Restraint, page 9
He shrugged one shoulder. "I'd be happy to take a pretty lady out on the town."
She bit her lip for a moment, then shook her head. "I'll never understand men," she said. He frowned, confused, and she met his eyes. "I'm sorry, Mr. Benson. It's a generous offer, but I really do need to get home. Thank you."
He shrugged again, then raised one finger in admonition. "You look me up when you get back to town. Got it?"
"Got it," she said.
He nodded once, then turned on his heel and slipped off down the hall. He moved like a panther, smooth and dangerous, and she watched until he disappeared into a stairwell. Then she pushed her door closed again. She took one long breath, eased the safety back on her gun, and closed her eyes. She wasn't sure what flavor of flustered to feel.
A date. Four years without one, and then two offers in one night from men she detested. Or...from men working for the wrong side, anyway. If she hung around much longer it would be Velez and Brandeis fighting for her hand, when the men she really wanted....
She arrested that train of thought and fought down a little blush. She had work to do. She scrubbed her hands over her face and let loose a little sigh. "Hathor, I need to take that flight home tonight. Thanks."
She made sure it was arranged then sank down onto the side of the bed and just sat there for five minutes, maybe ten. She didn't move, just enjoyed the still silence. Soon enough her headset buzzed, and she heaved herself to her feet. She zipped her bag shut, hauled it off the bed, and headed for the door with a purposeful stride.
She found Phillips's car waiting for her at the curb, already set to ferry her to the airport. The driver monitor flashed a note from him when she climbed inside. "Thanks for taking the bullet for me. See you in a week." As soon as she laughed, the screen cleared and then drew a map to the airport.
She hesitated then, her eyes lingering on the little map—on that dark, unmarked corner where Velez and Brandeis and Ghoster all came together under the impenetrable veil of Shadow Mountain Security. She couldn't muster the fury to go haring off there. Sure, she could break her teeth against its walls, but she knew she wasn't getting anything done there until Phillips got her that court order.
And then, she had her orders. Reed wanted her back in DC. She closed her eyes, leaned back in the soft seat, and said simply, "Go."
She got to the airport in time to grab a coffee before heading to her gate. There, she slipped through shiny white identity gates and then took a window seat near the back.
It was dark out, and the plane's interior glowed a dim orange from the handful of overhead lights turned on. Fewer than half the seats were taken, mostly up near the front, and no one seemed to be in a very talkative mood. That suited Katie quite well. She slumped down in her tall chair, all alone at the back of the plane, and dragged out her handheld to do a little snooping.
She started by looking in on her dad, as she too often did. HaRRE showed her a quiet, comfortable hospital room and flooded her screen with complicated readouts—most of which she'd learned to decipher in the last three months. None of them had really changed in the last three months, either .
She checked on Ghoster, then, and found him at home in his sprawling manor, lounging imperiously in an overstuffed leather armchair. A tumbler of brandy stood at his right hand, and the words of Sir Walter Scott burned on his handheld. He read on for a moment, his face the picture of perfect concentration, then turned all too casually to look right at her and smiled a mischievous grin.
It could have been coincidence. But then, with Ghoster, she couldn't really say. She cleared the screen quickly, though, and did a search for Martin instead—for Martin, and for every alias she'd been able to track down—but all she got was the ghost in Buenos Aires. She'd long since confirmed that Martin wasn't playing Velez's old games. The man didn't even speak Spanish.
She sighed. "Where are you, old man?" She felt an ache in her chest and took a deep breath that didn't really do much to relieve it. "What are you up to?"
The search results screen held her eyes. "No results on query." She cleared it out and checked in on Phillips instead.
He was at Blu, just as he'd promised. She found him at the end of the bar, talking distractedly to a pretty brunette and discreetly sneaking peeks at the redhead three stools down. Katie giggled at that, then put him away.
The plane was already in the air by then and well on its way to DC. She opened her casefile out of habit before she remembered it was canceled. She checked it anyway, but there were no new comments. She closed that, too, and sat staring at the seat in the front of her for a minute. She needed to be working. She needed something to do.
