his new girlfriend. It got towed.”
Syd was tempted to tell the woman she was better off without the guy and was almost glad when her cell phone vibrated. Whatever Penny and her boyfriend were about, it wasn’t related to her case. “Excuse me,” she said, when she saw it was Scotty.
“You ready for dinner?” he asked. “I thought we could meet at King Yen’s.”
“Can I call you back in a few?” she said, moving away toward the window for a bit of privacy.
“I’ve already made the reservations.”
He’d proposed to her there and, no doubt, had chosen that spot for tonight in hopes that they could discuss their relationship. Her fault, she supposed, for not squelching the dinner thing. That didn’t mean she wanted to hurt him, give him any ideas. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the time or place to discuss it. “Give me five minutes. I’ll call you right back.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said.
She disconnected, was just tucking her phone on her belt when she noticed a man in a long overcoat looking into the window of Scotty’s Jeep parked just down the street. “You get a lot of car thefts in this area?” she asked Penny.
“Don’t even get me started on this crappy neighborhood.”
The man straightened, started walking up the sidewalk. He was white, clean-shaven, too healthy-looking to match the profile of some dirtbag hoping to smash a car window for a stereo. Even so, Sydney kept her eye on him, then noticed a second man across the street, also in an overcoat, paralleling the first man. The second man started across the street, and she noticed a vertical ridge running down the length of his coat. A ridge about the length of a long barrel of an assault weapon hidden beneath. The momentary thought that these were the missing bank robbers fled when she realized Scotty would not have called her for dinner if the robbers were still out there.
Her gaze flew to the man on this side of the street. The one walking toward Penny Dearborn’s front door.
Syd glanced at Penny. “Where’s your phone?”
“Downstairs. But it was shut off.”
Every telephone in the U.S. was supposed to have 911 access, even if it was shut off for nonpayment, and 911 access meant instant address relayed to the cops, far superior to using a cell phone. “Please tell me you have a phone up here?” she asked, looking around.
“Packed,” she said, pointing at all the boxes. “Somewhere.”
Syd drew her weapon, stepped back from the window, then pulled out her cell phone. “This paranoid boyfriend of yours,” she said to Penny. “He happen to show you any of these escape routes?”
7
“Damn it, Tex!” Zach Griffin paced his office as far as his landline would allow without pulling the phone from the outlet. “You were supposed to be tailing her.”
“We were. She left the Smithsonian. Archer was on her like white on rice.”
“Apparently not close enough.”
“Close enough to hear the security guard telling her that there was some fight between lovers, maybe that was the assault she was asking about. He wanted her to talk to some other security guard, but she left, went straight from there to the police department. She was getting reports on towed cars. That was when we lost her. Delivery truck got between us and her car, and Archer lost the point.”
He had to figure out Fitzpatrick’s logic if he was to have any hope of finding her. “The police have been kept out of the loop, she’s got to know that by now, so why go there at all?”
“Because she’s thinking like a cop, a Fed, not a spy.”
Zach paced in the other direction, but the phone cord stopped him from moving farther. “A cop…Towed vehicles…”
Hindsight forced him to see the consequences of letting Fitzpatrick believe she had recommended Tasha for the job, all because he didn’t want Tasha’s connection to his agency known. But as a result, Fitzpatrick believed she was responsible for recommending Tasha for the drawing, which meant guilt over her death. And if a by-the-book FBI agent wanted to allay that guilt?
Bring the killer to justice.
By looking up towed cars…? For what?
She used to be a cop, so think like one…
She had reason to believe Tasha’s murder was connected to the drawing. If so, she’d realize she needed to identify her Jane Doe—Alessandra—to determine if there was a connection. But his agency had taken over the investigation, had kept it from the local police once they realized the connection and what it could