Something about the sight brought a hard, clear understanding.
The guards were in on this.
The fire alarm was bogus––an excuse to minimize witnesses.
Whatever this was, the white supremacists were just errand boys.
Black’s mind clicked through his situation in less than a second. He saw the limits of his options, even before he saw the chiefs being herded back towards the main building.
Even so, the survival instinct was stronger.
He fought to get back to his feet, but the dark-eyed Aryan with the eagle tattoo punched down at him, a hard cross to his face, twisting his upper body in a skilled arc. The blow barely registered after the excruciating pain of the collar, but it briefly slowed his attempt to stand.
When Black tried to get up a second time, the collar lit up around his throat again.
Shock blanked out his mind.
The pain was so intense, so raw, he almost couldn’t recognize it as pain at all until his body and mind went back into a hard convulsion. In what might have been seconds... minutes... hours... even days... he forgot who he was, how he’d gotten here, what he’d been doing. He couldn’t move, couldn’t remember anything.
He lay there on the cement, unsure if he was even alive, or what planet he was on. The skin around his neck felt charred, like the collar now rested directly on bone.
Some part of him wondered if this was what being burned alive felt like.
Another part of him wondered if Miri would ever find out what happened to him.
He screamed for her in that dark, screaming her name, again and again...
He was pretty sure he wouldn’t survive this. There was no way he could survive even a minute more of this. Yet somehow, he did. Seconds... minutes... however long into that endless stretch of death-like pain... Black finally heard someone screaming back.
It took another blank stretch of silence before he realized that someone was him.
Twelve
NOT WHO BUT WHAT
TIME PASSED. I don’t know how much.
I don’t remember being aware of much of anything. For the rest of that night and most of the next day, I sat in a brightly-lit conference room, surrounded by plainclothes cops.
Some less-conscious part of me knew where I was.
Some even less-conscious part of me knew to check my watch every few minutes, counting down to when Dex and Kiko walked through that door, and when Angel and Nick got here with them. I knew enough to remember Kiko telling me they were bringing the company jet. They’d sent ahead experienced trackers on Black’s helicopters already.
Nick and Angel would be on that jet, too.
The trackers were supposed to go straight to the Port Authority, so they were likely down there already. I was only a few miles away from them now, at the Los Angeles Port Police building. Via Black’s Pentagon connections, Black Securities and Investigations now had a formal role on this.
So did I, as an employee, which is the only reason they’d let me in the room.
Someone from Black’s spec ops days was coming out too, and they wanted to talk to me.
Harrison... something. Or maybe something Harrison. The details blurred.
Like me, Kiko had more faith in Black’s guys than she did the LAPD, or even Homeland Security and the F.B.I.
They’d tried to locate him via the RFID chip. I was the only one who had the frequency, but I’d given it to Kiko in the first minute or so we were talking.
They hadn’t gotten a signal.
Kiko said whoever took him likely extracted and smashed it.
Now, when I blinked my eyes, coming out of that strangely high-functioning daze, I looked around the room and realized that the woman SWAT officer still sat beside me. I’d found out her name at some point: Jacquie. She wore an engagement ring when she took off the combat gloves she’d been wearing.
She’d told me as much as she could about what happened, and while I didn’t consciously remember that either, I remembered every detail she’d shared.
I had her tell Kiko everything she told me. Kiko promised every detail of that information was on its way to the trackers before we’d even hung up the phone.
Some of those details Jacquie gave still looped sickeningly in my mind.
He’d offered to go first. He’d offered.
He put himself in the line of fire.
My mind tried to make sense of that, couldn’t. I wondered if he knew they wouldn’t kill him. I also wondered if he’d suspected Uncle Charles. Whoever it was went to a fair bit of trouble to get Black alive. They’d also shown almost no regard for human life in the process. I understood why Black might have put two and two together, but I still didn’t think it was Uncle Charles. I doubt even my uncle was that good of an actor.
I’d called him right after I called Kiko the first time, and the sheer level of rage I felt on him after I described what happened, the fury in his voice when he told me he’d send someone, convinced me he didn’t orchestrate this.
No, my Uncle Charles didn’t take Black, not this time.
But I strongly suspected he knew who had.
I also intended to get that information out of whoever he sent.
Jacquie also told me––or maybe I read it on her––that whatever they hit Black with, it acted so fast he’d still been running when he went down. His legs crumpled within a second of his being hit. Jacquie and the others could only watch, helpless, as Black plowed forward into the cement. He hadn’t so much as raised an arm or hand to slow or catch his fall.
From Jacquie’s mind, it was disturbing as hell.
She’d been in the military, in addition to being in SWAT, and she was a decorated officer in both. She’d never seen anyone go down like that before. It had shaken her, even given everything else she’d been through that night.
Everything I’d heard in the conference room remained crystal-clear in my mind, too.
Sterling had been found dead in his home, along with his wife and kids.
The Homeland Security guys now thought the car outside the Los Angeles Theater was a plant, as well as the files they’d left inside. A good chunk of them now thought this whole thing had been orchestrated to kidnap Black.
I listened to them discuss it around the table, not knowing who I was.
