The Naked Edge Page 8

  “A hell of a swell guy,” Cavanaugh said. Knowing that he'd been investigated made him feel vulnerable. If William could find him, others could. In fact, they had.

  The cabin—a hunting retreat that Garth leased from the government—had a living/cooking area, a bedroom, a hand-pumped well, and an outdoor toilet. After scouting the perimeter, Cavanaugh had waited in the woods, listening, satisfying himself that the night was quiet.

  Meanwhile, Jamie had closed and locked the interior shutters. When he entered, he saw her put a lamp in a corner, where it wouldn't help a gunman who peered through cracks in the shutters and tried to use its feeble light to guide his aim. Mrs. Patterson (tireless, wonderful Mrs. Patterson) used the cabin's Coleman stove to heat cans of soup that she found in a cupboard.

  “You're going to get your wish,” Cavanaugh told Jamie after a long silence.

  She looked confused by the apparently out-of-nowhere reference.

  “I'm accepting what Duncan gave me in his will. I'm assuming control of Global Protective Services.”

  The stove hissed. William and Mrs. Patterson watched him.

  “I think the only way to catch whoever's responsible is to offer myself as bait,” he continued, “and that's an awfully good reason to own Global Protective Services. It'll give me access to the best operators in the business.”

  The stove kept hissing.

  “All my life, I tried to protect people,” Cavanaugh said. “Even when I was in Delta Force, I thought of it as protecting. Against terrorists. Against all the cowards and sadists who think they can kill anybody in the name of God or because they believe they're God. But this is something new for me. This is the first time I've needed protecting.”

  14

  Venice.

  The suite in the hotel—a converted twelfth-century Doge palace—had a dramatic view of St. Mark's piazza. Crowds persisted, despite a chill spray from rising waves.

  “Glass making,” the Internet tycoon said.

  “Glass making?” The head of his protective detail frowned.

  “Nobody comes to Venice without taking the boat across the lagoon to Murano,” the tycoon's wife said. “For certain, I don't. Murano's the most famous glass-making town in the world. Its pieces are museum quality.”

  The protective agent nodded. “Give me twenty-four hours to set up the security.”

  “In twenty-four hours, we'll be in Madrid,” the tycoon's wife told him.

  “Madrid? That isn't on the schedule.”

  “We decided during breakfast. This city's too damp.”

  The agent, a former member of Britain's Strategic Air Service, nodded again. “Yes, all those canals.” One hundred and fifty of them, to be exact. Four hundred bridges. One hundred and seventeen islands, every nook and cranny of them a security nightmare.

  “So that's the plan.” The tycoon's wife dropped her napkin onto a half-eaten bowl of fruit. “In ten minutes, we leave for Murano.”

  There wasn't much to be said after that. The agent, whose name was Miller, had five men at his disposal, three of whom were resting after the night shift. Because the change in schedule was last minute, a predator couldn't know about it, so there wasn't any point in sending a man to scout the location. Miller took some consolation that he didn't need to be overly concerned about a long-distance threat from a sniper. With a business executive, the likely threat was kidnappers wanting a ransom.

  The bumpy twenty-minute lagoon crossing made the tycoon and his wife slightly nauseous. As Miller's eyes roamed the choppy water, on guard against any boats that might speed toward them, he studied the island of San Michele, Venice's main cemetery. Several boats were docked there, draped with funeral cloths and wreaths. He'd read somewhere that, with land so scarce in the Venice area, soil had to be brought to the cemetery so that it could continue accepting coffins.

  He switched his gaze toward Murano, the heart of which had two rows of Renaissance buildings separated by a canal. Yellow and brown, the long, stone structures adjoined one another, almost all of them glass-making factories.

  My God, if we need to go into every one of these buildings, Miller thought, we'll be here all day.

  But the tycoon and his wife had made phone calls and knew precisely where they were heading. Miller instructed one of his men to stay behind and guard the launch, to make sure it wasn't tampered with. Then Miller and his remaining agent flanked their clients, never looking at them, always peering outward at potential threats. The tycoon and his wife ignored the tourists, crossed the street next to the canal, and entered a building, where two well-dressed owners waited for them.

