Bait (15 page)

Smolski spent much of his life doing his best to avoid his wife, who spent much of hers tracking him down. Sam was willing to bet that Melody, a kindhearted sort, had just alerted Mrs. Smolski to her errant hubby's availability to take a call.

Smolski uncovered the mouthpiece, said, “Hang on a minute, honey, I'm dealing with a situation here,” listened, winced, said, “Of course I'm not trying to avoid you. I promise, just one minute,” and covered the mouthpiece again.

“You guys get the hell out of here.” He dismissed them with an angry wave of his hand. “I see any more dumb moves like you pulled today, and I'll bust you down to file clerks. You understand me?”

“Yes, sir.”

Acting on the dismissal with alacrity, Gardner was already on the steps that led down to the tarmac, Wynne was in the doorway right behind her, and Sam was bringing up the rear by the time Smolski had the phone to his ear again.

“Thanks, Mel,” Sam whispered to Melody, who had followed them to the door.

“Anytime.” She smiled at him, and for a moment he had a bad pang of the might-have-beens. But there were a lot of might-have-beens littering his life, and so he shrugged this particular one off, clasped the metal handrail, and headed down the steps. It was overcast and drizzling now—no more than a light mist, really—but enough to make steam come up off the pavement, so it looked as though they were stepping down into a cloud. Sam wasn't bothered by the fine drops that beaded on his face and dampened his clothes, but the moisture caused Wynne's hair to frizz even more than usual and wilted Gardner's short-and-spiky look, which, by way of a change, this week she had dyed fire-engine red.

“And, by the way, you guys look like shit!” Smolski's voice followed them. The bellow was muffled, but neither Sam nor Wynne nor Gardner nor the half-dozen mechanics and luggage handlers in the vicinity had any trouble hearing it. “Shave! Put on some decent clothes! Do something about your hair! Quit embarrassing me!”

“The sad thing is, that's the most excitement I've had today,” Gardner said pensively as they dodged an orange luggage cart and headed toward the terminal. A commercial jet raced toward takeoff in the background, the roar of its engines blunted by distance. “Do you think he'll really be named head of the Bureau?”

“I heard it's a done deal,” Wynne said.

“They're waiting to announce it until after Mosley”—Ed Mosley was the current FBI director—“announces his retirement. That won't be till after the election.” As he spoke, Sam absentmindedly watched the jet that had just taken off do a graceful U-turn and head north, rising until it disappeared within the lowering bank of iron-gray clouds that covered the sky.

“So, who's going to replace Smolski?” Gardner wondered aloud.

Sam shrugged. They had reached the terminal by this time. Wynne pulled open the glass door that led to the escalator that would take them up to the main level, then stood back to let Gardner precede him. She walked in, swinging her butt provocatively. It was a J.Lo butt, big and curvy in a clingy black skirt, and Wynne could hardly tear his eyes from it. Her equally generous breasts jiggled like water balloons beneath a pink silk blouse. Her waist was cinched by a wide black belt pulled so tight that Sam wondered how she could breathe. He also wondered, just in passing, where she was carrying her gun. Did they have bra holsters now? Deciding he really didn't want to go there, Sam followed them inside, only half listening to their conversation. Wynne's face was turning shades of puce as Gardner continued to do her high-heeled strut in front of him all the way to the escalator. As the three of them rode it up, Sam, still bringing up the rear, shook his head. Poor guy had it bad for Gardner, and the sad thing was that, knowing Wynne, he was never going to do anything about it. As far as he himself was concerned, Gardner had all the right equipment even if it was a little abundant for his taste, and she was attractive enough with her bright blue eyes and big, bold features that matched her five-foot-ten, big-boned frame, but he was not going there. No way, no how.

As his grandma told him nearly every time he saw her, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that zing.

“You drive,” Sam said to Wynne, tossing him the keys as they reached the Saturn, which they'd left in short-term parking. He'd already punched the button to unlock the car, and Gardner was already sliding into the front passenger seat. Sam had no doubt that she would spend the drive back to the hotel, where they'd set up shop, crossing and uncrossing her legs at him, just like she'd done on the drive out to the airport. She was going to so much trouble to be provocative, Sam thought, that the least he could do was provide her with an appreciative audience.

