Contract to Kill

by Andrew Peterson

  “Have you forgiven the man who, like, you know . . . tortured you?”

  “Yes, but I’m never going to be friends with him and I don’t have to understand why he did it.”

  Lauren thought for a few seconds, then asked, “Can I go with you on Sunday? You know, to church? Just the two of us?”

  “I’ll pick you up at a quarter to nine, but you’ll need to dress . . . appropriately.”

  She rolled her eyes in that cute kid way.

  They fell silent again, looking at each other in the mirror. Nathan saw her face brighten a little. She looked so innocent and fragile, but underneath was one tough kid. Tested and proven.

  “I still want to be a Special Forces soldier.”

  “Have you told your mom that?”

  “No way. She’d totally freak.”

  “Then it’s better not to mention it for now.” He paused. “Hey, do you think they’re talking about us out there?”

  “Duh.”

  “Try again.”

  “Yes, they’re talking about us.”

  “Come on, we’d better get out there before they decide they don’t need us anymore.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Toby Haynes never looked for trouble. Not anymore. A few years ago, he’d pursued confrontations on a regular basis. For most of his adult life, he’d mistakenly believed that bullying people made him feel better about himself. Epiphanies can be sparked from an infinite number of circumstances, but Toby’s had come from a force of nature in the form of Nathan McBride.

  At six foot eight and 270 pounds, Toby looked like an NFL defensive end—minus the ink—and there had been a time when he’d used his bulk to intimidate people. Even though McBride was three inches shorter and thirty pounds lighter, Nathan had been all but intimidated. After an ill-advised fistfight in which he hadn’t landed a single punch, Toby had been bloodied, broken, and completely defenseless. He remembered looking up at McBride and thinking, This guy’s going to beat the living hell out of me, but something quite different had happened—something he’d never forgotten.

  He couldn’t remember all of McBride’s advice that night, but one thing had stuck with Toby: Life is full of details. Start noticing them. And notice them he had, starting with a thorough self-examination. Toby had been so impressed with McBride and his friend Harvey Fontana that he’d followed in their footsteps and enlisted in the Marines, where he’d spent two years as an MP until a car crash ended his career.

  Six months later, after his physical therapy ended, he’d applied for a security guard position at McBride’s company but hadn’t passed the background check. Although he didn’t have a criminal record, he had a really lousy credit score, and if you wanted to work for First Security, Incorporated, you needed near-flawless credit.

  But to Toby’s surprise, failing the credit check hadn’t been the end of it.

  The following day, he’d received a call from Nathan McBride. Not only was Toby going to have the chance to be a security guard—he’d be attending a security guard academy. Toby hadn’t known such things existed, but this school was the best in the country—the prestigious Beaumont Academy in Gallup, New Mexico. McBride was offering Toby a personal loan on nothing more than a verbal promise to repay it after he graduated and landed a job.

  Now there was no guarantee of employment after graduating, much less with the esteemed Beaumont Specialists, Inc., one of the country’s biggest private military contractors. Determined despite the odds, Toby applied himself and advanced to the top of his class. Smaller security companies would’ve hired him hands down, but he wanted to work for BSI. And so he finally got hired. Since his first BSI paycheck, he hadn’t missed a single payment to McBride.

  Toby smiled at the memory, waiting for the gas pump to click. He glanced at his watch. He had forty-five minutes before his 1:00 AM shift started. Patchy fog and a near-freezing mist had descended upon the city. Out-of-towners would have a hard time believing San Diego’s weather could be like this. A few degrees colder and it would be snowing.

  On the opposite side of the intersection, approaching headlights caught his attention. A silver SUV rolled through the green light and pulled into a competing gas station across the road. The vehicle looked familiar—it was the same make, color, and model that BSI used for company vehicles.

  Interesting . . . Toby had never bumped into a colleague in this neighborhood. Mildly curious, he tried to glimpse the driver. Another surprise. The driver wasn’t merely a colleague of Toby’s; he was Chip Hahn, right-hand man and personal bodyguard to BSI Chief of Security Tanner Mason. Toby had often wondered why Mason needed a bodyguard, but he’d never mustered the nerve to ask. Questions like that tended to strangle careers—as would gawking at your boss from the shadows instead of waving hello.

