Chapter 53

CHAPTER 53

A T TEN MINUTES TO ELEVEN, Devine was nearing Gum Alley. It was cold, breezy, and a marine fog had settled in from the harbor, glazing Seattle into the Victorian London of Sherlock Holmes.

Devine pulled up his coat collar and kept his gaze roaming. He’d left the hotel early and performed a zigzag, in-and-out-of-buildings trek across the city to throw off anyone attempting to follow him. When he entered the alley, he glanced at the hardened gum revealed through the threads of fog and thought this was all beyond surreal, outdoing even the battles he’d fought in, where he’d seen things he could never unsee. Combat was horrible but straightforward. You tried to kill the enemy while they tried to do the same to you. Here, there were no sets of rules, no obvious goals, only puddles of darkness and shifting allegiances.

He kept walking, his fogs of breath joining the firmament of the marine layer. He glanced at his watch. It was one minute to eleven. There was no one else around because who would want to be out on such a foul night? Devine had no idea what to expect, maybe even a bullet in the back. Only he didn’t have much choice in the matter. He needed help to crack this case, and ironically, the woman who had tried to kill him a trio of times seemed to be his best bet.

He made it halfway down the alley and stopped. He was armed but did not intend to draw his weapon unless it was necessary. He knew he was putting a lot of trust in the woman, and he hoped it would be rewarded.

Devine’s attention turned to a shadowy figure standing along a part of the alley that was just beyond the gum on the wall.

“You want to come out where I can see you as well as you can see me?” he said.

One foot emerged and then another. Pru Jackson took three slow strides and stopped in the center of the alley facing him. She was a bit shorter than he remembered from the train and her figure was bundled under protective layers, her long coat sleeves hiding her hands. A ballcap covered her hair; dark glasses did the same with her eyes.

She looked at him but said nothing.

“I’m not in a real trusting mood, so how do I know you are who you say you are?” he asked, sensibly enough.

“The knife I was going to kill you with on the train was a Wander Tactical Megalodon with a fixed one-hundred-millimeter blade. Black Micarta handle.”

“Wander Tactical, they’re more of an outdoorsy hunter’s carry, aren’t they?”

“Well, I wasn’t outdoors on that train but I was definitely hunting. And I find that the Italians really know their knives. It cost me a packet. I don’t suppose you still have it? I assumed you took it because it wasn’t there when I woke up from your little love tap to my jaw.”

“I must have dropped it somewhere. Thanks for confirming your identity. You working with spotters tonight or did you just trust me to come alone?”

“Intel I don’t divulge,” said Jackson.

“You put a tracker on my car.”

“Lucky for you that I did; otherwise you wouldn’t be here talking to me or anyone else.”

“Okay, what’s on the program for tonight?”

Jackson drew closer. “A while back you and I were on the same side.”

“So you alluded to on the construction site easel. Feel free to elaborate.”

“I won’t tell you my name; that would be too easy. But let’s just say that I have a rather large grudge against my former employer.”

“Why?”

“Because of them for two years my home was in a prison in a country that is no friend of ours, and has no designs on treating their own citizens humanely, much less someone like me. If I hadn’t managed to escape, that would have been the end of me.”

“And why would your employer—”

“Former employer,” Jackson corrected.

“—former employer do that to you?”

“Because I believe an opportunity of collaboration came along with this same enemy . On top of that, I had discovered that certain people at my former employer had conspired to murder an agent of one of our allies. So to save themselves, my former employer offered me up as—”

“—an olive branch?”

She studied him. “Why did that particular term occur to you? Because it’s exactly the one I was going to use.”

“The hit with me on the train?”

For the first time, Jackson visibly reacted to his words. “Yes?”

“Apparently your former employer once more got a better offer and extended me as an olive branch. So you were hired to do to me what had once been done to you.”

Devine watched the woman closely. Cold-blooded killers were a dime a dozen. And while the woman in front of him was definitely a killer, he believed she was the rare one with principles.

Like me.

She said in a tight voice, “The client was not made known to me, nor the reason. It was a kill on demand, half the fee up front, the rest on photo confirmation.”

“Would it have made a difference if you’d known?”

“I would have had no problem killing you, Devine, under most circumstances. But not under those, no.”

“I appreciate the candor. You mentioned the chopper?”

“I’m sure you’ve investigated that,” she said.

“Two agencies use it. Mine and—”

“—my former employer. As I told you before, I saw them load two bodies into it.”

“Recognize anyone?” asked Devine.

“No, but I’ve been out of that world for some time now.”

“Do you understand my current mission?”

“Danny Glass, Betsy Odom, who seems a wonderful girl full of spirit, and people who want you dead.”

“And do those same people want you dead?” he asked.

“They think I am dead. So she wants you to be her guardian?”

“Betsy told you that?” asked Devine.

“No, I had other means.”

“I may end up being her guardian, at least temporarily.”

“Do you know who killed her parents?”

“No, but apparently, higher-ups in the government got DOJ to bag the RICO indictments,” noted Devine.

“They would only do that for some platinum treasure in return.”

“And I think Glass told someone he wanted to have custody of his niece. And maybe they decided to get him that, the hard way. Perhaps as a sweetener to whatever deal they wanted him to take.”

