Last Chance to Die by Noah Boyd (good books for 8th graders TXT) 📕

Vail looked at Kate. “It was in there?”

“They’re going to examine it for prints to see if Rellick’s are on it. It hasn’t been processed before, so the Russians must have copied it and fumed the copy for the flash-drive setup.”

“You’d think Rellick would have destroyed everything, especially that.”

“He probably panicked, and maybe he intends to defect. If so, why bother? Considering where this box was, under all the rest, he may have just forgotten it, and even if he didn’t, it would have taken him some time to find it in all that mess. From the other documents in the box, it looks like it’s a couple of years old, so if he did think about getting rid of it, he probably knew that it would take too long to find.”

Vail said, “That sounds like all good news to me.”

“For us, yes, but for them there’s a new problem. As soon as they discovered he was gone, they unleashed the techs on his work computer. They found a deleted file that he’d cobbled together from a bunch of different files that he shouldn’t have been able to gain access to. They’re thinking maybe the Russians helped him ‘jailbreak’ some of the CIA security measures.”

“What was on it?” Vail asked.

“Dozens of the agency’s European sources. If he’s taking it to the Russians, the likelihood of their being killed is quite high. It would set the Agency back ten years.”

“You said ‘if he’s taking it to the Russians.’ ”

“The last entry in the file was just two days ago. And it was deleted last night after the polygrapher told him about the impending test. So they don’t think he had completed the list yet. But somehow they were able to tell that it was downloaded before it was deleted.”

“Did they check his e-mail?” Vail asked.

“Both at the office and here. He didn’t send it through either of them. I don’t know, maybe he put it onto another thumb drive. As you can imagine, there’s a fairly large amount of panic around here. Right now they’re trying all their super-secret spy stuff to find him. The problem is that he knows how to avoid it,” Kalix said. “Steve, they found one more thing on his computer here. That photo that was sent to the two guys at the house who tried to kill you, through that untraceable CIA phone line—it was on there. The Russians must have had him send it so it wouldn’t come back to anyone.”

“Well, that answers who,” Vail said.

“Anyway, before Kate’s innocence gets lost in all the impending catastrophe, I’m going to go see the United States Attorney. He says he’ll see me as soon as I get there. In the meantime, maybe we can find something else here that will eliminate any doubt that Kate wasn’t part of this.”

“I don’t know how to thank you, John,” she said.

“You’re not clear yet, Kate. As long as Rellick’s on the loose, they are going to need somebody to blame. They’ve got evidence against you, and even though it’s all manufactured, the United States Attorney probably isn’t going to be a fan of yours the way you made a fool out of him when you escaped. But I’ll let you know once I talk to him.”

After Kalix hung up, Vail said, more to himself than the others, “He’s right.”

“Think so?” Bursaw said.

Realizing he’d said it out loud, Vail looked at Kate. “Sorry. It would be better for you if they found Rellick. Much better.”

She thought for a second and then said, “See if this sounds right: Rellick left his cell phone behind at his house, mostly as a decoy. Would he have another one? You know, just for spy business?”

“That makes a lot of sense,” Vail said.

“You have that CIA dead-end number, right?”

“Yes.”

“Since you were last in the Bureau, we’ve developed fairly sophisticated reverse-toll record traces, especially for cell phones, because every call is noted for billing. So we can take a call if we know the date and time and, with a fairly simple computer run, determine the phone it was made from.”

Vail said, “So if Rellick does have another cell and we can identify it through the reverse records, if he’s got it on, we can ping it.”

“And find out where he is,” Bursaw added.

Vail had his pocket notebook out, turning pages. “Here it is.” He started to write it down, then stopped. “But how do we get it done? Technically, you’re still wanted.”

“If you think about it, there aren’t many people at headquarters who know my situation. The worst thing that could happen is that someone could find out I’m here. We really have no choice.” Both men nodded. “Why don’t you guys get out of here, and I’ll make the call. That way if something happens to me, you’ll still be able to look for Rellick.”

“Just remember, if you get locked up again, you’re on your own.”

“Talk about your one-night stands.”

Vail looked over at Bursaw, who had a huge, self-congratulatory smile on his face. “Thanks, Kate. Now I can spend the rest of the day fending off questions from the Special Agent Lust here.”

After eating burgers in the car again, Vail and Bursaw sat parked a half mile from the apartment, where Kate was making calls. “Steve, do you think we’ll actually find out what happened to Sundra?”

“Huh? Oh, I don’t know. We could. Right now I’d guess fifty-fifty.”

“You’re worried about Kate, aren’t you?”

Vail looked at him carefully to make sure this wasn’t a lead-in to a salacious line of questioning. “The way everything’s gone today, I shouldn’t be, but every once in a while I get worried that things won’t work out. That usually happens when I can’t do anything except sit and wait.” He took Bursaw’s phone and dialed Kate. After a number of rings, he hung up. “Does your sister have call-waiting?”

“I think so.”

“I didn’t get the machine, so hopefully Kate was busy on the line.”

Then