The Lost Key (A Brit in the FBI 2)

“Yeah, yeah, make me laugh. What are we supposed to do about this?”

“It appears I’ve been reinstated. Zachery wants us downtown, fast.”

Mike’s blood stirred, she felt energized, as did Nicholas, she thought, as they hurried down the stairs, past the landing where the NYPD had decided Grossman had entered the house. Through the windows, Nicholas could see it was still dark out, the sky an inky black edged in silver, the darkest hour before the dawn.

“Hold on a moment. I need to check on Nigel.”

His worry was unfounded. He found Nigel sitting in an armchair in his living room, reading a book.

Nicholas said, “Needed a wee bit of edification this morning, did you?”

Nigel closed the book and started to his feet. Nicholas gestured for him to stay put. He looked fine, just tired.

“Everything okay?”

“Yes. I couldn’t sleep. Shall I make your breakfast?”

“We’ve been called in. You, stay put and rest. Orders. Understand?”

Ni

gel saluted smartly, smiled after Nicholas as he ran down the stairs to the foyer, where Mike was waiting, listening to a message on her cell phone. They went out the front door and onto the street.

He said, “I’ll drive, where are the keys?”

Soon he was headed south, through the darkened streets of Manhattan, as Mike listened to her voice mail. She said, “Ben left me a message. He found Adam Pearce on the crime scene video from Wall Street yesterday morning, and again from videocams, at the shoot-out at his girlfriend’s apartment.” She shook her head. “To know both his father and his girlfriend were murdered and not be able to do anything about it—that had to be very hard.”

Nicholas drove around a slow-moving cab trolling for an early-morning fare. “It feels like someone—Havelock, maybe—is systematically driving this kid toward a specific goal, and that’s gotta be this key, which, in turn, leads to some sort of fantastic weapon. He has some seriously bad people sending him hard messages.”

“And now they’ve got his sister, for leverage. I hope we find Sophie with him, and they’re both safe. That’s wishful thinking, isn’t it?”

He nodded.

She said, “It strikes me we missed something at Allie’s apartment. Neither of the Germans had the files on them. So who took it?”

“Adam. Clearly.”

“Maybe that’s why he was on the video. He was at Allie McGee’s apartment to get the files, but he was obviously followed. They probably also followed him to Ariston’s yesterday morning too, wanting to get their hands on the SD card.”

“Sounds good to me.” He pulled around a garbage truck, got the finger from a driver.

“We need to get eyes on this Havelock character. Let’s be sure to call Menard after we’re briefed on Sophie.” She punched his arm. “Hey, no SIRT for you.”

“Unless there’s some rule I don’t know about,” he said as he turned into the garage under Federal Plaza.

When the doors opened on the twenty-third floor, Mike slapped her access card against the reader and the door unlocked. They went straight into the senior staff hallway.

The offices were already a hive of activity, people hustling about, hurrying down the halls. It was not an atypical scene. The New York Field Office routinely did 5:00 a.m. “knocks,” serving warrants to criminals. These knocks were witnessed by the team in a control room, with multiple wide screens on the walls. Almost as good as being there themselves.

But there wasn’t a knock this morning, and the people who were here had only one thing on their minds: finding and saving Sophie Pearce.

When they came into Zachery’s office, he rose to stand behind his desk. “Come, come.” Zachery looked utterly whacked, Nicholas thought, his eyes bloodshot, his fine suit on the bitter edge. At least he’d been able to put on a fresh white shirt and shave.

Zachery said, “You made good time. Follow me.”

He led them to the control room one floor down, where Ben, Gray Wharton, and Louisa Barry were already assembled.

The wall of screens was up and running as well. Mike took one look and said, “That’s the front of the United Nations. They took her from the UN? It’s one of the most protected spots in New York.”