Blind Instinct

by Fiona Brand

  She whirled and stared at…blankness.

  Hendricks stepped out of the shadows, his eyes empty. One arm hung limp and bloodied at his side. His Kevlar vest was punctured where he had taken multiple hits across the chest. A handgun was held loosely in his good hand. “Where did he go?”

  She suppressed a shiver. “He’s in the rocks somewhere. Be careful.”

  Hendricks edged between the rocks, staying flat. Something dark flickered at the edge of her vision. The detonation of a handgun split the air. Hendricks grunted and stumbled back. He was dead before he hit the sand.

  The cold breeze continued to flow across Helene’s face, tugging at her hair and making her feel every one of her seventy-two years. But her mind was clearer and sharper than it had ever been. Lopez and the sniper he had up in the hills, could see her, probably as plain as day, but neither would shoot.

  Not until Lopez had what he wanted.

  Bayard took the call at one in the morning. Hendricks and Larson had been found on a beach in Portland, Maine. They also had a lead on Helene. Courtesy of information from Marisa, they had been monitoring a shipping firm. The trucks had just rolled up to a warehouse in an industrial area just outside of Baltimore. According to their source, there was a ship on standby.

  Sara climbed out of bed and made coffee while he made calls and dressed. Bayard added milk to cool it down, then drank the coffee in steady gulps.

  When he kissed her, she clung, briefly. He had to go; it was his job. She discovered that she hated his job. “Be careful. I want you back.”

  When he was gone, she sipped coffee and turned on the TV, then, too restless to watch anything, turned it off. She walked through to the laundry, pulled clothes from the dryer and began folding them into piles. The T-shirt and pants Bayard had worn when he had rescued her for a moment brought back the darkness and confusion of the warehouse and Saunders’s prone body.

  She put the clothes away. The fake diamond studs she had worn to the reception were still sitting in a small dish on Bayard’s dresser. Another reminder of how badly things had gone wrong at the reception, because they simply weren’t dealing with people who had the usual criminal agendas.

  Something was wrong.

  She walked back to the sitting room and found her phone.

  The warehouse had to be a setup, a diversion. With all the publicity, and Reichmann/Cohen’s photograph being circulated amongst security and border agencies—not to mention the fact that the press were having a field day with the story—neither Helene nor Lopez would touch it. If they hadn’t already left the country, they should be solely concerned with getting out.

  If they had a normal, criminal agenda.

  She remembered the conversation in Rousseau’s office. Bayard had said Lopez was working on two levels; two of his men had been shot, his phone had been tapped.

  Just days ago Bayard had been an acknowledged target—and the warehouse was a location that guaranteed his attendance.

  Her heart slammed hard in her chest. She picked up her cell phone and speed dialed Bayard. When he didn’t answer, probably because he was using the phone, she tried Lissa’s number. Lissa picked up on the second ring. When Sara explained that she needed to get a message to Bayard and why, Lissa offered to try. “I’ll call you back in a few minutes.”

  Lissa hung up and Sara dialed Bayard again. When she was shunted through to his answering service, she left a message. “The warehouse is a setup, and so is the beach.”

  A whisper of sound made her stiffen. Cold metal gouged into the side of her neck.

  “Clever girl.”

  She stared into Stein’s—Lopez’s—eyes. There was no recognition. Nothing personal. For him she was a complication, nothing more. Killing her would just be business as usual.

  “You’re not frightened. Now that surprises me.”

  “If you were going to shoot, you would have done it by now.”

  Something changed in his gaze, although she didn’t make the mistake of assuming Lopez harbored any kind of human emotion. He was a coldly brilliant, clinically organized, psychopathic killer. When she had fulfilled whatever role he had assigned to her, he would execute her. “You’re right, I’m not going to kill you…yet. You’re my passport out of this country.”

  “He won’t stop until he finds you.”

  Lopez jerked his head in the direction of the door. At that second her cell phone rang.

  Bayard.

  The preprogrammed number of rings completed and the phone lapsed into silence. A message appeared on the screen. She had voice mail.

