“Well, it will come to you eventually. And you can do with it what you want.”

  “You’re assuming I outlive the guy. Nothing is guaranteed,” she added bluntly.

  “No argument there.”

  Five minutes later Blum said, “It looks like we have arrived.”

  The Escalade had slowed and turned into a long drive that led up to a substantial home on about five acres.

  “Well, whoever we’re dealing with has some bucks of his own,” noted Mercy.

  Blum slowed the Porsche and pulled past the driveway the Escalade had turned into. Then she drove on and turned into the parking lot of a church that was down the street a bit. There were other cars in the parking lot, and she edged in between two of them so as not to stand out.

  She stared across the street at the house.

  “They might have Agent Pine in there.”

  “Maybe so. Now what do we do?”

  “We could call the police, but we really have no grounds to do so. And if they come and find nothing in there, the people will know we’re on to them.”

  “I can go take a look,” offered Mercy.

  “No, it’s too dangerous. If they are in there, they could capture or kill you.”

  “Then what—we just wait out here while they might be in there hurting Lee?”

  Blum looked torn. “But you have no experience doing this sort of thing.”

  “Let me tell you something, I’ve kicked the shit out of more ‘tough’ guys than any gal you’ll ever meet, including your boss. There’s a lot to worry about with this, but me not being able to handle myself ain’t one of them.”

  “But—”

  Mercy started to open the door. “I’ll be careful. I’ll just go and take a peek. Okay?”

  Blum’s defenses crumbled away. “Are you sure?”

  “As sure as my name is Mercy Pine.” She leaned into the back seat, zipped open her duffel, and took out her Glock in the belt clip.

  When Blum saw it she said, “Do you have a permit for that?”

  “Where I got it, you don’t need a permit or a background check. And North Carolina is an ‘open carry without a permit’ state. I checked that before I came here.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  Mercy put the clip holster on her waistband and covered it with her sweatshirt. “I don’t like to get hassled by the cops if I can avoid it. What’s your phone number? I’ll text or call you if something pops.”

  Blum gave her the number, and Mercy put it in her contacts list. Then Blum opened the glove box, plucked out a pair of small binoculars, and handed them to Mercy.

  “Thanks. I feel like a real spy now.”

  Blum said, “Please, please be careful. I don’t want to lose both sisters.”

  Mercy got out, looked both ways down the road, then hustled across the street. She made a wide berth around the target property and promptly disappeared from sight.

  Blum sat back in her seat, ran a shaky hand over her forehead, and started to pray.

  Chapter 53

  A PREOCCUPIED BUCKLEY SAT IN A CHAIR in the dining room of the house, where the large furnishings still looked small in relation to the enormous space. Spector moodily leaned against the wall, while Stephen Marbury paced restlessly in front of them.

  The house was closed for the season; its owners were at their other home in Colorado, which was probably even more splendid than this one. The property manager had been paid a large fee to allow them to use it for a couple of hours as a safe meeting place. No faces, no names, just cash.

  “This puts me in a bit of a pickle, Mr. Buckley,” said Marbury, who, while he paced, seemed focused on the state of his wingtips rather than the measure of his client.

  Buckley was barely listening. The phone call he’d gotten had more than ruined his day. Agent Pine had escaped. His men had been found, revived, and relocated before the police arrived, thankfully, but that was small consolation for the problems Pine’s gaining her freedom could potentially cause him. He said absently, “I never told Pine you had been hired by me. Only that Dolores Venuti would be seeking bail. I didn’t even say you would be the one seeking it. The connection is tenuous at best.”

  “But I met with her today. They are bound to make the connection. And I had to identify myself to the police at the detention facility. They know who I am. They know I’m from New York. They can easily track me down.”

  Buckley said distractedly, “Then I suggest that a vacation is in order. In another country. I can make the arrangements.”

  Marbury started to whine. “It’s not that easy. I have other clients. I have a practice. I have a family.”

  “Then go back to New York, and when the police question you, you will merely tell them that you received a cashier’s check for ten thousand dollars to come here and meet with Atkins, or Venuti, rather. You don’t know who sent it but you presumed she would know. When she didn’t have a clue, you were as puzzled as she was. I can provide the cashier’s check drawn on an untraceable account, backdated. You can say you hadn’t cashed it yet because you weren’t sure you were going to take the case. You came down here to get the lay of the land. Because you are a prominent member of the bar, after all. Now that you know the state of things, you want no more part in it. You have never officially appeared as her counsel or filed the requisite papers legally attaching yourself to her case. That will be the end of it.”

  Marbury stopped pacing and stared at him, impressed. “That actually might work.” He added in an admiring tone, “You would have made a fine lawyer.”

  “Yes, well, I’ve always aimed higher in life,” Buckley said tersely, drawing a smile from Spector. “And now that your personal welfare is accounted for, please provide me with the information I need.”

  Buckley had called in Marbury so he could meet with Desiree Atkins and milk as much information out of the woman as possible under the pretense of legally representing her. There were few ways to get in to see a prisoner, but being a lawyer was one of them. Buckley had no interest in Atkins’s being granted bail. He had tried to use the lawyer’s being able to talk to Desiree as leverage to make Pine provide him with information about El Cain, in exchange for sparing Pine’s life. And now Pine was out there somewhere, no doubt gunning for him.

