Greene's Calling: Seventeen Book Three (A Supernatural Action Adventure Thriller Series 3) (15 page)

The assassin Conrad had overpowered at the FedEx field was slouched in a metal chair behind a table in the middle of a stark interview chamber. His right foot was shackled to the floor and his left hand had been cuffed to the armrest. His other hand and leg were in casts.

His expression changed when he saw Conrad. The ugly bruise and swelling over his fractured nose and around his eyes distorted with his scowl.

The female agent on the near side of the desk looked over. ‘Gee, that’s the first reaction we’ve had from the guy since he got here,’ she drawled. ‘You the one who beat the shit out of his sorry ass?’

‘Yes,’ said Conrad, his gaze shifting from the prisoner.

The agent grinned. ‘Swell.’

Conrad joined her and took the third chair at the table. He leaned forward with his hands folded together and watched the assassin for a long, silent moment.

‘What’s your name?’ the immortal said finally.

The man returned his look blankly.

‘Who are you working for?’ asked Conrad.

Silence followed his question.

‘When were you hired for this job?’

The assassin absentmindedly scratched at his cuffed arm with his free hand, his expression clearly disinterested.

‘Where did you get the gun we found on you?’ Conrad persevered.

The man remained resolutely mute.

The female agent sighed. ‘We’ve been asking him the same questions for the last two hours.’

‘And?’ said Anatole.

‘Zip. Zilch. Nada,’ she replied. ‘The wall’s got more personality than this guy.’

Conrad leaned back in the chair and studied the tight-lipped prisoner with a critical eye. He doubted the man would talk so easily.

‘If you cooperate with the authorities, your sentence will be reduced,’ he stated in a passionless voice. ‘If you don’t, there are ways and means to make you talk. They will be painful and unpleasant. After that, you will disappear. I will personally see to it that no one finds your remains.’

The assassin blinked. He glanced at his left arm where it lay restrained to the chair. Conrad followed the path of the man’s eyes with his gaze.

The female agent suddenly straightened in her seat. ‘Hey, are you okay?’ she said sharply to the prisoner.

Conrad looked up. The assassin’s eyes bulged in his skull, his pupils growing black circles in a sea of reddening white as blood vessels popped in his sclerae. Sweat beaded his skin and his features contorted in an expression of shock and pain. He swung his injured arm to clutch violently at his chest and collapsed face down on the table, his forehead smacking the surface with a thud.

Chapter Twelve

‘S
hit!’

The metal chair rattled and fell on the floor as Conrad sprang to his feet and moved around the table. He heaved the man upright in his seat and felt frantically for the pulse in his throat as the female agent joined him from the other side. The killer’s head lolled backward on his neck, and he stared unseeingly at the ceiling. Alarm shot through the immortal.

‘Get a medical team here! We have a man down!’ the male agent at the door shouted into his radio unit before storming across the room toward them.

Conrad swore when he felt the absence of the steady heartbeat he had been expecting. ‘He’s arrested! Let’s get him on the floor!’

Anatole and Stevens helped the female agent undo the prisoner’s restraints and lower him to the ground.

Conrad kneeled by the unconscious man and placed his hand on his forehead. ‘Start CPR!’ he ordered grimly as he cast his healing energy down his birthmark.

The female agent pinched the prisoner’s nose and blew air into his mouth. Anatole put his interlocked hands over the man’s breastbone and started to pump vigorously.

‘Let the White House know we have a situation!’ Conrad barked at Stevens. The agent took out his cell phone.

‘What the hell is that on his arm?’ grunted Anatole, his upper body moving rhythmically as he compressed the killer’s chest.

Conrad looked down and saw a small, round, red blister on the killer’s left bicep. His alarm turned to fear.

‘Don’t touch it!’ he shouted when the female agent reached out with her fingers. She snatched her hand back millimeters from the dead man’s skin.

A door opened in the distance. Footsteps pounded the concrete passage outside the room. The male agent strode out into the corridor. ‘In here!’ He beckoned the people running down the hallway.

Conrad’s gaze focused on the discolored circle of skin on the prisoner’s flesh. ‘Did that nurse give him any pills?’ he asked urgently.

‘No!’ replied the female agent. ‘All she did was measure his blood pressure!’

Conrad went still. ‘On his left arm?’

