The Prophet (Ryan Archer #2) (8 page)

“Back to Costco,” he said.

He started the Land Cruiser and turned on the lights. The Mercedes followed him all the way home.

TWELVE

Smith was in the shower when Archer got home. She liked to shower late. Archer didn’t mind at all. He didn’t mind anything about Smith, especially when it concerned her without clothes on.

Archer parked in the gravel along the side of her driveway and unlocked the front door. The house was dark. The bathroom door was open and light from inside fell onto the bedroom carpet in the shape of one slice from a pie chart. Archer pushed the door open and went into the bathroom. The shower door was fogged. He tapped it with the knuckle of his middle finger. Smith swiped her palm over it in a circled pattern enough to see him. She smiled. Archer pulled off his shirt, unbuttoned his jeans, and joined her.

Smith put her arms around his neck and pressed her lithe body into his. Archer dipped a hand between her thighs and spread her with two fingers. Smith’s eyelids fluttered as she leaned into the pressure from his hand. His fingers were thick and long, making it nearly impossible for her to catch her breath. He kissed her deeply, and she pushed her tongue into his mouth. He put his arms around her waist and lifted her off the ground, pressing her against the shower wall. He cupped her ass with his hands as she moaned. Shower water rained down on them as he moved against her.

“You smell amazing,” he said.

Smith swirled her tongue around his, inspiring him to continue his work. He kissed her neck, then worked his way to her chest. She wrapped her legs around him and held him tight.
 

“Damn, that feels good,” she moaned.

The shower billowed with steam. Smith ran her fingers through his wet hair as her body writhed. She stuck out her tongue and tasted the hot spray, eyes closed.

Archer set her down and stepped through the shower door. They toweled off and lay naked in bed. Then Smith straddled him, her body still superheated from the water.
 

“Already?” he asked.

She giggled softly, nodding her head, her hair spilling down around his face.
 

THIRTEEN

Archer awoke before sunrise. He poured steel-cut oats into a pot with water and sat on the deck in the morning air while breakfast simmered. He sprinkled chia seeds on the oats and poured a glass of skim milk. The trees on the hillside beyond the deck looked ghostly in the predawn gloom. He sat on the stairs and absorbed the stillness.

When the bowl was scraped clean, he set it aside and folded his legs into a comfortable position for meditation. He spent a half hour in silence, centering himself and shutting out his thoughts. When he opened his eyes, the first hints of sunrise were visible as an orange ribbon at the edge of the horizon. He pulled on running shorts and a hooded sweatshirt, laced up his Brooks and was careful not to wake Smith as he slipped out the door.

His route today was a rigorous path through the hills. For the first two miles he stayed on paved surfaces, then veered off onto a dirt path that led through the trees and across acres of hillside with a view of the Pacific in the distance.
 

After thirty minutes he doubled back and retraced his route back to the pavement. The city of Los Angeles was now lit by the amber glow of the new day. He was sweating through the sweatshirt. He ran past cars parked along the roadside, hypnotized by the steady rhythm of his shoes on the asphalt. For Archer, running was a form of meditation for his body.

Smith was still asleep when he slipped back inside the house. He showered, toweled off, and then slipped back under the covers and attacked Smith from behind. Morning sex was always vigorous. When they were done, he dressed in jeans and a T-shirt from a dresser drawer Smith had loaned him and gave her a kiss on his way out. She was still smiling when she heard the door shut.

Archer had spotted the Mercedes during his run. It was parked along the sweeping curve in the road up the hill from Smith’s house. It was a hundred yards away, off in the gravel on the shoulder where the weeds began. Archer had expected to see it. Someone was obviously very interested in keeping an eye on him.

Archer backed into the road and turned uphill toward the curve. He leaned forward and dropped the glove box open, reaching for his Beretta. He rested the gun between his thighs and accelerated hard. His headlights fell across the weeds as ribbons of fog floated across the narrow asphalt lane. He spotted the Mercedes again. It hadn’t moved. It was coming up on his left.

