Текст книги "The Naked Edge"
Автор книги: David Morrell
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Cavanaugh gave the bulging, legal-sized envelope to William, who spread the contents onto the conference table.
"Where do I put my autograph?" Cavanaugh asked.
"Aren't you going to read it first? As your lawyer, I strongly advise you to study what you're signing."
"Is there anything in it you don't approve of?"
"It's elegantly simple. You accept the bequest. You assume control of the company, with all its assets and, I emphasize, its liabilities."
"Yesterday, you told me Duncan made some questionable business decisions."
"He expanded the company too quickly. London, Paris, Rome, Hong Kong. The new office planned for Tokyo. Granted, after nine/eleven, first-rate security has never been in greater demand. But right now, GPS has more money going out than coming in. There's a risk of bankruptcy."
"Bankruptcy?" Ali frowned at Brockman. "Nobody told me anything about–"
Cavanaugh signed the document.
"We need a witness." William looked at Jamie. "But it can't be your wife."
"Wife?" Kim looked stunned.
"Hell, I'll do it," Mrs. Patterson said, happy to have continued to be part of the group. She signed where William indicated.
"So the company's mine now?" Cavanaugh asked William.
"Down to the paper clips and the water coolers."
"Then let's get started. Gerald, cancel the Tokyo office. Merge the Paris office with the one in Rome. Ali, Mrs. Patterson needs to be protected around the clock. Put her in a safe site."
"And assign some handsome young men to watch her," Jamie said.
"William needs a safe site, too," Cavanaugh added. "The hit team can use both of them to get at me. Kim, do a computer search on every assignment I ever had. There's a chance the attack on me was meant to keep me quiet about something I learned. I want the best protectors to escort Jamie and me. Send for Rob Miller, Dominic Benuto, Hans Dietrich, and . . ."
The somber looks he received made him stop.
He suddenly processed two incongruous statements that Ali and Kim had made. Ali had said, "As if we don't have enough problems." Kim had said, "I guess we're all reacting to stress."
"What's wrong?" he asked.
Kim drew a breath. "Except for Eddie, they're all dead. Within the past twenty-four hours."
At first, Cavanaugh was certain he hadn't heard correctly.
"Miller was in Venice, protecting a corporate executive and his wife," Ali explained. "Dominic was in Oaxaca, escorting a movie star. The others were on equally unrelated assignments. All of them were killed with sharp-edged weapons."
Cavanaugh leaned forward, pressing his hands on the table.
"All the blades were covered with a rapid-acting poison," Kim added.
Cavanaugh couldn't speak.
"The clients survived." Brockman sounded troubled. "They weren't harmed in the least. Nobody attacked them."
"Nobody? But that doesn't make sense," William objected.
"Sure, it does," Cavanaugh said. "If the clients weren't attacked, it means the protectors were the targets."
"But why not just use guns?"
"Because there's something creepily intimate about being stabbed," Cavanaugh replied. "A victim often doesn't feel the cuts or have any idea how serious the wound might be. There's a video that knife trainers use. The tape came from a security camera mounted to the ceiling of a bar in California. You see a bunch of Anglo tough guys beating up a short Latino man. They really put the boots to him. Finally, the worst of the attackers has the Latino on the bar's pool table, wailing the hell out of him. On the video, you see a little movement to the left, the Latino's hand trying to get out from under the bad guy, struggling to reach into his jean's pocket. Then you see a lot of quick little movements. The hand's a blur. Then the bad guy straightens, as if he pounded the Latino as much as he wanted to. He turns, and his stomach's wide open, but he's in shock and doesn't know he's been cut. Everybody runs. The bad guy looks puzzled by their reaction and walks over to the bar. He sits down. The Latino, who's covered with blood, gets off the pool table, puts his knife in his pocket, straightens his clothes, and walks out. The bad guy sitting at the bar orders a drink. He's still in so much shock that he doesn't know how many times he's been cut. He sits there a moment longer, shakes his head as if he's a little confused about something, and falls over dead."
William looked appalled.
"Most security personnel are so worried about a knife threat, they make sure they carry at least one knife so they can scare somebody with it if the situation gets that bad. Several knives are preferable so you've got a better chance of drawing one of them. Attached to a break-away chain around the neck." Cavanaugh opened his shirt, displaying a short, black knife in a nylon scabbard: part of the contents of the Gulfstream's bug-out bag. It was called La Griffe , a French word for "talon," which described its shape.
