Noble Intentions: Season Three (19 page)

“Do you see them?” she said.

He flung himself forward and up the
stairs. Stopped in front of her. Said, “Maybe they weren’t after you.”

Clarissa turned, took a deep
breath, shook her hands. The car was about one-third full. The rear seats were
empty. She walked to the back and sat down with her back against the side wall.
The vinyl seat felt cool on her flushed skin. Soon enough she’d stick to the
material if they didn’t turn on the air conditioning.

Spiers collapsed on the seat next
to her. His head fell backward. His Adam’s apple bounced up and down a couple
times.

Two figures outside the train caught
her eye. Two men, dark suits, dark skin, bulges on their hips.

“They’re out there,” she said.

“Dammit,” he said.

The men stopped. One pointed inside
the train car.

“Here.” Spiers tossed her his cell
phone. “When my associate calls, you find out where to meet the women and you
take care of them. OK?”

Clarissa heard his words, nodded.
She kept her eyes focused on the two men outside the train.

“Wait, what?” she said.

“You heard me,” he said.

“They’re not here for me. They want
you.”

He nodded, said nothing.

The agents approached the car. One
forced the door open. They climbed the stairs. Clarissa slumped in her seat.
Spiers moved across to the bench that faced Clarissa, sat down with his back to
the men.

The train’s air brakes hissed. The
door closed again. The journey was about to start. She looked across at Spiers.
He lifted his chin from his chest and met her gaze.

One of the men looked right at
Clarissa. He said something to his partner, too low for Clarissa to hear. She
closed her eyes, balled her hands into tight fists. Unarmed, she wouldn’t have
much choice if they asked her to get up. She could fight, but they’d end it
with a bullet. She could only assume that Spiers handing her his cell phone
meant that they weren’t after her. He was their target. Why, though? Was his
work in France unsanctioned? The political backlash could be huge if so.

“Vous là-bas, ne se déplacent
pas.”

Clarissa translated the words.
You
there, don’t move.

Every muscle in her body tightened.

“I didn’t do it! Let me go!”

She opened her eyes. The agents
dragged a petite dark-haired woman out of her seat. The lady thrashed around at
first, then her body went slack. The tips of her toes grazed the floor, her
worn out soles were the last thing Clarissa saw before the woman disappeared from
sight.

Spiers exhaled loudly.

Clarissa looked at him and mouthed
the words, “What the hell?”

He shrugged, wiped the sweat from
his forehead with his left hand. She noticed that he held his pistol in his
right hand. Spiers had no intention of going with the men. That’s why he handed
her the phone. He planned to take them out and must have figured that one of
the agents might land a shot in the process.

Spiers rose, crossed the aisle and
retook his seat next to Clarissa.

“Gets the heart going, don’t it,”
he said.

She nodded. Her heart had finally
calmed down to a cool one hundred beats a minute and she was able to breathe
somewhat normally again. Sometimes she doubted that she was cut out for the spy
game.

“I know. Me, too,” Spiers said as
if he read her mind. He glanced at her trembling hands. He held out his right
hand, now sans weapon. It shook uncontrollably. “Adrenaline. That’s all.”

The doors shut tight. The brakes
hissed again. The train rolled forward.

“Two and half hours till Brussels,”
he said.

The Cadillac rolled to a stop next
to the police station. The building was small, square, made from brick. Bear
glanced at the black lettering above the double glass door. He didn’t bother to
read it. What did it matter? They were at a stoplight in a small town two hours
away from the motel, and had nine more hours to drive.

Back at the motel, they hung back
until the cops left. One of them had made the trip up to the crime scene. The
cop snapped a couple of pictures, then went back down to the parking lot. After
twenty minutes of waiting, the cops took off, and Bear and Mandy hurried to the
Caddy and found the highway and headed east. The only drawback was that the
police had his name. There was little they could do with that, though.

The light turned green. Bear
dropped his heavy foot on the accelerator. Mandy made a soft whimpering sound.
Bear glanced over. The cracked window allowed enough air in to lift her blond
hair up and whip it against the cream colored leather seat. The girl breathed
slowly, deeply. Her exhales were sometimes audible amid the wind rush and jazz
playing over the radio. Bear had been amazed that he found a station that
played something other than country music.

