Expectation (Ghost Targets, #2) (4 page)

Paul Hafstedt from Transactions joined them at the next floor and stepped out ahead of them when they got to the lobby. Reed dragged his feet a bit until Paul got well out of earshot, then asked Katie with a suspicious nonchalance, "What sounds good for lunch?"

She glanced toward the hall that led to the cafeteria, but she suspected he wanted to get out of the building as much as she did. "Something foreign?" she said.

He grinned. "Perfect. I'm thinking Scotch." He nodded toward the big glass doors, and said, "I know just the place."

It was a cold morning, with crisp, refrozen snow along the edges of the sidewalks and a freezing fog stuffing the air like cotton. Reed said, "How cold is it?" and when a voice answered him over his headset, he shook his head. "Jesus!"

"Careful," Katie said with a stale smile. "You might get an answer."

Reed glanced over sharply, then cracked a smile of his own. "That's not funny." He glanced back over his shoulder, up and up to the mirrored windows of the Ghost Targets offices, where the Steves were probably still listening in on their conversation, and his smile slipped. "Especially not now."

"Screw 'em," Katie said. Her eyes narrowed as she caught sight of a flickering neon sign set in the wall at ankle height above a tight staircase that plunged down into darkness. She could just see a smoky window onto a room glowing with amber light, and she shook her head. "That can't be your place."

He frowned. "What's wrong with it?" He glanced back up at the office once more, then shook his head, putting the Accountability audit from his mind. Instead he turned his full attention back to Katie and spread his hands innocently. "What?"

"Look at that place!" They were standing above it now, and a carved wood sign on the door below said simply, "Bar." The neon guttering at the top of the stairs said, "Ice cold beer." She peered down into the window and shook her head. "You can't be serious. Now, Rick...I could almost see Rick in a place like this. But not you, all buttoned-up shirt—"

"Rick brought me here," Reed said. He started to say more, but let it go. After a moment, he smiled sadly. "Come on down," he said. "Give it a chance."

The inside was exactly what she'd expected. The stale reek of real tobacco smoke hung thick in the air, and the acrid scent flooded her momentarily with memories of her father. He hadn't smoked since she was little, but the sense memory was overwhelming. Reed kept her from bumping into tables in the sudden gloom, steering her without ever quite touching her, right up to the bar.

The bartender was a big man with broad shoulders and a black ink tattoo patterning his right arm from the biceps down to the first knuckle on each finger. He had another black diamond tattoo surrounding his right eye, and even in the dim interior Katie could spot the scar that the ink was meant to hide. She didn't let her eyes linger. She gave a full turn before she took her seat, taking the place in, and when her eyes came back to the bartender, she met his gaze with one of appreciation. "Nice little place you've got here."

He laughed, a deep belly laugh that rolled around the bar until he finally wheezed to a stop. "Lady, that look on your face has been screaming for a mop and a bucket since you walked in the door." He hesitated for a moment, considering, and said, "Well, mostly. There was just a moment there—"

"I get it," she said. "You pay attention." She turned to Reed. "What's good here?"

The bartender answered for him. "This guy's gonna have three fingers of a single malt and a tall ice water. Nothing I can do to talk him into a sandwich." He jabbed a finger at her. "You should try my nachos. Or the cheese fries if you want some real fun."

"Nachos," Katie said. "And a diet coke."

Reed shook his head. "Get her a beer."

"Coke," she said more firmly, and when Reed started to object she said, "Some of us have to get back to work."

"A beer won't kill you," Reed said, while the bartender poured a generous portion of scotch in a glass at his right hand. "Besides, I don't see any reason to go back up there."

She colored. "I've...I'm sure you don't remember, but I've already walked out on the job in the middle of the day here. I can't afford to make a habit of it."

"I do remember," he said. "I'm the one who made him call you back." He rattled the ice in his glass, then took a slow sip and set it back down on the bar in front of him. His eyes were fixed on the ice. "But this is not the same thing. You're not going back up to the office because you have a plane to catch."

