Authors: Kyle Mills
By the time he managed to maneuver through the second set of glass doors, he was thinking about the kiss again. Or, more precisely, the attempted kiss. What had it meant? Anything? And how did he feel about it? The answer to that was typically complicated. His emotions were stacked like the boxes he was pulling -- layer after conflicting layer.
"That's a lot of stuff you've got there."
He slowed and then finally stopped, but couldn't bring himself to look behind him at the source of the voice. "I don't suppose you'd believe me if I said this isn't what it looks like."
Mark Beamon strode alongside him, taking a deep drag on his cigarette and then blowing the smoke in Erin's direction. "Never heard that one before."
His eyes were nearly invisible in the shade provided by a wide-brimmed straw golf hat. Combined with the sweat-stained Polo shirt, wrinkled khakis, and Birkenstocks, the overall impression was "slow."
Erin took a step back and eyed a fence that Beamon wouldn't be able to get over without the assistance of a crane, but a quick look around put an end to any plan to run. The woman pushing a baby stroller a few feet away had a subtle wire running from her ear, as did a Mexican-looking guy working on the post office's sparse landscaping. A couple of heavily tattooed bikers at the end of the sidewalk were a little less obvious, but they were not paying attention with an intensity that was almost certainly calculated.
In the end, though, it was the man who'd helped load the boxes who finally clamped the handcuffs on him while Beamon watched from a thin strip of shade he'd found next to the building.
"I've really been looking forward to talking to you," he said, throwing an arm around Erin's shoulders and leading him toward a van parked along the curb just as Jenna eased into the lot. Erin shook his head subtly and she kept going, looping back to the street and disappearing down it. He was surprised at the relief he felt when she was gone.
"Every time I think I've got this thing figured out, I get another piece of the puzzle that doesn't fit." He lowered the volume of his voice. "For a while, as you get older, experience makes up for the loss of brain cells. I've been starting to wonder if I've crossed the line -- if ten years ago, I wouldn't have wrapped this thing up a week ago."
The back of the van was windowless and probably over a hundred degrees, which in itself wasn't that bad, but combined with the gentle rocking and adrenaline, Erin was feeling increasingly nauseous.
Beamon pulled a cigarette from a nearly empty pack and put it between his lips.
"Would you mind not smoking, please?"
He lit it with a silver lighter that he snapped shut loudly. "My fiancee thinks I quit. The more miles there are between me and her, though, the less I can help myself. Don't get me wrong -- I don't really have any illusions that I'm fooling her. You know how women are."
Erin scooted back along the van's floor, trying to get as far away as he could from the tendrils of smoke working their way toward him.
"And speaking of women," Beamon said. "How's your old girlfriend? What was her name? Jenna?"
Erin managed not to react, but then realized that no reaction at all was probably the most suspicious response he could have come up with. "What are you talking about?"
"All those climbing equipment mailing lists you were gathering up," Beamon said. "Intriguing. You know, I got hold of the rest of them and had my people sift through all the names. You know what I found?"
Erin didn't answer.
"Not interested? Not even a little bit?
That's okay, I'll tell you anyway. I found a very compelling woman living outside Bozeman, Montana. Jennifer Baker. Actually, I didn't find her -- she was long gone by the time we got there. She has investments totaling about two million dollars that even my army of CPAs can't trace back to their source. She's got a fake social security number, no friends, no family, no medical or work history. Then, lo and behold, we start seeing charges on her credit card. Medical equipment, no less." Beamon thumbed behind him at one of Erin's boxes. "The kind you use to study bacteria."
"What's that got to do with me?" he said, knowing how stupid it sounded even before it came out of his mouth.
Beamon scooted toward him and pulled a small photo from his pocket. "It's from her driver's license. Not a great picture and obviously the hair's different, but I'd say that the reports of Jenna Kalin's death were a little premature."
Once again Erin made the mistake of not reacting and this time the smirk on Beamon's face made it clear that it was too late to backpedal.
"I'm thinking that means Michael Teague and the Metzger brothers are slinking around somewhere, too," he said, shoving the picture into his pocket and sliding back against the wall of the van.
"I guess you've got it all figured out, then don't you?"
"Come on, Erin. Look what's happening out there. Hell, look what's happening to you. I think it's time you told your story."
"What's the point? Everybody already knows I'm guilty."
Beamon took another drag on his cigarette. "I finally got around to reading your book. It was very . . . what's the word I'm looking for? Meticulous. I just don't understand how we got here. What did you hope to accomplish with all this? Come on .. . you people love going on and on about this crap, right? So go ahead. Make your case."
"I thought I had the right to remain silent."
"It'd be a mistake to believe that, Erin. You've managed to piss off all the wrong people. Actually, you've managed to piss off just about everyone." He pointed toward the doors at the back of the van. "Hell, if we stopped right now and I told the people on the street who you are, they'd tear you apart."
"Go ahead."
Beamon sighed quietly, but didn't press further. He just sat there and went through the rest of his cigarettes, ignoring his captive's profuse sweating and death-like pallor. When the van finally stopped and the doors were thrown open, Erin would have fallen out if two of Beamon's men hadn't been there to grab him and drag him toward the small jet parked in front of them.
The woman who had been pushing the baby stroller and the postman were just ahead, but they froze when a man appeared in the doorway of the plane. Beamon, looking perplexed, stopped dialing his phone.
"Who the hell are you?" he said.
The man jumped down to the tarmac, smiling condescendingly. He was wearing a gray suit -- jacket and all but wasn't perspiring.
