Lethal (Lee Coburn)

“How is it that you’re so sure of that?”

Then the line went dead.

Chapter 33

Honor and Coburn made it back to the playground parking lot without incident.

The mother and child had left. The teenager had taken a break from his tennis practice and was now lying under a tree, earphones on, doing something on his cell phone. He didn’t notice the couple who got into a stolen car and drove away.

Only then did Honor ask Coburn about his brief exchange with Hamilton. “What did he say?”

“He wants us to turn ourselves over to Tom VanAllen. He gave me his word that VanAllen is solid and that we’ll be safe in his custody.”

“Do you believe him?”

“If VanAllen is that solid, why didn’t Hamilton let him in on my op? Now, all of a sudden, Hamilton trusts him. That makes me nervous. I’d have to be eyeball to eyeball with VanAllen before I could gauge his trustworthiness, and I won’t have that much time before placing our lives in his hands.”

“And the other part? About his ability to protect us.”

“I have even less confidence in that.” He looked over at her. “The hell of it is, I’m running out of options.”

“I would say so. You’ve resorted to puncturing harmless footballs.”

He ignored that, but she hadn’t really expected an apology.

“The thing is, I know I’m right.” He looked over at her as though daring her to contradict him.

“All right, say Eddie did have something, how long can you continue to search for it alone? What I mean is,” she said, rushing to continue before he could interrupt, “with all the technology that the FBI has at its disposal, if you were working with other agents, with a network of personnel, wouldn’t you stand a better chance of discovering what Eddie had stashed?”

“My experience with a network of personnel? Things usually get fubared, and I’m talking on a colossal scale. Even good agents get hamstrung by bureaucratic red tape, and the federal government has miles and miles of it, most of which is wound around the DOJ. That’s why Hamilton had me working alone.”

“And why it’s only your life that’s in jeopardy now.”

He shrugged. “Goes with the job.” Then he tipped his head for emphasis. “My job. Not yours.”

“I’m here because I chose to be.”

“You chose wrong.”

They’d been keeping to the outskirts of town, where there were clusters of houses now and then, but no organized neighborhoods like the one they’d left. Sad-looking strip centers and lone businesses were either run-down or had been closed for good, some abandoned after Katrina and never reopened, others victims of the economic crash caused by the BP oil spill.

Coburn pulled into the parking lot of a strip center that had a Dollar General store, a barber shop, and a small market and liquor store that featured homemade boudin sausage and antitheft bars on all the windows.

He cut the motor, then propped his elbow in the open window and cupped his mouth and chin with his hand. For several minutes he sat still, as though in deep thought, but his eyes remained in constant motion, watching everyone who went into or out of one of the businesses, warily evaluating each car that drove into the parking lot.

Finally he lowered his hand and reached for his cell phone. “I’m going to make this quick, okay?”

She nodded.

“Whatever I say to Hamilton, you go along.”

She nodded, but with less surety.

“You gotta trust me on this.” His blue eyes bore into hers.

She gave him another nod.

“Okay then.” He placed the call.