Tragic Desires (29 page)

D
awn is breaking
as I regain consciousness—I’ve been out for six or seven hours. I’m in some alley on a filthy mattress. My shirt is unbuttoned, my tie undone, and I’m leaning against a brick wall. My hands move to my throbbing head.

Gemini!
Where the hell is she? Upon looking around, I find my team of six men here too, but no Gemini. Fuck!

“
Wake up!” I yell. My hands reach into my pocket for my phone—it’s gone. That’s no surprise.

It takes a couple of attempts but I finally
stand.

“Hey,” I nudg
e the other guys. “Wake up! We gotta get out of here.” My heart races as I think about Gemini and where she could be. The guys groan as they begin to stir.

“What happened?” one of them asks.

“We were hit and drugged. They took Gemini. Does anyone have a cell phone?”

Only
one guy still has his phone, stashed in his boot. Damn, I’ll have to remember that. I call Huff. Reinforcements arrive within twenty minutes.

“What the fuck happened?” Huff asks.
“We’ve been calling everyone but no answer. We’ve been combing the area. I was just about to run a chip search.”

“We were ambushed coming out of th
e restaurant. They used silencers. They drugged us. They must’ve thrown us in the back of a van or something. They took everyone’s phone but Jason’s.” I explain.

“I don’t know why Jason’s phone didn’t pop up on the
GPS locator,” Huff responds. “It must be malfunctioning.

Turns out w
e’re in an alley on the other side of Denver, in a part of town that is relatively deserted.

I’m so angry I want to scream but
my head is splitting open. Huff, Blake, and a few other guys who weren’t with us last night look around for evidence but come up empty.

“The restaurant!”
I yell.

We pile into the cars and head there. The guys check everything out
but don’t find a thing. Luckily, all the bodyguards were wearing Kevlar vests, so no one took a bullet.

“Fucking shit! Where is she?”

“We’ll find her. I’ll contact the restaurant and see if they have security cameras,” Huff says.

We get back to
headquarters and I’m physically ill. My head swims from whatever drug they used. The men who were drugged are also in bad shape. Huff calls in Dr. Davis and he gives us anti-nausea medication. It helps.

“Fuck, I can’t believe this happened with all the protection we had,” Huff says.

“They have her, Huff. We have to find her. If they kill her, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“Okay, okay, just try to stay calm.”

Mania takes over and my voice booms. “I can’t stay calm! Aali Imaam has her and so help me God if they do anything to her, I’ll fucking take them all out. I want you to call The Company. Now.”

“Drex, are you sure?”

“Do it. Tell them I want to meet with Alex Michaels. Alone. Do it, Huff. Now!”

“Okay. But why alone?”

“Because I said so, that’s why. In the meantime, track her chip. And see what you can come up with from the restaurant.”

“Got it,
boss.”

Light speed can’t come close to how fast my thoughts churn.
It’s so ridiculous, even I can’t keep up. Sitting won’t work and neither does standing. Pacing doesn’t suffice. I want to hit something or someone, namely the fucking asshole who took her. Thinking straight is impossible. This is the craziest my mind has ever been and I feel so fucked because I need clarity and I’m in a murky pond with zero visibility. The fact that I’m this knee deep in shit makes it even worse for Gemini.
Pull it together, Drex. She needs you, goddammit!

Before I know what I’m doing, my hand is through the wall.
Huff comes running and he calls Dr. Davis back to my office.

“Can you move your fingers?”

“Yeah.” I know it’s not broken. “It’s just bruised.” I flex my fingers for the doctor and he seems satisfied. They hurt but not too bad. The skin on my knuckles is torn off. Whatever. I need to get my mind right because I’m worthless like this.

Blake runs in and tells me they have a location on Gemini
—she’s in Denver. Not too far from where we picked you up.

“
Why would they keep her in Denver?”

“Can’t answer that,” he says. “I can only tell you the location of the chip.”

Huff is on his heels with some information about the restaurant. “The owner says he’ll meet us in thirty minutes. But Drex, you need to stay here. Alex Michaels is supposed to call you.”

“Fuck that. I’ll forward my number to my cell
, which I’ll need another one by the way. I need to see that scene again. Maybe it’ll come back to me.”

“Drex. You won’t remember
, not if it was rohypnol,” Dr. Davis says.

“Yeah, well, I have to take that chance
. What if it was a different drug?”

I know I’m a pressure cooker and at any time, my lid’s going to
blow. Forcing myself to use controlled breathing techniques, I feel much more stable by the time we get to the restaurant. Upon looking around, I don’t remember being here at all. Nothing about the evening rings a bell. We review the tapes and I see Gemini and I walking out, and then we’re surrounded. There’s gunfire, and then I’m pushing Gemini out of the way. I don’t see who takes her. Someone lays one right in my kisser and then drugs me, but I can’t see his face. He’s wearing a
keffiyeh
, a Middle Eastern headdress, but that’s about it. I seethe, not only with anger but with a need so strong to find her and get her to safety.

My phone rings
but I don’t hear it.

“
Drex, your phone,” Huff nudges me.

“Fuck.” I shake my head and tap the screen. “Wolfe.”

“Wolfe. Michaels here. You wanted to speak?”

“Yeah. My office. One hour.”

“No. That won’t work. We meet on neutral ground. You come alone.”

“When and where?” I ask.

“One hour at your house.”

“You mean my place that was bombed?”

“The same.”

The fucking bastard.
What is he up to?

“See you there.”

“And Wolfe. No wires or cameras. You come alone or no deal. Got it?”

“Sure do.”

I rejoin the crowd.

“Well?” Huff asks.

“I’m going to meet him in an hour.”

“Who’s going with you?”

“No one. Just me.”

