Viking Bay (25 page)

Sterling waggled his gun at her. “Move to your left so you're not behind the car.”

Kay did as instructed and took two steps to her left—Simon Says—her hands still in the air.

“How did you know I was here?” she said. She
really
wanted the answer to that question before she died. She wanted to know if she'd been betrayed or if she'd just fucked up.

Sterling smiled. “A short time ago, I had a problem with a former employee and I decided to beef up the security here at my home.”

Kay was pretty sure the “former employee” was that guy, Nelson, who tried to rape and kill her and failed. After she killed Nelson, Sterling probably began to worry that Callahan didn't buy his story that Nelson had quit and that Sterling had nothing to do with the attack on Kay—and that's when he'd beefed up his security.

“One of the things I did,” Sterling said, “was install a few cameras outside and inside my house. The cameras are connected to motion detectors and they send a signal to my smartphone when they're activated. So I saw you yesterday, scoping out my place, and I saw you walk into the garage. I didn't know it was you because of that bandanna you were wearing, and then you took off yesterday before I could get here. But today, I made it on time. I saw you go into the garage. I knew you didn't go into the house or you would have tripped a camera in there. So I knew you were in the garage, and the only place you could be was hiding behind the Z3.”

This meant that the cameras he'd installed were so damn small or so well camouflaged that Kay hadn't seen them yesterday when she'd toured the outside of Sterling's house looking for cameras. The good news, based on everything he'd just said, was that he didn't have a camera in the garage. If he'd had one there, he would have gotten a clear image of her face when she'd wiped up her wet footprints from the
garage floor. But he hadn't known it was her. He'd said
Jesus, it's you!
when he saw her. This also meant that the cameras outside the house, with the rain pouring down and her wearing a hat, hadn't captured a clear image of her, either. At least, she hoped not. She also hoped that the pictures taken by the outside cameras had gone only to Sterling's smartphone, like he'd said, and not to some other computer's hard drive.

Sterling concluded his diatribe by saying: “I mean, for Christ's sake, Hamilton, I run a security company. Did you really think it was going to be this easy? I knew you were an arrogant bitch the moment I met you.”

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, but he had a point about her assuming it would be so easy. It was also nice to know that she hadn't been betrayed; it was not so nice to know she'd been a fool.

Kay was about to tell him once again that Callahan knew she was there and if he killed her, Callahan would send in a team to take him out. Before Kay could say anything, however, Sterling said, “Frisk her, Ramirez. Make sure she's not carrying any other weapons, and if she has a phone, get it. For that matter, remove everything she has in her pockets.”

“Yes, sir,” Ramirez said—and then he did something really stupid.

He shoved the .45 he was carrying into the front of his pants and he didn't put the safety on. He walked toward Kay, and Kay, trying to look like she was scared, said, “Please. Don't hurt me.” This made Ramirez smile and it also put him more at ease, thinking Kay was frightened.

When Ramirez reached her, he said, “Turn around and grab the wall,” and then he reached up with his right hand to touch her left shoulder to spin her around, and when he did this he was standing between her and Sterling. Instead of turning, Kay reached out with her left hand, grabbed Ramirez's T-shirt and jerked him toward her, and at the same time she reached down with her right hand, grabbed Ramirez's gun—and pulled the trigger without removing the gun from his pants.

She didn't know if she'd just blown Ramirez's dick off or if the bullet had ended up in one of his legs, but whatever the case, he screamed in pain and his eyes bulged with shock. Kay didn't let him drop to the ground, however. She quickly pulled the gun out of his pants and, still clutching Ramirez to her, using him as a shield, she fired at Sterling. And missed.

Sterling fired back immediately. His first bullet went whizzing past her left ear. Since she and Ramirez were almost the same height, and because she was holding Ramirez in front of her, Sterling then did the only thing he could do: He fired directly at Ramirez's back, hoping the bullet would pass through Ramirez and hit her.

