He opened the box again and double-checked to make sure he’d seen it right. He stuck a finger into the hole where the canister had been, and pulled up. As he’d suspected, the foam wasn’t glued in place. Once it cleared the opening, he could see something underneath.
A stack of photos. Different sizes, maybe a dozen or more.
He pulled them out.
“Misty,” he said after he perused them. “Take a look at this.”
“What is it?” she asked, rising off the floor.
He showed her what he was holding.
She held out her hand. “Let me see.” She shuffled quickly through the photos. “Where were these?”
“In the bottom of the box. That’s her, isn’t it?”
She said nothing until she’d looked at each one. “Yes. These were the ones in Peter’s missing file. It’s his wife, Miranda.”
CHAPTER 21
As soon as Griffin felt a drop of water hit the back of his hand, he turned and looked up at the sky. Dark gray clouds hung heavily over the city, the leading edge of a tropical storm that, not long before, had been an early season, category-two hurricane. According to the news, rainfall in the DC area was predicted to reach an inch and a half before the storm passed further inland.
But he wasn’t about to let the weather bother him. He had work to do, actual fieldwork, which was rare these days. He had started out as Morten’s field enforcer years ago, but had gradually become, more and more, the coordinator of other efforts. While he was good at it, sitting in an office dealing with morons like those at O & O was at times maddening. Getting out, doing the work himself — he needed that every once in a while.
Several more raindrops hit him as he opened his car door and climbed in. Instead of starting the engine, he pulled out his phone. His first call went to voice mail after ringing five times. He disconnected and hit the number again. Same result. On the third try, the call was answered after the first ring.
“Hello?” The voice was male and half asleep.
“Good morning, Michael.”
“Who is…” A pause. “Griffin?” The last was almost a whisper.
“Long time no chat.”
In the hush that followed, Griffin imagined Michael Dima’s heart rate increasing as he quickly considered his options, but coming up with only the final, inevitable—
“What can I do for you?”
Part of Griffin’s job had been to cultivate contacts in agencies who could be potentially useful at some point. His preferred method was not one of faux friendship and cash, but of legitimate threat and blackmail. When people’s carefully constructed lives were in danger of crashing down around them, ninety-nine out of a hundred would choose the path of least resistance. In other words, cooperation. The other one percent? That’s where the legitimate part of the threat came in.
Dima’s flaw was a violent streak in his past that he’d been able to hide from all but the most vigorous investigator — Griffin. While a young man, Dima had put someone in a permanent vegetative state by using an iron pipe. The authorities had never learned the perpetrator’s name. Griffin, on the other hand, had discovered the truth, and it proved to be the leverage he needed to obtain Dima’s attention.
It had been a while since Griffin had needed to use the man, but the moment O & O had gone silent, Griffin knew he and Dima would soon become reacquainted.
“Your organization was tasked with keeping tabs on a certain apartment in Georgetown. You know the one I mean.”
“How did you…I can’t talk about that.”
“Please, Michael. Don’t insult me. Who do you think your client was?”
The pause that followed was thick with tension. “You?”
“Of course. So are you familiar with the apartment I’m talking about or not?”
“Yes,” Dima said quickly.
Griffin never doubted Dima would be aware of what O & O had been up to. Dima was one of the people at O & O who served as Central, coordinating the agency’s active projects, so any answer but yes would have been a lie.
“According to the reports I received, your people found nothing that would identify the intruders at the apartment. Is that correct?”
The hesitation was slight. “That’s correct. The team that responded to the incursion found nothing.”
Griffin’s eyes narrowed. The team that responded to the incursion…It was a very specific reference. “Think very carefully before you answer this question, Michael.” He fell silent for several seconds, giving Dima time to worry. “How many teams did you send out?”
“Well, the response team, and — I assume you know about the safe house?”
“The one in Arlington Ridge. Yes, I’m familiar.”
“Um, right. So there was the team that went there, but the place was empty.” He paused. “Oh, and then the follow-up recon to the Arlington Ridge home to check for anything that might have been left behind. Again, nothing.”
Dima was doing it again, only this time trying to confuse things by overexplaining. “Was that it? Or were there more?” Griffin asked.
The pause was long. “One more.”
This was new. “Where did they go?”
“The…the apartment.”
“When?”
“Yesterday. Midday.”
“And?”
“Well…um…”
“Don’t make me pull it out of you.”
It only took another second before the dam broke and Dima spilled everything — the chase, the two men, the woman, the accident.
“Why didn’t I receive a report about this?” Griffin asked.
“You…you didn’t?”
“Now you’re just trying to piss me off. Why didn’t I get the damn report?”
“T-That decision came from higher up.”
“Who higher up?”
“I’m…not sure.”
Griffin let Dima drown in silence.
Finally Dima said, “Director Cho, I think. She now oversees O & O.”
Griffin had heard of Cho, but their paths had never crossed as far as he could remember. He filed her name away to look into later. “Was O & O able to ID the two men and the woman?”
“Well, there’s the car left behind at the accident, but that’s a dead end.”
“Explain.”
Dima told him what they’d found, which was basically nothing.
Griffin frowned. “You’re holding something back.”
“No, I’m—”
“Why are you making me remind you that there’s no statute of limitation on attempted murder?”
Dima stopped breathing. “The…the…the recon team…they were able to get pictures of all three.”
Well, that was interesting. “So you were able to identify them?”
“It was taken out of our hands. We didn’t have a chance.”
“By Director Cho?”
Dima did not respond.
“I want the pictures,” Griffin said.
“I’m at home. I don’t have access to them.”
“Get access.”
“They’ve probably been purged from the system by now.”
“I want the pictures.”
“I’ll, um, see what I can do.”
“Do more than just see.”
Dima’s response was more a whine than a word.
“One more thing,” Griffin said, before the other man could hang up.
“Yes?”
“Where’s the BMW from the accident?”
Most of the space at the city impound yard was taken up by fully functional vehicles, sitting side by side as they waited for their owners to spring them from jail for parking violations.
The group off to the left, behind a separate chain-link fence, though, was different. Many of these would only see the open road again on the back of a truck hauling them to a wrecking yard. They were leftovers of recent accidents — the bent, the broken, the totaled — kept there only as long as the police needed them.