Lethal (Lee Coburn)

Coburn held Honor’s stare. His cheek still stung where she’d slapped him, where hours ago her daughter had left the wet imprint of a goodbye kiss. He wasn’t used to dealing with people who wore their emotions on their sleeves, and these Gillette women had made it an art. No wonder he was cranky.

“Coburn?” Hamilton said, repeating his name for the third time.

“I’ll call you back,” he said, and clicked off the phone.

Chapter 32

He lied to you.”

Tom VanAllen made a motion with his shoulder that could have been either a shrug of indifference or of concession. “Not outrightly.”

“He deliberately misled you,” Janice said. “What would you call it?”

He would call it lying. But he didn’t want to use that term with Janice to describe how Hamilton had manipulated him. Essentially, he was defending Hamilton’s manipulation, and he hated himself for it. But to admit how gullible he’d been would make him look even more ridiculous to his wife.

He’d come home to help her with Lanny, who’d kept them up most of the night moaning. It was a distress signal they knew well. Those pitiable sounds were his only means of communicating that something was wrong. Sore throat? Earache? Muscle cramp? Headache? He wasn’t running a fever. They checked him daily for bedsores. Because they didn’t know why he was suffering, they couldn’t do anything to relieve it, and, as parents, that was torture.

Maybe he’d only been afraid, and their presence at his bedside had comforted him, because eventually he’d fallen asleep. But it had been a rough night. That, coupled with Tom’s professional crisis, was making both of them feel particularly whipped today.

After tending to Lanny, he’d declined her offer to make lunch, and had instead chosen the den as the room in which to tell her about Hamilton’s trickery. He’d noticed the computer was on, and when he remarked on it, she admitted to having spent several hours that morning investigating the websites of some of the better perpetual care homes within a reasonable distance.

Tom regarded that as a step forward. Of sorts. Paradoxically it was a forward step that led to an end. He was almost relieved to have another crisis diverting his attention from that one.

“How do you know he’s telling the truth now?” Janice asked.

“You mean about Coburn being an undercover agent?”

“That man seems no more like an FBI agent than—”

“Than I do.”

Her stricken expression was as good as an admission that he’d taken the words out of her mouth. She tried to recant. “What I meant was that Coburn sounds like someone who’s cracked. He killed eight people, counting Fred Hawkins.”

“Hamilton claims Coburn didn’t shoot those men in the warehouse.”

“Then who did?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Does he know?”

Tom shrugged.

She exhaled a gust of breath, her annoyance plain. “So he’s still playing head games with you.”

“He’s paranoid.” Hamilton had come right out and accused Tom’s office of being riddled with holes through which information was flowing. Deputy Crawford had groused about the moles in the various law enforcement agencies. “Everyone is paranoid, with reason,” he told Janice.

“Why didn’t Coburn call you for help when all hell broke loose? Why did he run away from the massacre, ransack the Gillette house, and make himself look a criminal?”

“He wanted to maintain his cover for a while longer. Besides, Hamilton is his exclusive go-to guy. Hamilton put him there in Marset’s company, and no one else knew. I wasn’t even Coburn’s fallback contact.”

“Until now.” Janice didn’t even try to disguise her bitterness. “Now that Hamilton’s boy wonder has his back against a wall, he dumps it on you to bring him in. You know what that means, don’t you? It means that if something bad happens, you catch the blame. Not Clint Hamilton, who’s safe and sound up in his carpeted office in D.C.”

She was right, of course, but it irked him to hear his gnawing resentment put into words by his wife. He grumbled, “It may not even happen.”

“What do you mean?”

“First, Hamilton has to contact Coburn, who’s being very coy about staying in touch. Then he has to persuade him to place himself in my custody, and that’s going to be a tough sell.”