10. Farrow
Chapter ten
Farrow
The SUV pulled up, and I was already by the door with Wiley’s coat in one hand and his coffee in the other.
“Coffee’s hot. I’ve got your coat. Let’s move.”
He was in the parlor, staring at a legal pad. He’d hidden whatever was on the second page under a blank first page.
He didn’t move.
“Wiley.”
“One minute.”
“You don’t have one minute,” I said.
“I have however many minutes it takes for that car to be at the curb.”
“It’s already at the curb.”
He looked up, and Christ, he looked rough. His hair was still damp from the shower, with dark smudges under his eyes a Sharpie couldn’t have drawn better.
He finally stood. I held the coat open behind him, and he shrugged into it. I pressed the coffee into his hand.
“Phone in airplane mode.”
“It’s in my pocket.”
“Not the same thing, Wiley.”
He pulled it out, killed it, and dropped it back. “Better, Mom?”
“Marginally.”
“You’re a delight in the morning, Farrow.”
“I’m a delight at every hour. Most people are only sober enough to notice in the morning.”
He almost smiled. That was beyond expectations at five-fifty in the morning, considering where we were going.
Reed was at the front door, with a hand on the deadbolt and a comm in his ear. “Front clear,” he said. “Collins is driving.”
The hundred-year-old hardwood floors gave everyone away in the house. Dane was coming down the hall.
“Farrow.”
I turned.
He wore jeans and a black hoodie, sleeves shoved up nearly to his elbows. The camera feed was open on his phone, and he held a mug of coffee in his other hand.
God, he looked good. Tired and contained and beautiful, the way only Dane Fletcher could look at six in the morning in a borrowed safehouse. And the man Dane had fucked the night before was about to walk out the door and head to a meeting that already smelled wrong.
“You have everything?” he asked.
I patted myself down. “Earpiece. Sidearm. Backup. Wiley. Coffee for Wiley. Patience for Wiley. Spare patience for Wiley. Eamon’s already at the building?”
“He’ll be in the lobby when you arrive. Cabot stays with me. Eamon’s not putting both principals in the same building for a meeting he doesn’t fully trust. The meeting brief?”
“In my head.”
“I’d prefer it in your pocket,” Dane said.
“And I’d prefer a lot of things, Fletcher. We work with what we have.”
“Keep comms hot the whole way. Check in every five.”
“Every ten.”
“Every five, Farrow.”
“Every ten or I report what Wiley’s doing the entire drive,” I said.
His mouth twitched. “Every ten.”
“Excellent. Mature compromise. We’re growing.”
Dane looked at me.
“Move,” he said.
“Moving.”
I put a hand at the small of Wiley’s back—light and professional, the same hand I’d used to guide at least fifty principals through fifty doorways. It was also the hand that had braced against an upstairs wall last night while Dane Fletcher pressed me against it and took what he needed.
Not the time for that. Definitely not the time.
I walked Wiley to the door. He stopped at the threshold for half a second.
“Wiley.”
“I’m going.”
We descended three brick steps, crossed the sidewalk, and climbed into the SUV. I pulled the door shut, and the locks engaged with a soft clunk.
Wiley turned and looked back through the rear window. He watched Reed close the green door. He didn’t speak the entire length of Mount Vernon.
When we hit the turn at Charles, he finally spoke. “Helen Patterson sat on a Harcourt foundation board for three years.”
“Yes.”
“He’s bringing us something he was supposed to bury.”
“Or he’s bringing us something he was told to hand over.”
“You don’t think he’s clean,” Wiley said.
“I think we’re about to find out.”
I tapped the comm twice.
“Moving. ETA twenty-two.”
Dane’s voice in my ear. “Copy. Eyes up.”
“Always, babe.”
A pause.
“Farrow.”
“Yeah, Dane.”
“Bring him back.”
His voice caught on the word “back.” The line went dead before I could say more.
I closed my eyes for one second and tried to breathe normally.
The SUV took the turn onto Storrow.
The building was on a side street off Kendall, one of those glass-and-steel monstrosities that had gone up only a decade ago and was already getting tired around the edges. Collins pulled up to the curb a hundred feet short of the entrance and killed the engine.
I got out and checked the block. The foot traffic was light. It was early.
The street was clean. The building unnecessarily exposed.
Glass frontage ran the full width of the lobby, floor to ceiling. From the sidewalk, you could see the elevator bank and the security desk. Anyone inside was visible from the street.
It was beautiful in an abstract, architectural sense. Operationally, it was stupid.
I opened Wiley’s door. “We walk in fast and continue through the lobby to the elevator. Keep your eyes forward. Don’t stop to read the directory. Don’t check your phone. You ignore everybody. If I touch your back, you will follow my hand. Clear?”
“Clear.”
I tapped the comm. “On approach.”
