A few minutes later he glanced up at her. “You did well.”
“You forced me to do well.”
“And you resent it.”
“No. Well, maybe on one level. But it was necessary for me to remember. No matter how much it hurt. It was my job.” She sat up and braced herself. “Are you ready to show me the sketch?”
“Are you ready to see it?” He smiled faintly. “Hell, yes, you are.” He turned the pad around. “The shooter.”
He'd sketched in the rifle pressed against the face of the man.
She flinched and then forced herself to concentrate on the face. “He looks too . . . smooth. The face was thin, but there were wrinkles around his eyes when he squinted.”
Morgan turned the pad back and began to work. “Ears.”
“Close to his head, I think. I didn't see. . . . The rifle was—”
“Think about it.” His tone was hard, incisive, demanding, as his pencil moved over the pad. “You remembered the sideburns. You have to remember the ears.”
“I'll remember. Give me a minute.”
“Just spit it out. You're on a roll.”
“For God's sake, give me a break.”
He glanced up at her. “Is that what you want from me?”
Hardness. Coolness. Without mercy.
No, she didn't want a break from him. She wanted exactly what she was being given. Intelligence. Dedication. Determination. “Hell, no.”
“I didn't think so.”
She closed her eyes, remembering. “He had small ears, close to his head, and his lobes were full, almost plump. . . .”
“I think we're as close as we're going to get.” Morgan got to his feet. “We'll go over them again after you've taken a nap.”
“I don't need a nap. I can look at the sketches now.”
“You could look, but would you see them? It's been seven hours. You're getting woozy. I wasn't easy on you.”
“No.” Her gaze was fastened on the pad. “Those likenesses are really close, Morgan. Are we going to send them to Leopold?”
“Maybe.”
“What?”
“Don't get edgy. We'll get an ID. There are other sources that may be faster.” He moved toward the door. “Take a nap while I clean these up. We'll talk later.”
“I want to talk now. I didn't work my ass off to get those sketches right to have them end up anywhere but in the hands of people who can find and ID these men.”
“One's already been ID'd.”
Her eyes widened. “What are you talking about?”
He held up the second sketch they'd worked on. “George Lester. He was the man who was driving the blue Toyota and tried to put you down.”
“How do you know who he is?”
“I called a friend, and he checked and found that the police had done a fingerprint and dental check on him. Definitely George Lester from Detroit. Very ugly customer but a loner. That's going to make it difficult for us.”
“Dental check? You make it sound—” She stopped. “He's dead?”
He shrugged. “I didn't know we'd need him.”
“You killed him?”
“He was going after you. It would have been only a matter of time before he got you. It seemed the reasonable thing to do.”
“Killing is never reasonable.”
“I beg to disagree. But this time it wasn't smart. I was only interested in getting him off your case, not finding his connections. Now we'll have to start at square one.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“It would only have upset you. You have a soft heart. You didn't even kill Al Habim when he targeted you. It seemed the most efficient way to protect you.”
So casual. So cool.
He glanced back over his shoulder as he opened the door. “That's right,” he said, as if reading her mind. “One cold son of a bitch. But there are uses for men like me. You'll probably find a few before we're done.”
She stared at the door after it had shut behind him.
She was filled with shock, confusion, and a sense of foreboding.
There are uses for men like me.
But she didn't know anyone who would dare to try to use Judd Morgan.
Okay. Rest. Think. Analyze the situation. Decide if she could place even a small amount of trust in a man who had killed a man because it was efficient.
5
“Shit!”
Powers snatched up the report off the fax machine, scanned it, and then dialed Betworth. “The report just came in from Quantico on the man in the stairwell, sir.”
“Morgan?”
“How did you—” Sometimes he thought the bastard was psychic. “Yes, they had trouble with the video or we would have had the ID sooner. You expected him to turn up here?”