"And here." Jamie pulled back her blazer, showing William a utility knife holstered above her left hip, something else from the bug-out bag.
"And here." Cavanaugh unclipped a five-inch tactical folding knife from the inside of his pants pocket. The clip attachment made it easy to find and retrieve the knife. On the back of the blade, a hook snagged on the pocket. The resistance caused the blade to open as the knife was being drawn. "I had years of training with blades. A master knife maker taught me to forge them. But I hate the thought of being attacked by one. Believe me, a lot of protectors will feel cold and naked when word gets out they're being stalked with blades."
"But you weren't attacked with a blade," Jamie told him. "What's the connection?"
Chapter 3.
Raoul had no idea where he was being taken. After he used a pay phone to tell his parents that he was heading north to find a job in Denver, the stranger drove him to a small airport, Double Eagle, west of Albuquerque. There, the stranger returned his rental car. No security check was required as they walked toward a small jet. A few minutes later, they soared into the cobalt sky.
"I use small airports," the stranger explained, as if Raoul understood what the hell he was talking about. "I stay below eighteen thousand feet. That way, I don't need to file an instrument flight plan, and I don't turn on my transponder, which is how radar would otherwise track me."
Raoul had trouble concentrating. Until now, he'd never been in a plane. Vertigo threatened to make him vomit. But there was no way he'd let the stranger realize he was afraid. Although his palms were slick with sweat, he kept them firmly on his knees. He forced himself not to tremble.
The secret was not to look down, he decided. He began to wonder if this was some kind of sex thing, that the stranger would be like the predators Raoul had fought off in prison. But the stranger made no moves of that sort. In fact, after paying Raoul the promised two thousand dollars, all he wanted to talk about was fighting.
"Ever want to join the military?" the stranger asked.
"Hell, no." The jet engines were muffled through the earphones the stranger had given him.
"Don't you think it would be cool to carry a handgun and an assault rifle as part of your job?"
" That part. But who wants to go through all the bullshit of taking orders?"
"One goes with the other." The stranger had powerful-looking forearms. His sun-darkened face was gaunt, with a crease down each cheek, and an unusual intensity in his hazel eyes. "Nobody's going to give you a gun without telling you how and when to use it."
"I already got a gun."
"That piece of junk thirty-two? Even if you'd shot me with it, I could have reached you, grabbed it out of your hand, and shoved it down your throat. We'll get you some real guns. Ever fired an MP-5?"
"A what?"
"A submachine gun. Do you know the difference between a submachine gun and an actual machine gun?"
Raoul didn't even know there was a difference.
"A submachine gun fires pistol ammunition. Nine millimeter. A machine gun fires rifle ammunition. A point two-two-three cartridge, for example. The kind that goes in an M-16. Wicked. The bullet flips end over end when it hits something. Rips the target to shreds. Ever fired a submachine gun?"
Raoul hesitated, afraid he'd lose face if he admitted the truth. "No."
"We'll make up for that deficiency. There's nothing as sweet as firing an MP-5 on full auto, thirty rounds zipping through that gun in two seconds. Raoul, you might not have made love to the most beautiful woman. You might not have tasted the greatest whiskey. You might not have driven the fastest car. But I'm telling you, when you put thirty full-auto rounds through an MP-5, you can definitely say you've shot the world's best submachine gun. But to be given the chance to do that, and to get the further money I promised, you need to follow some orders. I mean, that's in any job, right?"
"I realize nobody's gonna give me money and not expect me to do something," Raoul said. "But you asked if I ever wanted to join the army. There's no way I'm gonna make bunk beds and bounce quarters off them and shit like they show in the movies."
"Movies, Raoul? You like movies?"
"Sure."
"Did you see any movies when you were in prison?"
"On TV."
"Sounds like a cushy prison."
"Try it sometime. See how cushy you think it is."
"Oh, I've been in prison, Raoul. Believe me. But the kind I was in didn't have TVs. What they had was red-hot needles under my fingernails and electrodes on my testicles."
Raoul noticed the scars on the stranger's fingers.
"When you're not learning about MP-5s and fun stuff like that, you're going to have a different kind of fun, watching a lot of movies," the stranger said. "Quite a job, huh? To get paid three thousand dollars a month to watch movies?"
" What movies?"
"Action movies. I think we'll start with Thief . Michael Mann directed it. James Caan's the star. Ever seen it."