She frowned, and when he didn't give her any more information, she pulled out her handheld and drew up her scheduled events. Sure enough, she was booked on a flight out of town in three hours. She checked the details and said, "When did that happen?"

"Craig set it up for you while we were in your interview," Reed said. "They disabled all notification messages so we wouldn't be disturbed."

"In light of that..." she trailed off, bewildered. She tried again. "Excuse me for saying, sir, but with everything that's going on, should we really be leaving?"

He looked up from his glass and met her eyes. "They could have stopped us, Katie. They've got the authority, and they know it. I've had my ticket booked since Saturday, and they haven't done a thing to keep me here. I suspect their audit will probably go a little more smoothly with us out of the way."

She watched his eyes for a moment, but his thoughts were clearly somewhere else. He took another drink, absently, his eyes far away. Her voice sounded small in the empty bar when she said, "What have they done to you, Reed?"

It took him a moment to focus on her, and then he smiled a sad smile. "It's not them, Katie. They're just doing their job." He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. He looked around the dim room, taking in the empty booths lost in shadow, the scratched felt of the pool table, the dart boards on the wall. "It's Rick."

"Reed, he was—"

"I know," he cut her off gently. "I know what he was, at the end, but he was my friend for a long time before that. He was my mentor, Katie. He taught me everything I know about police work." He took another deep breath, let it go, then sipped on his drink. The ice rattled against the glass in the room's silence. "I was able to get into Velez's records before his system blew. That's part of how I know...." He trailed off, but Katie knew what he'd meant to say. It was how he knew she was innocent. Martin, too. He'd seen some measure of the hell they'd gone through in Velez's lair. "I saw him gunned down, and I was what—a block away."

She caught his eyes and held them for a moment. "And it would have been me, too, if you had been any farther," she said. "Reed, you saved the day. You saved my life—"

"And I've been answering for it ever since." He finished his drink in a gulp, just before the bartender came back in through the kitchen door. Lee was carrying a big plate mounded high with chips and cheese, and as he approached the smell of it made Katie's stomach rumble again. Reed put on a smile and shook his head. "You've got the world's best timing, Lee. Pour me another."

Katie stopped him with a sharp look. "You don't need another, Reed. It's the middle of the day."

His lips tightened. "I don't fly well." He looked up at the bartender and nodded once, briefly. Before Katie could object again, he spoke over her, "Let it go, Katie. I'm your boss now, so stop trying to tell me what to do." He turned to her and quirked an eyebrow. "What can you tell me about our case?"

"It's weird," she said. She glanced over a new message on her handheld, then put it away and focused on Reed. "They've got some serious security measures in place. It'll take some time to figure out a full list of what's getting hidden—"

"We can get that," Reed said. "If they're doing everything on the books, you wouldn't believe the paperwork, but we'll be able to get a complete list. If they're doing anything under the table, our analysts will be able to track it down."

She nodded slowly, considering the implications. After a moment she said, "Okay. That helps. The whole clinic is a total blackout, but I saw him step out of thin air at his doorstep, so I knew there was something weird going on."

"Probably a private taxi," Reed said. "They do that sometimes, so people can't just watch the boundaries of a restricted area to plot comings and goings. I'm not surprised they're doing it with De Grey." He took a sip of his drink, then said, "Anything suspicious?"

"Not really," she said. She considered Reed out of the corner of her eye for a moment. "Well, just the police chief." When he didn't respond, she pressed on, "Dora Hart. She contacted you on Saturday."

"I recall," he said.

"If not for her, we wouldn't be in this. The army has done what looks like a thorough examination; the wife is content with their evaluation, but this Hart wants us to get involved."

"She had a thing with Barnes." Reed let her ponder that for a moment before he went on. "Something...what, twenty-four years ago. They went to high school together."

"That's a pretty tenuous connection."

Reed nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, it is. But she's the only agitator in this whole business, so you've got to ask yourself why. She had a relationship with the victim two decades ago, but nothing since then. I checked up on her, and even with all the gaps in his record, there's no way these two were involved recently."

"So you think she's got a good reason for agitating."

