The little gift Wolf had planned to present to Fitzsimmons had not worked out, and he dug his fingers into his thigh, the pain holding his rage in check. It should not have happened like that. That big empty house.
How had she known to leave, unless someone told her she was at risk?
He ground his teeth and stared into the fading darkness through the van windshield as the vehicle pulled away from the curb. They cruised past the big stucco house that showed only darkened windows to the street. Empty house. Nothing of use inside except for the evidence he’d planted.
With him were his three silent men, their scent of sweat and gun oil a balm to his senses. Once they’d worked together overseas. Now they backed him up here on the darker side of Homeland Security’s work.
They knew better than to talk when a mission had gone sour. They knew him too well.
“Page, any update on tracking the Drake ‘twenty’ through her phone?” As part of his responsibility as Liaison to the AGS, he’d tapped all of the AGS phones and had tracers on all of the Agent cells. Fortuitous, now, it seemed.
Page, a big, ham-fisted man who’d done three tours of duty in Iraq with a multinational security company before signing with HS, grunted his assent and stabbed a button on his phone. He muttered into it and had a quiet conversation, and then hung up.
“Our girl’s gone black, boss. Phone’s not on line.”
Wolf went a little colder. “Then she knows we are on her trail. Damn woman. Damn all these Gifted.”
The plan was to make his career on this—gain control of the AGS and deal with his other problem—not have it all blow up in his face. But from the rumors he heard from Washington, nothing really worked the way it was planned when it came to the Gifted and the AGS. Though at first no one had believed in the Gift, once they were acknowledged, whatever they did always led to little ‘problems’.
“I figure someone warned her, boss.” Page again.
“An inestimable deduction. The question is, who?”
“Someone at her shop?”
“The AGS?” Wolf thought a moment. “That white cretin certainly. He is the one who let her leave.”
“Boss? There’s something else. The technician tracked back. He said that her phone showed she was at the house at the time we were pulling up. Then she left and traveled north until the GPS suddenly went dead.”
“Are you saying someone warned her at the house?” Wolf half-turned in his seat. Page shrugged his mountain of shoulder.
“Might have.”
And that made too much sense. Wolf smiled as he swung forward again. “Call them back and tell them to get a fix on an SPD Detective named Jason Bryson. It might be a personal or a Seattle PD phone, or both, but get it—them—trace any call and track it. When you’re done, call Seattle Police and have them patch me through to a Homicide Detective named Blacklock. I have the information he requested.”
“It’s pretty early, boss. Detectives don’t usually take calls this early unless it’s an emergency.”
“It is an emergency.”
Because he needed all the help he could get pulling this one out of the fire.