  Miller didn't like the shadowy corridor he faced—or the roar at the end of it. He entered a large area that consisted of several blazing furnaces, their hatches open. Men wearing fire-retardant aprons and gloves held metal poles into the flames, turning them, softening the large pieces of glass suspended from their tips. At a precisely judged moment, one of the workers removed the pole and applied various tools to the molten glass, cutting, twisting, and shaping it, sometimes blowing through a tube to expand it into a globe.

  Keeping his attention on the corridor through which they'd entered, Miller heard a conversation behind him, the two owners using English to explain to the client and his wife how time-intensive a hand-crafted piece of glass was, how it could take all day to make one perfect vase and certainly much longer to fashion a glass peacock, its fanned-out tail as multi-colored as that of an actual bird. The most ambitious pieces, the most complexly contoured and layered, required centuries of glass-making experience. The techniques were handed down from generation to generation.

  Miller straightened as a man and woman came along the corridor. In their mid-thirties, pleasant looking, they wore shorts and sandals. The man's shirt was tucked in. So was the woman's blouse. No outline of a gun or a knife. No fanny packs. Nothing to cause concern. The man had a camera around his neck. He nodded to Miller, a little puzzled that Miller wasn't watching the activity around the ovens. Miller nodded in return.

  Behind him, the two owners were telling the tycoon and his wife that the almost finished vases they saw on a table required one more procedure and then would be ready for exhibition.

  “Twenty of them. How much will their total value be?” the tycoon asked.

  The answer was a very long number in lira.

  More tourists entered.

  Miller scanned them. Nothing threatening.

  “How much in dollars?” the tycoon asked.

  Miller heard fingers tapping a calculator. “Four hundred thousand.”

  The tycoon said, “I assume they can be safely packaged and sent by air.”

  “Of course.”

  “Signore,” one of the executives said, presumably to a tourist who'd entered, “photographs are not permitted.”

  The man answered in French that he didn't understand.

  The executive switched to French and repeated that photographs were not allowed.

  The room became more crowded.

  “No, don't touch that,” the other executive said in Italian.

  Glass shattered.

  The startle reflex cannot be eliminated. It's hardwired into the human nervous system. Knees bend. Shoulders hunch forward. Hands rise to the chest, palms outward. These movements provide an instinctive defense against an attack. His reaction unwilled and automatic, Miller swung his gaze from the corridor toward the scene behind him, where the two executives and Miller's clients gaped at an almost finished vase that the man with the camera had knocked over. Chunks of colored glass lay at their feet.

  “I'm so sorry, so sorry,” the man kept saying in French.

  Miller suddenly felt light-headed. His leg was wet. He peered down, gasping when he discovered that his right pant leg was cascading crimson, that he was standing in a pool of swiftly spreading blood.

  Femoral artery was all he could think. Somebody cut my—

  A knife slash with a sharp blade almost never caused pain unles
s delivered with force. As the skin parted, there was only a stinging sensation. Spinning, Miller saw the woman who'd followed the group into the factory. Shorts. Sandals. She walked along the murky corridor toward the bright sunlight that formed the exit, looking once over her shoulder.

  Abruptly, Miller's vision turned gray. Groping to find something to keep him from falling, he stumbled toward his client's wife, who jerked away in horror. Somebody screamed, but Miller barely heard. The roar of the furnaces became muted. Their blazes dimmed. Despite the heat radiating from them, he felt cold. Reaching, falling, he struck the table, upended it, and sent the remainder of the vases crashing onto the floor.

  With his head sideways on the concrete floor, he stared at colored chunks of now-worthless glass shimmering around him. Their luster faded, as did his vision. The last he saw were the chunks being covered by his blood.

  15

  Sunlight glinting off its bullet-resistant windows, the helicopter landed in the meadow in front of the cabin, the wind from its rotor blades bending the grass.

