The Vigilante's Lover: A Romantic Suspense Thriller (The Vigilantes Book 1)

by Annie Winters

  I’ve been in interrogation rooms before, but not on this side of the table. I fold my hands on the cool surface and say nothing. Eventually Carter pulls out a tablet and scrolls through information. He frowns several times, then puts it down with a sigh. The screen winks out before I can see what it says.

  “Trespassing, unauthorized access of syndicate systems, attempted bribery, assault and battery of a civilian police officer, and murder of a fellow Vigilante,” he says. “Not to mention escape from an authorized penitentiary. How again were you thinking to prove your innocence when none of this is in dispute? Of which of these crimes do you claim innocence, Mr. De Luca?”

  “None of them.” I spread my hands. “They’re all true.” I hesitate. “Except the bribery. I was just paying a hooker.”

  Carter’s eyes narrow. “This is not amusing. You don’t seem to understand your position.”

  I put my hands on the desk and lean forward, staring hard at Carter. “I need to speak with Sutherland.” Sutherland is the head of the American syndicate. He presides over all the regions, a position I was once in line to accept.

  Carter doesn’t bat an eye. “And why do you think Sutherland can help you?”

  “Because,” I say in a tone I might use with a child, “he has final arbitration over conflict between two Vigilantes. Ergo, he can clear my name.” I straighten back up in the seat and resume my neutral posture.

  Carter sighs, as if his job is too much for him today. “What if I told you Sutherland has already notified me that he does not want to speak with you?”

  “Not possible—” I begin, but Carter cuts me off.

  “He was alerted the moment we recognized your heat signature. Furthermore, he has instructed me to place you into custody until such time that you can be transferred to a maximum-security penitentiary, one where you can’t simply walk out the front door.”

  An uncomfortable prickle creeps up my neck. I had not counted on Sutherland outright refusing to speak with me. This is not the Sutherland I know.

  But then, neither is the one who would allow a syndicate director to rot in jail without a tribunal.

  Still, I have to call the bluff.

  “I would call you a liar, Mr. Carter,” I say. “Sutherland is my mentor and personal friend.”

  Carter spins the tablet around and brings up the display. A picture of me appears along with the same basic vitals as in the glass entry hall. However, beneath the word “fugitive” is a new sentence.

  By order of Director Sutherland, former operative Jax De Luca is ordered held for transfer to New Attica Correctional Facility upon apprehension.

  That prickle becomes a full-on spear to my head. This is not possible. Ever since the police rebellion four years ago, New Attica has been one of the worst prisons in the country. For Sutherland to order my incarceration in that hellhole is serious.

  I keep my discomfort buried deep and focus on feeling every part of my body. The concentration rapidly calms me and I allow myself a steady, even breath before giving Carter a small smile. I reach out and spin the pad back to him.

  “It says nothing about asking questions,” I say.

  Carter shrugs. “Go ahead. I won’t guarantee answers you like. Or answers at all.”

  I decide to be direct. “Where is Operative Klaus?”

  Carter gives me a puzzled look, so I press on. “Klaus. He was with the German syndicate before transferring to America years ago. He was my partner, but now he has vanished. I fear his security has been compromised and his life may be in danger.”

  Carter picks up the tablet and taps on it. He frowns after a few seconds. “I don’t see a record for an Operative Klaus.”

  Another unpleasant surprise. “Are you spelling it correctly? His last known location was the Tennessee safe house.”

  “No,” Carter says. “There’s nothing.”

  “Vigilantes don’t just vanish!” I growl. “He has an entry in the system! I know because I entered the details myself as syndicate director!”

  Carter eyes me coldly, his mouth a tight line. “Perhaps this was the ‘unauthorized access of syndicate systems’ I noted earlier?”

  My calm snaps. I shoot up out of my chair and send it flying back with a clatter. The guard leaps forward, a Taser in his hand. I hold my ground behind the desk, fuming. I can feel my anger flowing off me in heated waves, but tamp it down enough to keep my voice steady.

