by Logan Ryles
His cheeks flushed. “What kind of sick show is this?”
The edge of the blade nicked his throat, and he felt a warm stream of blood running down his neck.
The man spoke for the first time. “I wouldn’t upset her if I were you.” He touched his own neck, and T-Rex saw a scab that looked like it may have been caused by the same blade.
“On the bed, now.” The redhead motioned with her free hand, and T-Rex reluctantly lay on the bed, wiggling until he was centered over the comforter. The woman in the black robes stepped forward, a coil of light rope appearing from the folds of her clothing.
“Hey!” T-Rex started to sit up, but the blade pressed against his neck again, and he slumped back.
Banks approached him from the other side and helped the silent woman in the robes tie his hands to the bedposts, then they moved to his feet.
T-Rex’s voice wavered on the edge of a sob. “Look, don’t hurt me, okay? I got kids, man! And a wife. A mother. I’ve got a pet parrot, man!”
The redhead laughed. “Bullshit. All you’ve got is a big, sticky problem. You see, my friends and I have spent the last three hours discussing our favorite forms of bedroom perversion. We’ve come up with a pretty good list. I’m curious. Do you like lighter fluid? Because Kelly loves it.”
The redhead motioned to the woman in the robes, who turned and faced T-Rex. Her dark eyes glinted through the slit in her face mask, sending a cold chill ripping through his body.
The ropes tightened around his ankles, restraining him to the bed. Banks and Kelly backed off, and the redhead hopped onto the bed with an agile jump that landed her small feet between his knees. She grinned down at him with a semi-devilish glint in her eyes as the tip of her blade danced down his neck, tracing his torso down to his belt buckle and then one inch lower.
“Now then, baby . . .” Banks said, stepping up beside him. “We’ve only got one question. Where is Reed Montgomery?”
Twenty-One
Port of New Orleans
New Orleans, Louisiana
Reed’s shoes sank into the muddy shore on the south side of the Mississippi River. He shoved his hands into his pockets and squinted against the rising sun as he stared across the slow-moving river at the Port of New Orleans. The Crescent City Connection bridge shot across the water directly overhead, its rusty, red-metal framework glistening in the warmth of the morning and providing him only moderate relief from the brightness.
It was going to be a hot day. He wouldn’t need the coat, which made disguising his person—not to mention his gun—an increasing challenge. Reed could already see state troopers and security personnel bustling on the other side of the river, setting up a podium for the governor’s speech. There were dozens of cops, but to the trained eye, it wasn’t an altogether efficient operation.
That was good. The mild chaos and inevitable tension between the state, city, and parish cops would offer Reed the perfect opening to slip inside their ranks and plant the bomb. It would be like walking into a darkened movie theater without a ticket. As long as he was quiet, nobody would stop him,
but he’d need a better disguise than a thick coat on a hot morning. Something that would blend in, not stick out.
He turned away from the water and back toward the car. He knew exactly where to find it.
Reed correctly assumed that the Louisiana state troopers would perform fringe support for Governor Trousdale’s primary security detail, and it took him less than fifteen minutes to identify a lone trooper at the edge of the crowd. The man was tall, broad, and generally representative of Reed’s physique, which was all he needed.
He left Officer Rich Bordeaux unconscious and restrained in the basement of a bar, two blocks from the port. Bordeaux was a big man with a hat and uniform that fit Reed nicely. A quick tap to the base of his skull was all that was necessary to subdue him, and Reed left him a bottle of water and a couple aspirin to treat the headache when he woke up.
Reed straightened his tie and stepped back onto the street, the hat cocked on his head at the same angle Bordeaux had worn it. Troopers spent the majority of their days working alone, patrolling highways and parish roads, so he hoped that meant Bordeaux didn’t actually know many of the people he’d be working with, and therefore nobody would notice the disconnect between Bordeaux’s nameplate and Reed’s face. There was no way to be sure.
