Jack Kilborn & Ann Voss Peterson & J. A. Konrath

by Flee - a Thriller

  She held out her hands, palms up. “I don’t have anything to cut the ties.”

  “Check the drawers.”

  She opened drawers and raked through their contents. Finally she held up a pair of utility scissors.

  “That should do it,” I encouraged.

  Below me, Cory groaned.

  The girl froze.

  “Hurry,” I whispered.

  The sound of my voice seemed to snap her out of her paralysis. She slipped the scissors’ blade under the tie binding my left wrist and cut.

  Needles of pain raced through my fingers. I pulled my arm free of the board and moved my hand, willing the blood to return. Then I took the scissors from her. My grip was weak and it took me several seconds to cut my other hand free.

  “What the hell is going on?” Cory’s words were sluggish, but the anger behind them rang loud and clear.

  Blood tingled through my right hand. I clawed at the Velcro straps pinning my head and shoulders to the backboard.

  “Di?” he bellowed again.

  She stared at me with wide eyes.

  I ripped the straps free and struggled to sit. My neck was still immobilized in the cervical brace. I hit my head on the overhead cabinet before I could scramble upright.

  “Di? I’ll fucking kill—”

  I swung off the counter and landed on him, straddling his body.

  He tried to bring his hands up, to grip the collar, to fight me off, but he was still recovering from the stun and his moves were clumsy and pathetic.

  I gripped his skull in my hands. I’d practiced the move many times, and I barely had to think. I gave a hard twist and felt his neck pop.

  He slumped back against the cabinets. His hands spasmed slightly before falling limp by his sides.

  “Cory!” Di screamed. “What did you do to him?”

  I climbed off his body and took off the cervical collar encasing my neck. I tossed it to the floor and started out of the kitchen.

  Di blocked my path. She held the scissors up in front of her, brandishing the blade like a knife.

  “Put the scissors down, Di.”

  “You killed him! You killed Cory!”

  “I just did you the biggest favor or your life. Someday you’ll thank me.”

  “No!” She flew at me, the scissors leading the way.

  I dodged the blades and answered with a solid right cross to the jaw.

  Di hit the table and crumpled to the floor beside Kaufmann. I hesitated for only a second, and then walked from the kitchen without looking back.

  “Drugs are tools,” The Instructor said. “Like any tool, they can be beneficial, or deadly. To know the effects these tools will have on your body, your training will require you to sample a wide variety of them. So get ready to get high with your Uncle Sam.”

  My thoughts were scrambled eggs, my fragile emotional state further degraded by pain, exhaustion, and an insurmountable list of things I had to do. Add in the norepinephrine I’d been injected with, and I was a nervous breakdown waiting to happen.

  Or perhaps it already had.

  Not that it mattered. I couldn’t let grief and helplessness overwhelm me again. When I’d lost Kaufmann, I wanted to die. Cory’s girl had made me realize I couldn’t allow myself that luxury. Things needed to be set right, and I was the only one who could do it.

  It didn’t take long to find one of Hammett’s bras tucked in the back of Victor’s drawer. I pulled it on, along with a long-sleeved tee, and added the jacket I’d worn to meet The Instructor. The yellow bag of cash was still tucked in the back of the closet. I shouldered it and wiped down everything in the apartment that I or Hammett might have touched, then called 911 to report a multiple murder and left.

  I took the stairs to the parking garage. The Instructor’s car was just where I’d left it, but the man himself was gone. I’d given him a big enough dose of amobarbital to still be asleep, so either Hammett had taken him, or he’d had back-up that I’d missed.

  The underground garage was dank and cool, chilling my damp hair and the new sheen of drug-sweat that was covering my body like an oily shroud. After checking the car over, I opened the door and slid behind the wheel. I reached under the seat. The Instructor’s computer was still there, so I fished it out it and woke it from sleep.

  Blips flickered to life on the touch screen. This time, an additional speck of light moved up Lake Shore Drive on her way to the John Hancock Center.

