Vital Lies (Sentro) by Daniel Pyne

Author:Daniel Pyne [Pyne, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2022-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

He’d spent most of the day in Otter’s new crib, an abandoned boat-repair shop on the river that the old spook callously called “Rendition Redux.” The Eyes had approved access to a digital intel group in Christchurch; Banks sent them scans of the albino killer’s passport and boarding pass and was waiting to see if they led anywhere. There might be surveillance footage of him from the Albuquerque airport, and a picture of his as-yet-unknown female accomplice. The number could be anything, and neither of them could translate the Cyrillic scrawl.

At around four o’clock Banks went back to his long-term hotel suite because Otter said there was “new meat” coming in from Tunisia, a possible dangle (Otter’s colorful shorthand was beginning to rub Banks raw), and since this had nothing to do with Operation Pogo, the Canadian was off the clock. Otter’s new quartet of interrogators (how easily replaceable we all are!) was already strategizing in the break room; Banks recalled that Gillian hated prescripted cross-questioning because of how it locked you in. The secret of a good interview, she liked to say, was letting the subject think they had some control over what they were telling. The slow suffocation of their lies.

Poor Gilly.

He missed her, he mourned her, but not for the reasons she would have wanted.

It was after midnight when someone knocking on his door awakened him. He didn’t bother to dress to answer it, sleepy and guessing room service had the wrong suite. Jenny Troon stood out in the hallway, soaked through, so pale from the rain’s chill she might have been a zombie. Mascara a clown show, her hair a matted tangle, she looked hopelessly lost and fiercely recalcitrant.

It took his breath away.

“What the fuck, Banks,” she said, shivering. “Can I please come in?”

He convinced her to take a hot shower and gave her the complimentary hotel robe and slippers from the closet. Cleaned up, she was unabashedly pretty and knew it.

Nothing like her mother in that regard.

“Don’t get any wise ideas; this isn’t a booty call,” she warned him, but it was false bravado, masking real pain. “I just didn’t know where else I could go.” He hadn’t really noticed her intricate sleeve tattoo before, a serpent that wound up around her arm and disappeared under the back of the robe. Was she flirting? He couldn’t read her. Banks had grown up with three sisters, but this woman was a different species. American, for one thing, but Gillian was a Yank and nothing like Jenny Troon. She had all of her mother’s wily impenetrability, plus her own unpredictably volatile emotions, which he’d never seen Sentro indulge. It occurred to him that he probably couldn’t trust her daughter; it occurred to him that he might not care.

Told that it was too late to order from room service, she proceeded to loot the minibar and, between pretzels, cheese crackers, and little bottles of Baileys Irish Cream, whinged her litany of gripes and grievances about her mother and her mother’s life of lies.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.