by John Etzil
I sighed. “I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this.” I unplugged the end of the emergency call button cord from the wall and tossed it in her lap. I took out my Glock and pressed it against her forehead. I watched as her complexion went from suntanned goddess to white as a ghost. Her eyes got so big she didn’t even look half Japanese anymore. She dropped the emergency call button and closed her eyes.
I pushed her backwards with the Glock until she was lying down. She was trembling, her whole body shivering, and sweat had beaded up on her forehead. I stuck the Glock in my belt.
I sat down on the side of the bed and clamped my hand over her mouth. Her skin was cold and clammy. It felt like shaking hands with a dead body. Her eyes shot open, and then she stifled a cry and slammed them shut.
I leaned over and whispered, slow and soft in her ear, “Your sister and I took great risks to rescue you. You might not appreciate it now, but I promise that in due time, you will. Do you understand me?”
She didn’t respond.
I leaned away from her and spoke again. “I’m going to remove my hand now so that you and I can have a civilized conversation. Are you going to behave yourself?”
She nodded, and I took my hand away. She opened her eyes and brought her hand up to her mouth to stifle another cry.
“Do you know about the GPS tracking device?”
She nodded.
“The men we took you from know where you are. There’s a good chance that they’ll come looking for you. I’ll make sure that if they do, they die. Do you understand?”
She nodded again, the whole time leaving her hand over her mouth to hold back her cries.
“Good. And another thing. I’m on a mission in life to remove some very bad people from this earth. And no one is going to stop me. Not the police, nor the FBI, and certainly not you. So if I think for a second that you are jeopardizing my life’s mission—look at me now, this is important—Debbie’s sister or not, I will kill you. No matter where you run, I will track you down, just like I did a few days ago. But instead of carrying you out of a house, I’ll kill you inside of it. You saw firsthand what I’m capable of, and that was only the tip of the iceberg. Are we clear on this?”
She turned two shades whiter and nodded, tears gliding down her cheeks and spilling onto her oversized hospital gown.
“Good.” I smiled at her, leaned forward, and kissed her on her forehead. She jumped. I turned to walk away but stopped in my tracks. “Oh, and one more thing. Stop scowling at me like I’m Hitler’s offspring.”
I left Catherine’s room, did a cursory walk through the dim hallway, and went down the stairs and out to my truck. There were no new vehicles in the parking lot. I climbed into my pickup and dialed Debbie. She answered on the first ring. “Hey, baby, everything okay? Catherine safe?”
“Yeah, everything’s fine,” I told her, deciding to leave out the part about threatening to kill Catherine. “How about you? Dogs good?”
“Yeah, one on each side of me, and a Glock in my lap.”
“Buddy snoring?”
“Like a buzz saw. I don’t know how Saber sleeps with that racket.”
“I’m more worried about you getting a good night’s sleep. We’re taking another road trip, and it’s going to be a long couple of days.”
“Where to?”
“I’ll tell you about it in the morning. We leave right after Catherine gets out of post-op.”
“Who’s going to stay with her while we’re gone?”
“An old friend, Frankie. I called in a favor.”
“Okay, I’ll be at the hospital first thing. Kisses.”
“Night, baby. Sleep tight.” I hung up the phone and went back into the hospital. When I got to Catherine’s room, she was in the bathroom, so I took a seat and planned my next set of moves.
Catherine came out of the bathroom and glanced at me with pursed lips. She climbed into bed, turned on her side so her back was to me, and went to sleep.
33
Cosmo barked out a fast-food order to one of his underlings and tossed him a twenty. “Get some extra fries too.”
He turned to Amare. “Who we got? How many?”
“The usual crew, minus the missing-in-action from your house. Seven total.”
“That’s plenty. When’s LoJack Larry getting here?”
“Any minute now. He’s on his way.”
“Good.” Cosmo looked at his oversized watch and smiled his gold-toothed grin. “When he confirms her location for us, I’m sending men right away. Make sure they’re ready to go when they get here. I don’t want any delays.”
“Okay, boss man.”
As if on cue, a small balding old white man pulled up in a Toyota hybrid.
Amare spotted him through the front window. “Larry’s here, boss man.”
Cosmo hoisted himself off the couch and walked over to look out the window. He watched as the little old man stepped out of his car, opened his rear hatch, and took out a briefcase. “What a sorry excuse for a man. Think he ever gets laid?”
“I don’t know, boss, probably not. Maybe you can help him out.”
“Yeah, right, I don’t think so. Every one of my whores would kill his skinny white ass by the end of the night.”
Cosmo leaned over the railing and yelled down to his door man. “Yo, Pauly, Larry’s here. Send him up.”
“Will do, boss.”
A few seconds later, Cosmo heard the old man enter the house and shuffle his way up the stairs. When he reached the top, he took out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his face. “Hello, Mr. Cosmo. I understand you want to locate one of your assets?”
“That’s right, Larry. I need to find somebody. Right now.”
“Very well.” The old man walked over to the table in the kitchen, laid his briefcase on top of it, and popped the two latches. He took out a laptop and turned it on.
“Who are we finding, Mr. Cosmo?”
