by Blake Dixon
That was also why she couldn’t trust Kane. He was operating outside the book.
Jude was nearing the neighborhood now. Still had to use an Agency sedan, but he’d gotten one without government tags hoping the vehicle wouldn’t scream ‘feds’ quite so loudly. “So, this team leader,” he said to Kane. “Who is he?”
“Some guy.” Kane smirked. “They call him Tiger.”
“Hilarious.”
“Really. They do,” he said. “All of them have stupid code names.”
“So what’s yours?”
“Fluffy.”
“Fine, don’t tell me.”
“Wasn’t planning on it.” Kane looked briefly out the side window. “We’re about there,” he said. “Keep an eye out.”
“For what?”
“Suspicious things.”
“Got it.” Far as Jude was concerned, everything around here looked suspicious. This wasn’t the best neighborhood. In fact, it was about the last place you’d expect to find a cigar lounge — which was probably why the cover for the merc bar worked. Nobody went into that building looking to buy expensive cigars.
Coming up on the turn for the drop-off, he spotted a figure standing in the shadow of an alley, staring at the sedan. Couldn’t make out much beyond a furtive posture and the suggestion of hardware. “Kane. Your ten,” he said.
Kane looked. “Keep driving,” he said in low tones. “And don’t stare.”
Jude obliged, setting his gaze on a light pole three blocks ahead. He caught a glimpse at the corner of his eye as they passed the figure — a shift in the shadows, head turning to track the sedan. “Was that one of them?”
“Not sure. Didn’t want to take the chance, though,” Kane said. “Take your next right.”
He signaled and turned on Junction Lane. “Should I double back at the next block?”
“Nah. Drop me at the corner,” he said. “Think I can make an extra two blocks.”
Jude drove to the next intersection and pulled over in front of a darkened tenement building. “Don’t see any more lurkers,” he said. “You?”
“Looks clear.” Kane reached for the door handle, then paused and turned toward him. “I’m getting the impression that you trust me, Wyland.”
“I do.”
“Well, you shouldn’t. I’m not your partner anymore.” He stared past him for a moment, shook his head and refocused. “Good chance I’ll have something to go on tonight, after this,” he said. “I’ll call when I’m done.”
Jude nodded. “I’ll be waiting.”
“I don’t get you, Boy Scout.”
“Yeah. That makes two of us.”
Kane snorted and popped the door open. “You don’t think like the rest of them,” he said. “You should probably keep that up.”
“That’s the plan.”
“Uh-huh. When you get me, bring more of that protein crap.” He got out, closed the door and walked away.
Jude watched him a minute, considering. He didn’t know what all that was about. It kind of sounded like a warning.
But he had no idea what he was being warned about.
He put the car in gear and headed in the opposite direction. With the chance he was being watched, he had to get out of this neighborhood. Probably further than he’d planned. Still, he’d come back when Kane called.
And he’d bring more protein crap.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Jude parked the sedan around the back side of an executive plaza with a view of some country club or another. Not the one that bordered the Noakes house. He’d grabbed a takeout dinner and a few bottles of Muscle Milk. It’d been an hour now since he dropped Kane off — not long enough to worry, but too long to do much of anything else.
He flipped idly through his phone, tapping the calendar, the photo album, the address book. His eye fell on a name: Dottie Noakes. After the interview with her, the little girl’s mother had given him her cell number and asked him to call if he found anything. She’d also been insistent that Bromwell couldn’t have anything to do with the kidnapping. She could be really upset right now if she heard he’d been arrested. Especially if the details of what they found got out.
He’d give her a call. Just to see how she was doing.
The phone rang four times before she picked up with a cautious, “Hello?”
He realized he hadn’t given his number in return, so she wouldn’t recognize it. “Mrs. Noakes, it’s Jude Wyland,” he said. “The private investigator.”
“Oh, Mr. Wyland.” Her tone changed to a terrible sort of hope. “Have you found anything about my daughter?”
He hated to disappoint her. But at least it sounded like she hadn’t heard about Bromwell. “No, ma’am, not yet. I do have a very strong lead that may be about to pan out.”
“A lead?” she said. “To what?”
“Can’t really say, until I know more.” He didn’t want to give her false hope, and he definitely didn’t want to mention mercenaries in the same breath as her daughter. “I just wanted to check in with you. See how you’re holding up.”