After that it was a gunfight that lasted less than three seconds. She just kept pulling the trigger as fast as she could, hoping to hit Sterling, and Sterling did the same thing: He kept shooting at her, hoping to hit her in the face, half his bullets hitting Ramirez in the back. She had no idea how many bullets they both fired—at least a dozen was her guess—and one of her bullets hit Sterling in the chest.

She knew she wasn't better than Sterling—she was just luckier. She was lucky she hit him, firing without really aiming, and while holding Ramirez upright. But where she really got lucky was that none of the bullets Sterling had fired passed through Ramirez's body, which meant that Sterling was probably using frangible ammo—dumdums—the type air marshals used. Why Sterling had loaded his gun with that type of bullet she didn't know, but she thanked God that he had.

Kay dropped Ramirez to the ground, and she couldn't believe it when she heard him moan. He'd been hit so many times she knew he'd be dead very soon, and she was astounded he was still alive. He was a tough little motherfucker. She ignored Ramirez, however, and focused on Sterling. He was lying on the ground, but she could tell he was still alive, too, and his gun was in his hand. She pointed her weapon at Sterling, intending to shoot him again if necessary, but it wasn't necessary. Sterling was too weak to lift his weapon and aim it at her.

She started to approach Sterling but then looked down at Ramirez. His eyes were closed and blood was seeping from his mouth. She wondered how long it was going to take him to die.

She thought about it for less than a second and shot him in the head. There was no point in letting him suffer.

She walked over to Sterling and kicked the gun out of his hand, then knelt down next to him. He had a classic, bubbling chest wound, meaning her bullet had pierced a lung and air was escaping through the hole. Had she wanted to save him, she would have put a piece of plastic, like Saran Wrap, over the wound to seal it and then wrapped bandages around his chest to keep the plastic in place—but she didn't want to save him.

“If you tell me where Anna Mercer is, I'll call the medics,” she said to Sterling.

Without opening his eyes, he said, “I don't know where she is.”

Kay believed him.

“How much did she pay you to help her?”

Sterling's lips were moving, but he couldn't—or wouldn't—speak.

“Tell me how much she paid you and I'll call the medics,” Kay said. She wasn't going to call anyone.

“Five.”

“Five million?”

“Yeah.”

That's all she really needed to know. If her plan had worked out and she'd been able to question him, she would have tried to make him tell her where the money was and force him to transfer it back to one of Callahan's accounts. That wasn't going to happen now, however, because Sterling died a few heartbeats later.

—

THE GARAGE DOOR
was still open, so Kay closed it. She then searched the storage lockers in the garage and found some plastic garbage bags,
rags, and a gallon of a liquid chemical for removing oil stains from concrete. The label on the bottle said the product contained bleach, which was good, as bleach made it harder to get DNA results.

She used the rags and the chemical cleaning agent to wipe up all the blood she could see, then placed the rags, Sterling and his buddy's guns, and all the shell casings she could find in the garbage bag. She couldn't be sure that she found all the casings, but she couldn't search any longer.

She took one final look around the garage; a hotshot CSI team like you see on TV would certainly find evidence that a shoot-out had taken place in the garage and blood had been spilled, but to a casual observer, everything looked fine. One other bit of luck: None of Sterling's bullets had hit a window, and where they'd hit the back wall of the garage they'd fragmented and the wall was just dinged up in a couple of places. All the bullets she'd fired at Sterling, except for the one that hit him, had flown out the open garage door.

She found the keys to the Escalade in one of Sterling's pockets, put on her baseball cap, and tied her bandanna around her face to make sure Sterling's invisible surveillance cameras didn't record her. She then opened the garage door, drove Sterling's Escalade into the garage, and closed the garage door again.

It took her about ten minutes to load Sterling, Ramirez, the garbage bag with the bloody rags, and her knapsack into the Escalade. She searched the garage storage lockers again, found a paint-splattered tarp, and tossed it over the bodies. She opened the garage door, hopped into the Escalade, and began to back it out of the garage—when she suddenly slammed on the brakes.

What the hell was wrong with her? She'd forgotten to get Sterling's smartphone, the one that had images of her walking up the driveway and entering the garage. She'd better get her head on straight. She pulled the tarp off Sterling and retrieved the phone.

