“Fuck. There was more than one time?”
Nodding he answered, “I mentioned meeting in Alabama to Rachel when we were in the Las Vegas hotel room. That’s why she got a nosebleed and missed completing her mission task.
“I mentioned Columbia to Laurie…” he paused and decided against saying ‘in bed’, “…when we were together in Alabama. I couldn’t mention Rachel’s life to Laurie or her nose would bleed. And visa versa with Rachel. Technically, the nosebleed in Las Vegas was my fault.”
“They were both your fault,” Paul grated out.
“Fine. String me up later, but find her now.”
Paul’s eyes fairly bulged out of the sockets. He placed his thumb and forefinger on the bridge of his nose and squeezed. “How long have you known?”
“I met her the day before I went on my mission to Columbia. I kept her from falling down some stairs at the police station. But she ran off.
“Two months later she showed up in Columbia as Rachel and I convinced her to save my ass. I didn’t even recognize her at first. I just thought she looked familiar.
“When I got back I was surprised to find out how difficult it was to locate one female spy. You called me off and told me to stop looking for Rachel.” He smirked. “So I did.”
“Then you went back to Alabama and hunted down Laurie.”
Colin nodded. “Yes. I found her.”
“How did you trace her?”
“What difference does it make?”
Paul advanced a step closer and fairly growled, “I need to know where the breakdown in my department is. Did you get someone to talk?”
“No. Nothing like that.” Colin shook his head. “She left an obscure phone number that traced to the library where she works part-time. I didn’t even expect to find her there.”
“Did she remember you?” Paul had stopped pinching the bridge of his nose.
Colin almost laughed in memory, but stifled the urge. “She remembered me from the police station, but not from Columbia. I just thought she was really good at undercover work and staying in character while on another mission.”
Paul shook his head. “Unbelievable.”
The conference phone, resting in the center of table, buzzed. “Mr. Davenport? I have an urgent message from one of your agents.”
“Take a message, Miss Pemberton.” Ken shook his head slowly back and forth and sighed.
“He said to tell you he has vital information to report on your St. Louis mission. He’s on a secure line.”
Ken’s jaws clenched in annoyance before he asked, “Who is it?”
“Zack Mahon.”
“Put him through.”
The black, triangular conference phone squawked out a short beep before Zack’s gravelly low voice came across. “Salerno’s alive.”
Ken’s eyebrows went straight to his hairline. “That’s old news. We have him in custody. The sixty-four thousand dollar question is, how do you know?”
Ambient city noises came through the line before Zack answered, “I traced Luis Montoya’s escape from the Columbian prison to our favorite bad guy. Salerno funded Montoya’s escape and secret insertion into the U.S. in return for a very large favor, which was to occur in Las Vegas. I believe we can all guess what that was.”
“Where is Montoya now?”
“No clue, but undoubtedly he’s already in the states. The only other tidbit was that Salerno staged his own death with the help of someone, and I’m quoting here, ‘intimately acquainted’ with the top echelon of Raoul Ortega’s organization.”
“Who?”
“Don’t know. But it had to be someone who either wasn’t there the night of the raid or was released from jail later. I’m checking around discretely to get a list of possible suspects.”
Ken sighed. “Any idea who helped Montoya out of the Columbian prison?”
Zack never missed a beat. “No. So far, not a whisper of who it is. Could be the same person who helped Salerno, but by now, Montoya could be anywhere in the U.S.”
“When can you get back here?” Ken asked.
“Tomorrow. Day after, at the latest. After I meet with my local contact.”
“Good. Call if you discover his identity.”
“Copy that.”
Ken reached out to disconnect the call.
The click over the intercom signaled that Zack had already hung up. The room was silent for several seconds.
“Now what?” Colin asked.
Paul murmured, “We find her.”
“How?”
“Leave it to my Protocol team.”
“I want in,” Colin barked.
“No.” Paul crossed his arms and smirked.