Something came to her. She looked at her handheld again, and fought down a completely unnecessary blush as she pulled up details on Reed. She found him in Lee's Bar, Rick's old hangout, just around the corner from the FBI office. He was sitting at a table alone, a full glass in front of him and his eyes locked on something far away. He didn't say a word, didn't move except to sip at his drink, didn't even glance up when the waitress brought him a new glass. He just sat and stared, and Katie watched him on a tiny screen in the palm of her hand, hundreds of miles away.
But closer every minute.
8. Just Friends
It was after midnight when Katie stopped at the top of the narrow stone steps—suddenly and strangely nervous. She pressed herself forward and down and slipped through the door into a quiet and mostly abandoned bar. She'd only been here once, months ago, but in a weird way she'd also been there for most of the last two hours. Her eyes tracked automatically over to the little round table beneath the neon Beer sign, and Reed still staring, all alone.
It was four paces from her to him, but she felt that strange hesitation again. She couldn't make herself step forward. On a playful whim, she said softly, "Hathor, connect me to Reed."
He didn't answer right away. Instead, he asked for Katie's location details to his handheld, and she got to see the look of confusion on his face when he checked it. Before he got over that, she said his name again, this time just loud enough for him to hear.
"Hi, Reed."
He looked up, and in an instant the frustration and pain that had clouded his face for hours was gone. He smiled, eyes bright, and suddenly Katie could move again. She flowed forward, one hand going to her ear automatically to mute her headset. He kicked out the chair opposite him, silly simulacrum of a gentlemanly gesture, and Katie fell into it with exaggerated exhaustion.
"Hey, kid," he said, and his eyes danced. "Long flight?"
"Not too bad," she said, "but it was a long trip." She let her smile slip and fixed him with a gaze that demanded an honest answer. "How about you?"
He shrugged, but he had caught the meaning in her look, and he answered, "Not as bad as it could have been. I see a lot of long, frustrating nights ahead for Ghost Targets, though." He tossed off most of a full glass and banged it down loudly on the table, cue for a refill in case Lee wasn't watching the monitors on his glass.
"I've spent the last five hours reviewing today's testimony," he said, touching a hand to his headset. "And getting ready for tomorrow."
She arched an eyebrow and nodded to his empty glass. "With vodka? Or is that gin?"
He barked a laugh and said, "Oh, Katie, you worry too much." That did nothing to soften her glare, so he dropped the smile and said seriously, "There's only two things I ever let them put in my glass, and those are scotch and soda. My daddy raised me right." He sent the glass sliding over to her with a flick of his wrist, and said sadly, "It's nothing but sparkling water for me tonight."
"Good," she said, nodding with a sudden flush of satisfaction. She glanced toward the bartender and called across the room, "Hey, Lee. Kitchen still open?"
"For you, Katie?" He grinned back at her. "You want the cheese fries this time?"
She fought down a grin at how silly she must have looked, placing her order by shouting across the empty room, and just went with it. "You got any sandwiches?" From the corner of her eye, she saw Reed grinning openly.
Lee didn't answer right away. Instead he turned his back and drew a tall, cold glass of Coke for Katie, then came out from behind the bar to deliver it to her personally. As he crossed the floor, he shook his head with a thoughtful frown. "Don't really have any of the stuff for sandwiches, but I do make a mean cheeseburger."
She smiled back at him. "That'll do, Lee. You're a sweetheart."
He set her glass down on the table and hovered there, eyes fixed on Reed. "What about you?" he grunted. "Just a refill?"
Katie turned to Reed, too, and realized with surprise that he had put away the Congressional hearings and was now scanning the bar's menu on his handheld. After another moment, he nodded and said, "Yeah, make it a burger for me too, would ya?"
"No problem," Lee said. "Need a candle, too? I can probably scare something up."
Reed hit him with a scathing look, but it evaporated as soon as he turned back to Katie again. He smiled. "I'm glad you're home."