Billionaire. Highly exclusive security company. Black ops background. Pentagon clearance. Government contractor. Could be a personal grudge from a past job or more likely something to do with intelligence. Unlikely to be ransom. Black was single, no family. He was on the books as an orphan, a product of the system. If someone was blackmailing the company, they would have reached out by now. They wouldn’t go this long with zero contact.
As for the hit itself, they mapped out the probable sequence.
Get him off his home turf, away from his people, disguise the op with a totally unrelated crime, possibly even a staged one. Replace his normal back-up team with a police force unequipped to handle a military-grade extraction...
They went on and on.
A few details stood out sharper in my mind.
They believed he’d likely been transported out of the United States. A few speculated he might be halfway across the world by now, on his way to some country or private organization’s black site––maybe in Morocco or Eastern Europe.
Just listening to them speculate about it aloud made me physically sick.
I felt sick anyway, though.
I fought not to think about what that meant.
I was about to get up, to walk out of the room to get more water and call Kiko again...
When Nick walked into the room.
His whole body posture was rigid, in fight mode.
Something about seeing him there, wearing his beat-up leather jacket, his hands balled into fists as he walked into the room, his face dangerous, brought such an intense flood of relief I almost called out his name. Instead I watched him case the room. Ignoring the Homeland Security guy who sto
pped speaking and stared up at him, Nick’s eyes found me. He motioned with his head for me to follow him out of the room.
I climbed to my feet, knocking into the table in my haste to get up.
The Homeland Security team, Mozar, the two F.B.I. agents I’d actually been introduced to, all looked up at me. So did Jacquie and the other two surviving SWAT guys.
On impulse, I leaned down, squeezing Jacquie’s shoulder.
“You should come with me,” I said to her, speaking low, in her ear.
She looked up, frowning. Then she nodded, pushing her chair back and getting up to follow me out. I’m not sure what I was thinking exactly, bringing her with me. It would limit what Nick, Angel and I could talk about, for sure, but assuming Kiko and Dex were out there, one more person who didn’t know what Black was wouldn’t make much difference.
The crowd waiting for us outside was bigger than I expected.
Nick led me out there, telling me they didn’t really have a conference room for us. I knew part of that would be Dex and Kiko, too, not wanting our conversation to be recorded.
So I followed Nick through the front door of the Port Police station and into the bright sunlight. It blinded me briefly, making me throw up a hand. When I lowered it, following Nick to the left of the doors, I found myself face to face with a lot of people I knew and a handful I didn’t know. They all stood around, talking in low voices by a group of benches and potted trees and desert plants that decorated the side of the building.
Looking through those faces, I fought to make sense of them, to prioritize.
Angel. Kiko. Dex.
I recognized the faces of three more of Black’s employees.
The two tallest men standing there worked for my uncle, who’d assigned them to be my personal bodyguards. Black and I had taken to calling them Thing 1 and Thing 2, but I also knew their names now.
“Thing 1” was Ravi. “Thing 2” was named Efraim.
Ravi was maybe 6’4”, had a red sun tattoo on the side of his neck and chocolate brown hair. Against my better judgment, I liked him. Efraim was maybe an inch or so taller and had a perpetually dour-looking face and dyed blond hair. Mostly, he was just an enigma to me. Black told me once that Efraim hadn’t been here long, meaning this version of Earth. Black seemed to think he was still experiencing “adjustment issues.”
Both of them wore dark brown contact lenses, so I had no idea what color their eyes really were. Both of them looked pissed off when they turned to stare at me.
I didn’t have to ask why.
Black and I more or less ditched them, coming down here. Thinking about what Black said about that at the hotel, how he’d made me laugh about it, brought a hard pain to my chest.
Shoving it aside angrily, I scanned through the handful of new faces, all of whom had to be Black’s people too, just from the way they dressed.
I caught a few of them looking me over, too, curious looks on their faces.
I wondered which ones were the trackers Kiko mentioned. They all looked the same to me in a certain sense. Lean hard muscles, black T-shirts, military tattoos and stances. All but a few had short-cropped hair and wore dark sunglasses. A few stored those sunglasses in the collars of their T-shirts. They all looked armed. I only noted three women, apart from Kiko.
Kiko spoke as soon as I entered their little circle.
“The trail’s already getting cold.” Her voice was blunt, precise. Her jaw jerked towards one of the guys I didn’t know. “Hamish’s team found the boat. Him, Lara and Roderick traced it to a covered dock on Long Beach. No prints. Nothing we can use.”
“Who’s it registered to?” I said.
Jacquie spoke up from behind me.
“Konstantin Group owns it.” When Kiko and I looked back at her, she pursed her lips. “Probably means our guys stole it from the harbor, since Konstantin owns that whole section of the shipping yard. The staffer I talked to said it was a company boat, used by executives for outings and to entertain clients and so on. It had a hired crew.”
I nodded, looking back at Kiko. “You think they moved him by land?”
