Not the Fort.
He had to smile. This was a line he had given her when they had been working together on his brother’s case. He had called her “Fort Knox” because she seemed impenetrable. This was her way of confirming her identity.
But still, it could be a trap.
The Vice President’s warning came back to him.
Don’t trust anybody.
Knox was in the clandestine world. Puller had found they were the toughest people of all to trust, because it seemed they could never, ever tell you the complete truth.
But Knox had risked her life to save his several times. She had helped to clear his brother and been nearly killed in the process.
He kept his M11 out and checked his watch. His musings had burned five minutes of the ten.
He went to the window that looked out on the front parking lot. Dawn had come and it was light enough to see clearly.
What he didn’t see was a mass of black SUVs waiting to snatch him away. The lot was quiet. There were many parked cars because the hotel was large, but he only saw a couple of people there.
One was a man in military uniform carrying a briefcase. He got into his car and drove off.
The other was a woman who had just gotten out of her cab and was walking to the front entrance, rolling her suitcase behind her.
Puller looked at his watch.
Two m
inutes to go.
He grabbed his bag and pulled it over one shoulder. He had a feeling he wouldn’t be coming back here. He slid the gun in the other pocket of his windbreaker but kept it gripped in his hand. He hit the elevator and made his way down.
The lobby was empty except for the woman he’d seen earlier checking in and the sleepy-looking front desk person helping her.
He eyed the doors leading out. If Knox was outside he wondered why. He also wondered where she had been.
He crossed the lobby and walked outside. It didn’t take him long to find her. That was because she drove up in a black sedan.
She rolled down the window as he looked at her.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“At the present moment, saving your ass. Get in.”
“My duffel’s in my car.”
“No it’s not. It’s in my trunk.”
“The key is in my pocket.”
“I don’t need a key,” she said. “Just get in.”
“Why not take my car?”
“It’s tainted goods, Puller.”
“You mean they’re tracking it?”
“I’ll explain. Get in!”
He threw his bag into the back and climbed into the passenger seat.
She hit the gas and they shot out of the parking lot.
“What the hell is going on, Knox?”
“I’ll tell you what I know, but you’re not going to believe a word of it.”
Chapter
37
ROGERS HAD KEPT checking the rearview all the way back to where he was staying.
There had been a car back there. It had been at the first dumpsite, and then he’d spotted it at the third and the fourth sites. Then he had driven straight to the interstate.
He cursed himself for going to where the bodies had been. But the thing in his head had made him do it. And the thing in his head, he had found, could make him do anything.
He was now sitting on the bed in his motel room thinking all of this through.
Who could have been back there?
“It was pretty uneventful,” replied Rogers.
“Nothing too exciting, then?”
“No.”
Rogers was telling the truth. There had been absolutely nothing exciting about throwing Chris Ballard out a four-story window and watching his head smash into the cobblestones.
“I wanted to let you know that Josh will be in tonight with a party,” Myers went on.