Kuchin immediately phoned his man closest to this location and then jogged back to the hotel. In five minutes he was in a rental SUV driving himself west to Georgetown. The traffic was bad, the intersections snarled. Kuchin anxiously tapped his fingers against the glass. His phone rang again. He was still at least ten minutes away.
“Yes?”
“No sign of her, sir,” said Manuel.
“Call in the rest of the teams. Set a ten-block perimeter outward from the ATM. Four men walk every square inch of it starting at that point. Two men in cars ride a circuit on the outside of the perimeter, one clockwise and the other in the opposite direction. I’ll be there as soon as I can. She just got cash so it’s a reasonable bet she’s going to spend it on something, so check any shops or restaurants you think appropriate.”
He slipped the phone back in his jacket. He had been convinced they would not find her on this go-round. That would be too easy, too lucky. Those things happened in movies, not in real life. But now they had a perimeter. And Kuchin knew how to work a perimeter like few people in the world.
CHAPTER
81
TELL ME about Kuchin’s friend,” said Shaw.
“Which friend?” asked Reggie.
“The skinny one with white hair who shot Dominic in the arm.”
It was late at night and they were sitting in a small room on the second floor at Harrowsfield that Reggie shared with Whit as an office of sorts. It was cramped and cluttered. Reggie sat on the only chair and Shaw was perched uncomfortably on a small cardboard box. Outside a light rain fell.
“Alan Rice. He’s a business associate of Kuchin.”
“What else?”
“I only spoke with him a few times. Although there was one odd thing.”
Shaw sat up straighter. “Word for word.”
“Well, I can’t remember it word for word, but he was warning me. About Kuchin. Well, of course he used the name Evan Waller.”
“Warning you how?”
“He said that his boss could get a bit weird around women. That he’d done so in the past. Become obsessed. He was basically telling me to shove off for my own good.”
“So he was concerned for your safety?”
“Apparently so, yes, although he said he was doing it to protect his boss.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Why is it interesting?”
“Because I think Rice tried to kill his boss in the catacombs back in Gordes.”
Reggie looked over at him in shock. “What? Why do you think that?”
“In a crisis you fire your weapon at primary threats, Reggie, not at secondary targets.”
“I’m not following.”
“Rice had his gun pointed at Whit, who was not near Kuchin. On the other hand, Dominic was maybe a foot to the right of Kuchin. When I hit the first guy, Rice wheeled around and saw me. A second later I hit the second guy, the smaller one. Rice could have taken me out then. He was only five feet away with a clear line of fire. Instead he turned and fired at his boss.”
“But he hit Dominic.”
“He hit Dominic probably because he was a bad shot. It’s a lot harder to nail someone from even ten feet away than it looks. But that round did come within a hair of impacting Kuchin’s brain. So he doesn’t take me out when he could but instead tries to kill his boss.”
“But that makes no sense. Why try to kill Kuchin? He was there to rescue him.”