Storm Front

Two hours in, she was starting to panic. She considered calling Storm, but what was he going to tell her? He wasn’t there. He couldn’t see what she could see. He’d be guessing even more than she was.

She sat down in the great man’s chair, trying to clear her mind, staring at the top of his desk as she did so. That’s when she saw a yellow legal pad with “ROLL TIDE PAC” written atop it — and nothing else. Curious, she started leafing through it. The next four pages were either nonsense or irrelevant.

Then, on the sixth page in, she hit gold. The words “ALABAMA FUTURE FUND” were prominent at the top of the page. Underneath was “$5 MILLION” and “SPLIT INTO FIVE LLCs.”

And then, underneath that, was what she and Storm had come halfway across the world to find. It was the name of the man who had funded the PAC, the man who had hired Gregor Volkov, the man whose orders were directly responsible for the deaths of five bankers and their families, the man who planned to inflict financial turmoil on the entire world.

It was underlined three times, and it was as plain as the senator’s block handwriting:

“THANK YOU WHITELY CRACKER.”

CHAPTER 23

NEW YORK, New York

Clara Strike had seemed as surprised to see Derrick Storm as he was to see her, if not more so. After all, he was the one who was supposed to be dead.

But before they could deal with any of that, there was a mess to clean up. There was always a mess to clean up when Clara Strike was around.

He needed to pay off the cabbie. The Maserati needed to be towed — Storm didn’t want to know what the repair bill would be; he was just glad that Whitely Cracker didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would sweat it too much. And, last but not least, New York’s Finest needed to be assuaged.

All the while, Storm was annoyed. Annoyed at being lied to about Strike’s involvement in the case. Annoyed that there were obviously some moving pieces Jones had not told him about, as usual. Annoyed that for all his annoyance, he kept stealing glances at Clara and feeling the familiar longings. Her curly brown hair. Her shining brown eyes. The small whiffs he kept getting of her perfume. Damn, did that perfume have a hold on him.

During the four years he had been officially dead, Storm had not seen her once. He hadn’t even missed her. Or felt bad about leading her to think he was dead. As far as he was concerned, turnabout was fair play. Clara Strike had died on him once, too — died in his arms, even. She hadn’t contacted him, hadn’t found some small way to let him know it was all one of Jedediah Jones’s tricks. She had let him go to her funeral, let him grieve, let him lose a piece of his soul thinking he had lost the woman he loved. He was younger. More naïve. More vulnerable. He still hurt easily back then.

To her, a faked death was just business — an occupational hazard. To him, it had been emotional torture. When he found out she had been alive that whole time and could have spared him all that suffering with one phone call, he swore he would never forgive her. And he hadn’t.

And yet.

Here she was. Again.

And here he was. Again.

And he couldn’t help it. He found himself thinking of all they had done together — of the bad times, yes, but of the good times, too. He thought about Jefferson Grout, the man who had unwittingly given them their introduction. Back in his private eye days, Storm had spent four months tracking down Grout, who he thought was merely a two-timing spouse. Grout was actually a CIA operative gone rogue. Working all by himself, Derrick Storm of Storm Investigations had succeeded in doing what the combined resources of the CIA had failed at doing for a year. Strike recruited him into what she called “the company” the next day. There had been a whole lot of victories since then — many more W’s than L’s, truth be told.

So when the cabbie, the Maserati, and the panel van were all gone, and Strike asked Storm to grab a drink, it was something of a reflex to say yes.

“I’m sorry I keep staring at you,” she said as they settled into a corner booth at a cozy martini bar in the East Village. “It’s like I’m looking at a ghost. I can’t believe…”

“I know the feeling,” Storm cut her off.

“I almost want to ask you how long you’ve been alive again. I keep forgetting you’ve been…”

“Alive this whole time,” Storm said.

“Yeah, it’s just… I mean,” she began, but she was cut off again, this time by a waiter coming to get their order. It gave Storm the opportunity he needed to shift the conversation away from his apparent resurrection.

“I was told you weren’t working this case,” he said.

“I was told you weren’t working this case,” she echoed.

“You expect me to believe that?”

She shrugged. “I guess Prince Hashem is worth every effort from the United States government.”

“Wait, who?”

“Prince Hashem,” Strike said. “Don’t play dumb, Storm. It doesn’t suit you.”

“I’m serious. Who is Prince Hashem?”