Threat Warning Read Online Free PDF Page A

door to open and Jonathan to pass.
    “How’d you get sprung so fast?” Luke asked.
    Engelhardt answered for him. “Helps to have friends in high places. That high-and-mighty Secret Service agent who brought you in is sitting in receiving lookin’ like he swallowed a bucket of worms.”
    “This is bullshit,” Dion said. Now that a wall of bars separated them again, he seemed to have rediscovered his courage. He still stood funny, though. “You pull that cheap fightin’ stuff, and I’m supposed to believe you’re innocent?”
    Engelhardt had already taken two steps toward leading Jonathan to freedom, and Jonathan nearly let Dion’s bravado go unchallenged.
    Nearly. In the end, he couldn’t do it. He whirled on the bars, and Dion jumped back. “Look, you gangbanging moron, you need to decide if you want to sew your mouth shut or be fitted for a body bag.”
    Jonathan understood better than most the lives of disaffected youth. At one level, all that differentiated him from these punks was the fact that his father’s criminal enterprises had been enormously successful. Money talked. Dion and his friends never had the benefit of Jonathan’s fifteen-thousand-dollar-a-year high school education.
    These boys had been throwaway strays since the day they were born. Jonathan pitied them the way he pitied everyone who was born into crime. Years ago, he’d founded Resurrection House, a tuition-free residential school for children of incarcerated parents, specifically in hopes of breaking the cycle of misery that began for children when their parents were arrested, and often followed them all the way to their graves in a potter’s field beyond their own prison walls.
    Jonathan noted a smirk on Engelhardt’s face as he led the way back out through the maze of airlocks. “Something funny, Deputy?”
    Englehardt bristled. “Keep your tough-guy rap for the inmates,” he said. Then he laughed. “But wait till you see the Secret Service dick. You seem to have an interesting way with people.”
    Jonathan’s first impression of Agent Clark when he saw him waiting in the receiving area was that Engelhardt had gotten it wrong—the guy looked like he’d swallowed a bucket of spiders, not worms. Worms would have brought a look of disgust. This guy looked scared.
    Jonathan knew exactly what had happened: Dom had placed a call from the Woodrow Wilson Bridge to the J. Edgar Hoover Building on Ninth Street, beginning a ripple of consequences that had led to Clark learning this vivid lesson in Washington politics.
    “Good evening, Agent Clark,” Jonathan said through a broad smile. “Nice of you to come.”
    Clark stood, but his face remained as hard as granite. “There are a lot of people dead out there tonight, Mr. Grave,” Clark said. “Forgive me if I don’t find that funny.”
    Jonathan glared at the classic inside Washington bullshit. When rocked on your heels, take the offense by being offended. Warfare by sound bite. It was a game Jonathan chose never to play. He shook his head in the most patronizing way he knew how. “I’m going to go home now and read about the murderer who got away because you wouldn’t let me shoot her.”
    That ought to do it.
    As Jonathan pushed past, Clark grabbed his elbow. The fact that they were in a police station saved him from a nightmare of facial surgery and jaw wire. “Wait,” Clark said.
    “If you’re not arresting me, you’d better holster that hand,” Jonathan growled.
    Clark let go. “Look,” he said. “I don’t know who you are, or how you got the attention of the head of the FBI, but Director Rivers for sure has the attention of Director Miller, and he called me personally to tell me to come here and apologize.” He steeled himself with a deep breath. “I apologize.”
    Most people’s features age when they’re under stress, but Clark was the exception. He somehow appeared younger. Maybe it was the kid-in-the-principal’s-office body language. Whatever it was,