  “Klaus was my friend,” I say through gritted teeth. “He had an entry. When a record is deleted, the system is flagged.” I lean over the table. “Search. The. Flags.”

  Carter stares at me a moment, and I think he’ll just deny my request. But he picks up the tablet. As he taps, concern crosses his brow and his finger strikes on the surface become faster, more insistent.

  “All right,” he says. “I found a flag in the system attached to the name Klaus. It’s not a personnel record. Just a death notice.”

  “A what?” I lean closer.

  “It’s weird.” Carter keeps tapping. “If I search the flags, I show a death notice for Klaus, but no evidence that he was ever alive.”

  “How did he die?” My throat is tight.

  “It doesn’t say. Just that he’s dead.” Carter frowns. “This is high-level tampering. Nobody can die without having a living record.”

  “May I?” I hold out my hand for the tablet.

  Carter hesitates, then hands it over. I quickly search for flags on deleted entries involving the Tennessee safe house.

  Sure enough, one comes up. The closure of the safe house due to “toxic chemical contamination.” It’s the same date and entry as Klaus’s death.

  There is no toxic chemical there. It was a ploy to close it. To hide what they did. Klaus died at the safe house and someone deleted him to cover their tracks.

  Jovana.

  And her lackey temptress.

  Mia.

  I push the pad at Carter and sit back down.

  But Carter stands to leave. “I’ll be sure to add this to my report,” he says. “Perhaps your role in helping identify the fraudulent record will be of help to you in a future hearing.” He shrugs. “If you survive even a day in New Attica.”

  He nods at the guard and the two of them move to the door.

  It hisses closed behind them.

  I’m alone for the moment, but I’m not done here. I still have a skeleton key.

  And I have a lying, murdering honey-haired safe house operative to locate in this building. And to interrogate. And if necessary, to take out of commission.

  18: Mia

  I’m sick of sitting with this Dell woman. I want out of here to find Jax.

  The doors open again, and the girl Katya enters with a tray of small sandwiches.

  Dell stands up. “Katya, you sit with Mia a while. I’m going to check on the status of her release approval.”

  Katya nods as she sets the tray on the coffee table. She perches uncertainly on the far end of the sofa.

  Dell turns to me. “I’ll be back very shortly. Let us know if you need anything to make you comfortable.”

  I glance down at the stilettos. “You wouldn’t happen to have a shoe store nearby, would you?”

  Not that I have money. I left home with only a now-destroyed nightgown and my Crocs. Not so much as a driver’s license, I realize. No one would know if I disappeared. No one would even look, other than maybe the neighbor, Shirley.

  “You’ll be home soon,” Dell says. “We’re here to help you.”

  She exits through the door. To keep track of which one she uses, I imagine I am sitting at six o’clock and the door is at two. Maybe I can keep them straight that way. Katya came in at ten o’clock, so the kitchen must be that way.

  “Are you hungry?” Katya asks.

  She has straight blond hair that just touches her shoulders. She’s pretty and fresh looking, no makeup, just the white pantsuit. I glance at her feet in white sneakers. I could use a pair of those. They look about my size. />
  I realize Dell never drank her tea. “A little hungry,” I say. “But I have a rule never to drink alone.” I push Dell’s cup toward Katya. “Dell poured this but didn’t drink any.”

  Katya stares at the cup with undisguised concern. She’s not very good at hiding her thoughts, at least not yet. Jax would eat her alive. Now I feel sure the tea is drugged. I wonder how to get out of here.

  But she picks up the cup and takes a sip. I watch her a moment, wondering if she is just not aware of what they have done.

  Although I guess she probably made the tea.

  When several minutes pass in awkward silence and nothing happens to her, I dump three spoonfuls of sugar in the cup and drink it greedily. I’m starving and thirsty and need calories if I’m going to escape this place. I don’t know if they told the truth about the bracelet or if it just tracks me. For all I know it’ll stick me with poison the minute I try to go anywhere.

