their questions are getting a whole lot of variations on No comment at this time.
An SUV pulls up around the barricade. Elizabeth Ashland and Dwight Ross emerge from the vehicle.
Elizabeth. Elizabeth, who insists that I’m Citizen David’s mole. Who seems to have an inordinate amount of cash on hand all the time. But who green-lighted my investigation when nobody else would. People have more than one face.
Is Books’s suspicion correct—are Darwin and Citizen David one and the same? It’s possible, I concede. I can’t put it all together, but I may lack some of the pieces of that puzzle. And is Elizabeth connected?
“Nothing else of note from the storage shed,” Elizabeth says to me. “We’re processing it. But Wagner’s gone. That much is clear.”
That much isn’t clear. But I will keep that opinion to myself for the time being. If I don’t trust her, I don’t trust her.
“The question is how,” says Dwight, always the master of the obvious. “In what vehicle. We can’t send out an alert if we don’t know the vehicle.”
“Can one of you drive me to my apartment?” I ask. “I’m not far from here. I need my car. I’m going to go back to our offices and start pulling data from the tollway cameras and the license-plate readers in the area and cross-match them against Dodge Caravans and other disabled-plate vehicles. If we work backward, we might be able to identify the vehicle.”
It’s not a lie. I’ll do that. I don’t think it will produce any helpful information. I don’t think Wagner’s our guy. But I’m not sure. I’m not sure of anything.
“Where’s Books?” asks Elizabeth.
“Personal business,” I say. “The bookstore in Alexandria.”
That statement was true half an hour ago. Books is no longer on personal business. But I’m keeping Elizabeth on a short leash for the time being.
Dwight makes a face. “Why would an agent at the top of his game throw it all away to run a bookstore?”
He did it to have a better lifestyle. He did it so he could spend less time on the road and more time with his fiancée, yours truly, who then proceeded to break up with him.
“We can drive you,” says Elizabeth. “We’re going back to Hoover too. Just let me check in with the agents inside.”
While Elizabeth and Dwight head into the house, I call Books again. Voice mail again. Damn. I text him again: Just send me a quick note that ur okay.
A few minutes later, Elizabeth and Dwight walk out. “Let’s go. Nothing left for us to do here. The techies are on it.”
“Okay,” I say, walking with them to their SUV.
Call me, Books, I silently pray. Please call me.
I jump in the back of their SUV, and we drive off.
109
“SIR? SIR. Are you okay?”
Books hears himself moan as he opens his eyes and squints up at an older woman and a child, harsh sunlight behind them.
“Would you like me to call an ambulance?”
He quickly pats his side holster. He still has his weapon, thank God. The woman steps back as she sees it.
“I’m an FBI agent,” he says reassuringly. Though these days, it seems, people don’t always find that reassuring.
He sits up and regrets it immediately; his head feels like a bowling ball, and laser shots of pain fire back and forth inside his skull. He scans the asphalt around him for his phone. He finds it, thank God again. “I’m all right, ma’am.”
“Your face is…red.” She touches her left cheek. He touches his own and feels the abrasion he got when his face smacked the asphalt.
“Did you…see where he went, ma’am?”
“I just saw him leave in that blue car,” she says. “I saw him hit you too. My granddaughter and I just got back from the grocery store. He hit you with…something, a club or something, and then he saw us pull into the lot. He jumped into a blue car and drove away. I’m sorry I didn’t see more.”
“No need to apologize,” says Books. You probably saved my life.
Books tries to get to his feet, using a nearby SUV to brace himself, but an alarm goes off inside his head, and he sits back down. He landed on the left side of his face, and Petty struck him with the baton, or whatever it was, on the right side of the skull, cracking his head against the pavement a second time in the process. He touches the knot on his head, and his hand comes away from his hair sticky with