by L. T. Ryan
Jon nodded. “Two beds, unmade, one more than the other. Couple spots of blood on the floor, on the sheets. Pretty fresh. I’d say under an hour.”
“The girls were moved,” Jack said. He pointed at the dead man in the kitchen. “Owen was waiting for Godfrey to return or to be given his next location.”
“Maybe,” Jon said. “Maybe Owen was hiding out here. In light of everything that happened, he had to be scared. Who would look for him here?” Jon tipped over the bulk of the shattered radio. “That’s a police scanner. Maybe they figured someone would show up here. That could explain why Owen waited around.”
“Perhaps,” Jack said. “How long do you think he and Godfrey were working together?”
Jon shrugged. “No idea how it even happened. Owen’s a career criminal. Was one of Thornton Walloway’s top guys. Worked his way up over the past five years or so. As you said, he popped Walloway, so he must have had something going with Naseer for a while now. Maybe Sasha or Mason can shed some light on that. I’d imagine that’d be how he and Godfrey hooked up.”
Jack walked into the empty room, crouched and studied the footprints on the floor. “Tiny feet. Mia was in here.”
No one said anything.
“So what then? You think maybe they’re acting alone?”
Jon shrugged, offered no reply.
“What does this have to do with me and my daughter? What do they want with me?”
“I don’t know, Jack,” Jon said. “Wish I did.”
“You men, out,” Alex said to the group of agents that hovered near the front door.
The agents cleared the room, leaving Jack, Bear, Jon and Alex alone with Owen’s corpse. Jack’s phone rang. He pulled it out, looked at the display.
“It’s Dottie,” he said.
“Put her on speaker,” Alex said. “She might have heard something.”
“Hello, Jack.” Dottie’s voice sounded different than normal. Deeper, unemotional, no inflection.
“Have you heard anything, Dottie?”
“About?”
“The girls.”
A pause stretched for several seconds. “I know where they are, Jack.”
“Where?”
“Mia’s right here with me. She’s safe, for now. That will all depend on you, shortly.”
“Dottie, you’re making no sense. You found her? They released her?”
“Not exactly, Jack. I have her.”
Jack said nothing. The reality of the situation had begun to settle in. All heads leaned forward. All stares were on him. The men waited, mouths open, for her next words.
“Are you with Alex?” Dottie said.
Jack looked at the Prime Minister, who nodded.
“Yeah, he’s with me.”
“Who else?”
“No one. The rest are attending to the dead body.”
“Who’s dead?”
“That son of a bitch, Owen.”
“Oh well, just a cog in the machine.” She paused to clear her throat. “Now Jack, I want you to say hello to your precious little daughter.” Her voice faded. “Mia, say hello to Jack. He’s your dad after all.”
Mia into the phone. “Jack, I’m scared. Please help me. Get me out of here. Aunt Dottie’s gone…” The little girl’s voice trailed off.
“That’s enough of that, dear,” Dottie said.
“What have you done?” Jack said.
Dottie took a deep breath, exhaled into her phone’s speaker. It sounded like a gust of wind through a leafy tree.
“What do you want?” Jack said.
“Oh, it’s pretty simple, Jack. I want you to kill the Prime Minister.”
Jack fought for a response. Couldn’t find one. Jon reached for his gun, pulled it from its holster, aimed it in Jack’s direction. The guy looked confused, scared. Alex took a step toward Jon, reached over and pushed Jon’s arm down.
Not yet, Alex mouthed.
“Jack?” Dottie said. “I haven’t heard a gunshot yet. Perhaps I haven’t made myself clear.”
Mia’s screams burst through the speaker. “Don’t shoot me.”
Alex took off his jacket, dropped it to the floor. He unbuttoned his shirt and slid it off his right shoulder.
Jack hit the mute button on the phone. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Shoot me, Jack.”
“Have you lost your mind?” Jon said.
