Furious

25

Senior Chief Agent in Charge Foile stood in the middle of the lake cottage as a forensic team began to process it. There was a lot of stuff here, but it didn’t tell him anything that he didn’t already know. The subject of his search had flown the coop and left not a trace of where she or her companions were going.

The car outside matched the video of the one leaving the Roost area. Its owner was even now talking to a pair of WBI agents, but Foile would bet money he could write the interview report himself. “Yes, I know Colonel Hancock. He was in town. I loaned my kids’ junker to my old Marine buddy. Is there a problem, Agent?”

The cottage had been identified by the process of elimination of all the motel, hotel, and other rental properties paid for by a credit chit bought with cash. They’d busted down half of the doors so paid for, interrupting quite a few adulterous trysts as well as several teenagers who begged not to have their parents informed.

Now they had the right one, and it was telling them only what they knew. Five individuals that field DNA tests identified as General Tordon, Colonel Hancock, Captain Montoya, Lieutenant Commander Longknife, and Lieutenant Pasley-Lien had been here and weren’t anymore. There were plenty of tire tracks in the mud in front of the cottage, but all the fresh ones belonged to the car that was sitting there.

“Damn, these folks are good,” Foile whispered to himself.

“They’re the best we’ve got,” Leslie said. “Usually, we’re rooting for them.”

“Today, we’ve got to catch them.”

“Yes, sir,” the woman agent said.

“Mahomet, I need to know every car that entered the local freeway at the closest exit and the next two exits in either direction. I want to know where every one of them went and who was driving them. You hear me?”

“That will tie up a lot of computer time, sir.”

“Time we don’t have, so get on it now and get all the computer resources the Bureau can beg, steal, or borrow.” Foile turned to his boss.

She nodded. “They are yours as soon as I get off the phone.”

“Good,” Foile grumbled. “Even good people make mistakes. That’s what we’re looking for, crew. Their first mistake.”