We Know

Steve's voice answered me gruffly. "I thought I told you only to call me if you were about to get killed."

"Yeah, well."

"Shit," he said. The wind blew across my cheeks, the receiver, and then Steve said, "Hello?"

"I'm here. You make any headway?"

"I'm hitting the databases every time I can grab a minute, but I have to do this quiet, like I said. Jane Everett's not the most common name, but it's not the most unusual either. A good number of hits so far, none matching the profile or the picture."

I cleared my throat. "Don't try to reach me. Don't call this number. Wait and I'll contact you. If I can."

"Listen, Nick, your mother-"

"If you don't hear from me, tell Callie…"

"What?"

"Tell her thanks for believing me."

I snapped the phone shut before he could say anything else. I set it on the concrete and smashed it with the heel of my shoe. Then I pried out the circuit board and bent it in half and dropped it through a sewer grate. The plastic casing I dumped in a trash can.

Odds were good that I'd soon become an enemy of the state, with all the attendant privileges. Or one of those anonymous corpses, hidden in a heating duct, discovered weeks later when the weather shifted. Disappeared, but this time for good. Sadly, I felt as if now I had more to lose than ever. So much had changed over the past six days. I had shared my past with Induma and Callie, and that meant I would miss them with more of myself.

A bus wheezed by on Figueroa, then slowed with a gassy exhale. The nighttime breeze swirled up hot-dog wrappers and a few early leaves. Leaning back on my heels like a rube in Manhattan, I contemplated the commanding building. It all but blocked out the sky.

I was sweating through my Jesus shirt.

Before I could lose my nerve, I walked into the lobby. A moderate amount of traffic to and from the elevators, even at this hour. By dint of habit, I put my head down and veered past the reception console. I didn't like signing visitor books, not that any of that would matter anymore. The rent-a-cops, distracted with phones and a shrill woman who'd misplaced a coat, didn't notice me.

I slid through the closing elevator doors. Thumbing the button for the thirteenth floor, I realized I'd turned away from the rear mirror and the security camera it likely hid. So many habits, stretching back so many years. But this was the end, the time to lay aside Liffman's rule-book and head into the belly of the beast.

I counted the passing floors, my heart racing, pins and needles in my fingertips. The doors parted and I forced myself out, assailed by the bright fluorescents. At the end of the hall, beside the reception desk, hung the vast crest with its eagle and flag.

The woman looked up. Behind her was the open squad room, desks arrayed around waist-high partitions. Despite the loosened ties and sloughed suit jackets, the room was the picture of industry. Agents flipped through files, pulled faxes from machines, jabbed fingers at booking photos.

I kept on toward the receptionist. My palms were slick. I shrank from a passing agent as if he were infectious. The overhead security cameras felt like interrogation lights in my face. Shying from their glare, I reached the desk. Nowhere else to go now. The receptionist, nicely made up like a 1950s front woman, smiled at me expectantly. A few of the agents glanced up from their desks. I was having a hard time getting air.

"Yes?" she asked.

A swirl of nausea, like the sickness that accompanied my 2:18 wake-ups, except more vivid under the bright lights. Beyond the partition I recognized the wide shoulders of Reid Sever. He was facing away, bent to scrutinize a document. The strip of white flesh beneath the line of his buzz cut was pronounced.

"I'm…" My throat froze up. I couldn't get my name out.

"What, sir?"

"I… I'm…" My eyes tracked up to Sever. He-and every other agent in the room-was now staring at me. I was completely, pathetically immobilized.

Sever said, "Nick Horrigan."

Chapter 38

"Release Homer now or I won't talk." My arms ached. It didn't help that Sever was steering me by the cuffs, shoving me through one hall after another. Agents and secretaries paused at their monitors and over their cups of coffee to take note.

"You're not setting the rules," he said, with that soft edge of a Southern accent.

"That was the deal. You know it and I know it."

"We don't have a deal."

"We both know this has got nothing to do with Homer. You used him to get to me. It worked. He's not valuable to you anymore. If you want me to talk, cut the guy a break and let him out before they dump him into general pop."