  Hammett was smart. It would take her a while to discover my hiding place, but eventually she’d find the transceiver. The same thing that had hamstringed me could work both ways: we both had trackers implanted in us. If she did get my cell phone, I’d still have a chance to figure out what she was planning to do with it and stop her.

  I focused on the blip north of Chicago in the ritzy suburb of Lake Forest. I’d lost Kaufmann, been set up by Victor and had misplaced The Instructor. The only other person I had ties to in this world was Jacob.

  Jacob, who was under siege.

  I needed a weapon.

  Though there were more Stretchers health clubs in the area with guns stashed in the lockers, I was thinking of something with a little more oomph. And I knew just where to get it. But before I could get anything, I needed to get my head straight. And the only way to do that was to neutralize the shit in my system.

  I started the car and headed south. Like many large cities, the line between affluence and poverty was often just a block. I followed West Cermak to South Martin Luther King Drive, drove past Washington Park and the adjacent University of Chicago, and then left onto 63rd. It took five minutes of circling the area before I found my first dealer.

  A black teen, in a 4XXXX white tee, wearing baggy jeans that would be around his ankles if he didn’t keep holding them up with his free hand. He had that thousand mile stare of someone who had seen combat, and perhaps this kid had. I parked ahead of him, grabbed some bills from my bag, got out of the car, and approached slowly with my hands at my sides. He probably had eyes on the street, covering him, and sure enough I spotted a shorty—a child no more than eight years old and dressed the same way. He was on his cell phone, no doubt talking about the white woman approaching.

  Though I’d never bought drugs in this neighborhood before, I was shaky, and no doubt looked strung out, which meant I shouldn’t arouse suspicion.

  “Coke,” I said, stopping two feet away from him. “Blow or crack, I don’t care.”

  “Well, what we got here?” He made a show of looking me up and down while he whistled through his teeth, showing me a gold grill. “You lost, little girl?”

  I blew a stiff breath out of my nostrils. This should be a simple transaction. I had money. He had product. Let’s make a deal. “You deaf, little boy? I want to buy cocaine. That’s the reason you stand here all day, right?”

  In a life undoubtedly plagued by bad choices, this dealer added one more. He decided to mess with me.

  “You look like you need it bad, ho. Maybe I make you suck my cock for it.”

  “Sorry, I already blew a sociopath today. One’s my limit.”

  “Then maybe you don’ get no rock.”

  “I have money,” I said, fighting the tremor in my voice. “Sell me something.”

  “Then get on yo knees, bitch.”

  “I have a better idea.”

  My palm hit him right in the upper lip, breaking both his nose and his 14k dental appliance. As he staggered back I whipped a leg around, caught him on the side of the head, and dropped him to the street. His skull bounced on the asphalt in a way that didn’t look healthy. The shorty watching took off in a run, and I squatted and searched the dealer’s pockets, patting him down, rifling through nickel bags of weed, balloons of heroin, and finally a vial of crack and a glass cigarette pipe. Even bleeding like a stuck pig and with a lump on his head big enough to rappel off, homeboy made a half-assed attempt to grab my wrist. He received a broken arm for his efforts.

  “Got a lighter?” I
asked him.

  “B…back… p…p…pocket.”

  I dug it out, tossed a crumpled twenty dollar bill onto his crying face, and hurried back to my car. When I was a good ten blocks away I pulled into a shopping center and prepared my fix.

  During training, I’d sampled a wide variety of drugs. The human body was a complicated machine and could be made to run better, or worse, with the right combination of substances. I tapped the crack rocks out of the vial and into the end of the glass tube. Then I used the lighter to heat them to the melting point and quickly sucked in the vapor they emitted.

  The effect was instantaneous. But rather than the euphoria normally associated with narcotics, instead I got quick relief from the norepinephrine that was causing havoc in my system. Cocaine blocked neurotransmitter receptors, preventing the reuptake of catecholamine. As a result, the shakes stopped, and I was able to concentrate for the first time in what felt like hours.

  I needed one hundred percent of my focus for what I had to do next.