  “But when will I be able to come back and see my family?” The noise from the chopper's engines forced Mrs. Patterson to strain her voice.

  “When we're sure you're out of danger,” Jamie explained.

  “Which is the same as saying ‘when Aaron's out of danger.’” Mrs. Patterson nodded toward Cavanaugh.

  Jamie had gotten so used to his assumed name that she felt a sense of unreality when people referred to him as Aaron.

  “It's for your family's protection as much as yours,” Jamie told her. “Believe me, you'll be well-cared for.”

  “New York?”

  “Yes. Manhattan.”

  Mrs. Patterson thought a moment. “Is Radio City Music Hall there?”

  Jamie almost smiled. “Ten blocks from where you'll be staying. We've got some nice-looking young men who'll be pleased to escort you.”

  Behind her, Cavanaugh told Garth, “William phoned Judge Canfield and got permission for us to leave the state until the grand jury convenes.”

  “He certainly has the power to get things done in a hurry.” Garth didn't sound happy that influence achieved results. “We're checking every hotel and motel in the area. We're especially interested in the cabins at Moose Junction where you saw the assault team. We're also checking the airlines and the local rental car agencies.”

  “The car that blew up. You're sure the bomb was under it?”

  “The crime scene investigators confirmed that.”

  “What the hell is going on?” But even as Cavanaugh asked the question, the answer was obvious. “Whoever hired those men was afraid of what they might say if they were captured and interrogated. Ditto the sniper.”

  In the helicopter, the pilot motioned for everybody to get aboard.

  “Thanks for your help, Garth.”

  “I'm just glad you got out of this alive.”

  Except for Angelo, Cavanaugh thought, anger burning inside him.

  I'll find who did this.

  The chopper lifted off, gaining altitude to clear the bluffs. Its destination was eastward. But as it flew from the Teton valley, Cavanaugh did something he'd promised himself that he wouldn't—he asked the pilot to fly north first. He wanted to see his ranch. Above his canyon, he surveyed the scattered wreckage of his home, the charred timbers, the craters where the propane tank and the helicopter had exploded, the flattened lodge, the burned meadow.

  He and Jamie looked at one another.

  Yes, I'll find who did this, he thought.

  16

  Albuquerque, New Mexico.

  The newly constructed jail was on the outskirts of the city. The state's hottest time was from the middle of June to the middle of September. But this had been a drought year, the heat lingering into the fall. Even now, in the middle of October, at mid-morning, the temperature was 85. Although Bowie's car windows were open, the absence of a breeze made the interior feel hotter than the air outside, his brow beading with sweat, his wet shirt sticking to the back of the seat. But he had trained himself to ignore inconvenient sensations and focused all his attention on the glass doors at the front of the jail.

  Fifteen minutes later, a lanky Hispanic stepped out. His hair was cut so short that his scalp showed. He wore sneakers, jeans, and a white T-shirt, whose short sleeves revealed tattooed gang symbols on his arms. Bowie knew that the man, whose name was Raoul Ramirez, was twenty-three. Raoul had been a member of an east-side gang called the Blades, the name of which Bowie approved, although he wondered if Raoul had the awareness to know that blade didn't mean only knife. Raoul's blade had certainly gotten him into trouble. He spent five years in prison for forcibly restraining a woman in a motel room and raping her. In addition, his police record listed arrests for assault, theft, shooting at an occupied building, and torching a car that belonged to a member of another gang. Except for the rape, every arrest had resulted in probation.

  Because of overcrowding in the state's prison system, Raoul had been allowed to serve his final months in the relative ease of the spacious new jail. Now the sneer on his face and the sociopathic dullness in his eyes became more pronounced as a low-riding car stopped at the curb.

  Raoul got in. Gang handshakes were exchanged. The car pulled away. Maintaining a careful distance, Bowie followed to the modest, single-story home of Raoul's parents, where relatives and friends parked and hurried in. Music and the smell of barbecued chicken drifted along the street. Bowie took for granted that one of the ways Raoul would celebrate was with alcohol. Around two in the afternoon, when the booze had its effect and the urge to have fun took control, Raoul left his parents’ home, got in the lowrider with his friends, and drove down the street.