  “Put the phone down on the table.”

  He gestured with the gun and she moved back a step and watched as he listened to the message, then pocketed the phone.

  “Time to leave. Hold your hands out.”

  He produced a pair of cuffs.

  “You won’t get me out of the building wearing those.”

  He snapped the cuffs on, then slid a flat black case out of his coat pocket.

  A ripple of unease slid through her as he extracted a syringe and a small vial of colorless fluid from the case. “What is that?”

  His expression was peculiarly absorbed as he broke the seal on the vial and filled the syringe.

  When his gaze fixed on hers she realized he had heard her question, he just hadn’t bothered to respond. She was cuffed and under his control. He had neutralized the threat of the phone and now he was proceeding with the next step in his plan. If she registered at all, it was as a logistical problem, not a human being.

  She watched as he tested the syringe, the moment surreal. Within a short time she would be unconscious. When it suited him, he would kill her.

  She took a deep breath and waited. When his gloved fingers closed over her arm, she jerked her cuffed hands up in a two-handed punch. As a blow, it wasn’t that effective. She was too close, and she couldn’t get much swing, but it was enough to throw him off balance and release his hold. Shoving a chair in his path, she lunged for the hall and the front door. One step away from the door, he caught her arm and swung her in a short arc. She slammed into the wall hard enough that she saw stars. His weight pinned her and she felt the sting of the needle.

  He stepped back and she stumbled. Her head was throbbing and her mouth tasted of blood. Whatever it was he’d injected her with, it was already working. “You won’t get out of the building. Bayard has his people in place.”

  Lopez tossed Hudson’s and Glover’s IDs on the hall table. “Had. Past tense.”

  “You won’t get out of the country. The borders are being watched.”

  “Even Bayard can’t watch every part of every border.”

  Her stomach sank. He wouldn’t risk sea or air travel; he would be a sitting duck. A land crossing meant Mexico or, more likely… “Canada.”

  He said something in Spanish. She didn’t understand every word, but she understood enough. She was female, barely human. Of no importance.

  Which meant they were going to Canada.

  It made sense. The border was huge and difficult to control. People crossed back and forth on day trips and not every road had a checkpoint. There were plenty of wilderness places where anyone could simply walk across without being either seen or stopped. Added to that, the places that were checked were often flooded with tourists.

  “If we’re driving and you want to get me over the border, I’m going to need clothes.”

  The logic was unassailable. She was dressed for bed in a camisole and cotton drawstring pants. If he tried to haul her outside, they could get noticed. En route, the fact that she was dressed for bed would make her noticeable, which Lopez wouldn’t want.

  He jerked his head in the direction of the bedrooms. “Two minutes, no more.”

  He followed her through to Bayard’s bedroom, where most of her things were now stored. She collected socks, sneakers and track pants and quickly pulled them on. She no longer had Todd’s gun. Bayard had taken it along with all the other items she had
retrieved from the attic. She glanced at the earring with the transmitter and GPS device on the dresser and gauged her chances of getting it. Opening Bayard’s drawer, she took out one of his sweatshirts, then feigned a dizzy spell and dropped it over the earring. Sliding her hand beneath the sweatshirt, she palmed both earrings as she straightened.

  Lopez muttered a hard, flat phrase in Spanish. Her two minutes were up.

  She turned to face Lopez, supporting herself with one hand on the chest because already she was beginning to feel woozy. “You’ll need to take the cuffs off so I can pull the clothes on.”

  Lopez unlocked the cuffs and replaced them in his pocket, keeping the gun trained on her the entire time.

  Her fingers clumsy, and keeping the hand with the earrings closed, she dragged the sweatshirt over her head and shoved her arms through the sleeves. The faint scents of laundry powder and Bayard registered, and fierce emotion swamped her. The sweatshirt was large. Thick folds fell to just below her bottom, and the sleeves were long enough that they sagged down over her wrists, hiding the fact that she was holding something.

