Nicole pushed dancers out of the way. “Jimmi!”
She hit the door running, even in these stilettos. Good thing she was used to high heels.
The surveillance van was hauling ass down the street. She pulled her gun from her purse, but had no shot.
Ruben and Glick caught up to her.
“Well, now we know Debbie Downer’s plan.”
And a good plan it was. Lure them here. The serial killers knew there would be some kind of surveillance vehicle involved. Then wait until Nicole and Ruben went in. And make sure Glick was preoccupied. It was like the cult knew them better than they knew themselves.
Damn them.
A police car streaked up. Nicole waved the cop out. Ruben got into the passenger’s side.
“Sir?” Nicole asked, as she revved the engine.
“Go,” Glick said. “Get our boys back.”
Nicole didn’t hesitate. She dropped the hammer, pushing the pedal into the floorboard. This car had some get up and go. Far more than the surveillance van could have.
They streaked ahead. Ruben had one hand on the dashboard and another on the door handle. His face had gone pale.
Oh, it had been a while since they had been in a high-speed chase.
Nicole, for one, planned to enjoy every moment of it.
* * *
Kent was trying to drift off to sleep, but the security camera’s red light blinked asynchronously.
That killed any notion of slumber. It wasn’t Morse code. He would have recognized the patterns if it had been. No, it was something else. What, he couldn’t decipher. That alone woke him up.
The more he watched the little twitchy camera’s red light, the more convinced that Kent became that it was a repeating pattern but why? And why wasn’t it Morse code? If someone was trying to get a message to him, it would be Jimmi or Joshua.
Joshua. Of course.
Joshua.
Kent vaguely remembered Joshua gushing about how he had developed a new encryption system based on Klingon. Dear gawd, Kent never thought he’d actually have to decode a message in it. He really should have paid more attention to Joshua’s multi-media presentation.
There was something about shifting vowels and prime numbers. It was all a bit sketchy.
Counting off the dots and dashes, Kent really had to dredge through his memory to remember his Klingon. And was this standard Klingon or high Klingon? Knowing Joshua, this would be high Klingon, because, um, duh.
Kent decoded the message in his head. “We, or us, have been taken, or possibly eaten, by…”
It took Kent a few passes before he could get the last part.
“Debbie Downer.”
Bolting straight up, Kent’s breath caught in his chest.
“Something wrong?” Martin asked from the lower bunk.
Kent didn’t answer, he simply hopped off the bed frame and hit the floor. He banged on the bars. “Guard.”
“It is lights out, Harbinger,” Martin said rising from his mattress. “You’re going to get us put on restriction.”
Kent banged again. “Guard!”
Finally a man, messy hair and blurry eyed came to the bars. “What?”
Guess Kent interrupted his nap. Some guards were honest and hardworking, the rest, well, the rest were like this guy. Sleeping on the taxpayers’ dime.
“I need to make a phone call.”
The guard chuckled. “Right. Now settle down or I’ll write you up.”
“Section five of the uniform code of penal facilities,” Kent stated, making it up as he went along. “Paragraph nineteen, sub-sentence five indicated that a prisoner in protective custody may be allowed to make a telephone call to his lawyer if he has an open case pending judgment.”
That sounded good, right?
Kent glanced over to Martin who frowned. Okay, he wasn’t buying it, but Kent didn’t need to convince Martin. And this guard was no sophisticated psychopath.
The guard rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. “Nice try.”
“This is a sue-able offense,” Kent doubled down. “A civil suit against the prison and personally the guard that denied the call.”
That got the guard worried. He cocked his head side to side. Time to put the nail in the coffin. “Call the warden. He’ll confirm.”
Please, for all that was holy, do not call your warden…
The guard clearly weighed his options. No matter what happened, waking up the warden was not high on this guard’s list.
“It’s just a phone call,” Kent urged.
“To your lawyer?” the guard reflected back.
“Yes.” Sure.
Finally the guard lifted his hand and twirled his finger, indicating to the guards in the security center to open the cell.
“Make it quick,” the guard said, as he escorted Kent out of the cell, not even bothering to shackle him. Like he said, the work ethic on the late shift wasn’t exactly stellar.
But it benefited Kent, so he shouldn’t complain.
He dialed the number. The only one he had memorized by heart.
* * *
Nicole’s phone rattled at her hip. She pulled it out of its leather holder. And hit speaker.
“Usher,” Damn it. “Harbinger.”
She hoped that sounded like a dash in there.
“Nic,” a very familiar voice said. What the hell time was it? And wasn’t her husband in prison? She could barely hear him over the sirens as she drove full speed toward the fleeing van.
“Look, Kent, I’m a little busy,”
“Joshua and Jimmi have been kidnapped by Debbie Downer.”
“Kind of figured that out,” Nicole said. But wait. “How did you know that?”
The profiler was in prison and still could figure stuff like this out.
“Joshua transmitted a looping code into my cell.”
Nicole glanced over to Ruben, who frowned. He certainly didn’t know any more than she did.
“How?”
“The kidnappers are probably jamming them, so Joshua must have found a frequency or bandwidth that snuck past it. UHF, ultra-low frequency, something. Find it and you’ll find them.”
