Pelham this afternoon, I don’t want to hear it, not tonight. How’d you even know where I live?”
“Trick or treat,” I said, stepping forward.
“Oh, shit,” said Pritchard. “You’ve got to be kidding me, Reinhart.”
Elizabeth’s head whipped back and forth between me and her new boss. “You guys know each other?”
“We’ve crossed paths once or twice,” I said.
It was an obvious understatement. Elizabeth rolled her eyes at me. “Is there anyone you don’t have history with?” she asked.
I shrugged. “What can I say? I tend to make an impression on people.”
“Actually, I should’ve known,” said Elizabeth. “You both knew about Halo.”
Pritchard glared so hard at me I thought his eyes might pop out. “What the fuck did you tell her, Reinhart?”
“It’s more like what you told her,” I said. “Apparently, you flinched or something when she showed you that hotel surveillance footage. You really ought to work on that.”
Never mind that Elizabeth caught me doing the same thing when I saw the footage. I conveniently left that part out. But Elizabeth already knew about my past. Now she was learning about Pritchard’s.
He shook his head. “If I’d known it was you, Reinhart, I would’ve—”
“I know, I know. You would’ve never opened the door,” I said. “Now that you have, are you going to invite us in or what?”
“That depends. What do you want?” he asked.
“Peace on earth and a brand-new Ferrari. What do you think I want? I need your help.”
“You’re still as charming as ever, Reinhart,” he said.
“Yeah, and you still owe me,” I shot back.
Pritchard mumbled something about my being the male offspring of a female dog. He then turned and walked back into his townhouse, leaving the door open for us. It wasn’t the warmest invite, but the result was the same. We were heading inside. Though not before I quickly whispered in Elizabeth’s ear.
“Brace yourself,” I said.
“For what?” she whispered back.
I didn’t have to answer. With only one foot inside Pritchard’s door she saw what I was talking about.
CHAPTER 50
IMAGINE IF Mike Tyson, Norman Schwarzkopf, and T. E. Lawrence from Lawrence of Arabia had all been interior designers. Now imagine Pritchard having hired all three at the same time.
We walked in. Every inch of his floor was covered with sand. Actual sand. Like from an actual desert.
As for interior walls, there weren’t any. There was no second or third floor either. The townhouse had been hollowed out and fitted with an angled glass ceiling for a roof. You could see the night sky.
To the left of us were a standing punching bag and a full-size boxing ring. Behind the ring was a large military tent from Operation Desert Storm. It was the exact same tent Pritchard slept in as a land component commander.
That of course leads to the question How do I know that?
Meanwhile, Elizabeth was looking at me with her own question. What the hell did we just walk into?
The short answer was Pritchard’s happy place.
After the liberation of Kuwait, Pritchard returned to the States as a warrior without a war. He cashed in as a bodyguard for a Saudi prince attending Columbia Law School. Thus, he was able to afford a Manhattan townhouse. He then joined the CIA with a fast-tracked application courtesy of a four-star general. It was a brief stint, followed by what’s been a long tenure with the FBI and the JTTF.
But at no time was Pritchard more “alive,” as he put it, than when he was on a battlefield. So instead of returning to a Middle Eastern desert, the terminal bachelor decided to install one in his Upper East Side townhouse.
Had it been anyone else, the word crazy would’ve come to mind. For Pritchard, it somehow made sense.
“All right, Reinhart,” he said, folding his thick arms as he turned around to face us. “What do you want?”
“I need your file on the mayor,” I said.
He laughed. “What file?”
“The one you compiled after Elizabeth was assigned to your unit.” I glanced at my watch. “When you’re done pretending it doesn’t exist, let me know.”
So much for his fake laugh. It was as if Pritchard had suddenly remembered my PhD from Yale wasn’t in the field of classical banjo or underwater basket weaving. I was inside his head. I knew how he operated. There’s a fine line between paranoid and protecting your ass, and Evan Pritchard walked it every day like a Flying Wallenda.
“Okay, let’s pretend for a second—hypothetically, of course—that this imaginary file on the mayor somehow exists,” he said. “What specifically