“No. She went first, then he did. And he was kind of looking down the whole time, like he didn’t want anyone to get a good look at him.”
They asked him a few more questions, and Roy left his business card in case the waiter remembered anything else. As they walked along outside Mace pulled the reports she’d gotten from the ME from her pocket and glanced through them.
“What?” asked Roy.
“I don’t know. Nothing, I guess.”
“So it wasn’t Watkins she had dinner with. There’s another guy out there.”
“Seems to be. And they obviously didn’t want folks to see them together. Out-of-the-way place, secluded table, came and left separately.”
“We left my car at the garage. What now? We can’t walk to Alexandria.”
“We can cab it to Altman’s house, grab my bike, and then go from there.”
“Do you think whoever’s after us knows you’re staying at Altman’s?”
“It’s possible.”
“But what if they go after Altman for some reason? You know, leverage against you somehow?”
“Herbert told me there are three full-time security guards who live on the premises. I guess after the run-in with the HF-12 drug crew, Abe decided some of his own muscle wasn’t a bad thing. One’s a former Navy SEAL, another used to be a sniper with the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, and the other one is former Secret Service with five years in Iraq under his belt in counterterrorism.”
“Damn. I never noticed those guys when I was there.”
“That’s sort of the point, Roy.”
The cab dropped them at Altman’s. She took a few minutes at the guesthouse to slip some items into her knapsack. As they walked outside to where her bike was parked Roy said, “What’s in the goodie bag?”
“Stuff.”
“Stuff for breaking and entering?”
“Get on.”
Roy barely made it on the Ducati before Mace punched the clutch with her boot and the back wheel gripped the asphalt for a single moment before its energy was released and they shot down the road. The automatic gates parted and Mace worked the clutch to top gear. Minutes later they blew down the windy, tree-bracketed GW Parkway, whipping past cars so fast Roy could barely see the drivers.
He finally yelled into her ear, “Why so damn fast?”
“I have a fetish for speed.”
“You ever crash this thing?”
“Not yet,” she screamed back over the whine of the Ducati’s engine.
Roy clutched her waist with both hands and muttered a brief but heartfelt prayer.
CHAPTER 71
WHY AM I not surprised that you can pick a deadbolt?” Roy was staring over Mace’s shoulder while she worked on the lock. They were at the fence-enclosed basement entrance to Diane Tolliver’s waterfront luxury town home at Fords Landing. It was an upscale community a little south of the main strip in historic Old Town Alexandria.
Mace had her pick and tension tool inserted in the lock and was manipulating both instruments with ease. “Amazing what you learn in prison,” she said.
“You didn’t learn that in prison,” he said in a scoffing tone.
“How do you know that?”
“Trust me, I just know.”
“Are you insinuating that I bent the rules while I was a cop?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“I mean, I’m not insinuating it, I’m stating it as a fact.”
“Go to hell, Roy.”
“Wait a minute, how do you know the security system’s not on?”
“I already snuck a peek through the glass sidelights on the front door. Green glow coming from the security touchpad means security off. Cops probably had the alarm company shut it down when they came to bag and tag. They almost always forget to tell them to turn it back on.”
There was an audible click and Mace turned her tension tool like a key. “And we’re in.” They closed the door behind them and Mace on a small flashlight with an adjustable beam. She widened the focus and looked around.
“This is a rec room with a full bar over there,” Roy said as he pointed up ahead and to the right. “And there’s a media room through that door over there.”
“Nice.”
“If the cops already bagged and tagged, what can we hope to find?”
“Stuff they missed.”
They went room by room. One space had been outfitted as a home office. There was a large desk, wooden file cabinets, and builtin bookshelves but no computer.
“I think she had a laptop in here,” said Roy. “The cops might’ve taken it instead of using the flash drive you talked about.”
Mace was eyeing a pile of documents she’d pulled from a file cabinet. “Do all lawyers at Shilling bring this much work home?”