  While she’d pulled on the clothing, Lopez had found her handbag, upended it onto the bed, and pocketed her passport. He jerked the gun in the direction of the door, indicating that it was time to leave. When he didn’t make any comment about the fact that she was wearing a garment that was obviously too large for her, relief made her head swim. He had been focused on finding her passport, and hadn’t noticed anything suspicious about the clothing she had chosen. Even if Lopez suspected the sweater had originally belonged to Bayard, he probably thought she was frightened enough to need the comfort of her boyfriend’s clothing.

  Fighting waves of dizziness, she preceded him out of the apartment and into the corridor. As they waited for the lift, it registered that this time he hadn’t bothered with the cuffs, but that made sense. He had needed them to keep her under control while he had injected her, but she was now in no condition to fight him and they would be a liability while trying to move her out of the apartment and into a vehicle. With the drug taking effect, he could project the fiction that she was drunk and no one would take much notice.

  The elevator doors slid open. Lopez, gun held against one thigh so that it was almost invisible, gripped her arm and shoved her inside.

  The downward motion of the elevator made her stomach heave, and for a moment she thought she was going to be sick. The doors slid open and the much cooler air of the foyer flowed over her.

  Lopez jerked her into motion again. Jaw clamped, she fought to stay upright and mobile. She had no idea what he had injected her with, but she would fight it. She wasn’t experiencing any kind of euphoria; the predominant feeling was drowsiness and an increasing clumsiness. The probability that he had given her some kind of sleep-inducing drug was high.

  Fight the drug by making a conscious effort to stay alert. Hyperventilate to increase the amount of oxygen in the bloodstream. If you can get to water, drink as much as you can to flush the drug out of your system.

  She didn’t know where the information came from, it was possible she had read it, but she didn’t think so. The knowledge was simply there, a part of that new awareness.

  Sucking in a deep breath, she shuffled forward, delaying Lopez, although with Hudson and Glover both dead, the likelihood of rescue was slim. The harsh lighting in the foyer hurt her eyes, which had become ultrasensitive. Taking another deep breath, she lifted her head and looked directly into the security camera bolted above the front doors. That way Bayard would pay attention and get a good look at what she was holding in the palm of her hand.

  Seconds later they were out on the street. The breathing wasn’t working; her head felt thick, she was having trouble keeping her lids open, and her coordination was going.

  Light and shadow striped a van parked beside the curb. She lifted her head and tried to fix on details, but in the dim lighting she couldn’t make out the license plate. She hadn’t seen any sign of either Hudson or Glover, which meant Lopez must have concealed their bodies, probably in the janitor’s room. The thought that Harry Clare-mont, the janitor, was also probably dead made her feel sick to her stomach.

  Lopez slid the side door of the van open. For the short time that his attention was diverted, it occurred to her that she could make a break for it, but the thought was fleeting and distant. Her breathing was shallow and she was having trouble staying upright.

  Lopez half dragged, half carried her into the interior of the van. While he cuffed her to the steel frame of the seat, she kept her fingers closed grimly around the earrings.

  The side door slammed. Seconds later, Lopez slid into the driver’s seat and started the van. As they pulled out into traffic Sara noticed that someone was sitting in the passenger seat.

  A small shudder went down her spine when she recognized the back of Helene Reichmann’s head.

  Turning her attention to the earrings, she isolated the transmitterized one. Fighting lethargy, and a dangerous clumsiness in her fingers, she turned the bezel, switching the transmitter and the GPS on, then slipped the earring into her mouth and swallowed.

  Twenty-Five

  Bayard’s phone rang as he pulled in at the curb outside his apartment. Bridges had beat him by two minutes. He had found Hudson and Glover— both dead. Harry was okay, although still dazed. He had been knocked out and locked in the basement. Sara was gone, the apartment left wide-open.

  Bayard walked through the apartment, his jaw tight. Bridges hadn’t touched a thing. The two IDs Lopez must have taken off Hudson and Glover were still sitting on the dining table.

