“Not enough for you not to cover that angle.”
“You obviously know something is going on in this place.”
“I just don’t know the something. I’m not a detective. My talents lie elsewhere.”
“Did you get the shooter?”
“He won’t be bothering you again.”
“We can question him,” suggested Decker.
“He won’t be bothering you again.”
“Are you telling me he’s dead? He could have led us somewhere.”
“He would have led us nowhere. Probably at least four layers between him and where we need to go. Waste of time, and we don’t have time to waste.”
“Did you just kill him?” said Decker.
“Does it matter to you?”
“I’m a cop. Shit like that does matter to me.”
“You let me worry about that. You do what you do. We’re counting on you.”
“If this is such a big deal, how come we don’t have more federal assets here?”
“Stealth, Mr. Decker.”
“Why do I think you didn’t fly commercial into North Dakota?”
“It’s a free country. You can think what you want. I won’t stop you.”
“How do I get in touch with you, then? And you with me?”
“We’ll figure a way.”
“Can you tell me your name, at least?”
The man hesitated, the first instance of indecision Decker had glimpsed in the fellow.
“It’s Robie. Will Robie.”
“WILL ROBIE? He told you his freaking name?”
Jamison was staring across at a soaked Decker, who was leaning against the wall of her hotel room dripping water on her carpet. Decker had come directly back to the hotel, knocked on her door, and woken her up, and now she was sitting on her bed in sweat-pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt staring at him incredulously.
“Yeah, he did.”
“So let me get this straight. First you got attacked by a bunch of morons and you and Baker beat them up?”
“They were after Stan, not me.”
“Then someone tries to shoot you with an exploding bullet, only this Robie guy saves your butt. After that he runs off and takes out the guy who was trying to kill you. And then he comes back and intimates to you that there’s something big going down in this town and we’re expected to find out what it is really quickly with no other assets coming our way.”
“That’s actually a pretty good summary.”
Jamison slumped against the headboard. “And this Will Robie actually said he was on our side?”
“Different division, same team, he said. But the most interesting thing I found out tonight was what Stan told me the guy from the air station said.”
“That we’re sitting on a time bomb? Yeah, that’s comforting,” she said sarcastically.
“Stan thought his name was Ben. And he was in uniform, so it was before Vector took over out there.”
“And he didn’t follow up with what the guy said?”
“Stan isn’t a cop. And they were drinking at a bar at the time. Stan probably thought he was bullshitting.”
“But what the guy said obviously stuck with him.”
“Yeah, it did,” conceded Decker. “In retrospect.”
“So this Robie, what is he? Your guardian angel?”
“He was tonight. I’d be on a slab with my head literally blown off but for him.”
This comment drew a shiver from Jamison. “I’m never going to let you go out alone again. You always get into trouble. I mean always.”
“I just went to have a beer and talk with Stan. I wasn’t looking for any trouble.”
“Well, it always seems to find you,” she retorted. In a calmer tone she said, “So how does this change our investigation?”
“There’s no concrete proof that what happened tonight and Robie’s appearance on the scene are tied to Irene Cramer’s murder.”
“Can a place like London, North Dakota, support two simultaneous dark conspiracies?”
Decker swiped his wet hair with his hand. “Let’s look at this logically. Cramer was thirty. She came here a year ago, and had a college degree.”
“We just have the people at the Colony’s word for that. And they said they didn’t have any record of that other than what Cramer showed them.”
“That’s true. But if she did earn her college degree, then from the age of eighteen to twenty-two or so she was in school. Then she comes here about eight years later and we can find no record of her before that? And the FBI’s alarm bells go off when her prints come through their system?”
“And your point?”
“Cramer didn’t have all that much time to establish herself as some international spy, like we were speculating before. In fact, she didn’t have much time to do anything so remarkable that the Bureau would be hopping when her prints came through. But that’s exactly what happened. And that’s why I seriously doubt she was the catalyst for whatever had happened in her past. So we need to find out what was the actual catalyst.”
“But if not WITSEC, what then?” asked Jamison, her brow furrowed. “Because I can’t think of anything else.”
“Well, I thought of one thing.”
“What was that?”
He gazed at her with a pensive expression. “The sins of the parents can carry over to their children, Alex.”
Jamison’s puzzled look turned to one of understanding. “Cramer’s parents? So it might have been something they did that led Irene to go underground? And maybe change her name?”
“I’m sure she changed her name. We just have to find out who she really was.”
“We don’t have a lot to go on.”
“We usually don’t.”
“And we don’t know that what happened to Cramer is tied to this ‘ticking time bomb’ comment.”
“No, we don’t. But we will figure it out.”
“I wish I were as confident as you.”
“Now, get some sleep.”
“Wait, will you tell Kelly about what happened tonight?”
“For now, let’s keep it between you and me.”
“Are you sure? He is a local cop.”
“I’m not sure, but I’m trusting my gut.”
He headed to the door.
“Decker, promise me you’re not going back out,” she said imploringly.
“I’m going to slide the bureau up against my door, and sleep with one eye open and my gun in my hand.”
DECKER DIDN’T GO TO SLEEP, at least not right away.
He sat fully dressed in his wet clothes on the floor.
From his wallet he took out two pictures. They were of his wife and daughter. Each had been taken shortly before their deaths.
Tonight, he had come as close to dying as he ever had, he supposed. If this Robie fellow had been a second slower, or not there at all?
I’d be dead. Like Cassie and Molly.
He peered down at their images. He hadn’t looked at these pictures in quite a while. On the day of their funerals, he had been unable to speak, unable to really function. Tearful, devastated people kept coming up to him and saying how sorry they were. And he couldn’t comprehend at the time what they were even trying to communicate. He felt as dead as his wife and daughter were. He had actually wanted to be dead, because he had no desire to keep on living while they could not.