But every day for the two weeks I’d struggled with getting the bar on its feet again, Steve had been here. So we’d spent those past fourteen days and nights talking for hours, everything from basketball to women to books to movies. I hadn’t had a friend in a while. I hadn’t had the time for one. And he was someone who had once helped my family during a dark hour. I owed him. Maybe I should listen to his offer, help him. I felt torn.
“When’s your friend coming?”
He glanced at his watch. “Any minute now.”
Then the woman walked in. Even in the dim light you could see she was striking. Long dark hair, a curvy figure. She wore a scarf around her neck that blocked some of her face and as she unwound the length of red cloth I could see her mouth, lipsticked, set in a determined frown.
She was my age, mid-twenties, and I thought: She’s not really his friend. But then, I was his friend, and I figured it was none of my business.
She seemed to give Steve a look of polite surprise. Like she couldn’t believe she was here. It was close to midnight and we were in a cheap bar. Who meets at a bar so close to closing?
“Hello,” she said, shaking his hand. “Let’s sit over on the couches, where we can talk.”
She clearly wanted to be away from me. But Steve, ever the gregarious one, said, “This is my good buddy Sam. He owns this dump. I just keep it in business.”
The woman offered her hand, and I shook it. She had a confident grip. She didn’t tell me her name, though, and I couldn’t tell if she simply forgot or she didn’t want me to know. Steve didn’t introduce her. This was odd; this was off. Something else was going on here. “Hello. What may I get you to drink? We’re about to close, but you’re welcome to stay and talk.”
“I don’t want to inconvenience you…”
“Sam lives above the bar; he can’t be inconvenienced,” Steve said. “This is a very private place. Like you asked.”
She glanced at Steve’s empty beer. “Well. All right. That’s kind of you, Sam.” And her lovely eyes met mine. “Could I please have a club soda? With lime?” And her voice was low and slightly loping in how she spoke, and heating you while you stood there.
“Of course. I’ll bring it to you.” I muted the post-basketball game analysis that was playing so they could hear each other more easily.
The woman gave me a grateful smile. “Thank you, Sam; you’re kind.” That molten voice, like warmed honey.
They headed for the couches and I got her a club soda. I wished our bar glasses were better crystal. I saw her glance at the walls: the vintage Miami Dolphins posters, worn signs from local breweries, a framed photo of the bar’s original owner—a famously irascible woman named Stormy who had died a few years back—and Ernest Hemingway from the 1950s. A message blackboard where anyone could write a morsel of wisdom. This evening it announced, in blue chalk: SPECIAL TONIGHT, BUY TWO DRINKS, PAY FOR THEM BOTH. I hoped she’d think the bar was retro cool instead of outdated lame.
I brought her the club soda, with the nicest looking lime slice in the whole bar, in time to hear Steve talking about his service in working security overseas. He shut up—nothing could get Steve to shut up normally—when I set down the drink. I left them alone, feeling vaguely uneasy. I wondered what kind of job he’d needed help with where he’d need an inside man—someone to go undercover. I knew he owned a security firm and that he’d handled bodyguard duties for celebrities when they came for big awards events, although he hadn’t seemed at all busy the past two weeks. He had a house close by, and I wondered why he wasn’t meeting his lovely friend there. They spoke in low voices, too low for me to hear, like lovers.
I turned off the OPEN sign, locked the door, retreated back to the bar. I wiped the already spotless counter, working around the checkerboard, and did a quick inventory. Short on wine and beer. I’d have to reorder, eating up the scant profits. And then I’d have to decide if I was going to go home next weekend, to New Orleans, and see my son Daniel. The weekend would be the busiest time, and the bar couldn’t easily afford for me to be gone. No one could manage it; the current staff had no stars I could groom. And given that the bar had its own secrets in the apartment above it, I needed a manager I could trust entirely. I could maybe recruit one of the managers from my other bars: Gigi from Las Vegas, Kenneth from London, Ariane from Brussels… The Europeans might particularly enjoy a stay in Miami.
I saw Steve lean back suddenly from his friend. They’d become huddled, her talking so softly that I couldn’t even hear the murmur of that honey river of a voice of hers.
I glanced at the clock. Ten past midnight.
