Unsolved (Invisible #2) - James Patterson Page 0,11
is the leader, Special Agent Lee Homer from the FBI’s tactical operations unit at Quantico.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” Homer says.
Books hadn’t been sure either until he drove here. He is filled with dread; his stomach has been in knots all day, and he’s had a throbbing pain in his shoulders since he woke up this morning. When he was an agent, he’d had to make some tough decisions, do some things that felt wrong, but he’d always told himself he was doing it for the greater good. What he’s about to do now—he’s not so sure there’s a greater good behind it.
This may be the worst thing he’s ever done. And it may change his life forever.
Special Agent Homer hands Books a Kevlar vest. Books doesn’t bother to protest.
“Let’s get this over with,” Books says.
11
A QUIET residential street in Lincolnia, Virginia, at midnight. The brick three-story condo building fits right in. The perfunctory waist-high metal gate, unlocked, is more for delineating boundaries than for security. The front door of the building, however, is a security door that you can access only if you’re buzzed in or have a key.
Books has a key. His stomach churning, he slips the key into the lock. I can’t believe I’m doing this, he thinks as he pushes the door open.
Agents of the FBI’s tactical operations unit file in, one after the other, and take the stairs to the second floor, Books following.
Faintly, from above, there is music, probably on the third floor. Someone is still awake at this hour. Not terribly surprising.
The team members step noiselessly down the hallway. They appear to be walking casually, as if there is nothing unusual about their presence here, but Books knows they are moving on the balls of their feet, minimizing the sound of their footfalls. Anyone who is sleeping will not be awakened. Anyone who sneaks a glance through a peephole—well, that person might have some questions.
It was a risk they had to take. There had been debate about when to do the op. Daytime made some sense, but two of the people living in this building work from home, so the decision was made to try to sneak in during the wee hours.
These tac-ops guys are pros. He saw them break the window of a corrupt governor’s campaign office in the middle of the night, move in, hide electronic surveillance devices, clean up the mess, replace the window, and go without leaving a trace of the operation. He watched them open a supposedly impenetrable safe-deposit box without a key in the span of sixty seconds. The greatest safecrackers and cat burglars in the world work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He’s always known this, but it’s somewhat unsettling now that he thinks about it as a civilian.
But those skills aren’t needed to access the condo on the second floor any more than they were needed for the front door because Books has a key for the condo too. He opens the door while one of the tac agents holds the trigger of a repressor to freeze the alarm system.
And then they are inside, all of them. The security alarm remains quiet.
The door closes. The condo is completely dark; the windows are covered by drapes that block any outside light.
They will move to an interior room, away from the front door, before turning on an overhead light. They don’t want the glow from the light bleeding into the hallway.
Flashlights go on. The beams illuminate a small kitchen, a living room. He follows the agents into one of the two bedrooms. There, one of the agents flips on a light.
Books squints for a moment. Then his eyes open fully.
There’s a part of him, if he’s honest with himself, that is not surprised at what he sees.
“Oh no,” he whispers. “Oh no, Emmy.”
12
INSIDE THE bedroom that Emmy uses as an office, the tac officers are all business. One agent photographs every single document in the room, wherever it is—on the desk, on the walls, in the file cabinets, on the floor—taking care to leave them just as they were found. Another uses a portable hard drive to download the contents of Emmy’s computers. A third installs the first of several eavesdropping devices, this one inside a carbon monoxide detector.
Books can’t take his eyes off the walls; a cold shiver runs through him.
One wall is lined with copies of dozens of letters addressed to Emmy, some handwritten, some typed: