Reckless Abandon (Holly Barker 4)

“What?” Holly asked.

“This is a very big step.”

“Well, yeah, I guess it is.”

“I think you ought to give some thought to the consequences before you act on this. First of all, you’re going to enrage the FBI.”

“I’d like that,” she said.

“You might not. Suppose you need them on an important case. I mean, you still have to use their lab, their computer databases, their expertise. You might find all that suddenly unavailable to your department—not overtly, just in small ways. They might ‘misplace’ your lab samples, or your computer connection might suddenly go down.”

“Stone has a point, Holly,” Lance said. “If you go to the Times, it would be like a declaration of war on the FBI, and they could make things uncomfortable for you.”

“You still have to answer to your city council, don’t you?” Stone asked.

“Well, yes.”

“You wouldn’t want key members of the council to start getting phone calls from highly placed people at the FBI, complaining about you.”

“I guess not. Maybe I should just resign. That would fix all the problems you’ve brought up.”

“But then a whole new set of problems might arise,” Stone said. “God help you if you should ever get into some kind of trouble with the Feds.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Oh, I don’t know. You might be caught up a tree, so to speak, and need the Bureau’s help, or at least their inattention.” He waited to see if the penny would drop about the tree. It didn’t.

“What do you mean, ‘up a tree’?”

“Just a figure of speech, but a pertinent one.”

The penny dropped. “Oh,” she said.

Stone turned to Lance. “Isn’t there something else you might be able to do to help Holly locate Trini—something that could be accomplished without tossing a grenade into the Bureau?”

“I’d need more to go on than I have,” Lance said. “If I had Trini’s name in the Witness Protection Program, for instance.”

Holly sat up straight. “Robert Marshall.”

“What?”

“That’s Trini’s name in the Program. I got it from . . . a source.”

“And how long have you known this?”

“Since not long after I came to New York.”

Lance pulled out his cell phone and dia

led a three-digit number. “Robert Marshall,” he said. “New listing.” He took out a notebook and wrote down something, then hung up. He ripped the page off the notebook and handed it to Holly. “Eighty-eighth Street,” he said. “Two blocks east of here.”

“You’re kidding,” Holly said.

“Nope.”

“You’ve got a CIA thing that can give you that?”

“No, I called New York City information.”