CHAPTER 99
The hit took less than five seconds.
Rowan Anderson walked back to the Peugeot with the diplomatic license plates and hoped that whoever was watching would remember the car more than its driver.
Anyone bothering to look at the driver would have seen only someone—could have been a man or a woman, no idea—in a black ball cap, a long black coat, and dark sunglasses, with a scarf covering most of the person’s face.
Besides, on the off chance that some toothless crackhead did remember the car’s make and model, or even its tag number, who the fuck were they going to tell anyway?
Anderson made her way back to I-295 and blended seamlessly into traffic. Someone would find Natasha at some point and call the cops. Maybe. It really didn’t matter, since she would be long gone.
Twenty minutes later Rowan was southbound on the George Washington Memorial Parkway, passing Ronald Reagan National Airport. She reached into her go bag for another burner phone to make a call.
“It’s me. We’ve been summoned.”
“When? Where?” Elise Courville asked, her voice trembling. “What does he want?”
“I got an encrypted message a little while ago. I’m out in your car, just driving. I don’t know if he’s here himself or if it’s one of his goons, it just said to meet him tonight at nine somewhere over on Capitol Hill. He’ll send the location when we get close.
“Listen, Elise—just relax. We haven’t done anything wrong, and if that shithead tries to say we have, I’ll kill him myself right there.” Rowan said all this with the calm confidence she knew Courville needed to hear.
“But how can he be here? We said we weren’t going to contact him—did you?”
“No Elise, I didn’t contact him. Look, for all we know he just wants an update. Which we do have, and it’s a good plan. Now don’t get carried away—it’ll be okay.”
“If you say so. I was supposed to have dinner with my father. Should I just tell him that you and I are getting together for a drink?”
“Hmm—don’t do that, Elise. My boss will fry my ass if we’re seen doing social stuff outside normal work hours. We’re too close. Tell your father we’re going to see Nathan Phillips—that he wanted to check in and see how you and I were doing. Totally believable, and nobody’s the wiser.”
“What an odd suggestion. Why would you say that, Rowan?”
“I don’t know. I’ve just been thinking about him lately, and it’s plausible without being contrived—know what I mean?
” Anderson had been caught off guard by the pushback, but Courville would do as she was told.
Hopefully. Anderson thought back to the moment at Courville’s home, when she had momentarily feared that Elise really was going to pull the trigger of the Glock pointed at her head.
You never know with people when they get in power mode.
She had to hand it to Ming: He was the master when it came to deception and subterfuge.
“You like him, don’t you?” Courville teased.
“Yeah—he’s okay,” Anderson said truthfully. “But right now, man, we need to get through the night and finish this soon. I’ll pick you up around the corner at eight thirty.” She hung up without giving Courville an opportunity to ask more questions.
Now it was Rowan Anderson’s turn to be nervous: She had to make a date with Nat Phillips.