Afraid of the Dark - James Grippando [107]
Assuming there really was a kitty8.
He retrieved Paulo’s e-mail address from the Miami Police Department home page before putting the finishing touches on the draft message. It didn’t matter if Swyteck had brought Paulo to London, or if Paulo had brought Swyteck. They were here together, and that made for a single threat. The draft e-mail seemed fine, but he didn’t want to fire off anything in knee-jerk fashion. He took a couple minutes to get dressed, then returned to the computer to read it again.
Perfect. He hit SEND, then started across the bedroom.
“Where are you going?” Shada asked from the bed.
He put on his coat—the one with the key to the cellar in the pocket—and turned to face her in the darkness.
“Taking care of business,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
He stepped closer to the bed, his expression deadly serious. “It means none of your business,” he said, letting her feel the weight of his stare for a minute. Finally, he turned and left the room, closing the bedroom door behind him.
Chapter Fifty-five
Jack was glad to hear Andie’s voice on the line. It was lunchtime in Miami, and she had only a few minutes. Vince had gone down to dinner by himself to give Jack time alone to talk in the room. Jack wanted to tell her how much he missed her, but Andie wasn’t one to get all sloppy on the phone in the middle of her workday.
“Theo wants to know if you’re planning to hit the Tanqueray distillery,” she said.
Theo was like those relatives up north who expect you to bring them back a bag of grapefruit every time you visit Florida. Jack would rather fork over twenty bucks with directions to their local grocery store. He changed the subject.
“How’s Grandpa?”
“He’s doing surprisingly well. We’ve had some good talks since you left.”
“You have?”
“It’s weird. Your trip to London seems to have energized him. Or at least triggered some long-term memory.”
“Are you telling me there really was a General Swyteck?”
“No, but Grandpa was convincing enough that I did some research on your family.”
Jack caught his breath. An FBI agent doing research on your family could be dangerous, even if she was your fiancée. “What did you find out?”
“No General Swyteck, but it turns out there was actually a Czech general who went into exile in the U.K. right around the time period your grandfather was talking about—early 1940s. And his last name was Petrak.”
“Is it the same Petrak as my grandmother?”
“I haven’t gotten that far yet.”
The landline rang. Jack’s first thought—that Vince had gotten lost in the lobby and was calling for help—was a stupid one, as he quickly realized that somehow Vince had managed to survive pretty well without him for the past three years. He put Andie on hold and picked up. It was Chuck Mays.
“Did you look at the file I sent you?”
Chuck had e-mailed Jack a key file that he had obtained through Project Round Up. It wasn’t that Jack didn’t appreciate how important the work was. It just took some emotional preparation to dive into this particular type of P2P trading.
“Not yet.”
“What are you waiting for? Another dead friend?”
Chuck had quite the way of reminding him that he was here for Neil. But he had a point. “I’ll do it tonight,” said Jack.
“Let’s do it now.”
“I said I’d get to it.”
“I’ll walk you through it. It will be better that way.”
Again, he had a point. Jack took a minute to say good-bye to Andie on his cell. Then he returned to Chuck on the landline and booted up his laptop. Chuck gave him click-by-click instructions to bring up the file. It was a video, as Jack had expected, and a thumbnail bearing the name Project Round Up appeared on Jack’s LCD.
“That’s obviously not the original thumbnail,” said Chuck. “But everything else about the file is intact, exactly the material I traded for on the P2P network. Left click once, and that will bring up the original thumbnail; click again, and that will enlarge it to screen size.”
Jack clicked once, and even though the