Raoul had no idea who the hell Michael Mann and James Caan were. "Sounds like an old movie. I don't watch old movies."
"I guarantee you'll love this one. At the end, Caan goes into a house and blows away a bunch of gangsters, using a handgun. It's one of the first times a gunfight had an accurate look in a movie. Mann uses terrific technical advisors. The way Caan holds the pistol. His balance. His footwork. Amazing. I've got a bunch of other movies like it. Ronin . Proof of Life . Spy Game . The Recruit . The thing is, Raoul, you need to ignore the plots and concentrate on the individual scenes, on what the characters do and the way the actors handle themselves, because those movies had terrific technical advisors too, and except for a few spots, they're accurate in their tradecraft."
"Tradecraft?"
"The way operators– professionals –do things. You'll catch on to the vocabulary as we go along. You'll watch Black Hawk Down , of course. And the TV series, The Unit , which is about Delta Force. And Dark Blue . Kurt Russell plays a corrupt cop. The director Ron Shelton got a really good technical advisor. The gun stuff is accurate. And there's a moment when Kurt gives a speech and says, 'I'm a gunfighter. I come from a family of gunfighters.' That's a first. I never saw a movie before in which somebody like a police detective who earns his living with a gun calls himself a gunfighter. In life, of course, privately they do call themselves that. Gunfighter. You like the sound of that word, Raoul?"
"Sounds like an old western."
"A western. Good idea, Raoul. I'll make sure you look at The Wild Bunch ."
The sun was behind them. The expanse of the landscape changed from mountains to flats, from brown to green. Sunset occurred swiftly. Soon they flew in darkness. Raoul controlled his dizziness by staring at the faint glow of the lights on the cockpit's dials.
"You impress me," the stranger said.
"What are you talking about?"
"You're afraid to fly."
"Who says I'm afraid?"
"But you don't show it."
" Who says I'm afraid? "
"Not me."
Raoul continued to stare ahead, surprised by how much light was on the ground. Towns glowed. Cities glared. Headlights blazed on freeways. There were seldom stretches of pure black. He hadn't realized how many people there were and how bright the night could be. When they reached one of the few sections of black, the stranger aimed the jet toward the heart of it.
Immediately, two rows of lights appeared in the gloom. As the stranger guided the plane down toward them, Raoul's stomach rose toward his throat. He repressed the urge to be sick. But by God, he wasn't going to show the stranger any of what he felt.
Descending, he suddenly had the sense of high trees on each side of the lights. Then the lights got big, and he felt a nudge through the plane as the wheels touched down. The stranger steered to the right, toward other lights, which were in a corrugated-metal building that had its large doors open. At once, the lights on the runway went out, but not before Raoul looked back and saw men scurrying across the runway, pulling something over it. A net. They were covering the runway with a camouflage net. The stranger shut off the plane's engines. In the blessed silence, their sound still echoed in Raoul's ears.
When the stranger opened the exit hatch, humidity enveloped Raoul. Sweat moistened his face and threatened to make his clothes stick to his skin as they stepped from the plane. The air weighed on him.
Where the hell was he?
There was too much else to think about. Three men waited for the stranger and him to climb down. They wore thick-soled camping shoes, pants with numerous pockets, loose shirts hanging out, and baseball caps over what their short sideburns suggested was closely cropped hair. One was Anglo. One was Black. One was Hispanic. The latter made Raoul feel less isolated. It took him a moment before he noticed that, although he thought of them as men, two seemed younger than his twenty-three years, but something about the way they carried themselves made clear they were definitely men.
"Everything's on schedule?" the stranger asked.
"Yes, Mr. Bowie," the black man said.
At last, a name for the stranger.
"This is Mr. Ramirez," Bowie said, indicating Raoul.
Despite his uneasiness, Raoul felt proud to have been introduced in that formal manner. Mister. No one had ever called him that before.
"He's smart," Bowie said.
No one had ever spoken about Raoul in that way, either.
"He'll be an excellent contribution to our group." Bowie turned to him. "Won't you, Mr. Ramirez?"
Yes." Then an amazing thing happened. Raoul didn't think about the next thing he said. He just did it. "Yes, sir."
"See?" Bowie told the three men. "An excellent contributor. Get him squared away. Clothes, equipment, something to eat. Show him where he'll be bunking. Mr. Ramirez, as you can tell from these representatives of our group, this is not a white-bread operation. If you have any problem relating to various races, you'll need to get over it in a hurry. We follow the one true god here, and that is Discipline."
