Edge

trained the muzzles of our weapons in the direction of the snap.
    “The hell is it?” he asked.
    We got the answer a moment later as we saw another rock sail over the house and land in the driveway.
    “Diversion,” I rasped with alarm in my voice. We both spun around fast—to see a man covering us with a silenced semiautomatic pistol. He’d come up behind us quietly, as we were staring toward the sound, after flinging the stones over the roof to distract us.
    The lean sandy-haired man was wearing the same green jacket he’d been wearing on Saturday at the assault on the Kesslers’ house and at the flytrap.
    I whispered, “It’s Loving’s partner!”
    “His—?” the Barr-imposter began to ask. But before he finished the sentence the man in the green jacket squinted, lifted his weapon toward my leg and fired three times.
    I cried out and went down hard.

Chapter 56
    THE BULLETS, IN fact, hadn’t hit me at all.
    And the man in the jacket wasn’t Loving’s partner.
    He was Williams’s security expert, a man named Jonny Pogue—the one who was indeed closer than I would have thought, as Williams had said, after his grunting chuckle. Pogue had been stationed directly across the road and had been shadowing us for days to make certain that Joanne and her dark secrets didn’t fall into the wrong hands. That’s what he’d been doing at the Kesslers’ house and at the flytrap, but since he was operating undercover, he never contacted us and we’d assumed he was the partner.
    Over the phone shortly before, Pogue and I had worked out the ruse that was now unfolding, a strategy that might get to the truth about the imposter and what Loving’s true plan was.
    A strategy that might also get both Pogue and me killed.
    Pogue knelt down and pretended to search me carefully; as he did so he turned his back to the imposter and was completely vulnerable. But the man, who could have shot him at any moment, was confused that Pogue was ignoring him. And furtherdisarmed by Pogue’s picking up my Glock and handing it to the phony FBI agent. “Here.”
    “I’m sorry,” he said, taking the weapon uncertainly, “but who the fuck are you?”
    “Pogue.”
    “Henry never said—”
    “Loving doesn’t know about me. I work for the man who hired him.”
    This was a gamble that Pogue and I had discussed. If the imposter himself worked for the primary, the whole play would end right now—maybe bloodily.
    But then I heard him give a brief laugh and say, “Oh, sure. That explains it.”
    “I’ve been keeping an eye on you and Henry just to make sure things go according to plan.” Pogue rose and extended his hand. “What’s the name?”
    “McCall.”
    They shook hands briefly. Then Pogue muttered, “Well, McCall, we got a problem. You know the insider—got you the info about Barr and your picture up on the Bureau website.”
    McCall nodded absently, looking around. “I don’t know who it is, just somebody in that asshole Fredericks’ office.”
    So the mole was in Freddy’s department. This was bad. I didn’t react, however, just clutched my leg and moaned. McCall seemed to enjoy it.
    “Well, whoever they are, they changed their fucking mind,” Pogue spat out. “They’re talking.”
    “Shit, no.”
    “Shit, yeah.” There was a mocking quality about the comment, the sort you’d hear between two soldiers on allied armies. Pogue was acting in top form.
    Sickle  . . .
    McCall asked, “They know about me?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe not yet but they will. It’s just a matter of time till they figure out that you clipped Barr.”
    Defensively McCall said, “The body’s in a storm drain. Take ’em days to find it.”
    “You can fucking hope. But the point is we’ve gotta bail. Get to Henry and warn him—we can’t use the phones or radio. They have all our numbers and frequencies.”
    “What about him?” McCall pointed my own Glock at me.
    “He’s coming with us. There’s things my boss wants to know. But the priority is we’ve got to get to Henry. I mean, now. Where is he?”
    “Last time I talked to him he was pretty close.” McCall smirked. “They bought all that crap about him going to Philly.”
    “Well, let’s get to him. Before they track him down. Where is he exactly?”
    Careful, I thought to Pogue. I was worried he might be overdoing it.
    “He was going to facility, after he and the crew picked up the target.”
    Pogue asked, “The target? Joanne Kessler?”
    McCall