Midnight Secrets (28 page)

Joe punched a wall. “Contact Bud Morrison! Get a description of that van out in a BOLO!”

Jacko’s friend Chuck, the owner of the restaurant, held up his hands. “Guys, sorry. The cells are fried and I don’t have a landline. The nearest public pay phone is a mile away. East to Stone Avenue. We’re completely cut off here. And I gotta get out there and deal with the customers.”

Joe was clenching his jaws so hard it hurt. Even running, it would take them minutes—minutes they didn’t have—to get to the public pay phones. By then Blake would be long gone. Joe had no doubt that they’d be finding Isabel’s dead body somewhere far away, on some roadside, tumbled down a remote hillside or fished out of the river.

He’d never felt so fucking frustrated. On any op there was always something you could do. But now? Any step could be wrong, waste precious time. It scared the hell out of him.

For the very first time since he signed up to be a warrior, he didn’t know what to do.

Metal and Jacko and Nick were looking at him, all three of them with their useless cells in hand. Felicity was looking at him, too, fingers touching the closed cover of her useless laptop.

Time was rushing by like a flood, Isabel was getting farther and farther from him with every passing second and he didn’t know what the fuck
to do!

A vehicle slewed to a stop outside the back room, in the loading area, spewing gravel. It was ancient—with more primer than paint, two dented fenders. A jalopy.

A man got out, tall, with dirty blond dreadlocks. He was moving fast and Joe drew his weapon. The man had an athlete’s body but he looked like a homeless person, clothes rags, boots ancient. Hands and face grimy with dirt. And with a lump on his hip under the filthy long overcoat.

Was he sent by Blake?

“Hold it right there! Hands up!” Joe held his Glock two-handed at chest level. If this guy was sent by Blake he was going to kill him where he stood, homeless or not. The guy wasn’t raising his hands. “There are two snipers behind me. You reach for your weapon you’re a dead man.”

The man was frowning. “Goddammit, we don’t have time for this shit! You let them take Isabel! She’s getting farther from us every damned second.”

Joe lowered his weapon.

The bum glared at Joe. “Name’s Jack Delvaux. I’m Isabel’s brother and you’ve been talking to me on the computer. Blake must have used a miniature, controlled-pulse EMP so whatever tags you put on Isabel are useless. But I’ve got a hardened tag on that fucker Blake, so you and your friends hop in, we’re going after the son of a bitch.”

* * *

“You’re never going to get away with this.” Isabel kept her voice steady as she rode in the back of the van on a bench set along the side. Hector had been leaning forward conferring with the driver. She couldn’t hear what they were saying over the loud engine noise of the ancient vehicle.

Hector’s eyebrows rose as he looked back at her. “Oh, but I am going to get away with it. As I told you, I’m in Washington, DC, right now.” He sat back down next to her. “You’ve been rich all your life so you should know this. Money can buy a lot of things, a lot of people.”

“And you’ve made plenty of money,” she spat.

“Plenty, yes. With more to come. But that won’t concern you, my dear, because you’ll have taken your own life. Poor, broken Isabel checked into a cheap motel and took enough pills to kill a horse.”

She tried to still her hammering heart. He sounded so certain, so matter of fact. But he couldn’t fake her suicide, could he? “People know I’m with you.”

Blake shook his head. “People know you’re with
someone.
Maybe an old lover, maybe the guy who filled your prescriptions for you. All anyone knows—if they even saw it in the dark—is that you willingly went with someone and drove away. No one could possibly know it’s me. And I put out a small electromagnetic pulse and anything with a chip is fried. My hat—” he tipped the brim of the fedora, dark eyes sardonic, “—has infrared lights in the brim. In case the cameras caught my face for one second before everything was switched off, all theyd get was a glow. I wore gloves. Even if someone saw me all they could say was that they saw a man in a black coat, hat, dark glasses and a scarf over the bottom half of his face. No one could possibly recognize me.

“My friends will know I didn’t kill myself! You’re crazy! They won’t rest until they get the truth.”

“Your friends can make all the noise they want. You checked into the motel under your own name with your own credit card, records showing you bought a huge stash of pills back in Washington, DC, will be uncovered. You tried to build a new life for yourself in Portland, but sadly that didn’t work out. You decided to end it once and for all. The autopsy will show a lethal dosage of a commonly prescribed antidepressant in your system. No signs of violence. Oh, and there will be some very sad—very, very sad entries in your journal and in your computer. No, my dear. No one will question this and if they do, we can buy the coroner, any PI they hire, any investigative journalist. We have more money than God.”

Smug and composed, he leaned forward once again to talk to his thug.

Isabel tried to think against the rising panic. He couldn’t possibly get away with this! Could he? But then, he’d gotten away with the Massacre. He’d hidden in plain sight. The worst terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11 and no one had a clue who had orchestrated it.

Three trillion dollars had been drained from the economy, which was enough to buy off every single government bureaucrat in the chain. Of course Joe and his friends couldn’t be bought, not for anything. Nick couldn’t be bought off. And the way they spoke of him, neither could their cop friend, Bud Morrison, be bought. But it wouldn’t be the first time someone was murdered and the murderer got away free.

They’d raise a fuss and maybe some journalist or blogger would mention her.

But in the meantime, she’d be dead.

A suicide.

But—for it to be a plausible suicide by ingesting pills, the body had to show no signs of violence. If there were signs of violence on her body, even the most corrupt cop would have to investigate.

Violence like—

She banged her head against the van wall, once, twice. She changed the angle and banged her head hard against a bolt and felt skin tear. It hurt but being dead was worse. She beat her head, her shoulder against the wall, tearing at the soft fabric holding her wrists together, twisting them so that her hands started turning blue from lack of circulation.

She kicked her ankle, hard, against the bench they were sitting on. So hard blood showed through her pant leg. She kicked again.