—

KAY CALLED CALLAHAN.
She was driving Sterling's Escalade very carefully, making sure she stayed below the speed limit. The last thing she needed was to get stopped by a cop with two corpses in the car.

“I have two items to be disposed of, plus the vehicle I'm driving, plus the contents of a garbage bag inside the vehicle.”

“
Two
items?” Callahan said.

“Yeah. There was a complication.”

“Okay. Is the drop-off point still the same?” Callahan asked.

“Yeah. I'll be there in an hour.”

“You'll find a blue Camry at the drop-off point, keys on the left rear tire. A couple of guys will be there to take care of the disposal in exactly an hour and a half, so you need to be gone before they get there.”

“Copy that,” Kay said.

“Come to the office as soon as you're back in D.C. I want to hear what happened.”

“No. I'm going home to my daughter. I'll talk to you tomorrow.”

She hung up before Callahan could remind her that he was the boss.

40
|
Nathan Sterling wasn't reported missing for five days, two of those days falling on a weekend.

Sterling's partner, Cannon, was out of town the first day Sterling was absent from work, which happened to be a Friday. Cannon and his wife had decided to take a long weekend at Nag's Head. The administrative assistant that Cannon and Sterling shared was surprised when Sterling didn't call her and tell her he wouldn't be coming in, but he was a rude, inconsiderate man and she didn't think too much of it. She was annoyed by his absence but certainly wasn't alarmed or concerned.

When he didn't show up on Monday, Cannon and the admin assistant both called Sterling several times but he didn't return their calls. Again, the admin assistant wasn't concerned—but Cannon was. He'd grown to dislike Sterling during the years they'd worked together, but Sterling had always been reliable. On Tuesday, when Sterling still hadn't returned his calls, Cannon called the cops. He told them that Sterling lived alone and maybe he'd had an accident or a heart attack, though a heart attack seemed unlikely given Sterling's physical condition.

The police entered Sterling's house—they had to call the security company to disarm the security system—and looked around, but saw no signs of foul play. They just glanced into the garage and saw it was empty except for the Z3. The cops checked flight records but could find no evidence that Sterling had taken a plane anywhere. They checked his credit cards, but he didn't appear to be using them, nor could they locate him via his phone. The cops informed Cannon that they'd keep their eyes open for his partner, but there wasn't much else
they planned to do, particularly as there was no evidence that Sterling had been harmed or that he'd committed a crime and fled.

Cannon immediately had a CPA come in and audit the C&S books. Cannon knew Sterling was in bad financial shape, and he wondered if he'd embezzled from their failing company. The CPA said no money was missing—not that there'd been a lot of cash there to begin with—and maybe Cannon ought to think about filing for bankruptcy if business didn't pick up.

No one at C&S Logistics noticed or cared that Ramirez was absent from work the same days Sterling was missing. Ramirez lived alone, had few friends at the company, and had a drinking problem. Maybe Ramirez was on a bender. Or maybe, since Ramirez had just gotten back from Afghanistan, he'd taken a few days off. Or maybe, Ramirez being the asshole he was, he just quit and didn't bother to give notice.

Ramirez was like the line from that Dixie Chicks song “Goodbye Earl”: He was a missing person whom nobody missed at all.

—

THERE WAS NOTHING NEW
with regard to Anna Mercer: The damn woman was just gone. The Brits were searching databases for home purchases made by single women in their forties, looking for people who had no apparent history, but so far no one who might be Mercer had been found. To complicate matters, a lot of the women who purchased homes in the U.K. weren't U.K. citizens, divorced women often used their maiden names, and property records for home purchases weren't updated in a timely manner.

“Jesus,” Kay complained one day to Callahan, “there must be something else we can do. The worst thing is, we don't even know if she's in the U.K. She could be in fucking Timbuktu for all you know.”

“Hamilton, will you relax,” Callahan told her. “It's only been three weeks. I know you don't want to hear this, but it may take us years.”