Cross Fire - James Patterson [39]
It seemed as if there were an answer for everything here, except my questions. The only part I really trusted was that she loved and missed Ali. But that wasn’t enough.
“Okay, here’s what’s going to happen,” I said. “We’re going to go get some ice cream. You can say your good-byes after that, and then you’ll see him again in July, like always. Anything else, and we’re going back to mediation. That’s a promise, Christine. Please don’t test me on this.”
To my surprise, she smiled. “Make it dinner. Just the three of us, and then I’ll get on my plane to Seattle like a good little girl. How’s that?”
“I can’t,” I said.
Her mouth tightened into a hard, straight line again. “Can’t? Or won’t?”
The answer was both, but before I could say anything else, the office door opened and there was Ali. He looked so all alone, and scared.
“When can we go?” he wanted to know.
Christine scooped him up just as she had the night before. To her credit, there was none of the thunderstorm in her eyes that I’d seen a second ago.
“Guess what, honey? We’re going to go out for some ice cream. You, me, and Daddy, right now. What do you think of that?”
“Can I get two scoops?” he asked right away.
I couldn’t help laughing — for real. “Always the broker, aren’t you, little man?” I said. “Yeah, two scoops. Why not?”
As we left the school, Ali took each of us by the hand, one on either side, and it was smiles all around. But it still wasn’t lost on me that Christine hadn’t committed to a thing.
Chapter 50
BY THE TIME I finally got to the Hoover Building for my five thirty meeting, it was quarter after six. I signed in and took the elevator.
The Information Sharing and Analysis Center where Agent Patel worked could have been anywhere in corporate America, with its ugly tan-and-mauve cubicle maze, low ceiling tiles, and fluorescent box lights. The only tip-off was the endless computers, at least one internal and two outside machines at every desk. The real sci-fi-looking stuff — the enormous servers and surveillance banks — was elsewhere on the floor, behind closed doors.
Patel jumped when I knocked on the half wall of her work space.
“Alex! Jesus! You scared me.”
“Sorry,” I said. “And sorry I’m so late. I don’t suppose Agent Siegel’s still around?” I wasn’t keen to end my day with him, but in the name of collaboration, here I was.
“He got tired of waiting,” she said. “We’re supposed to meet him in the SIOC conference room.”
She called his extension and left a message that we were on our way, but when we got there — surprise, surprise — no Siegel. We waited a few more minutes and then started our meeting without him. Fine with me.
Chapter 51
PATEL QUICKLY BROUGHT me up to speed on the True Press e-mails. Actually, there wasn’t that much to tell, at least not at this point in her investigation.
“Based on the header, the IP address, and what I got from the registry over at Georgetown, Jayson Wexler’s account was open and active at the time both messages were sent,” she told me.
“Which is not to say that Wexler sent them himself,” I said.
“Not at all. Just that they either originated from or somehow passed through his account.”
“Passed through?”
“It’s possible someone used an anonymous remailer from a remote location, but really they’d have no reason to. A stolen laptop that never turns up is a perfect dead end, forensically speaking. You’re better off looking for any witnesses to the theft itself.”
“We canvassed up, down, and sideways where Wexler claims the computer was taken,” I told her. “Didn’t get anywhere. And the closest surveillance cameras are DDOT’s, over on K Street. There’s nothing from the park at all. No one saw a thing — which is a little odd.”
Patel sat back, twiddling a pen between her fingers. “So should I keep going? Because there’s more bad news.”
I ran my hand over my mouth and jaw, an old tic of mine. “You’re just full of sunshine today,