The End Game (A Brit in the FBI 3)

She stared up at him, smelling her burned hair, listening to the roaring flames, and she started to laugh. She rolled away from him and dropped her singed head to the scrubby, ancient land and laughed and laughed.

Matthew lay beside her, panting, watching her. He rolled up on one arm, raised his hand and fingered the ends of her burned hair. “Vanessa, are you all right?”

“Oh, yes, I’m perfect,” and she laughed again.

Ian, his dark hair coated in ash, his men behind him, appeared to their left. “What a blast that was, Van! Wasn’t expecting it to roar like a dragon. What are you two waiting for? It’s time to go. Coppers will be here in a flash. Van, what’d you do to your hair? I told you never to stand so close, and look what you’ve done.”

Vanessa stood, ran a hand over the crispy ends of her hair, brushed the dirt from her jeans. She looked at the two men—one dark, one light, both crazy like foxes, both grinning at her.

“Satisfied, Mr. Spenser?”

Matthew rose slowly, wiped off his hands on his jeans as she had, and smiled down at her. “Oh, yes,” he said, his voice filled with pleasure. “I’m more than satisfied.” And he stared down at her, at her mouth, his eyes hot and manic.

Monday

11 p.m.–4 a.m.

2

KNIGHT TO F6

Bayonne, New Jersey

Present

Monday Evening

FBI Special Agent Michaela Caine drove the black Crown Vic with one hand, tucked a hank of loose hair back into her ponytail with the other, then shoved up her glasses.

It was late and she was tired, ready to go home and crash. But no chance, since they’d gotten a credible tip off the hotline. She looked over at her partner, Special Agent Nicholas Drummond, tapping on a laptop balanced on his knees, doing a background check on their tipster.

She said, “I’m praying with all my might we’re not on a wild-goose chase and this guy isn’t a thrill chaser.”

Nicholas looked up. “I’m inclined to think he isn’t. Ben said the man was convinced he had information on COE, and a possible bombing. At this point, I’m willing to listen to anyone, even if it means missing one of Nigel’s dinners. He called me earlier, said it was prime rib.”

Mike laughed. “Oh, my, that sounds even better than the scrumptious three-day-old chicken salad sandwich I was planning to have at home.” She paused, then sighed. “We’ve been working this case for two weeks now, Nicholas, and gotten nowhere. I hate that. Several oil refineries out west and no leads. I only wish we could keep the frequent-flier miles earned from flying all over the country. And what do we have? This group’s mission statement, over and over, the same thing: No more oil from terrorist countries or you will pay the price.

“And now, out of nowhere, this guy pops up in our own backyard with information on COE? On a possible bombing? Do you really think this Hodges character is for real?”

He looked over at her. “My gut is starting to agree with my brain and say yes. You know what else? I think it’s also about time that we have our turn at bat.”

Baseball metaphor from a Brit? No, he probably meant cricket. Were you at bat in cricket? She didn’t know. She grinned. Either way, he was right, it was their turn, and if Hodges was for real, it was possible they’d have a chance for a home run.

Nicholas looked back at his laptop. “Mr. Hodges appears solid, an accountant for a local Bayonne engineering firm. His wife died three years ago, breast cancer.”

She took a left into an older residential neighborhood, thick with trees and small, well-manicured lawns. Mr. Richard Hodges’s house was on a quiet dead-end cul-de-sac that backed up to the Hudson River. To Nicholas, the block looked like any other older development in a small eastern American town—thirty-year-old single-story house, comfortably settled in with their neighbors. Amazing how quiet it was, considering its proximity to Manhattan. He supposed the lapping water dampened the sound.

They saw the curtains twitch.

Nicholas closed his laptop. “I see we’re expected.”

Mike turned off the engine. “Okay, I’m thinking positively. I’m up at bat and Mr. Hodges is going to give me a perfect pitch.”

The door opened before they had a chance to ring the bell. A man dressed in jeans and a white polo shirt waved them in and closed the door quietly behind them, as if he didn’t want to wake someone. A habit from when his wife was ill?

The interior of Mr. Hodges’s house was neat, looked clean, but it smelled musty, somehow sterile, and Mike doubted there’d been another woman living here since his wife’s death. She didn’t see any photos or knickknacks on any surface, only piles of newspapers and newsmagazines. The house, she realized, was now only a place where a lonely man lived off his memories.

“Mr. Hodges? I’m Agent Caine, and this is Agent Drummond. We were told you have some information about the terrorist group known as Celebrants of Earth, or COE, and a possible bombing.”