“I couldn’t help with the document, but I get a name, I get curious. I checked him out.” Arnie pulled out a pair of glasses and put them on. He turned to his computer, which sat on the counter, hit some keys, and a piece of paper fell into the printer tray. He pushed it across to Robie, who didn’t glance at it before slipping it into his pocket.
“It’s not an address, it’s directions. Complicated ones from what I could see. Just that kind of a place, I guess.”
“I appreciate this,” said Robie.
“I won’t appreciate you,
if you’ve been bullshitting me. Reel goes down at your hand, don’t ever come back here.”
“I take it you like her?”
“If she killed them I know one thing. She had a damn good reason.”
“Let’s hope you’re right.”
Robie left and grabbed another cab for the next leg of his journey. It dropped him off two miles from his destination. He hoofed it the rest of the way.
The woods were on his right. He ducked down the gravel drive that cut between the trees and accelerated his pace. The house was a mile back.
His hideaway. His safe haven that the agency didn’t know about.
But Julie knew where it was. So did Nicole Vance. But that was it.
Robie actually regretted their knowing about it, but there was nothing he could do about that now.
He disarmed the security system, ran upstairs, packed a bag, and went out to the old barn next to the house. He unlocked the door and slipped inside. In the single bay of the barn was a pickup truck. It was fully gassed.
Robie pushed aside the hay that covered the floor, revealing a square panel of wood. He lifted this up and hurried down the exposed set of stairs.
He had not built this room under the barn. The farmer who owned it originally had done so back in the fifties, no doubt hoping that a veneer of wood and hay would somehow protect him against a Soviet thermonuclear strike. Go figure.
Robie had stumbled onto it by accident one day while looking through the barn after buying the property under an alias. He had outfitted it with things that he might need from time to time. This was one of those times.
He packed the gear in a large duffel and slid it into the bed of the pickup truck, which had a locking cover. He opened the barn door, drove the truck out, and locked the barn door. He drove out onto the main road and hit the gas.
He hoped for many things from this trip. Most of all he hoped he would run into Jessica Reel. And if he did, he hoped he was ready for whatever she threw at him.
CHAPTER
38
THE OLD WOMAN SHUFFLED THROUGH the security line at the airport. She was tall and thin, her hands covered in age spots. Her back was bent and she seemed to be in pain with each step. Her hair was white and cut short. She stared at the floor as she passed through the magnetometer without it making a beep.
She recovered her bag and kept shuffling.
She rode in coach in a window seat. She stared out the window and didn’t engage in conversation with the passenger sitting next to her. The flight was smooth, the landing unremarkable.
When they arrived the sun was shining and the sky clear. It was a welcome change from wet and cold D.C.
She deplaned and shuffled to a restroom.
Twenty minutes later she reappeared, younger and straighter, and she no longer shuffled. Her disguise was carefully packed away in her carry-on.
She had one bag to claim at baggage. It was a large roller bag, and inside were two metal boxes, both locked tight.
One held two different sets of ammo.
The other held her Glock.
She had lawfully declared it at check-in in her old-lady disguise.
The airline personnel at check-in had merely assumed she was an old woman who liked to protect herself.
There were also a lot of plastic parts and other pieces of metal and springs strewn throughout the nooks and crannies of her luggage.
She picked up her bag and rolled it to a car rental counter. Twenty minutes later Jessica Reel was driving out of the airport in a black Ford Explorer.
She drifted to her right to get a better look behind the cabin.
That’s when she saw where a large field of solar panels was arrayed. That was overkill, she thought. Enough energy to power a place ten times this size. There would be underground lines taking the power to the cabin.
To the left of the cabin and fifty yards back was a barn. Solar probably fed that too.
Totally off the grid. Makes sense.
Reel didn’t think there were cows or horses in that barn.