They passed an exit sign for I-75
south. It said one hundred miles to Atlanta. He thought about taking the exit
and flying out of Hartsfield-Owen. He knew he could get a direct flight to
London from there. The only problem was he didn’t have any solid contacts in
the Atlanta area. At least none that could produce two false identities in a
matter of minutes instead of days.

So they drove. The sun traveled
from high in the sky to deep in the west. Mandy woke up as the final rays of
deep pinkish-red reflected off the rear-view mirror.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Close to Virginia,” Bear said.

“Are we going back to D.C.?”

“Maybe.”

Bear hadn’t decided whether they’d
fly directly out of D.C. or catch a flight to New York or Boston and fly from
there. He often wondered if Boston was a safer airport for him to use. He’d
spent very little time there, despite its close proximity to New York.

His cell phone vibrated on the
dash. He grabbed it, checked the caller ID. The number was not familiar. Bear
answered anyway.

“Bear, this is Brandon. I have some
information for you.”

“Give me a minute.” Bear set the
phone in his lap. He angled the Cadillac toward the fast approaching exit.
Immediately following the exit was a gas station. He pulled in and parked close
to the convenience store.

“I’m hungry,” Mandy said.

Bear handed her a twenty and told
her to get him a Coke Zero.

“OK,” Bear said. “Talk.”

“Seven months ago Jack got into a
tangle in Monte Carlo with a billionaire named Thornton Walloway.”

“OK.” Bear recalled Jack mentioning
it.

“Thornton Walloway is dead. Two days
ago he was alive. They found him buried under a pile of wood and garbage in an
abandoned warehouse in London.”

“They think Jack did it?”

“I’m looking at it like the man had
a beef with Jack. He’s alive before Jack gets to London. He’s dead a day or two
later. But the consensus is that Jack didn’t do it. They tell me that they
think he was being targeted as well. For some reason, he didn’t show up to the
site of the hit. Another guy did. They found him next to Walloway’s body.”

“So you think the other guy was
supposed to be the shooter? Who was he? And if Jack didn’t pull the trigger,
who did?”

“Working on that. No ID found on
the guy. Neither of them, actually. Just empty wallets. Thornton was easy for
them to spot. He’s kind of well known, mostly for being a prick. But this other
guy is a bit of an enigma. And it doesn’t help that half his face is missing.”

Bear scanned the empty parking lot,
said nothing.

“Where are you now?”

“Outside of Johnson City,
Tennessee.”

“Perfect. I got a partner in
Greensboro, North Carolina. Full service stop, man. He can hook you up with
IDs, passports, cash, credit cards. Hell, if you got a hankering for Twinkies,
he’s got cases of them in his garage. Only damn place you can find them
anymore. He’ll take care of your car, and we can get you on a flight out of
Raleigh.”

Bear thought about it while
drumming the tips of his thick fingers on the hood of the Caddy.

“Which international terminal do
you prefer, Atlanta or D.C.?” Brandon said.

“Atlanta. Less of a headache.”

Brandon laughed. “If you say so,
man.”

Bear said nothing.

“OK, listen up. You’re gonna hop on
26 East, then 40 East. He’s a mile off the interstate. Should take you about
three hours. I’ll call in two and three-quarters with directions.”

“Why not give them to me now?”

“You know better than to ask that,
Bear.”

He did. Giving too many details at
this point put both parties at risk if someone monitored the line.

“All right, Brandon. We’ll start
heading…” Bear stopped, looked at the phone’s display. Brandon had already hung
up. “Asshole.”

“Always with the language.”

He turned and saw Mandy standing
there, half his size and holding out a sweating bottle of Coke Zero. He twisted
the cap and took a long pull from the bottle, enjoyed the burning sensation of
the carbonated beverage flowing down his throat.

He gassed up the Caddy, then hit
the road. They took 26 East, which really took them five degrees east of
straight south, then merged onto 40 East in Asheville, North Carolina. Despite
the dark, Bear knew they were in beautiful country.