  “Everyone is the enemy. You can put your trust in your handler, and in God, and that’s it. You may need to make allies to complete a mission, but these relationships should be abandoned as soon as the mission ends. Trust no one.”

  I circled the block where my apartment building was located two times, the first in the car, and the second on foot after parking next to a fire hydrant. I didn’t see any signs of cops or enemy combatants. My tablet showed no blinking dots in the vicinity.

  Maybe I’d get lucky for the first time today and be able to get what I needed from my place without having to fight for my life.

  As the sun dipped into the west, it had grown cooler. My senses weren’t functioning at peak level, due to all the crap still in my system, but the familiar smells of my neighborhood were somewhat reassuring. I did a brisk reconnoiter of my building, then ducked into the alley and discreetly counted bricks in the wall until I reached twenty-five across and six up. The mortar there was actually a loose mixture of sand and clay, and hidden between bricks was a spare key. I used this to open the back door and paused before entering.

  The building felt normal. No unusual sounds or scents. Not the hotbed of activity it must have been earlier. I padded in softly, making sure the door didn’t slam, stopping every few steps to listen. The elevator was out of service, yellow police tape stretched across it. I slipped into the stairwell and climbed quickly, staying on the balls of my feet. When I reached my floor I was slightly winded, and had broken out in a good, healthy sweat. So far so good.

  More police tape across the elevator, the doors still bent outward from the explosion. The spot where I’d killed the hitman had been cleaned. No chalk outline. That only happened in old movies. I thought back to the DoD report on him. Former KGB. Victor spoke flawless Russian with a native-born Pomor dialect, so I guessed there was probably a connection. This operation may have been too big for Hammett, and she brought in some hired help. Or worse, she sided with the enemy. I didn’t want to know what she promised those assholes in return for their cooperation. Those ex-KGB goons were bad news.

  My apartment door was closed, the wall next to it still pocked with bullet holes. I crept up silently, placed an ear to the door, and when I heard nothing out of the ordinary I slipped the key in and entered.

  I closed the door behind me, took two steps into my living room, and immediately all the hair stood up on my forearms. It was my proximity sense telling me I wasn’t alone in the apartment.

  I spun, raising my fists, falling into a fighting stance, and found myself staring at a woman with a gun.

  But this one, surprisingly, didn’t look like me. She was older, mid-forties, my size, long brown hair, a strong chin. Although her clothes were designer and her shoes expensive, I immediately made her as a cop, and a good cop at that. Calm and in control, with an assured, professional aura about her. As usual my mouth went dry, as it did whenever someone pointed a firearm at me, and I had to force myself to stand still.

  “Relax,” she said. “I’m one of the good guys.”

  I didn’t relax. Instead I found myself studying her posture, looking for an opening.

  “You’re calling yourself Carmen Sawyer,” the cop continued. “I’m Lieutenant Daniels, Homicide. Are you armed?”

  Not yet, I thought, eyeing her weapon. It was old school, a .38 Colt Detective Special.

  “I don’t want to shoot you, Carmen. But you’re making me uncomfortable the way you’re sizing me up, and I wouldn’t want to get nervous and accidentally pull the trigger, which, as you see, is fully cocked. So please answer me. Are you armed?”

  “No.”

  “Can you do a turnaround and show me?”

  I lifted my shirt up over my belly and did an easy three-sixty.

  “Pants too, if you don’t mind.”

  I hiked up my jeans on both sides, showing my socks.

  “Isn’t this the part where you tell me to get down on my knees, hands behind my head, and read me my rights?” I asked. I knew ten different ways to disarm a cop who tried to arrest me.

  “I haven’t decided yet. Right now I just want to talk.”

  “Tough to talk with a gun pointed at you.”

  “If I lowered the gun, would you relax a bit?”

  I nodded. She lowered the gun. I made myself appear more relaxed, but I was still a coiled spring, waiting to pounce.

  “I’ve had to deal with a lot of dead bodies on this shift,” Daniels said. Though her weapon was at her side, she still had her finger in the trigger guard. “Not just here at your place, but all around the city. I’d really appreciate your help sorting this out.”