  “So why did you call me special?” I ask Katya, when I figure she’s at her most uncomfortable due to the silence and her awkward position on the sofa.

  “Because you are one,” she says quietly.

  “How did you know just by looking?”

  “You have a zero screen,” she says.

  “A what?”

  She points above my head. “A zero screen. You can’t see them? They are angled to be visible only for your direct view.” She scoots down the sofa and reaches for my bracelet. “Twist this one.” She turns a crystal on its gold hoop.

  Above her, on the glass screen, appears a set of data like the one when Jax and I entered the facility.

  Katya Reynolds. Age 18. Phase One Trainee.

  Hey. That’s what Jax kept calling ME.

  “What’s a Phase One Trainee?” I ask.

  “It’s the status of anyone in their first year of training,” she says. “Why don’t you know that?” Her eyes get wide, like she’s just screwed up.

  “I’ve been in a safe house,” I say. Maybe I can fake this. “For my protection.”

  “You’re not much older than me,” she says. “You don’t seem like you’d be a special.”

  “Is that why I don’t have one of those over my head?” I say, gesturing toward her wall screen.

  “You do. Yours is just blank except for your name. That makes you a special,” she says.

  I turn around to see my screen. Sure enough, all it says is “Mia Morrow,” the same as when we walked in the glass hall.

  “But Dell said I just wasn’t in the system.”

  “Everybody’s in the system,” Katya says. “From the moment your mother gets a positive pregnancy test.”

  I shudder at the thought of someone watching a woman peeing on a stick.

  It’s time to figure out where I am and what I’m doing here, before Dell comes back. Katya is infinitely easier to manipulate.

  I pick up a sandwich and take a big bite as I think about what to say to Katya. I wonder if our conversation is being monitored. Of course it is.

  My neck itches where Jax put that sedative device and I press my hand to it. “This is so annoying,” I say. She knew about the bracelet. Maybe she can deactivate this. “Do you know how to remove it?”

  “It’s just a tracker,” she says. “You can pull it off.”

  Obviously she doesn’t know what it is. “It will sedate me if I do,” I say.

  “No,” she argues. “That’s definitely one of the first things we learn to identify. It’s just a tracker.” She reaches out for me.

  I try to smack her arm away, but when I connect, I realize Katya is a lot more than she seems. Her arm is like steel. What we can’t see beneath that generic white suit is a solid layer of muscle.

  I feel a sharp tug against my skin.

  “It’s best to yank it like a Band-Aid,” she says. “See?” She has the device in her palm.

  I slap my hand against my neck, already feeling woozy. I sag against the sofa.

  Katya turns the adhesive strip over. “Just a GPS model. An old one. No sedative.”

  I stare at it. There’s nothing but a fine wire curled inside.

  I sit up. She’s right. I’m fine.

  Then I’m mad.

  Ohhhh, that Jax. I could have run at any time! I burn with rage. He thought I was so stupid.

  Katya sets the adhesive strip on the table. “How long were you in that safe house? This is a really old device. It should have been in your training even if it was years ago.”

  A yellow bar on the wall catches my eye. It’s Katya’s screen. There’s now an extra icon at the bottom. It blinks steadily. I have a funny feeling it has to do with our conversation, and that Dell will come back any second to keep me from finding out anything else.

  No more sitting around this place, whatever it is. I want to get the layout, make a plan. I stand and head to the door at ten o’clock, the one Katya came through. “Does this go to the kitchen?”

  Katya jumps up. “Yes. You want to see the place?” She seems relieved to do something other than talk.

  “Yes,” I say. “Let’s do that.”

  When I approach the door, the scanner begins its journey, then stops at the bracelet. The doors open instantly.

  Excellent. Maybe I am a little bit special.

  Now to figure out how to steal this girl’s shoes.

  19: Jax

  The interrogation room is silent and chilly. I stare at the black dome on the table. Inside are cameras, microphones, and thermal sensors. Everything that just happened will be stored in my file for future reference.