The Blue Ridge Mountains had been
one of his favorite areas as a kid. Every summer he and his father would take a
fishing and hunting trip there. They’d hike for a week in, then a week out. He
learned a lot during that time. How to hunt. How to field dress a deer. How to
survive in the wilderness. He also discovered that despite his father’s silent
and rugged exterior, the man had a gentle soul. Bear wondered for a minute what
his life would have been like if his father hadn’t been killed when Bear was
sixteen years old. Maybe he wouldn’t have dropped out of school. Maybe he would
have played football in the SEC. Maybe he wouldn’t have joined the Marines.

“What are you smiling at?”

He glanced over at Mandy.

Maybe I wouldn’t have met her.
Nothing in my life is worth fixing if that’d be the result.

Jack waited for two hours. The
groans and creaks of settling wood often interrupted the silence in the house.
He learned to tune the noises out. He watched the camera feeds. A few cars passed
by out front. Rabbits and squirrels scurried in and out of the woods. The wind
blew the swings in the backyard back and forth, the seat turning and the chains
twisting from time to time.

No one came. Perhaps he’d been
wrong. Maybe they had figured Jack was onto them and he and Dottie and Leon
would be prepared. Dottie had resources. She could enlist enough former agents
and former SAS to make a decent security team. They had to know that.

So Jack reached out to an old
contact who told him Mason Sutton’s home address. Jack considered returning to
the hotel a few miles away. The Fiat was parked there. Having a car would make
the trip easier. In the end, the risk outweighed the reward of driving around
in the cramped vehicle. They’d found the first hotel in London and all he’d had
was a reservation there. Jack didn’t doubt they knew of the hotel he actually
stayed in.

He left the house, walked a mile,
found a main road and caught the bus into London. The bus entered an area heavy
with foot traffic. Jack got off there, hailed a cab. The taxi took him to
Sutherland Road, north of the M4 highway. From there, Jack walked two blocks
east, then two blocks south. He turned east again on Gordon Road. He passed by
an area that was residential on one side of the street, industrial on the
other. A large warehouse took up half the block. Puffs of steam rose from its
roof.

His shadow stretched out along the
sidewalk in front of him. Behind him, the sun hovered low in the western sky.
The orange tint made the homes in the area look older than he assumed they
were.

Twenty minutes after starting his
trek on Gordon, Jack stood across the street from Mason’s house. The homes in
the area looked like they cost a pretty penny, or pound, Jack figured. He knew
that, like U.S. intelligence jobs, MI5 paid well. But well enough to afford a
home like the one he was looking at? Jack doubted it.

More proof the man was on the
payroll of a billionaire.

There was no point in being
clandestine. Jack wanted to attack, drive fear into the man. He crossed the
street, took the steps leading to the front door two at a time. He knocked with
his left, grabbed the handle of his pistol with his right. If Mason made an
aggressive move, Jack would be ready to strike. Thirty seconds passed with no
answer. He knocked again. A minute went by, still no answer. He reached out and
grabbed the door handle. Unlocked. He turned the knob and pushed the door open.

“Hello?” he called out.

No response.

“Mason? You here?” He didn’t bother
to disguise his voice. His British accent was awful. He knew it. Any American
accent he used would be pointless. Mason would know it was him.

Again, no response.

Jack used his foot to push the door
open. It glided smoothly without a sound. Well-oiled or fairly new, he guessed.
The heavy odor of potpourri wafted through the open doorway. Jack stepped
inside and used the heel of the same foot to kick the door closed. Then he
called out once again and received no response.

He stood in a ten by ten foyer. In
front of him, a set of stairs led up to the second floor. Next to the stairs, a
hall. To his left, a wall. To his right, the dining room. Jack turned right.
The dining room led to a large kitchen with slate floors, granite counter tops
and updated appliances. Everything was clean, sleek and modern. Clearly missing
any feminine touch. The sink was placed against the back wall. Above it, a
window. Jack leaned over the faucet and looked out at the backyard. There were
no trees or bushes or flowers, only green grass. Unnaturally so, thought Jack.
He wondered if it was fake.