Reed walked the two blocks back to the port and infiltrated the gathering crowd of media, curious citizens, and angry port workers encircling the podium.
Trousdale’s security had done a good job of setting the place up. There was a bulletproof shield that stood ten feet high, twenty feet distant from the podium, ensuring that any random hothead who slipped through the checkpoints with a pistol wouldn’t be able to crack off a lucky shot. The transportable podium stood eighteen inches off the ground and was covered with a black cloth embroidered with the state seal of Louisiana. A microphone, teleprompter, and a stand with a bottle of water all waited in the middle of the podium, while black-suited guards walked back and forth, making final checks and adjustments.
It would be perfect, Reed thought, and ideally suited to execute his plan without any collateral damage. He swept his gaze around the buildings that encircled the port and quickly identified all three snipers. There would be three, of course: one to keep a constant eye on the governor and track her position if she needed to be moved, and two more to keep seamless surveillance over the crowd while constantly searching for threats.
It was the first sniper keeping his eyes on the governor who would be the problem. In an ideal world, Reed would’ve found a way to disable him beforehand, but there wasn’t enough time for that.
He checked his watch. It was twenty minutes until the governor’s speech. Given the hostile nature of the crowd, he doubted she would appear before then.
Reed stepped out of the crowd and walked one block away from the port and around a corner. The BMW waited in a small pay-per-hour parking lot, its nose pointed outward toward the street. He hit the trunk release button on the key fob and ducked his head down, dragging out the duffle bag. Inside were two packages: one of them contained eight pounds of T-Rex’s C4, while the other was packed with the remaining two pounds. Both were equipped with electronic detonators, wired and ready to go.
Reed walked back to the crowd, keeping the bag swinging by his side, his shoulders loose, and his face twisted into the sort of authoritative, somewhat-aloof expression he imagined troopers used, though he wasn’t actually sure.
Another trooper almost bumped into him as he passed but offered Reed nothing more than a brief nod before hurrying on. Forty yards farther, Reed circled the edge of the semi-circular bulletproof shield and stepped toward the podium.
“Hey! You there. Where are you going?”
Reed turned around. One of Trousdale’s security detail, dressed in a dark black suit with a curly wire running toward his ear, held up a hand.
Reed stopped and cocked his head.
“What’s in the bag?”
Reed unzipped the bag and pulled the flaps back.
“Water . . . for the press conference. You want some?”
The man seemed briefly confused, frowning down at the bag. There were nine bottles inside, six of them still wrapped in a plastic package, while the other three were loose.
Reed selected one of the loose bottles and tossed it to him.
“Here, better hydrate. It’s warm today.”
The agent caught it and offered a quick grin. “Hey, thanks. You can put those over there, I guess. Just get rid of the bag. They don’t like them lying around.”
“No problem.”
The guy walked off, and Reed turned around, resisting the urge to glance up at the snipers. He had no doubt that at least two of them had viewed the exchange. He could only hope their concerns were suitably disarmed.
Approaching the podium, Reed scooped the six-pack of water bottles from the bag and bent over, setting it down at the back of
the podium, just under its lip where the cloth parted. He then straightened, made a show of stretching his back, and circled the podium before depositing two more bottles in front of it, just inside the bulletproof shield.
This was the moment of truth. There was no real reason to leave bottles here. A close inspection of either bottle would reveal that their contents weren’t liquid. But maybe, with some luck, everybody would be too busy and too distracted to question something so insignificant.
Twenty-Two
Hwy 45 South
Mississippi
“Reed’s in Baton Rouge! I sold him ten pounds of C4 this morning.”
As it turned out, T-Rex was no Fort Knox. He squealed only moments after being tied to the bed, and over the next ten minutes, the group mined as much information as they could out of him. Then, after promising to alert the front desk in a couple hours, they left him tied up and took inventory of his van on their way out.
