The Straw Men 3-Book Thriller Collection by Michael Marshall

Author:Michael Marshall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2015-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

When Nina woke at just before five she knew there was no point trying to sleep again. She and Ward had been up for two hours after Monroe’s call, trying to work out what it meant and what it didn’t mean. So far as she could see, it could be only one thing. Somehow, somewhere, Zandt had managed to tread heavily on the toes of someone close to the Straw Men. They hadn’t been able to get to him direct, so they’d set him up. She’d tried throughout the night to get hold of him. His phone was turned off.

Ward had sobered up quickly, and in the end made a suggestion she knew she had to take seriously. She had to get Monroe somewhere private, and tell him some things. Not on the phone. Face to face. If she was going to try to convince him that there was a group of men and women operating behind the face of what most people understood as America, that they killed and lied and now had her ex-lover in their sights, they were going to have to be in the same room to do it. It probably should have been done three months ago, but – racked with paranoia and with several deaths on their hands – none of them had believed it the right thing to do.

Right now, that seemed like a mistake.

She drank five cups of coffee, working out what she was going to say. How much could be revealed about what had happened up at The Halls, without putting any of them in jail. She waited until seven, when she knew that he would be awake and on his feet. If she could catch him before he left for work, perhaps they could meet. She was walking over to the phone when it rang.

It was Monroe. He was already in the office. He instructed her to meet him there immediately, and he didn’t sound like someone she could tell anything at all.

He was waiting for her outside the elevator on the sixth floor. His face looked like stone.

‘Charles,’ she said, quickly. ‘I need to talk to you.’

He shook his head curtly and turned to walk down the corridor. A little way along he threw open a door and stood back, waiting for her. She made up the distance hurriedly, stepped inside.

Room 623 was the kind of anonymous corporate space which exists in every good-sized company in America. Under business conditions it says ‘Look: we can afford the best stuff out of the catalogue. We’re not afraid of you.’ What it was supposed to convey in law enforcement Nina had no idea. A large wooden table loomed in the middle, polished to a high reddish gloss and surrounded by the most expensive and least used chairs in the building. One wall of windows looked down over the back parking lot; the others were panelled to waist height but otherwise bare. There was a poorly framed photograph of someone receiving a commendation, not recently, and nothing else.

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