  I’ll give them an eyeful when I find Mia. Just picturing her makes me hot with rage.

  She’ll tell me what happened to Klaus. I will hold nothing back now that I know he died in her safe house. Vigilantes are authorized to use any force necessary against civilians.

  I know I’m being watched via the dome, so I make sure I appear calm and composed until I strike.

  The doors work on scanner technology, probably keyed to heat signatures, DNA if they are the latest models. This means I will have to act fast to get one open before it scans me and sets off an alarm. It also means most personnel here won’t think twice about someone wandering the halls, since the scanners keep unauthorized personnel corralled.

  Even so, I’ll have limited time once I leave this room to find Mia. I need them to think I’m still in here. The skeleton key can probably cloak my position for a few seconds, but that will not do me much good with a camera visual. Unless…

  I slowly, carefully, slip the thin bit of cellophane out of its hidden pocket. I pop it on the underside of the table and set it to analyzing the nonexistent lock to confuse it.

  I take off my jacket. The key beeps in error because it’s not attached to a locking mechanism, but that’s not what I’m after. A quick tap sets the key to power surge. The dome crackles with static from the unexpected jolt.

  I toss my jacket over the dome and retrieve the key. If I’ve done this correctly, it will seem as if the camera simply malfunctioned and shut down. They’ll send someone to check, but I’ll have several minutes before a technician arrives.

  Hopefully. I don’t intend to stick around to find out.

  I step to the door and put the key against it, near the frame. The scanner begins its journey down my body, but I quickly tap a command. A second later it beeps, and the scan stops. The door pops open. I release my held breath. Sam is a genius.

  The hallway beyond is empty. I pull the key off the door and walk back toward the central silo. If I guessed right about their security protocol, no one there will pay me any mind as long as I don’t draw undue attention to myself. Time to test that theory.

  I enter the central silo and pause for a quick glance, looking for an unoccupied station. I spot one on the next level up, across from where I am. Staying close to the wall, I circle the silo and head up the stairway. At the top I stand aside to let someone pass by on the stairs. He looks at me with a blank expression and I give him a polite nod
.

  “Pardon me,” he says, and continues on his way down.

  I breathe a sigh of relief. Another test passed. As long as I don’t encounter anyone who actually knows me, I’ll be fine. None of the hallways have glass screens that will give away my name or fugitive status as I walk. The rooms are another matter, but I don’t plan to enter any.

  I arrive at the empty terminal. The interface is familiar, and I pull up a map of the complex. Nothing is labeled, but it looks like the entire east wing is an addition to the original military installation. Carter said Mia was going to the “East Room.” She’s probably somewhere in that addition, but where?

  The tracker.

  I told Mia the sticker on her neck was capable of all sorts of tricks, but really it’s nothing more than a GPS locator, seriously old tech. If I still had my Blackphone this would be child’s play, but even without it I can find her if the system here is set up like the ones on the West Coast. I tap through a few screens. Tracking a person would require a log-in that would compromise my identity. But I’m just doing an inventory check on the devices, same as any low-level worker could do.

  Bingo. The screen lights up, showing the location of trackers in the complex. A cluster of them are together far below, probably a storage room. But one is all by itself. In the east wing.

  Mia.

  I memorize the layout of the complex. We can’t go out the front door, obviously, but there are six emergency hatches. Four of them have scanners for access and actual guards. Two are in an unused section of the silo. Probably permanently sealed. I can probably take out the guards, although it’s risky with Mia in tow. I may have to take a chance on the others.

  Between Mia and the unused hatches are a number of those scanner doors, but I should be able to pop them open with the skeleton key. Until they figure out I’m gone and put the whole silo on lockdown.

  No time to waste.

  I set the terminal back to what it displayed when I found it. Another trip up the stairs takes me down a connecting passage to a second missile silo. Unlike the one I just left, this silo is still bare concrete, just a huge circle that once housed the actual missile.