He was preparing to leave when he noted the phone answering machine in the living room. The red light was blinking. He went over to the phone and hit the playback button. The first three messages were innocuous. The voice on the fourth message made Jackson jerk around and bend his head low to catch every single word.
Alicia Crane sounded nervous and scared. Where were you, Thomas, she implored. You haven’t called. What you were working on was too dangerous. Please, please call me, the message said.
Jackson rewound the tape and listened to Alicia’s voice again. He hit another button on the machine. Finally, he picked up the boxes and left the apartment.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
LuAnn looked at the Lincoln Memorial as she drove the Honda over the Memorial Bridge. The water of the Potomac River was dark and choppy. Flecks of white foam appeared but then quickly dissipated. It was the morning rush hour and the traffic over the bridge was heavy. They had spent one night in a motel near Fredericksburg while they decided what to do. Then they had driven to the outskirts of Washington, D.C., and spent the night at a motel near Arlington. Riggs had made some phone calls and visited a couple of retail establishments preparing for the events that would take place the next day. Then they had sat in the motel room eating while Riggs had gone over the plan, the details of which LuAnn quickly memorized. With that completed they had turned out the lights. One slept while the other kept watch. That was the plan at least. However, neither one got much rest. Finally, they both sat up, one curled around the other. Under any other circumstances they would have probably made love. As it was they spent the night looking out the window onto the dark street, listening for any sound that might herald another wave of danger.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” LuAnn said as they drove along.
“Hey, you said you trusted me.”
“I do. I do trust you.”
“LuAnn, I know what I’m doing. There are two things I know: how to build things, and how the Bureau works. This is the way to do it. The only way that makes sense. You run, they’ll eventually find you.”
“I got away before,” she said confidently.
“You had some help and a better head start. You’d never get out of the country now. So if you can’t run, you do the reverse, you go right at them, take the offensive.”
LuAnn focused on the traffic at the same time she was thinking intently about what they were about to do. What she was about to do. The only man she had ever absolutely trusted was Charlie. And that complete trust had not come quickly, it had been built and then cemented over a ten-year period. She had only known Riggs for a very short time. And yet he had earned her trust, even in a matter of days. His actions reached her far more deeply than any words he could try to tempt her with.
“Aren’t you nervous?” she asked. “I mean you don’t really know what you’re going to be walking into.”
He grinned at her. “That’s the really great part, isn’t it?”
“You’re a crazy man, Matthew Riggs, you really are. All I want in my life is a little predictability, a semblance of tranquillity, of normalcy even, and you’re salivating over walking along the edge of the cliff.”
“It’s all in how you look at it.” He looked out the window. “Here we are.” He pointed to an open spot on the curb and she pulled over and parked. Riggs got out and then poked his head back in. “You remember the plan?”
LuAnn nodded. “Going over everything last night helped. I can find it with no trouble.”
“Good, see you soon.”
As Riggs walked down the street to the pay phone, LuAnn looked up at the large, ugly building. The J. EDGAR HOOVER BUILDING was stenciled on its facade. Home of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. These people were looking for her everywhere and here she was parked ten feet from their damned headquarters. She shivered and put on her sunglasses. Putting the car in gear, she tried to keep her nerves in check. She hoped to hell the man really knew what he was doing.