Saving Faith By: David Baldacci

Thornhill gave one brief shake of his head. “She’s disappeared.”

Winslow summed it up. “So we take out one of the Bureau’s finest and

let the real target get away.” He clinked the ice in his drink. “Not

good, Bob. The others won’t be happy to hear that.”

“Just to get all the good news out, our man was also shot in the

process.”

“By the agent?”

Thornhill shook his head. “No. There was someone else there tonight.

Unknown as yet. Serov has been debriefed. He gave a description of

the man who was at the cottage. We’re doing computer generations of

him right now. We should know his identity shortly.”

“Could he tell us anything else?”

“Not at present. Mr. Serov is being detained, for now, in safe

quarters.”

“You know the Bureau will go after this tooth and nail, Bob.”

“More precisely,” Thornhill said, “they will do everything in their

power to find Faith Lockhart.”

“Who do they suspect?”

“Buchanan, of course. It’s logical,” Thornhill replied.

“So what do we do with Buchanan?”

“For now, nothing. We’ll keep him informed. Of at least our version

of the truth, that is. We’ll keep him busy at the same time we keep

close tabs on the FBI. He has a trip out of town this morning, so were

covered there. However, if the FBI’s investigation gets too close to

Buchanan, we’ll provide him with an early death and provide our

professional brethren with all the sordid facts of how Buchanan tried

to have Lockhart murdered.”

“And Lockhart?” Winslow asked.

“Oh, the FBI will find her. They’re quite good at that sort of thing,

in their limited way.”

“I don’t see how that helps us. She talks, and Buchanan goes down and

takes us with him.”

“I hardly think that,” Thornhill said. “When the FBI finds her, we

will be there as well, if we don’t find her first. And this time we

won’t miss. With Lockhart gone, Buchanan will soon follow. Then we

can move forward with our original plan.”

“God, if it could only work.”

“Oh, it will work,” said Thornhill with his usual optimism. To last as

long as he had in this business, one had to have a positive attitude.

CHAPTER 10

LEE PULLED THE CAR INTO THE ALLEYWAY AND STOPPED. His gaze swept over

the darkened landscape. They had driven around for over two hours

until he felt reasonably sure they had not been followed, and then he

had made the phone call to the police from a pay phone. Although they

seemed relatively safe now, Lee still kept one hand resting on the grip

of his pistol, ready to pull it in an instant, to terminate their

enemies with the salvos from his deadly SIG. That was a joke.

These days you could kill from a sky away, with a bomb smarter than a

man, taking the most important thing a human being had without so much

as a “Hello, you’re dead.” Lee wondered if, during the millisecond it

took to cremate the poor bastards, the brain moved fast enough to spark

the thought that the Hand of God had struck them down instead of

something manufactured by man, the idiot. For a crazy moment, Lee

scanned the sky looking for a guided missile. And depending on who was

involved in all this, maybe it wasn’t so crazy after all.

“What did you tell the police?” Faith asked.

“Short and sweet. The location of the place and what happened.”

“And?”

“And the dispatcher was skeptical but did his best to keep me on the

line.”

Faith looked around the alley. “Is this the safe place you mentioned?”

She took in the darkness, the hidden crevices, the garbage can and the

distant tap of footsteps on pavement.

“No, we leave the car here and walk to the safe place. Which, by the

way, is my apartment.”

“Where are we?”

“North Arlington. It’s being yuppified, but it can still be dangerous,

especially this time of night.”

She stayed right next to him as they made their way down the alley and

out onto the next street, which was an avenue of old but nicely kept-up

attached rowhouses.

“Which one’s yours?”

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