Killer Instinct - James Patterson Page 0,23

None of the staples like “Hush, Little Baby” seemed to calm her down. Desperate one night, Tracy and I riffled through his iTunes playlist like a couple of possessed Casey Kasems. Much to our relief—and delight—we discovered that our baby girl was a Beatles fan. Tracy was now in the middle of one of her favorites, “Penny Lane.”

“Tracy really has a nice voice,” I said. “Don’t you think?”

“You’re stalling,” said Elizabeth. “That’s what I think.”

She’d intentionally waited until we were alone before asking me about the glow, and that only made me feel worse. She knew my darkest secret and Tracy didn’t.

I’d become all too adept at concealing from Tracy anything having to do with my CIA days. But my decision not to tell him—made so many years ago and done, I was convinced, for his protection—had always hung over me. At that moment it felt as if there were a giant boulder perched on a ledge in the middle of an earthquake, and I was standing directly below it wearing a pair of lead shoes.

Still, Elizabeth wasn’t about to take No comment for an answer.

“It’s called Halo,” I said. “That’s what’s causing the glow.”

“Halo? I don’t know what to ask first,” she said. “How does it work or who created it?”

“It was developed by a CIA lab back when I was stationed in London,” I said. “As for how it works, I’ll be damned if I understand all the science behind it.”

Elizabeth blinked in disbelief. “Did you just admit to ignorance?”

“Bite your tongue. I said I didn’t know all the science. The device, sometimes disguised as a necklace, reflects infrared waves, along with some visible light, and distorts any CCTV image. The effect is that blur of white you saw.”

“With a simple necklace?” she said.

“That’s the gee-whiz part. They’ve been able to produce the effect with what look like ordinary beads.”

Wait for it, Dylan. In five seconds, she’ll forget all about the science and realize the implications. Five, four, three, two …

“Jesus,” said Elizabeth. “So this woman with Darvish is CIA?”

“It’s possible.”

“Could she have killed the professor and made it look like an accident?”

“Also possible,” I said.

“Would Pritchard know something like that?”

“It’s highly unlikely anyone in your unit would know, including your boss.”

“But he could know about Halo, right?” she asked.

“We’re back to it’s possible,” I said. “But you can’t ask Pritchard because—”

“You and I never had this conversation. I get it. Besides, I’m not even assigned to the case anymore.”

“You could’ve fooled me,” I said.

“Can you blame me? We need to find out who this woman is.”

“We?”

“You want to know, too, don’t you?”

“Not necessarily. If she’s an operative, I’ll take it on faith that she was acting on good intelligence—information that no one inside the Agency is about to share with me.”

“What if she’s not, though?”

“Acting on good intel?”

“No,” said Elizabeth. “What if she’s not CIA?”

It was a fair point. Halo’s technology had been around nearly a decade, albeit in the hands of a very select group. That didn’t mean, though, that someone else hadn’t gotten hold of it. The wrong hands.

“What time does Bergdorf’s close?” I asked.

There wasn’t a more out-of-left-field question I could’ve thrown at Elizabeth in that moment. Her face confirmed it. “Bergdorf’s?” she asked. “Why?”

I reached for my phone, quickly googling the store’s hours. It was already past seven. “We need to do some shopping,” I said. “Then we need a huge favor.”

CHAPTER 27

“I’M REALLY going to hate returning these,” said Elizabeth, gazing down at the shoebox in her lap as we pulled away in the cab from Bergdorf’s. We caught a break. The store stays open until eight during the week.

I turned to her. “Who said anything about returning them?”

“Yeah, right,” she said with a laugh. Then she realized I was serious. “Dylan, that’s crazy. I can’t keep these.”

“Why not?”

“For starters, they cost over nine hundred dollars.”

“Yeah, what is it with women’s shoes? You girls know you’re getting scammed, and yet you still buy them like drugs,” I said. “Anyway, that’s not a good enough reason not to keep them.”

Elizabeth opened the box, taking out one of the Christian Louboutins and staring at it, transfixed. She was clearly in love. Still, as if snapping out of it, she shook her head.

“I’ll give you a better reason why to return them,” she said. “They’re just going to sit in my closet.”

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” I said.

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Please don’t. My sister already gives me the you-need-to-get-a-boyfriend speech