‘Yes,’ she confirmed. She froze and stared wide-eyed at the blister, realization dawning on her face.

Beneath his fingertips, Conrad could sense the presence of a strange chemical in the assassin’s blood stream. The damage to the man’s heart muscles and nerve fibers had been done. Though he could reverse the physical effects of the toxin, he would be unable to bring the killer back to life without giving away a piece of his soul. He clenched his teeth.

Fingers closed around his wrist in a steely grip. He looked up into Anatole’s scowling face.

‘I hope you’re not thinking of doing what I think you are?’ the red-haired immortal muttered as a group of doctors and nurses rushed inside the room. ‘He’s
not
worth it.’

‘No, I wasn’t.’ Conrad was aware of Stevens’s uneasy stare on the side of his face. ‘And no, he’s not.’ He rose and started toward the door as the medical team took over resuscitating the dead man. ‘Shut down the building!’ he called out to the two agents who had been with the prisoner. ‘We need to find that nurse!’

Conrad exited the room and sprinted up the corridor. He emerged in the security lobby with Anatole and Stevens on his heels. The woman behind the desk looked up, a phone receiver tucked against her ear; she was speaking urgently in the mouthpiece while typing on the keyboard of her computer.

Conrad strode around the station and studied the security monitors. ‘Can you see the woman who came through that door a few minutes ago?’

‘You mean the nurse?’ said the agent sharply. She placed the phone down on its cradle.

‘Yes!’

She clicked on a mouse and brought up more feeds from the security cameras in the complex. ‘The building’s in lockdown. If she’s still here, she won’t be able to get out.’

‘There!’ Anatole exclaimed. He stabbed a finger at the bottom left corner of the screen.

A slim figure in gray scrubs was disappearing swiftly down a flight of stairs.

Anger blazed through Conrad. His nails bit into his palms. ‘Where is that?’

‘It’s the northwest service stairs,’ said the female agent. ‘She’s on the fourth floor!’

‘How do we get to it?’

‘There’s a shortcut through there!’ The woman’s fingers clattered on the computer keyboard. The security door on the right popped open. ‘Go straight down and take a left. I’ll override the fire door!’

Conrad ran for the opening and heard the woman bark instructions into her radio as he disappeared over the threshold. Another passage dotted with harsh light strips stretched out in front of him. Curious faces appeared in the narrow, glass windows of some of the holding cells lining it.

He skidded round the corner at the end and bolted for the fire door ahead. It clicked ajar just as he reached it. Conrad pushed through and entered a narrow stairwell. He staggered to a halt and peered over the metal banister. Eight floors below, a shadow was moving swiftly down the stairs.

The immortal’s pulse ratcheted up a notch. ‘Shit! She’s almost at the bottom!’

He started rapidly down the concrete stairs, Anatole and Stevens following in his footsteps.

‘She’s trapped!’ shouted the agent. ‘There’s no way she can escape!’

‘Tell me that when we’ve got cuffs on her!’ retorted Conrad.

The sharp staccato of gunfire suddenly rose from the stairwell. The immortal stopped and looked over the handrail.

A couple of agents had cut off the woman’s exit route on the ground. She shot at them steadily as she raced back up toward the upper floors of the building. One of the men cried out and fell.

Conrad swore. He braced his hands against the wall and the banister, and swung down the stairs three steps at a time. Shots sounded one level down; it was echoed by the sharp pings of bullets striking metal. He jumped to the next landing, turned the corner, and spotted the woman on the floor below just as she kicked down a fire door.

Conrad scowled and vaulted onto the railing. The woman looked around when she glimpsed him sliding obliquely toward her. She glared and disappeared over the threshold of the fire escape. The immortal’s feet struck the ground a couple of seconds later. He went after her.

The door opened onto a corridor at the back of the medical center. He raced past a couple of operating rooms and emerged into a recovery area. A couple of startled nurses in gray scrubs shrank back against one of the beds lining the walls, where an unconscious man lay with an oxygen mask on his face.

Conrad scanned their faces, heard a clatter on his left, and saw a pair of doors flutter close. He ran toward them and pushed through the panels. There was a faint click to his right. He dove to the ground.

Bullets slammed into the metal door above him, raining sparks on his head. Conrad whipped out his gun and aimed it toward the slim figure racing down the length of an open wing. His finger froze on the trigger when he registered the patients and staff in the bay. He swore, rose to his feet, and bounded after the fleeing woman.