  The car stopped next to Bowie, who assumed that neighbors had phoned Raoul's parents about the man watching the house. A window slid down. Pounding music boomed out. Raoul glowered.

  “I'd like to talk to you,” Bowie said.

  “I did my time. Why don't you chingado cops leave me alone?”

  “I'm not a police officer.”

  “I was innocent. The bitch lied.”

  “I've got a business proposition for you.”

  Raoul lapsed into a string of hate-filled Spanish.

  Bowie surprised Raoul by answering in Spanish. “I'm serious. I've got a business proposition for you.”

  Raoul spat on Bowie's car. The window went up. The car moved on.

  Bowie followed. Raoul and his friends reached an Allsup's gas station, where they bought two twelve-packs of Tecote beer. They drove over to Interstate 40 and headed west.

  Bowie continued to follow as they left the crowded highway and turned north onto a deserted, narrow road. Bowie noted the mountains in the distance and the cacti around him.

  The paved road became gravel and, except for the two vehicles, was now totally deserted as it rose toward a low hill. From a quarter mile back, staying clear of the dust their car raised, Bowie had an occasional glimpse of them drinking beer and knew that in their quest for fun they'd decided that he would provide it.

  Their car went over the hill. Following, cresting the hill, descending, Bowie saw what he expected: the car blocking the road, an embankment shielding it from anybody watching from a distance.

  Raoul and his three friends were propped against the lowrider, drinking beer, watching him stop. As he got out, the sun weighed on him, but he ignored it, focusing his reflexes, leaning sideways when Raoul threw his empty can at him.

  “That's what I think of your shitface business proposition,” Raoul said.

  The can clattered over stones, but Bowie wasn't distracted. The jeans that Raoul wore from the jail had been replaced by baggy, big-pocketed pants that hung low on his hips like the pants his friends wore.

  The pants aren't hanging down to their butt cracks just for style, Bowie thought. It's because of weight. They have weapons.

  “You cops shouldn't be harassing me.” Raoul seemed proud that he knew the word. “It's against the
law.”

  His friends thought that was hilarious.

  “I told you, I'm not a police officer,” Bowie assured him.

  “So this isn't entrapment.” Another big word Raoul was proud of. “I won't be charged for stomping a cop.”

  “Or cutting you,” a kid next to Raoul said, drawing a knife.

  “Or maybe I should just give you a red hole in your head.” Raoul pulled a semi-automatic pistol from his pants. It was small, a .32.

  “You wouldn't enjoy doing that,” Bowie said.

  “No?”

  “You ever hear of Carrie Fisher?”

  “Who?”

  “The actress. Debbie Reynolds is her mother.”

  “What the—”

  “She played Princess Leia in the first three Star Wars movies.”

  “Man, I might as well shoot you to keep you from talking me to death.”

  “She also writes novels and screenplays. Her best line is, ‘The trouble with instant gratification is, it takes too long.’”

  Raoul looked as if Bowie was speaking Martian.

  “You won't shoot me,” Bowie said, “because it's too quick. It wouldn't be as much fun as prolonging the foreplay by cutting or stomping me.”

  “Foreplay?” For a moment, Raoul looked confused, as if the concept wasn't familiar to him. “Yeah, you got that right.”

  “Can I have him, Raoul?” one of the kids asked. “Let me take a piece of him.”

  Raoul thought about it.

  Perhaps he's beginning to suspect, Bowie thought. If so, that's encouraging. I'm not wasting my time.

  “All of us'll take him,” Raoul decided.

  They pushed away from the car and spread out. One of the kids finished his beer and threw the can. So did the others.

  Bowie had no trouble avoiding the cans.

  “What'll it be, Raoul?” a kid asked. “Stomp?”

  “Or cut?” The kid with the knife grinned.