Three Minutes to Midnight (16 page)

“Yes. It's good to see you.” And it was. She seemed relaxed and confident. She wore a black V-neck top that accentuated her slender neck. “How was your day, dear?”

“Much better, Hawthorne. You're trainable.”

“Seriously, in about five minutes two foreign men are going to come through this door and attempt to kill us. This thing has gone completely off the rails. Your phone is tapped. Ted or somebody put a locator on there, and they've got spyware. They found my apartment because I was curious and left my phone on. They also have a Stingray, which basically let them see the texts between us, find my number, and then find a way to track my phone. That part I haven't gotten figured out yet. So we need to get moving.”

“You're serious.” Grace's face had gone pale.

“As a heart attack.”

“Which you're giving me. My big news was that Griffyn thinks he's got something on your fingerprints on the door. He'll try to lie to you about the time difference, but it's all smoke and mirrors.”

“Even more the reason to get moving. I just saw Griffyn, by the way. He's a complicated man. Hand me your phone.”

She slid it across to him. Mahegan twisted it with his bare hands, snapping it in two. He pulled the SIM card from the slot and yanked the battery out of the chassis. Walking out of the pub, Mahegan tossed the detritus in a Dumpster. They had both parked in the back of the pub, and as they rounded the corner, he saw another black pickup truck nosing into the same part of the parking lot.

“Down,” he said. Fortunately, they were near the Dumpster, and Mahegan pushed Grace into the wall, shielding her with his body. He had an oblique view of the action, and as he had expected, two Slavic men stepped from the truck and walked hurriedly around the far side to the front of the pub. Mahegan said, “Stay here.”

He walked to the pickup, opened the driver-side door, popped the hood, and ripped the wiring harness for the spark plugs from the engine. He shut the hood and then quickly moved to the outside back corner of the pub, with his back to the wall.

Mahegan let the first man pass and clotheslined the second one with a linebacker-style tackle. He felt the man's windpipe give a bit. By the time the first man turned around, Mahegan was on him. Two straight rights across the man's face stung him. Mahegan spun him around and slammed his face into the hood of the truck, denting the metal. Shifting his attention to the second man, Mahegan lifted him on his back and threw him into the bed of the truck. He grabbed wallets, cell phones, and GPS devices. He lifted the other man into the back of the truck, and they both lay there, unconscious but not dead. Mahegan would have preferred dead, but they were in public. He hoped he wouldn't regret his decision.

He raced to the other side of the building, saw Grace huddled in the corner by the Dumpster, grabbed her hand, and hustled her into his Cherokee.

“What the hell is going on? It's like that zombie movie. They're everywhere.”

“No. They're very specifically focused on people who can interrupt their operation. Look at these wallets,” Mahegan said, handing them to Grace. “Here's the deal. You follow me in your car to my place.”

“I thought you said your place was compromised.”

Mahegan stared at her a minute. He had never said the word
compromised
.
Compromised
was a military term meaning “unsecure.” He found it unusual that she would use that term, but let the moment pass and said, “Yes. They found my place using your phone. Whoever is in charge dispatched a team, but they're no longer with us.”

“What the hell?”

“As long as we keep batteries out of phones, we can breeze through my place and then keep on the move. I need to secure some equipment.”

She quickly perused the wallets. “You're right. EB-Five from Serbia.”

“I have a theory which we can discuss tonight. Get in your car and follow me.”

Grace jumped out of the Cherokee and slid into her own car. Mahegan gunned his SUV. He wasn't sure, but he didn't think anyone had seen the two minutes of action in the back parking lot. It was still early in the evening, and unless a cook was on a smoke break, which was entirely possible, they were clear.

Fully expecting Griffyn to be either following him or waiting for him at his apartment, Mahegan was relieved that no such confrontation was imminent. Grace pulled her vehicle in next to his in the barn, and he shut the swinging barn doors. They ascended the interior steps to his apartment, where he unlocked the door. Several of the anti-intruder devices were still intact, such as the Scotch tape across the door frame, the thin string at ankle level, and the combination lock on the door.

