Lethal

When he clicked off, he grinned. “We may not need Tori. That was my guy at the FBI office. Coburn is sending Honor in.”

“When? How?”

“My guy’s standing by for details.”

Chapter 34

Hamilton had been very specific about timing. “If you’re already there when Coburn arrives, he’ll be suspicious. If you come late, he’ll probably scotch the plan altogether, and you’ll never even see him or Mrs. Gillette. So get there with only a couple minutes to spare.”

Tom VanAllen had arrived at the designated place at exactly two minutes before ten o’clock. He’d turned off the motor of his car, and after the popping of the cooling engine had stopped, the silence was complete except for the sound of his own breathing and the intermittent screech of a cricket.

He wasn’t cut out for this cloak-and-dagger stuff. He knew it. Hamilton knew it. But Coburn had set the terms, and they’d been given no other choice except to agree.

The rusting train was to Tom’s right, a darker bulk against the surrounding darkness. It crossed his mind that Coburn might be hiding somewhere on the train, watching and waiting, assuring himself that his conditions had been met before producing Mrs. Gillette.

Praying to God he wouldn’t screw up, Tom slid back his cuff and checked the lighted hands on his wristwatch. Only thirty seconds had elapsed since his arrival. He wondered if his heart could withstand the pounding for an additional minute and a half.

He watched the second hand tick off another few seconds, marking more time since he’d called home.

He made an involuntary sound of utter despair when his mind tracked back to the scene that had played out this afternoon when he’d caught his wife on her cell phone. Caught her in the act, so to speak.

He lunged and snatched the phone from her hand.

“Tom?” she cried in shock.

Then angrily, “Tom!”

And finally, “Tom,” on a soft, plaintive, remorseful groan as he read what was on the screen.

Some of the words were so blatantly sexual, they seemed to jump out and strike him. But he couldn’t associate them with Janice. His wife. With whom he hadn’t had marital sex in… He couldn’t even remember when the last time had been.

But whenever it was, the words he was reading off her cell phone screen hadn’t been part of their foreplay or whispered in the heat of passion. In fact, before today he would have bet a month’s wages that language like this had never crossed her lips, that she would abhor it. Beyond bawdy, it was the dirtiest vernacular of the English language.

He scrolled up to the last text that someone-who?-had sent her. It was a salacious invitation, outlining in explicit detail what the sender would like to do with her. The reply she’d been so busily composing was an equally graphic acceptance.

“Tom-”

“Who is it?” When she just looked at him, her mouth moving but no words coming out, he repeated the question, stressing each word.

“It’s no one… I don’t know… he’s just a name. Everybody uses code names. Nobody knows-”

“ ‘Everybody’?”

He tapped on the word “Messages” at the upper left-hand corner of the screen in order to display the index of senders from whom she’d received text messages. He tapped on one and several exchanges appeared. Then he accessed those sent by another sender with an equally suggestive code name. The names were different, but the content of the messages was nauseatingly similar.