After a beat, she said, “That’s very kind of you.” Her tone struggled to hold its shape, and he knew she was still on the sedatives. “To be honest, it all seems to blend together. It feels like weeks since … since they…”
“I understand.” He didn’t want her to have to say it out loud. “How about your husband?” he said, a gentle attempt to steer the conversation away from directly discussing Valerie.
“Oh. Poor Gary is so lost,” she said. “Vallie is his whole world. Our world. He hardly knows what to do with himself.” She made a brief, choked sound. “Just yesterday, after he spoke with that man from the CIA again, he was talking about going to our cabin on the lake. Taking Vallie on vacation, getting us away from all this stress. Just as if she’d never … he broke down and cried, right in the middle of saying so. It was awful.”
“Yes, it must have been.” That was exactly the kind of muddled shock he’d figured the D.A. was mired in, the half-dreaming, non-reality state that would lead a man to sit in a country club sauna and do nothing while his daughter was missing. Even his tough ex-Navy father had gone through it when they took Amy. “Mrs. Noakes, I meant what I said. I will get your daughter back.”
A startled sob came from the other end of the phone. “I hope that you can, Mr. Wyland,” she said. “Thank you for calling.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll keep you posted.”
He’d no sooner ended the call when his phone rang, flashing the non-specified government caller ID. He answered with a simple, “Yeah.”
“Come get me. Same place you dropped me off.”
Kane. “All right,” he said. “I’m about fifteen minutes out.”
“Guess I’ll stand here for fifteen minutes, then.”
And he was gone.
Casting a rueful smile at nothing in particular, Jude started the sedan and popped it into gear. ‘Easy to work with’ did not describe Garrett Kane.
But at least he was getting easier to read.
The neighborhood felt a lot more deserted when Jude drove back in and headed for Kane’s location. Few cars, fewer people. Not a sign of anyone lurking in alleys and watching him. That should’ve been a good sign, but it put him on edge.
The edge got sharper when he reached the drop-off point and saw no sign of Kane.
He’d slowed the car, intending to pull over. Instead he crept the rest of the way to the corner, made a right and did a slow circuit around the block. Checking to see if maybe Kane had gone to the place he’d dropped him off the first time.
No one there, either.
Frowning, he headed once more to Junction Lane and made a right. Just as he pulled to the curb, his phone went off.
He answered immediately. “Kane?”
“Yeah, I had to move. They were tailing me.”
“Where are you?”
“You at the drop-off?”
“How do you think I knew you weren’t?�
��
“Right,” Kane said. “Hang left at the corner, then take your third right. That’ll be Huntsman. There’s a basketball court two blocks down on the left. I’m there.”
“On the way.”
“Watch your six, Boy Scout.”
Jude stopped breathing. Another warning — one that went way back. “What am I watching for?” he said slowly.
“Just make sure you’re not followed. Got something to show you, when you get here.”
Kane hung up.
He spent a full minute scanning the area, looking for possible tails before he pulled onto the road and made the left turn. No other vehicles. No people, lurking or otherwise. He drove the three blocks at half-speed, took the right onto Huntsman. Spotted the chain-link fence of the basketball court ahead and parked at the curb across the street.
A solitary figure stood at the far end of court beneath a light pole, hands in his pockets. Kane. He made no move to approach the car.
Jude checked his piece, got out and jogged across the road. The gate at the front stood open. He passed through and headed toward Kane, keeping to the fence rather than making himself a target by crossing the open court.
He saw no one except Kane.
“Well?” he called, closing the last few feet to stop in front of the man. “What are you showing me?”
A muscle twitched along Kane’s jaw. “Sorry, man,” he said. “They made you.”
He was too shocked to react fast enough when the gun came out, too slow to deflect the blow from the butt of the weapon aimed at his temple.
At least the explosion of pain was brief, before blackness took over.
Chapter Thirty-Three
When consciousness came back, Jude’s head didn’t hurt as much as he expected. Might’ve been because his shoulders and wrists hurt more. He couldn’t tell exactly how or where, since there was a rough-weave fabric something over his head, but his hands were definitely tied behind his back.
He’d only stirred an inch or so when the fabric was yanked away, forcing him to squint against the light that stabbed his eyes. He blinked slowly to clear his vision.
A hand waved in front of his face. “Guess he’s not dead after all,” a male voice said. Not Kane. “Oh, Mr. Fed Man. You’re gonna wish you were, real soon.”
Jude tried to focus on him. Vague recognition, like he’d seen a mug shot of the guy somewhere, but he couldn’t put a name to it. Dark blond hair, days-old scruff, dressed in thug casual and a wicked sneer.
