When Anne had gone straight from law school to the FBI, after her mother had assumed her daughter would go into private practice, Mrs. Nichols had understood without need of discussion that her “baby girl” wanted to be a cop like her momma.
Nichols had the long, slender frame of her father, and a prettiness that her stocky, rather blunt-featured mother lacked. But both women knew they were more alike than not.
On the fifth floor, Nichols walked quickly to her apartment, beckoned by the thought of a hot shower and cool bed sheets. She was just getting her keys from her purse when she noticed the edge of light under her door.
Her tiredness evaporated and she was on the alert — she never left the lights on. Never.
This was a security building, with a doorman on duty much of the day and a keypad in the lobby. Not an impregnable fortress by any means, but anyone who’d been able to get in here, and into her apartment, was likely a professional criminal... or a federal agent.
And considering the rogue element in government that Rogers had warned them about, Nichols could not assume the best about another fed.
She dropped the keys back in her shoulder-strap purse, withdrawing a small automatic with one hand, and the burner phone she’d been given with the other. Tempted as she was to deal with this herself, the wiser move would be to call Rogers for backup.
The automatic trained on the door, her hearing perked for anything behind it, she had just started keying in Rogers’ new number when she sensed something behind her.
An anonymous nine millimeter snugged in his waistband, Joe Reeder stood on the fire-escape landing outside DeMarcus’s crib, pulling on a cigarette liberated from the half-pack of Benson & Hedges Menthol Ultra Lights left behind by the formerly naked Sheila in the couple’s rush to leave. The beautiful starry evening seemed at odds with the storm clouds of the situation, though a March crispness provided a reminder that a chill was coming.
That distinctive white hair of his Reeder had tucked under a Nationals cap, appropriated (like the Georgetown windbreaker) from his host’s closet. The door was propped open, a shaft of light cutting the darkness of the wrought-iron landing as he waited for Rogers and Miggie, knowing they should be back soon.
He hadn’t smoked in over a year, not even a single cigarette, but he couldn’t resist just this one as he tried to calm his jangly nerves. He’d been going over every single aspect of the Yellich assassination and the dead CIA quartet in Azbekistan, looking for possible connections — was Len Chamberlain’s murder the connective tissue? He tried to separate what he knew from what he thought, what he could prove from what he surmised.
As soon as he saw headlights swing onto Tenth, Reeder tossed the cigarette sparking into the alley and went down to greet them.
When Rogers parked the car alongside the building, Reeder stepped behind the vehicle so that when she popped the trunk, he’d be ready to grab some of Miggie’s gear. With the three of them, a single trip got all of it up and inside. Although Mig used a tablet for most of his searches, the rest of the tech wizard’s toys, which were in part to help hide his presence here, would not exactly fit neatly into a shoulder bag.
With the door finally pulled shut, Miggie looked at Reeder and said, “Patti gave me the Cliff Notes version. How about the unabridged edition?”
Reeder motioned for them to move to the comfy chairs and couches facing the big flat-screen and settled in. Reeder brought Mig up to speed quickly but thoroughly.
Then he asked Miggie, “Have you had any luck tracking the money Wooten was paid to take Secretary Yellich down?”
Mig, in gray Hoyas Basketball sweats, shrugged. “Some... but nothing that does us any good yet. Shell companies, a slew of them. Whoever paid Wooten wanted the transaction untraceable. Nothing is, of course... but tracking it could take time.”
“How much time?” Reeder asked.
Miggie shrugged again. “Who knows? Weeks, even months.”
“We have four days. Then it won’t matter.”
Miggie frowned, flipped a hand. “I can only do what I can do, Joe. It’s like peeling an onion a layer at a time.”
Rogers asked, “What about our friend from the GAO?”
“Your elevator buddy? Well, knowing he’s from the GAO — if he’s really from the GAO — isn’t much to go on.”
She clearly didn’t like the sound of that. “Can’t you round up some pictures for me to sort through?”
Miggie huffed a non-laugh. “Patti, there’s somewhere north of three thousand employees in the GAO, more than half of ’em male — you want to look at all their photos?”
She frowned. “There has to be a faster way...”
“Might be,” Miggie admitted. “I’ve got a couple of ideas. Get back to you on that. In the meantime, what else do we need?”
Reeder held out the plastic bag with the busted flag-lapel camera in it. “Any way to track this?”
Miggie took the bag, removed its contents, studied it. Finally he said, “There’s no onboard memory, so it recorded images to a hard drive somewhere else. Meaning... probably not. Any idea who it belongs to?”
“A guy who jumped me in the dark.”
“Giving me a lot to work with, aren’t you?”
Reeder lifted a shoulder and put it back down. “Well, the Secret Service is the only agency I know of that uses these, this model anyway. It almost has to belong to one of their agents. If not, why did the GAO drone try to intimidate us right there at the Secret Service?”
Rogers asked, “What do you say, Miggie? Is there a way to track down the right agent?”
Examining the back of the mini-camera, the computer expert said, “There’s an ID number... maybe match it, if I hack the Secret Service. No small feat that, and when the flag cam got smashed, the ID number appears to’ve been ground into the concrete, and it was a tiny one to begin with... but we should be able to come up with several possibilities.”
“Good,” Reeder said.
As if taking stock for the first time, Miggie glanced around, sniffing some, and said, “You’ll need more Febreze than that to cover up that much weed.”
Reeder chuckled. “Who says Miguel Altuve can’t determine anything without a computer?”
Really taking their surroundings in now, Miggie asked, “What the hell is this place?”
Not missing a beat, Rogers said, “The Batcave.”
Miggie smirked. “Oh really? Is that how Bruce Wayne made his fortune, selling dope and guns?”
Ignoring that, Reeder rose and said, “Get set up, Mig, and get at it. You should be safe here... just don’t answer the door.”
The smirk morphed into a frown. “You think that elevator clown who threatened you can find us? Him or whoever he works for, anyway? And I don’t mean the GAO.”
Reeder shook his head. “Probably not, but in this town, what couldn’t happen? And the friend of mine who loaned us this pad has customers who will not be expecting you. So don’t answer it unless it’s one of us. There’s a camera — you’ll be able to see who’s out there.”
Miggie nodded, let some air out, said, “Got it.”
Reeder turned to Rogers. “Have you taken care of the Kevin situation?”
“No, but it’s next on my list.”
“Mine, too.”
She rose. “Joe... I can handle it myself. You stick here, why don’t you, and keep Miggie safe.”