She could have been upset at that. She could have used it to pick a fight. She could have told him, in no uncertain terms, that she wasn't glad to be back. She didn't. She took a sip of her drink, then smiled back at him. "How bad is it really, Reed?"
"It's...." He looked down at his hands, and they fell open in a gesture of helplessness. "It's not really us, Katie. That's not what's eating me. It's listening to them talk about Rick. He...." Reed sighed and shook his head.
"I have to go in there tomorrow...I know what I have to do. I have to go in there and promise them the sins of the past died with Rick Goodall." The man's name caught in Reed's throat, and he tried to find a drink in the bottom of his empty glass. Katie offered him a sip of hers, and he nodded his gratitude. Then he shook his head sadly, holding her eyes.
"They'll give me a chance to defend the man," he said. "Somebody's going to ask, somebody's going to give me the opportunity, and if I say so much as a kind word...we'll end up buried in Accountability auditors for as long as either of us could ever imagine."
Katie placed a hand on his, comforting, and a tiny smile touched his lips. She had no real advice for him, no answer to his suffering, but she felt a genuine sympathy for his pain. She poured as much of it as she could into her eyes, into her voice, and she whispered, "I'm sorry."
He met her eyes, and without a word spoken she felt his gratitude. His hand was warm under hers, and strong when he gave her a little squeeze half a heartbeat before Lee approached with their burgers. Then he sat back, and the moment was gone.
In the first bite she discovered she was starving, and it was a fantastic cheeseburger, so Reed caught her with her mouth full when he set his own burger down and said, "What about you? I got the impression you found something big in Atlanta."
She shook her head, chewing quickly, then said, "No." She took a moment, and felt a frown creep onto her face. "No, not really. I found out Shadow Mountain is uncooperative. We won't learn more than that without a court order."
He leaned back in his chair, and laced his fingers together behind his head. "That's what Phillips is staying for? I don't know that that's necessary—"
"They're hiding something," Katie said fiercely, but immediately she caught herself. She hadn't come here to fight with Reed. She smiled and shrugged while Reed just watched her. "That can wait," she said. "I did find it weird that Ghoster was there."
Reed snorted. "I read Phillips's report about your little encounter. He was impressed."
"Impressed?" Katie laughed. "He told me off like I was a child."
"I...." Reed hesitated, holding her eyes. "That may be my fault. Phillips can be a little too protective, especially when it comes to...well, women. I'm afraid he may have taken my assignment a little too much to heart."
"Afraid? Hah." Katie snorted. "You got exactly what you wanted."
"Not exactly...." Reed said distantly, but Katie's mind was on other things.
"What's his story, anyway? How much of that is just for show, and how much of it is...." She couldn't find the right word.
Reed supplied it. "Damage." He sighed. "It's...I don't know. He's been like that as long as I've known him. He makes it work for him, though." He considered her for a moment, and said, "What about you? Where's your damage?"
"Buried deep," she said with a light smile. "I mean, umm, I care too much, and I'm too much of a perfectionist."
Reed smiled at that, but his eyes were still measuring. He shook his head. "You've seen too much of my defenselessness, here in this bar. Just feeling a little vulnerable, I guess."
"You've got nothing to fear on my part, sir." She couldn't have said why she added the "sir"—it just sort of slipped in there—but she saw him blink at it, felt him draw away, and immediately she wanted it back.
Before either of them could speak, though, he got a message. His handheld sprang to life at his left hand even as his eyes narrowed at some voice in his headset. He reacted almost immediately. "Oh, good. Sort of." And then nothing for a long, breathless moment. Then he grabbed his handheld and brought up details. "Just a second, Katie. This is...interesting."
She'd already spent her regret, so she just sat back and watched him work. Probably something about the hearings, she figured, and she had no desire to interfere with that. Instead, she finished off her burger and flagged Lee for a refill on her Coke. Before he brought it, though, she felt her own handheld buzz in her pocket—an urgent message at two in the morning—and reached up to reactivate her headset.
