“Tess. Tess. Listen to me. It’s going to be OK.”
She didn’t answer. She just nodded, nervously.
“You weren’t here, all right? You were never here.” I leaned back a bit so I could look her squarely in the eyes. “Neither was Kim.”
She looked down at Lendowski’s corpse, still shivering. “I’m glad I was.”
I pulled her in and kissed her on the forehead, keeping her close, keeping my lips on her cold skin, feeling her veins throbbing away under my fingers. After a few long seconds, I pulled away and went back to his prone body. I fished through his pockets and pulled out his BlackBerry, which unsurprisingly was turned off. I stuffed both guns and his phone in the backpack.
“You need to go home. Before anyone finds him. I’ll drive you into town.”
“No. I’ll be fine. I’ll make my way back. You need to get out of here.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want you walking through the trail on your own. I’ll drop you where it’s safer. Then, just go home. They’ll be wondering where Lendowski is. Anyone asks, you went out for some air and a think. That’s it. You stick with that. You never saw me.”
She didn’t move. “What are you going to do?”
I looked down at Lendowski’s body. “Find the bastards who paid him to kill me.”
She placed a hand on my arm-her eyes locked on mine, grasping at anything. “He tried to kill you. Doesn’t that prove something?”
“They’ll just argue he was here to arrest me and I gunned him down.”
I could hear the desperation in her voice as she pleaded, “You could come back with me. I’ll sneak you in through the backyard, then you could go up into the loft space.”
“What, and watch DVDs while you sneak me up some energy bars and a carton of milk?” I threw a weak smile at her. “Go home, Kim. It’s dangerously close to your curfew.”
“How can you find them when everyone’s out looking for you?”
“I’m going to even up the odds. Don’t worry. I’ve got an advantage here. I know how this game is played.”
She threw her arms around my neck and pulled me in for a kiss. After a minute or so, I gently peeled off her. I reached into the backpack and gave her back the gun she’d brought me, along with the box of ammo. “Keep it near,” I told her as I put away the one she’d use on Lendowski. “I seem to be building up a collection of FBI Glocks.” Then I took a fresh burner phone from my jacket pocket and handed it to her. “I’ll call you on this. I dialed my number from it, so it’s stored in the call log. Call me if you don’t feel safe for any reason.”
“I won’t feel safe till you’re in the clear and back home with us.”
I nodded. There was nothing I would have liked more. “We’re going to get through this, Tess. I promise.”
She looked at me for few seconds, then nodded back.
I nodded back, then started to drag Lendowski’s body toward the tree line.
31
New York City, New York
Across the street, I could see the nightclub that Kurt had designated as our latest meeting place. All manner of leather-garbed, tattooed and pierced night creatures were standing outside, smoking. It didn’t look like where I imagined Kurt would spend his Saturday nights. Maybe Gigi was broadening his horizons.
After ensuring that Tess was safely ensconced in a cab and heading home, I’d left the stolen Caprice in a parking garage near White Plains station and taken a train into the city. Kurt had been out with his gal when I’d texted him, and he didn’t seem at all pleased that he had to interrupt their date for an urgent powwow.
I’d changed into the clothes Tess had brought me, ditching Lendowski’s suit and parka in an alleyway dumpster beside an Italian restaurant. I’d given the discarded items a generous coating of week-old pasta sauce to dissuade anyone from reclaiming them while on a high-calorie dumpster dive. I’d also taken the holdall that now carried the three Glocks and the stuff Tess had brought me and shoved it into a dark, tight spot behind it, making sure no one saw me and figuring it stood a reasonable chance of still being there when we left the club.
Satisfied as I could be that there was no one watching the place, I crossed the street and headed for the entrance, angling my face away from the CCTV cameras bolted to the building’s facade. I was well aware of our intel-gathering agencies’ capabilities when it came to finding a needle in a haystack, and I knew that, from here on, I’d need to avoid any kind of camera or even a phone call if I didn’t want the monster servers that picked through anything they could sink their claws into to get a lock on my trail.
Before I could get through the door, two hundred and fifty pounds of bouncer blocked my way. “Wrong door, buddy.”
I held up the denim backpack. “I need to change. The wife hates this side of me. Had to sneak out.”
He thought about this for a moment then nodded me in, grudgingly. “Go on.” As I stepped past him, he called after me, “You’ll have to tell her eventually, you know. One way or another, secrets always find a way out.”
Everyone’s a guru.
I maneuvered myself through a murder of Goth girls-some of them looking no older than Kim-and went inside.
Time to really screw up Kurt’s evening.
Strobing lights and bizarre electronic music pummeled my senses as I made my way through the dark and sweaty catacomb-like space. I found Kurt and his new friend seated at a small table at the back, away from the frenetic dance-floor crush. They were both dressed in full costume, but the clientele was so freakish they fit right in. I was the one who looked way out of place.
Kurt, dressed in a red tie, high-collared white jacket and blue cape, smiled weakly. “We were on our way to a Final Fantasy all-nighter at a pop-up cinema. No time to go change and not too many places we could go to dressed like this. Gigi suggested we meet here.”
Gigi looked at him quizzically, then struck a coquettish pose-chin resting on the backs of her hands. “Not Gigi. Lumina.” She flashed me a grin. “From Final Fantasy Thirteen. And he’s Cid. Cid Raines.”
So she was also averse to using real names.
Terrific.
Lumina-pink hair, black bodice reining in her hard-to-ignore chest, pink-lined sweeper tailcoat, short feathery skirt and black mid-thigh stockings-looked me up and down. “So this is the Fed?”
Kurt nodded, looking intensely uncomfortable. I assumed he had filled her in while they were waiting, and while I wasn’t massively comfortable with it, I didn’t really have time to worry about such subtleties.
Even here, with the sound system at less than full tilt, no way was anyone going to hear what we were saying, so I decided to dive right in.
“Kirby’s dead. And the evidence says I killed him.”
Kurt’s face lit up. “Jesus. What happened?”
I gave him and Lumina a brief overview-from my arrival at Kirby’s house to my escape from Federal Plaza. Keeping with my recent theme, I omitted the parts that featured Tess.
Gigi listened intently, unfazed-which surprised me. Kurt, on the other hand, looked more and more uncomfortable.
I got to the end and shrugged. “So here I am.”
Gigi gave me the raised eyebrow. “To kill one government employee may be regarded as a misfortune; to kill two looks like carelessness.”
I smiled. It was my fault. My own natural flippancy was obviously infectious. “Oscar Wilde. Nice.”
Gigi smirked with unexpected appreciation.
Kurt said, helpfully, “His wife’s a writer. She’s-”
I shot him a withering look. “I did manage to read a book or two long before I met her.”
Gigi grinned. “I have to admit I lost it myself with my adorable panda when he told me who you were, but this is all magnificently fucked-up. It’s like you guys are living some old-school ARG.”
Kurt gave me the eye roll. “Alternate Reality Game, dude.”