  “You’re being awfully polite.”

  “Don’t confuse that with weakness.” She gave me a hard look, as if to illustrate her point. “Now please tell me what’s going on.”

  “I’ve had one heck of a day, Lieutenant, and I’m sort of in a time crunch.”

  “Call me Jack. What can I call you? There are no public records of Carmen Sawyer. No history at all. Your ID is bogus. We had a team in this room for three hours, couldn’t find a single thing about you. No pictures. No personal documents. Computer is clean. Not even a fingerprint in the place. What kind of person lives in an apartment for over a year and doesn’t leave her prints?”

  “Maybe I’m just exceptionally tidy.”

  Jack’s eyes crinkled a bit, but the smile didn’t reach her mouth. “You’re very much in demand right now, Carmen. My superiors want you. The Feds want you. Some guys in black suits who won’t say who they work for want you. There are so many charges against you, you’ll need a busload of lawyers just to sort them all out. You also seem to be drawing the attention of a certain criminal element.” She paused, as if for dramatic effect. “Some of them look a helluva lot like you.”

  I gave her a one-shouldered shrug. “I have one of those faces.”

  “Actually, you have four of those faces. Three of them are currently in Cook County Morgue.”

  I took a careful step forward, trying not to appear threatening.

  Jack instantly raised her gun back up, aiming at my center mass. Her hand was remarkably steady. “Please stay where you are, Carmen. I don’t want to shoot you, but people have a tendency to die in your presence, and I don’t want to be one of them.”

  Contrary to the adversarial nature of our current relationship, I was starting to like this woman. “So what do you want, Jack?”

  “To take you in.”

  I gave my head a small shake. “I can’t allow that.”

  “I can promise you protection.”

  “No. you can’t. They’ll kill me.”

  “I won’t let them.”

  “Then they’ll kill you, too. Besides, I have things I need to do.”

  “Who do you work for?” Jack asked.

  I let out a short, abrupt laugh. “Seriously?”

  Jack shrugged her shoulders, but her aim didn’t waver. “It was worth a shot.”

  “
Let’s just say I’m a public employee, like you.”

  “That’s what I figured. And it’s the only reason you aren’t in handcuffs right now. Are you CIA? NSA?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “So far every corpse we’ve found appears to be a case of self-defense,” Jack said. “I could be wrong, of course. According to the FBI, you’re a dangerous terrorist, hell bent on overthrowing the government. But to me it looks more like you’re being pursued. So why come back here? No one thought you would.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I had a hunch.”

  “Don’t you Homicide cops travel in twos?” I asked.

  “My partner is close by. So why did you come back here, Carmen?”

  I didn’t answer, watching as Jack sorted it out.

  “There’s still something here,” she eventually said. “Something you need. What is it?”

  “Floorboards, beneath you.” I hoped she would look down. She didn’t.

  “What’s there? Top secret documents? Or are the fibs right, and it’s a plan to assassinate the President?”

  “Just my sniper rifle.”

  “What do you need that for?”

  My turn to shrug. “Sniping.”

  We stared at each other for a minute, then Jack lowered her gun again. “I want to help you, Carmen. But to do that, you’re going to have to trust—”

  On Jack’s last word I rushed her, coming up underneath the .38, chopping at her wrist with the heel of my hand. Either fatigue and pain had slowed me down, or the cop was faster than she should have been, because Jack dodged the move and brought an elbow down on my shoulder, driving me to the left. I took an extra step to correct my balance and found myself looking at the wrong end of a spin-kick. I raised up my hands, taking the hit in the forearms instead of my head, and then Jack was dancing around my other side, raising the gun again. But I anticipated the move, striking the back of her hand. The gun went flying, and for a brief, eternal moment we watched it arc through the air, then land on the sofa on the other side of the room.

  Jack backpedalled, getting between me and the sofa, and then kicked off her shoes and struck a Dwi Koobi stance—a defensive posture used in taekwondo, with one foot in front of the other and both fists raised.