But he wasn’t a buck-wild, easily influenced teenager unable to see beyond the moment. He was a thirty-four-year-old man with a wife, a daughter, a business. Real responsibilities. A real life.
There had to be another way.
Cracking his knuckles, he left the office. He passed the control panel for the security system, stopped.
The command center’s status light was green, for “Ready.” But he recalled activating the perimeter sensors before he had left for work that morning.
If Leon had abducted his family while they were still in the house-hadn’t Leon said Simone was “in her drawers” when he’d found her? — how had he gotten inside without setting off the alarm?
And no windows had been broken, either, no doors pried open.
Manually disabling the security system would have been far more complicated than simply snipping the wires at the phone box on the house’s exterior wall, too. Corey had installed the package himself. It included cellular backup that would have automatically contacted the police if the landline connection were severed.
Perhaps Leon had become a well-equipped, high-tech thief over the years. Gotten past the front door’s lock with a lock-release gun of some kind, used some sort of slick electronic gadget to scramble the control panel. No system or lock was foolproof, and Leon certainly possessed the intellect for such expertise, if not the discipline and patience Corey thought necessary to master those skills.
As he pondered the question, the doorbell chimed. Frowning, he went to the window in the living room. The wooden Levolor blinds blocked the daylight. He lifted one of the slats and peered outside.
He’d been expecting a courier or a door-to-door solicitor, but a black Ford Crown Victoria with tinted glass was parked in the driveway next to his car. Everything about the vehicle declared cop.
“Shit,” he whispered.
What could the police want? Had a neighbor witnessed something that morning and called it in?
The doorbell chimed again.
If I see a cop on my tail, if I even suspect that you’ve involved them in this private business matter of ours, I’m going to kill your family, and I’m going to make it exquisitely painful, worse than anything you can imagine. .
He had no plans to contact the police, but he couldn’t avoid them if they were at his door. His car was in the drive-way-they knew he was there. Avoiding them would invite suspicions, would raise dangerous questions.
He pushed out a deep breath, wiped sweat from his brow. Clasping his clammy hands, he walked to the front door and opened it.
An attractive young woman in a black pantsuit stood outside, flanked by a man in a gray business suit who Corey took to be her partner. The woman was as petite as a ballerina, with an olive complexion, raven hair knotted into a long ponytail, and large onyx eyes that reflected a degree of perception and experience that contradicted her apparent youth. The guy, perhaps in his midtwenties, was tall and broad-shouldered, with blond hair trimmed in a buzz-cut and glacial blue eyes buried in a marble slab face.
“Mr. Corey Webb?” the woman asked. She had a New York accent and a husky voice that didn’t fit her diminutive stature at all.
“I’m Corey Webb,” he said, pleased that his voice was steady. “May I help you?”
She offered a professional smile and flashed a badge.
“I sure hope you can, sir,” she said. “I’m Special Agent Gina Falco, and this is Special Agent Robert March. We’re with the FBI.”
19
A fresh layer of icy sweat moistened Corey’s hairline. FBI. What could they want?
He had not invited the agents inside. Although he realized that he probably should have asked them in to put to rest any suspicions they might hold of him, a lifelong distrust of law enforcement kept him blocking the threshold.
He folded his arms across his chest. “What can I do for you?”
Falco put away her badge. Her perceptive eyes made him uneasy; they would detect a lie quicker and more effectively than a polygraph.
“May we come inside, please?” she asked.
“That depends on whether I’m in trouble or not.” He offered a short chuckle.
She smiled disarmingly, and he realized why she was doing all the talking. With that smile, her good looks, and those penetrating eyes, she would be able to coax the truth out of virtually anyone.
“We have only a few routine questions to ask you, Mr. Webb,” she said.
“About what?”
“This individual here.”
Although Falco spoke, March offered Corey the photograph. Corey took it, already suspecting what he was going to see.
It was the mug shot of Leon that was posted on the FBI’s Web site.
“His name’s Leon Sharpe,” Falco said.
She awaited his reaction. Agent March’s cold blue eyes measured him, too.
Corey kept his face blank, but his mind spun.
“Come in, then,” he said, and stepped aside.
The agents filed past him. Agent March had to turn sideways to get his shoulders through the doorway.
“You can have a seat in there.” Corey indicated the formal living room on the left of the foyer.
“Thanks.” Falco swept her probing gaze around. “You have a very nice home, sir.”
“Thank you.”
“You might want to talk to your housekeeper, however,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
She settled onto the sofa. Her gaze didn’t leave his face. “There’s a broken vase on the floor at the end of the hallway, near the staircase.”
Damn.
“Oh, that?” He shrugged. “My daughter knocked it over this morning, running through the house. I hadn’t gotten a chance to sweep it up yet.”
“Kids, eh?” Falco said, with a smile and shrug.
March sat beside Falco, moving with surprising grace for a man of his size. He scanned the house, too.
Corey hoped that nothing else was out of place. He was eager to get them out of there as quickly as possible. He could only imagine how nervous he looked, and he worried they would interpret his rattled nerves as guilty behavior.
Forcing himself to breathe slowly, he sat on an upholstered chair across from the agents, placing the profile photo on the coffee table between them. He nodded toward it. “I saw Leon yesterday. I ran into him at a gas station, totally by chance. I hadn’t seen him in at least sixteen years.”
“You and Mr. Sharpe used to be good friends?”
“We were friends back in Detroit. He lived across the street from us for a while.”
“From ‘us’?” She took out a pen and pad.
“Me and my late grandmother. She didn’t like Leon at all. Said he was pure trouble.”
“Was he pure trouble back then, Mr. Webb?”
“Of course he was-that’s why I never hung around him too much. When I ran into him yesterday, I knew he’d probably been involved in a lot of mess over the years. A leopard can’t change its spots, as Grandma Louise liked to say.”
“So you spoke with Sharpe at a gas station. .”
“The QuikTrip on Haynes Bridge Road, not far from here. Around eight-thirty yesterday morning, maybe eight forty-five.”
She jotted quick notes, looked up and gave him the full power of those eyes. “Kinda funny, don’t you think?”
He frowned. “What’s funny?”
“You running into an old friend from the neighborhood, totally out of the blue. Some coincidence, huh?”
He felt color spread through his face. Was she implying that he had planned to meet Leon? As if he would ever want to see Leon again, in this life or the next.
“Well, that’s what happened,” he said with an edge in his voice.
“What’d he look like?”
“He didn’t look like that picture you’ve got at all. He had dreadlocks down to his shoulders, and a thick beard, too.”
“Disguise, no doubt.” She made notes. “What was he wearing?”
“Denim overalls, old work boots. He was dressed like a house painter, which he claimed was the kind of work he was doing these days.”