  Hahn wore his signature ball cap and sunglasses. In the eighteen months Toby had worked as a private security officer for BSI, he’d never seen Hahn’s eyes. Ever. He’d also never seen the man smile.

  Toby took an instinctive step back into the concealment of the gas pump and chided himself: If you’re not going to say hello, you’d better not get caught watching the man. He knew he should mind his own business, but something about Hahn felt . . . off. More than usual.

  The rear windows of Hahn’s SUV were darkly tinted, screening any occupants. Who besides Mason could Hahn be driving around at this hour? And why? Even more curious, Hahn’s SUV had stopped short of the gas pump island. Dressed in black tactical clothing, Hahn got out of the vehicle.

  Why didn’t he pull up to the pump? Toby wondered.

  Rather than reach for his wallet, Hahn pulled a small item from his coat pocket and approached the island. He pointed the object at the top of the pump for a few seconds, then tucked it back into his pocket. Toby quickly looked away and shrank back into the shadow of his gas pump. He was pretty sure he knew what Hahn had just done. The question was why.

  Toby leaned to the side to reacquire Hahn. At the same moment, as if sensing he was being watched, Hahn froze. Even though Toby stood more than a hundred yards distant behind a gas pump, he felt the man’s eyes penetrate the mist. A shiver raked his body. Was he blown? Had Hahn seen him?

  In desperation, Toby actually considered stepping out and offering a friendly wave, but Hahn got back into the SUV and pulled forward to the pump.

  Toby circled to the driver’s side of his white Sentra and got in.

  He grabbed a compact pair of field glasses from the glove box and sought out the object that Hahn had reached for earlier. As he’d suspected, a wad of shaving cream was plastered over the orb-shaped security camera overlooking the gas pump area. Given the secretive nature of the corporation Toby worked for, the shaving-cream gambit wasn’t totally out of character, but the circumstances didn’t seem to warrant such discretion. Something important was going down.

  Just drive to work and forget you ever saw this.

  But he knew he couldn’t. He had to know why Hahn impaired the security camera. Toby bargained with himself: He’d keep the surveillance going as long as it didn’t put him at risk of being late to work. He couldn’t afford any black marks on his employment record. Getting the BSI job had been a big accomplishment, but these days Toby had his sights set on the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department.

  Hahn finished pumping the gas and drove the SUV out of the gas station. In world-record time, Toby climbed out and returned the nozzle into its slot. Determined to learn more despite the risk, he turned his headlights off and followed the SUV. Since no one was around, he ran the red light and blew across Clairemont Mesa. Three hundred yards ahead, he saw the SUV make a left.

  Not toward BSI.

  Toby stomped on the gas, then braked hard at the corner where Hahn had disappeared. Farther ahead, he saw the taillights of the SUV just finishing a right turn. Toby left his headlights off and sped down the street. When he neared the spot
where Hahn had turned, he clicked on his headlights. It was a driveway. Cruising past, Toby stole a quick look to the right. The SUV had stopped at the far end of a linear parking lot between two industrial buildings. Its brake lights were on, but as far as Toby could tell, its headlights were dark. Just before he lost sight of it, the driver’s door opened and Hahn stepped out. Toby kept going down the block until he found a parking spot at the curb behind a delivery van.

  He grabbed his field glasses and night-vision scope—items he used during his nightly BSI beat—and locked his car. If there were any security cameras mounted on the building to his left, he didn’t see them, and no lights were on inside. Cautiously, he approached the driveway, then stopped and took a quick look.

  The SUV was still there. As was Hahn.

  Is that a gun?

  He brought his field glasses up and focused on Hahn.

  Yes, it was definitely some kind of pistol, and it had a suppressor.