"My name's not important, Mr. Beamon. I work for the CIA. And we're here to take custody of our prisoner." He reached into his jacket, prompting the postman to put a hand on his gun.
"Whoa!" Beamon said. "Everybody stay calm, okay?"
Erin tried to focus, but felt strangely detached as he watched the postman's hand move slowly back to his side.
"Look, I don't want to be rude," Beamon said as the man fished a piece of paper from his jacket and held it out. "But I don't really give a shit who you work for. Now get away from my plane."
"Read it," the man said, shoving the document into Beamon's chest as the jet's engines began to spin up. Erin peered over his shoulder, skipping the body of the letter and going straight to the signature line. Gerald Dunn. The president of the United States.
Chapter
27.
Mark Beamon shoved the door open and stomped across the office. "What the fuck's going on, Jack?"
"Calm down," Reynolds said, rising from behind his desk. "I --"
"Calm down? Calm down? You send the CIA to take my only decent suspect and my only way home and you want me to calm down?"
"Mark, you --"
"Do you have any idea how hard it is to get across the country right now? I called you about a hundred times, but apparently now that I've handed over the guy you think is guilty, I don't rate a call back. If the head of security at United wasn't an old friend of mine, I'd still be in Texas. And even with his help, I still spent the last two days and nights sitting in airports."
"Mark --"
"Then, when I finally do get back, I find CIA guys all over my office."
"Are you through?" Reynolds said. "Can I talk now?"
Beamon had an overwhelming urge to throw something, but when he looked around, there was nothing valuable or breakable enough to bother with.
"You brought this on yourself, Mark. After overlooking all the leaks, now we find out that someone working for you is the one responsible, for Christ's sake --"
"You're the one who insisted I use Erin Neal, Jack. If you think real hard, you'd remember that I --"
Reynolds held up his hand. "I'm not going to sit here and play the blame game with you, Mark. All I'm saying is that I don't see how it could surprise you that the president wanted the CIA to get involved."
Beamon spun and walked as far from Reynolds as the office would allow, finally pressing his back to a wall and folding his arms across his chest. It was exactly what he'd known would happen from the very start -- the politicians would panic and start thinking they knew better than him and the hundreds of trained investigators working for him. The question was what to do about it.
Since neither Reynolds nor the CIA had so much as mentioned Jenna Kalin's name, Beamon assumed that the few people he'd told about her were keeping their mouths shut. He'd left her Visa and ATM cards alone and they were being monitored, but she obviously knew it. She bought what she needed and got the hell out before his people could react. And trying to track her phone had produced similar dismal results -- she only turned it on briefly, probably to check messages, and always right as her Visa charge was going through. Not a stupid woman by a long shot.
"This is a huge mistake, Jack. These CIA guys aren't investigators. They --"
"You haven't set the bar very high, though, have you, Mark?"
"No one seems to remember that I figured out what was happening and got Erin Neal in a matter of three weeks."
"Not good enough, Mark. Not even close," Reynolds said. "Open your eyes, for Christ's sake. This country -- the entire world -- is starting to come apart at the seams. Businesses are closing their doors left and right, unemployment's skyrocketing, imports and exports that we're completely reliant on are disappearing, the markets are panicking. And the only thing everyone agrees on is that we're going to be hit the hardest because we're the most energy-intensive economy in the world. We could go from being the most powerful country on the planet to being one of the weakest in a matter of a few months."
"What's your point?"
"What's my point? What's my point? Tomorrow the president is going on the air to explain the coupon system we've come up with for gas rationing so that we can keep critical services going. And as far as we can tell, this isn't a short-term measure. It's permanent. How do you think that's going to go over with the American people?"
"What the fuck do I care, Jack? I'm not a goddamn politician. What I'm telling you is that you're making a mistake. The CIA's had two days. What have they given you?"
Reynolds didn't answer.
"I take that to mean 'nothing.' "
If there was anything he'd learned about Erin Neal, it was that he was one tough son of a bitch and that he'd do anything to protect Jenna Kalin. He needed to be handled with finesse that the CIA just didn't have.
Beamon took a deep breath, realizing that he wasn't going to win by escalating this confrontation. "Look, Jack, this is more complicated than it looks, and it's not going to respond to a bigger hammer. Is Erin Neal involved? Hell, yes. Did he do it? I'm not so sure."
"Are you holding out on us, Mark? Is there something you know that we don't? Because if I find out there is, I will personally crucify you."
Beamon ignored the threat -- he'd taken worse from far more powerful people. "Let me talk to him, Jack."
Reynolds shook his head. "It's out of my hands."
"You've got --"
"I worked it out that you can stay involved in the investigation," Reynolds interrupted. "But you'll have no management authority. You'll answer to the Agency. Otherwise, you're out."
Chapter
28.
The noise was soft enough that at first Jenna thought she had imagined it. Still, she pulled the pistol from her lab apron and padded to the door. Her heart was pounding in her ears as she twisted the knob and jumped out into the blazing sunlight, gun shaking in front of her.
But Jonas wasn't standing there with the gleaming knife and dead smile she had expected. And there was no Homeland Security SWAT team slinking around in desert camo aiming machine guns at her. Just the hot, dusty wind.
Next time, though, maybe it would be different.
She was about to retreat back into the warehouse, but instead wandered across the cracked soil and sat down on a boulder.
She had so many things to worry about that government death squads and psychotic Germans barely broke the top five. Erin had been gone for more than three days without a word. The news channels were airing increasingly detailed descriptions of his life that now included brief mentions of her as his former girlfriend, but nothing about him being captured. He'd just disappeared.