At the last second, as he came up parallel to the luxury sedan, he jerked the wheel counterclockwise and hit the brakes. The beefy tires screeched across loose gravel and the Land Cruiser shuddered to a stop. He had blocked the car from being able to exit. Archer was up and out the door with the gun raised in a split second. The headlights flicked on as the German engine roared to life, then the performance tires spun, throwing gravel as the car fishtailed in reverse looking for a way out. Archer couldn’t see inside because of the dark tint.

Then a window buzzed down and he saw a man with a gun. There was a muzzle flash and a bang as Archer ducked away. He returned fire, charging at the car on foot. He got an arm in and pushed away the man’s gun and punched him in the face with the Beretta. The Mercedes accelerated with Archer’s arms still inside. He ran alongside in an attempt to keep up. The guy inside pushed a hand into Archer’s face, going for the eyes. Archer fired a round and put a bullet in the dash, then he felt himself falling and hit the asphalt hard as the back tire missed his legs by a fraction of an inch.

As he rolled to a stop in the middle of the road, he glanced up and saw the car accelerating away down the hill. He ran to his truck and spun out in the gravel. The Mercedes was already nearly out of sight, but he spotted the brake lights as they slowed for a turn up ahead.
 

Archer hugged the turns as tightly as possible, but the old Land Cruiser wasn’t built for the kind of speed or agility that the Mercedes was. His only advantage was his knowledge of the hills. He detoured through an empty lot between houses and the truck bounced up through a ditch, the suspension on the machine nearly sending him out of his seat. The maneuver saved him about fifteen seconds of drive time. That wasn’t enough.
 

He punched the accelerator and turned hard into the next turn. The front tires went wide and he nearly took out a young couple pushing a stroller. He heard screams but hadn’t felt any kind of contact so kept plowing forward. He was losing ground on the Mercedes.

He had seen two men in the car. Who were they? He didn’t recognize them from anywhere. They definitely weren’t cops, and he didn’t believe they were FBI. The first shot he fired had made contact with the car but didn’t do any damage, so it had certainly undergone some significant aftermarket enhancements. Both men had been well built, with dark features, and armed.

Why? Why the interest in Archer?

He processed the likely scenarios through his brain while navigating the narrow switchbacks leading out of the hills. The most likely conclusion was that it obviously had to be connected to Tatum Cloud. But how?

The road straightened out and he trailed them by a couple hundred feet. He leaned out and fired a round at one of the rear tires but missed. The bullet threw sparks off the rear fender.

“Damn it!” he said, struggling to not let them pull away.
 

Who were they? What did they want? How might they be connected to Tatum’s disappearance, if at all?

He was losing them. The Land Cruiser simply didn’t have that kind of muscle under the hood. He eased off the gas and eased onto the side of the road, watching the Mercedes vanish into the heat shimmer in the distance. Then he called Webb from his cell phone and woke him up.

“I’ve got a plate number for you,” he said. “Get back to me ASAP.

* * *

The disappearance of a celebrity kid always created chaos. The LAPD had already fielded hundreds of crank calls, including death threats and ransom demands. The problem was every single one had to be taken serious until vetted, and this chewed up precious police resources that could have served more effectively elsewhere. It was a waste of time and manpower. The more the story was featured in the media, the more exposure it got and the more the crazies came out of the woodwork looking for attention. It was an exhausting process.

Webb was smart enough to ignore the great bulk of anything the LAPD passed on to him. He was skilled at seeing through the rubbish. He was very good at his job, and hadn’t gotten good by chasing every rabbit that ran out in front of him. Part of the science of his job was to be patient, insightful, discerning, highly skeptical, and always pay very close attention to the tiny voice in the back of his head.
 

Webb was at the office with his third cup of coffee, combing through e-mails as he listened to the speakerphone on his desk. A friend across town was running a trace on the plate number Archer had given him. His office door was open and he could see Rosemary seated at her desk. She was wearing a skirt and was showing plenty of leg today. She had amazing legs. Webb took a sip of coffee and enjoyed the view in his peripheral vision.

“Is it going to be any time
today
?” Webb asked.

“Not with that attitude,” Jerry Ving said over the speakerphone. “Maybe I can take care of this some time after lunch.”