“Glass strikes me as a man who doesn’t depend on the largesse of others to get what he wants,” said Jackson.

“I would think that, except I saw the man’s reaction when I pretty much accused him of killing the Odoms. It was not what I was expecting.”

“He could have snookered you.”

Devine said, “But I doubt he can, or would, cry on demand.”

“So agents of the U.S. killed two American citizens? Even in my former world that is not… usual.”

“They apparently had no trouble throwing us to the wolves.”

“True,” conceded Jackson.

“You said it had to be worth platinum. Any thoughts on that?”

She drew closer. “Why would you think I would know anything?”

“Because you already know more than me,” Devine shot back, his hand slipping to his pocket. “And a smart person seeks out those smarter because they can make him look brilliant.”

She studied him for a moment. “I knew about Danny Glass before all this. Just idle curiosity. His name kept popping up in certain sectors I paid attention to. I did a deeper dive on him after I came here, looking in places that are not accessible to the public, or even some government agencies. Glass lives in another world, a dark one, where there are predators and there are victims and lives get snuffed every second of every day. And those still alive just keep on rolling like nothing important happened, because, for them, nothing important has. The murders of others is just another day at the office.”

“So what did you find out?” he said.

“Glass operates around the world, but he has a large footprint in the Middle East.”

“So we’re talking Middle Eastern terrorists?”

“No. I don’t think that’s it. The U.S. has intel sources all over that area. We know what shit will happen before the people doing the shit are even thinking about doing it.”

“Not on 9/11 we didn’t.”

“Which is why the U.S. upped its game and uses laser microscopes on that space now.”

“Where else, then?”

“The usual cartels are always a possibility. But why give one major drug operator a ‘get out of jail free’ card to catch another major drug operator? No, that doesn’t work. Organized crime isn’t nearly as organized as it used to be, so check that one off, too.”

She took a step closer and Devine’s hand closed around the grip of his Glock. He edged the muzzle forward, in her direction.

“Don’t accidentally shoot yourself, or me,” observed Jackson coolly.

“Just picking my way carefully through the minefield. I see you’re doing likewise.”

He pointed to the bulge in her wide coat sleeve that covered her hand. And something else.

“Great minds, Devine.”

“You were saying?”

“Other things being equal, I would look internally.”

“Meaning?” he said.

“To my mind, and in the minds of the people whose job it is to protect this country, the chief threats right now are home-grown groups that pledge allegiance like you and me. They just point that allegiance in a different direction.”

“Domestic terrorists, then?”

“You could throw a rock in any direction in any part of this country and hit somebody who wants this country to look and taste vanilla and never come close to having a scoop of cherry or chocolate anywhere near the horizon of possibility. And some of these people will not stop until what we have today is replaced with something more 1930s Germany than 2020s America.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“No, I can’t. Because that’s not my job. But if Glass knows about something big being planned like that, my former employer will move heaven and earth to stop it, and blowing up a RICO indictment and offing two citizens would just be seen as a cheap price to pay.”

“I don’t think I like the world you used to play in,” said Devine grimly.

“Neither do I, but it’s the only one I know,” she retorted.

“And there’s still the matter of Perry Rollins.”

“The man killed at the Sand Bar? The one who approached you with dirt for sale?”

“And how did you know about that?” asked Devine.

“I’m an excellent eavesdropper. And recently I’ve taken it to an elevated art form augmented by the latest in surveillance technology. So any idea on what the dirt on Glass is?”

“No. But someone bought the Odoms a mobile trailer and the land around it, and an expensive car. And Betsy said when they went to Ricketts, her parents met up with two men who gave them a duffel bag maybe full of money. Minutes after that, they were dead.”

“And the payer?” she said.

“I thought it was your former employer. Maybe as a conduit for Glass since he told me Dwayne Odom refused any help from him.”

“But why pay and then kill them, Devine?”

“I don’t know.”

“And was the money found?” she asked.

“Not to my knowledge. The police chief of Ricketts is a hard-ass named Eric King. The town has military-grade vehicles, and a government building it can’t afford. His wife is the mayor. She’s attractive, about three decades younger than her husband, walks with a swagger, is as ruthless as they come and ambitious as hell. I’m pretty sure she knew about the attempt on my life in Ricketts. And I can still hear her weird, raspy voice—What?”

Devine had noted a discernible shift in the woman’s body language.

“Describe the wife to me in greater detail.”

“Her name is Mercedes King. She’s around thirty-five to forty, five-five, blond, curvy, if I can use that term, confident, assertive, all the things people love in men and hate in women, for the usual stupid reasons. She can change her persona on a dime, from flirty to flinty.”

“Right, but you said her voice was raspy?”

“Yeah, like a hoarseness to it. I got her prints and had a friend run them through the usual databases. Then they hit a wall that we believe had a federal cloud behind it.”

Jackson nodded at all this. “Were you able to get the prints of the men who abducted you and run them through the same databases?”

“Yes. The locals here in Seattle were handling that.”

“And did they get a hit on the men?”

“Sort of. There was one database where something popped, but it was restricted. Sort of like with Mercedes King.”

“I actually know that database well.”

“How?”

“Because my prints are on it. And I’m pretty sure so are those of the woman calling herself Mercedes King.”