Die Trying by Lee Child

McGrath, was reporting that he’d lost one of his people. Special Agent

Holly Johnson was missing, last seen twelve o’clock Chicago time,

whereabouts currently unknown, contact attempted but not achieved. And

because Holly Johnson was a pretty special case, the message carried an

eyes-only code which kept it off every terminal in the building except

the one all the way upstairs in the director’s office.

The director of the FBI got out of a budget review meeting just before

seven-thirty in’ the evening. He walked back to his office suite and

checked his messages. His name was Harland Webster and he had been

with the Bureau thirty-six years. He had one more year to run on his

term as director, and then he’d be gone. So he wasn’t looking for

trouble, but he found it glowing on the monitor of his desktop

terminal. He clicked on the report and read it through twice. He

sighed at the screen.

“Shit,” he said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

The report in from McGrath in Chicago was not the worst news Webster

had ever had in thirty-six years, but it came pretty damn close. He

buzzed the intercom on his desk and his secretary answered.

“Get me McGrath in Chicago,” he said.

“He’s on line one,” his secretary told him. “He’s been waiting for

you.”

Webster grunted and hit the button for line one. Put the call on the

speakerphone and leaned back in his chair.

“Mack?” he said. “So what’s the story?”

McGrath’s voice came in clear from Chicago.

“Hello, chief,” he said. “There is no story. Not yet. Maybe we’re

worrying too early, but I got a bad feeling when she didn’t show. You

know how it is.”

“Sure, Mack,” Webster said. “You want to confuse me with some

facts?”

“We don’t have any facts,” McGrath said. “She didn’t show for a five

o’clock case conference. That struck me as unusual. There were no

messages from her anywhere. Her pager and her cellphone are out of

commission. I asked around and the last anybody saw of her was about

twelve o’clock,”

“She was in the office this morning?” Webster asked.

“All morning,” McGrath said.

“Any appointments before this five o’clock thing?” Webster said.

“Nothing in her diary,” McGrath said. “I don’t know what she was doing

or where she was doing it.”

“Christ, Mack,” Webster said. “You were supposed to take care of her.

You were supposed to keep her off the damn streets, right?”

“It was her lunch break McGrath said. “What the hell could I do?”

There was a silence in the director’s suite, broken only by the faint

hum on the speakerphone. Webster drummed his fingers on his desk.

“What was she working on?” he asked.

“Forget it,” McGrath said. “We can assume this is not interference by

a Bureau suspect, right? Doesn’t make any kind of sense in her

case.”

Webster nodded to himself.

“In her case, I agree, I guess,” he said. “So what else are we looking

at?”

“She was injured,” McGrath said. “Tore up her knee playing ball. We

figure maybe she fell, made it worse, maybe ended up in the ER. We’re

checking the hospitals now.”

Webster grunted.

“Or else there’s a boyfriend we don’t know about,” McGrath said. “Maybe

they’re in a motel room somewhere, getting laid.”

“For six hours?” Webster said. “I should be so lucky.”

There was silence again. Then Webster sat forward.

“OK, Mack,” he said. “You know what to do. And you know what not to

do, case like hers, right? Keep in touch. I’ve got to go to the

Pentagon. I’ll be back in an hour. Call me then if you need me.”

Webster broke the connection and buzzed his secretary to call his car.

Then he walked out to his private elevator and rode down to the

underground parking lot. His driver met him there and they walked

together over to the director’s bulletproof limousine.

“Pentagon,” Webster said to his driver.

Traffic wasn’t bad, seven-thirty on a June Monday evening. Took about

eleven minutes to do the two and a half miles. Webster spent the time

making urgent calls on his mobile. Calls to various locations within

such a tight geographical radius that he could probably have reached