They were an unusual-looking trio: a giant Asian American, a tall African American and—in Rickard’s opinion—a walking dead man.

Chapter 24

24

There was no avoiding a trip to the local police precinct house this time. We’d been involved in a shoot-out where three hit men and three members of the public had died. There were four others seriously wounded and a couple with minor injuries from flying glass. And there was one unconscious killer.

We chose to plead the Fifth Amendment until Walter arrived. The cops weren’t happy, but Walter had us kicked loose under rules governing the arrest and incarceration of active CIA agents. We made nobody any the wiser. As soon as we were off the record, I told the homicide detectives what I knew about our attackers. It wasn’t much. I didn’t mention a possible connection to Wetherby because I wasn’t sure that there was one. Then we went and collected our weapons from where they’d been stored after they were seized as evidence. That raised the anger level tenfold, but there was nothing the cops could say or do at the time.

I seriously pissed off the lead investigator, Lieutenant Jonah Hawke, a big, red-faced detective with twenty years under his belt, when I asked to look at the file concerning the murders at Luke Rickard’s apartment. I actually thought that he was going to swing for me, and we had an awkward moment before Walter stepped in and made the request official.

“I only want a look at the suspect’s face,” I told the cop.

“Can’t help you. He’s not on record. He wasn’t the type to keep snapshots either; there were no photographs of him lifted from his apartment.” Hawke was more than a little smug in the way he announced this. “We’ve checked his prints. They’ve come up in connection with a few unsolved crimes, but that’s it. The name Luke Rickard’s bogus. As of now he’s designated as an unsub. The guy’s a goddamn ghost.”

He will be if I get my way, I thought.

“What about his physical description? You must have canvassed the other tenants in the building by now.”

Hawke held my gaze steadily. “Physical description, huh? I’m looking at it.”

The cop’s words struck me deeply. I was already aware that Rickard had disguised himself in order to set me up, but now I wondered just how far he’d gone in stealing my face. It wasn’t a nice thought, considering that there was someone out there who was the total antithesis of me, but who was my identical double. I walked away from Hawke before he noted the shaking of my hands.