Nate gave her one last blank look and headed for the door.
“And get me some clothes!” he heard her yell as he bounded up the stairway.
Nate called his roommate and asked him to rendezvous in an hour with a couple of changes of clothes, his passport, and basic toiletries stuffed in a backpack—and to be as discreet as possible leaving the apartment. He wasn’t worried. If anyone could look nonchalant it was his roommate, Mikey. He was a champion loiterer. That accomplished, Nate headed over to Jill’s place.
It was the second time that day he’d scoped out her neighborhood in Wallingford. This time he was even more paranoid than before. He saw no cars, no indicators that anyone was inside. Yeah, right. Like they’d advertise the fact.
He had no choice. Besides, what was the worst that could happen? If government agents picked him up he could claim ignorance. What could they do, torture him?
Yeah, they could. They could torture him.
He went around to the back, approaching on the alley. The house seemed dead—no noise, no movement. He had Jill’s key, but he’d never tried it in the back door. He put it in the lock—it worked. He let himself in.
Christ, his heart was pounding. Credit card, passport, clothes. Credit card, passport, clothes. The thought, as he snuck through the kitchen in his black boots, of digging through Jill’s lingerie drawer picking out stuff was… Well, it wasn’t bad, actually. Made him feel a little bit better about the whole thing.
The house was empty, ominously so. In the hall he picked up the empty garbage bag he’d left on the floor. Two steps more and he was in her bedroom. Passport first—it was still where he’d seen it earlier, in her bedside table. He stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans. Next, the closet. He pulled open the doors and began pulling things off hangers, clothes he recognized, clothes she’d worn often. God, this stuff was awful. Wool vests, button-down shirts, a regular Lands’ End catalog all miniature-sized. There was one odd note—a red, silky dress. She’d never wear such a thing. It still had a tag. Ever hopeful, he put it in the bag.
He went to the dresser for her pants, selected four pairs. One drawer up was lingerie. He grinned, giddily amused that he was looking at Jill the Chill’s underwear. First and last time, no doubt. They weren’t exactly Frederick’s of Hollywood, but they weren’t white cotton, either. He picked up a small underwire bra—peach silky fabric with just a hint of lace trim. He felt a stomach-twisting rush, Pavlovian in its predictability. He made himself stuff the bra in the bag. He followed it with a few more handfuls of whatever came into his grasp.
He was rubbing a silky bit of black panties between his fingers when he realized he’d been standing there like that for a couple of minutes. Damn.
Credit card.
Right. He shoved the drawer closed and headed for the living room.
He was trying to recall his sisters’ underwear. Not that he ever saw much of it, but it hadn’t been white cotton, either. They probably didn’t make stuff that plain anymore. So Jill having semihot underwear didn’t mean a thing. It didn’t, for example, mean that she was a closet nympho. It was probably all she could find. She’d probably bought it with about as much interest as she ordered teriyaki.
Credit card.
Right. Jill kept a filing cabinet and desk in a space between her living room and kitchen. Nate opened the filing cabinet, looking for a credit card file. He found the credit card file, but naturally, there was no credit card in it, only bills. Who would keep a credit card in a filing cabinet? He began going through the top drawer of her little desk and had just wrapped his hand around something that felt suspiciously like a credit card when the front door crashed open with a violent, splintering crunch.
Calder Farris was enraged. It wasn’t apparent on the outside, not unless you made the mistake of questioning him or getting in his way—which his men didn’t. It wasn’t obvious as long as his dark glasses were firmly in place. But inside, the demon ran the show, possessing him from fingertip to toenail—and it was Godzilla on a rampage.
An hour ago—and the mere thought made him tremble with fury—an hour ago he’d been on the phone with Dr. Rickman, formulating an offer. Putting together a fucking job offer. Dr. Talcott, that tiny, twisted mass of feminine deception, had made him believe she’d cooperate, that she was panting to work for the DoD. He could have sworn he’d seen the power lust in her eyes. She’d appeared to have such a practical bent. She seemed to know on which side her bread was buttered and that the government held the biggest, fattest jar of the stuff.
Ohhh, she had made him buy it. Fuck. The thought of how he had bought it made him tremble and burn. She’d made him look ridiculous in front of Dr. Rickman. Or he would look ridiculous if he had to tell Rickman she was missing. But Calder’s plan was to find her and have a little chat, to cram that job offer down her throat before Rickman knew anything about it.
The men he’d had on guard, worthless pricks one and all, had described the platinum blond–tipped youth, gold hoop in his ear, who had gone twice into Talcott’s room. Hinkle had ID’d him as Nate Andros, Talcott’s grad student. They’d had a picture of him and Calder had shown it around, but it had been old. His hair had been a long, curly mess. No one recognized him and he’d been wearing a hospital uniform, so they’d assumed…
There was no excuse. Obviously Andros had been working with the lab tech with the cart. They’d snuck her out in the thing; there was no other explanation. They’d snuck her out while Calder’s men had been scratching their tiny little balls and Calder himself had been on the phone discussing fucking pension plans.
Meanwhile, the Seattle Fire Department’s report blamed a furnace. A furnace! And he’d called an XL3! Could he look any more dickless?
Except that it occurred to Calder that what had happened to that furnace might have been akin to what happened to those birds in Alaska. Only he wasn’t going to say that. He wasn’t going to risk looking lamebrained again, not without some proof that waves were even remotely involved. He had to know what Talcott had been doing down there. He had to know.
And she was going to fill him in, tell him all about it—right after he’d made her luncheon on her invitation to join the happy family in the DoD.
He’d sent Hinkle to Andros’s place and other team members to the university. Still others were scouring the hospital and its surrounds. Calder and a Marine named Rice had gone to Talcott’s house because Calder figured she was most likely to show up there. She’d need clothes and ID. Calder sent Rice sneaking around the back while he covered the front door himself.
He stood on the stoop and silently removed his glasses, the better to see inside. He drew his gun in his right hand but didn’t intend to use it. He wasn’t going to shoot the bitch. Not immediately anyway. He noiselessly tried the knob with his left hand—locked. He stepped back and aimed a fury-filled kick just to the right of the doorknob.
And found himself in the open doorway staring at the kid with platinum-tipped hair and the faggy gold hoop in his ear. The kid took one look at him and dropped to the floor in a dead faint.
It might have been horrendously stupid, deserving of a mention in one of those “really dumb ways people die” books, but when Nate saw the Fed in the doorway—black suit, spooky eyes, gun, and all—his immediate reaction was to play dead.
Funny, because the reaction was so innate, instinctual really, and he didn’t recall reading anything about the Greeks, his ancestors, favoring the techniques of possums in warfare. Trojan horses, yes, maybe even something about Odysseus and sheep. Possums, huh-uh.