“How do I get in touch with you, then? And you with me?”
“We’ll figure a way.”
“Can you tell me your name, at least?”
The man hesitated, the first instance of indecision Decker had glimpsed in the fellow.
“It’s Robie. Will Robie.”
“WILLROBIE? He told you his freaking name?”
Jamison was staring across at a soaked Decker, who was leaning against the wall of her hotel room dripping water on her carpet. Decker had come directly back to the hotel, knocked on her door, and woken her up, and now she was sitting on her bed in sweat-pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt staring at him incredulously.
“Yeah, he did.”
“So let me get this straight. First you got attacked by a bunch of morons and you and Baker beat them up?”
“They were after Stan, not me.”
“Then someone tries to shoot you with an exploding bullet, only this Robie guy saves your butt. After that he runs off and takes out the guy who was trying to kill you. And then he comes back and intimates to you that there’s something big going down in this town and we’re expected to find out what it is really quickly with no other assets coming our way.”
“That’s actually a pretty good summary.”
Jamison slumped against the headboard. “And this Will Robie actually said he was on our side?”
“Different division, same team, he said. But the most interesting thing I found out tonight was what Stan told me the guy from the air station said.”
“That we’re sitting on a time bomb? Yeah, that’s comforting,” she said sarcastically.
“Stan thought his name was Ben. And he was in uniform, so it was before Vector took over out there.”
“And he didn’t follow up with what the guy said?”
“Stan isn’t a cop. And they were drinking at a bar at the time. Stan probably thought he was bullshitting.”
“But what the guy said obviously stuck with him.”
“Yeah, it did,” conceded Decker. “In retrospect.”
“So this Robie, what is he? Your guardian angel?”
“He was tonight. I’d be on a slab with my head literally blown off but for him.”
This comment drew a shiver from Jamison. “I’m never going to let you go out alone again. You always get into trouble. I meanalways.”
“I just went to have a beer and talk with Stan. I wasn’t looking for any trouble.”
“Well, it always seems tofindyou,” she retorted. In a calmer tone she said, “So how does this change our investigation?”
“There’s no concrete proof that what happened tonight and Robie’s appearance on the scene are tied to Irene Cramer’s murder.”
“Can a place like London, North Dakota, support two simultaneous dark conspiracies?”
Decker swiped his wet hair with his hand. “Let’s look at this logically. Cramer was thirty. She came here a year ago, and had a college degree.”
“We just have the people at the Colony’s word for that. And they said they didn’t have any record of that other than what Cramer showed them.”
“That’s true. But if shedidearn her college degree, then from the age of eighteen to twenty-two or so she was in school. Then she comes here about eight years later and we can find no record of her before that? And the FBI’s alarm bells go off when her prints come through their system?”