Namely, Wynne.

“Don't wreck us,” Sam added as an afterthought, only then considering the possible consequences of Gardner's come-hither act on Wynne, but it was too late. Wynne was already making himself at home behind the wheel, and, anyway, Sam personally was just too damned tired to drive. The headlights coming at them as they pulled around the spiral exit ramp were blurry, and his head pounded like the bass on a teenager's stereo. Plus, the interior of the car smelled of cheap vinyl, stale cigarettes, and Wynne's everlasting gum. The combination didn't do a thing for his stomach, which was quivering on the verge of nausea.

God, just how long had it been now since he'd had any sleep? He didn't even want to think about it.

In the front seat, Gardner crossed and uncrossed her legs at Wynne for at least the third time, with a predictably deleterious effect on his driving. It was rush hour, and traffic on the interstate heading back into the city was heavy. The rain was coming down more steadily now, and the roads were slick. The windshield wipers swished back and forth with the mind-numbing rhythm of a metronome.

Wynne, distracted, was one scary-ass driver. There was only one thing to do, Sam decided, if he wished to preserve life and limb, and that was distract Gardner from distracting Wynne.

“So tell us about Madeline Fitzgerald. The live one,” Sam said to her.

“Anybody ever tell you you're a slave driver, McCabe?” Gardner protested good-naturedly, despite tugging her briefcase onto her lap and rooting some papers out of one of the pockets. Glancing down at them, she turned in the seat to look at him. “What do you want to know?”

“Why don't you start all over again?”

Gardner had been in the process of filling them in on their survivor when Smolski's call had come in, ordering them to meet him at the airport. A fresh start without worrying about how hard Smolski was getting ready to come down on them would probably be a good thing. Especially since all three of them were so tired that their brains were sputtering along like a car getting down to its last few drops of gas.

Gardner looked down at the papers again. “Madeline Elaine Fitzgerald, twenty-nine years old, owner of Creative Partners advertising agency, which she purchased nineteen months ago from the previous owner, who sold because of poor health. Previous to that she was an employee of said advertising agency for two years. Previous to that she was an independent contractor for an outfit selling advertising space in various local publications. A BA in business administration from Western Illinois University. Parents, John and Elaine Fitzgerald, deceased. He was a dentist, she was a homemaker. No siblings. Never married. Pays her bills on time. No arrest record.”

“Any history of gambling?” Wynne asked, easing into the slow lane as an eighteen-wheeler shot past on the left with a tooth-rattling roar.

“Nothing showed up.”

A vision of Maddie as he had last seen her rose in Sam's mind's eye. Big brown eyes, lush mouth, luxuriant hair, slender, alluring body, legs that went on forever. Tons of sex appeal, as he personally could testify, and a lot of class besides. Business owner. College degree. Should ooze self-confidence. But there'd been insecurity there. And hostility, too. In fact, he'd almost gotten the impression that she was afraid of something. Afraid of him.

“What about boyfriends? How's her romantic history?” he asked.

“We don't have anything on that yet. This is just a preliminary report. I haven't had time to really dig down deep.”

“Keep working on it.”

“You have Gomez picking her up on the other end?” Wynne cut back into the middle lane again. Sam couldn't help glancing around warily. There was a minivan to the left, a compact car to the right....

“Yeah,” Sam said. Pete Gomez was an agent in the St. Louis field office. “He'll be with her from the time she steps off the plane.”

Wynne chuckled. “She won't like that.”

“She won't know about it. Unless she needs to.” Sam's meaning was clear: Maddie would only find out about Gomez if he had to step in and save her ass.

“Still think our UNSUB's going to go after her?” Gardner asked.

Sam was so sure of it that, barring an act of God, he planned to have them all in St. Louis within the next twenty-four hours. “Wouldn't you?”

“I don't know,” Gardner said, frowning. “It depends on a couple of things. Number one, if she was the intended target—and the other Madeline Fitzgerald has a lot more red flags in her background, so it seems unlikely at this point—then he will definitely go after her. Number two, if he thinks she can identify him, then he will go after her. But barring either of those circumstances, I ...