“It’s not even nine AM, Jerry,” Webb said.

“Precisely my point,” Ving replied with a hint of a northern accent.

Archer had described the encounter with the Mercedes near Smith’s house. Webb was both concerned and curious. Archer had clearly been stalked, and not by run of the mill crazies. The two men he described seemed to have been well financed and well trained. The encounter reinforced Webb’s suspicion that Tatum Cloud had indeed been abducted. He expected an authentic ransom demand to roll in at any time.

“I’m not getting much back on this one,” Ving said. “There’s an address for Salt Lake City, Utah, and that’s about it.”

“What about a name?”

“Nope. The registration doesn’t list anything other than what appears to be a business address.”

“Give me the address,” Webb said.

Ving read it from his computer screen and Webb ran a Google search of it. He clicked the mouse several times to zoom in closer. The address was located at the outskirts of the city at the edge of the mountains. It was not near any major highway. It was big—a long, wide rectangle.

“What is that place?” Webb asked.

“Got me,” Jerry Ving said.

“Looks like a warehouse or something.”

“What do you see?”

“Looks like a big flat-roofed building. I’d guess close to a million square feet.”

Ving whistled through his teeth.

There was a paved expanse on all four sides, and there appeared to be freight trucks parked in neat rows in front and back.

“Is there a company name attached?” Webb asked.

“Negative.”

“Keep looking. I’ll call back later.”

Webb called Archer to deliver the news.

“Keep digging,” Archer said.
 

FOURTEEN

It was morning prayer time, and Alexander had read scripture with Tatum before giving her some private time alone with God. He closed the door and went to the kitchen to oversee the preparation of her breakfast. Everything was as it should be. The kitchen smelled of rising dough and sliced fruit.

Alexander preferred to prepare Tatum’s breakfast drink himself. It was an organic smoothie made of fruit, vegetables, a variety of nuts and seeds, juices, and flax oil. The final ingredient, Alexander carried in his jacket. He removed a pill bottle from one pocket and removed the lid. It was filled with small white tablets. He tapped three into the palm of his hand and put the bottle back inside his jacket. Then he placed the chalky tablets in with the rest of the ingredients inside the mixing machine, pressed the lid on tight, and pressed the power button. He blended the drink until the end product was green and thick.
 

When the rest of breakfast was ready, he placed the food on a tray and delivered it to her room. She was rising from her knees when he knocked on the door.

“I’m just finishing,” she said.

“Breakfast is served,” he said with a smile.

“Smells delicious.”

He set the tray on a table in the small chapel and excused himself.

“Take your time eating,” he said on his way out. “Then we have a very busy day ahead.”

Tatum took a drink of the smoothie and smiled. It tasted yummy. The smoothie had quickly become her favorite part of breakfast.

* * *

Archer’s arm was still bleeding. He’d gotten some nice road rash from his tumble through the gravel after being thrown free of the Mercedes. He stopped to get gas and stepped into the restroom to find a paper towel. He tore one from a dispenser on the wall and wet it under the faucet. He dabbed at his elbow as he crossed the parking lot to his truck. There was also blood coming from above his left eye. He had noticed it in the mirror as he wet the paper towel. He looked like someone had attacked him with a cheese grater.
 

He was pissed that the car tag had proved to be a dead end so far. He was ready to get his hands on the two goons in the Mercedes and beat their heads together. Plus, it didn’t seem like much of a stretch to assume that when he caught up with the goons in the suits, it would only be one more short step to finding Tatum.

He picked bits of gravel from the seat of the Land Cruiser. The windshield was grimy with dust. He flicked the lever and squirted wiper fluid onto the glass and let the wipers do the best they could. He turned the key in the ignition and glanced at traffic. The cuts down his arm stung like hell. There was blood on the steering wheel.
 

The driver of the Mercedes and his partner looked American but could have been from anywhere. They hadn’t spoken. Archer had every detail assigned to memory. He couldn’t wait to do some damage. The wind was in his face and the sun was bright. It was a perfect California day. A day like that would give Tatum a heart attack.