He studied a small piece of paper and then handed it to her and she tucked it into her purse. I heard him say, “Considering what they sent me, you have to treat this seriously.”
She said, clearly, “I don’t know what they want. I don’t understand it.” Then she glanced at me, as if realizing that she might have spoken too loud.
And then his voice dropped back down again.
I opened up a laptop I kept under the bar for the extra slow times like this. Keyed it on. Typed in a website and then there was a video feed of my son Daniel, asleep in his crib. His sleep was so deep that for a moment I got worried, and nearly called Leonie, his nanny (of sorts—she used to be a forger and I saved her from her life of crime, long story). She’d set up the feed for me, the traveling dad who had to be away too often.
Then he stirred, that magical breath of life, and I watched my baby sleep.
This is why I can’t help you with your security job, whatever it is, Steve, I thought. I need to stay out of that world.
“Sam,” Steve’s voice broke my concentration and I closed the laptop.
“You all want something else?” I asked. The woman was still sitting on the couch.
“I’m going to go get her car and bring it around, then I’m going to follow her home on my motorcycle.” Steve lived only a few blocks away, in a nice lush corner of Coconut Grove, near the landmark Plymouth Congregational Church. When he didn’t walk to the bar, he rode his motorcycle. “Will you stay in here with her, please?”
“Sure. Has someone threatened your friend?”
“Just keep an eye on her.” He turned to go.
“Steve? Seriously, is there a problem?” I raised my voice.
He cracked a smile. “Just keeping her safe. You sure you didn’t used to be somebody?”
“Just a bartender,” I said, automatically.
He paused, as though wishing I’d finally given him another answer. He headed out the door. Most of the parking for the bars in this part of Coconut Grove is either valet (with several restaurants sharing the service) or individual paid lots of banks or other early-closing businesses scattered through the neighborhood. Stormy’s was between a valet station for a couple of nice restaurants, closed by now, and a paid lot three blocks away.
Something was wrong. I walked to her table. “Is there a problem?”
“So?”
“Don’t you have friends your own age?”
“Yes. Steve seems concerned.”
She said nothing.
The spy in me. “Are you in some kind of trouble? Are you his client?”
She didn’t answer me. She glanced around. “It’s not what you’d call a nice bar, but I like it,” she said. “I like that you have left that checkers game untouched. That’s some customer service, there.” She tried out a smile. It was lovely.
I shrugged. “Every game should be played until there’s a winner.”
“I agree completely.” She stood and watched for him at the window. Steve’s motorcycle was parked out front, and he’d left his jacket and his helmet on the bar. I moved them down to the end of the bar and I could hear his bike’s keys jingle in the jacket pocket.
I joined her at the window. A block down was another bar, with no one sitting outside. A moderate rain had started, chasing the
Sunday night drinkers inside. Rain was a fact of life in Miami; some days it felt like the humidity never eased. But traffic had thinned, a light mist coming with midnight. The street was empty. “I’ll be fine waiting for him.”
“He asked me to stay with you,” I said.
“That’s my car,” she said. I wondered why on earth he would have insisted that he bring her car around rather than just walk her to it if he was concerned for her safety. Steve was Steve. It was an older Jaguar, in mint condition. I saw Steve at the wheel, turning onto the street from the prepaid lot, three blocks from us.
He pulled up. He stepped out onto the bricked sidewalk.
Then from the opposite direction, from the road Steve took to his house, a heavy SUV roared down the street, slowed when it reached Steve. He turned to look at it.
I heard a single shot, muffled.
Steve fell. The SUV roared past us.
The woman screamed.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Part One: The Devil’s Eye
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Part Two: Here There Be Dragons
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Part Three: The Edge Of The World
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
About The Author
Notes And Acknowledgments
Also By Jeff Abbott
Acclaim For Jeff Abbott’s Sam Capra Thrillers
A Preview of Inside Man
Newsletters
Copyright
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2002 by Jeff Abbott
Cover design by Flag
Cover copyright © 2014 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Excerpt from Inside Man copyright © 2014 by Jeff Abbott
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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Originally published in 2002 by Dutton
First Grand Central Publishing ebook edition: April 2014
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ISBN 978-1-4555-4621-3
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