“Catherine.”
The little old white man adjusted his glasses and went to work, banging fingertips on his laptop until he looked up with a smile. “I’ve found her.”
“Where is she?”
“As of six hours ago, she was in a little town in upstate NY called Summit.”
“Six hours ago? Shit, she could be in Canada by now.”
“Unlikely. This is a quiet little town, and I’m guessing she’ll be there for a while.”
“I don’t pay you to guess. I’m sending some men to get her back. You go with them in case she makes a run for it before they get there.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible, Mr. Cosmo. Travel is not included in my duties, and I have responsibilities here that I must attend to.”
Cosmo took out his pistol and pressed it against the old man’s forehead. “Don’t make me fuckin’ shoot you. You’re going. Understand?”
The old man’s eyes grew so wide he looked like he’d witnessed the second coming of Christ. His jaw fell open and he looked down at the floor. His whole body started shaking. Cosmo thought he was going to have a stroke. He couldn’t afford to lose him and his tracking software, so he put the gun away and changed his tone to a friendlier one. “Just get her and bring her back. I’ll make it worth your while.”
The old man didn’t answer.
“Help him out to the car, Amare. They can take the SUV. And tell Vargas to get his ass up here.”
Amare grabbed the old man under the arm and hoisted him up. “Come on, old man, let’s go.”
“Larry. My name’s Larry.” He folded up his laptop, stuck it in his briefcase, and followed Amare.
Vargas came running up the stairs. The former high school football player, still in shape in his midtwenties, took the steps three at a time. “You wanted to see me, boss?”
“Yeah, take LoJack Larry and find Catherine. I know she had something to do with the attack on my crib. Bring her back alive. I want to make her suffer myself.”
“You got it, boss.”
Cosmo
reached into a kitchen drawer and took out a burner cell phone. “Here, take this. My burner phone number is the only one in the contacts. Keep me updated on your progress, but only use this phone to text me. Take JA with you.”
“You got it, boss.” Vargas ran down the steps, called out for JA, and headed out the door.
34
They came to get Catherine at six sharp and wheeled her off to surgery. Debbie showed up just in time to give her a hug and a good luck kiss.
We went to get breakfast at a nearby diner and came back and sat in the waiting room. A few hours later, the doc came out with a smile on his face. “Everything is fine. She did good. Implants were removed, along with the foreign object.”
“Thanks, Doc. When can I have the foreign object? I’m anxious to start my investigation.”
“Any minute now. I ordered the nurse to clean it up and bring it out to you.”
“Thanks again for your help, Doc. I owe you one.” I winked and shook his hand. He smiled back at me.
We sat down and waited for the nurse. Fifteen minutes later, she came out and handed me a container with the object inside. We thanked her and left.
We sat in my truck and opened the container to look at the object. It looked like a big horse pill with some numbers etched in the side. I’d researched it through HFS and knew exactly what it was. “Yep. It’s a GPS tracking device all right. It sends out a signal to the nearest satellite. It’s crazy that Cosmo tracks his women this way. I guess he has a high turnover rate.”
“You think? What an animal. So now what?”
“Put it in your bag. We’ll take the tracking device on our little road trip. Cosmo will come looking for us, and we’ll let him find us. On our terms.”
“What about Catherine? What if he shows up here after we’ve left?”
“I called in a favor. From one of my good friends from my NSA days, Frankie, who went on to become a CIA operative.”
“What kind of operative?”
“Assassin. Close-up. Knife, strangulation, that sort of thing.”
“Excellent! When’s he get here?”
“Frankie’s a she, as in Francesca.”
“Oh. How well do you know her?”
I looked at her and shrugged.
Her eyes grew narrow. “You were lovers? You called up an old lover, to watch your current lover’s sister?” She punched me in the arm. “Explain yourself!”
“What’s to explain? I met her on the coed volleyball team at NSA.”
“She plays volleyball?”
“I don’t think she plays anymore. She was good too. Went to the Olympic trials for beach volleyball when she was in college.”
“Beach volleyball? That’s the one with the girls in skimpy bikinis.”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“And you guys were lovers.”
“Yeah, but we haven’t seen each other in years. She’s a good operative, and I trust her to make sure that nothing happens to Catherine. She’s posing as Catherine’s sister, by the way.”
“What? Wait… her sister, Debbie? As in me? Your old lover is posing as me?”
“It was the only way I could get her hospital access without raising any eyebrows.”
“Does she at least look like me?”
“Not really.”
“Then how’s she going to pose as me? The doc knows me, Patrick.”
“Doc’s in on it. He’ll play along, official police matter and all.” I winked at her.
She punched me in the arm again. “You suck, Jack Lamburt.” She crossed her arms over her chest and looked out the passenger window.
I opened my door, stepped out, and leaned against the truck to wait for Frankie.
Five minutes later, and it was a long five minutes with Debbie pouting, Frankie pulled up in her light blue BMW M3 and parked next to me. She smiled, took off her sunglasses, and walked over to me. She looked great. Long muscular legs that ended in a tan miniskirt. A halter top that showed off her abs, tattoos, and muscular shoulders, and a wide smile that reminded me how easy it was for her to get close enough to her targets to kill them.