  Marbury sat down across from him, placed his hands on the table, and then clenched them. He looked ready to commence either begging for mercy or lying on the witness stand.

  “She is an abominable woman. Insufferable whiner. Everything was someone else’s fault. She’s not quite right in the head, in my opinion. Might make for a good legal defense, actually.”

  “Yes, yes, most assuredly, I think we can safely conclude that any person who imprisons and tortures another is not in their right mind,” said Buckley.

  When Spector glanced at him with hiked eyebrows, he read her mind and added, “If it’s done solely for the sadistic pleasure of the person doing the torturing. But if it’s done for the purposes of obtaining vital information? Well, even our very own government has done that.”

  He looked back at Spector with a superior expression and she finally glanced away.

  Marbury looked puzzled by this back-and-forth, but ended up ignoring it and plunging on. “Since I told her the attorney-client privilege would protect anything she said, the idiot woman told me that an FBI agent and her associate had tricked her into confessing to killing her husband in Georgia on the same night that this Rebecca Atkins escaped from where she was being imprisoned. She was furious about that and wanted me to get the evidence thrown out.”

  Spector stepped forward and said, “Did she question who sent you to her aid?”

  “Not in the least. She strikes me as someone who sincerely believes that aid will come whenever she damn well needs it. The fact is, since she’s a fugitive from justice, no judge would cut her loose. She’d simply disappear again.”

  Buckley clearly didn’t care about bail or Desiree Atkins. “What did she tell you about El Cain?”

  “She hadn’t seen her since that night in Georgia.” Marbury paused to rub at his mouth. “Until Cain walked into her jail cell earlier today with an older woman.”

  Buckley and Spector exchanged a significant glance.

  “You didn’t mention that on the phone. How did it come about?” asked a frowning Buckley.

  “They just showed up. She had no idea they were coming. The older woman and Pine had visited Atkins previously. They said that they wanted to discuss doing some kind of deal with her. She didn’t know the details yet. They were going to get back to her.”

  Buckley glanced at Spector. “You really need to work your contacts at the FBI to find out more about Agent Pine.”

  “I actually found out some things. I was going to discuss them with you when all this happened.”

  “Well, I’d like to hear them now.”

  “Okay, first, Pine’s apparently a world-class agent, but she’s definitely a lone wolf. She could have climbed the Bureau ladder, but has no interest in doing so. Currently, she’s assigned to the Grand Canyon area and lives in a town called Shattered Rock. It’s a one-agent RA,” she added, referring to a small FBI Resident Agent office. “Carol Blum, the ‘older woman,’ is her assistant there. But it’s odd that she’s out in the field with Pine on a case. That’s not how the Bureau operates. And this El Cain matter is obviously a cold case, so I was confused as to why Pine was even involved at all. I mean, it’s not her area of responsibility. I asked that very question, but my contacts had no answers.” She added in a warning tone, “But by all accounts, Peter, Pine is good, I mean really, really good. We need to tread carefully.”

  “Well, considering she escaped from us, I would tend to agree with you.”

  Marbury looked very uncomfortable hearing this. “Mr. Buckley, please, I can’t be party to any of this. I have to tread cautiously here to maintain my legal career.”

  “Don’t worry, Marbury, none of this will come back to you.” He gave the lawyer a piercing look. “And if memory serves, weren’t you part of El Chapo’s defense team a few years ago?”

  “Well, everyone is entitled to a proper legal defense,” Marbury said primly.

  “Right. Now tell me, how and why would Blum and Cain think Desiree would be of any use to them?”

  “It seems that in addition to imprisoning people, my ‘client’ also is involved in a local drug ring. She admitted that to me when I questioned her about this deal they were discussing. While they never told her what they wanted from her, and they certainly didn’t mention to her that this Agent Pine had gone missing, she speculated that they knew about the drug ring and might want information about that. She told them she wanted a sweetheart deal presented to her first no matter what they wanted from her. They left it at that with, I suppose, the understanding that they would go back and try to get such a deal for her.”

  Spector said, “That would make sense, Peter, since they have no idea that you’re involved in this. They can’t possibly know that it’s someone with a beef against El Cain that’s behind this and not someone connected to Atkins and this local drug ring.”

  This should have been good news to Buckley, but it wasn’t. He had let slip to Pine that his motivation in going after Cain was the fact that she had killed his brother. Unless Cain had killed lots of people’s brothers, that would narrow things down considerably. He had been an utter fool to have disclosed that, but he had never envisioned Pine’s escaping. Which was a lesson to never assume anything. The only saving grace for him, perhaps, was that Cain might not know that his brother had actually died.

  He looked up and caught Spector eyeing him. She was a smart, clever woman, he knew. And her look was clear; she was now thinking the same thing he was. He had screwed up. But he also knew she had said what she just had in front of Marbury to cover up this angle. The lawyer had no need to know. And that was yet another reason why he liked working with Britt Spector. She got it, when most others didn’t.

