14

Powderhorn Park, Minneapolis

Clancy Johnson ended the phone call. He stood on Vida Wiley’s lawn. The brick agents had left, leaving him and Stone the heavy dry cleaning. They’d discovered nothing—not the woman and no signs of a struggle, just a normal, messy house. They’d been about to leave when he’d gotten the call, one he wasn’t willing to answer with Stone in earshot.

He massaged his temples, hoping to delay the approaching migraine.

He didn’t like the orders he’d just received.

At the Minneapolis Institute of Art earlier in the morning, both women had struck him as scared. Fear is a hard emotion to fake, and why would you bother if you didn’t know you were being followed?

He was positive they hadn’t made him. The tall drink of water was a cop, and a good one by her files. But she was young, and only a few hours earlier she’d laid eyes on a pool of blood that might be all they’d ever find of her mother. The poor kid was shell-shocked. He’d seen the same dazed expression and confidence-to-nowhere in his troops in Nam. If she didn’t watch herself, she’d convince the both of them to walk off a cliff and believe it was a good idea the whole time.

The other one he hadn’t figured out yet. It was funny, because when he’d looked over both their files, Salem Wiley appeared easier to crack than an egg. Born to a professor mom and artist dad, at age twelve, hippie dad swallows a handful of pills and drowns himself right in front of her eyes. Fast forward a decade plus, and the girl predictably turns to the safety of computers and puzzles and leaves the world behind. Nearly a shut-in, from what he could tell.

But now, she found herself in the same boat as her friend, with her mom a blood puddle and a memory for all she knows. Yet, of the two, it was Wiley who was less twitchy. The girl was either going to crash hard, too hard to recover, or she was going to discover she was a different person than she’d imagined all these years. In his thirty years in the FBI, he’d seen it happen both ways.

And these girls didn’t know the half of what they were in for. According to the phone call, Vida Wiley and Grace Odegaard had been leading double lives, both in up to their necks before they’d disappeared.

That’s what the man on the other end of the line had told him, and he’d yet to be wrong. Clancy never liked it when he took his orders from the H, as he called them, but such was the reality of government work. He’d do what the power asked him to do. He’d done it before, and he knew where to hide the bodies.

He jogged back toward the Bucar, the nickname all bureau-­assigned cars received, and crawled in. He held up his phone and pointed at it. “Sorry. Urgent business.”

His partner, Lucan Stone, glanced at him. At least, he turned his head in Clancy’s general direction. It was hard to tell where he was looking with those mirrored frames. “Asshole glasses” is what they’d called them in training. Clancy’s reflection was bouncing off of them, a tiny version of himself reflected back to him. He’d been told he resembled the actor Ed Harris enough times that he’d come to believe it.

“Everything okay?” Stone’s voice was a deep rumble. The man always sounded like he was about to unleash something.

Clancy nodded. “Just the wife. Wants to know when we’re gonna be back in DC.”

Stone turned his attention to starting the car. “Don’t we all.”

Clancy frowned. He didn’t know what actor Lucan Stone would be compared to. The movies didn’t much interest Clancy Johnson. He was more of a nonfiction guy. Stone did remind him a little of a sculpture he’d passed by when leaving the art institute, though: as black as pitch and carved out of steel.

Stone had exploded through the FBI ranks but didn’t have that hotshot air most wunderkinds did, and as a KMA—short for Kiss My Ass, referring to an agent still active but past the age of retirement and so who had nothing to lose—Clancy had worked with more than his share of young guns. Stone was quiet, and he did his job. Clancy Johnson liked him better than fine as a partner, but it was still a mystery whose side he was on.

Given Clancy’s latest directive, he suspected he would find out soon.

Definitively.

“I’m flying to Massachusetts.” Clancy reached for his Styrofoam coffee cup and took a sip of the bitter, grounds-filled liquid. Like French kissing a goddamned potted plant. “Salem.”

Stone didn’t respond, didn’t even turn his head. For a crazy second, Clancy Johnson wanted to flick the chisel of the man’s cheekbones. He bet it’d make a solid thunk. Hurt his fingers.

“Makes the most sense, given that’s where the daughters are flying to, and they’re the only assets we’ve got right now,” Clancy continued, as if it was an afterthought. It wasn’t unusual for them to work a case from different angles. He’d intentionally been one step behind Stone during this whole one. Allowed him the freedom to complete his real assignment. “What say you get the task force on track here, and we meet up out East?”

Stone seemed to be weighing all the alternatives. Hell, for all Clancy knew, he could be mentally alphabetizing his spice rack.

Stone finally spoke. “I’ll meet you in Massachusetts before the end of the week. I have some calls to make.”

Who do you answer to? The question nearly leaked out of Clancy before he could stop it, a top-secret burp. He almost couldn’t help it. How much easier would this job be if they found out they both had the same goals? But in the end, he dismissed the foolishness. He was too old for that rookie mistake. He didn’t know who yanked Stone’s strings, but he knew who pulled his.

He shrugged reflexively, massaging the back of his neck.

We all have a master in this life.