“Well, hello, Jack Lamburt. Long time no see.”
I held out my hand. She smiled and playfully smacked it away. I was afraid of that.
“Really? That’s how you’re going to greet an old lover?” She threw her arms around me, kissed me on the cheek, and gave me a long, tight hug.
“Ahem.” Debbie had gotten out of my truck and was standing with her arms crossed, glaring at us.
“Frankie, this is Debbie.” I pointed to her. “Debbie, Frankie.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Thanks, you too,” Debbie replied, icicles hanging from every word.
“Wow, she’s as beautiful as you said. You done good, Jack.” Frankie walked all over Debbie with her eyes and smiled at me. “Yeah. You were right. I’d do her,” she added with a nod.
“Excuse me?” Debbie voice rose an octave.
“You’re hot. I’d do you. It’s a compliment.”
Debbie glared at me. “This is what you guys talked about? How hot I am?”
“It’s an old habit of ours.” Oh crap. I regretted saying that as soon as the words left my lips. Goddamn impulse control issues…
“Wait, you guys used to pick up women together?”
Frankie and I just looked away, down at our feet, at our watches.
“I don’t believe this. You never told me that you and your old girlfriend were womanizers.”
“The subject never came up.”
“I don’t have time for this right now,” She turned to Frankie. “Will you take care of Catherine for us?”
“Debbie. That’s why she’s here.”
Frankie looked at me and smiled. “It’s okay, Jack. I’m guessing that she doesn’t know the bond that agents form.”
“Bond that agents form?” Debbie asked.
Frankie turned to Debbie. “No one will get to Catherine without killing me first, and I can assure you, that’s not going to happen. Now you two go take care of business.” She reached into her car and grabbed her purse, “When she’s discharged, I’ll take her back to Jack’s place and stay with her until you get back.” She turned and asked me, “Garage code still the same?”
Oh crap, I wished she hadn’t asked me that in front of Debbie. “Yep. There’s plenty of food in the fridge, and all my weapons are locked up in the gun safe. Saber and Buddy have a doggie door, so they let themselves out. They have automatic feeders, and their water bowls are automatically filled when they decline to a certain level, so they’re self-reliant.”
I thought I was slick, changing the subject about the garage code by going over what I had already briefed Frankie on.
Debbie would have none of it. I felt her daggers slicing through my back and turned and delivered my best lady-killer smile. She looked at me, her almond-shaped eyes morphing into tight little slits, and scoffed.
“She knows the garage code?” She shook her head and pursed her lips. “Boy do you have some explaining to do when this is over.”
35
We climbed into my pickup, and I drove over to I-88 and headed east. Other than asking where we were going, to which I replied, “Peru, New York,” Debbie was quiet for the first forty minutes or so. After we hit the New York State Thruway in Albany and headed north, she switched over to her usual self. “So what’s the plan, Stan?”
“Dad’s family owned a property in Peru that was used as an Underground Railroad stop. I haven’t been there in a while, but I spent a lot of time there as a kid. Dad loved teaching us about the role that the farm played in the Underground Railroad.”
“Underground Railroad, as in helping the slaves escape captivity?”
“Yeah, this place goes back a long time and has a ton of history. Complete with tunnels that the slaves traveled by. I used to play in them when I was a kid. It’s the perfect place to lure Cosmo.”
“You think he’ll drive al
l the way up there? Maybe we should have headed south, closer to him, to entice him to visit us.”
“All my HFS research on Cosmo indicates that he’ll track Catherine down, even if she’s on Mars.”
“What do we do once we get there?”
“We set up an ambush. The old stone farmhouse is built like a fort and surrounded by hundreds of acres of forest. There’s only one way in, and one way out, so they can’t sneak up on us.”
The one-hundred-and-eighty-four-mile trip took us a little over three hours. We didn’t stop anywhere, and I paid all tolls in cash. I had put all of our phones and my E-ZPass in a lead-shielded bag so that we were untraceable.
Once we arrived, I found the trail to the house overgrown with tall grass and an occasional shrub, but I had no problem getting through with my pickup. I pulled up to the house and was immediately hit with flashbacks of running through the woods with my cousins as a kid. Good times.
We got out, and Debbie was the first to speak. “Wow, this is desolate. Makes Eminence look like New York City.”
“Nobody around for many miles.”
“You weren’t kidding about it being a fortress either.” She pointed to the steel shutters that were over every window, locked in place from the inside.
“Dad figured that was the best way to keep the animals and stray folks out of the house.”
I reached into my truck, grabbed my go bags and went up to the front door. “Aw shit.” I looked at Debbie.
“What?” she asked.
“I forgot the key.”
36
Vargas guided the big SUV onto the New Jersey Turnpike and settled in for the long ride to upstate New York. The two-hundred-and-forty-four-mile trip would take him over four hours, and that was without stopping to refuel and stretch his legs. The trip was short notice, so other than his pistol, he hadn’t had time to pack, and he’d have to stop for food and water. Plus the old dude Larry sitting in the backseat would probably need to take a piss at least two or three times before they got there.