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Callahan laughed, and Cody knew he’d won this round. “Okay,” said the voice on the other end. “How soon can you get here?”
“I’m not sure. There aren’t a lot of flights to either Sheridan or Buffalo. It might be easier, and maybe even faster, if we drove, especially since we’ll need reliable transportation while we’re there. We can drive up in six hours, but I don’t know how soon we can leave.”
“Let me know. We’ll need to set up a place to meet.” Where we can’t be seen, he didn’t have to add.
“What about my cabin near Granite Pass?” Cody offered as the idea occurred to him. “I haven’t been up there in six weeks, but I assume it’s still standing. I figure you’d have said something before now if it wasn’t.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Callahan said slowly.
“The three of us could stay there, too. Then no one would know we were even near Black Rock,” Cody said. “If things are as dicey as you intimated earlier...”
Callahan chuckled, but there was little humor in it. “You know, Walker, for an amateur you’re not half-bad.”
“Thanks,” Cody said drily. “I’ll take that as a compliment.” Both men hung up, and Cody laughed softly to himself. “Amateur,” he said and laughed again.
He walked back to the office listing in his mind all the things they needed to do before they left for Black Rock. D’Arcy and Callahan are right, he thought. We need to move on this fast. But he wasn’t so lost in thought he didn’t take every opportunity to check to see if he was being followed. And when he turned a corner two blocks before the outer gate of the agency’s complex, he let his gaze swing wide in the direction from which he’d just come, out of habit more than anything else. That was when he spotted him.
The man looked no different from anyone else on the street. He blended in—almost too well. There wasn’t a single thing that made him stand out from the crowd. Cody couldn’t have said what it was about him, but there was something...and he knew he was being tailed.
He didn’t let on he’d marked the tail, just kept heading toward the agency’s front gate. While he walked, he reviewed the scene at the pay phone in his mind, and his first spurt of adrenaline subsided. This man had not been there; Cody was sure of it. Or if he had, he hadn’t been close enough to hear Cody’s side of the conversation.
But Cody knew he wouldn’t risk using a public pay phone again. Throwaway cell phones and encryption software, he added to his mental list, which was growing longer by the minute.
Cody managed another glimpse of the man when he reached the front gate, and he imprinted the face, rough height and weight, and other general characteristics in his mind. That was when a cold, sinking feeling hit him.
He’d seen the guy before.
Two days ago when Cody was filling his truck with gas on the way to work, this man had been in the next bay over doing the same thing to a little blue subcompact. He hadn’t picked up on it at the time. But now that Cody realized he was being followed, the memory returned to him. How long? he wondered. How long has someone been following me? I should have picked up on it earlier—I’m getting too damn lazy. Is it related to Callahan somehow? Or a different case?
Either way, he didn’t like it. It meant he was slipping, and that was a bad sign for a special agent.
Cody flashed his ID badge to the guard at the gate, then badged into the building using the electronic stripe on his ID card, without which no one entered the agency’s building. No one. Early on in his career with the agency, Cody had forgotten his badge one morning and had been forced to return home to retrieve it.
But he still had to run the human gauntlet. Two agency security guards stood watch at the front desk, armed and alert. Even if someone stole an electronic ID card, they still had to match the photo on the badge, and both guards perused Cody’s badge carefully before allowing him to enter the elevator. In the morning there were always two sets of guards on duty to make the line move faster, but it was never quick. But that made the building ultra secure. And there were things that went on in the agency they didn’t want the general public to know.
