The Angel. Carla Neggers

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      Chapter 6

      Logan International Airport

      Boston, Massachusetts

      10:00 a.m., EDT

      June 18

      FBI Director John March greeted Simon with a curt handshake in an ultraprivate VIP lounge at Boston’s Logan Airport. March had flown up from Washington, D.C., that morning specifically for this meeting. He had an entourage of hulking FBI special agents and staffers with him, but they stayed out in the hall.

      He was sixtiesh and trim, and although his hair was iron-gray, its curls reminded Simon of March’s daughter, Abigail. But March wouldn’t be seeing her today. He wouldn’t risk it. Simon knew it wasn’t just that March was protecting a classified mission. He didn’t want to have to explain his complicated history with the Cahills to a daughter—a cop daughter, no less—who knew nothing about it. It didn’t have to be a secret. It just was one.

      “Some days, Simon,” the FBI director said, “I wish you’d decided to become a plumber.”

      “If it’s any consolation, some days I wish I had, too.” Simon had been fourteen, crying over his father’s casket at a proper Irish wake in the heart of Georgetown when he’d first met March. “At least when you’re a plumber and you’re knee-deep in crap, no one tries to convince you it’s gravy.”

      “I’ve put you in a difficult position.”

      “I put myself there. You’re just capitalizing on it. That’s your job. I’m not holding it against you.”

      “My daughter will.” March’s tone didn’t change from its unemotional, careful professionalism. “I’ve kept too many secrets from her as it is.”

      Simon thought he detected a note of regret in the older man’s tone, but maybe not. Simon didn’t have the details, but apparently John March had known more about the circumstances surrounding the murder of his daughter’s first husband, an FBI special agent, than he’d let on. Nothing that would have led to his killer any sooner. But Abigail didn’t necessarily see it that way.

      “Comes with the territory,” Simon said without much sympathy.

      He hadn’t asked for March’s help all those years ago, when the then FBI special agent was wracked with grief and guilt after failing to stop the execution of Brendan Cahill, a DEA agent and friend, in Colombia. But there was nothing March could have done. The killers had videotaped themselves. The video showed them tying up Simon’s father. Blindfolding him. Firing two bullets into his forehead. Simon had seen the tape. For years, he thought he’d stumbled onto it—that he’d been clever, outwitting the brilliant, powerful John March. He was over that illusion now. March had arranged for Simon to find the tape and see his father’s murder.

      Instead of feeling angry, bitter and betrayed, Simon had felt understood. March had known that once Brendan Cahill’s young son had realized the tape existed, he’d find a way to see it.

      What Simon hadn’t realized, until recently, was that March had never mentioned him or his father to his daughter. Not once in twenty years.

      He was a hard man to figure out.

      March stayed on his feet. “I’ve told you as much as I know about what comes next.”

      Simon doubted that, but he shrugged. “Great. I’ll be in London cooling my heels.”

      “We’ve got him, Simon. We’ve got Estabrook, thanks to you.”

      With a little luck, the “thanks to you” part would stay between Simon and March, but Simon had learned not to count on luck. “I’ll feel better when he’s in custody.”

      “Understood.”

      Simon could sense March’s awkwardness. Ordinarily he would keep his focus on the big picture and not concern himself with what a mission meant for Simon personally. But this mission was different. Eighteen months ago, Simon had left the FBI and started a new life—volunteering for Fast Rescue, making a living helping businesses and individuals plan for disasters. It wasn’t a bad life. He had a good reputation, a decent income and the kind of freedom he’d never had as a federal agent.

      Enter Norman Estabrook.

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