  Bridges poked his head through the door. “I’ve rewound the security tape.”

  Bayard secured the apartment and took the elevator down to Harry’s office.

  Bridges pressed a button on the VCR.

  Bayard watched the surprisingly crisp footage. When he saw Lopez herding Sara toward the front door, fear and raw panic briefly paralyzed him.

  Profilers had written endless papers on Lopez. He was a vicious and inventive killer, juggling modus operandi in a way that confused the purists. But there was one common theme—that Lopez was escalating in his behavior, becoming less and less able to hold to any kind of pattern.

  Given that he had spent years altering his appearance and remaining anonymous, he had taken a huge risk snatching Sara. His reasons in taking a hostage were clear enough, but the act itself bordered on insanity. He had exposed himself to security cameras and left a raft of DNA evidence.

  Although, as with everything he did, Lopez had achieved his purpose. In one stroke he had obtained a hostage and delivered a message. He had Bayard’s woman. If Bayard tried to stop him, he would kill her.

  Lopez also knew that he would follow.

  Bayard watched the footage as Bridges ran it through again. Lopez walking to the elevator then, approximately twenty minutes later, leaving with Sara. Sara lifting her head, her face bruised on one side, her eyes blank as she stared directly into the security camera.

  He frowned. Bridges replayed the last section of the tape. This time, instead of watching Sara’s face, he studied what she was wearing. An oversize sweatshirt shrouded her upper body, hanging down low enough that it skimmed her upper thighs. The sweatshirt was familiar—it was his— but that wasn’t what grabbed his attention. Something glinted in her palm.

  Bridges ran the tape again.

  His heart pounded once, hard, at the risk she had taken. “She’s got a GPS with her.”

  Bayard made a call. Minutes later, Lissa rang back. They had a signal.

  When Sara woke it was light and they were still driving, but with a difference. Skin crawling, she examined her immediate surroundings. At some point, Lopez had ditched the van and transferred her to the backseat of an SUV with darkly tinted windows. One wrist was shackled to a door handle and a blanket had been thrown over her, concealing her from anyone who might see into the car if a window was wound down or a door opened.

/>   She lay quietly for long seconds, systematically flexing muscles and gauging her condition. Aside from a few bruises and the headache, she felt surprisingly alert.

  Moving slowly, and keeping her expression slack, as if she were still fighting the drug, she eased into a sitting position and stared out of the window. The light was bright enough to hurt her eyes. She had no idea what the time was. At a guess, from the heavy traffic it wasn’t early, maybe nine or ten in the morning. They were in a sizable town. A sign flashed past. Rochester.

  The traffic slowed to a crawl—morning gridlock. Adrenaline surged, burning away the last remnants of lethargy.

  They were stopped in traffic now, with cars hemming them in from behind. The SUV inched ahead a few feet.

  Helene craned around, almost unrecognizable in a fluffy gray wig that made her look like everyone’s favorite grandmother. “She’s awake. You should have injected her the last time we stopped.”

  Lopez glanced in the rearview mirror. The chill that just looking at him gave her deepened. Wearing a fake salt-and-pepper beard, a pair of aviator sunglasses and a ball cap, she could have walked past him in the street and not recognized him.

  “The syringe is in the glove compartment,” he said flatly.

  The SUV moved forward, then came to a halt.

  Sara heard the click of the glove compartment.

  Helene leaned over the backseat with the syringe in her hand, her eyes cold. “If you give me any trouble I’ll shoot you. He’s the one who wants you along. I don’t.”

  Leaning over the headrest of her seat, she grabbed at Sara’s arm and peeled up her sleeve, but the angle was awkward. She leaned over farther. Sara kept her arm limp until all of Helene’s attention was on inserting the needle. Sucking in a breath, she twisted free, caught Helene’s wrist and jerked. She sprawled forward, her wig flying. The syringe dropped to the floor.

  Sara lunged for the syringe, but at that moment Lopez, aware that the syringe was rolling loose, accelerated then braked so that it rolled under the driver’s seat and out of her reach.