Lethal (37 page)

“Shit,” Coburn said under his breath.

“What?”

“It would take days to go through all this.” He nodded toward the small loft that was mounted just under the ceiling in one corner. “What’s up there?”

“Mostly Eddie’s sporting gear.”

A ladder constructed of two-by-fours had been built into the wall. Coburn climbed it and stepped onto the loft. “Hand me a knife.” Honor got one from the work table and passed it up to him. He used it to slice through the packing tape on a large box. Inside, he found an archery target, baseball, basketball, soccer ball, and football.

“Watch out.”

One by one, he tossed them down. A bowling ball was in the bottom of the box. The finger holes were empty. Coburn opened a second box to find uniforms for each of the sports, a baseball glove, a football helmet, shoulder pads. He searched them all. Found nothing.

When he came down, Honor was holding the football, turning it over in her hands. She ran her finger along the leather lacing. Smiling, she said, “Eddie was quarterback of the high school team. His senior year, they went to district. That’s when we started dating. That season. He was too small to play college ball, but he still loved the game and would go out and throw passes whenever he could get somebody to catch them.”

Coburn held out his hand. Honor gave him the football. He plunged the blade of the knife into it.

She cried out and reflexively reached out to take the football back, but he worked the knife to increase the size of the hole, then shook it so that anything inside it would fall out. Nothing did. He tossed the deflated ball onto the work table.

When he came back around, she slapped him. Hard.

“You’re a horrible person,” she said. “The coldest, most heartless, cruelest creature I can imagine.” She stopped on a sob. “I hate you. I really do.”

At that moment, he pretty much hated himself. He was angry and didn’t know why. He was acting like a complete jerk and didn’t know why. He didn’t understand his compulsion to want to hurt and rile her, but he seemed incapable of stopping himself.

He took a step toward her and made it intentionally intimidating. “You don’t like me?”

“I
despise
you.”

“You do?”

“Yes!”

“Is that why you sucked my tongue down your throat last night?”

She seethed for a count of five, then spun away from him, but before she’d taken a single step he reached out and brought her back around. “That’s what you’re really pissed about, isn’t it? Because we kissed.” Lowering his face closer to hers, he whispered, “And you liked it.”

“I hated it.”

He didn’t believe that. He didn’t want to believe it. But he forced himself to appear indifferent to whether she had liked it or not. He released her arm and stepped away from her. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. Humans are animals, and animals mate. They also sneeze and cough and fart. And that’s about as much as that kiss meant. So relax. You didn’t cheat on your dead husband.”

She hiccupped a sound of affront, but before she could articulate a response, he took out his cell phone and turned it on. By now Hamilton would know about this morning’s close call on the shrimp boat. Coburn wanted to know what the fallout of that had been.

He placed the call. Hamilton answered immediately. “Coburn?”

“Good guess.”

“You pulled a fast one this morning.”

“By the skin of my teeth.”

“Which was enough. Where are you?”

“Try again.”

“I’ve set it up with Tom VanAllen for you and Mrs. Gillette to come in. He’s as solid as Gibraltar. It’ll be safe. I give you my word.”

Coburn held Honor’s stare. His cheek still stung where she’d slapped him, where hours ago her daughter had left the wet imprint of a goodbye kiss. He wasn’t used to dealing with people who wore their emotions on their sleeves, and these Gillette women had made it an art. No wonder he was cranky.

“Coburn?” Hamilton said, repeating his name for the third time.

“I’ll call you back,” he said, and clicked off the phone.

H
e lied to you.”

Tom VanAllen made a motion with his shoulder that could have been either a shrug of indifference or of concession. “Not outrightly.”

“He deliberately misled you,” Janice said. “What would you call it?”

He would call it lying. But he didn’t want to use that term with Janice to describe how Hamilton had manipulated him. Essentially, he was defending Hamilton’s manipulation, and he hated himself for it. But to admit how gullible he’d been would make him look even more ridiculous to his wife.

He’d come home to help her with Lanny, who’d kept them up most of the night moaning. It was a distress signal they knew well. Those pitiable sounds were his only means of communicating that something was wrong. Sore throat? Earache? Muscle cramp? Headache? He wasn’t running a fever. They checked him daily for bedsores. Because they
didn’t know why he was suffering, they couldn’t do anything to relieve it, and, as parents, that was torture.

Maybe he’d only been afraid, and their presence at his bedside had comforted him, because eventually he’d fallen asleep. But it had been a rough night. That, coupled with Tom’s professional crisis, was making both of them feel particularly whipped today.

After tending to Lanny, he’d declined her offer to make lunch, and had instead chosen the den as the room in which to tell her about Hamilton’s trickery. He’d noticed the computer was on, and when he remarked on it, she admitted to having spent several hours that morning investigating the websites of some of the better perpetual care homes within a reasonable distance.

Tom regarded that as a step forward. Of sorts. Paradoxically it was a forward step that led to an end. He was almost relieved to have another crisis diverting his attention from that one.

“How do you know he’s telling the truth now?” Janice asked.

“You mean about Coburn being an undercover agent?”

“That man seems no more like an FBI agent than—”

“Than I do.”

