Twice Dead - Catherine Coulter [90]
“Yes,” she said, her voice so thin Adam swore she was fading away right before his eyes. If he hadn’t been worried sick, Adam would have enjoyed watching Thomas turn his power onto the FBI guys, but he didn’t. Now Adam wondered how Thomas knew Tellie Hawley, a long-time FBI guy who had a reputation for eating crooks for breakfast. He never cut anyone any slack. He was sometimes very scary, sometimes a rogue, admired by his contemporaries and occasionally distressing to his superiors.
“Hey, Adam,” Hawley said. “I guess I’ll find out soon enough why you’re here. Where’s Savich?”
“He and Sherlock will be in a bit later.” Adam nodded then to Scratch Cobb, a tough-looking little man who wore elevator shoes that brought him up to Adam’s chin. He got his nickname years before, when it was said that he scratched and scratched until he found the answers in a high-profile case. “Scratch, good to see you again. How’s tricks?”
“Tricks is good, Adam. How’s it going, my boy?”
“I’m surviving.” Adam took Becca’s hand and lightly squeezed it. He leaned close and whispered in her ear, “The guy standing to the left has hemorrhoids. The big one with the mean eyes, Hawley, will want to cross the line, but he doesn’t dare try it, not with your dad here. Actually, he has five dogs and they rule his house. Now, go get ’em, tiger.”
If she were a tiger, she thought, she was a very pathetic one, not worthy of the name, but still—She smiled, she actually smiled. “Hello, gentlemen,” she said, and her voice wasn’t as paper-thin now. “You wanted to speak to me?”
“Yes,” Hawley said, stepping forward. Adam didn’t move, smiled a feral smile at him that could make a person’s teeth fall out.
“Adam, I’m not going to bite her. I’m a good guy. I work for the U-nited States government. You don’t have to stand guard.”
“I’m supposed to be protecting the lady, Tellie. The thing is, I screwed up, and the bad guy got her, drugged her, and dumped her right in front of One Police Plaza.”
Hawley nodded, then said, “Okay, so you’re not going to budge.” Hawley continued smoothly, coming one step closer, watching Adam from the corner of his eye. “This guy who kidnapped you and drugged you and put you out of his car, who is he?”
“I don’t know, Agent Hawley. If I did, I would have announced it to the world via CNN. You know I reported his stalking me, calling me, threatening to kill the governor. It started in Albany and he followed me to New York. Then he killed that old woman in front of the Metropolitan Museum.”
“Yes,” Tellie Hawley said, and he shifted from his left foot to his right. “But what we want to know is who this guy is, why he tried to kill the governor. We need to know why and how you’re involved in all this—”
Adam said very quietly, “The governor was shot, like the guy threatened to do, and then the aide to Governor Bledsoe turned out to be the one who told the cops that Becca was an obsessed liar. He was murdered. Did you know that, Tellie? Did you know that the guy who killed him ran him down in a car he’d stolen in Ithaca, after he’d murdered the owner? Did you know that the cops have impounded that car with its dark-tinted windows so no one would be able to identify him when he ran down Dick McCallum? Hey, do you and your fed techs realize that you can go crawl all over it right now?”
“Yeah, okay, we know all that.”
“Then why are you pretending it didn’t happen?”
“We’re not pretending it didn’t happen,” Hawley said, his hands fisted, anger creeping up over his shirt collar to redden his neck. “But there’s no reason for him to have picked Ms. Matlock out of the blue, that he targeted someone as unlikely as she is. It only makes sense she must know something, she must be aware of his identity, have some idea who he is and why he’s doing this. This is big, bad stuff, Adam, and she’s slap-dab in the middle of it. I hear there’s all sorts of doings in the CIA, but I can’t find out what’s going on. I’ve heard it involves