“Both of you shut up,” Ken shouted.
The conference phone buzzed once again.
“Mr. Davenport?”
“What!” Ken snarled. He shook his head and cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Miss Pemberton. What is it?”
“I’m sorry to bother you again, sir, but there’s a man insisting on speaking with Mr. Kelly.”
“Who is it?” Paul asked as he frowned.
“He won’t identify himself with a name, sir. He said to address him as El Lobo. He’s calling from a cellular phone. I’ve ordered a tech to run a trace.”
“Shit.” Colin knew that Luis Montoya had called himself El Lobo in Columbia. He had an engraved lighter with a howling wolf on it. A grim feeling hit low in his stomach. “It’s Montoya.”
Paul’s eyes narrowed. He said, “Go ahead and put him through, Miss Pemberton.”
“Mr. Kelly?” A deeply accented voice came through the conference phone.
“What do you want?” Paul barked.
Montoya laughed. “No. You mistake me. I have something that you want.”
“I doubt that very much. Where did you get my name?”
In the background of the phone line came the distinct sound of a whip being snapped. A feminine shriek quickly followed.
Rachel?
“I have your agent, Mr. Kelly. If you want to see her alive again you will do exactly as I say.”
Ken’s eyes widened and he sent an inquisitive look to Colin.
Paul calmly replied, “What agent are you talking about?”
Another whip noise snapped, followed by another scream over the static-filled line. Colin sent a panicked gaze to Paul and took a step closer to the phone.
Paul’s face went pale. He clamped his hands into fists but didn’t speak.
Montoya laughed lightly as if amused by the game they played. “The agent that you’re surely looking for by now. Let me help your quest by making it very easy. I have her.”
The door opened to the conference room and Miss Pemberton leaned in far enough to hand a piece of paper to Ken. As he read the information, his mouth tightened in a way that Colin recognized as being bad news. Handing the note to Paul, Ken stepped closer to Miss Pemberton and whispered some instruction in her ear. She nodded and left the room.
“I’m calling from your agent’s cellular device.” Montoya’s smug tone suggested he knew he’d been traced. “Rachel became much more interested in helping us once we found a way to persuade her.”
Colin took another aggressive step closer to the phone. He wanted to reach through the line and rip Montoya’s head off. Paul’s hand came up in a stop gesture as if he expected Colin to try something.
Without looking at anything else but the phone, Paul asked tersely, “What do you want?”
“I want to trade your agent for another.”
Paul dropped his arm, leaned forward and placed his palms on the conference table again. If his glare had been heated, it would have melted the phone into vapor. “Trade what agent?”
“I want Colin Riley in exchange for Rachel Miles.”
Paul bobbed his head as if surprised, but didn’t miss a beat. “I don’t have an agent named Colin Riley.”
“But your good friend, Ken Davenport, does. And I know you two were recently working
together in St. Louis.”
Paul turned his head and glanced first at Ken and then at Colin before fixing his stare back to the phone. “I’m not authorized to—”
“Stop playing games.” Montoya cut him off. “I’ll call you from this cell phone in an hour with instructions, or else your agent is dead.”
The sharp sound of the whip cracking again and a low animalistic scream punctuated the line before it cut off to blank air.
Paul fisted his hand and pounded the table.
Colin understood his feelings completely.
* * * *
The trade was made along a narrow lonely stretch of old highway along an even older bridge. Paul stood with Ken and Colin at one end of the ramshackle wooden structure. Luis Montoya and several hired guns waited at the other end. Half the length of a football field separated them under a moonless sky.
The darkness made it difficult to see without night vision binoculars.
Paul’s cell phone rang and he put it to his ear without uttering a greeting. He knew who it was. They all did.
“Send Mr. Riley towards us and we’ll release your agent.”
“I want to talk to her.”
Luis laughed. “Fine.”
There was shuffling and Paul heard Rachel’s voice. “Hello,” she whispered.