Sudden gunshots made Raoul flinch. In an instant, he tucked down his head, bent his knees, and raised his hands to defend himself.
"Quick reactions," the Anglo said.
The shots came from behind the building.
"He shows promise," the Hispanic agreed.
The shots persisted: a steady rattle. His stomach on fire, Raoul stared past the plane toward the rear of the building. He had no idea how thick its corrugated metal was, and the only thing that kept him from diving to the concrete floor was that no one else in the group seemed alarmed.
"It's a night-training exercise," Bowie told him. "You'll be involved in them soon enough."
Out there, something exploded. Again, no one else reacted.
"And when you're not training," Bowie said, "you'll learn to sleep despite the noise. Sleep is the operator's friends. Fatigue is among the legion of his enemies. Always sleep and eat whenever you get the chance, although you won't have much time for rest here. Do you like video games, Raoul?"
"Uh, video games?" The seemingly weird question made Raoul frown as he glanced nervously again in the direction of the shots.
"Video games, sir ."
"Sir. I used to. In the joint, there weren't any."
"Well, that's different now. Here, when you're not in classes or watching movies, you can play video games as much as you want. The latest versions. Soldier of Fortune. Mortal Kombat. Doom. The U.S. military licenses that one and encourages its soldiers to play it. Medal of Honor. Brothers in Arms. Men of Valor. Full Spectrum Warrior. America's Army . We've got every action video game on the market. Hone your reflexes. Have a ball."
Chapter 4.
"Don't you think you should try to sleep?" Jamie asked Cavanaugh from the shadowy doorway to the bedroom.
Duncan, who'd sometimes worked twenty-hour days, had put his living quarters next to his office. That Duncan's personal and professional life had been so severely joined made Cavanaugh wonder how his own life and Jamie's would change now that he'd assumed control of the corporation.
He sat at Duncan's desk, a thick computer printout spread before him.
"I doubt I could sleep." Eyes sore with fatigue, he ran his finger down the list that Kim had prepared: his former assignments.
It depressed him to realize the number and extent of the protective details he'd worked on. Politicians, corporate executives, movie celebrities, sports stars, real-estate barons, on and on. There'd been hundreds, but only a few had seemed special apart from the money, power, or fame they had. The work had been what he'd cared about. As Duncan had insisted, "Unless they're obvious moral monsters, it isn't our place to make judgments about our clients. The only thing that's important is, they're somebody's prey, and predators are always the enemy."
"That list will look fresher in the morning," Jamie said.
"But in the meantime, what if somebody dies because I didn't do my job? I have to believe, somewhere in these past assignments there's a clue about why the hit team tried to kill us and why those other agents were killed. Or maybe the attack was revenge because of an assassination or kidnapping I prevented. I don't know where else to look."
"You can't do your job if you can't think straight."
"I've gone without sleep a lot longer than this."
"I hear it makes a person psychotic."
Cavanaugh had to grin. "You say the sweetest things."
"I'm serious." Jamie massaged his shoulders. "The list will look fresher in the morning."
Cavanaugh thought about it and sighed. "All these assignments. When this is over–"
"Making me think about the future so I don't worry about the present?"
"I'm projecting myself into the future so I don't worry about the present. When this is over." Cavanaugh set down the pages. "You're right. Let's get some sleep."
He put his arm around her and guided her toward the bedroom.
The phone rang.
He paused.
It rang again.
He turned.
"Don't answer it," Jamie said.
He stared at the desk. Not Duncan's desk. Not any longer. Now it's my desk.
"Whatever it's about can wait until morning," Jamie told him.
"No," Cavanaugh decided.
But when he reached for it, the phone stopped ringing.
"Couldn't have been that important if the caller hung up," Jamie said.
Cavanaugh pointed toward a light on the elaborate phone console. "Somebody else answered. Maybe after a specific number of rings, the call gets transferred to another phone."
He stared at the constant light on the console. Next to each light was a name. In this case, the name was Brockman. "If it was a wrong number, he'd have hung up by now. I'd better go find out what's wrong."
"What makes you think something's wrong."
"Was there ever a call at three in the morning that wasn't about something wrong?"
They entered the corridor.
