlocked the door and yanked it open.
“You’ve made a mistake,” Buchanan said.
“No, you did. And you will make a greater mistake if you ever come near my home again.”
“Damn it, if you don’t want my help. .”
“I want you out!” Pedro shoved Buchanan.
Buchanan lurched outside, feeling exposed by the porch light above him. “Don’t touch me again.”
“Pedro!” Anita said.
“I don’t know where my daughter is, but if I did, I would never tell you!” Pedro told Buchanan.
“Then go to hell.”
6
“You’d better get here pronto,” Duncan Bradley said into his cellular phone while he listened to the transmission from the house. “Something about the guy who showed up definitely rubbed Mendez against the grain. Mendez thinks the guy’s with us. They’re yelling at each other. Mendez is kicking him out.”
“Almost there. Just two blocks away,” Duncan’s partner said through the cellular phone.
“You might as well be two miles away.” Duncan stared at the green magnified night-vision image on his closed-circuit television screen. “I can see the dude coming off the lawn toward his car. He’ll be gone before you get here.”
“I told you I’m close. Can you see my headlights?”
Duncan glanced at another screen that showed the murky area behind his van. “Affirmative.”
“Perfect. When he pulls away, I’ll be just another car on the road,” Tucker said. “He won’t think anything when he sees my lights behind him.”
“He’s getting in his car,” Duncan emphasized.
“No problem. The license number you gave me.”
“What about it?”
“I accessed the Louisiana motor-vehicles computer. The Taurus belongs to a New Orleans car-rental agency.”
“That doesn’t tell us much,” Duncan said.
“There’s more. I phoned the agency. Pretended to be a state trooper. Said there’d been an accident. Wanted to know who’d rented the car.”
“And?”
“Brendan Buchanan. That’s the name on the rental agreement.”
Tucker’s headlights loomed larger on the rear-view television screen.
On the front-view screen, two blocks away, the Taurus’s lights came on. The car pulled away.
With a flash, Tucker’s Jeep Cherokee passed the van. Duncan pivoted his gaze from the night-vision television image and smiled toward the front windshield and the swiftly receding taillights of Tucker’s Jeep.
“See, I told you,” Tucker said through the cellular phone. “No sweat. I’m on him. No headlights pulling away from the curb behind him. Nothing to make him suspicious.”
“Brendan Buchanan?” Duncan wondered. “Who the hell is Brendan Buchanan? And what’s his connection with the woman?”
“The head office is checking on him.” Tucker’s taillights diminished to red specks as he followed the even-more-minute specks of the Taurus. “Meantime, I’ll find out where he’s staying. We’ll pay him a visit. We’ll find out all we need to know about Brendan Buchanan.”
7
A microphone-transmitter required something to receive its broadcast. Depending on the strength of the transmitter, the receiver might be as far away as a mile. But practical considerations-static-producing electrical equipment in the area, for example-usually required that the receiver be much closer to the source. As well, it was useful for the person monitoring the reception to maintain visual surveillance on the target area. Thus the odds were, Buchanan concluded, that the receiver was in the neighborhood-possibly in a building, although in this respectable single-family-dwelling area it would have been difficult for a surveillance team to take over a house-more likely in a vehicle of some sort. But there weren’t any other cars parked on the street in this block. Buchanan had noticed that when he’d arrived, and he checked again as he crossed the lawn toward his rented car.
He turned to glare at Pedro Mendez, who continued to stand on his front porch, scowling at Buchanan.
Damned good, Pedro, Buchanan thought. You missed your calling. You could have been an actor.
Pretending to be furious, Buchanan spun toward his Taurus. As he rounded it to unlock the driver’s side, he glanced both ways along the street, and there it was, some kind of vehicle parked two blocks away. He hadn’t noticed it before because the vehicle, small down there, was in shadows between widely spaced streetlights. The only reason he noticed it now was that the headlights of an approaching car exposed it.
I think it’s time to pay somebody a visit, Buchanan thought as he started the Taurus, turned on its lights, and drove away. The headlights of the approaching car came up behind him, aggravating his headache.
Somebody wants to find Juana badly enough that they bug the house. But they still can’t be sure Juana didn’t get a message to her parents in a way that the microphones couldn’t detect, so whoever wants to find Juana becomes impatient and sends somebody around to the house to pretend they know Juana and ask where she is. No success. They send somebody else. Nothing. So they send yet another. .
Does that make sense? Buchanan wondered. They must have realized that three old friends coming around in two weeks would make Juana’s parents suspicious. Then why would-?
Yes, Buchanan thought. If Juana is in touch with her parents, whoever is after her wants her to know that her parents are being watched. They want to make Juana nervous about her parents. They want to threaten her by implying a threat against her parents. They hope that’ll force her to come out of hiding.
And now that I showed up, now that the surveillance unit knows there’s a wild card, they might get nervous enough to stop being patient and have a long, forceful chat with Juana’s parents. I have to let Pedro and Anita know they’re in danger.
And what about me? Buchanan thought as he steered around a corner. Whoever’s after Juana will want to talk to a stranger who suddenly shows up and asks the same questions they did.
Buchanan steered around another corner.
The headlights behind him kept following.
My, my, Buchanan thought.
8
FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA
The colonel had chosen a motel on the edge of town, using a pay phone to reserve a room under a pseudonym. At 11:00 P.M., after he’d used an electronic scanner to make sure that the room was free of microphones, his three associates arrived, their clothes speckled with water from the dank November rain that had greeted them at Washington National Airport following their flight from New Orleans.
All of them looked tired, even Captain Weller, who normally exuded sexual vitality. Her blond hair looked stringy, her blouse wrinkled. She took off her jacket, slumped on the motel room’s sofa, and toed off her high-heeled shoes. Major Putnam and Alan had haggard red cheeks, presumably from fatigue combined with the dehydration that occurs on aircraft and the further dehydrating effect of alcohol.