Sam's cell phone rang.

He jumped. Gardner's eyes widened. Wynne almost drove off the damned road.

“Watch where the hell you're going,” Sam growled at Wynne, digging in his pocket for his phone, which continued to ring. As Wynne straightened the car out with a muttered “sorry,” Sam dragged the phone free and squinted to read the number in the ID box. Because of the rain, the street-lights were on, and the bright beams of cars going in the opposite direction slashed through the Saturn's interior. If it hadn't been for that, Sam wasn't sure he would have been able to make out what was written in the little box.

Error,
it said.

“Jesus. I think it might be him.” His pulse shot into instant overdrive as he flipped open the phone and spoke into it. “McCabe.”

“You're screwing up, McCabe. That time you weren't even close.”

It
was
him. At the sound of the digitally altered voice, Sam felt every muscle in his body tense. He nodded to let Gardner and Wynne, who was looking at him through the rearview mirror, know.

Another semi, dangerously close, rattled past on the right.

“Where you been? I thought you forgot about me,” Sam said, concentrating hard on anything he might be able to hear in the background. The sound of traffic, for example—the interstate was noisy, and if the bastard was in one of the vehicles around them he might be able to hear it. His eyes cut left and right, trying to see into nearby cars.

“Don't you worry, I wouldn't do that.” Sam couldn't hear any kind of background sound at all. His own surroundings were too noisy. “Ready for your next clue?”

“How's your leg?” Sam asked, hoping to throw him off. “I imagine a pencil wound's a nasty thing. Lead poisoning and all that.”

If the bastard got rattled, Sam hoped against hope, he might just keep talking long enough for them to get a fix on him. It didn't take long....

“You're dreaming, asshole. Now here's your clue. Better shut up or you'll miss it. Where in the world is—Walter?”

There was a click as the bastard hung up, followed by nothing but dead air. The silence in the car was equally thick and heavy.

“Shit,” said Sam. His eyes met Wynne's through the mirror. “Looks like we're back on the clock again.”

 

THE FIRST thing Maddie saw when she cleared the last of the airport security barriers in St. Louis was the sign:
Way to go, Maddie and Jon.
It was printed in big block letters on a white piece of posterboard, and it was being waved above the head of Louise Rea, Creative Partners' pleasantly plump, pleasantly wrinkled—just plain pleasant, period—sixtytwo-year-old administrative assistant. Beside her, Ana Choi, a slender twenty-one-year-old college student whom Maddie had hired six months before on a part-time basis to handle graphic design, stood on her tiptoes, scanning the stream of disembarking passengers as they emerged into the visitor-friendly part of the airport. Judy Petronio, a forty-seven-year-old mother of four who was in charge of retail accounts, was wedged in next to Ana; behind Judy, fifty-two-year-old Herb Mankowitz, who handled the direct-mailing part of the business, looked faintly impatient. But he was there. They were all there, the entire staff of Creative Partners. It was just after six p.m., they'd worked a full day, and it was clear from their dress that they'd come straight to the airport from work.

On a Friday, when presumably they all had way better things to do.

Their presence was as touching as it was unexpected.

Surveying the motley crew, Maddie thought,
This is my family,
and felt her throat tighten.

“I called Louise from the airport,” Jon said. He was striding along beside her, and his face broke into a broad grin as he spied the welcoming committee among the crowd greeting the deplaning passengers with little cries of excitement and pleasure. In fact, he looked buoyant, just the way Maddie knew she should be feeling. The way she
would
be feeling if it hadn't been for the little matter of her life having just been blown all to hell.

Ana spotted them first. Her eyes fixed on Maddie and widened. Her long, black hair was tied up in a ponytail, and she was wearing lowrider black slacks with a shrunken-looking white tank that bared enough skin so that the tattoo of a dragonfly above her left hip was clearly visible. Maddie presumed—hoped—that there was a jacket, cardigan, something that made the ensemble work-friendly, lying around somewhere that Ana had doffed after five p.m. She would graduate in December, and she'd already made it clear that she was dying to be offered a full-time job at Creative Partners. It hit Maddie that now that they had the Brehmer account, she was suddenly in a position to do just that. A financial position, anyway.