Deceptions
Page 12

Gabriel gave a grunt that I interpreted as “Good.”
“I’ll surprise him at the airport,” I said. “He can drop me at the office in the morning.”
Another grunt. I looked up to see him engrossed in his e-mail. I stopped talking and texted with Ricky. When I finished, Gabriel was sitting with his phone on his leg, his hand engulfing it.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“Edgar Chandler is dead.”
“What?”
“He killed himself shortly after returning to his cell. Cyanide, it seems.”
“Ransom must have slipped it to him. He warned Chandler that the hounds were coming and gave him a way out. That’s why I heard them. They were coming for Chandler.” I exhaled. “Shit.”
“There will be an investigation,” Gabriel said. “As his final visitors, we’ll be questioned. We may also be suspected.”
“Of giving him the pill? But we never touched him and the guard can confirm . . . Except the guard wasn’t a guard at all.”
“There were security cameras. As well as the second guard. I doubt we’d be seriously considered as suspects.”
“Okay, so what about Jon Childs? The guy Chandler wanted you to kill.”
“I had no intention of actually—”
I cut him off with a look. “I know that. You just wanted to get his name and find out why Chandler wants him dead.”
He nodded, pleased that I’d figured it out and relieved that I’d known he wouldn’t kill a man—at least, not one who didn’t present an immediate lethal threat.
“So let’s find Jon Childs,” I said.
CHAPTER SEVEN
While neither Jon nor Childs is a particularly uncommon name, when you put the two together you get fewer than twenty adult males in the country. And exactly one in the Greater Chicago area.
The Chicago Jon Childs was a thirty-six-year-old self-employed equities trader. Successful, according to his tax records. Yes, we had access to his tax records. Or Lydia did. Not necessarily legally. She’d spent most of her working life as the executive assistant to Chicago’s Field Office Special Agent in Charge. That would be the CIA field office.
Before I met Lydia, I’d presumed that husky voice on the phone belonged to some hot young thing. When we did meet, I realized my unforgivable lapse in reasoning. There was no way in hell Gabriel would hire eye candy to manage his office when he could get someone like Lydia for the same salary, given she was past retirement age and just looking for an interesting way to spend her time. Working for Gabriel was nothing if not interesting.
According to Lydia’s research, Childs was a graduate of Portland State who’d moved to Chicago ten years ago, immediately opening his own business and attracting a decent clientele. Never married. No kids. No affiliation with any known political party or other group. In other words, a guy without ties. Not unlike the man I worked for. A lack of ties meant a lack of accountability and, well, let’s face it, a lack of witnesses.
Childs worked from home, which made it difficult to stake him out. Problem number two? We could find absolutely no photographic record of him. No passport. No driver’s license.
The only alternative was to call him up, express interest in his services, and persuade him to meet with me. Except Childs wasn’t home, and he didn’t seem to have an admin assistant. I left a message with my cell number.
—
Lydia was on the phone as we were walking past her desk. She flagged me down and covered the receiver.
“I can finally get you in to see Todd,” she said.
I froze mid-step. Gabriel turned to me. “You’d rather not?”
“No, I—”
“Let me rephrase that. I know you’d rather not. I’m going to leave this ball in your court, Olivia. If you wish to visit Todd at some juncture, let Lydia know and—”
“Tuesday.”
He hesitated.
“I’ll go Tuesday,” I said.
“That’s tomorrow.”
“Oh, right. Maybe . . .” I took a deep breath and turned to Lydia. “I’d like to go tomorrow if you can make the arrangements, please.”
She nodded, and Gabriel led me out the door.
—
I showered and changed at Gabriel’s, and I planned to grab a taxi, presuming Ricky would have his bike at the airport. Gabriel was having none of that. He would deliver me to the doors of the appropriate terminal, where he would watch until I was safely inside. I could say he was overreacting, but given the events of the last few days, he really wasn’t.
I stood with the usual crowd of friends and family at the bottom of the baggage claim escalators and tried not to bounce on my toes like an excited kid. As I spotted Ricky at the top, a young woman beside me whispered to her friend, “Who’s that?” They began speculating—musician, actor, model . . .
When I first met Ricky, I thought he looked like Hollywood’s version of a biker. Six feet, well-built, tousled blond hair to his collar, hazel eyes, and a cleft chin when he shaved. What bolstered the whispering, though, were the two Satan’s Saints who stood on the escalator step behind him. To his left was CJ, who looked pretty much exactly like you’d expect from an aging biker. Big guy, late forties, slight paunch, graying beard, stringy ponytail, and shit-kicker boots. The other was Wallace, sergeant-at-arms—Don Gallagher’s right-hand man and main enforcer. Wallace is clean-cut and almost as tall as Gabriel, with an extra twenty pounds of muscle. Both men could pass for roadies or bodyguards, and that’s what the girls obviously mistook them for.