Panicked screams shattered the air as he chased her through the clinic. She turned another corner and disappeared from view.

Conrad made a low, guttural noise in the back of his throat and accelerated. He skidded around the bend, bounced off the opposite wall, and saw her vanish inside a cleaner’s supplies closet at the end of a narrow corridor.

The door slammed shut in his face seconds before he reached it. The lock turned. A dull scrape followed from the other side as something was dragged and jammed against the closet entrance.

Conrad twisted the handle frantically and slammed his shoulder against the wood. It refused to budge. He swore and rammed into it again. Footsteps rose behind him. Stevens appeared at his side. Anatole was nowhere to be seen.

‘She’s in there!’ Conrad bellowed.

He raised his semiautomatic at the lock and squeezed the trigger repeatedly. Stevens took out his FN Five-seveN and joined him. An echo of shots accompanied the barrage of bullets from their guns. Conrad thought he heard glass shattering inside.

The lock fell off. They jammed their shoulders against the door and pushed. Something heavy ground across the floor on the other side. It gave away without warning. They stumbled into the closet.

Conrad’s eyes locked on the blinds fluttering in a mild breeze. He dashed to the broken window and looked outside. The woman was rolling off a canvas awning three floors below. She landed nimbly on the ground and sprinted toward a car park at the front of the building.

Stevens staggered to a stop at the immortal’s side, glass crunching beneath his shoes. ‘Shit!’

Conrad tucked his gun in his rear waistband and climbed over the windowsill. The jagged pieces around the frame bit into his palms as he balanced on the outer ledge.

‘Hey, what the—?’ started Stevens in a choked voice.

Conrad jumped.

His body dented the awning a couple of heartbeats later. Air left his lips in a harsh exhale. He twisted to the end of the green canopy, grabbed the edge, and flipped down. His boots touched the asphalt just as the powerful growl of a motorcycle erupted from the left. He looked around.

A black Ducati superbike emerged from the shadows under the trees. Conrad’s eyes widened when he saw the figure atop it. He cursed and started to run.

The motorcycle flashed past yards ahead of him. Conrad caught a glimpse of the woman’s narrowed gray eyes through her open, black helmet before she brought the visor down. The superbike roared, the front tire lifting briefly off the ground. Its rider leaned into the corner and headed for the avenue.

Conrad angled toward the park in front of the building. He bounded over a row of seats and raced across an expanse of freshly mown grass, his heart thundering inside his chest. He hit the blacktop seconds later.

The Ducati was moving rapidly up the road on his right. He bolted after it. The woman spotted him in her side mirror. She glanced over her shoulder, gunned the engine, and accelerated. Conrad’s stomach lurched as the distance between them widened. He clenched his teeth and willed his legs to move faster, his breath coming in hard, hot gasps.

Tires suddenly squealed somewhere on his right. Stevens’s black Suburban appeared on a service road running parallel to the avenue. The SUV climbed a narrow embankment and plowed through a hedge. It rocked on its suspension before shooting out onto the road a dozen feet ahead of him. The brake lights came on and the passenger door popped open.

‘Get in!’ Anatole shouted from behind the wheel as Conrad came abreast of the vehicle.

He grabbed the interior armrest and hopped inside just as Anatole hit the gas. The Suburban lurched forward.

‘You got the keys off Stevens?’ Conrad panted.

‘Didn’t have time! I hot-wired it!’ Anatole glowered at the road. ‘Dammit! Where’d she go?’ He maneuvered sharply around a bus.

A grunt left Conrad’s lips as he slammed into the window. He slid back into the seat, clipped his belt in, and looked through the windshield. The Suburban was hurtling toward a junction with the signals on red. The bike had disappeared.

Anatole switched on the SUV’s flashing forward lights and siren, clutched the steering wheel, and weaved violently between two braking cars. They shot across the intersection to a blast of horns and shocked screams.

Conrad caught a flash of black out the corner of his eye. He looked to the right. ‘She’s cutting across the park!’

The Ducati was disappearing between the trees at the south end of a green area containing an elaborate central water feature and fountains. He spotted a signpost on a pole.

‘There’s a bike trail to the east! That’s where she’s headed,’ he said grimly, his gaze focused on the back of the woman’s helmet.