What Lies Behind

“Christ, what is that?”

Sam pulled the waist of her T-shirt up to cover her nose. She flashed the light into the small space. Saw a silver handle. Using her gloved hand, she pulled it open.

And immediately began backing away again.

Son of a bitch.

“Fletcher, alert HAZMAT. Now.”

His head jerked toward her. “What is it? What’s in there?”

“It’s a wine refrigerator, but the power’s been cut.”

“Let me see.”

“Don’t—”

He stepped around her. “What is this stuff? Some sort of science experiment?”

Sam grabbed his arm and pulled him backward, toward the front door. “Without examining it closely, I can’t say for sure. There’s a bottle labeled Vibrio cholerae.”

At his blank look, she explained. “Cholera, Fletch. And there’s more than one vial in there. Cattafi has an unsecured refrigerator full of transmissible, possibly deadly bacteria and viruses. Ones that shouldn’t be anywhere but in a secure lab.”

“What do you mean, deadly bacteria and viruses? What the hell?”

She glanced back at the refrigerator. “It looks like Thomas Cattafi was being a bad, bad boy.”

Chapter 11

McLean, Virginia

RILEY CALLED ROBIN just past ten. She was still at the house. She’d called in sick, which raised a few eyebrows, but to hell with them. She hadn’t had a sick day since she’d woken up in Ramstein, Germany, three years earlier, pumped full of shrapnel from the remnants of a roadside IED. A blindingly red day, it was all she could remember, a fog of puce, sucking at her, draining her dry. Later, when she was healed, she remembered the screams, and was happy the fog had taken away the memories.

She rubbed her left side, where the scars were the worst. She couldn’t be upset about them. She was the only one who’d survived intact. Another five feet and that wouldn’t have been the case. She’d be missing legs and arms, like the rest of the team, not just her spleen and a kidney. Aside from the lingering headaches and occasional blackouts and swirls of colors when people talked or were emotional, she was just fine. Mostly fine.

She answered the phone with trepidation, wondered where her nerve had gone.

“What’s happening?”

“A lot. The police just called HAZMAT to Cattafi’s apartment.”

“HAZMAT? What in the hell?”

“I don’t know. Was Amanda still on that vaccine scam?”

“I think so. She was working it hard a few months ago, I know. But, Riley, seriously, we hadn’t talked in a few weeks. I don’t know if it has anything to do with her. Might be the boyfriend’s troubles.”

“Speaking of, Alicia traced the call made to your cell phone this morning. It pinged off the tower closest to Amanda’s town house on Capitol Hill.”

Robin pulled a cup down from the cabinet, the delicate china from her parents’ wedding set, went about making a cup of tea. “As far as I know, she has that place rented out to a couple of congressional aides. She wouldn’t go there if she came to town. She’d just grab a hotel room, or stay with me.” Or go stay with a boyfriend Robin knew nothing about. “Someone should do a welfare check, just in case.”

“I’ll send Lola.”

Lola Jergens was Riley’s particular pet. Petite, wheat blonde, small enough to fit in his pocket, attractive in a bland, generic, easy-to-forget-her-face way, he’d been grooming her to handle the more discreet needs of their workload around town. He took her on assignment sometimes, too. Robin had to admit, Lola was a good choice. They could count on her to be subtle. Then she thought about it, and changed her mind.

“No. I’ll go. I have a key. It will save us some time. Where is the phone now?”

“After the call, it drops off the grid.”

“Destroyed?”

“Most likely. Listen, Robbie, you have to operate under the assumption that whoever has, or had, that phone knows where you are. Knows who you are.”

She patted the Glock under her arm, though he couldn’t see the action. “Worry not. I’m ready for anything. Just so you know, I put a call in to Atlantic. We’ll see if he knows anything about this.”

“Good, that’s good. Do I want to know what HAZMAT is going to find?”

“I haven’t the foggiest. But I’m going to go take a look in her files, see what I can dig up.”

“Has Metro been in touch yet?”

“I would assume they’re having a hard time finding me. I’ll go to them once we know what’s really happening.”

A surge of red filled the air. Mop up your mess, little sister. Followed by a swirl of canary yellow. How dare you die on me!

“Be careful, Robbie. Stay in touch.”

“Always.”

* * *

Robin logged in to her secure home system and immediately went to her email account. Checked to see if there was anything from Amanda officially, saw nothing. She logged out, crossed platforms, went to Gmail and tried Amanda’s account. Prayed she hadn’t changed the password—not that it would matter; Robin could get in, it would simply take more time—but she was lucky. The password was the same, and moments later, her sister’s private correspondence was open.

She ignored the inbox, went directly to the drafts folder. It was a common trick—give two people access to a single account, and communicate through the drafts without ever sending the email, thus ensuring absolute privacy.

There was a single draft email in the file, dated three hours earlier. Addressed to Amanda, no subject. Five i

Did you get it in?

There was nothing else in the folder.

Robin quickly sca

Did she get what in? And to where?

She itched to get her hands on Amanda’s laptop and her phone. There wasn’t much Robin could do accessing remotely on her own computer, but with Mandy’s, if she’d not erased the history each night as she should, Robin might be able to re-create the drafts folder, see what other messages might be in there. Better yet, her phone might have a cached version of the drafts inbox, which would hold the earlier messages.

What could she have been trying to bring in? The vaccines, yes, Robin knew about that project. Was there something in them? Something deadly, or earth-shattering?

Something worth dying for?

Drumming her fingers on the table, little puffs of slate rising from the taps, she decided.

She’d go to Mandy’s house, look around a bit, then it was time to see what Metro had discovered.

Chapter 12

Teterboro Airport

New Jersey

BELOW XANDER, AS the tarmac exploded into action—a cacophony of shouts and screams and the background roar of a plane’s engines reversing as it landed—Xander slid down to the roof, rolled to his back and stared at the sky. He hadn’t thought this through, had only reacted. From the moment the SIG was in his hand, his forefinger caressing the trigger, the end was clear. He’d gone into a trance of perfect focus and eliminated the threat. What he was trained to do.

Clouds scudded past, lacing the blue sky with billows of white. Calming, comforting. Skies were all different. Some forbidding, some beautiful. He’d lain on roofs and grounds across the world, waiting, pla

He thought back to the moment Chalk approached him about starting the firm, realized that he’d never fully conceptualized what might happen. He’d known intellectually he might be forced to kill again, but he was supposed to be in protection now, damn it all. Saving lives, not taking them.

For a life he’d just taken, no question about it. He rolled over onto his stomach again, looked over the edge to the target. The man he’d shot was slumped over the parapet, arms dangling. A rusty smear was giving in to gravity, spreading slowly down the concrete.