Reed saw the motion and shrugged. "That one's from me," he said, "but you're going to want to look at it." He considered her, narrow eyes measuring again, and said a little too casually, "What do you know about a Douglas LeClerc?"
It took her a moment to place the name, her train of thought so far down another track, but eventually it came crashing home. "LeClerc? The researcher?" She fumbled her handheld out onto the table in her haste. "He was working with Shadow Mountain! Ghoster told me about him. Is he connected to the blackouts? Because that would be—"
"He's dead," Reed said quietly, and that stopped Katie short.
For a moment she didn't move. She took a slow breath, eyes fixed on her handheld spun at a funny angle on the table. She blinked, and asked him, "How? Where?"
"New York. He was found on the riverfront in the Bronx, ghosted all to hell."
"Bronx?" Katie snapped. "Wait, is this—"
Reed cut her off with a nod. "Your old partner's case. I tracked it down when you objected so strongly to leaving Atlanta. Figured I could throw you a project you might like a little better."
She held his eyes for a moment. She felt hers crinkling in the corners, almost a smile, but she kept it to herself. She blinked twice, then looked back down at her handheld and pulled up the casefile. "I don't really know anything about the case," she said. "Marshall didn't either. He just thought we should check it out."
"He was right," Reed said. "Somebody went out of his way to keep that one silent, and the officers on the case were in way over their heads."
Katie nodded furiously. Marshall had told her the same thing. "And that was before we knew it was LeClerc," she said. "This has something to do with Shadow Mountain. I'd swear it. There's way too many coincidences here, Reed!" The words came out with a heat she couldn't control.
Reed met her eyes with an expression that didn't disagree. He bit his bottom lip then jabbed his chin toward the report on Katie's handheld. "You ever heard of a SpectreShield?"
She shook her head immediately, and he sighed. "No real surprise. They're new, and they're ugly."
Her fingers were tight around the edges of her handheld, but she could tear her eyes from Reed's. There'd be time enough to read later. She licked her lips and asked him, "Ugly how?"
"It's a portable active personal ghosting device." He nodded when her eyes widened. "Yeah. Not just that, but it's good. We've seen things like it in the past, but they're always clumsy. They tend to get disabled by Hathor infrastructure updates before we ever get around to it."
"And this one?"
"This one's special," Reed said. "Dimms thinks it's piggybacking on Hippocrates, but that doesn't really get us anywhere. It shuts down cameras at a range of thirty yards, though, and it blinds everything that reports home—handhelds, watches, the whole set."
"What does that have to do with our case?"
"The killer apparently left one on the corpse. That's...unusual."
"Unusual as in it could match an MO?"
"Unusual as in...that's a year's salary, for you and me. After your boys shut it down, they fished a handgun out of the river that cost a pretty penny, too. Somebody dropped some cash on this hit."
She whistled softly, reading through the police report. "This sounds like mob work. Tortino's in Shadow Mountain—"
"And our victim was researching them." Reed nodded. "It kinda weird the officer running the case didn't note that connection in the casefile, isn't it?"
Katie snorted, and Reed arched an eyebrow in response. She shook her head. "Orman's worthless." She tapped her handheld. "The cop on this case. That was probably half of why Marshall wanted us to assert jurisdiction."
"Really?" Reed frowned. "He'd miss something like that?"
"I worked with him on a hostage situation a little while back," Katie said. "Took us about a hundred years to get it wrapped up." Reed barked a little laugh, and Katie smiled and nodded back. "I'm serious, man. He's useless."
Reed frowned. "He's still our point man. Even if we assert jurisdiction. It's his case, his turf—"
"We can't reassign it?" She was watching his eyes, so she saw the hesitation. She leaned forward, intent. "I'm telling you, Reed. We don't want him. We'd be better off just letting it go."
Reed didn't meet her eyes. He didn't answer right away, either. He toyed with his empty glass tumbler, and finally he sighed. "You gonna tell me who you want on this?"
"Marshall," she said. "He'd be perfect."
"This didn't happen in Brooklyn," Reed said quietly, but Katie waved away his objection.
