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Judas Horse_ An FBI Special Agent Ana Grey Mystery - April Smith [129]

By Root 608 0
of baby deputies and the sharp eyes of my SAC.

“Dick Stone gave me his testament.”

“What’s on there?”

“The manifesto. What he wanted to be printed in the newspapers. What he said the American people need to remember.”

Scrolling past planting schedules and shopping lists, I discover a file called “Career of Evil.”

“This is it! Memos dated 1972 to 1974, signed by Peter Abbott, authorizing illegal phone taps against ‘suspected student radicals.’”

“Keep looking.”

The screen is filled with numbers.

“Fish statistics. Great.”

And then a map. “A map of Bonneville Dam. Hey, wow. It’s a schematic.”

Donnato looks over. “Detailed?”

“The building plans for the dam. What Stone must have used to plot the bomb attack. There were several contractors.” I’m punching buttons, enlarging the type on the plans. “Hamilton, Meizner, Adams-Vanguard—”

“Adams-Vanguard is one of Abbott senior’s shell companies.”

“So Peter’s father, the congressman, was lining his pockets with a multimillion-dollar contract.”

“I’ll bet if we had another twenty-four hours, we could come up with a link between the builders of the powerhouse project and contributions to young Peter Abbott’s political career,” adds Donnato. “But we don’t have twenty-four hours.”

I hold it out to him. “You do.”

“It’s collateral,” Donnato says. “It was Stone’s collateral; now it’s yours.”

“He wanted to cash it in. He wanted Abbott to roll on the floor like a pill bug.”

I press the device into Donnato’s hand and find that mine is trembling.

“Get him,” I whisper.

“Roger that.”

I realize that I am becoming incoherent.

“Where is Galloway sending me? Why would he burn me? I’m a hero. Aren’t I?”

“Shhh. You’re valued. Believe me, at the highest level.”

“I don’t know what to believe.”

“If you knew everything, you wouldn’t do the job. These aren’t the days of Dick Stone. The tentacles were working—all those people behind the scenes, helping to protect you until the case came together. The supporting elements of the undercover are like your crystal ball—we see your future and help you dodge it.”

He kicks it up to eighty on the country road.

“What is my future?”

I watch a big green freeway sign for Portland snap backward into the dark.

“Aren’t we going to the county jail?”

Donnato does not reply.

“But I’m in custody.”

Donnato’s voice is breaking. “You just have to trust me.”

We drive in silence through the poignant end of day. The little road is sweet, the way it flows between the silver river and vertical slopes of scree, where multiple waterfalls sport like nymphs. It is the same drive I made with Stone when he began to tell his story of betrayal by his own people; we are simply going in the other direction. Stone wasn’t asking for trust or belief. He wasn’t asking for anything when he told it. But Donnato’s tone is full of pleading.

A rusted shell of a gas station and a neon sign half-buried in leaves that says MOTEL put you in mind of 1940s detective stories, where scheming lovers escape to a motor court out in the boonies with a million bucks in cash—only to discover the final, bitter twist.

There is always a double cross.

How far would the Bureau go?

In the car, my teeth are chattering with cold. We turn down a short road and past a restaurant. The restaurant is closed, but as we swing around, I see it is adjacent to a private airfield. If you sat on the patio, you could watch the planes. They look thin and flimsy, like scraps of paper.

The tower is lighted. A small jet waits on the tarmac, engines running. The door is open and the stairs are down.

“It’s best if you leave the country,” Donnato says.

I reel out of the car. The air is freezing and my shoulder is stiff. The sky has dropped to deep and final lavender.

“It’s waiting for you,” he says. “Go on.”

“Go on? To where?”

“I have no need to know.”

“You have no need? You can’t just dump me here.”

“Ana, this is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”

“What’s hard? Knowing nothing? Leaving everything? The Bureau,” I whisper, almost ashamed. “The Bureau is my family.”

He grips my arms. “I wouldn’t have

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