True Evil. Greg Iles

pouch and dug in hard. There were cars and trucks moving along the Trace now, most carrying workers who lived beyond the borders of the long but narrow strip of federal land. The speed limit on the Trace was fifty—great for bikers if the commuters had observed it, but none did. Checking his watch, he realized that he probably wouldn’t make it home in time to take Ben to school. That would make Thora wonder, but he’d had to do something to dissipate the tension that Morse’s visit had caused.

      Now Foster’s call had canceled out any relief he’d felt from the exercise. He had more information now, but no real answers. Alex Morse was a star FBI agent who’d screwed up and gotten someone killed. Fine. She’d admitted the screw-up herself. But what was she now? A field agent working a legitimate case? Or a rogue agent working her sister’s murder without permission? In one respect it didn’t matter, because Chris was convinced that in her views of his situation, she was out of her goddamn mind.

      He wrenched his handlebars to the right as a car blasted by from behind, its horn blaring, its tires spraying water. He almost took a spill on the shoulder, then made a last-second recovery and edged back onto the wet pavement. The driver was too far gone to see now, but Chris flipped him off anyway. He wouldn’t normally have done that, but then he wouldn’t normally have allowed a vehicle to catch him unawares on a seldom-traveled road.

      As his tires thrummed along the pavement’s edge, he saw another biker in the distance, approaching on the opposite side of the Trace. As the distance closed, Chris saw that the rider was female. He raised his hand in greeting, then hit his brakes.

      The rider was Alexandra Morse.

       TEN

      Agent Morse wasn’t wearing a biking helmet, but her dark hair was drawn back into a soaking-wet ponytail, making her facial scars all the more prominent. It was the scars that allowed Chris to recognize her. He could hardly believe her presence, and he was about ready to sprint right past her when she crossed the road and hissed to a stop a yard away from him.

      “Good morning, Doctor.”

      “What the hell are you doing?” he asked.

      “I needed to talk to you. This seemed like a good way to do it.”

      “How did you know I was here?”

      Morse only smiled.

      Chris looked her from head to toe, taking in the soaked clothes stuck to her body and her dripping ponytail. She had chill bumps on her arms and legs, and the cotton tulane law shirt she was wearing would take forever to dry, even if the rain stopped.

      “And the bike?” he asked. “You a big cyclist?”

      “No. I bought it four days ago, when I found out that you were a biker and your wife was a runner.”

      “You’ve been following Thora, too?”

      Morse’s smile faded. “I’ve shadowed a couple of her runs. She’s fast.”

      “Jesus.” Chris shook his head and started to ride away.

      “Wait!” Morse cried. “I’m not a threat, Dr. Shepard!”

      He stopped and looked back. “I’m not so sure of that.”

      “Why not?”

      He thought of Darryl Foster’s words. “Call it instinct.”

      “You have good instincts about sources of danger?”

      “In the past I have.”

      “Even when those sources are human?”

      A red pickup truck whizzed past, its rider staring at them.

      “Why don’t we keep riding?” Morse suggested. “We’ll be less noticeable talking that way.”

      “I don’t intend to continue yesterday’s conversation.”

      She looked incredulous. “Surely you must have some questions for me.”

      Chris looked off into the trees, then turned and let some of his anger through his eyes. “Yes, I do. My first question is, did you personally see my wife go into this divorce lawyer’s office?”

      Morse took a small step backward. “Not personally, no, but—”

      “Who did?”

      “Another agent.”

      “How did he identify Thora?”

      “He followed her down to her car, then took down her license plate.”

      “Her license plate. No chance of a mistake? No chance he got one number wrong, and it could have been someone else?”

      Morse shook her head. “He shot a picture of her.”

      “Do you have that picture?”

      “Not on me. But she was wearing a very distinctive outfit. A black silk dress with a white scarf and an Audrey Hepburn hat. Not many women can pull that kind of thing off anymore.”

      Chris gritted his teeth. Thora had worn that same outfit to a party only a month ago. “Do you have any recordings of her conversation with the lawyer? Copies of any memos or files? Anything that proves what they talked about?”

      Morse reluctantly shook her head.

      “So you admit that it’s possible that they talked about wills and estates, or investments, or something else legitimate.”

      Agent Morse looked down at her wet shoes. After a while, she looked back up and said, “It’s possible, yes.”

      “But you don’t believe it.”

      She bit her bottom lip but said nothing.

      “Agent Morse, I happen to know from my wife’s recent behavior that what you suggested yesterday is impossible.”

      The FBI agent looked intrigued, but instead of asking what he was talking about, she said, “It’s ten miles back to your truck. Why don’t we ride back together? I promise not to piss you off, if I can help it.”

      Chris knew he could leave Morse behind in seconds. But for some reason—maybe just the manners he’d been raised with—he decided not to. He shrugged, climbed into his pedal clips, and started southward at an easy pace. Morse fell in beside him and immediately started talking.

      “Have you called anybody about me?”

      He decided to leave Darryl Foster out of the conversation. “I figured you’d already know the answer to that. Aren’t you tapping my phones?”

      She ignored this. “I’m sure you have some questions for me, after all I said yesterday.”

      Chris shook the rain out of his eyes. “I’ll admit I’ve done some thinking about what you told me, especially about the medical side.”

      “Good. Go on.”

      “I want to know more about these unexplained deaths, as you called them.”

      “What do you want to know?”

      “How the people died. Was it a stroke in every case?”

      “No. Only my sister’s.”

      “Really. What were the other causes of death?”

      “Pulmonary embolism in one. Myocardial infarction in another.”

      “What else?”

      A hundred feet of road passed beneath them before Morse answered. “The rest were cancer.”

      Chris looked sharply over at her, but Morse kept watching the road. “Cancer?”

      She nodded over her handlebars, and water dripped off her nose. “Fatal malignancies.”