Free The Informant by James Grippando

sighing. “But if we have to keep her in the dark, that means she can’t take steps to protect herself if something goes haywire. The informant’s already hinted that the predictions could start hitting close to home if I went to the cops. I want her protected—twenty-four hours a day.”
    “We could do that without her even knowing it. I’ll have to clear it through the Miami Field Office, but I’m sure they’ve got someone doing background checks on applicants for government jobs who’d think watching your wife is a major career opportunity.” She checked her watch. “In fact, I’m meeting the profile coordinator there in forty minutes to talk about the Miami investigation.
    Sorry to eat and run, but I have to go.”
    “One more question,” he said, catching her as she rose.
    She paused. He had a look on his face that told her something was bothering him. “What is it?”
    “Ever since I got the call, I’ve been racking my brain, asking myself, ‘Why me?’ With all the reporters in the country on this story, why would he single out me as his sounding board? I can’t figure it—can you?”
    She laid a ten-dollar bill on the table to cover her share of the tab, then looked him in the eye. “I guess the answer to that question depends, doesn’t it?”
    “On what?”
    “On whether he’s an informant,” she said, arching an eyebrow. “Or whether he’s the killer.”
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    Their eyes locked in a tense stare, as if each was wondering what the other’s guess was.
    “Keep in touch,” she said, rising. She turned and headed for the exit, leaving Mike alone to ponder his own question.
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    Chapter 10
    o n Friday evening Karen headed home on Miami’s Metrorail, an elevated commuter train that paralleled the six-lane parking lot that was U.S. 1 during rush hour. The tracks and open-air stations rested on concrete pillars, fifty feet or higher aboveground. From a window seat Karen looked down on the power lines, treetops and barrel-tile roofs of what used to be a quiet suburban neighborhood. These days, however, all the doors and windows were covered with iron security bars, and razor-wire fences protected places of business. The speeding silver train came to a stop at the Coconut Grove station. A few passengers got off, but it was still standing room only. Karen was three stops from home and deep in her thoughts, but as the train left the station she stirred at the sight of a guard on the platform with a pistol at his side.
    Fortified houses. Trains with armed guards. Compart-ments full of lonely travelers who never speak or make eye contact with anyone around them. It got 72
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    her thinking about a summer trip she and Mike made back in the late eighties, when they took the Eurail to Berlin. Their train had stopped in the middle of the night, and just one look out the window gave her the eerie sensation of the East German border. Police dogs sniffing around. Armed military police dollying convex mirrors beneath the train to check for stowaways. She and Mike were sharing a six-person compartment with a young Polish couple who, it appeared, were smuggling food back to Warsaw. Mike had given them his duffel bag to make it a little easier. It was 2:00 A.M. before the passport check was over. As the train left the station Mike was nearly asleep on her shoulder. She flipped on the reading light and woke him with a nudge.
    “Tell me something,” she said quietly, so as not to wake the other couple. “If I lived on one side of the wall and you lived on the other, what would you do?”
    His eyes blinked open, and he nuzzled against her breast. “Tunnel under it,” he said confidently, “to be with you.”
    “What if you couldn’t?”
    “Then I’d sneak out. Bribe my way out. Pole-vault over it. Somehow, I’d get out.”
    “But what if there was just no way? Say it was impossible. You and I had to live separate, forever and ever.”
    His brow furrowed, as if he didn’t