Gone Tomorrow

answer.
    She asked, “When are you planning on setting out?”
    “Two hours,” I said. “Then another two hours to find them, and attack at four in the morning. My favorite time. Something we learned from the Soviets. They had doctors working on it. People hit a low at four in the morning. It’s a universal truth.”
    “You’re making that up.”
    “I’m not.”
    “You won’t find them in two hours.”
    “I think I will.”
    “The missing file is about Sansom, right?”
    “Partially.”
    “Does he know you’ve got it?”
    “I haven’t got it. But I know where it is.”
    “Does he know that?”
    I nodded.
    Lee said, “So you made a bargain with him. Get me and Docherty and Jacob Mark out of trouble, and you’ll lead him to it.”
    “The bargain was designed to get myself out of trouble, first and foremost.”
    “Didn’t work for you. You’re still on the hook with the feds.”
    “It worked for me as far as the NYPD is concerned.”
    “And it worked for the rest of us all around. For which I thank you.”
    “You’re welcome.”
    She asked, “How are the Hoths planning to get out of the country?”
    “I don’t think they are. I think that option disappeared a few days ago. I think they expected things to go more smoothly than they have. Now it’s about finishing the job, do or die.”
    “Like a suicide mission?”
    “That’s what they’re good at.”
    “Which makes it worse for you.”
    “If they like suicide, I’m happy to help.”
    Lee moved on the bed and the tail of her shirt got trapped underneath her and the silk pulled tight over the shape of the gun on her hip. A Glock 17, I figured, in a pancake holster.
    I asked her, “Who knows you’re here?”
    “Docherty,” she said.
    “When is he expecting you back?”
    “Tomorrow,” she said.
    I said nothing.
    She said, “What do you want to do right now?”
    “Honest answer?”
    “Please.”
    “I want to unbutton your shirt.”
    “You say that to a lot of police officers?”
    “I used to. Police officers were all the people I knew.”
    “Danger makes you horny?”
    “Women make me horny.”
    “All women?”
    “No,” I said. “Not all women.”
    She was quiet for a long moment and then she said, “Not a good idea.”
    I said, “OK.”
    “You’re taking no for an answer?”
    “Aren’t I supposed to?”
    She was quiet for another long moment and then she said, “I’ve changed my mind.”
    “About what?”
    “About it not being a good idea.”
    “Excellent.”
    “But I worked Vice for a year. Entrapment stings. We needed proof that that guy had a reasonable expectation of what he thought he was going to get. So we made him take his shirt off first. As proof of intent.”
    “I could do that,” I said.
    “I think you should.”
    “You going to arrest me?”
    “No.”
    I peeled my new T-shirt off. Tossed it across the room. It landed on the table. Lee spent a moment staring at my scar, the same way Susan Mark had on the train. The awful raised tracery of stitches from the shrapnel from the truck bomb at the Beirut barracks. I let her look for a minute and then I said, “Your turn. With the shirt.”
    She said, “I’m a traditional kind of girl.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “You would have to kiss me first.”
    “I could do that,” I said. And I did. Slowly and gently and a little tentatively at first, in a way that felt exploratory, and in a way that gave me time to savor the new mouth, the new taste, the new teeth, the new tongue. It was all good. Then we passed some kind of a threshold and got into it harder. A short minute later we were completely out of control.
    Afterward she showered, and then I showered. She dressed, and I dressed. She kissed me one more time, and told me to call her if I needed her, and wished me luck, and walked out through the door. She left the black bag on the floor near the bathroom.

Chapter 71
    I hefted the bag over to the bed. About eight pounds, I figured. It hit the rucked sheet and made a satisfying metallic sound. I unzipped it and parted the flaps like a mouth and looked inside.
    First thing I saw was a file folder.
    It was legal-sized, and khaki in color, and made of thick paper or thin card, depending on your point of view. It held twenty-one printed-out sheets. Immigration records, for twenty-one separate people. Two women, nineteen men. Citizens of Turkmenistan. They had entered the United States from Tajikistan three months ago. Linked itineraries.