  Standing in front of the SUV, Hahn pointed the weapon at the parapet of the roof. Toby followed the man’s aim and saw a red laser dot sweep onto a security camera. A second later, the device shuddered and pieces of glass and plastic rained down. There was no sound at all. Not even a faint pop. He estimated the distance at just under one hundred yards. He should’ve heard something unless Hahn had used a small-caliber subsonic round. Toby knew his way around handguns, and a subsonic round from a suppressed .22 wouldn’t be much louder than a dropped apple.

  Something big was happening, and Hahn and whoever else was with him didn’t want any witnesses. Hahn picked up the expended brass, opened the passenger door, and grabbed a large pair of bolt cutters.

  The sudden appearance of an approaching car made Toby’s skin tighten. He’d been so focused on the SUV he forgot to watch for other cars.

  In a split-second decision, Toby flattened himself on the ground and hoped the low hedge would screen him.

  Blinding light blanched the entire area.

  Shit, shit!

  Panicking could prove costly, and he wasn’t just worried about losing his job.

  He clenched his teeth as the dual beams bounced. What were the odds? It had to be thousands to one a second vehicle would enter this driveway at this exact moment.

  No way was this a coincidence.

  He wished he didn’t have such a vivid imagination. Here he was, lying on wet grass with a pair of field glasses around his neck, a night-vision scope in his pocket, and absolutely no explanation for any of it.

  His stress level eased a bit when the car kept going.

  Trembling from the adrenaline rush, he peered over the hedge and saw the intruder was a dark Lexus sedan and its headlights were now off. If he had any brains at all, he’d consider this close call a warning and leave.

  The SUV was gone.

  He watched the Lexus continue to the end of the aisle and turn right and then stop, but it didn’t look like there was anywhere to go out there. There had to be a gate in the fence. That’s why Hahn needed the bolt cutters. As if on cue, the bleed light from the Lexus’s brakes vanished and the sedan started moving again. Someone had gotten out to close the gate.

  Doing his best to stay in the shadows, Toby ran toward the wrecked camera. If he didn’t hurry, he’d lose sight of the sedan through the mist. Again, not an altogether bad thing to happen.

  He pressed the illumination button on his watch and checked the time. Had only five minutes passed since seeing the SUV? Could that be right? BSI was a ten-minute drive from here, so that left him thirty to forty minutes, depending on how far he ventured on foot.

  He slowed to a fast walk when he reached the northwest corner of the building. Like he’d thought, a dark expanse of baseball diamonds and soccer fields bordered this property. From his current position, he couldn’t see the Lexus, but he heard the hiss of its tires.

  Avoiding the broken pieces of glass and plastic, he angled across the parking lot and found the closed gate. It didn’t look like the official entrance to the ball fields—more like a fire-access point. On closer inspection, he saw where a lock had hung.

  Beyond the gate, there was only one set of fresh tire tracks on the decomposed granite surface. Check that, two sets, but the Lexus had driven on top of the SUV’s impressions. Not accidental, in all likelihood.

  Toby used his shirt to wipe the binocular lenses before scanning the area. If there were any sources of light out there, he didn’t see them. He switched to NV and immediately found the vehicles. They were creeping along the road toward the interior of the complex. He was about to follow the tire tracks when he realized he shouldn’t leave any footprints.

  He diverted to the post supporting the gate and used a weed-strewn area to mask his entry. At a safe distance from the gate, he crossed the dirt track, hopped a low center field fence, and sprinted toward home plate. Although he felt exposed out in the open, his footfalls on the grass were silent and the mist provided a good visual screen.

  My phone!

  He reached into his pocket and changed it to silent mode.

  At home plate he found himself trapped by a chain-link fence used for stopping foul balls. He should’ve anticipated this would be here. Beyond the fence, some kind of tall rectangular structure loomed like a giant tombstone. He diverted to his left, over to the first base side, and found a gate near the dugout.

  As far as he could tell, the SUV and Lexus were at least another hundred yards farther north and east of his position. Aside from the background whoosh of the 52 freeway, it was eerily quiet out here.

