Back at the Hilton, Jax took a long shower and changed into a dry pair of khakis and a polo shirt. He tried one last time to call Sibel Montana, but when she didn’t pick up, he figured he was about to cross the line from sincere to a nuisance and gave it up. He hesitated, then punched in the number for Clare’s Florist on King Street.
“What do you want on the card?” asked the girl who took his order for a dozen white roses.
“Just…just, ‘Thanks for the good times, Jax.’”
He went to stand beside the window overlooking the crippled city. Here and there tattered blue FEMA tarps still showed amid the scattering of new roofs and gaping demolition sites. New Orleans had turned into a strange hybrid, half bustling port and tourist city, half Apocalyptic ghost town. He couldn’t figure out if the place was depressing or inspiring. Maybe it was both.
It occurred to him that in the past twenty-four hours, two of the people in his life had questioned his career choice. He wondered if maybe he was just being obstinate, staying with the Agency. He’d always had a habit of going against what people told him to do. At times that could be noble, something to be proud of. But sometimes it was just plain hardheadedness. Maybe this was one of those times. Except…
Except that whenever he thought about quitting, he felt diminished. He felt as if he would be giving up or selling out. So much of the time, he knew, he was just beating his head against a wall of bureaucracy and corruption and stupidity. But every once in a while he really did achieve something—something he could walk away from knowing he’d made a difference. He couldn’t imagine anything else he could be doing that would make him feel so alive. He supposed it was the same instinct that drove other men to become priests or teachers. Perhaps at its heart that instinct wasn’t even altruistic. Maybe it was just another form of arrogance and pride. But he didn’t like to think so.
He pushed away from the window and put in a call to Matt.
“The girl’s still alive,” he told Matt, giving him a quick rundown of the afternoon’s events—although he left out the bit about the swim in the lake. “She’s badly spooked. She’s not going to be easy to bring in.”
“Any idea yet who we’re dealing with here?”
“I recognized the cowboy I shot. His name is Stuart Ross. Last I saw him, he was with Special Forces down in Colombia. If you can find out what he’s been doing for the last few months, it might tell us who we’re dealing with here.”
“You think these guys are Special Forces?” Matt asked.
“Maybe. Maybe not. Special Forces can’t keep their people any better than the CIA can. Everyone makes more money working for the big mercenary companies.”
“Did you get the feeling the girl was the target, or was she just unlucky enough to stumble on a hit on Vu?”
“I don’t know.” Jax hesitated, then added casually, “By the way, I’m going to need to rent another car.”
Matt groaned. “What’d you do to the G6?”
“Relax. It’s fine. It’s still at the marina. But I’m going to need to let it cool off for a while. Some of Ross’s friends might be on it.”
“What are you leaving out, Jax?”
“Leaving out?”
“Yeah. After you shot Ross and Guinness kicked the other guy into the lake, what happened?”
Jax stared out the window at a heavy belt of clouds building on the horizon. “She got the drop on me and made me jump overboard.”
“She what?”
“You heard me.” Jax held the phone away from his ear until Matt had finished laughing his ass off.
“The lady sounds like maybe she’s smarter than anyone’s giving her credit for,” said Matt, when he caught his breath.
“Smart? She’s crazy.”
Tobie tried calling Colonel McClintock from a pay phone on the UNO campus, but hung up when his answering machine kicked in. She glanced at her watch.
She felt a rising spiral of fear, as if her options were narrowing down. She thought about catching a taxi back to where she’d left her car by the marina, then decided to go see the Colonel instead. It was after five. If he’d gone for a walk with Mary and LaToya, he should be home soon. Maybe he’d learned something from his friends in Washington, something she could use to make sense of this mess. She clung to that hope as she waited for the taxi outside the Union building.
But when her taxi finally drew close to the Colonel’s house, she could see the flashing red and blue lights of emergency vehicles from more than a block away.
“Pull up here,” she told the taxi driver.
“But Soniat’s not for another—”
“That’s okay. Just pull over.” She thrust a twenty at him and tumbled out of the taxi.
A police car and an ambulance filled the street in front of the Colonel’s house. Tobie could see the broad back and close-cropped head of Mary McClintock’s nurse, LaToya. The Colonel was nowhere in sight.
Clutching her bag to her side, Tobie ventured across the street and up about half a block, to where a knot of three women and two men huddled together at the end of a driveway. Neighbors, drawn out of their homes and into the street by the sound of sirens.
“What happened?” she asked.
“It sounds like it must have been one of those home invasions or whatever they’re calling them these days,” said a plump, middle-aged woman with carefully coiffed platinum hair and a red boat-neck T-shirt decorated with an American flag appliqué. “LaToya came back from taking Mary for her walk and found Dr. McClintock unconscious in his library.”
“He’s still alive?”
“Yes. Although Laura heard someone say he’s been badly hurt. There’s just not enough police in this town, ever since Katrina. That’s the problem, you know. Not enough police and too many punks coming in from all over the country. New Orleans was bad enough before, but ever since the storm…”
Tobie wasn’t paying attention anymore. She was watching the policeman who had just walked out of the Colonel’s house. He glanced up the street, and Tobie swung her head away, her heart thumping wildly.
It had been a mistake to venture this close, she realized. Keeping her head down, she turned and forced herself to walk slowly back down the street. She kept her face averted until she rounded the corner. Then she broke into a run.
She’d covered about two blocks, heading toward St. Charles, before the pain shooting up from her bad knee became so unbearable she had to drop down to a trot. But she kept moving.
She’d thought she could fight these men, make them pay for what they’d done to Henry Youngblood and for what they’d tried to do to her. But she’d been wrong. You can’t fight a corporation whose tentacles reach from the CIA to the Pentagon, all the way to the White House.
She was going to go back to the marina, she decided, get her car, and just get on the I-10 and head west. It’s what she should have done when Colonel McClintock first suggested it that morning. Now Elizabeth Vu was dead and McClintock himself was in an ambulance on the way to the emergency room.
She still didn’t know where she was going to go, once she got out of New Orleans. All she knew was that she had to get out of the city and stay away from anyone she knew.
Before she got someone else killed.