21

I reached the traffic circle at the base of the gardens and pulled up short, letting the tour buses go around and around for their pictures. I clicked into the radio. “Blood, we’re finally at the bottom. What’s the status?”

“I got one bad guy down, but Shoshana did her own damage. I got cops all over the place.”

“What happened?”

“I’m up for ideas. I took the guy that went long. He was setting up for an ambush, so I took him out. She did something. I don’t know what, but whatever it was, it was complete. They’ve got an ambulance here, and it’s not for my guy. All I did was choke him out. No permanent damage.”

“Where is she?”

“I tracked her to the traffic circle at the base of the gardens, and she boarded a bus going to Acre. I couldn’t follow, obviously. You were right. She’s on the warpath.”

I said, “Okay, okay. So she’s good? She’s free?”

“Yeah, she’s free from here, but I don’t know what assets are against her. If you’re asking if I was successful in protecting her, I’ll tell you that I was here. Here. I don’t know about anything else.”

Shit. Brett had worked operations like this for a decade. He was putting a little frosting on the turd with that answer. He had gotten her clear from the gardens, but he didn’t think that was the end. I gave him our location and waited on him to arrive.

Why won’t she fucking answer her damn phone?

Jennifer said, “What now?”

“I don’t know. She’s in the wind, and she’s being chased by a team. Apple Watch is still out there, and he was just security in a car. We know they had a team that went up, and there’s no way Shoshana eliminated them all. If she had, she would’ve walked out the front door instead of jumping in front of us.”

Jennifer said, “Why do you think she looked at us that way? She wanted to shoot us.”

“I don’t know. I’ve thought about that . . . I don’t know.”

Jennifer toyed with a napkin between our seats, then said, “I think I do. She thinks you’re after her.”

“What? That’s fucking crazy. All I did was ask for dinner.”

“Don’t get mad . . . but she is a little off. I think she saw you and made a connection to something that isn’t there.”

“What about all that empath shit, where she can see a threat? The thing you think is real? Why would she look at me as a threat?”

Jennifer exhaled and said, “Good question. I don’t know.”

I said, “I do. Because she’s fucking crazy. Jesus. I should have never called.”

Jennifer looked at me with a side-eye and said, “Really? Your call caused this? So you completely ignored all Taskforce protocols to go running up here to protect her? Ignoring our main target? Quit it.”

I sighed and said, “Okay. I’m worried about her. That look wasn’t right. She wanted to shoot me, for real. I saw it. She bolted not because she was deciding whether she should or not. Just that she didn’t have the time to waste.”

“I know. And it’s also irrelevant. This is like trying to save a tiger in the water. We want to help, but the tiger thinks we mean harm. In the end, you have to rescue the tiger, no matter how much it claws.”

Brett came up, slapping the window. I popped the locks, and he slid into the back. He said, “Okay, she did some serious damage. The guy she took out looks like he’s been through a meat grinder. He’s on the way to the hospital—alive—but I’m surprised she didn’t kill him.”

“And your guy?”

“He’s probably slinking back to the base right now, coming up with a story of how he was blindsided by Batman.”

I put the car into drive and pulled away. Jennifer said, “What now?”

“I guess head on back to Tel Aviv and try to at least accomplish our mission. It’s going to be hard enough explaining this detour to Kurt. We gave her a day. Maybe more.”

Jennifer sat up straight in her seat and said, “Are you kidding me? We did this today but didn’t solve the problem.”

The words were music to my ears. I said, “So you want to continue flagrantly ignoring our mission, which, by the way, is paying our salary, to go chase that nutcase?”

Brett’s head went back and forth between us, but I knew he didn’t care. He just liked watching the fight. Even though he didn’t realize there wasn’t one.

Jennifer became incensed, saying, “Okay, I made a joke about the gardens today. But there’s no way I’m leaving Shoshana out on her own with a team of assassins hunting her. A team, I might add, that’s tied to our mission. What the hell has come over you? You’re always the first to tip over the applecart.”

Brett started laughing, now in on the joke. She turned to him and snapped, “You think this is funny? You think her getting killed is humor?”

He said, “I think Pike was looking for a solution, not a fight.”

She looked at me, and I grinned. She smacked my shoulder and said, “Why do you do that stuff? Just agree with me. I’m always right.”

I passed through a traffic light and said, “Yeah, that’s true. But we still have no leverage. No anchor to tug on.”

She sat in the car, tapping her fingers on the dash, and I knew her mind was working a thousand miles a second. I, honestly, had no idea what to do next. And I’d done the thousand-miles-a-second routine. I was willing to see what her brain could come up with.

She finally said, “Okay, we know she’s being hunted, right?”

“Yep.”

“And we know that they’re good at what they do. They’ve managed to plan an operation against her using both native assets and transnational killers. They have some talent, and they have some money behind them. They won’t stop because of what happened today, and we probably didn’t short out their ability to succeed.”

I said, “Okay, that’s reassuring. So, we have no idea how to find Shoshana, but they do, and they’re going to kill her. Great.”

“That’s not true. We know at least three of the players that are hunting her, right?”

“Who?”

“Apple Watch, the Orthodox Jew, and the man he met at the marina restaurant.”

“Yeah . . . I guess that’s right. You mean we have their cell phone numbers?”

“Yes. Exactly. And we know Shoshana is going to Acre, and that’s only thirty minutes away.”

“Wait, we know she got on a bus that goes to Acre. We have no idea if she’s riding it the whole way.”

Jennifer pursed her lips, not liking the logic, and said, “Okay, we know she’s on the bus, and we know the location it ends at.”

“So?”

“So, if these fucks are so good at their job, they’ll find her. All we need to do is find them.”

I sat in silence for a moment, just letting the car glide forward. It was pure genius. I glanced into the rearview mirror, catching Brett’s eyes. He said, “You screwed up bringing her on board. You’re no longer the smartest person in the room.”

Jennifer perked up at the comment, looking like Marisa Tomei at the courtroom scene of My Cousin Vinny. If she’d put her hands on the dash and shrugged, it would have been a fait accompli.

I said, “Dial up Creed. Get us a geolocation of those numbers.”