Free Angel Face by Suzanne Forster Page B

was the sensation in his gut now. He was looking down the precipice, and he could see a body tumbling endlessly.
    If you change your mind, call this number and ask for—
    Jordan picked up the phone. The number was local, and it began to ring immediately. A woman answered.
    “How can I help you?” she asked in a pleasant voice.
    “I was told to ask for Firestarter.”
    Jordan was instantly put on hold. He wasn’t sitting at his desk now. He was standing beside it, counting intermittent beeps that pinged like sonar and were equally as ominous.
    “Dr. Carpenter? What can I do for you?”
    God, he sounded exactly like an insurance agent. Jordan felt a little foolish. The man seemed so accessible, Jordan couldn’t help but wonder about the brick wall that Mitch Ryder had run into. “Am I speaking to Edwin Truitt?”
    “You are. Go ahead and speak freely. It’s safe.”
    Easy for you to say , Jordan thought. It didn’t feel safe at this end. It felt like someone’s idea of a sick practical joke. There was nothing he liked about the situation he found himself in, but he’d already gone this far.
    “I’m calling from California General,” Jordan said. “Something just happened here that I thought you should know about. A visiting surgeon was found in a storageroom with no pulse and no respiration. There was a defib unit next to his body, and he was holding one of the paddles. I tried to revive him, but he didn’t respond.”
    “You found him, right? And you were alone?”
    “Yes, but there’s more. I went for help and when I got back—”
    “I know what happened, Doctor.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “The body was gone. It wasn’t there when you got back.”
    Jordan hesitated. He put people on medication when their hearts were beating this fast. “You already know about this?”
    No answer. It was so quiet, Jordan could hear the beep again, and among other things it reminded him that he still hadn’t found his pager.
    “You could say we knew about it, Dr. Carpenter. You could even say we did it.”
    “You did what?”
    “Cleaned up the scene. There was no choice.”
    “What the hell does that mean?” Jordan couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “A visiting colleague could be dead, and you’re talking in movie spook lingo. What are you saying, Mr. Truitt, that you had something to do with what happened?”
    “Let me be clear about two things, Doctor. First, I gave you a code name. Use it. Second, we didn’t make the mess. We just cleaned it up. As I said, there was no choice. We cannot allow her to fall into the hands of the local police or any other law enforcement agency.”
    “Her?”
    “Angel Face, of course.”
    Suddenly Jordan was angry. He’d been about to tell the agent that he’d seen a woman who looked like Angel Face at the hospital, but that hardly seemed necessary now. “You can’t allow her to fall into the hands of the police,but you can sit around and allow her to kill doctors?”
    “If I thought it would make me look less inept, I’d say yes, I’m letting her do it. The truth is, she’s faster than we are. She even erased her own memory before we could get to her and do it for her. There’s enough secret information in that head of hers to take out a chunk of the globe’s population, but no one can get at it now, not even her.”
    “What kind of numbers are you talking about?”
    “That’s the worst-case scenario. The best is that no one dies a horrible death, but she brings down the current administration and some very key figures in the military-industrial-scientific complex. Neither scenario is acceptable.”
    Jordan wanted to know how she could be one step ahead of the CIA. “I couldn’t have been gone from that storeroom more than five minutes,” he said. “How did you know where to find the body? How did you get there so quickly? Did you have her under surveillance?”
    “We had you under surveillance, Doctor. I was tipped earlier today, probably by Angel