Luke leaned onto the passenger-side window frame.
“Yo, Flash. Don’t ju be leanin’ against my wheels with yo’ sweaty ass.”
“You can cut the cornball ghetto talk,” Luke said. “I know you, remember?”
Sammy Wilkes was as much a part of the black ghetto experience as the Prince of Wales. Educated at Cornell with a degree in electrical engineering, he had grown up in an upper-class neighborhood on Chicago’s north side, the son of an investment banker.
Wilkes had been the only member of Proteus without a military background. They had found him at the National Security Agency, where he’d cultivated a unique portfolio of electronic surveillance skills.
“By the way,” Wilkes said, “things are fine with me. Thanks for asking.”
“What’s it been, Sammy, five years?” Luke looked down the street. “Do I have to guess, or are you going to tell me why you’ve been following me?”
It wasn’t just Sammy’s background that distinguished him from his fellow Proteus members. He didn’t have the same pensive and brooding nature that others had worn like an overworked habit. Sammy and his pearly white teeth smiled mischievously at life. He’d been a cocky and talkative kid who glided past the questions that had tormented Luke. Covert operations that had played out as lopsided massacres, killings made to look like they were done by other groups — for Sammy, it all had seemed as inconsequential as an insect under his boot.
Sammy had had other things on his mind. He’d always talked about how he would turn his talents into something big. In fact, he had, parlaying his specialized skills into a thriving corporate security and surveillance business that operated at the furthest edges of legality, and sometimes, Luke suspected, beyond.
The black man studied the street around them. “Sammy usually gets paid to follow people. I may have to start a tab here. You owe me big-time for this one.”
“Other than the fact that you’ve always started every conversation by claiming that I owe you a favor, what exactly are you talking about?”
“Breaking the code of the brotherhood. That’s what I’m doing by talking to you. We’ll just put it on your tab, Flash.”
“You want to speak English?”
“Yours truly, the footloose and fancy-free Sammy Wilkes, was asked to conduct a super-secret clandestine investigation of one Luke McKenna. ‘Course, I turned ’em down, which is lucky for you because I happen to be unmatched in my field.”
“Someone is investigating me?”
“Think nothin’ of it. And I do mean nothing. In fact, forget I’m here. If word gets out that Sammy makes a habit of calling ducks and letting ’em know that hunting season has started…well, that’d be bad for business.”
“Who is it?”
“Judging from his pictures, he’s more of a what than a who.” Sammy eyed a passing car in his side mirror, then came back to Luke. “But I hear you recently served him up a big ol’ can of whoop-ass.”
“The football player? Erickson?”
Sammy’s head started bobbing. “His lawyer called me yesterday. They gonna make you look like a crazy-ass loon — at least, that’s the plan.” His mouth erupted in a grin that looked like his face had suddenly cracked open. “If only they knew how crazy you are, Flash. If only they knew.”
Luke ran a wet hand over his head. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“Oh, believe it. A blue Ford Mustang, old two-door model. It’s parked up the block from your house. Check it out.”
“You sure about this?”
“You kidding, right? Countersurveillance, that’s Sammy’s specialty. You wouldn’ta seen me earlier if I didn’t want you to.”
Sammy waited for a response. Apparently, he could see that Luke wanted more. “Sammy decided to look in on things, see who they put on you. When I spotted the snoop, I walked up to him and asked what he was doing there.”
“That was subtle.”
“Best way to do it. He thinks I’m a local, looking out for my neighbors, so he gives me his cover story. Tells me he’s a broker, scouting properties for his clients. Holds up a Multiple Listings book that’s sitting on his lap, lets me take in the Open House placards on his dash.”
“Maybe he is a broker.”
“You kidding, right? When’s the last time you saw a broker driving a two-seater? Not exactly what you’d use to drive clients around in. Besides, the camera sitting on his passenger seat has a telephoto lens that’d need wheels if it was any bigger.”
Luke glanced up the hill in the direction of his home. His jaw muscles hardened.
Sammy seemed to read his thoughts. “Keep it loose, Flash. Don’t make trouble for yourself.”
Luke looked at the ground, then back at Sammy. “I guess I do owe you. Thanks.”
“There’s times we gotta look out for each other. We’re off the books, remember?” Sammy handed Luke his business card, saluted with two fingers, and then punched the throttle.
By the time Luke finished reading the card, Sammy’s car had disappeared onto a side street.
Luke started walking toward his home.
Off the books. It had been years since Luke had heard that phrase. Proteus had been created to deal with national security threats that, by classified presidential order, were deemed too sensitive and imminent to disclose to the intelligence committees on Capitol Hill. The brainchild of a maverick Secretary of Defense and a President frustrated by congressional leaks, Proteus was the darkest special ops unit ever conceived. It was completely “off the books,” answerable to the President alone, and known to only a handful of White House and Pentagon staffers.
It survived through just two presidential terms. When the other party won the White House, Proteus was dismantled. The outgoing President saw it for the potentially lethal political liability that it was, and almost overnight all traces of Proteus disappeared. At the time, Luke still owed the military one more year for his Naval Academy education, but the President’s need to bury Proteus made that issue moot. Luke had jumped at the offer of an early discharge.
When he turned the corner onto his block, there it was. The blue Mustang was parked about seventy yards beyond his duplex under the overhang of an oak tree. With the car draped in shade, the outline of a large camera lens barely showed behind the windshield.
He felt the heat rise in his face. Each step was a battle against primal urges. When he reached the edge of his driveway, he took a deep breath and willed himself to turn toward his front door.
Keep it loose, Flash. Don’t make trouble for yourself.
He made it through the door, wended his way to the kitchen, and came out onto the elevated redwood deck that sat over his driveway. A trellis overgrown with jasmine shielded him from the Mustang’s view.
Luke seethed, thinking about Erickson and his attorney putting him under a microscope.
He started into his ritualized workout — abdominal crunches, inverted push-ups, fingertip pull-ups — but gave it up before he finished the first rep and, instead, sat on the deck sweating.
Erickson’s investigator would probably dredge up his “official” military record. It was nothing more than bland fiction, no more threatening than a gnat with a broken wing. His real file, the Proteus file, was buried under so many layers of security that no single individual acting alone — not even the President — had the authority to access it. His file was off the books.
But having some private detective shadow him, invade his life, and threaten the seclusion he had so carefully guarded, stirred an unfamiliar discomfort. Luke knew how to hunt a target, how to disappear into shadows, and how to stalk his prey. He didn’t know how to be the prey.