Page 63 of Devil's Due

Lucia looked from her to Ben. “We could track suppliers. That could give us the unit number.”

“Or we could just give the FBI the information.” He nodded at Susannah. “And her.”

“I can make the phone call, but without some proof, I don’t think Agent Rawlins is going to be giving it much priority. He’s overworked. He barely responded when we had anthrax in an envelope.” She paused, thinking about it. “I know somebody to talk to, but he’s undercover. I’ll have to arrange a drive-by meeting. Shouldn’t take long.”

McCarthy didn’t look happy about it.

“How are you going to get there?” he asked. “To your meeting? I can’t leave her alone here.”

“That’s the wonderful thing,” Lucia said, and pulled the cell phone from her purse. “If you have a phone and a credit card, you can get just about anything delivered.”

“Get pizza while you’re at it.”

She called FBI Special Agent Roger Cole ten minutes later. Cell phone, not office phone. Two minutes of idle chatting, a simple thirty-second request, and silence from him on the other end.

“Is this going to bite me in the ass?” he asked her. He was in his car. The road noise nearly overwhelmed his voice. “Because I’d like to know how, so I can get my will ready.”

“It might make your day, Roger. If I’m right.”

“Then you should give me everything you have so I can get to work on it. Or better yet, somebody else can. I’m a little busy. Maybe you’ve heard, somebody’s been playing with funny little white powder in envelopes.”

“I’ve heard,” she said blandly; he knew perfectly well who’d gotten the envelope. “This could be connected.” A lie, but a nebulous one.

“Yeah?” The road noise lessened; he was puffing over. “Okay, give. What do you have, and why aren’t you talking to your red-haired boy?”

“My red-haired boy isn’t exactly jumping through hoops for me at the moment.”

“Don’t be that way. He had four guys on the street looking for you, you know. He was distressed.”

“So distressed he hasn’t bothered to make a phone call to say hello and interrogate me about what I know? He’s got bigger and juicier fish to catch just now. Look, all you have to do is track the shipments of chemicals to a specific address in SubTropolis, and I’ll do the rest. If it checks out, it’s yours. You get to be the hero.” She read out the names of the specific chemicals as Susannah had given them. “Sound like anything to you?”

“Electroplating,” he said. “And gas chambers. Fuck. You’ve done it again, haven’t you?”

“Are you going to get me the information?”

His sigh rattled in the speaker. “No. I’ll get the info, but I go with you.”

“I don’t want a full team for reconnaissance.”

“Relax. I’ll make some calls, pick you up in …” he paused to check the time “… about an hour, okay?”

“Thank you.”

The pizza arrived in forty-five minutes, and the driver looked nervous when Lucia met him at the door to hand him cash. She didn’t doubt the apartment complex had a bad rep among deliverymen. She added on a considerable tip for his trouble, and hoped he wasn’t mugged on his way back to his car.

Two slices later, her cell phone rang. Cole had a unit number in SubTropolis, including an entrance address. He’d even secured a Bureau van labeled as an electrical contractor; it would draw less attention in the SubTropolis tunnels than a private vehicle, especially since so much of the place was fitted out for industrial use.

“Where should I meet you?”

“You shouldn’t,” he said, amused. “I’ll pick you up. Curb service and all that crap. Address?” She gave it. “Right, I’m close. Five minutes. I’ll honk twice.”

As she hung up, she realized that both McCarthy and Susannah were staring at her. “He’s a decorated FBI special agent,” she said. “I can vouch for him. He’s the last person you need to worry about.”

“Lucia, I don’t like this,” McCarthy said. He leaned back in his chair, frowning. “You just got out of the hospital, for Christ’s sake. Let Jazz check it out.”

“Jazz is looking into where I was taken while I was unconscious. That’s not something I can put on the back burner. I need to know.”

“Jazz hasn’t slept in a week,” he said softly. “You know that, right? She’s catnapped a couple of times, when she fell down from exhaustion, but she’s been living on coffee and Vivarin. Give her a break. Hell, give both of you a break.”

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