Chapter 99
The wait had been interminably long. Cathy Moynihan watched as the girl powered on her iPhone and began to wave it through the air. It was as if she were trying to wipe away the message on the display that indicated there was no signal. She waited on the edge of her seat, ready to recite the FBI deputy director’s number, but the good news still hadn’t been delivered. She glanced over at the teenager and could sense she was about to ask the same question again.
“Has it connected yet?” Melody Millar whispered.
The room was thick with anxiety, and the question grated like an impatient child on a long car trip.
“No, Melody,” the girl said, clearly frustrated. “Don’t worry. I’ll let you know as soon as it does.”
Moynihan decided to break the tension. “Just let it charge for a few more minutes, and then slide it over to Melody. She can pass it to me if it doesn’t work for her. There might be a signal in our part of the room.”
“Okay,” the girl said nervously.
They heard heavy steps out in the hallway, and all three of them turned toward the door. Soller started to reach for the plug that fueled the charger, but the noise quickly faded into the background. They shared sighs of relief.
Moynihan noticed the girl with the phone was bothered by something, and she sensed she was about to find out what it was.
“So why did the FBI want to take Melody?” she asked.
The agent thought about how to answer the question. At this point she decided it couldn’t hurt to tell them the basics of what she knew. It wasn’t much anyway, and maybe she could learn something from the others.
She was careful to keep her voice down and said, “They wanted to question her about her brother.” She noticed the girl sit up in her chair. “He was at the scene of a murder. The bureau wanted to find out the extent of his involvement. Right now he’s a person of interest.”
The girl lowered her gaze and stared down the FBI agent. “So, let me get this straight,” she said, her voice growing louder with each word. “You think Etzy, other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, had something to do with Max’s murder?”
Moynihan pushed the palms of her hands toward the floor in an attempt to quiet her down, but it only served to wind the girl up.
“He didn’t have anything to do with it. I can tell you that much,” the girl insisted, this time a little quieter but with the same sentiment.
Moynihan shook her head. She didn’t understand the girl’s intended connection.
“Etzy?”
“Etzy is Francis Millar’s nickname.” She nodded to Melody. “Her brother. Nobody calls him Francis anymore,” the girl said dismissively.
Moynihan inclined her head. “I see. And how can you be so sure about that?”
“For starters, Etzy is a good person.” Tears began to well up in the girl’s eyes. “He was taken by the man who killed Max.” She turned to Melody and then back to the FBI agent. “They said they had taken her, and if he didn’t do what they said, they were going to hurt her. He didn’t have a choice.”
Moynihan squinted in disbelief. “How do you know this?”
“He sent me a text just before they took him. He was scared to death.”
Tears streamed down the girl’s face while Moynihan tried to piece everything together.
“He did? How do you know Francis…I mean Etzy?”
“He’s my boyfriend,” the girl said.
Moynihan’s eyebrows raised at the news. “What?” Still taken aback, she realized she needed to approach this delicately. “Is it possible…?” She paused to consider whether or not to edit what she was about to say. “Is it possible that you don’t know him as well as you thought you did?”
The girl’s teary visage hardened with anger.
Doing her best to sound compassionate, Moynihan said, “Love is a crazy thing. Sometimes it can affect the way you reason things.”
“No!” the girl shouted, her voice echoing through the room. “He would never do anything to hurt my brother. I can promise you that!”
Melody cowered from the volume of Maria Soller’s voice, and Moynihan was stunned by the revelation that the girl wasn’t only Francis Millar’s boyfriend, she was Senator Soller’s daughter, Maria.
Moynihan shook her head. “What the…?”
Footsteps pounded their way down the hall toward the room. The FBI agent looked helplessly at Maria Soller. She had been overcome with emotion, and the men were almost to the door. Her heart pounded as she tried to motion for Soller to stash the iPhone away out of sight, but she wasn’t responding to visual cues.
Chapter 100
He was running late; it was atypical for the former operative. The Gulfstream G650 was a fast plane, but with the aviator’s equivalent of a traffic jam at the small airport, they were forced to circle above the Illinois skies for more than thirty minutes. Time was short, so he dressed himself in the confines of the corporate jet.
It had been quite a while since Heckler had put on a tuxedo — so long, in fact, he was thankful the fashion had remained constant. He had been told it was a black-tie event, so wearing a regular suit would attract unwanted attention.
The plane was at the airport for less than fifteen minutes. Immediately after he climbed down the stairs, Heckler sealed the plane so the pilots could get their wheels up as soon as possible. Their next stop was New York to pick up more assets for the operation. There would be no time to spare, so every second saved had the potential to make a difference. Heckler had taken a cab into town and was in a rush to check in to his room so he could get to the theater to meet the Island Industries operative.
“Mr. Smith?” the clerk said as Heckler handed him his ID.
“Yeah, that’s right,” he replied. He liked the name: nice and forgettable. Heckler turned to size himself up in the hotel’s floor-to-ceiling mirror and muttered an explicative to himself.
The clerk looked up at him, unable make out the words. “Excuse me?”
“Ah, sorry. It’s nothing.”
He frowned at the unsightly hanger crease that dominated the horizontal axis of his slacks. There was no time to iron, so he shrugged it off. The smell in the lobby had him wondering whether they had sprinkled baby powder on their cheesy plastic flowers.
“Do you have something for me here?” he asked.
The clerk disappeared below the counter and popped back up. “Why yes I do, Mr. Smith. Here you go.”
The clerk wore an overly enthusiastic smile as he handed Heckler a sealed envelope.
He nodded and said, “Thanks.”
Heckler quickly headed up to his room and unloaded the rest of his gear. He checked his watch to see how late he was. It was already well after six o’clock, so he proceeded down the stairs, headed out to the street and flagged down a cab.
“The Studebaker Theater,” he told the cabdriver as he slid into the back seat.
The driver turned his head toward him and nodded without saying a word. Heckler noticed a vibration from his phone. He had felt it earlier, but when he checked the display, he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The occasion had served as a reminder for him to turn the ringer off.
As the cab approached the venue, the vibration got stronger. Heckler pulled the device out of his pocket to see if he had pressed a button inadvertently. This time the display was dominated by a message: Proximity Alert Warning, 34 meters to your east. He touched the display, and the device provided more details. It indicated that a cell signal that had been flagged for alert had been detected. He handed the driver a ten dollar bill and told him to keep the change.