The Dark Hour (12 page)

“At his house?”

“Maybe. I wasn’t at his house.”

“How do you get on his computer—”

“Remotely. You don’t even have to be there. But they were on it, and that means it wasn’t the police. They hadn’t even arrested him yet. Whoever it was, I think they were waiting for all this to go down before they deleted the files. And it didn’t take them long to figure out who I was and come after me.”

“They came after you. Fine. But I’m not involved in any of this. Why would they come after me?”

“Because your name was the only other one on Hollis’s computer. He didn’t know anyone else.”

“Okay, so my name was on there.”

“And your picture.”

“Nobody has my address. I moved to a different city to get away from Hollis. I’m not even listed in the phone book.”

“The FBI agent found you.”

“He’s like a cop. They’re supposed to be able to do that.”

“I
found you.”

And that apparently got her attention. Because she had most definitely not given her address to Izzy. Even so, Maddie insisted on returning to her apartment to see if anyone had been there.

“Tomorrow,” Izzy said. “We’ll go there tomorrow in the daylight. It’ll be safer.”

“And where am I supposed to spend the night?”

“I have a motel room.”

“Oh, right.”

“Look. I’m not trying to hit on you. It has two beds. And it’s clean. Just one night. And then we’ll go by your place tomorrow. If it turns out I’m wrong, then no harm, no foul, okay?”

Of course, that was assuming Izzy hadn’t been followed, and he looked around, wondering if it was possible that they had let him get away just to get to Maddie . . .

T
he following morning, Izzy kept a sharp watch as he drove up the street and into the drive of Maddie’s apartment complex.

“Which place is yours?” he asked.

“The one with the open curtain in the living room window. See, it’s fine. There’s no one there.”

And he wondered if maybe he was overreacting by thinking they’d come after Maddie. Maybe they weren’t even after him. In the back of his mind was the thought that he’d jumped out his bedroom window at the sight of the van, only
hearing
someone knocking on his door. After all, it could have been coincidence. Maybe a neighbor asking to borrow something, and the van wasn’t even there for him. But he didn’t think so, and something told him it would be a bad idea to go inside. “Are you friends with any of your neighbors? Is there someone you could phone to double check?”

“Rhonda lives across the breezeway. Her front door faces mine.”

“Call her.”

The parking lot formed a giant U, with driveways at both ends, buildings on the exterior, and a pool and the office in the center. He drove past her apartment, continuing on around, parking in front of the pool in one of the visitor spaces, which gave them a line of sight through the wrought-iron fence to the other side of the drive as well as her apartment. “What do I say?” she asked, fishing through her purse for her phone.

“Make up something.”

She put the phone to her ear, covering the receiver as she said, “Answering machine . . .” Then, directly into the phone, “Hey, Rhonda. It’s Maddie . . . Um, give me a call when you get in?”

Across the way, a white van drove into the parking lot, its side emblazoned with a large “Florist” sign.

“Look,” Izzy told her. “That’s the same van.”

“A florist van was at your place?”

“And
at the store.”

The van stopped in front of her building and a man in coveralls got out, opened up the side door, removing a bouquet of flowers. It didn’t look like a deliveryman’s uniform, Izzy thought. It looked more industrial. Like the uniforms that the utility company guys wore, except they weren’t the same color.

“Those are real flowers,” she said. Her voice wavered slightly as though unsure, and they watched the man walk up to her door and knock. “They could be real, couldn’t they? A real delivery?”

“You have a boyfriend? Any other reason you’d get flowers?”

She shook her head. “What should I do?”

“You can’t go home. Call your boss this morning. Maybe tell them your aunt is sick, dying, and you’re going up to Maine to visit her?”

“What is it these guys are after? Why are they doing this?”

“I think they wanted to stop Senator Grogan, and Hollis found out about it.”

“Who wanted to stop him?”

“I don’t know.” Right now he was hoping they could stay alive long enough to figure it out.

“We should go to the FBI,” Maddie told Izzy as he drove from the complex. “Ask for that agent who came to see me.”

