Watchlist by Jeffery Deaver Read Free Book Online Page B

sir, no young woman by that name is registered. No Mister and Missus either. No sir, no messages. Yes sir, I’ll call you at the bar if anything changes. Oh wait, what was your name? Excuse me: Sir? Sir?”
    In the dark lounge, Middleton told the bartender, “Glenfiddich, rocks.”
    After the ice melted in his drink, Middleton concluded that his daughter wasn’t coming. Wasn’t here. Wasn’t where she was supposed to be.
    He laid the cell phone he’d snatched off the floor beside his glass on the bar. A pre-pay. Not his. He fished his phone from his briefcase. Ached to call someone, anyone. But he couldn’t risk a monster hacking and tracking his calls. Besides, who could he talk to? Who could he trust now? Maybe killers had infiltrated Uncle Sam’s badges too.
    Breathe. Breathe.
    You’re a musician. Be like Beethoven. Hear the full, true symphony.
    Do what you do best.
    Interpret. Authenticate.
    Whatever this was started in Europe. Could still be evolving there with other assassins, other terrors. Started way back with Kosovo, a war criminal, and a phantom mastermind. Was worth killing for. Worth dying for.
    From Poland, the fake cop rode the plane that Middleton was supposed to be on. He might have spotted an airport cop getting off shift, followed him to his parking spot, snapped his neck, stuffed the dead cop in the trunk of his own car, stripped the corpse of clothes, weapons and IDs. As a cop in uniform, the killer strolled into the airport to meet every plane from Paris.
    But who were his partners?
    Focus on what makes sense.
    I know something. Or someone. That’s why they wanted to kill me. I have something that somebody wants. Or am something. I did something.
    But the truth is, I’m not that important.
    Wasn’t. Am now.
    That new truth is calibrated in blood.
    In his mind, Middleton heard random notes, not a symphony. He flashed on jazz. When asked how a musician could slip into a free form jam that he’d neither started nor would finish, legendary pianist Night Train Jones said: “You gotta play with both hands.”
    Middleton put his cell phone inside his shirt pocket.
    Stared at the cell phone he’d found spinning on the floor in a combat zone.
    The phone had been turned on when Middleton grabbed it. If someone could locate a cell phone just because it was turned on, they were already rocketing toward him. Middleton found the “recent calls” screen. On the inside front cover of the paperback Camus novel, Middleton wrote the phone number that this cell phone had connected to for 3 minutes and 19 seconds. That same number sent this phone one text message:
122 S FREEMNT A BALMORE
    Baltimore, thought Middleton. A 40-minute drive from this bar stool. A train ride from Union Station kitty-corner to the hotel. A few blocks north of the train station was a bus depot from which silver boxes roared up Interstate 95 to Charm City where Middleton spent a lot of time at the Peabody Conservatory of Music.
    Middleton wrote the address inside the novel’s cover.
    He went to the men’s room and, in the clammy locked stall, counted his remaining cash: $515 American, $122 in Euros. Credit cards, but the second he used one to buy a ticket, meal or motel, he would pop up on the grid. He checked the ammo magazine in his scavenged Beretta: eight bullets.
    Can go a long way and nowhere at all on what I’ve got, thought Harold Middleton.
    Back on the bar stool, he realized he reeked of frenzy. The bar mirror made him flinch. He looked terrible. Burned out and all but buried. Worse, he looked memorable.
    Middleton left enough cash on the bar, walked toward the night.
    He turned away from well-lit streets, still not ready to risk a phone call or a train or a bus or shelter for the night. Walked past empty office buildings.
    Out of the darkness loomed a man brandishing a butcher knife. Middleton froze two paces from a blade that would’ve punctured his throat.
    Butcher-knife man growled: “Give it up! Cash. Wallet.