“Rachel?”
“Please, help me.” She started sobbing and didn’t say anything else coherent. Paul was desperately worried about her health. She’d been in the field too long and overdue for a check up with the Protocol scientists.
Rachel soon exited the van parked across the bridge. She stood on wobbly legs, but someone had covered her head with a burlap sack. Two rough eyeholes had been cut into the tan fabric for her to see, but they weren’t large enough that Paul could see her face.
She was dressed in the same clothing as when she’d left St Louis. The man moving her about turned her around and even from this distance Paul could see the three whip marks across her back that had torn viciously through her shirt. He ground his teeth hard enough he was surprised they didn’t crack in his mouth.
Beside him Colin tensed.
Paul leaned close and whispered, “Do me a favor. Kill him for me, with my blessing.”
“Trust me, I will.”
Ken said, “Zack won’t make it back in time to back you up, so I’ve volunteered to do it.”
Colin’s face registered surprise. “Aren’t you a little rusty to be out in the field?”
“I was still in the field five years ago.”
“Five years! Good God, you’re ancient.”
“Shut up. I’ll monitor the transceiver devices we’ve wired you with.”
Paul knew that as a former agent, Ken’s black ops career was legendary. Colin should be grateful to have Ken back him up in the field.
“Standard issue?”
“A couple are. One’s in your ear bud, plus another obvious one in your watch. The third inserted beneath your skin at the wrist is courtesy of the witch doctors in the Protocol Agency.”
Colin fisted his hand and rotated his wrist around first clockwise then counterclockwise. “Yeah, it’s itched since they put it in.”
“Don’t scratch. Hopefully, when they scan you and pull the one in your watch they won’t look for more in the same area.”
“Let’s hope. I’d hate to have my wrist slit for removal.”
“It’s supposed to be undetectable,” Ken assured him, although his guarded expression, in Paul’s opinion, didn’t inspire confidence.
Paul remained silent as Colin and Ken rehearsed various scenarios once he was traded.
“I don’t get why Montoya is risking so much to get to you,” Ken said. “Why wouldn’t he just go on his merry way now that he’s free from the Columbian prison?”
Colin shrugged. “Drug lords take revenge very seriously.” He slid his bulletproof vest on and secured the wide Velcro straps across his torso. “Especially against spies able to infiltrate their ranks for months without being caught.”
Paul wanted his agent back. He wanted Rachel, no, Laurie, back safely in his care. Unimaginable situations like this one was why he harbored well-planned fantasies about murdering Senator Bremer. In his favorite version, he smothered the senator while he slept.
“I’m ready,” Colin glanced at Paul. His eyebrows creased as if unsure why Paul was so worried. “She’ll be back safely in a few minutes.”
Paul cleared his throat. In a quiet voice he said, “I appreciate this, Riley.”
“I’m not doing it for you.”
“I know, but all the same, I thank you.”
He nodded and looked away. “Right.”
Sixty seconds later, Colin headed west along the rickety bleached gray boards of the bridge. Paul watched his progress through his night-vision binoculars. His field of vision, through the specialized lenses, was lit with various shades of green and black. Across the expanse of the bridge, Rachel stumbled forward as well.
Her gait was wobbly at best as she traversed the space. Paul thought she’d drop and stumble to the ground as she made her way across the bridge. But she managed to stay on her feet.
Colin passed her from a width ten feet away as previously arranged. He watched her pass beside him, but she never looked his way. The act of simply putting one foot in front of the other seemed to be all she could handle.
Paul found himself drifting towards her a quarter step at a time wanting to whisk her off to safety and the medical lab as soon as possible.
Across the bridge, Colin was seconds away from Montoya’s men, while Rachel had a ways to go. He heard her sobbing from fifty feet away as she shuffled slowly along.
The hair on Paul’s neck stood up a millisecond before a rifle shot rang out.
