50

Of course, Joe hadn’t killed Kimberly or Janet, and neither had Sal Bonadello. Sal’s conference call with Joe and me had been part of the plan. It gave Joe what he thought was a bargaining chip, gave him a false sense of security. When I kept coming after him in spite of the threat to my daughter, he came to the conclusion I was certifiable. He reasoned, if I didn’t care enough about my own kid to try to save her, what chance did he have with me? Joe, already in a panic, must have felt like a trapped rat. At least I thought he’d feel that way, and I hoped to flush him out.

Because, truth is, I really didn’t know where his panic room was hidden, and he had a hell of a big house. As it turned out, the architect and his wife knew nothing about a panic room. If Joe had one, the architect guessed it had been added by the second architect, the one who revised the original plans and completed the construction effort. That guy had disappeared shortly after completing work on Joe’s house.

Lou had pulled the building permits and gave us the name, but apparently DeMeo had told the second architect not to file the revisions. Quinn and I felt terrible about kidnapping and torturing our architect and his wife with the ADS ray, but they were okay now. Hopefully they’d be able to look back on the experience some day and laugh about it. If not, who would believe their story anyway, right?

Our captured included the architect, his wife, the security guy, Joe DeMeo, and Grasso. That’s a lot of people to deal with, so I did what I always do when I’ve got a mess to clean up.

I called Darwin.

Darwin sent a company cleaning crew to Joe’s house, and the clowns kept an eye on the architect and his wife and the security guy until the cleaning crew could round them up. Meanwhile, Quinn and I tied DeMeo and Grasso to the sides of the Hummer and made them run a few miles with their pants around their ankles to amuse the clowns. When we got tired of that, I pulled over to the side of the road and put a gun to Joe’s head and made him call Garrett Unger at headquarters. Joe claimed he couldn’t remember the passwords, so I made him run a few more miles. Unfortunately for Joe, he kept falling and spent most of the time being dragged. Then I repeated the process again and again until he remembered enough to make me square with Addie and Quinn and Callie and Sal Bonadello.

After Joe came through with the passwords, Quinn tied him and Grasso to the PEPS weapon on the roof. Then I hauled them off to Edwards to meet Jeff Tuck, my eccentric L.A. operative. Jeff couldn’t understand why it took so long to drive thirty miles to the base. I told him we got a late start.

Joe and Grasso had been dragged half to death, and their faces and bodies showed the effects. Jeff took one look at them and said, “Relatives of yours, Augustus?”

To me, he said, “Do I want to know why their pants are sopping wet?”

“I wouldn’t think so,” I said.

“You got any dry clothes they can wear so they don’t ruin the jet seats?”

Quinn and I gave Jeff our camouflage blankets and watched him wrap them around the two waifs. I remembered the two thousand dollar suit and tie Joe wore last week at the cemetery and thought, You never feel the splinters on the ladder of success until you’re sliding back down.

Jeff flew Joe and Grasso to Washington and turned them over to Darwin’s security staff, and Quinn and I took one of the company’s Gulfstream jets back to headquarters.