He swung the door open, and they entered his apartment, which was untouched from when he had left it earlier. He locked the door, removed the rifle, ensured it was loaded, and sat on the bed.

“What have we gotten ourselves into?” Grace asked. She sat next to him on the bed.

Mahegan stood and moved the breakfast table next to the bed, along with both chairs. He spread all his booty on the bed and the table. In one bag there were the cell phones with the extracted batteries and SIM cards, the wallets, and the weapons from the Turks who invaded Grace's home. He also had a GPS device from Petrov's vehicle and his Blackberry. He laid out the smartphones, wallets, and GPS device from the two men he had shot this morning, as they were approaching the Robertson household. Next came the equipment from the two men he had just knocked unconscious in the back of the Irish Pub. Removing the identification cards from all of the wallets, he laid them out on the table like a blackjack dealer.

“Two Turks. Two Russians. Two Serbs. All hit men. All twenty-one years old or under. All relative amateurs, but with enough balls to try to do the job. Glock 17s, disposable cell phones, and GPS devices. Tools of the trade and indicators of their mission—to enforce. They enforce with the weapons, communicate with the phones, and find their way around unfamiliar territory with the Garmins. The Garmin GPS devices all have a spot on the Wake and Chatham County borders as their ‘home' location. I was at that location today. They're digging a fracking well.”

Mahegan watched Grace, studying her for a tell, or a sign that she already knew what he was telling her. Instead, all he noticed was a mixture of fear and confusion etched on her worried face.

Mahegan stood and said, “You said my place was compromised. That's a military term, not a civilian one. It was an odd thing for you to say.”

“Is that a question?” Grace countered, standing.

“It's a statement. The question is, can I trust you?”

“I've been wondering the same thing about you. I've given you information that is helpful to you personally and to this case. I've jeopardized my job to help you. What have you done for me?”

“Other than save your life, not much,” Mahegan said.

Grace's defensive posture softened, and her body went slack. “I'm so used to fighting with Ted that I automatically attack instead of talk. I'm sorry. You did save my life, and I'm grateful for that. You defended me when you barely knew me. That counts hugely.” She walked to the window and looked into the fading evening. Through the window Mahegan saw the sun setting into the line of trees beyond the Robertson house.

“So my place was compromised. It's a true statement, but a military one, not a civilian one.”

Grace turned from the window and walked toward Mahegan. “I'm a forensic expert. Evidence gets compromised. Crime scenes get compromised. It's a common term in the business. You have your language. We have ours. Sometimes the terms overlap.”

Mahegan studied her face. She looked him directly in the eyes as she spoke and gave no signs of parsing or dishonesty.

“Okay. I had to ask.”

“Your antennae are way up, but I understand,” Grace said. She was inches from him, inside his personal space, which he didn't mind. Not at all. But he also didn't need the distraction of an alluring woman. She was exotic and beautiful.
Not fully Japanese, but more Polynesian
, Mahegan thought.

“Roger. Can I see your wallet?” Mahegan asked, pointing at her backpack.

Grace paused, then laughed. “You're serious?”

“I'm serious.”

“Why didn't you just go through it when I wasn't here? I left everything except my car keys.”

“Wasn't my place to do so. I'm a straight shooter. If we can't talk like this, then we have no business talking at all,” Mahegan said.

Grace walked over to the kitchenette, picked up her backpack, and dumped it on the bed with the EB-5 bounty.

“Toss me in with the rest of them, though I was born in San Francisco and moved here with my parents, who work in Research Triangle Park.”

Mahegan opened the purse he found in the backpack and pawed through the licenses and other identification cards. She had a North Carolina–issued driver's license and all the appropriate badges to allow her into the Raleigh Police Department headquarters. She seemed legit, but she was glaring at him.

“You can get mad. Doesn't bother me,” Mahegan said.