The panel van, painted with gaudy images of Greek gods, was loaded to the gills with every sort of weaponry and combat equipment imaginable. Wolfgang said he was fully equipped, and Lucy seemed happy with her swords and knives, but Kelly and Banks dug through the boxes and trays and surfaced with enough firepower to continue their mini-war. Kelly selected a Smith and Wesson M&P 9mm compact, along with an extra magazine, a flashlight, and a holster. The weapon disappeared beneath her burka like a shadow.
Banks found a small revolver—another Smith and Wesson—chambered in .38 Special, and tucked it into her waistband. On her way out, she spotted a pump shotgun on a rack. It was short and black, with a pistol grip and sawed-off barrel. Upon further inspection, she found it to be chambered in 20-gauge, a lighter-recoiling load still fully capable of knocking a grown man off his feet. Banks was very familiar with shotguns—she had fired several of them while growing up in Mississippi. Something about the simple elegance of the sawed-off was attractive to her.
She found a bandolier of 20-gauge buckshot and grabbed the gun, piling out of the van and nodding to the others.
“I’m good. Let’s roll.”
Wolfgang’s car was a Mercedes AMG S63 Coupe, and it was by far the nicest car Banks had ever ridden in. Lucy and Kelly, the two smallest members of what Lucy named “The Ass-Kicking Squad Plus This Dude,” piled into the cramped back seats of the car while Banks dropped the shotgun into the trunk and slid into the front passenger seat. There had been a brief debate over whether to drive Lucy’s rented SUV, but Wolfgang wouldn’t hear of it.
“Style. Your squad needs it,” he said as he hit the start button and the Mercedes’ giant engine roared to life. That sound, coupled with the glowing Mercedes logo on the front grill, brought a twist to Banks’s stomach. She remembered the last time she had seen this car, in another forest, on another road, in another state. She remembered the rattle of automatic gunshots as Wolfgang pressed a submachine gun through his window and opened fire on her Beetle.
She paused a moment, staring him down. The tall man dressed in a wool coat, with his hair neatly combed to one side and a wry smile on his face, seemed nothing like the cool, calculated killer who had launched grenades at her in North Carolina. She knew instinctively that she should be wary of this man. Maybe even afraid. But somehow, she wasn’t. Maybe it was because Lucy sat directly behind him, one of her long knives lying across her lap. Or maybe it was because Banks had spoken to Wolfgang and understood him better.
Or maybe it was because she was stupid, she thought. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Hadn’t she trusted Reed and almost anyone who asked her to her whole damn life? Hadn’t that led her into this strange world of bloodshed?
Banks wiggled deeper into the plush seat of the Mercedes and closed her eyes, tracing her way back to the last moment she saw Reed as he disappeared into that Alabama forest. He had glanced over his shoulder, held her gaze for a moment, and she saw something in his eyes that she hadn’t before—something soft, deep, and passionate.
It was longing, aching pain. And yet, there was more to it than that. There was something else, something mysterious that radiated from his very soul.
Banks had no idea what it was or what it meant, but she knew exactly how it made her feel. It made her feel like the whole world had fallen away, and nothing and nobody except the two of them remained. It made her feel like there was another man behind the cold-hearted face of the killer she knew—a man who was more complex, more conflicted, and maybe more good than she had first assumed.
I know you said not to say it, but I love you. Goodbye.
Once more, Reed’s last text message rang through her mind. The burner phone was still in her pocket, but she didn’t need to review it to remember those words. She had read them a hundred times until they were burned into her memory forever.
Don’t follow. I love you. I love you. I love you. Goodbye.
He said he loved her. Did he mean it? Did she believe it? Was this brutal, bloody man capable of love?
Wolfgang reached forward and flicked a switch on the dash. The car was flooded with the gentle melody of an opera streaming from speakers that probably cost more than Banks’s Beetle.
“What bullshit is this?” Kelly snapped. She sat behind Banks, still wrapped in her burka.
“This, my dear woman, is style,” Wolfgang said. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
“It sounds like a squealing pig. A squealing French pig.”
