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“To be clear, Mai and I did the heavy lifting,” Kessler said.
“They always say that,” Sparks said, smiling at me.
I’d never seen a briefing run quite this way. Far from being the single point of command in charge of disseminating information, TJ allowed the baton be passed from speaker to speaker. That dilution of authority might be what had gotten Red into trouble in the first place. I put a pin in my opinion, though, because it wasn’t my team, no one was asking for my input, and Red hadn’t stopped telegraphing her sense of betrayal to me.
“Actually, we had eight pairs of eyes reviewing the footage over and over for most of the day yesterday,” TJ said. “We compared and compiled notes and realized that this man”—TJ clicked forward his slide deck by a few frames and pointed to a guy in a green baseball cap and black jacket—“showed up at the same coffee shop at 0700 on Wednesdays and Fridays, coincidentally the same days and times that O’Dell sometimes stopped there. The two days O’Dell didn’t show at the coffee shop, he and Mystery Man turned up at the West Side Deli for lunch at 1300.”
“No other patterns come close,” Alder said. “I’ve determined there’s a 96.4 percent chance the two men were meeting, although neither the coffee shop nor the deli had inside footage going back further than 24 hours.”
I’d heard Alder toss around precise percentages a couple of times over the past few days. What I’d taken to be an odd speech quirk was, according to Jensen, an ability to accurately predict the likelihood of events based on complex algorithms Alder built, thus the team took her probability statistics as gospel. Sparks had told me that Alder’s love of algorithms was closely related to her fascination with fractals, which she shared with her six partners in her polygamous relationship. At which point I had politely excused myself from the conversation, not because of my monogamy-centric brain, but because after the team conversation on Sunday morning alluding to my love life, I was sensitive to prying into anyone else’s.
Red nodded as she watched the series of slides that TJ clicked through, each showing a different day and time when both men arrived separately at their shared destinations. “I take it there are no good images of either of their faces.”
“None,” TJ confirmed. “We’ve positively identified O’Dell based on biometrics, medical records, movement profiles, the whole deal. But we need a lot more to go on before we can identify his friend.”
“Who is probably not Carbonados, else he’d know O’Dell is dead,” Red said.
“That’s our starting point,” TJ said. “Which brings us to our upcoming operation.” He glanced at Red. “Questions?”
She shook her head. “I think I’m all caught up. Thanks.”
“Continuing our briefing,” TJ clicked back a few slides to a blueprint of the deli and nodded toward Penn.
“Other than the front door, the building has one other exit, down the hallway between the kitchen and the public restrooms,” Penn said. “Sparks and I will be at the booth closest to that hallway, on a date.”
“You’ve been waiting our whole professional life to take me on a date,” Sparks joked.
Penn grinned at his partner. “Yep. Don’t tell my husband. Now, if our mystery man heads for the restroom, I’ll follow him to make sure he doesn’t go for the back exit. If he does, I’ll give chase.”
“And we’ll have a logistical crew from another HEAT team waiting in the street behind the deli just in case,” Sparks said.
“Mai and I will cover the front door from the table closest to the entrance,” Kessler said. “I’ll be in the chair facing into the restaurant so I can watch Mystery Man to determine whether he recognizes Prescott, whether or not he approaches him.”
“Prescott?” Red and I said together, then glanced at each other.
“You’re our bait,” TJ said. “Even if he’s not Carbonados, we want Kessler’s read on whether or not he recognizes you from Friday night’s fight or Saturday’s car chase, which would point to the likelihood that he has some knowledge of this operation of theirs. That will give us a better sense of how to question him.”
“You’re going to snatch the guy in the deli?” I asked. That was ballsy, even for a bunch of spies.
“Of course not,” Penn said. “We know he always cuts through an alley two blocks west of the deli after he leaves. The command van will be parked there. That’s where we’ll net him.”
Now that sounded like a plan I would expect from spies.
“It might sound unorthodox,” Kessler said, obviously reading my dubious expression, “but it’s just another day’s work for us.”
“Right up our alley,” Jensen said, grinning.
That drew a collective groan from his teammates.
“This is ridiculous.” Red stood and faced down TJ from the opposite end of the table.
The team went quiet. She was annoyed, or maybe more than that. More like pissed.
“If this guy is going to recognize anyone, it’s going to be me,” Red said. “At least let me go with Evan.”
“No,” TJ said. “You’re just coming off a 72-hour medical watch, and even if you weren’t, you’re not ops.”
She winced at his words. Now I was annoyed, or more like pissed.