“Do it,” Alex said. “In the shoulder. I’ve got a plan, but we don’t have time to discuss it. You’ve got to do this now. Then I want you to start firing afterward, Jon. Into the ceiling, not at Jack.”
“Do I have your attention!” Dottie yelled.
Jack unmuted the phone. “You’re a sick woman.”
“And you’re about to become a dead man. You and the Prime Minister.” She laughed. “That is, unless you want young Mia to suffer a painful death.”
Mia’s cries slipped through the speaker.
“I’ve got people all over this city,” Dottie said. “Don’t even try to fake this. Your Mia will pay with her precious young life.”
Jack looked at Jon, then Alex. Both men nodded. Jon took a step back. Alex took a step to the side.
“Go to hell, Dottie.”
Jack raised his Beretta, aimed at Alex’s shoulder and pulled the trigger.
Alex’s screams blended with the ringing in Jack’s ears. Men burst into the house through the front door. Jon and Alex held out their hands to stop the men from doing anything. Then Jon shot four times into the ceiling. Chunks of plaster crashed to the floor. Alex’s blood mixed with some of the white residue.
Dottie laughed. “Yes, Jack, yes. Enjoy your trip to hell.”
“I’ll be waiting there for you.” Jack cut the phone off.
Bear had lunged in front of Jack, placing himself in front of men with itchy trigger fingers.
“Phone’s off,” Jack said.
Jon said, “Stand down. This was planned.”
Alex wriggled in pain along the floor.
“Are you OK?” Jon asked.
“No,” Alex said. “I’ve been bloody shot.”
“We need an ambulance here now,” Jon said.
“And the news,” Jack said.
“What?”
“She said she had people everywhere, watching. Well, what better way to tell her this went down than to show me being escorted out by the cops, and Alex with a bunch of damn tubes sticking out of his body while he’s covered with a blood soaked sheet.”
“That’s a damn good idea,” Alex said through his clenched teeth.
Bear knelt next to Alex. He steadied the Prime Minister and applied pressure to the wound. “Take it easy.”
“Have you ever had a GSW to the shoulder?” Alex said.
Bear pulled his shirt collar to the side and showed off an impressive scar. “As a matter of fact, yes I have. And Jack was there for that one, too.”
“I must be bad luck,” Jack said.
Bear and Jon laughed. He felt the Prime Minister would have, had he not been the recipient of the bullet.
A couple minutes later strobing lights bounced off the walls.
“Ambulance is out front,” Jon said. “And it looks like the news isn’t that far behind. There’s a helicopter incoming.”
The medics entered the house. Already serious, their expressions changed to panic when they saw who their patient was. Jon did his best to ease them.
“It’s not a fatal wound. But I need you to make it look that way.”
“What?” a medic said.
“Tape everything you can to his face, chest, wherever. Douse the sheets with his blood. This needs to look bad.”
The woman, her nameplate said Nikki, went to work without questioning him further.
The agents in the room escorted Jack outside. The helicopter hovered overhead. News vans lurched to a stop in front of the house. Cameras were pointed in his direction.
“Jesus, that’s the Prime Minister,” someone shouted. “H
e’s been shot.”
The media bought it. Now they had to hope that Dottie would too.
CHAPTER 64
“Looky there,” Randy said. “Ain’t that your boyfriend?”
Clarissa shifted her gaze from the dirt and grime covered window and the distorted view of the street to the television. The image on the screen showed Jack being led from a house that looked as worn down as the one they occupied. A banner scrolled along the bottom of the screen. It said, Prime Minister Shot.
Could Jack have done that?
“This makes no sense.” Sinclair rose and pulled his phone from his pocket. He left the room.
“Always knew Noble was a piece of dog doo,” Randy said from his seat beside her.
Clarissa glanced over her shoulder and waited for Sinclair to step outside. Randy leaned forward, closer to the TV, as if he was inspecting the Prime Minister’s injuries himself. She brought both of her hands up and lunged forward. Her arms wrapped around the side of his head. Her fingernails met in the middle of his face. She raked her hands in an outward motion, across his eyes and cheeks and ears.