“Well, this sure as hell bothers me!”

“I'm sure it does, but I have to do it. I go with my gut, and I got hung up on the term
compromised
. Just one of those things. You're legit. My bad.”

“That's it. You're bad?”

“We need to talk about all this,” Mahegan said, waving his arm across the bed and table. “Minus your stuff.”

Grace had crossed her arms and shifted her weight so that one foot was forward from the other, a thinking pose.

“What about you? Let me see
your
stuff,” she demanded.

Mahegan paused, thinking
fair enough
. He went to his desk drawer and removed his full pack of “Hawthorne” credentials he had removed from his safe this morning. They were in a manila folder and included an ersatz passport and birth certificate.

“She pawed through the folder and Mahegan realized, a second too late, that he had placed in the folder that picture of his father he had taken from Throckmorton's house two weeks ago.

“What's this?” Grace asked, as Mahegan firmly removed the folder and picture from her hands.

“My credentials,” he said.

“No, the picture. That's what I mean.”

“That picture is none of your concern,” he said. “But this one is.”

Mahegan withdrew from his pocket the photo he had removed from Piper Cassidy's room and showed it to her, happy to change the topic away from the Throckmorton photo of his father. “Here.”

She stepped forward and took the picture from Mahegan. “This is her? Maeve? And her baby, Piper?”

“Yes, but the important part is on the back. And her husband is dead.”

“Dead? As in killed dead? Or heart attack dead?”

“Murdered. Shot in the forehead. Probably while holding the child.”

She looked at the image of Maeve and Piper Cassidy, mother and daughter. “My God. And now her husband and her father is dead,” Grace said, pointing at each face.

Both mother and daughter had chestnut hair. Piper's was still in the reddish-brown phase, while Maeve's had taken on a darker shade. Their facial features were similar, especially the eyes: copper irises flecked with thin bands of amber, which made them look alive with excitement.
Electrical
was the word that came to Mahegan's mind as he stared at the images.

“Okay. You're frigging forgiven. I understand the stakes here, I think,” Grace said. She pushed at Mahegan and said, “Asshole.”

Mahegan turned to Grace and said, “Look at the back. The picture she drew.”

Grace studied the drawing and said, “It's kind of random. The dollar-bill pyramid with the mystical floating eye.”

“The term below that is what has me intrigued. It's like an e-mail address, but not quite.” Mahegan pulled the bottle of henna extract from his pocket. “Found this in Piper's room, next to the picture and a shower kit.”

“Henna? Like the tattoos?”

“Never thought of that. It's mostly used to darken men's hair and beards in Afghanistan.”

Grace lifted her wrist with the Latin phrase
Esse quam videri
written in small cursive letters. “Remember? In two weeks I'll replace this with some famous Hawthorne quote, I'm sure, but this is henna.”

“I do now, but maybe she was trying to dye her hair? To run away if she felt she was in that much danger? It was in the child's room, so perhaps she was doing that for both of them.”

He watched Grace process his theory. “She changes her hair, she's still got the same issues. Someone is after her, and she has to care for Piper. A disguise doesn't buy her much.”

“I found this, also,” Mahegan said, removing the nametag and handing it to her. “In a wooden cell on the Chatham County line.”

Her eyes darted from the cloth strip to Mahegan's eyes and back. “She's alive.”

“Not necessarily, though I believe that. All this means is that her uniform was in that cell. But you're right. It's a good sign.”

“And something else,” Grace said. “This tells me she leaves clues. She's trying to communicate. Work with me, but this is what I do. I study evidence and draw conclusions.”

“Okay.”

“Henna is all the rage for tattoos nowadays. The drawing is a clue. The
PiperCub
phrase is a clue. So we need to think through what she's saying. What is she telling us?”

Mahegan looked out of the window. He saw treetops, the rooftop to the Anderson home, a long winding gravel driveway, and steam lifting from the Shearon Harris Nuclear Power Plant in the distance.