Cavanaugh had the feeling of being lifted, of him and Jamie being thrown through the air and striking the corridor's wall, of dropping to the floor. Immediately, his senses caught up to him. The roar behind him. From the office. No, from beyond the office. From the bedroom . The searing flash. The shockwave punching air from his lungs. Groaning, he rolled toward Jamie as chunks of plaster and wood fell over him. Despite the ringing in his ears, he thought he heard Jamie moan. Then he heard her curse, anger giving her the energy to paw rubble off her.
He smelled smoke. Struggling to his hands and knees, he peered through the doorway into what had been the office. The wall between the office and the bedroom had been ruptured. The lights had been destroyed, but flickering flames allowed him to see into the gutted bedroom. The window's bullet-resistant glass was spread across the bedroom floor. An October wind howled through the jagged opening, fueling the flames.
An alarm went off. Overhead sprinklers gushed water into the bedroom and the office.
Somebody pulled Cavanaugh away–Ali. Somebody else pulled Jamie. Belatedly, Cavanaugh realized it was Kim. Brockman had a fire extinguisher and charged into the wreckage, spraying foam where the flames resisted the water from the sprinklers.
Then Cavanaugh was clear of the smoke and the dust. Ali set him down in the conference room and turned on the lights. Jamie squirmed next to him, blood running from her nose.
Cavanaugh realized that blood ran from his nose, also.
Through blurred vision, he stared at the draperies that covered the conference room windows. "Get us out of here." His voice seemed to come from far away.
"What?" Ali asked, as if Cavanaugh spoke gibberish.
And maybe Cavanaugh did speak gibberish. He pointed toward the windows. "Get us out of this room." He tried to say it as distinctly and forcefully as possible, his throat raw, his lips numb.
"The glass from the other window," he managed to say.
"What about it?"
". . . sprayed inside the bedroom. The explosion came from outside. It must have been . . . "
"A rocket," Kim realized.
Handheld types were only thirty inches long. At this late hour, with midtown Manhattan mostly deserted, one could have been easily launched from the opposite sidewalk.
"Hurry." Ali helped to pull Cavanaugh and Jamie from the conference room into the lobby.
But they didn't stop there. Brockman was suddenly with them again. Dropping the fire extinguisher, he helped Ali yank open doors that led to a bank of elevators.
A bell rang. An elevator opened.
Brockman, Kim, and Ali drew their guns.
Chapter 5.
The man who emerged from the elevator wore black pants and a black leather jacket. He stared at the weapons, stopped chewing gum, and raised his hands. "Whoa," he said.
Slowly, the pistols were lowered.
The man was Eddie Macintosh, one of the protectors Cavanaugh had sent for. He studied the blood trickling from Cavanaugh's nose. "Tell me what to do."
"Have you got a car?"
"In the parking garage downstairs."
From the gaping window down the hall, they heard the wail of approaching sirens.
Jamie sat up. "Get us out of here."
"To the hospital?"
"No. We'd be targets there."
"And we'd be defenseless at a police precinct." Cavanaugh forced himself to stand. "We can't assume every police officer and fireman who arrives is genuine."
Through the shattered window, the sirens sounded closer.
Cavanaugh wavered, then helped Jamie up. "How did they know to hit our bedroom?"
"Maybe they saw its light go on," Brockman said.
"No. That light was off," Jamie insisted. "What was that phone call about?"
Brockman's tone was stark. "Another agent's been killed."
"What?"
"Jack Gantry. He was in Vancouver, protecting a TV anchorwoman from a stalker. He escorted her home. When he walked back to his car, he got hit. A crossbow. Those things are almost as powerful as some pistols. No sound."
"A crossbow?" Cavanaugh's confusion made him feel as if the floor shifted. "Kim, do you have a backup for the printout you gave me?"
She fumbled in her suit coat and gave him a memory stick.
"Tell the police we'll contact them when we're safe." Unwilling to trust the elevator, Cavanaugh motioned for Jamie and Eddie to follow him toward the fire door.
Chapter 6.
The stairs felt cold. Cavanaugh tried to assure himself that was why he shivered. Footsteps scraping, the group descended from the fortieth to the thirtieth floor, where he surprised Jamie and Eddie by opening the door.
Eddie looked puzzled. "You said we were leaving the building."
"The others don't need to know."
Cavanaugh glanced inside and made sure that the softly lit corridor was empty. After they went in, he held three fingers in front of Jamie. "How many?"
She told him.
"Blurred?"
"No."
"Headache?"
"Yes." Jamie wiped blood from her nose.
"We need to wait and see if it's a concussion."
"How will we know?"
"If you throw up or feel sleepy."
