“Bus?”
But Parker remembered that there was. Downtown. She put the SUV in gear and steered back onto Route 55, scattering gravel as, this time, they drove north.
Hannah muttered, “I don’t want to take a bus. They’re gross. Jesus, Mom, what? You think he can track the car? He doesn’t have superpowers.”
Except that, yes, Jon Merritt did.
Her ex-husband had been a decorated and popular Ferrington Police Department detective, sixteen years on the force. He still had plenty of friends at FPD, men who didn’t give a shit about a drinking problem and an arrest for spousal assault. (A desent wife would havegot him help you bitch!read one anonymous email she’d received.) It wasn’t impossible that he’d appeal to these friends, on the QT, to peek at server information and highway cameras to track her.
And even more troubling were the contacts he’d made on theotherside of the law. She knew that as a cop, Jon had cut deals with some of the most dangerous organized crime bosses in and around Ferrington. Maybe at this very moment he was calling in a favor: Help me hunt down my ex...
And if that didn’t give him the superpowers of a Marvel Comics character, it came damn close.
19
Shaw and Sonja Nilsson walked into the same office they had been in not two hours earlier.
Marty Harmon gestured to the couch.
At the moment he was all edge and sniper. The humor was gone.
The two of them sat and Harmon eased forward in his chair. “LeClaire?”
Nilsson said, “Did just what we thought. Didn’t take the money. Probably called the buyers right after we left to tell them that they have the real trigger.”
Or that’s what he did when he lowered his arms, which was undoubtedly somewhat after Shaw and Nilsson’s departure.
Harmon said, “I talked to our tech department. The GPS is still dark. They’re monitoring it.”
The fake S.I.T.’s tracker was on a timer so as not to be detected on planes. Many passengers didn’t know that pilots could tell if someone was trying to use a mobile phone on an aircraft.
But it was clear that LeClaire was not the first thing on his mind. He absently rubbed a thick finger against the side of his pug nose. “Something’s come up. The engineer who developed the S.I.T.?”
Shaw nodded. “We interviewed her. Allison...”
“Parker.”
The clear-eyed brunette, furious that her “baby” had been stolen, had been helpful in running through procedures for securing the components and the mesoporous nano material.
It was the woman Harmon had described as “brilliant.”
“Alli was married to an abusive husband. Jon Merritt. About a year ago he tried to kill her. Put her in the hospital. Got three years in prison. Only he was released early—this morning. Alli sent me an email saying she was going into hiding, with her daughter. She wouldn’t say where. She probably was terrified he’d find out.”
“She thinks she’s in danger?” Shaw asked.
“Oh, she is. Her lawyer told me she knows something about Jon, his past, something that he didn’t want to get out. And that may have been why he wanted to kill her in the first place.”
“What?”
“David didn’t know.” Harmon’s fists balled up. “But if there was any doubt, get this, just after he’s released, a couple of prisoners go to a supervisor. Merritt told them first thing he was going to do when he got out was kill her. Merritt was completely calm about it. Like talking about a game. They said it looked like he didn’t care what happened to him. Maybe murder-suicide, killing their girl too.”
Nilsson shook her head, frowning.
“How’d the prison miss that?” Shaw asked.
Harmon scoffed. “I don’t think they take a poll of fellow prisoners in deciding to release somebody or not. And why didn’t the board or the prison shrink pick it up? I’ve met Merritt. He can be charming, funny, your best friend. He played the staff.”
Nilsson said, “I think I met him. A party here. Christmas. Caused a scene. Bad one. It got physical. Somebody was hurt.”