  Buckley let his thoughts wander down this road a bit. But if Cain and Pine and Blum joined forces, and Cain was able to connect Ken as my brother and learned that he had died? That would lead right to me.

  “What else, Stephen?” Spector said to Marbury while keeping her gaze on Buckley.

  “Well, Cain is very tall, very tough looking, and her hair is nearly shaved, like a buzz cut.”

  Buckley came out of his musings and snapped, “Atkins told you this? About the shaved hair? The only picture we had of her was with long hair. That was one reason my men made the mistake at the hotel in picking up Pine instead of Cain. They mistook her for Cain because they looked so much alike.”

  This comment had an extraordinary effect on Spector. She backed away, pulled out her phone, and did a series of searches while Buckley and Marbury continued their conversation.

  She read through screen after screen until she got to one that left her slack-jawed.

  “Peter?” She gestured for him to join her in a far corner of the room.

  “What?” he asked impatiently.

  “What you said about your guys mistaking Pine for Cain?”

  “Yes?”

  She held up her phone. “You need to see this. Now.”

  Chapter 54

  BUCKLEY JOINED SPECTOR in the corner of the room.

  “What is so important?” he demanded. “What do I have to see?”

  She said, “Pine has a Wikipedia page. Not of her own making. It was apparently a fan thing. When she was in college she tried out for the Olympics in powerlifting and barely missed making the team. I had looked at it before but I didn’t read the whole thing. I thought it was just fluff. That was my mistake.”

  “And how the hell does that help us?” snapped Buckley.

  She handed him the phone. “Read the last paragraph of the very last page. It’s a bit of her personal bio from a long time ago. Shit, I should have found this out before, but none of my contacts at the Bureau mentioned it.”

  Buckley read the last paragraph and then glanced sharply at her. “Mercy Pine. Kidnapped from Andersonville, Georgia, and never seen again. Mercy Pine! They’re sisters?”

  “More than that. They’re identical twins. So your men could be forgiven in confusing the two. And that would explain why she’s working this case. And that also explains my Bureau contacts’ not wanting to answer that question. It was probably only a need-to-know about what she was doing.”

  This explained a lot, thought Buckley. And it also started a kernel of an idea in his mind that was rapidly formulating into a strategy that would coincide nicely with what he had decided this whole thing really meant to him. But with Pine’s having escaped it complicated things. Still, there was always a solution to every problem.

  While he was thinking about this, Spector left her phone with Buckley and rejoined Marbury, who was still staring curiously at his employer.

  Spector said, “You were talking about Cain’s shaved head?”

  Marbury finally drew his gaze from Buckley. “Yes, Atkins told me about that, but as it turned out, I saw it for myself. I didn’t know it at the time, of course, because I hadn’t yet met with Atkins. But I passed Blum and Cain in the hall on my way to see Atkins. They had apparently just finished speaking with her before I got there.”

  Buckley heard this and looked up from the phone, leaving thoughts of his developing strategy behind for now. His gaze shifted first to Spector and then to Marbury. He said to the attorney, “Do you mean they left the building before you did?”

  “I suppose so, yes.”

  “Where were your car and driver parked?”

  “Right in front,” replied Marbury. “It was the most convenient spot for me. Very close to the front door. I have a gimpy knee.”

  Spector said to Buckley, “To do any deal they would have to get a sign-off from the local police. Blum and Cain could have gone to speak with them after they left Atkins.”

  “At which time the local police would tell them that they could do nothing about any such deal at the moment because…” He looked at Marbury.

  Marbury got the point like a knife between his ribs. “Because she was now, apparently, represented by counsel. By me.”

  Spector flitted to the window, but kept out of sight.

  Buckley didn’t even look at her because he knew exactly what she was thinking. He said sharply, “Marbury, would you even know if you had been followed here?”

  The lawyer looked astonished. “Followed? I…I…that didn’t occur to me.”

  “Of course it didn’t,” Spector interjected derisively. She took out a small but powerful optical device from her jacket pocket and surveyed both the street and the area beyond on the other side street. She saw nothing until she reached the church. There were a number of cars there. She was about to look along the street the other way when she adjusted the device and was able to make out something interesting. “There’s a red Porsche SUV parked in the church lot down the street. It has Georgia plates.” She adjusted the lens again, increasing the clarity. “And that might very well be our Ms. Blum at the wheel.”

  Buckley joined her at the window. “Any sign of Cain?”

  “No, but she might have left Blum to do some closer surveillance.” She looked across the room. “In fact, she might already be in this house.”

  Marbury looked at them with a stricken expression. “Are we in danger or what?”

  Spector drew a gun from her shoulder holster. “Peter, I can check the house. If she is in here, our task just got a lot easier.”

  Marbury looked alarmed by this comment, but was smart enough to remain silent.

  Buckley took the optical device and Spector told him where to aim it. He looked through the lens at the Porsche. In spite of it all, he smiled. His adrenaline had spiked, and with the blood rush came the thrill he’d been missing for too many years now, after having felt it every day of his life for a very long time. And best of all, the possible strategy, in the flash of creative brilliance, had turned into a definite resolution. The only one that mattered now.