Kiko exhaled, her hands on her slim hips. Frustration and a restrained fury emanated off her even before she spoke. “We can’t confirm that yet, doc. There’s an airport right there. We’re going through flight plans of every plane that left in the last twenty-four hours. We’re working all the airports, not just the one in Long Beach. We’re also checking satellites, trying to figure out when and how they moved him, but it’s looking like whoever did this took satellites into account.”
“What about The Konstantin Group themselves?” I said, frowning. “Could they be connected to this in some way? Any ties to Black? Or those crime families?”
“We’re looking into that, too.”
I glanced at Angel and Nick, who were listening. Angel looked furious. I’m not sure I’d ever seen her look that angry before. Nick wore his military face, one I remembered well prior to ops in the Gulf.
Just then, someone I hadn’t seen at all spoke up from my left, near an alcove in the side of the building.
“I need to speak with you, Miriam. Now.”
I turned, staring.
Uncle Charles stood there, wearing a chocolate brown suit, a spotless white shirt and dark green tie. The outfit should have been too warm for the weather, but I didn’t see him sweating. He wore dark sunglasses over his shockingly pale green eyes, and now that I could feel him, that fury I’d sensed off him over the phone seemed to emanate off his very skin.
“Now, Miriam. We haven’t much time.”
I looked at Kiko. “Can you give us a few minutes?”
She glanced at my uncle, frowning. I could tell without reading her that she knew something weird was up with him.
I’d caught her looking at Thing 1 and Thing 2 like that a few times, too.
It struck me that Kiko had no idea who Uncle Charles really was.
Black told me that photos of the crime boss, “Lucky Lucifer,” were nonexistent, even via unofficial channels. My uncle Charles, a.k.a., Lucky himself, was infamous in part for how few people could identify him. Kiko and Dex and everyone else at Black Securities knew who he was on paper, but it was highly doubtful they knew his face.
They definitely didn’t know who he was to me.
Uncle Charles had apparently reached the end of his patience, however.
“Now, Miriam.” He stared around at the rest of them, his eyes hidden by the shades, his mouth pressed in a hard line. “Don’t all of you have work to do? In regards to the disappearance of my nephew-in-law?”
I saw Kiko blink, right before she stared at me.
Dex stared at me too, clearly not missing the import of his words.
Kiko recovered first.
“Colonel Holmes would like to speak to you, too, Miriam,” she said, glancing at her watch. “He should be here within the hour. We have instructions to bring you to a place where the two of you can talk.” She gave Uncle Charles a harder look. “...Privately.”
I stared at her. That time, I recognized the name of the Pentagon person.
Kiko must have spoken his first name to me before, confusing me––Black had always been more formal when he brought up Colonel Holmes to me. No first name, no middle initial. Just “Holmes” or “The Colonel.” I don’t think he’d even mentioned his first name to me in all that time. Either way, it had to be the same guy.
He’d been Black’s commanding officer in Vietnam, the one who’d created a special regiment for “unusual” operatives, in part to hide Black’s race.
He had to be in his late seventies or early eighties by now. He was one of the very few human beings in the world who knew what Black was, apart from Angel and Nick.
I nodded. “Okay. We’ll do that next.”
“Miriam,” my uncle said, sharper.
“We’ll leave once I’m done here... I want Nick and Angel with me,” I said to Kiko. “Also you and Dex. No one else for now. The rest o
f the team needs to find out how the hell they got him out of here... and where they went.”
Kiko glanced at Charles, assessing him with her eyes. I could tell she still didn’t like me going alone with him, relative or no, but after the barest hesitation, she nodded. Once she had, I looked at my Uncle Charles, my jaw harder.
“You got your private audience. Lead the way.”
I gave Kiko another look as I began to follow him towards the road.
“We’ll leave right after this,” I repeated to her.
She nodded. Her eyes grew calmer that time, more reassured.
As they did, for the first time it really hit me.
Somewhere in all of this, I was now in charge.
I DIDN’T WAIT for him to talk.
We reached a white limousine parked on the curb and I climbed inside the instant the door was opened by one of Uncle Charles’ seers. I pulled the Glock-19 I’d taken out of Black’s bag at the hotel and aimed it at him as he climbed into the back seat after me.
Shutting the door behind him, he turned to face me and froze, staring at the gun.
“You know something about this,” I said, my voice cold. I flipped the safety off the gun, aiming it at his chest. “I don’t have time to listen to your bullshit right now, Uncle Charles, so I’m going to be really fucking clear. Who has him?”
His narrow mouth curled into a frown.
“We don’t have time for this, Miriam,” he said, his voice as cold as mine. “You’re not safe. I came here to take you into protective custody.” He looked forward, at the driver who was watching me in the rearview mirror, his eyes noticeably wide where he stared at the gun I held. “Porven, take us to the airport.”
I pulled out the second gun I carried and aimed it at the driver’s head. “You so much as reach for the fucking key, Porvin, and I’ll blow your fucking head off...”
I must have sounded convincing.
Porvin slowly raised his hands, showing them to me.
“Get out of the car,” I said. “Now. Wait for us outside. Stay where I can see you, or I’m putting a bullet in his head.”
Porvin looked at my uncle in the mirror that time.
Black And Blue (Quentin Black Mystery #5) Page 14