“We can’t go to the FBI. You ever hear of Robert Hanssen? He was an FBI agent who went to jail for the rest of his life for being a traitor. They even made a movie about it.”

“For God’s sake, Izzy!” she said, slinking down in her seat, to avoid being seen should the two men look that direction. “This isn’t one of your video games. Besides, if that FBI agent was in on it, he would have killed me right then. Why waste a good opportunity?”

“Yeah? Well, how are they going to believe us if
you
don’t? They’re telling the news that the case is closed and they got their man, who’s dead.” Izzy glanced in his rearview mirror as he turned into the street. So far the van hadn’t moved. “What we need is proof. Then the FBI will
have
to believe us.”

“Let me ask you this, Mr. Gonna Save the World. If these guys are as dangerous as you say they are, how are you going to get that proof and not get killed yourself?”

“Easy.
You
send me an e-mail saying we’re gonna meet somewhere. They show up, and we know who they are. We get this FBI agent to go with us so he can see.”

“An e-mail? How is that going to do anything?”

“Because I have a feeling that they got into my computer with the same program that Hollis used when he hacked into their system.”

“How do you know it will work? I mean, what if you send it and they don’t come and then—”

“They’ll come. I know just the place. But first we need to set you up with a fake e-mail.”

They drove to an Internet café, where Izzy paid to use a computer, purchasing fifteen minutes. “Do you have Web-based mail?” he asked Maddie.

“How should I know? I just turn on my computer, and it’s there.”

“That’s okay. We shouldn’t use your real e-mail anyway. We’ll make a new account. It’s not like they’ll notice.” He quickly pulled up a free online e-mail site and made her an address. “What should we use for a screen name? Girls always have cutesy names with a number.”

“How about Maddiebear23?”

“Maddiebear.” He typed in the number, created a new account. “So what should we say? We want it to sound like it’s a continuing conversation. Maybe one that started on the phone to explain why you’re only just sending it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe: ‘I got your voice mail. Meet me at the—’ Where did you want to meet?”

“Central Café.”

“ ‘At Central Café tomorrow at two o’clock.’ ”

“No one writes
o’clock
. We’ll just say
two
.” He read over the message, his finger hovering above the mouse. “Well?”

“Wait. Maybe we shouldn’t put the location until you answer it.”

“Good point.” He removed the location and hit send. “Guess we’ll find out.”

“Shouldn’t you check yours and see if it got there?”

“Not yet. I’m sure they have my password, and are probably watching my account. If I open it too soon, it’ll seem obvious. I’ll open it tonight or early in the morning.”

“What if they’re watching the place early and they see us come in?”

“Don’t worry. I have a plan.”

Please let it work
, he thought.

Because if it didn’t, they were both dead.

Chapter 18

December 8

Rijksmuseum

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Z
achary Griffin opened up his guidebook, adjusted his clear tortoiseshell-framed glasses as he pretended to read the information before looking up at the massive painting of Rembrandt’s
Night Watch
. He stood there admiring it for what he felt was an appropriate time before moving on. He’d been at the museum for two hours, waiting. He’d been here yesterday and the day before, different guises both times, casing the place. Of course, the beautiful thing about museums, he thought, making his way back to the sculpture of Minerva and Cupid, was that they were filled with benches and seats. No one thought twice about seeing someone sitting there doing nothing but looking at works of art for interminably long periods.

A museum docent watched him as he entered the room, the same man who had been there earlier this morning. The docent looked away, his body language relaxed, unconcerned, and Griffin took a seat on a bench that gave him a clear view of the sculpture and the room at large. For several minutes he sat studying his guidebook, his peripheral vision picking up the movement around him. Just as he wondered how much longer he could afford to stay, Sydney finally walked in, and he suddenly recalled that moment he thought it was she lying there on Petra’s floor—and then the relief when he’d learned otherwise.