Randy threw himself forward, onto his knees and into the wall. He pulled up on the TV cart. The television toppled over, barely missing his head and coming down on his shoulder.
Clarissa kicked him in the kidney, followed it up with an elbow to the back of his neck. He fell against the wall, turned. Blood from his eyebrows and forehead cascaded down his cheeks in thin crimson lines. He wiped his face with the back of his left sleeve. In his right hand, he held a pistol. Clarissa drove her foot into his stomach. He bowed forward. She grabbed the back of his head, struck him three times in the face with her knee. She let go and watched him fall to the floor, unconscious. His gun fell beside him. She scooped it up and moved toward the front door.
Sinclair stepped inside, his phone in one hand, pistol in the other. Both were down by his waist. The phone pointed toward the floor. The pistol toward her.
“What are you doing, Clarissa?” he said.
She took a step back, nodded toward Randy.
“What did he do to you?” Sinclair said.
“Nothing,” she said. “Preemptive strike.”
“What do you plan to do now?”
“Help Jack.”
“I can’t let you do that.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t tell you.”
She noticed that he cast a quick glance over her shoulder. A third man entered the room. She had not been aware of the guy. Clarissa moved too late. Thick arms wrapped around her, met in the middle, interlocked hands pressed into her chest. She kicked and thrashed to the side, threw a reverse head butt that missed. Each movement resulted in the grip around her growing tighter.
Randy pushed himself up off the floor and charged. “I’m gonna kill you.”
“Enough, Randy,” Sinclair said. “You more than likely deserved what she did to you.”
Randy stopped five feet away from her. He looked like a deranged bull, bloodied and battered and ready to tear off the matador’s head.
“Go get my bag,” Sinclair said.
Randy walked up to Clarissa, spit at her feet, then continued past.
“Don’t dare do that again,” Sinclair said. He turned his attention back to Clarissa. “Just relax, child. You need to calm down.”
She choked back her tears. “I need to help Jack.”
“The best thing you can do is stay out of his way.”
“I have something that can help him.”
“Nothing can help him now, I’m afraid.”
Clarissa didn’t believe that. She couldn’t believe that.
Randy entered the room and handed Sinclair his bag. The same worn bag he’d carried when she first met him over six months ago. Clarissa wondered how the guy had managed to get it through customs. She realized he hadn’t had to deal with customs. Not the way they traveled. He could have left from Langley and landed on base in England. They all had luggage with false bottoms and hidden compartments. Even if they were stopped, no one would ever find what they had.
“Don’t,” she pleaded.
“It’s for your own good,” he said.
“Please, Sinclair,” she said. “Just let me go.”
Sinclair approached her. He adjusted the needle in his hand.
Tears streamed down her cheeks. Rage more than anything else. Through blurred vision, she watched as drip after drip of the evil liquid fell from the tip of the long needle. Sinclair reached out, grabbed her jaw, plunged the needle into her neck.
Clarissa whipped her head side to side the moment he let go. She kicked, thrashed, and screamed. She thought she did, at least.
The room shrunk, dimmed, hazed over.
Slowly, quietly, calmly, she fell asleep.
CHAPTER 65
From the back of the car, Dottie watched the images of the agents escorting Jack out of the house. The gurney carrying Alex toward the ambulance followed. The bloodstained sheets, tubes in his mouth and into his lungs, and the speed at which they traveled told her that Jack had done as she requested. Not perfectly, but good enough. The problem was that Jack had always been better than good enough. At the same time, good enough meant that she could find someone to finish the job. They didn’t have to be as good as Jack Noble.
Only good enough.
“You think he can do this?” she said to Godfrey.
“Yes, ma’am,” Godfrey said.
The guy with the red beard turned in the seat. “Ma’am, I’m more than capable of—”
“Shut up,” she said. “I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to Godfrey.”
