“No, it isn’t.”
“He was born and raised in Syracuse. His mother’s a domestic, his father’s a chronically unemployed alcoholic. He started getting into trouble as a teenager, but he managed to do two semesters of community college before dropping out.” Juliet shrugged. “That’s all in his file.”
“What were you doing at Wal-Mart?”
“Buying potting soil.”
“Right.”
She heard the skepticism in his tone, remembered that same kind of skepticism in her law enforcement colleagues at the time.
She felt the burn of the three cups of coffee she’d had since five-thirty. She’d pushed herself on her run, did her weights too fast, rushed her stretches. Muscles, stomach, brain cells. Everything about her seemed charged up. “The means I used to find Tatro are irrelevant.”
“I’ll bet not to him. He went to prison because you found him.”
“He went to prison because he was convicted by a jury.”
“But he was mad at you, wasn’t he?”
“Yes.” Juliet let herself remember Tatro sneering at her, spitting at her, when she’d arrested him. “He threatened to come after me when he got out. His exact words were, ‘Your pretty blond ass is mine, Marshal. You can count on it.’”
“Anyone watching him since he got out?”
“Bobby Tatro served his time. He’s a free man.”
“Then you have no idea where he is?”
She sighed, hesitating.
“Juliet—”
“I heard a rumor that he’s in South America and may be mixed up with vigilantes. He didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d want to save the world when he was a free man, but you never know.”
Ethan’s expression remained neutral.
“You really should just forget whatever you’re into that involves Bobby Tatro and take me for coffee,” she said.
He smiled suddenly. “How many cups have you had already today?”
She didn’t tell him. “Ethan, you shouldn’t underestimate Tatro’s capacity for violence.”
The smile evaporated, and his dark eyes grew distant. “I never underestimate anyone’s capacity for violence.” He looked up at the massive statue of George Washington. “He’s your guy, isn’t he? He formed the Marshals Service.”
Juliet nodded impatiently. “We’re the oldest law enforcement agency in the country. Ethan, why did Bobby Tatro pop up on your radar screen? It’s too damn coincidental—”
“How did you know he’d be at the Wal-Mart that day?”
“I’m clairvoyant,” she snapped.
“Isn’t threatening a federal agent—”
“It was your basic emotional threat against the law enforcement officer who caught him. He knew he couldn’t stay on the farm forever. The Marshals Service catches thousands of fugitives every year. That time, it was Bobby Tatro’s turn.”
Ethan caught his fingers around hers, then dropped her hand and touched her hair, his fingertips coming away wet from the steady drizzle. “One day we’ll have that cup of coffee, Deputy Longstreet. Not on Wall Street in a cold rain. At a sun-kissed café, with roses and bougainvillea.”
“Bougainvillea doesn’t grow in New York.”
His smile eased into a laugh. “Exactly my point.”
“And sun-kissed.” There was a disturbing undertone to his laugh—she couldn’t quite describe it—that Juliet tried to pretend she didn’t hear. “What kind of word is sun-kissed for a special-ops type to use?”
“I think ‘sun-kissed’ every time I see your hair.”
“Brooker, you are so full of shit.”
He laughed again, and it was there again, a soul-deep regret, a sadness that reached into all the dark places of the heart a man like him preferred not to go.
“Good luck, Ethan.”
He didn’t respond, and when he turned and started down the steps, back out toward Nassau Street, Juliet knew.
Whatever he was doing—wherever he was going—he wasn’t at all convinced he’d get out of it alive.
Ethan took a cab to LaGuardia.
He’d left Juliet standing in front of George Washington, as still and unreadable as a statue herself. She was hardheaded and good at her job, and she could probably mop the floor with him, but his mention of Bobby Tatro, their clandestine meeting… Ethan had seen the dread creep into her eyes, overwhelming her questions about what he was up to, her doubts about why she’d agreed to see him in the first place.
If she’d had to do it all over again, Juliet Longstreet probably would have just let Conroy Fontaine shoot him that day in Tennessee back in early May.
Fontaine had convinced himself he was doing Nick Janssen a favor by meddling in his attempt to get himself a presidential pardon.
In accepting the voluntary mission he was now in the process of executing, Ethan had no illusions he was doing anyone a favor.
Except, maybe, Ham Carhill, whose ass Ethan was about to save.