email mishmash of spam, a couple of messages from old friends of mine in the service, and some reminders from Amazon and Staples.
But no messages from Tom.
Or Denise.
I check out Archie again. “A gamble. You never know how and where it’s going to pay off.”
Archie doesn’t look away, and I shake my head and say, “Just so you know, I’m one to keep my promises, to keep my oath. No matter the pressure, no matter the temptations. When I was in college, my roommate, Marcia, cheated on her boyfriend. She asked me to keep that secret. Save for you now, I’ve never told anyone, even my husband, even my best friends in the service.”
My throat thickens. “I’m about to violate a promise I made to my husband, a long, long time ago. I’ve been tempted here and there to break that promise, but now…well, it’s an emergency. I have to do it. You understand? I have to do it.”
I turn back to the keyboard, stop wasting time with Archie. I minimize the open screen that has my Gmail account, get back to work. Within a few minutes, I locate Tom’s Cloud account in Google. I feel sick at what I’m doing. For a long time I’ve known his log-in data to get access to his Cloud storage—as an intelligence officer, how could I not?—but I’ve never, ever gone into it. When we were first dating, Tom said to me, “Hon, I know how talented you are…in lots of ways, but especially in the Army. But Amy, please. My work has a lot of sources and confidential information in it. Please don’t ever try to find out what I’m doing, all right?”
And of course I promised to do that, and now, I am breaking that promise. At some point, I hope he will forgive me.
Tom’s office at home is a mess of papers, folders, books, and piles of old newspapers and clippings, but I’m pleased to see he’s not a slob on the Internet. I start going through his files, looking at his notes, and using a function that allows me to see the most recent information. I’m stunned at how quickly I find what I’m looking for, and what it means.
“Oh, Tom,” I whisper. “You damn, damn, damn fool.”
I can’t believe what I’m seeing there, in plain text on a plain screen, but it’s apparent. And thorough. And deadly stupid.
Now I know why he was picked up. And my Denise as well. And although I don’t know the identity of the man behind me, I know his background as well.
Oh, Tom.
I shake my head in disgust and turn around to leave.
Behind me is an empty chair.
Archie is gone.
CHAPTER 70
AT THE George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Warrant Officer Rosaria Vasquez is quickly walking to the service kiosk for Hertz when a familiar man in civilian clothes steps out from a news shop and says, “A minute, Vasquez.”
She halts in her tracks, stunned. Her boss, Senior Warrant Officer Fred McCarthy, who should be back at Quantico in Virginia, is here, deep in the heart of Texas.
“Sir?”
“This way,” he says, walking to a food court, where he takes a chair and gestures her to sit down.
She takes the chair and says, “Is this where you’re going to tell me why I’m in Houston?”
“You want coffee or something?” he asks. His usually tanned and fit face looks pale and anxious, and as always, he’s wearing a dark-gray suit that doesn’t fit him well. Senior Warrant Officer McCarthy is tall and loose-limbed, and Rosaria doubts that even the best tailor from Hong Kong or London could ever make a suit fit him.
She says, “No, I don’t want coffee. I want to know what the hell is going on.”
“You first, Vasquez,” he says. “What’s the latest on the Three Rivers shootings?”
Rosaria really doesn’t need her notebook but pulls it out for appearance’s sake. “Shooting broke out at a rental residence on Linden Street. Two Mexican nationals killed. A person—male or female, not sure—was seen fleeing the residence, dragging an older gentleman along. That person’s identity is also unknown. A black Jeep Wrangler was seen leaving the area shortly thereafter. No confirmation of how many people were inside. And the license plate wasn’t noted, either.”
“Forensics?”
“Too soon,” she says. “It’s a small but professional department, but even a big-town department would have a challenge handling three shootings in one afternoon.”
“Three? Who was the third one?”
She turns over a page. “Approximately thirty minutes after the first shootings, Texas