Elizabeth said, “I confess I’ve never eaten a taco.”
Savich said, “My wife claims tacos are a nutritionist’s dream, all five food groups in each bite. You’ll have to tell us what you think.”
Chapter Sixteen
Hoover Building
Criminal Apprehension Unit
Washington, D.C.
Wednesday afternoon
Special Agent Roman Foxe was speechless. Like every other agent in the CAU, he’d watched Savich and Sherlock speak with a young woman and leave with her, and wondered what it was about. There was lots of talk, but no one knew who she was. But no longer. Rome stared at his boss and said, his voice incredulous, “You want me to bodyguard the woman who slept with that maniac assassin Samir Basara and claimed she didn’t know who and what he was? And she thinks now—a year later—maybe terrorists are trying to kill her because they think she betrayed their boss?”
Savich said, “Well put, and yes, that’s what I want you to do. Keep her safe. She came to Sherlock for help because Sherlock was the one who killed Basara, really no other reason. I’ve forwarded the link to her files to you, and I’ve already been in touch with MI5, asked them to send us the details of their investigation into what happened to her in London. I’ll let her tell you what she’s been up to since she came to the U.S. You know the drill. Spend time with her, gain her trust, find outwhatever you can from her. Get to know her well enough to predict how she will respond if something does happen.
“As I said, above all, your primary assignment is to keep her alive, Rome, and work with us to determine who’s after her. We don’t know whether the people who want her dead will find her and come after her again. Maybe she’s right and it’s payback, but their waiting a year for that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me or Sherlock.
“I’m counting on you, Rome. Sherlock has finished speaking with her for now, and it’s time you met her. Come, let me introduce you.”
Rome didn’t want to be responsible for an uppity Brit who’d clearly shown she had appallingly poor judgment. It would pull him away from tracking down the psychopath who’d murdered three retired physicians in Lincolnville, Tennessee, working with Lucy McKnight and her encyclopedic brain, an agent he liked and trusted. But Savich was in charge. He remembered how proud his father, the chief of detectives at the nineteenth precinct, had been when he’d graduated Quantico six months before, telling him he was going to work for one of the best FBI agents in the bureau. Roman suspected his father had something to do with his being assigned to Savich’s unit, the CAU at the Hoover, the central nervous system of Disneyland East, as it was called in the field offices. But now everything had stopped in its tracks because of a nitwit Brit airhead who’d shown she’d had the judgment of a gnat—intimate for months with a murderer, claiming she didn’t know? Didn’t even suspect? It was like sleeping with Hannibal Lecter for months and claiming she had no idea he got off on eating people’s brains.
Savich said as they walked out of his office together, “I’ve assigned Davis Sullivan to work with Lucy on the Lincolnville case. Give them all your materials, insights, and recommendations. Now you’ll meet your priority—Lady Elizabeth Palmer.”
Roman never changed expressions. “Do I call her Your Majesty when I meet her? Bow or drop to one knee?”
Savich laughed. Obviously, his new agent wasn’t thrilled, but he knew he could trust him. Lucy spoke well of him, said he was tough, smart, and had great reaction time. Best of all, she’d said he paid attention to every detail in the field, was always aware of his surroundings. “Call her Elizabeth and shake her hand. The two of you can use the conference room. She’ll tell you what happened three months ago. When you’ve heard her story, take her out of here, someplace she’d like, to distract her. Give her some relaxation time, some non-stress time, she deserves it. She’ll be staying with me and Sherlock in the short term. Drop her off with us this evening.”
Savich paused a moment, saw Rome wasn’t happy. Savich laid a hand on his arm. “She saved herself in London, got a knife wound in her arm during the last attack. She escaped England and came here. She trained with Hurley Janklov for three months, one on one.”
Rome’s head jerked up. “What? Are you serious? She spent three months with Janklov and she’s still alive and walking upright? I heard stories about Janklov at Quantico—talk about a hard-ass maniac.” Rome couldn’t help it, he was impressed, until he considered maybe Janklov had gone easy on her, made sure she wouldn’t break a fingernail. Too, everyone knew Janklov had been a major horndog until his marriage awhile back.