He’d only dared the one call, and then, when she’d called back, he couldn’t answer, and so sent a text message on where to meet. She had a background in fine art, and he knew she’d be able to read between the lines. This was the one place he could think of that would allow him to wait for any length of time unnoticed.

And now she was here.

He watched as she glanced over at the sculpture, gave a slight smile, then looked around the room, finally noticing him.

She walked over, took a seat. “Minerva? Goddess of wisdom and war?”

“Virgin goddess.”

“So it’s a metaphorical treasure that the two griffin at her feet are protecting, not the usual hoards of gold?”

“A nice touch, I thought.”

“You would.”

“It was good of you to come.”

“I didn’t really have a choice,” she replied, her attention fixed on the statue, as though that was what they were discussing. “Whoever killed Petra sent someone to the States after me. Whether it was to stop me from reproducing that sketch, or just the usual trying-to-clean-up-any-loose-ends thing, I have no idea. Either way, if I’m going to be killed, I’d like to know why.” She turned toward him, her look piercing.

“I can’t tell you.”

“Did I mention the two hit men after me?”

He hesitated. Wondered what harm could it do at this point to inform her? She was already risking her job just being here, never mind her life. He glanced around the museum. No one seemed to be paying them the least attention. “You brought the sketch?”

“Yes.”

He nodded, looked down at his guidebook, not really seeing it. “Petra’s uncle, an old informant, had contacted me, asking if I was still interested in looking into my wife’s death. He arranged through his niece to have me contact him. He was afraid to do it himself.”

“Petra was a spy?”

“No. Faas was. Why he decided to go through her, I’m not sure. Nor do I know if the information Faas intended to pass on really came from him. I suspect that someone set him up, was trying to set me up, especially after the assassination of Senator Grogan.”

“What does the senator have to do with this?”

Griffin looked around, made sure there was no one within hearing distance. “Grogan wanted to open a new investigation into LockeStarr Management. The same company my wife and I were investigating two years ago when she was killed.”

“I heard the man who killed Grogan was a schizophrenic who had been off his meds and somehow got hold of a gun.”

“So maybe Grogan’s murder had nothing to do with this. Or maybe someone used it as a specific means to draw me out, make this information that Faas thought he was handing over look even better.”

“And what if it was a trap? Maybe they wanted you out of the picture. Or occupied with something.”

“Then they knew the one thing that would do it. Becca’s murder.”

She looked away, stared for several seconds at the statue of Minerva. Then, in a voice almost too soft to hear, she said, “I think they succeeded.”

“You know something.” When she didn’t answer right away, he whispered, “Damn it, Sydney. What do you know?”

She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper, handed it to him. “It’s just a photocopy. The re-creation of the sketch of the woman Petra saw.”

He took it, opened it, and the first thing he thought was the short hair was all wrong. She should have long hair. Long, dark brown—

He felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. This couldn’t be . . . It couldn’t . . . “Is this someone’s idea of a joke?”

“This is who Petra saw with the man on the corner.”

“That’s impossible.”

“I only drew what Petra directed.”

“My wife’s dead.”

“Then it’s someone who looks like her.”

Griffin examined the drawing, the structure of her face, her eyes, her nose . . . He ran his fingers over the bridge. She’d broken it during an operation with Tex. She’d come home with two black eyes . . .

“Maybe it’s not her,” Sydney said.

“And what if it is?” His words came out harsher than he’d intended, the loud whisper seeming to echo off the museum walls, and he folded the drawing, pressing the creases in frustration. He stood. “I need some time to think about this. I need to be alone.”

“No
,” she said, her voice low, but firm, as she stood, moving into his space, nearly chest to chest, her gaze narrowed. “You do
not
get to
think
about this. Someone’s trying to kill me because I did this goddamned drawing, and like it or not, we are in this.
Together
.”

Griffin shoved the drawing in his pocket as he looked around. Two women glanced over at them before turning their attention back to the display case on the wall. “Fine,” Griffin said. “You have any ideas on where we look next? Because I’m fresh out. Being thrown for a loop does that to me.”