“Hey!” Hector looked astonished. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Ankles, head, hands. She banged her shoulder against the van wall, over and over again, raking her hands over a nail, writhing, kicking. She was in a frenzy now. If they were going to kill her then
by God
no one was going to think she’d killed herself. No way.

She launched herself at Hector, biting him, scratching his face. There’d be his DNA under her fingernails.
Talk that one away
,
you son of a bitch!

He understood, and tried to keep her away with his gloved hands but Isabel was having none of it. The point was not getting away. She knew she’d never escape, she could only foil his plans.

This was the man who had killed her family. The most wonderful people in the world and he’d killed them for
money!
Blood was running over her face from a cut in her forehead. She swiped at it and smeared it on Hector, smeared it on the van’s bench.

He was backing away from her but there was no room to avoid her. A low inhuman growl escaped her throat as she beat her bound fists against him, getting in close and unstoppable.

Screams of rage came from her throat now as she kicked, swung her fists, turned her fingers into claws, bit away a chunk of his cheek.

Blood. She tasted his blood and it drove her insane. He should bleed and he should
die
!

They tumbled around the back of the van as it turned corners fast, sometimes sliding on the icy roads. That was fine, that was
great
. The more bruises the better. She lunged forward and her elbow caught the driver on the side of the head.

“Hey!” The driver turned, eyes wide and white in the darkness. Isabel turned on him, too. He was perfectly willing to kill her and she was perfectly willing to hurt him. She shoved one foot in Blake’s face and grabbed the driver’s arm.

“You crazy, lady?” His voice was high-pitched, scared. She was right behind him, he couldn’t see her in the rearview mirror, so he was driving with his head on a swivel, watching the road and trying to see the crazy lady behind him. “The fuck? We’re on a fucking bridge, you want us to go over?”

Yes!
A voice roared in her head.
Explain that to the police!

She launched herself so that she was facedown on the passenger seat, Blake pulling at her legs, the driver trying to punch her but she was unpunchable. She was Isabel the unpunchable, the unstoppable, full of rage, out for revenge.

The overhead streetlights of the bridge lit the driver’s face then left it in darkness and each time it light up he looked more desperate, more wild. His one-handed punches had no effect. She could feel the van sliding on the street and with one last lunge—
this one’s for you
,
Mom and Dad
,
Teddy and Rob and Jack—
she pulled the steering wheel as hard as she could to the right and felt something crunch against the fender and then they were sailing, flying out into the night.

Hector and the driver screamed and Isabel savored their fear, but not for long because the van hit the surface of the river and started sinking.

* * *

The old jalopy pulled away before Joe could even get the door closed.

The car was filled with gear. The homeless guy dumped a small monitor and IR binocs in Joe’s lap. There were handguns and four Maglites in the footwell.

“Watch the screen,” he said.

Joe looked but couldn’t figure out what he was seeing. The man—Jack Delvaux—gave a disgusted noise. “I can’t believe my sister picked such a moron. Look at it, goddamned you! Blake had access to a small EMP generator, it’s the only thing that makes sense. We had intel that the Chinese had come up with something like this only we’d never seen it. But I had a hardened tracker embedded in a plastic that is indistinguishable from human skin and I slapped it onto Blake’s neck. It’s functional. Check that green dot.”

Joe looked down and sure enough, a green dot was running along the river.

“They won’t know we can follow them.” Jack looked briefly over his shoulder. “You two, you’re shooters, right?”

Metal and Jacko nodded. Metal aimed a thumb at Jacko. “He’s the best shot we’ve got. But I’m a medic, too. If anything happens to Isabel, I’m there.”

If anything happens to Isabel.
Code for Isabel being shot to death, knifed to death, strangled... A pulse of fear so strong it bathed his body in sweat went through Joe’s system.

Jack shifted his eyes without moving his head. “You. Joe. Former navy SEAL. Keep your fucking head in the fucking game. That’s my sister and we’re bringing her back. Alive.”

“Yeah.” His voice was so hoarse he could hardly talk.

“Believe it. See it, live it.”

Jacko punched Joe’s shoulder from the backseat. Hard. “Yo. I can’t believe you’re letting a CIA punk give you a pep talk. ‘Smatter with you?”

“Help me on this, Joe,” Jack said, watching the road ahead. “I can’t do this without your help and the help of your friends.”

And just like that, Joe’s head was back in the game. Isabel was in danger and she needed him to be coolheaded. She needed him to be an operator, she didn’t need this sweating terrified man. He blew out a breath and checked the monitor.

“Two blocks up, turn right. Then three blocks down turn left. If you go fast we can catch up.”

Jack’s lips pressed together and he pushed on the accelerator so hard it was like being in a rocket. The car looked like it had been rescued from the junk heap but man it was eating up the miles. They were breaking every speed law on the books, but Joe leaned forward, willing it to go faster. To catch up with Isabel, in the hands of a murderer.

“How come this car works when ours don’t?” Metal asked.

“I bought it for cash and had it tuned,” Jack said. “It’s all mechanical. I have been pretending to be homeless and at times I slept in it, but it’s a real lucky break because Blake’s EMP killed everything that has electronics within a hundred, hundred fifty yards. He’s driving a van that doesn’t have electronic components either. I parked a block down, anyway. So my car and my gear work.”

And his foresight might save Isabel’s life.

“So,” Joe said, glancing over. Beneath the filthy dreadlocks, stubble and grime, he could see the resemblance. “Isabel’s brother.”

“Yep.”

“Thought you were dead.”

“So did Blake. That was the point. And I had to stay dead. If Isabel knew I was alive, she wouldn’t be able to hide it. I’ve been investigating, but I don’t have proof yet. But I will. There are other people involved in this and they are not done yet.”