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“I have to…”
“You have to disappear,” she says. Her face softens. “Oh.” She lightly touches my cheek. “I wish I had ice.” She pulls a packet of Wet Wipes from her console and gently strokes my forehead and cheeks. I remember falling on that face now, as well as getting a rough slap, and I involuntarily recoil from the touch. “Just another minute,” she says. “There, better.”
“Amber, I can’t just disappear. What are you talking about? I need to know what’s happened.”
She becomes agitated again. “We don’t have a whole lot of time here. What happened is everything has turned to shit and the only way to keep you safe is to get you out of here.”
“You’re FBI? Where are the other agents? Why didn’t you arrest them?”
“It’s complicated.”
“I can understand complicated. What? The FBI’s afraid of the CIA?”
“They’re not CIA. They’re private contractors, mercenaries. William Blankley and Morton “Stu” Farmer, former Marine recon. Laura Monahan, former Blackwater. They called her “Gitmo Laurie.” Enjoyed enhanced interrogation way too much. They all work for a company you’ve never heard of called Praetorian.”
I suck in a deep breath of air. Craig Summers’ CIA front company—the one that was supposed to have been dissolved.
I tell this to Amber as she fidgets. “They’re not CIA anymore,” she says. “And they’re not about surveillance, or just about surveillance.”
“What are they about?”
She doesn’t give me a straight answer. “I didn’t expect to run across them here.”
I study my wrists. They are bruised and cut from where I struggled against the handcuffs.
“Laura killed Troy,” I say. “I saw her that day, heading toward his office before he hit the street. She rammed her shoulder into me, like she was in a hurry…”
“Or a girl with an attitude,” Amber says, “who was going to take Troy out for talking to a member of the press.”
“No, she seemed surprised when I mentioned it.”
“Troy pointed you toward Olympic Defense, right?”
I nod. But he did it in passing, to show he was the smartest guy in the room. I didn’t come to Troy’s office with the agenda to find a secretive defense unit. I just wanted to shoot the shit, add some depth to a column I was doing on a major local company. Troy never mentioned Praetorian. He did ask about eleven/eleven, but not like someone who really knew what it meant.
“Why can’t you arrest them?”
“Because that’s not the way the world works. And I’m on my own right now. I don’t know who to trust on my own team. I need to find a lifeline. If you stay, you’ll be killed.” She reaches down and pops the trunk. “I have a suitcase for you. Inside is an envelope with five thousand dollars in hundreds and small bills. It’s the best I can do. You can’t use your credit cards. You can’t fly.”
“What about my gun?”
“No.”
“Oh, yeah, the pen is mightier than the sword.”
“That revolver is too heavy,” she says. “Too difficult to conceal.” She reaches across me and opens the glove box. She hands me a dark triangle of fabric. It takes me a minute to realize it’s a holster. I pull out a small revolver with a black graphite skin. The hammer is enclosed by a cowling and the barrel is short but thick, adding to the gun’s compact but menacing look. It’s the lightest gun I’ve ever held.
“Smith & Wesson 340PD Airlite,” she says. “Scandium alloy frame. Titanium barrel. Twelve ounces. The holster’s designed to stay in your pocket if you have to draw it. Here’s one Speedloader as a backup. I want it back.”
She hands me the circular device. It consists of a black plastic circle with five bullets hanging from it and a metal catch on top. Drop them into the cylinder of the revolver, twist the catch on top, let the cartridges fall in, snap the cylinder back in, and you’re done. The name says it all. The Speedloader is about the same weight as the gun.
I study the pistol. Open the cylinder, which is fully loaded with five rounds. “Will this work? I like my Combat Magnum.”
“It has stopping power, believe me. Special government-issue bullets, .357 magnum. Just don’t run out.” Her voice is businesslike, knowledgeable. This is the same woman who feigned helplessness against the dogs in Ryan Meyers’ apartment.
She reholsters the revolver.
Still I make no move to get out of the car and she’s forced to sit with me as a light rain taps on the windshield and the panorama below us becomes runny and insubstantial.
