“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Having a drink, same as you.” Devine held up a hand to the harried man behind the bar. “Can of Sapporo. Thanks.”
She sipped her drink. “Did you know Sara well?”
Devine said, “Not well. She was our class liaison. Funny, though.”
“What?”
“When I passed by our office building a little while ago, I saw Bradley Cowl’s Bugatti heading into the firm’s garage. Dude must never sleep.”
She looked alarmed when the name Cowl had come up, but Devine was intentionally not looking at her. He was instead staring at her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. It was just as informative as observing the real thing.
“Why is that funny? It is his business. And he has a penthouse apartment there.”
“I get that, but you wouldn’t think the guy would want to go back there tonight of all nights. I mean, with Sara’s having died there today.”
Stamos appraised him for a moment. “So, you think you’ll make the cut?”
“Not sure. But you’re good as gold. Six years in and the Book said Sara was the only one ranked ahead of you. But obviously no more.”
As soon as he said this, Devine regretted it. As a newbie operative in the Office of Special Projects, he was showing how ill-trained he was at eliciting intelligence from a target, at least in this setting. He had done okay at it in the Middle East.
“You are such an asshole!” Stamos cried out.
WASP heard this and looked up from his beer. He glanced at his buddies, and seemed to be contemplating something. Devine saw all this in the mirror as well. It was easy enough to read: The man was pondering whether to retake Hamburger Hill from Devine.
“I didn’t mean it like that. But that’s the way things are at Cowl,” Devine said, easing off the gas pedal. “You know it and I know it.” His beer came and he took a healthy swallow. It felt good against the rising heat in here.
“Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” she said in a pouty tone.
“No, you don’t.”
Devine thought quickly. He was making little progress and he had to turn that around. Campbell didn’t strike him as a patient man. His mind flitted over several possible lines of inquiry with Stamos, each fraught with complications. And then, like the soldier he had once been, he decided to cut through the bullshit and try a direct assault.
“Getting back to Sara, did you know her well?”
The answer to this query seemed harder than it should have been for Stamos. “No, not really.” She wouldn’t meet his eyes when she said it.
He decided to up the ante.
“You have any inkling she might kill herself?”
This question seemed to shake Stamos even more. Her eyes bugged out for a moment and her body tensed. However, she quickly regrouped and shook her head, with the mouthed word No tacked on.
“So, no warning signs? Nothing on the grapevine?” he persisted.
“I really didn’t see that much of her. She . . . she was working on other things.”
“Did you get an email about her death?”
“What?”
“An email with details about Sara’s suicide?”
“No. You mean from the firm?”
“I don’t know.”
Maybe it just went to me, then. But why? “Wanda Simms told me Cowl was her mentor. Did you know that?”
Her face got puffy and her manner grew subdued. She looked down at her gin like she wanted to jump into it and pass through to a fresh new world. “He mentors lots of people.”
“So is he mentoring you?”
She glowered at him, and in that look Devine knew he had blown it. “I don’t have to answer that. I don’t have to talk to you at all.”
He felt a hand on his shoulder and Devine turned to see WASP and two of his comrades in beers standing there. The other two were at least six-four and built like the college athletes they no doubt had once been.
“Is he bothering you?” WASP asked.
Stamos gave Devine a look with eyebrows raised as if to say, Should I sacrifice you or not? It’s up to you. So start begging.
But she sure as hell wasn’t going to get that from him. Her lovely face once more turned nasty when confronted with his stony, unrepentant look.
“Yes. Can you do something about it?” she said, not taking her gaze off Devine.
“Hell yes we can. Let’s go, buddy. There’s a little spot around the corner where they keep the trash. We can go there and settle things.”