Rome realized he was being an ass, but he was angry; he wanted his assignment back. He wanted to do something important, not babysit a fricking Brit. But Savich, and evidently Mr. Maitland, thought otherwise.
Savich said, “She’s been through a lot, Rome, and I don’t just mean Hurley. Come meet her.”
Sherlock saw them and smiled, waved him and Savich over to her in the conference room. “Rome, I’d like you to meet Elizabeth Palmer. She’s now in your charge. Elizabeth, this isSpecial Agent Roman Foxe. As I told you, you’ll be counting on him. He’s mean, he’s tough, he can lift a car off you while whistling Bon Jovi. Well, that’s what I heard. Oh, yes, everyone calls him Rome.”
When he got close, he saw Elizabeth Palmer was prime. She came up to his nose, every bit as tall as Sherlock. Her eyes were a clear hazel, her hair a natural blond, no doubt in his mind about that, and on the long side, sort of wavy and pulled back from her fine-boned face, fastened to the back of her neck with a plain silver clip. Her eyebrows and lashes were darker. She wore a slash of coral lipstick, no other makeup he could see. She was wearing tight black jeans and a gray jacket over a gray silk blouse, black low-heeled boots on her feet. She looked expensive, and something else that hit him solid—she looked hopeful.
Elizabeth stuck out a white hand and Rome shook it. Whoa, what was that? She had calluses? So Hurley had really trained her?
“How do you do, Special Agent Foxe,” Her Majesty said in a cool Brit voice.
He gave her a dip of the head. “I’m fine, thank you, ma’am.”
Savich said, “Elizabeth, I know you’ve been through this a dozen times, but it’s important Rome knows everything that’s happened, from your mouth. He’ll be bringing you to our house this evening for dinner. And that has to stay confidential, all right?”
No way Rome could refuse, and that meant a call to Lindy James at State to break their dinner date. An emergency, but no explanation. Lindy wouldn’t be happy.
The CAU conference room was good sized, with a big table and twelve chairs and a glass wall looking out into the unit. Roman pulled out a chair for her, earning him a raised eyebrow and a crisp “Thank you.” Rome sat opposite her, pulled a smalltablet out of his suit coat pocket. “I’d like to record this, if you don’t mind. Tell me everything.”
Elizabeth recited what had happened three months ago in London, fast and fluent. She even anticipated questions, since she’d answered so many, and weaved them in.
When she’d finished, she took a sip of water from the glass in front of her and sat silently, waiting. Roman set his tablet down. She’d been calm as a judge. Rome was impressed. He said, “Each time you said there were two men. Are you sure about the number? And are you sure it was the same two men all three times?”
No one had asked this before. After a moment, Elizabeth nodded. “There were definitely two in the Aston Martin because of the fact that no more than two would fit. The same two all three times? I can’t be sure. I didn’t see the man who tried to talk his way through my front door before the two of them tried to shoot their way in. There could have been more, I don’t know, but the feeling I had was that it was just the two. As I told you, at least one of them had a hint of an Arabic accent, like Samir Basara.” She sat forward, clasped her hands. “The third time, I recognized the man’s voice who’d come to my front door, but I didn’t see either of their faces, and they were wearing masks.” She paused, looked thoughtful. “Do you know, what I remember most about them was their utter hatred of me.” She swallowed, got herself together. “As I already told you, one of them was a large man, the other smaller, but both were fit, and vicious. They were young, I’d say. Benny, Officer Bewley, shot the smaller one who was on top of me ready to cut me with a knife. The fingerprints on the knife the surgeons pulled out of Benny’s chest were too smeared to be of use. MI5 officers found the attacker’s blood, but there was no DNA match. Deputy Director Eiserly told me that only meant the man Benny shot isn’t in the system, which didn’tnecessarily mean he hadn’t committed any crimes elsewhere. There wasn’t even anyone identified as a close relative in the DNA databases.”
