Mercy by David Baldacci

Author:David Baldacci [Baldacci, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Macmillan

CHAPTER

39

THE WHEELS OF THE BOMBARDIER JET solidly gripped the tarmac and held as it landed at the business aviation park. The aircraft taxied to a stop, the door stairs dropped down, and off stepped the sole passenger. Spector carried her black leather duffel over one shoulder, with a confident swagger in every stride.

Before joining the Bureau, she had completed college and then enlisted in the Army, jumping out of perfectly good airplanes with the 101st Airborne Division. Before every mission they would smear any exposed part of their skin with multicolor camo paint. It was a difficult process, and you had to get it just right or the entire purpose would be defeated. Irregular diagonal lines across the face. Two colors on the lips, nose, chin, etc. Don’t forget the ears, neck, eyelids, hands. Done right, even if the enemy hit you with a light, you would still be invisible. You could kill them before they killed you. Done wrong, you were a sitting duck with a Hollywood premiere-grade spotlight shining on your soon-tobe dead ass.

Yet the Army had never understood or appreciated her. When the promotions didn’t come as fast as she would have liked, and after some of her extracurricular activities had drawn the ire of those in command, she’d gotten her honorable discharge and moved on. She’d then taken her talents to the FBI. She’d stayed there long enough to realize it was also not a good fit for her personal goals. So she had become a freelancer in a field she had very much made her own. In doing so, she was deploying the same skills she had gained and burnished first in the military and then at the Bureau, but making far more money in the process. And, best of all, it was a life of her own making.

While her parents had been exemplary athletes, they had truly been disasters as parents and at providing for their only child. Thus, Spector had grown up poor and physically and verbally abused by a mother and father who had never achieved their dreams of athletic glory and had taken that failure out on her. After escaping their yoke, she had worked for all she had, and never wanted to be poor or abused again.

She climbed into the passenger seat of the waiting black SUV, and as soon as her butt hit the leather, they were off.

Driving was Peter Buckley, immaculate in pearl-gray slacks, a classic navy blazer, collared shirt, and pocket square. He turned to her and said, “Good flight?”

“Beats the hell out of a jump seat on a C130 wondering whether a SAM was going to blow you out of the sky.”

“Your work in DC went well?”

“As well as possible, thanks.”

“But now you’re on my clock,” he said.

“Same terms as before?”

“Double.”

She slid her sunglasses down to peer at him. “I sometimes forget what an attractive man you are, Peter, dear. But why double?”

“Because this job, I think, will be worth it.”

“You mean doubly hard?”

“You live for the challenge, or did I remember wrong?”

She slid her shades back up and looked out the window.

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