Page 55 of Slow Burn

Martin

Martin Grady deplaned with the rest of the cattle, shuffling down a long narrow hall with strange angles and sloping floors. At the end of the hall the crowd dispersed like aerosol spray, all on their separate urgent missions, their strange little lives. He shifted his suitcase from his right to his left hand and looked around, wishing he could have slept on the plane, wishing he’d been able to sleep the night before. Exhaustion had made him odd.

A uniformed limousine driver was holding up a hand-lettered sign that said MR. GRADY. He headed in that direction and was almost there when a hand slid under his elbow and turned him quickly away. He looked down and saw a plain matronly-looking woman with a pleasant smile clinging to his arm.

“Don’t cause trouble, Mr. Grady,” she said without breaking her smile. Something pressed into his side under the cover of their linked arms. “Feel that?”

“Yes—”

“It’s a gun. Keep walking. Do not make eye contact with the limo driver.”

He walked with her, sweating. Kidnapped by a grandmother at JFK. He was going to end up a movie of the week, just as he’d feared.

“Do you have any other bags?” Grandma asked, and patted his arm.

“No.” He resisted the urge to add,ma’am.

“Why, very good, that’ll save us quite a lot of time. Might even save your life. Right through here, young man, through that door.”

The door in question was blank wood except for the knob. Should he try to hit her with the door and run? He’d never expected to be a secret agent, no one had bothered to inform him about the proper procedures for being abducted. Behind the door could be anything—interrogation, a quick bullet, a body bag. He had to do something.

But it just didn’t seem possible.

He opened the door and went through, Grandma still clinging tightly to his arm. The lights were much lower inside the room; he blinked as she let go of him with one last fond pat and stepped away.

“Where are we?” he asked. The room was furnished with comfortable couches and chairs, reading lamps, shelves of books and magazines. A TV played quietly in the corner. Only the muffled rattle of aircraft and the lack of windows made it clear it wasn’t a normal living room.

“VIP lounge,” Grandma said, and opened her purse to slip a round gold tube of lipstick inside. He stared at it.

“Where’s your gun?”

“Oh, sonny, we’re in an airport. I don’t have a gun.” She gave him a wink and ducked back out into the airport again. He stood helpless, bag dragging at his hand, and flinched when another hand fell on his shoulder.

Adrian Carling. He looked down into her deep blue green eyes and had a sudden longing to kiss her, but her expression was all business.

“You almost went with the limo, didn’t you?” she accused. He shrugged. “Damn it, Marty, we’d be picking your body parts out of the Potomac if you’d made that mistake. Be a little more careful, would you?”

“You said you’d meet me.”

“Iammeeting you.” She shook her head in disgust. “Martin Grady, meet Special Agents Jennings and Mendoza. You just met Mrs. Womack, who’s on loan to us from another agency.”

“CIA?”

“AARP,” Carling said. Nobody else laughed. His chuckle trailed off into strained silence.

The two men who got up to shake hands might have been twins, except that Jennings was big and black-skinned, and Mendoza big and bronze-skinned. They both had football builds and chilly eyes, and wore earpieces like Secret Service men.

On the whole, he liked Mrs. Womack better.

“Martin is our data specialist,” Carling explained. “Mendoza, take his bag. I assume the disks and files are in there? Good. All precautions, Mendoza. If you’re ready, gentlemen?”

Carling, like a good defense attorney, always knew the answers before she asked the questions. They exited another door. This one led to a hallway that looked administrative. At the end of a long T-square hall loomed a guard station with metal detectors; Carling reached in her pocket and showed her FBI badge, beeped through without a pause. Jennings and Mendoza followed like the Crimson Tide in plainclothes. Martin was content to hold up the rear; alone in the parade, he didn’t set off the detector.

“Where are we going?” he asked, darting around the linebackers to get to Carling as they went out on the sidewalk. Carling had no time for him. Like the other two agents, she scanned the streets, eyes alert and paranoid, as a dark gray sedan slid to the curb in front of them. She jerked open the door, gave the driver a glance, and jerked her head at Jennings and Mendoza, who crammed into the backseat. She slid in the front and beckoned for Martin to follow.

The driver was Mrs. Womack, she of the deadly lipstick. She swung the sedan out into the traffic circle, watching the rearview mirror.

“Limo?” Carling asked.

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