Unsolved (Invisible #2) - James Patterson Page 0,76

came at me with her claws out, but since then, she’s stood up for me more than once. Who knows, maybe someday—

Well, I’ll settle for a détente.

“Sorry to startle you,” she says.

“No, no.” I wave a hand. “We’re working the data. Give us the rest of the night and we’ll have it. If it’s in there, we’ll have it.”

“You guys should go home, get some sleep,” she says to the three of us. “You’re more effective with rest.”

“We’re close, though,” I say. “I think we have the winning formula here. But then going through it all…”

“Going through it all will take time too. And you’ll want to be alert. You don’t want to miss something.”

Like Pavlov’s dog responding to the bell, I suddenly feel the weight of sleep deprivation overtake me. I stretch my arms. I look over at my team. Rabbit’s eyes are heavy and bloodshot. Pully looks like a cranky little boy who needs a nap.

“Emmy, walk with me to the elevator, would you?” Elizabeth says.

As we get some distance from the cubicles, she says to me, “I spoke with Assistant Director Ross about this. I briefed the task force.”

“And?”

“And I told them that I directed you to continue investigating this lead. Dwight didn’t like it, and some of the others were skeptical, but they backed me up. So now it’s my problem, not yours. You’re covered. You can say you were following orders.”

We stop at the elevator. She punches a button.

“Wow,” I say. “Thank you.”

She steps into the elevator. “Thank me by finding him,” she says. “See you in the morning.”

75

ELIZABETH ASHLAND leaves the Hoover Building just after seven o’clock. He knew she’d work late. She always does; Books has seen her attendance records from the card swipes entering and exiting the building. It’s consistent with everything he knows about her—her discipline, her adherence to routine. She arrives at 7:00 a.m. and leaves at 7:00 p.m. every day, Monday through Friday.

He raises his camera and gets her in focus. She is walking north, as he expected she would. He is set up at the corner, well north of her, which gives him plenty of time to snap photos of her as she walks toward him, unaware.

She walks briskly with an efficient, confident stride. She removes a phone from her purse and looks at it as she walks. He zooms in on the phone itself. She is texting something, slowing down as she does so. He doesn’t have the authority to tap that phone. He wishes he did. He may have to get that authority.

From the decisive movement of her thumb and the fact that she stopped typing, he takes it that she just sent a text. Then she drops that phone into her purse and pulls out another phone.

So she has at least two phones. That’s not unusual for an agent. There’s the government-issued phone and a personal phone. No big deal. Maybe.

She puts this second phone to her ear, her expression serious, her head nodding as she walks. Books lowers his camera and jogs north to stay ahead of her; he reaches the next corner and turns to shoot her again.

She ends the call, puts the second phone into her purse, and pulls out the first phone again. She does a thumb-swipe and reads something—presumably a response to that message she sent.

Then she crosses the street. There was a chance she would turn and head toward her condominium a few blocks away. But she doesn’t turn. Books didn’t really expect her to. He’s seen her credit card receipts, after all.

Elizabeth Ashland isn’t going home just yet.

76

NEAR MIDNIGHT, he’s in the comfort of his van, seated in his wheelchair. The vehicle idles at the curb, air-conditioning blowing hard on his face, some classical music playing low. The man who sometimes calls himself Charlie checks his GPS monitor for the movements of Emmy’s vehicle.

In his hands, a piece of paper, the corner bending slightly from the blast of cool air: a printout of an e-mail sent to Emmy’s work e-mail address but also copied to her personal e-mail account. Pully is a genius (but we already knew that) reads the subject line. Pully is presumably the sender, Eric Pullman, one of the analysts who works with Emmy at the FBI. A genius, maybe, but Pully shouldn’t have copied Emmy’s personal account on the e-mail, allowing Charlie to read it. Old habit, he presumes, from the time when Emmy was working from home so often; probably an automatic prompt