"I don't think she's got a bad one," he said. "She's a good cop. Her record attests to that. And she plays politics well; that's how she got where she is now. Fighting the army on this—and the wife—that's not good politics, so she's got to have some real conviction behind it. She's spotted something that makes her think our victim is getting the short end of the stick, and she just can't let it go." He took another drink and nodded. "I think there's a real case here."

Katie leaned back from her lunch and pulled out her handheld again. She drew up Dora Hart's personal profile and started catching up. After a while she spoke without looking up. "You got a suspect yet?"

"Three or four," he said, and gave that same tight smile again when she looked to him for more information. "That's pretty much everyone he knows. The man's a hermit."

"Well, it shouldn't take too long to track down, anyway." She checked her itinerary again, then drained the rest of her Coke with two gulps. "If we're really going to do this, I've got to get packed," she said.

"No problem." He made no move to rise. Instead, he waved goodbye with a short gesture. "I'll see you at the gate."

She hesitated, worried about leaving him there like that. She took one step away, then turned back. "Are you going to be okay?"

"I'll be fine," he said. He looked around the bar again, that same sadness still deep in his eyes. "I've just got to get out of this place."

"Fine," she said. "I'll see you at the gate."

The cold hit her as soon as she stepped outside, but a car was already waiting for her curbside. It called her name, and the door swung open as soon as she rose to street level. She climbed in and pulled the door closed behind her with a shiver. Fans hummed to life in the floorboard, flooding the car's interior with warm air, and after a moment her shivers settled.

The driver already had a course plotted to her apartment, so she blacked the windows and settled back into her seat. Eyes closed, she spoke to her headset. "Hathor, connect me to Dad." She could have used another command to record him a voice message without the wait, but there was something comforting in the ritual of it. She waited through two rings, then agreed to record a message. Her head fell back against the seat, and she let her eyes drift closed.

"Hey, Dad," she said, "It's almost three and I'm done for the day. Worse than I'd hoped, better than I'd feared." She took a deep breath, then let it go. "No," she said. "That's not quite right. I had a...an interview—" Her voice caught, and she pounded a closed fist against her leg just above the knee. "I got interrogated by Accountability," she said. "Did you ever have to answer to Internal Affairs? I don't remember you ever talking about it." She took a calming breath, and felt better when she let it go.

"I have a case," she said. "I'm working with Reed on it, actually. He's the new boss, and I'm glad. He seems like a good guy." She hesitated again, frowning, and pulled out her handheld. She left the screen blank, though, and went on after a moment. "He's still loyal to Rick."

She trailed off and for a while lost herself in the ride. Twice Hathor beeped at her, asking if she'd finished the message, and both times she told it to keep recording, but she didn't say anything else to her dad as the miles rolled by.

Finally she leaned forward, elbows on her knees, and squeezed her eyes shut. "It's going to be a weird case, Dad. I'm going to Boulder, Colorado, to figure out what happened to a famous doctor. He's in a coma." She glanced at her handheld, still blank, and put it away. "There's brain activity, but he's totally unresponsive. It's been more than a week, and the doctors don't expect him to come out of it." A flashing indicator on the driver monitor caught her eye. She was almost to her apartment. She sat back again and shook her head. "I'll try to keep you posted, but it promises to be a rough week. Love you, Dad. Goodbye."

She reached up and brushed a tear from her eye as the car pulled to a stop, then braced herself against the cold and threw the door open. The temperature had dropped six degrees since she'd left the bar, ten since they'd stepped out of the office, and the wind was howling now. She sprinted the short distance across her courtyard, pitching awkwardly as she favored her injured leg, and then had to fumble in her pockets for the key to her front door. "Open sesame," she said, as she waved the key in front of the door's sensor, then darted in and slammed the door shut behind her.

"Show me the weather forecast on the TV," she said, and her home system processed the request for her. Even as the weather radar flashed on the screen, a sinking feeling clawed at her gut and her shoulders drooped. "Oh, no," she said. "Show me the weather forecast for Boulder, too." The TV divided into split screen, and she groaned. In the mountains, it was going to be even colder. "Great," she said. "Turn that off and put on some music." Then she headed to the fridge for a drink.