Someone spoke in the background. Nicole, especially over the sirens, couldn’t tell who it was or what they said.
“Okay, look, we’ll have to talk more about my case tomorrow. I have to go.”
What the hell was that about?
With Kent you just really never knew.
* * *
Ruben didn’t waste any time. He got on the horn with the station and rousted a few techies to help. They were now searching for any signal on any frequency to find the two Js.
“We’ll find them.”
Nicole frowned. “But in time?”
Ruben knew this time she wasn’t frustrated with him, but with the situation. They had lost the van. It was a little hard to lose such a large vehicle, but they had managed to.
“They must have hidden it somewhere.”
“You think?” Nicole snapped back.
Again, not at him, but the situation.
They already knew the van’s GPS had been disabled. They weren’t finding the van that way.
“I’m circling back,” Nicole stated as she flipped an illegal U-y in the middle of the road. Good thing it was late in the night.
Ruben’s phone rang. It answered it mid-tone. “Yes?”
The tech rattled off a lot of information.
Ruben turned to Nicole.
“They have found a transmission, but can’t decode it.”
Nicole smiled, but it held no mirth. “It’s Klingon. Probably high Klingon. Someone in the tech department should be able to figure it out from there.”
Ruben relayed the information then hung up.
Great. The two Js lives were in the balance and Joshua had gone with Klingon, high Klingon no less.
No wonder they got along with Kent so well.
“Did you see that?” Nicole said, whipping her head around, lo
oking back over her shoulder.
“What?”
“A light,” Nicole said, doing another illegal maneuver to head in the opposite direction.
Ruben almost felt sorry for any Debbie Downer that Nicole caught up with. It wasn’t going to be pretty. Ruben knew, because guilt was what was driving his partner right now.
He knew the loop that played over in her head, because it was playing in his as well. If only they had stayed in the van, this wouldn’t have happened. This was their fault. His and hers.
If they had just listened to their Captain.
Ruben’s phone rang again.
He smiled. “We’ve got them.”
* * *
Joshua and Jimmi were crammed in the far back corner of the van, under the counter. Not like it was going to protect them, but it felt better to be in a closed small space.
Joshua was still transmitting. He hoped that Kent was as awesome as Kent usually was. He would get the message. Joshua felt certain of it. Jimmi wasn’t quite on board, but that was why Joshua was Kent’s favorite.
The back doors to the van yanked open. Joshua couldn’t stifle a scream. This was some scary shit.
Two robed figures entered the van. While it was two against two, Joshua didn’t feel like they had even odds.
“Get up,” one of them ordered.
“No,” Jimmi said, sounding very brave. When did that happen?
With robes swirling around their ankles, the two approached. “This will be infinitely easier if you cooperate.”
Um, Joshua had seen the crime scene photos. Nothing about those deaths brought the term “easier” to mind.
“We weren’t having fun, I promise,” Joshua squeaked out, pushing himself deeper into the corner.
Oh, if only Kent were here. He’d take them both out with a single move.
But Kent wasn’t. He was in prison, damn him. And poor Joshua was stuck with Jimmi, who was busy mouthing off to the killers.
“We won’t go.”
Then one of the assailants grabbed Joshua by the elbow and pinched hard, really, really hard.
“Ouch!” Joshua exclaimed as he was dragged up. Jimmi was extracted equally as fast.
“They are coming for us,” Joshua boasted, trying to keep some semblance of self-respect.
“Oh, we are counting on it.”
* * *
The pace was excruciatingly slow. Despite knowing the GPS coordinates of the surveillance van, this area was a tangle of crisscrossing yards and barking dogs.
This had to be a trap. So, they approached on foot cautiously. Nicole’s biceps were getting a little tired of raising her weapon each time she turned a corner, checking the area, finding nothing, then lowering it again.
Ruben was right at her heel.
So far nothing. But they had one more fence to climb to access the backyard of the address. The van had stopped and seemed to be parked. Without a chopper in the sky, it would take another five minutes for one to get to this area of the city.
So it was her and Ruben, creeping along hedges.
Finally, they were to the right fence. It was a low chain link one. Nicole climbed over it easily, even in her heels. The back of the garage blocked the view of the yard.
Glick had confirmed from Google street view that this house had an RV pad and a gate large enough to drive the van through.
The only advantage they had was stealth, so ignoring her booming pulse, Nicole took it slowly. Step-by-step she came around the side of the garage. Sure enough, there was the van. No one was in the front seat.
With a flick of her finger, Nicole indicated for Ruben to go around the left side of the van.
The tires were intact, so the serialists hadn’t been forced off the road. She put her hand on the hood of the van. It was still warm. No, it was hot. They had missed the murderers by only a few minutes.
Were Jimmi and Joshua inside? Were they still alive?
Nicole made her way down the length of the van. Nothing unusual. She met back up with Ruben at the rear of the vehicle. The back doors were shut. No windows of course.
She put her hand out to the handle.
* * *
Ruben blocked her hand. He didn’t like this. Debbie Downer had been hands on, up until now, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a bomb hooked to those doors.