"Sleepy? At this hour? Imagine that." Jamie turned toward Eddie. "We haven't been introduced. Jamie Travers."
"Eddie Macintosh. Are you an operator? You must be new. I haven't seen you around."
"She's my wife," Cavanaugh said.
"Wonders never cease."
"And yes," Cavanaugh said, "she's an operator."
"Haven't seen you around, either. I heard you left the business."
"I tried. But now I'm back."
Chapter 7.
Cavanaugh led them to a door marked WILLIAM FARADAY LAW OFFICES. He raised his jacket collar, reached into a slit in the material, and pulled out lock-pick tools that he'd taken from the Gulfstream's bug-out bag. He inserted one of the picks into the lock, probing to free the pins while he used another pick to apply torque and turn the key slot.
It took him thirty seconds. Too long , he thought. I should have been able to do it in fifteen. Perhaps he was still dazed from the explosions. But perhaps his lock-picking skills had atrophied during the months he'd stopped being a protector.
That made him worry about what other skills might have atrophied.
He opened the door and heard the intrusion alarm's beep. If he didn't enter the access code within thirty seconds, the alarm would blare. Leaving the lights off, he crossed the waiting room to the control panel and pressed buttons for the code that he and William had agreed on when the system was installed.
The beeping stopped.
Jamie locked the door behind them.
" Faraday ," a voice croaked. " Jerk ."
Jamie and Eddie drew their guns.
A dim nightlight revealed a parrot in a cage.
" Faraday. Jerk ," the bird repeated.
"What the hell?" Eddie muttered.
"One of William's competitors sent the parrot after losing a case to him," Cavanaugh explained. "William thanked the rival attorney and promised to keep the bird in his reception room."
" William did that?" Jamie asked in surprise.
"He also swore to keep the bottom of the cage lined with photographs of the man who sent the parrot. William's clients find it amusing to look down and see bird droppings over the guy's face."
"Now that sounds more like William."
" Faraday. Jerk ," the parrot squawked.
Cavanaugh hurried to the receptionist's desk and turned on its computer. Helped by its glow, he inserted Kim's memory stick and activated the printer.
As the machine went to work, he asked Eddie, "Are you armed?"
"Of course."
"Mind watching the front door while we clean the blood off us?"
Eddie pushed back one side of his leather jacket and drew a Beretta nine-millimeter. He had big hands and could handle the double-stacked fifteen-round magazine. He put another piece of gum into his mouth.
"Anybody who breaks through that door won't live to break through another one."
Chapter 8.
"Still got a headache?"
Cavanaugh used a moist paper towel to wipe blood from Jamie's face. The restroom didn't have windows, so it was safe to turn on the lights, which pained Cavanaugh's eyes.
"Not as bad. You?" Jamie wiped blood from his face.
"Shook up."
"You don't show it." Her voice echoed off the room's tiles.
"You're doing a good job of hiding it, also. Are you sure you don't feel dizzy?" The bright lights continued to hurt his eyes.
"You mean, do I think I'm going to pass out from a concussion? No. How do I know? Because I'm starved for a medium pizza with pepperoni and mushrooms."
"I guess you're going to live."
"For now."
"Yes," Cavanaugh said, the words sticking in his throat. "For now."
As he guided her toward the door to the hallway, she hesitated, no longer able to ignore her troubled thoughts. "How did they know to make the bedroom the target? I didn't turn the light on. They couldn't have known we were going in there."
"Maybe the phone call," Cavanaugh replied.
"You didn't answer it. They couldn't have known we were in that office."
"But then the call was automatically transferred to Brockman," Cavanaugh reminded her.
"You think he told them where we were?"
"I have no idea. He claims the phone call was about another agent who was killed."
"We'd need phone records to find out where the call came from."
"Yes, and while we figure out how to get them, here's something else that's been troubling me."
In the harsh light, Jamie's eyes narrowed.
"Duncan chose Brockman to be his chief-of-staff. It's a logical choice. Brockman's a first-rate administrator as well as a proven operator."
"So?"
"Why didn't Duncan give the company to him?"
"Because Duncan felt a bond with you ."
"But he also knew I hated working at a desk. We were close, yes, but Duncan saw Brockman all the time and must have gotten along with him if Duncan kept him as chief-of-staff."
"I don't see where you're going with this."
"According to William, Duncan decided to make me his heir a month before he was killed. What if he gave GPS to me because he'd begun to suspect something was wrong with the company?"
