Not the Fort.
He had to smile. This was a line he had given her when they had been working together on his brother’s case. He had called her “Fort Knox” because she seemed impenetrable. This was her way of confirming her identity.
But still, it could be a trap.
The Vice President’s warning came back to him.
Don’t trust anybody.
Knox was in the clandestine world. Puller had found they were the toughest people of all to trust, because it seemed they could never, ever tell you the complete truth.
But Knox had risked her life to save his several times. She had helped to clear his brother and been nearly killed in the process.
He kept his M11 out and checked his watch. His musings had burned five minutes of the ten.
He went to the window that looked out on the front parking lot. Dawn had come and it was light enough to see clearly.
What he didn’t see was a mass of black SUVs waiting to snatch him away. The lot was quiet. There were many parked cars because the hotel was large, but he only saw a couple of people there.
One was a man in military uniform carrying a briefcase. He got into his car and drove off.
The other was a woman who had just gotten out of her cab and was walking to the front entrance, rolling her suitcase behind her.
Puller looked at his watch.
Two m
inutes to go.
He grabbed his bag and pulled it over one shoulder. He had a feeling he wouldn’t be coming back here. He slid the gun in the other pocket of his windbreaker but kept it gripped in his hand. He hit the elevator and made his way down.
The lobby was empty except for the woman he’d seen earlier checking in and the sleepy-looking front desk person helping her.
He eyed the doors leading out. If Knox was outside he wondered why. He also wondered where she had been.
He crossed the lobby and walked outside. It didn’t take him long to find her. That was because she drove up in a black sedan.
She rolled down the window as he looked at her.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“At the present moment, saving your ass. Get in.”
“My duffel’s in my car.”
“No it’s not. It’s in my trunk.”
“The key is in my pocket.”
“I don’t need a key,” she said. “Just get in.”
“Why not take my car?”
“It’s tainted goods, Puller.”
“You mean they’re tracking it?”
“I’ll explain. Get in!”
He threw his bag into the back and climbed into the passenger seat.
She hit the gas and they shot out of the parking lot.
“What the hell is going on, Knox?”
“I’ll tell you what I know, but you’re not going to believe a word of it.”
Chapter
37
ROGERS HAD KEPT checking the rearview all the way back to where he was staying.
There had been a car back there. It had been at the first dumpsite, and then he’d spotted it at the third and the fourth sites. Then he had driven straight to the interstate.
He cursed himself for going to where the bodies had been. But the thing in his head had made him do it. And the thing in his head, he had found, could make him do anything.
He was now sitting on the bed in his motel room thinking all of this through.
Who could have been back there?
The thing was, the person had been at the first dumpsite before he’d gotten there. Now, that might have been a coincidence, but to be at the third and fourth too? And maybe he was at the second, but Rogers might have left by then.
Was it the police? Were they investigating the murders once more? They had never been solved. It might be one of those cold case investigations.
And I might have stumbled right into the middle of it.
He pulled out his phone and checked the newsfeeds.
What he expected to see wasn’t there.
For all the world knew, Chris Ballard was still alive and well behind his fortress walls. Certainly by now the police would have been called and an investigation commenced. And the news outlets certainly would have been informed.
Rogers had tried to make it look like suicide. Even if Ballard couldn’t walk, he could have crawled to that window and levered himself through it.
But with either murder or suicide there should have been something about it in the news by now.
For the next two hours he kept flipping through all the late breaking news sites.
Zip.
It was fully light now. He changed clothes and went down to the motel diner and had some breakfast while checking his phone constantly.
There was still nothing, which could only mean one thing: They were covering it up. Either the police hadn’t been called or they had been and higher-ups had put a stranglehold on any leaks to the media. Perhaps they were trying to figure out if this really was a suicide or murder.
And if they concluded that it was a murder they might conclude that he was back to deliver his revenge.
And more to the point, she would know of it.
Claire Jericho’s brainpower had been something to behold. But she had a dark side too.
Rogers no longer had compassion. It had been taken away from him, along with many other things. She, on the other hand, apparently never had any compassion at all.
This was the person who had created him. Perhaps in her own image. He lacked the capacity to dig any deeper into the psychology of it.
He went back to his room, lay on the bed, and closed his eyes. But he didn’t sleep.
His mind went back thirty years and then stopped on five women.
He hadn’t chosen them at random. They had something in common.
Me.
It had taken a lot of work on his part, but he had gathered the necessary information and then done what he had set out to do. It was all he had thought about for the longest time.
And right before they died, they knew exactly how I felt about what they had done to me.
And with that thought he fell asleep. He didn’t wake until it was time for him to go to work. He got ready and drove to the Grunt.
Helen Myers greeted him in the back hall of the bar.
“Did you have a good night off?” she asked.
“It was pretty uneventful,” replied Rogers.
“Nothing too exciting, then?”
“No.”
Rogers was telling the truth. There had been absolutely nothing exciting about throwing Chris Ballard out a four-story window and watching his head smash into the cobblestones.
“I wanted to let you know that Josh will be in tonight with a party,” Myers went on.