The relationship was an old one. Twenty years ago, when Dottie was rising in the ranks, Godfrey had just come on board. They’d worked together, remained close. He’d done everything she’d asked up to this point. She knew he’d do one last task for her. And if he failed, it wouldn’t matter. There was no way they’d be able to locate her after today.
But she couldn’t risk his life yet, and that’s why they brought this man along to take care of the prime minister.
She had hoped to be able to make the final call to Jack after they’d left England. Perhaps from the stern of the boat as it coasted through the Celtic Sea. But when she realized Jack and Alex had located the house where Mia and Hannah were being kept, she had to act quickly.
“Where are you taking us?” Hannah said.
Dottie looked back at the young woman, smiled. “Someplace safe, dear.”
And she meant it. She’d keep Hannah safe as long as the woman did what she was told, when she was told. She had no reason to harm her. She also had no reason to keep her around for much longer. The moment she stepped out of line, that would be it.
Hannah comforted Mia. That had been the worst part for Dottie. She hated to threaten her great-niece’s life. But bargaining chips were called so for a reason. When it came down to it, Dottie’s life was most important. If people she cared about had to fall along the way, so be it.
The car came to a stop. Godfrey opened his door and stepped out. He met the other man at the front of the car and shook his hand.
“Good luck,” Dottie muttered.
Godfrey reentered the car, put it into gear and pulled away from the curb, leaving the man behind.
“What’s he going to do?” Hannah said.
Dottie didn’t respond.
Betrayed didn’t begin to describe the way Hannah felt. Dottie had been like a grandmother to her. Kind and warm, Dottie had invited the young woman into her home and made her a part of the family. The past two years would have never led Hannah to believe that the woman could be so cold and cruel. Dottie had threatened to kill Mia. When Hannah spoke up, Dottie slapped her across the face. Three times. With a book.
Now, it hurt when she opened her mouth and when she turned her head.
Mia leaned into her. The child’s fingers intermingled with hers and squeezed tightly. Poor thing, she thought. To have to suffer through thi
s ordeal. Hannah held out hope that Dottie would drop them off on a corner. She wanted to plead for that very thing, but feared retribution.
She turned her head and watched the buildings pass. They drove west, away from the city. She had no idea where they were going. Dottie hadn’t mentioned it to the man who had gotten out a few minutes prior, or to the guy driving. She suspected that was because the guy who left them was not going to rejoin the group. What did he plan to do? Could anything be worse than forcing Jack to shoot the Prime Minister?
Her eyes began to water. She choked back a sob and waited as long as she could before sniffling. Dottie turned her head, looked Hannah up and down, then shifted her gaze forward. The same images replayed on the small screen in front of the woman. Jack being led from the house, the Prime Minister being taken out of the house on a gurney, and the ambulance heading toward a hospital.
That’s why the man had gotten out. She saw that now. As best as Hannah could remember, there was a hospital located two blocks from that corner.
The tears fell across her cheeks. A man was about to die. Not just any man, either. The Prime Minister. She had advanced knowledge of it, and there was nothing she could do about it.
Please God, she thought. Wake me from this nightmare.
CHAPTER 66
The agents took Jack underground. There he switched cars and reunited with Jon and Bear and Sasha. There was no holding her back now. They headed toward the hospital.
“Any reports?” Jack said.
“He’s doing fine,” Jon said. “You’re a good shot.”
“I don’t see how they’re ever going to let me back in this country after shooting the Prime Minister.”
Jon nodded. “Yeah, I wouldn’t count on it.”
Sasha leaned over and in front of Bear, who inconveniently sat in the middle between her and Jack. “At least he has the power to pardon you. You might make it out all right after all.”
The driver flipped on the sirens and the strobe lights and the thick London traffic split in two. Occasionally the driver had to weave to the left or the right, even slammed on the brakes twice. Other than that, they raced down the streets. He estimated they were doing over sixty in spots where cars normally crawled along like turtles.