Bloodshot - Cherie Priest [49]
However …
I tapped my knuckles against the steering wheel. I always fidget when I’m thinking. Can’t help it.
However, Uncle Sam knew The Other Thief’s identity. The serial number told me that much, and I wondered if there was some good way to take that number and turn it into a name. It’d be nice to know who I was looking for.
If I could pin down his identity, I could pin down other things. Family members, friends. Former service buddies. Co-workers.
I might even be able to get my hands on his old phone records or credit card statements; it’s amazing what you can find with the right phone calls and law enforcement clearance … not that I have law enforcement clearance. I don’t. But my fellow freelancer the Red Queen does, or if she doesn’t, she knows how to fake it.
Bad Hatter’s info might have burned me, but I believed him when he said it wasn’t deliberate. And even if Red Queen knew about my personal meltdown over here, it likely wouldn’t mean anything to her. She owes me one. About three years ago she needed architectural schematics for a large, unmarked building belonging to some Italian cardinal … but located in St. Petersburg, Florida. I got them for her. And no, I never asked what she needed them for.
At any rate, my number one priority was to track down The Other Thief’s name and then backtrack him clear to the cradle. The more I could learn about him, the better my chances of predicting where he’d run and hide. The fact is, very few people actually disappear with the kind of thoroughness required to stay disappeared. The odds were strong that someone, somewhere, knew where he’d gone.
But first things first. How to pry his personal information away from the government? I glared back down at Ian’s folder and I wondered: Could I find it at Holtzer Point?
Maybe. After all, one unauthorized downloading of the Bloodshot PDF had been serious enough to warrant a platoon of Men in Black. Surely the government hadn’t just let hard copies detailing the nitty-gritty details vanish—not without looking into it? There would’ve been an investigation. There would’ve been sensitive paperwork. And where did sensitive paperwork of this stripe wind up?
Holtzer Point.
But if the military or the feds were looking for me, did I really want to run straight into one of their most private facilities? For the moment, I’d given them the slip. A very narrow, very uncertain slip—but my fragile liberty was liberty nonetheless, and they hadn’t caught me yet.
At best, it wasn’t exactly a cunning strategy to impress the ages and achieve the status of tactical legend, but it was better than nothing. And otherwise, all I had was nothing apart from “run that guy’s serial number through the Internet and hope to strike gold.”
I had every intention of doing that, by the way. I’m not an idiot.
But since I’m not an idiot—and knowing what had happened when Duncan had nabbed that PDF—I decided to do it on the way out of town.
And I definitely needed to get out of town. I wanted to put as much distance between me and Seattle as possible, in order to regroup and see if I couldn’t brainstorm my way to some better idea once I achieved some breathing room and could calm the fuck back down.
With luck, I might even cough up some less stupid plan.
I squeezed the brittle old papers and made my resolution. Then I stuffed them back into the envelope, took a deep breath, and started my car again.
I’d never been to Minnesota before. But there’s a first time for everything.
So I’d begin my withdrawal and regrouping at St. Paul, but I wouldn’t leave from SeaTac—the Seattle-Tacoma airport. It was probably crawling with leftover feds from the Mean Bean, if my ruse had worked. The only way to find out was to try and fly out, and I couldn’t see taking that kind of risk. It wasn’t like me, and it wasn’t healthy, and I wasn’t in the mood for one of those plans where you let yourself get captured in order to escape with information.
No, the Thunderbird’s tank was full and I was feeling