“Drex
…”

“I’ll be fine. I need to go back to the office and get some gear.” Huff isn’t at all happy and none of the other guys will be
, either, but they can’t come with me. They don’t know about my covert activity with the CIA. It’s classified. End of story.

When we get back to the office, I arm myself to the teeth. Shoulder
and leg holsters, back belt holster, knife, extra magazines for my guns. I hope to hell he gives me what I want and need because I don’t know what I’ll do if he doesn’t.

“You ready?” Blake asks.

“As ready as I’ll ever be. Listen, I want you to send two teams out. One goes to the storage unit in Austin and the other hits Vegas. I want them to bring back whatever Gemini’s mother left for her in either location. Use threats, break in at night, do whatever you need to. Just bring back what’s there. If the file is there, it’s most likely on an old floppy disc.”

“We’ll get it
, Drex. And you need to take it easy.” Blake looks at me. “I mean it. If you get hurt, who will she rely on?”

“I got you
, Blake. And thanks. Find out everything you can about where she’s being held.”

Huff says, “Drex, man, let me go with you.”

“You can’t. No time for explanations. Find my girl and let me know how I can get her. As soon as I’m done with Michaels, I’m going after her.”

“Drex, you’re gonna need more than three guns and a couple of knives.”

“You’re wrong, Huff. I’ll only need my bare hands.”

Michaels is waiting
for me in the parking lot across the street from my demolished warehouse that I used to call home. Just looking at it pisses me off. But when I see him, the top of my head wants to blow.

My feet hit the ground and I walk with a purpose. The thing is, I want to punch his lights out, but I can’t. I need him. I need his information. But after I get it, then I’ll punch his lights out.

“What do you have for me?”

Michaels gives me an
eat-shit grin and asks, “What do you have for
me
?”

“Are you fucking with me, because right now, I’m about to come
unglued. First of all, the goddamn terror cell knows I’m CIA and now I find out that somehow your man was involved with Gemini. Tell me how this all worked out for you, Michaels. And how did Nick Lowry end up dead? How did you guys manage to fuck this up so badly?”

“Who told you about Lowry?”

“Are you guys that stupid or do you just have your heads so far up your asses you don’t know what the fuck is going on out here? Is Leo aware of this?”

When his face turns a tad paler, I can tell I’ve hit on something big. “What is it
, Alex? You sneaking around behind the boss’s back? Is that it? Leo doesn’t even know you’re here, does he? He doesn’t know anything about you and your involvement in the Sheridan case, does he? So who’s paying you off and who did you pay to try and implicate me in all this mess?”

“Wait a minute!”

“No,
you
wait a goddamn minute. Whatever you’re doing smells rotten. I see sellout and double-crossing all over this shit. And I can call in the big guys right now if you don’t start talking. It looks to me that you’ve gotten pretty fucking cozy with Aali Imaam. How else would they know about Gemini and her mom? How else would they have gotten information about me? Only a few select people even know I work for the CIA. Hell, the fucking CIA doesn’t even know I work for them. And Aali Imaam knows? So you tell me and tell me something fast, or I’m making that goddamn phone call and you’re gonna have all sorts of shit crawling up your ass. Tell me what the fuck you know.”

He’s even whiter than he was before and I know I have him cornered.

“Lowry was recruited to keep an eye on her right after her mother was killed. But when she had the damn accident, she got so schizo on him, he went haywire on us. I’m not sure what happened with him. He was way too involved with her because he went fucking nuts. Started making all kinds of threats so we had to take him out.”

What the fuck! They took out one of their own. “You guys are unbelievable. You don’t even think about helping people anymore. Your answer is a bullet to the head.
End of story. Is that what you did to Michelle Sheridan too?”

“No. We wanted her alive. She has something that
…” His mouth clamps shut so hard, I hear his teeth click.

“Go on,” I urge.

“Nothing. There’s nothing.”

“What the fuck turnip truck do you think I fell off? With the smarts I’m dealing with out here, I’m surprised every single one of our government secrets hasn’t been given away yet. You guys are incredible.”

His fingers hook into his collar and he pulls it away from his neck, trying to loosen it a bit. Then his head jerks around, avoiding my glance.

“You really can’t stand to look at me, can you?”

“That’s not it. I just have nothing to say about that.”

A laugh escapes me. “Well
, I suggest you come up with something fast because time’s running out. Tell me everything you know, dickhead.”

“What exactly do you know?”

“No, no, no, Michaels! That’s not how this works. I’m asking the questions now. So if you don’t want my fist in your face, you’d better get talking, and fast.”

He looks at me, hard. “The Sheridan case goes back to 1993. The Company
approached Rachel Miller, aka Michelle Sheridan, to get information about her lover, Hakeem Assaf. The dossier reads that she didn’t have a clue who or what he was. She only knew he had money. They were most definitely in love, because from all accounts, she was broken after she turned him in. Although she didn’t really turn him in. She gave us the means to capture him. And when we did, he asked us how we found out. According to the story, he crumbled and cried like a baby when he found out it all came from his beloved mistress and mother of his daughter. He begged and begged them to let him see Amira and Rachel one more time, but The Company refused. They were already placed in the program and had new identities. Her death had been set up and the day it appeared in the news, the account of his reaction says he had to be sedated. He thought she took her own life. Of course, it looked perfect for us, but he obsessed over Amira. They assured him she would be okay, but every day, his condition worsened until they were forced to put him in the psych unit. When he finally recovered, he supplied them with everything they asked in return for a life in solitude within the confines of our prison system. He lost the desire to live and he knew he could never return to the Middle East. They would hunt and kill him, but he didn’t care. He didn’t want them to find his daughter. So we changed his name but he died a few years later of cancer.”