Wright had found them in a compromising position outside, although he hadn’t said much—only thrown some broad hints. And then the couple had gone up stairs, which she could view as keeping them out of trouble.
Her attention was refocused when a nearby door opened and, speak of the devil, Wright came out, his face a classic picture from one of those TV commercials where a poor jerk learns he’s been doing something all wrong. In the next scene, he’s going to find out the magic product to solve his problem—like a special machine that works much better than crunches to flatten his stomach. For three easy payments of $9.99. Only Paula suspected that there wasn’t going to be an easy solution for Wright—or anyone else who had ended up in the Mirador Hotel.
When Paula started toward him, his head jerked up, and she was pretty sure he hadn’t wanted to be seen coming out of the business center. Interesting.
“Something wrong?” she asked.
“I . . . I need to contact my wife.”
“You have a wife?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t seem like the type.”
He shrugged. “We had a fight. I want to make sure she’s okay.”
Paula nodded, wondering if that was the real story. “And the computers and phones aren’t working?”
“Yeah.”
With a quick shake of his head, he turned and strode away.
Chapter Thirteen
Like a felon behind the wheel of the getaway vehicle after a bank heist, Grant drove with one eye on the rearview mirror. But he kept his speed below the limit as he headed away from the scene of the crime. Not his crime, he reminded himself. Now that he was in the car and driving away, it was impossible not to flash back to the impact of the bullets hitting the man he’d been holding up as a human shield. He’d thought there was no way the colonel’s men would shoot one of their own. He’d been dead wrong—although he was the one who had gotten away, leaving a bloody corpse in the shrubbery. And now that he’d made his escape, he had time to reflect on just how ruthless and brutal the attack had been. All Grant had wanted was information about his missing brother, and they’d gone to unimaginable lengths to make sure he didn’t get it.
Christ, what was going on here?
As soon as he’d opened that coffin and found the dummy inside, he’d known in his gut that something sinister was in play. He’d wanted to convince himself that there was some legitimate explanation. Now that was impossible—not after the ambush at the memorial and the hail of bullets. But, odd as it seemed, the way things had gone down gave him a tiny spark of hope.
Mack could still be alive, being held captive. But for what purpose? Like did he have some piece of information that would help a group of jihadists or something? The colonel had sounded like an American, but couldn’t that be true of a terrorist?
As he thought about the fierce attack again, Grant fought the urge to get out of sight by pulling into a downtown parking garage. But he couldn’t do it because, if they had already spotted him, he’d be trapped. Instead, he kept driving just below the speed limit and headed for upper Connecticut Avenue. A few blocks from Chevy Chase Circle, he turned off onto one of the residential side streets and pulled up under a line of mature trees along the curb. Leaving the engine running, he retrieved the dead man’s wallet from the glove compartment and riffled through the compartments.
There was about five hundred dollars in cash, but no credit cards and no ID.
Cursing under his breath, he started pulling up leather flaps and found a Maryland phone number. Just the number. No name or clue about where it was located. But Frank Decorah had allowed him to keep his password to the Decorah Security database, and Grant had left his laptop under the driver’s seat.
When he pulled it out and put in the phone number, he found it came from a facility called Hamilton Labs. And when he did some further poking around, he
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