1st Case - James Patterson Page 0,64

dropped the phone into an empty gray tub and covered it with my keys, ID, and jacket, then set it all on the moving belt, along with my bag.

I barely breathed during the pat-down. One guard searched me while the other watched the monitor, scanning my things on their way through.

Please, please, please—

“Okay, you’re good to go,” the first guard told me. “Grab your stuff and follow the agent inside.”

I kept my poker face and slid the phone into my pocket. Then I followed Konrad Palumbo onto the sixth floor’s main hallway as they buzzed us through.

Just inside, she swiped her ID to get us past yet another security door. This one led to an enclosed staircase. It was just a single flight, up to the seventh floor and back out again.

We came into a much shorter corridor than the one below. I counted five beige steel doors on the left and four on the right, with an alarmed fire exit at the far end. It was easy to imagine this little wing as a kind of secret compartment within the much larger federal building. I didn’t even know that the Bureau had offices on seven.

I followed Konrad Palumbo down to the last door on the right. She held her ID up to the card reader. The little red light turned green with a click, and she pushed the door open.

“This is you,” she said. “Home sweet home … ish.”

Inside, there was a carpeted space with a platform bed, a couch, a bathroom, and a tiny kitchen, including a full bag of groceries on the counter. It was basically a little studio apartment, minus the windows.

“More like cave sweet cave,” I said. “How long am I going to be here?”

Konrad Palumbo shrugged. “I’m not going to lie. You’re going to get bored.”

I wish, I thought, and fingered the phone-shaped bulge in my pocket.

“Write me up a list of things you’d like from your apartment,” she said. “Support staff will check in with you about incidentals, and psych services will be by first thing in the morning.”

“Psych services?” I asked.

“It’s protocol, with the death of an agent,” she said. “And listen, I’m really sorry about George. It’s a horrible thing that happened to him.”

“Whoever did it deserves to die a slow, painful death,” I said for the benefit of whoever was listening in through that phone. “I’d kill them myself if I could.”

Agent Lisa Konrad Palumbo narrowed her eyes at the intensity in my voice. She was trained to pick up on small changes like that, I’m sure, but she didn’t call me on it, which I appreciated.

I started scribbling down a quick list for her. Clothes, shoes, a few toiletries, laptop …

“Can this include my bike and indoor trainer?” I asked.

“I don’t see why not,” she said.

It was the one thing I knew I’d want, if I had to be cooped up. Without some kind of exercise, I was going to go completely mental in there.

“Now try to get some sleep,” she said.

“I will,” I told her.

But that was just another lie. I had no intention of getting any sleep. Just the opposite, in fact.

This was going to be the all-nighter of my life.

CHAPTER 70

AS SOON AS I’d locked the door behind Agent Konrad Palumbo, I took out the phone and checked for messages. There were none.

Anyone home? I tried.

There was no immediate answer, and no reason to wait around for one, either. They knew how to reach me, obviously, and they were taking their time doing it. I had no idea what to expect from them, or for that matter, when to expect it.

My best move was to get as much done as I feasibly could in the meantime. That meant not letting myself get overwhelmed with worry about Eve. Yes, there was sufficient cause to be afraid that the very worst could happen—that she wouldn’t be coming back again. That was possible for any number of reasons, including the ones I could think of and, even more frighteningly, some endless number of reasons I couldn’t even begin to foresee.

But obsessing about all that wasn’t going to do a thing to up Eve’s chances of getting through this. Logically speaking, Eve and I would both be better off if I kept myself focused and productive.

So I moved on to the next thing I knew how to do. I went looking for Hermes.

The Android was fully functional, which meant I could get online as much as I wanted. I just