Her stricken expression was as good as an admission that he’d taken the words out of her mouth. She tried to recant. “What I meant was that Coburn sounds like someone who’s cracked. He killed eight people, counting Fred Hawkins.”

“Hamilton claims Coburn didn’t shoot those men in the warehouse.”

“Then who did?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Does he know?”

Tom shrugged.

She exhaled a gust of breath, her annoyance plain. “So he’s still playing head games with you.”

“He’s paranoid.” Hamilton had come right out and accused Tom’s office of being riddled with holes through which information was flowing. Deputy Crawford had groused about the moles in the various law enforcement agencies. “Everyone is paranoid, with reason,” he told Janice.

“Why didn’t Coburn call you for help when all hell broke loose? Why did he run away from the massacre, ransack the Gillette house, and make himself look a criminal?”

“He wanted to maintain his cover for a while longer. Besides, Hamilton is his exclusive go-to guy. Hamilton put him there in Marset’s company, and no one else knew. I wasn’t even Coburn’s fallback contact.”

“Until now.” Janice didn’t even try to disguise her bitterness. “Now that Hamilton’s boy wonder has his back against a wall, he dumps it on you to bring him in. You know what that means, don’t you? It means that if something bad happens, you catch the blame. Not Clint Hamilton, who’s safe and sound up in his carpeted office in D.C.”

She was right, of course, but it irked him to hear his gnawing resentment put into words by his wife. He grumbled, “It may not even happen.”

“What do you mean?”

“First, Hamilton has to contact Coburn, who’s being very coy about staying in touch. Then he has to persuade him to place himself in my custody, and that’s going to be a tough sell.”

“Why wouldn’t he want safety and protection?”

“He doesn’t trust me—the bureau—to provide it. If he did, he would have called me in the first place, like you
said. Frankly, he’d be crazy not to be cautious. If Marset was as dirty as alleged, God knows what kind of evidence Coburn has collected. Anyone who did illicit trade with Marset probably has a contract out on Coburn.

“And then there are the personal vendettas. I’m told Doral Hawkins is out for his blood. So is Mrs. Gillette’s father-in-law. The vigilante mindset has Hamilton worried.”

“He wants Coburn alive.”

“He wants the evidence Coburn obtained.” He glanced at his wristwatch and then reached for his suit jacket. “I need to get back. I’ve got to be on hand and ready for whatever happens.”

As he walked past her toward the door, she reached for his hand to detain him. “What if he doesn’t?”

“What if who doesn’t what?”

“What if Coburn doesn’t come in?”

“Status quo for me. I won’t be the hero, but I won’t have a chance to screw up, either.”

“Don’t talk about yourself that way, Tom.” She stood up and clasped his shoulders. “Don’t even think that way. This could be an opportunity for you to prove your mettle.”

Her confidence in him was misplaced, but he appreciated her loyalty. “I’m just pissed off enough to seize that opportunity.”

“Good! Show Hamilton your stuff. And Coburn. And everybody.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Her expression softened. “Whatever you do, be careful.”

“I will.”

“This man may be an FBI agent, but he’s dangerous.”

“I’ll be careful. I promise.”

Before leaving, he stopped in Lanny’s room. The boy’s
eyes were open, but he lay still, silent, staring, and Tom almost wished for the agitation he’d exhibited last night. At least that demonstrated that he felt
something
, that he shared some level of humanness with his father. Any connection would be better than none at all.

“I would do anything for you, Lanny,” he whispered. “Anything. I hope that… that on some level, you know that.” Tom touched his son’s hair, then leaned down and kissed his forehead.

He got as far as the front door before realizing that he’d left his keys in the den. He retraced his steps and was about to reenter the room when he drew up short.

Janice had returned to her seat on the sofa. She had her cell phone in hand, her thumbs furiously tapping the touch screen. In under a minute, he and his problems had been discarded and forgotten. She was totally engrossed in her own world, a world in which he had no part.

He remembered that just a few days ago—or was it yesterday?—he’d caught her similarly absorbed in her telephone.

“Janice?”

She jumped. “Jesus, Tom!” she gasped. “I thought you’d left.”

“Obviously.” He set his briefcase on the end table and walked toward her.

She came to her feet. “Did you forget something?” Her pitch was unnaturally high, her smile unusually bright.

He nodded down at the phone in her hand. “What are you doing?”

“Playing my word game.”

“Let me see.” He extended his hand.

“What? Why?”

“Let me see.”

“You’re interested in my word game?” She posed the question around a phony-sounding laugh. “Since when have you—”

He lunged and snatched the phone from her hand.

“Tom?” she cried in shock.

Then, “Tom!” spoken in a strident tone that matched her gesture when she stuck out her hand, palm up, demanding that he give her cell phone back.

Then, when he didn’t, when he held it out of her reach and read the text message on the small screen, she said his name again, this time with a soft, plaintive, remorseful groan attached.

“I’ve called to put you on alert. Be ready to move at a moment’s notice.”

Diego gave a sarcastic huff. “What? And miss all this fun?”

He’d been at the Garden District mansion before sunrise and had followed Bonnell Wallace when he drove out of its front gate. Now, for hours, he’d been watching the banker’s car where it had remained since 7:35 that morning when Wallace had parked it in its designated slot in the employees’ parking lot of the bank building.