bits and began walking toward his victim. Before he even reached him, the man started to scream from behind his gag. The killer wasn’t listening. Raising the spinning drill in front of him, he reveled in the high-pitched whine and watched the bit as it was transformed into a blur of sharp gray metal. It was so ingenious, easily one of the cleverest ways ever devised to kill.
CHAPTER 26
Bill Wise had sent Harvath home with a stack of books. The two he wanted him to focus on were The Creature from Jekyll Island and Economics in One Lesson.
The Jekyll Island book, all about the secrets behind the Federal Reserve, was thick enough to be a doorstop. Thankfully, its author encouraged readers to skip around in it and not read it from cover to cover. Harvath loved to read and if he’d had the time, he might have tackled it from front to back. Instead, he followed the author’s advice and read the summaries at the end of each chapter and then dipped into the chapters that interested him the most.
Economics in One Lesson was a sliver of a book in comparison. Like The Creature from Jekyll Island it was well written and easy to read. He was halfway through it before finishing his first cup of coffee. The slim volume had originally caught his eye because its author was the same Henry Hazlitt whose economics quote had been hung around Claire Marcourt’s neck. He was plowing through the book not only in hopes of better understanding the killer’s, or killers’, mind-set, but also because of how interesting it was and how much he was learning.
Despite not having hit the sack until well past midnight, he awoke at 5 A.M. feeling rested and decided to go for a run. Four miles in, he could feel his IT band tightening up. He hadn’t stretched as well as he should have and now his body was punishing him for it.
He pushed himself to his five-mile marker and then turned back toward home. It was a cloudy, overcast morning with lots of humidity that hinted at a good rain at some point during the day. It was a good thing he was getting his run in now. As he ran, lots of things passed through his mind, predominantly about the case. He made a mental note to call Bill Wise after breakfast to see if he had made any progress.
Arriving back home, Harvath showered, shaved, and was downstairs with the TV on cooking breakfast when the Old Man called. “You need to get to Boston,” he said without so much as a good morning.
Harvath muted his TV. “What’s going on? What happened?”
“There’s been a second victim.”
“Who?”
“Herman Penning. Boston. I want you to get up there as soon as possible. Lewis says you can use the Fed’s plane. He has it standing by.”
Harvath looked at his watch. “I can be out the door in fifteen minutes.”
“Be out the door in five. I want you there before the trail goes cold or the Boston cops muck it all up. I’ll send what I’ve got to your phone. You can read it on the plane.”
After shoveling his half-cooked eggs into the garbage, he ran upstairs to get dressed. Flying private, he didn’t have to worry about carrying weapons, so he gunned up and grabbed a bunch of extra magazines. He also grabbed his knife, flashlight, a handful of EZ Cuff restraints, his cell phone, charger, and a small digital camera, then laid everything out on the bed.
Studying the items as he hastily tied his tie, he guessed there were probably a bunch of things he was forgetting and would later wish he’d thought to bring, but that was too bad. He had to get moving.
He pulled his ScotteVest trench coat out of the closet, slipped his gear into its multiple pockets, and then, grabbing the overnight bag he always kept ready, headed for the door.
The traffic on the George Washington Memorial Parkway was lighter than usual. Had he left home even a minute later, he had no doubt that he’d be sitting still right now instead of proceeding apace to Reagan National. He allowed himself to believe that somewhere up there, he was being watched out for. Then four miles from the airport, the rain began to fall and right on cue, the traffic slowed to almost a stop.
He decided to suffer the honks and explosion of one-fingered rush hour salutes by driving up the shoulder. In