“French pig?” The indignation on Wolfgang’s face was absolute. “And what would you know about anything French?”
Kelly’s eyes flashed behind the burka. “C'est un beau pays, plein de souvenirs.”
Everyone looked up, and Banks ratcheted her head around the seat. “You speak French? I had no idea. What does that mean?”
Kelly turned away, staring out of the small slit of a window next to her compact rear seat. “It means it is a beautiful country. Full of memories.”
Banks nodded slowly. “I’ve never been. I would love to go.”
Kelly snorted. “Maybe Reed will take you. That’s where we met. On a beach, in a Ferrari, under the moon.”
Kelly’s tone grew increasingly sarcastic as she spoke, and an awkward stillness filled the car. Wolfgang and Lucy both avoided Banks’s gaze. She twisted and settled back in the passenger seat, a knot forming in her stomach. Had Reed loved Kelly? She didn’t know much about them, how they met, or what tore them apart. Reed’s references to Kelly were few and far between, leaving almost no detail about their romance. She got the feeling they both cared about each other, but then something happened.
Maybe it was Reed and his ruthless lifestyle. What woman could live with that?
Only a woman who thought she could change him, Banks thought. Maybe Kelly had, but maybe Kelly had been proven wrong.
Wolfgang cleared his throat. “What kind of music do you like?”
Kelly said nothing for a moment, then grunted. “Lil Wayne.”
Wolfgang frowned. “Little Wayne? Is that a band?”
A chuckle erupted from the women.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Banks said. “You’ve never heard Lil Wayne?”
“No . . .”
Banks depressed the voice command on the dash and instructed Wolfgang’s phone to play Lil Wayne’s hits. Uproar came ripping through the speakers only a moment later, and Wolfgang’s face twisted into a dark scowl.
“What in the world . . .”
Banks began to snap her fingers and swing her shoulders, and Lucy clapped. Even Kelly looked forward, the hint of a smile in her eyes.
“This is not music!” Wolfgang said.
“You’re right,” Banks said. “This is art.”
Wolfgang reached for the stereo, but Banks slapped his hand away, and Lucy laughed. The two women began to rap along, barely keeping up with Lil Wayne’s practiced rhythm, until Kelly joined in a moment later.
Wolfgang exhaled an abused sigh.
“I knew I was gonna regret this.”
Twenty-Three
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br /> Port of New Orleans
New Orleans, Louisiana
“Are you ready, Madam Governor?”
Maggie sat alone in the back seat of her SUV, staring through the window at nothing. The man who leaned in across the front seat was one of her security staff—a detail commander also conducting coordination activities in place of her chief of staff, Yolanda Flint. Yolanda resigned three days earlier in the fallout of Sharp being arrested. Maggie guessed she had a pretty good idea about what went down inside the administration. Yolanda knew everything, after all. It was part of her job.
Maggie didn’t blame her for getting out before the fireworks started. It was the logical thing to do, the thing that Maggie herself longed to do. If only she could check out of this damn town and run away to the family home, deep in the swamps, and forget about Baton Rouge and the politics and the deception and all the bad, bad decisions she had made.
What business did she have being governor? She was barely more than a kid, inexperienced and full of too much passion and not enough discernment. She was a fool.
Maggie held back her tears. It was over now. She would go outside, step up onto that podium, and make it right. She’d admit to everything and probably be arrested, but at least Sharp would be cleared, and she could sleep with a clear conscience.
“Madam Governor?” The guard repeated from the front seat. “Are you ready, ma’am?”
Maggie looked up, meeting the man’s gaze in her rearview mirror. It was Officer O’Dell, a member of her personal detail from the first day she took office. He was a quiet man, but there was a strength in his eyes that made her feel safe whenever he was around. Now that she faced him from the back seat, she wondered what his story was. His accent said local, but his posture and the wariness in his eyes said he had traveled far from home and seen things that had changed him. Was he an ex-soldier? Probably.