53

Amherst, Massachusetts

Agent Stone didn’t approve of his diet, that much was clear to Clancy. Stone also managed to look completely put together despite spending the same twenty-four hours as Clancy had in this tin-can car. Clancy pegged Stone for a food stamp kid, the way he kept himself so tidy, his suits impeccable. Poor kids grew up, but they never grew past the need to show the world that they weren’t dirty. He also figured his maneuver in the Hawthorne Hotel lobby had put to rest any chance of them becoming friends.

Still, Clancy held the open box of doughnuts out to Stone. “You want any?”

Stone didn’t acknowledge him. Somewhere between the Hawthorne and here, Stone had gone from reserved to monolithic. It was either the ream-out Clancy had given him for showing up at the hotel without checking with him first, or Stone had figured out who was pulling
Clancy’s strings, though Clancy had racked his brain every way but Wednesday and couldn’t figure out how that would be. He’d been neat.

All of his covert ops, like texting the daughter from her mom’s phone, Clancy did in the bathroom, door locked. The phone had come to him via the clean-up crew in Minneapolis with instructions to use it to make sure the daughters were on the right track. Seems they’d gotten farther in cracking the hidden codes than tens of agents before them, stretched out over two hundred years. The Hermitage saw it as good business to have them continue.

The Hermitage’s assassin hadn’t gotten the message, though, and that’s surely who had almost taken out Salem Wiley in the Hawthorne Hotel lobby. Or maybe the communication had broken down on Clancy’s end. He was following the last instructions he’d been given. That’s all he could do.

“They’ve got someone following them,” Clancy said.

Stone, his eyes trained on the group of four walking toward the Emily Dickinson Museum, put down his granola bar. If Clancy had to bet, he’d lay money it tasted like sweet-n-salty dog shit.

“You see him now?”

“Naw.” Clancy dropped his glance, biting into a powdered circle of flour and sugar. He was rewarded with a bright squirt of lemon curd. “Saw the same car downtown as I did back at the truck stop, but I don’t see anyone here now. Just a feeling in my gut.”

Clancy was pleased that Stone refrained from glancing at his stomach. “You watch too many movies,” Stone said.

But Stone sat rigid, as he had since the moment the daughters came into view. He might have a different mission than Clancy, but he had the same instinct warning him that something big and hairy was about to go down.