A high-powered bullet burst through Rachel’s chest. She arched forward with the impact and fell to her knees. Colin was grabbed and shoved into Montoya’s van with the side door open and waiting on the other side of the bridge.
Paul screamed, “No!” He lurched forward as she fell face forward into the bridge.
Ken followed at his side with the intent to reach the woman crumpled before them on the bridge. They hadn’t gone two steps before the bomb went off detonating the center of the bridge into a million splintery pieces.
Chapter 14
Colin heard the rifle shot and looked back in time to see Rachel fall to her knees. “Bastard,” he screamed.
An instant later, three men jumped out of the panel van and grabbed him. They bound his hands behind his back as Colin fought like a wild animal with vengeance riding his actions. They wrestled him inside the van and drove away.
Cold fury ripped through his soul at the betrayal. The side door slammed shut on the scene followed a few seconds later by the explosion.
The sting of a needle pierced his upper arm before his knees hit the floorboard. His focus went blurry as he balanced so as not to fall on his face.
From the front passenger seat, Luis Montoya looked over his shoulder and said, “Tommy Callahan, so good of you to finally join us. Or should I call you, Mr. Riley?” He laughed lightly, flipped his El Lobo lighter open and lit a fresh cigarette. Snapping the lid shut on the flame, he blew a rush of smoke out into the vehicle’s small space. “I have so many surprises for you.”
Woozy from whatever they’d shot him with, Colin shook his head trying to stay conscious. He lost the battle seconds later and slipped sideways. He smacked his shoulder on the van’s unforgiving metal floorboard adding one more bruise to his growing list of injuries. His last vision was of Luis Montoya laughing. The stench of his second-hand smoke permeated the air in the van and filled his lungs.
Coughing, Colin soon succumbed to the dark world of unconsciousness before uttering the single word reverberating in his brain.
Rachel.
The scent of pine forest combined with the distinct odor of wood smoke greeted Colin when he roused awake sometime later. A breeze brushed across his uncovered flesh
and sent a rash of goose bumps along one arm. He opened his eyes and was greeted by his aching head and a dimly lit room.
Flat on his back, he couldn’t see the ceiling for the darkness. He glanced to his right and saw a half open window. Rough-hewn wooden walls in a horizontal pattern suggested he was in a log cabin.
Beyond the brightly colored curtains half hiding dirty panes of glass, Colin saw woods.
Lots of woods.
Where the hell was he?
Memories of the van and Luis Montoya smoking slammed into his foggy mind. Shit. Time to go.
Colin rolled to his feet, but was stopped by the bindings at his wrists and ankles.
Above his head he noticed the handcuffs. He couldn’t move his feet either. Beneath his back a familiar soft surface caressed his body. Fuck. He was bound to a bed again.
Beneath the open window he could see the corner of a chair leg in his limited field of vision.
“Hello?”
A shuffling sound greeted him followed by what sounded like moaning.
“Is someone there?”
Yanking on the cuffs any further would be futile and merely chafe his wrists.
His missing watch told him they’d found at least one of the hidden transmitters. Either that or they didn’t want him to know how much time had passed since his abduction. His ear bud was gone so that was the second one. He twisted both wrists up to ensure the third transmitter was still there. He didn’t see any blood on his hands so he was comforted.
It wasn’t long before his recollection of the trade on the bridge surfaced in his mind.
Along with Rachel’s murder.
The sharp painful memory of seeing her shot lanced through his conscious. If she’d survived the bullet, had she then lasted through the blast? Anger raced through his veins at the unfairness. He shook it off. Perhaps she hadn’t perished.
Montoya’s voice came from out of the darkness. “Ah. I see you are awake.” The sound grated on his aching head. Across the room, once he lifted his head, was a shadowy area. Possibly a door?
Colin replied with a question, “Why did you kill her?”
The scent of smoke from Montoya’s cigarette reached Colin before he answered. “She betrayed a friend of mine.
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