Edge

frowned. “No, no, man. She doesn’t have anything to do with this. . . . I mean, the real target. Amanda, the daughter.”

Chapter 57
    AMANDA  . . .
    She was the Kessler they were after? Not Ryan or his wife?
    I desperately tried to piece together how this could be.
    Recovering, Pogue said, “I know that. I just thought Henry’d want to take Joanne and her husband out.”
    McCall shrugged. “Maybe. But he didn’t say anything to me about it.”
    Pogue muttered, “I want to get the fuck out of here now. We’ll meet him at the facility. Where is it again?”
    This was a good try. I probably would have waited a little longer to pry some more details out, but there it was.
    And I could tell by the thick silence that followed that the ruse was over. McCall had grown suspicious.
    I couldn’t take a chance he’d discard my Glock—it was unloaded—and go for his machine gun. I rolled to my feet. “Now. Take him.”
    Gasping, McCall reacted fast, lifting the only weapon in his grip, my Glock, toward us.
    Pogue muttered calmly, “It’s empty.” He targetedMcCall with the suppressed Beretta. I stepped forward and grabbed my Glock from McCall’s hand, reloaded, drew the slide and released it.
    I covered McCall, gaping at us in shock, as Pogue slipped restraints onto his hands, cinching them tight. I took my phone and quickly dialed the detention center.
    Lyle Ahmad now appeared from the bushes, where he’d been stationed with his own M4, a night scope mounted. I’d sent Ahmad into the woods to target the imposter while Pogue and I put on our little performance to see what we could learn from the man.
    Grasping how completely he’d been suckered, McCall muttered, “I’m fucked.” He was staring at my leg, where the bullet holes should have been. “I am so fucked.”
    I spoke to the supervisor at the detention center and learned that he still couldn’t get in touch with the guards who were escorting Bill Carter and Amanda back from the rendezvous point.
    I exhaled slowly between gritted teeth. Now that I realized Amanda was the target I knew that McCall would have told Loving the girl and Bill Carter were leaving the detention center. He wouldn’t know the rendezvous spot specifically but Loving or other partners could have been waiting outside the prison for the car to emerge.
    “Call me the minute you hear anything.”
    “Yessir.”
    I disconnected. I knew the mole was in the Bureau so I couldn’t call Freddy for a tactical team. And I couldn’t contact anybody in our organization,even Claire, in case the traitor was in touch with someone there.
    I debated and decided to call local police and county troopers, sending them to search the road between the detention center and the rendezvous spot—a strip mall in Sterling, Virginia. There was a possibility of a kidnapping, I told them. I warned them that the suspect or suspects were armed.
    I slipped the phone away and crouched beside McCall, who was sitting slumped forward on the grass. His eyes met mine every fourth heartbeat.
    “You were the one shooting at us in North East, at the warehouse?” I asked. “And you were the one who got the trackers onto my car?”
    He said nothing but a flicker in his eyes told me that I was on the money.
    “And at Bill Carter’s place, you were in the woods across the road?”
    McCall’s lips tightened but still he remained silent.
    “Why do they want Amanda?”
    No response.
    “Where is this facility? What is it?”
    “I’m not saying anything.”
    In a raspy voice, Pogue said, “You just admitted killing Tony Barr, a federal agent. You have no leverage here.”
    McCall whispered, miserable, “Whatever you’d do to me, it doesn’t come close to what Loving would do if he found out I talked. I’ve got family, friends—Loving’d take them out in a minute. Or do worse.”
    “We’ll protect them,” I said.
    “From Loving?” McCall laughed coldly. “Right.”
    “You said you didn’t know the primary’s name. What do you know about him?”
    Silence.
    My phone buzzed. I stepped away and quickly hit ANSWER . “Corte.”
    It was a captain with the state police. “Sir, some of my troopers found William Carter. He’s alive. Wounded but alive. A security guard from Northern Virginia Detention is dead.”
    “And the girl?”
    “Afraid she’s gone. They were about six miles from the prison. Carter said a black SUV ran them onto the shoulder, shot out the tires. Three men inside. None of