“I’m not here to stay. I’ve seen this one before: We get close, things happen, then we stop the bad guy and I’m gone before the dust settles.”
Banner said nothing for a second, then smiled out of the corner of her mouth. “Promise?”
Blake blinked.
“I’m not looking for a lifelong commitment, Blake. I’m not searching for a new father for my daughter, and if I were, no offense, but…”
“None taken.”
“I need to keep my real life separate. I need to keep Annie away from… all of this.” She sighed and closed her eyes. “I just want…”
“Want?” Blake whispered.
“To break the rules.”
Their lips met, and Banner felt an electric jolt go through her body as Blake pulled her close. They kept kissing as their hands explored up and down and around. After a minute Banner broke the kiss and opened her eyes. She tugged Blake’s shirt up and he raised his arms to let her haul it over his head. The long white scar caught her eye again. She put the tip of her middle finger on the raised tissue, traced it from his upper chest down to where it disappeared beneath his belt. Her eyes moved up and met his. He didn’t say anything. If she’d expected an explanation for the scar, she should have known better by now. She pulled her own T-shirt over her head, and Blake moved in again, hands around her ribs, picking her up and pushing her gently but firmly back on the couch.
63
The needle hovered around a safe sixty. The dashboard clock clicked up another digit closer to midnight. Wardell gazed ahead and watched as the broken white lines marking each lane were swallowed up by the hood of his car. He wondered how many of those lines there were between here and Chicago. Tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands, maybe.
He’d make the Chicago metropolitan area by dawn if he didn’t stop. And he wasn’t going to stop. No more sleep. Never again. He ought to have been exhausted. Instead he felt reinvigorated, utterly alive.
He’d come to a decision after the call to Whitford. Detective Stewart was dead, leaving just one name from his original list. In a perfect world, he’d have liked to go ahead with it, but he had come to realize that that name did not fit the wider plan anymore. He wanted to engage Banner and Blake, to beat them before he killed them. To ensure that could happen, he’d found a new name to replace the old one.
He let his right hand slip from the steering wheel and fall to rest on top of the cheap notebook he’d laid on the passenger seat. It contained all the intel he’d need for the next twenty-four hours.
DAY SIX
64
Mike Whitford opened his eyes. Sluggishly, he came to, realizing that he’d dozed off on the living room couch, still holding his coffee-stained Boston Celtics mug. He’d been working on the latest Wardell story through the night, and it looked like the Irish influence in the coffee had momentarily won the battle against the caffeine. Although it was technically morning, it was still pitch black outside. The story was pretty much ready to go, pending a few important details. Not bad, considering Wardell hadn’t yet been back in touch to give him the details of his next hit.
He supposed that a layman might be surprised by that. That you could write most of a story about a planned event that had yet to happen and for which you had none of the details. But that was the way it worked: A story like this, direct contact with a celebrity killer, it was all about atmosphere, setting the scene. Whitford could make up the quotes out of whole cloth. All he needed to do was plug in the details as soon as they were made available to him. Whenever that was.
That Wardell hadn’t gotten back in touch yet really surprised him. He reached for the laptop and opened up the Hushmail account he’d created to send Wardell the information he’d requested. He’d chosen Hushmail for the strong encryption it offered, and picked an utterly anonymous alias — jim23456@hushmail.com — from which to send the documents. In the unlikely event that Wardell’s own anonymous webmail account was discovered, there’d be nothing leading back to him. Just to be on the safe side, he’d dispose of the laptop as soon as he could. He clicked on his in-box and saw for the hundredth time a pristine screen, unsullied even by spam.
Maybe Wardell had forgotten about him. Or maybe his e-mail to Wardell hadn’t sent right. For the fifteenth time he clicked on Sent Items. There it was, just as it had been the fourteen previous times: a single e-mail with a modest attachment size sent to the Gmail address Wardell had provided him with. The phone at the office was on a redirect to his cell phone, and he’d bought a second throwaway cell after Wardell’s call, the number of which he’d provided in the e-mail. He’d dispose of that too, of course. He had to admit that a part of him was enjoying the clandestine precautions he’d been forced to take as soon as he’d crossed the line and journeyed far beyond a breach of journalistic ethics.
And there was absolutely no mistake about that, about crossing the line. The line was now a distant memory left at the border of a far-off country. Sending that e-mail was obstruction of justice at the very least, possibly even conspiracy to commit murder, depending on how a prosecuting attorney was feeling. And that went way beyond career-ending. It meant heavy jail time became something of a best-case scenario.
An icy sweat broke out on his brow. Whitford scrunched his eyes shut as though that action could pinch off the perspiration and the feeling that came with it, like closing a valve. He reached for the bottle of Scotch and took a good long slug. It did the trick, burned off the sharp edge of anxiety.
But there was nothing to worry about, really. It wasn’t like Wardell would be sticking around to update people on his contact details. Whitford had a hunch Wardell wouldn’t be doing much of anything twenty-four hours from now. It was election day, and that meant Wardell was most likely going for a big political target. Probably one of the candidates for congress or the governorship. And if Whitford was thinking it, then the cops and the FBI were thinking it too. Whitford got the feeling — maybe from tracking events with a professional eye, maybe from the steely undertone in Wardell’s voice that last time — that tonight was going to be the big finish. That had to be why he’d contacted Whitford again, right? To advertise the big finale. When you came right down to it, Wardell fucking needed him.
So where the hell was his e-mail? Why the fuck wasn’t he calling?
Whitford hit refresh on his e-mail screen again. Checked his phone. Checked the throwaway cell. Each was as empty as his Celtics mug. He tucked the new cell phone into the pocket of his sweatpants and got up on rubbery legs. He lifted the mug from the arm of the couch and pointed himself at the kitchen. He’d make another coffee. By the time he got back, Wardell would have called. Or e-mailed. For certain.
He reached for the light switch. His fingers made it halfway before they were frozen by a single-syllable utterance.
“Don’t.”
Whitford didn’t drop the mug. He felt a nanosecond of inane self-congratulation for that. There was a man standing in his kitchen. And not just any man. He knew that without having to turn the light on. All of a sudden, Whitford’s mouth seemed drier than the inside of a toaster oven.
“Mr. Wardell?”
“My, haven’t we become formal.”
“I thought…”
“I know, partner. But isn’t a home visit so much more… personal?”
Whitford cleared his throat and swallowed. The saliva tasted like copper.
“I did what you asked me to,” he said. When Wardell said nothing, Whitford felt the urge to keep talking, to fill the terrible silence. “As I said in the e-mail, it was kind of a tall order. Gathering intel on a federal agent is difficult enough, but with this other guy, this… Blake, I got—”