Free Blood List by Patrick Freivald, Phil Freivald Page A

in front of him. "What reason would the CIA have to kill Jenny Sykes? Eugenia Klammen? Darrell Eaton? What reason would they have to kill half of these people? They're nobodies. There's no correlation between any of them."
    MacGowan shrugged, then jerked his hands up defensively when Marty lunged toward him. "Wait!" Marty stopped short, inches from crippling the man with his bare hands. "I don't mean that I won't say. That's not it. Several of these people weren't CIA targets."
    "So he's a professional and a hobbyist?" Carl asked.
    "No," MacGowan said. "I don't think so. I think he does a lot of freelance work."
    Carl looked at the victim file. "That explains why we couldn't figure out the M.O. or how he chooses his victims. Or why his psyche profile didn't make any sense."
    Marty scowled. "If he's not a serial killer, why does he taunt us?"
    "We don't know," MacGowan said. "I don't know what this current killing spree is about. We haven't even tried to contact him since last October."
    "How do we contact him?" Gene asked.
    MacGowan shook his head. "'We' don't, Special Agent Palomini. I do. If we have a job, I have Brian call a number. It gets forwarded through an online messaging service. A few days or weeks later, we get a cell phone through the United States Post Office. We get a text message within forty-eight hours that tells us where to send a name and address. It's always some kind of Internet relay, totally untraceable. You cannot find this man."
    You've got to be kidding me, Marty thought. We have a lead we can't use.
     
    Jerri interrupted his thought. "Yeah, but we don't have to find him."
    Every eye turned to her. "We use you to set some bait, then you get your agent back." She raised her eyebrows at Gene.
    "I'm game," Gene said.
    MacGowan took another bite of doughnut. "Done."
    Marty smiled ear-to-ear. Here we come, motherfucker.
     
    *   *   *
     
    October 24th, 11:28 AM EST; J. Edgar Hoover Building; Washington, D.C.
     
    This second meeting was almost too much, even for Gene. The wry smirks on MacGowan and his toady LaMonte's faces were enough to drive the most stable of men right over the edge. From the look of Marty and Doug, they weren't feeling too stable. If it weren't for the black I-590 NetPhone that sat on the table in front of them, Gene would have happily let them beat both men into unconsciousness.
    Gene unlocked LaMonte's handcuffs and shoved him toward the table, just as Jerri picked up the phone and hit the "messages" button.
    She found a single text message, a Gmail address of random letters and symbols. She typed in the name and address of Mr. Mark Burton.
    Staff Sergeant Mark Burton was a former Marine sniper from Camp Pendleton, California, who had volunteered to be bait, no questions asked. They needed a real person for a decoy, not someone connected in any way to Gene's team or the FBI. It had to be someone whom Paul Renner wouldn't suspect and a man whom someone in the CIA might want dead.
    Ten years prior, Burton had destroyed the drug empire of a rogue agent. He'd come clean on some unauthorized black ops, testifying before Congress at the cost of his own job. None of it hit the media, but the agent went down, and so did Burton's career. Those in the know described it as "taking a lot of balls." Almost as much as it took to be bait for an assassin the FBI hadn't been able to catch for ten years.
     

 
     
     
     
Chapter 9
     
     
     
     
    December 2nd, 1:42 AM EST; Times Square; New York City, New York.
     
    Under an orange night sky devoid of stars, Paul Renner walked along Times Square like a tourist. He wore a Rent hoodie and blue jeans, and took his time. He gawked at the billboards. He wasn't acting. He'd never paid much attention to the new, commercialized New York created by Mayor Giuliani. Sure, his time had passed, but the changes wrought by his predecessor had endured.
    Gone were the titty bars and porno theaters. Walt Disney had replaced Peekaboo Theater, the world's