  His soggy clothing produced an involuntary shiver. He should’ve grabbed his coat and now wished he had. His work uniform—a black security outfit—offered good concealment, but little in the way of thermal protection. He reached up, wiped the dampness from his bald head, and realized he’d forgotten his cover as well. He never wore the BSI hat anywhere other than work, but he kept a Marine Corps hat in the car for everywhere else. Way to go, Toby. You’re two for two.

  The open space to his left was another baseball field, so Toby decided to use it to angle east, back toward the access road where he could use the cover of some trees. Staying close to the road offered a second advantage. The road appeared to be several feet higher than the ball field, which worked in his favor. If headlights swept toward his direction, he could hide in the shadow created by the difference in elevation.

  At the tree line, he paralleled the same interior road the vehicles had used and advanced deeper into the complex. The smell of eucalyptus hung in the air like fog. It reminded him of his backyard when he was a kid.

  He heard something.

  The clunk of a car door—from his three o’clock position.

  He focused his NV in that direction and saw the Lexus and SUV sitting in the middle of a soccer field. He hopped the fence and climbed halfway up the bank. Since the trees on the opposite side of the gravel road didn’t have low-hanging branches, he stayed where he was.

  Standing next to the SUV, Hahn was turning in a circle and appeared to be scanning the area with some sort of device that looked like—

  A night-vision scope. Shit!

  Toby ducked, praying he’d been quick enough. Hahn had been mere seconds from sweeping past his area. He waited a good ten seconds before risking a look. Hahn was just finishing a 360-degree sweep. The SUV’s passenger got out, and to Toby’s surprise, it wasn’t BSI’s chief of security. It was Darla Lyons, a compact brunette in her midthirties. He didn’t know much about her, but she worked with Hahn and was obviously part of Mason’s inner circle.

  Okay, so who’s in the Lexus? he wondered. Maybe Hahn and Lyons have some kind of fling going. Were they out here for sex? No, that didn’t make sense. Why go to all this trouble when a motel would suffice? One thing was certain, if they had something illegal going on behind Mason’s back, it was more than reckless. You never crossed Tanner Mas
on.

  For half a minute nothing happened. They just stood there, looking around.

  The interior of the Lexus remained dark as its driver exited the vehicle.

  In a puzzling move, the sedan chirped and its parking lights flashed. Weird. The driver must’ve locked the car. Why would he do that?

  When the man approached Hahn and Lyons, Toby recognized his boss’s commanding presence right away. There was no mistaking Tanner, a.k.a. Skinner, Mason. His long blond hair was always tightly secured in a ponytail. “Skinner” was reputedly a tough-guy nickname or call sign from Mason’s BSI Academy days. Toby had only met Mason a couple of times because BSI’s structure closely mirrored that of the military. Toby reported to a lieutenant who, in turn, reported up the chain of command.

  When Mason reached the SUV, Hahn’s body language changed, like that of a corporal in the presence of a general. Like Hahn, Mason and Darla wore gloves and dark clothing, not the standard khaki garb they usually wore at work. They huddled for several seconds before walking over to the Lexus.

  Toby took a moment to scan his perimeter with the NV. He didn’t think a security guard would be on foot out here, but it was likely a mobile unit cruised the outside every so often as part of a larger patrol loop. He’d once done something similar during his MP days at Camp Pendleton.

  He kept alternating his surveillance between the vehicles, wondering what this late-night rendezvous was all about and why they needed such a dark and isolated spot.

  Mason raised his hand and the Lexus flashed and chirped again.

  Hahn circled to the far side, while Darla stood behind the trunk, her hand tucked inside her coat. Simultaneously, Hahn and Mason opened the rear passenger doors and backed away.

  Two men had trouble getting out, and Toby saw why. Their hands were secured behind their backs. He couldn’t see a lot of detail, but it looked like they wore formal pants and golf shirts. One of them sported a dark ball cap.

  Hahn escorted his man around the vehicle and shoved him into position next to the other guy. Darla closed both of the sedan’s doors and stood next to Mason.