Squatting, Ruben ran his fingers along the length of the door, checking the edge, then rose, checking the top of the door, then the handle. He couldn’t feel any trip wires or detonators, but that still didn’t mean there wasn’t a bomb on the other side of the door.
He indicated for Nicole to get to the side. He pressed his body against the side of the van and pulled the handle down. Nothing happened.
Putting his gun up, Ruben swung around with Nicole to check the interior of the van.
No Jimmi. No Joshua. No Debbie Downers.
Just an empty van with the words scrawled in blood “We have them.”
Well, no duh. Serialists always had to go for the drama. They couldn’t just leave a nicely typed note at the crime scene instead.
“They are on foot, dragging two uncooperative victims. They couldn’t have gotten far,” Nicole stated.
Ruben looked to the yard. “But which way?”
Nicole frowned. She knew as well as he did that they could just be spinning their wheels if they went in the wrong direction. What was the right direction?
“Hello Kitty,” Nicole said cryptically. She was starting to sound more and more like Kent.
“And?”
Nicole got that fierce smile on her face. “Joshua’s Hello Kitty watch.”
“Again, and?”
“It has a GPS transponder.”
Good to know.
CHAPTER 9
Kent entered the cell, ignoring the questioning look on Martin’s face, and climbed up to his bunk. He lay down, stretching. While he was vaguely worried about the two J’s, the timing seemed the most interesting.
Something was afoot. The Debbie Downer cult had drastically changed their MO. Allowing a false safe house to be compromised? Allowing two of their own to be killed? Now luring the surveillance van to be captured?
Why?
With a chill, Kent realized the reason at the exact same moment Martin approached his cot.
“So how did they get the information to you?” Martin asked. “About your two techs being kidnapped?”
Kent kept his pupils small. He forced them not to react. The same with his eyelids. He kept them tented. And his breath? He maintained a nice slow twelve breaths per minute. He did not allow his ribcage to expand over the average circumference it did per breath. His pulse, that he kept under wraps as well. He couldn’t display any sign of surprise or fear.
“I am guessing ultra-low frequency pulses,” Kent replied, still staring up at the ceiling. Not allowing Martin the satisfaction of looking into his eyes.
“The two of us, eh?” Martin asked. “You really have played it well, but now, well, now it is over.”
Again, Kent couldn’t allow any of his significant emotional reaction to reach his body. He had to play this cool. Possibly cooler than he had ever played anything in his life.
“We’ll see,” Kent commented. “And if you don’t mind, I’d like to get some sleep.”
While Kent couldn’t see it, Kent could feel Martin’s self-congratulatory smile. “Sure,” Martin said. “You’ll really want to get rested before tomorrow. It’s going to be a big day.”
Kent struggled to keep his breathing in check.
Just as Kent had been playing the disaffected bunkmate, Martin had been playing the lonely serial killer, eager to impress.
Now that the ruse was over?
Now there were just two predators locked in a cell together.
Guess what Kent wasn’t getting tonight?
Sleep.
Not a wink.
* * *
Nicole trotted down an alleyway, dodging knocked-over trash cans. It looked like Ji
mmi and Joshua were trying to leave a trail of breadcrumbs.
The Hello Kitty watch was in fact transmitting the two J’s location. The signal would have been blocked back in the van, but Nicole seriously doubted that they had maintained the electronic jamming after they’d left the vehicle.
Hence the GPS signal they were following right now. And they seemed to be on the correct track as they found a smudge of blood here and then there.
They were angling away from the residential neighborhood and into a strip mall. It was an older one. Decaying. Only half filled. And the only tenants were a medical marijuana place and a Mary Jane shop right next door. That and a Little Caesars. The holy trinity of potheads.
The signal stopped at the end of the strip mall. A large abandoned corner store. Nicole thought it used to be one of those big box stores that folded back in the early 2000’s. Nothing ever replaced it.
All the bustling business had transferred to the large mall downtown.
For now, though, this might be the hiding place of the Downers.
It couldn’t get much creepier, as she looked though the locked glass doors. The interior was dimly lit by streetlights. They couldn’t use their flashlights or give away their position.
Ruben was already at work on the lock. He gave a nod and quietly pushed the door open. Nicole slid through, her gun down, but ready to pull it up at any moment. The store’s inventory was gone, but many of the large sales racks were still there, blocking the full view of the room.
They crept through the maze, checking each and every corner. Joshua and Jimmi could probably die of dehydration by the time they got to them. The two had to be alive. Why would the serial killers take the bodies? Unless they were moving the corpses to stage them.
No, Nicole couldn’t think like that.
She had to assume the two J’s were alive and well. Okay, fine, at least alive.
Ruben indicated to the back wall with its large black swinging doors. It accessed the stock area. Because this hadn’t been bad enough. Still, there was nothing left to do than go through that door.
Ruben backed into it, slowly opening the path. It should have been pitch dark in here. Instead the walls were covered in glow-in-the-dark paint. Swirls and loops. The weak illumination cast eerie shadows.
2nd Cycle of the Harbinger Series: The continuation of the #1 Hard-boiled/Police Procedural smash Plain Jane Page 27