Bloodshot - Cherie Priest [147]
“What’s his name?”
He was getting worried. I could tell it in the way he licked at the corner of his lip, and his eyelids kept twitching as his gaze jerked back and forth between us. “Sykes,” he finally said.
I knew it. “And how’d he get so tightly holed up?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and the fear that was just now starting to waft off his skin implied he was telling the truth. Why was he getting scared now? Probably because he couldn’t see the Glock he kept taped under a bookshelf. It ought to be at his eye level, and it wasn’t. He was coming to suspect the truth—that we’d been here awhile, and we’d taken away all his toys.
“Take a guess,” I ordered.
“Money. Money’s my guess. He’s loaded. Richer than God.”
“How’d he get that way?”
“Department of Defense stuff. Designing … designing long-range, high-definition satellite surveillance systems. He sold everything to the government, cashed it all out. He still has his own grid, but he made his money on the patent.”
“So that’s how you followed me.” A statement of fact, not a question. It was a relief to know for certain. One more thing to be afraid of, yes. But one more thing I could take precautions to avoid.
Again he swallowed. “You didn’t make it easy. Driving those generic piece-of-shit cars. They’re hard to tail, even from the sky. We only picked you up by keeping an eye on the deJesus house, then we lost you again once you’d picked up that faggot in the high heels. Goddamn Atlanta and its goddamn traffic,” he muttered, but he was looking at Adrian funny—like it’d just now dawned on him that the faggot in high heels had a .38 pointed at his head.
Well, the state of Atlanta’s transportation infrastructure was one thing we agreed on. “So the most common-looking cars are harder to follow, eh? Good to know.”
“Any idiot could figure that out. Zebras on the Serengeti know that.”
Adrian interrupted with a loud, “Ha! So you did lead them to me!”
“Fine. But only technically, dear,” I said.
Bruner kept talking, like he was impatient with the both of us. “You know, if you hadn’t been crazy enough to take me up on the invitation to visit my office, we’d have never caught up to you again. I still can’t believe that worked.”
It was my turn to squint with suspicion. “How did you know it was me?”
“I played a hunch. We were watching your warehouse, Abigail. You obviously knew what was inside it, but I know for a fact you didn’t come or go when you said you did. You gave yourself away.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond. That’d been one hell of a slick play on his part, but I didn’t want to give him any credit, so I didn’t. I lied through my teeth instead. “So we played each other. Nice.”
“You? You played me? How?”
“I didn’t know where you kept your base of operations. You told me right where it was, and trap or no, me and him”—I cocked a thumb at Adrian—“still got inside, got what we needed, and got out in one piece. So the joke’s on you.”
Then I remembered how Cal had died, and how hard it’d been on Ian, and I thought it wasn’t a very funny joke.
“Wait a minute,” Adrian said, frowning. “Back up just a second. You said you picked her up in Atlanta, watching my parents’ place.”
“How else would we have found her? Or you?”
Ah. I saw where he was going. Good point. I noted, “But you’d already found me in Seattle.”
“Found you?” The major looked genuinely confused. “We had your warehouse on a list of suspicious places, yes, but nobody from our crew found you there. The place was empty when we checked it. We didn’t even see your squatters. Look, if anyone chased you down, that wasn’t us.”
“Then who?” I challenged him.
“The military, I guess. Bloodshot was closed, but it was top secret and the army doesn’t want anybody looking too closely. You were the idiot who played with a tainted file.”
He was right, of course. And as the big picture dawned on me, I was flabbergasted. “You’re telling me … that I shook Uncle Sam’s tail in Seattle only to pick up yours in Atlanta?”
“Sounds like it,” he grunted. “We’re all using