“Copy,” Dane said. “Heads up, Eamon’s at the elevator.”
Wiley climbed out, and I closed the door. I clocked everything as we moved.
The lobby door was a single glass pane on a slow hydraulic. Wiley hurried through. Eamon was at the bank of elevators reading his phone. He looked up as we joined him.
Eamon pressed the call button. The light for the sixteenth floor lit up, then the fifteenth. It was on its way down.
I scanned the lobby. A guard sat at the security desk. He was in his mid-fifties, reading something on a computer screen. The seating area was empty.
“Patterson’s coming on foot from the parking garage on the next block,” Eamon said. “He didn’t want a car at the entrance. Collins spotted him on his way.”
“You agreed to that?”
“I agreed to a meeting. He chose the approach. I made him take a route I could see for the last hundred feet.”
The elevator chimed. The doors slid open.
I caught movement at the glass front.
Patterson was on our side of the street, thirty feet from the lobby door. Eamon had shared his photo—mid-sixties, trimmed silver beard. He walked with his head down, holding a briefcase against his thigh.
Beyond Patterson, a man in a long charcoal coat was on the opposite side of the street . He had one hand at his side. The other held what I read as a phone. Half-a-heartbeat later, I knew it wasn’t.
“Eamon,” I said.
Eamon had already seen.
The elevator finished opening behind us. The man in the coat raised his arm.
I put my hand on the back of Wiley’s neck.
“Down,” I shouted.
Wiley’s knees hit the polished marble floor. His shoulder hit the inside corner of the elevator threshold. I went down with him, my body shielding him from the entrance, my left hand still cupped at the back of his skull. I reached for my sidearm with my free hand.
A flat, dull crack rang out. The second came a beat later.
Gunshots from a pistol.
The lobby’s glass didn’t shatter. A small white star opened high in the right pane, the size of my thumbprint.
Patterson was down.
“Stay down,” I said into Wiley’s ear.
Patterson lay on his right side. His briefcase had skidded two feet and stopped. He held his left hand against his chest. His right was open against the pavement, palm up, fingers slack. The man in the charcoal coat was gone.
A motorcycle started up somewhere to the right of the building. The note was clean and high. It went south and faded within three seconds.
Eamon tapped his comm. “Patterson down. Outside. We need EMS now.”
The lobby door opened. The security guard was in the doorway, staring at Patterson on the sidewalk.
“Inside,” I said—loud. “Step back inside. Now.”
He looked at me, his mouth open.
“Inside.”
Wiley made a sound under me.
“You’re safe,” I said. “Stay down and don’t move.”
Eamon crossed the lobby toward the door in a crouch.
“Eamon—“
“Stay with Wiley,” he said.
Eamon landed on one knee beside Patterson, pushing his shoulder slightly to view the wound. Patterson lowered his left hand, and I saw his mouth move. I couldn’t hear the words.
I tapped my comm.
“Dane.”
“Shots? Chatter from Michael. Wiley?”
“Wiley’s not hit. He’s under me. Patterson took one in the chest. Eamon’s with him on the sidewalk. Shooter went south on a bike. Clean exit.”
“Christ.”
That was my vocabulary, not Dane’s.
“Get Wiley up,” Dane said. “Get him moving. There’s an unmarked door behind the elevator bank. It leads to a corridor and the service exit to the loading dock behind.”
“Copy.”
“Farrow.”
“Yeah?”
“Are you hit?”
I hadn’t, until that second, even thought about it.
I ran my free hand in a quick sweep over my body. Nothing.
“I’m clean.”
Dane exhaled. “Move him. I’ll talk you through the corridor. EMS is on the way. Michael called it in.”
I shifted my weight and brought Wiley up by the elbow, keeping his head lower than mine, and staying between him and the glass. He came up under his own power. All the color was gone from his face, and his pupils were wide.
“Wiley, look at me. We’re going to walk around the elevator bank. I’ll take it slow. We’ll pass through two doors on the way to the back alley. I’ll have my hand on your waist. Clear?”
“Patterson—“
“Eamon has him.”
“He’s—“ Wiley swallowed and nodded.
As we entered the service corridor, a siren started up outside and grew louder.
I held the door as Wiley left the building. “Did you see his face?” Wiley asked.
“No.”
“He saw mine.”
The siren became two and then three. Dane was in my ear again.
“Status.”
“Entering the alley.”
“Eamon?”
“Out front with Patterson.”
“Patterson’s status?"
I looked at Wiley. He was watching me and waiting for my answer.
“I don’t know yet.”
The back exit dumped us into a service alley that ran the length of the block, dumpsters on one side, with an icy breeze that chilled me to the bone.
I checked the alley both ways. Somewhere on the next block over, a garbage truck’s hydraulics whirred. From the front of the building, sirens split the air.
I tapped the comm.