The man didn’t know his name. He wished he could take that as a good sign.
Ignoring the taunt for now, he assessed as much of the situation as he could. He was seated on a flare-back wooden chair, arms wrenched behind him and tied tight with rope. Stained concrete floor, steel walls, dim light that failed to reach the furthest corners of the space. Probably a warehouse. Besides the man directly in front of him, two more flanked him loosely. None of them were Kane. But a slight shuffle behind him suggested a fourth he couldn’t see.
He wanted to believe Kane hadn’t double-crossed him. It didn’t make sense telling him to watch his back, if he was only going to stick a knife in it. But this sure as hell felt like a setup — one he wasn’t getting out of.
“That knock to the head make your tongue fall out, or what? Maybe this’ll loosen you up, Fed.”
The blond backhanded him.
Jude’s head snapped aside with the force. He caught a breath, spat on the concrete floor. Tasted blood. After a beat, he faced front slowly and stared at the man. “I’m not a fed.”
“Really.” The man held up a slim black bifold. “This badge says otherwise, Agent Wyland.”
So much for the no-name theory.
“We hear you CIA boys have taken an interest in our operation,” the man said. He tossed the badge aside to land with a faint slap on the floor. “We don’t like it.”
Jude sneered. “I wonder who told you that.”
“Oh, you know. A little bird.” The two behind him snickered. “Here’s the deal,” he said. “I want to know everything the Feds know about the operation.”
“Let me guess. If I tell you, you’ll go easy on me.”
More laughter. “Hell, no. We’re going hard, no matter what you say.” He stepped forward, caressing a fist. “Tell you what, though. You cooperate, make me believe you’re giving me everything? I promise I won’t kill that pretty young thing you’re working with … what’s her name again?” A slow grin spread on his face. “Natalie Moore.”
The words were a sharp blow. There was only one way he could’ve known that.
Kane had done exactly what Rubin said he would. Switched sides.
And Jude was a dead man.
He barely had time to consider that before the beating started. And they went hard. For the first long minutes, they didn’t even ask any questions — just took turns hitting him, all four of them. The one who’d been behind him joined in. He wasn’t Kane, either.
By the time the questions came, he wasn’t sure he could get enough breath to speak.
A hand grabbed his shirt and jerked forward, dragging the chair a few inches across concrete with a sharp squeal. “How many of your agent friends know about the operation, Fed?” the blond snarled.
He laughed. It was a rusty sound, but at least he could still make it. “All of them.”
“How many?” Another backhand impacted his face.
Jude said nothing.
The blond growled and cocked a fist. “How many, damn it?”
“Enough,” said a voice from the shadows beyond his tormentors.
Instantly, the blond let go of Jude’s shirt and stepped back, wiping his bloodied hands on his jeans. “Sorry, Tiger,” he said. “You wanted to get some time in with this asshole, right? He’s all yours.”
Jude’s gut knotted in on itself. He knew what was coming, seconds before the shadowed figure stepped into the light.
Tiger was Garrett Kane.
“Move.”
The single soft word from Kane had the thugs scrambling out of the way. He walked deliberately toward Jude, his face a frigid mask. “I told you this would happen, Boy Scout,” he said. “You should’ve left me there.”
Jude was too furious to speak.
Before he could decide whether to spit on him or ignore him, Kane lashed out. A fist like a battering ram plowed into his stomach. The blow lifted the front of the chair, knocking the whole thing backwards, and the impact with the floor battered the breath from him.
White flashes swarmed over his vision, clearing abruptly when a hand fisted his hair. Kane, looming over him the wrong way. He started hauling him up by the scalp, then braced his other hand behind the chair and pushed the rest of the way, standing behind him.
And he slipped something into Jude’s left hand. Slender, round, metal. He tried to feel the object, and found he could move his wrists more than before. Kane had loosened the ropes.
The round something ended in a short, sharp blade. A penknife.
He didn’t dare look at Kane as the man circled around to stop in front of him. He was busy sawing through the closest rope, as fast as possible. Maybe this was Kane’s plan all along — but if that were the case, he had no idea what the end game was.
Until Kane drew his gun, and he was looking down the barrel of a very specific end game.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Tiger, what the hell are you doing?” one of the other thugs said. “Boss wants this guy alive until we get everything out of him.”
Kane held the gun steady. “I know this guy. He’s not cracking,” he said. “We’ll have to take him out to the boss, so he can deal with him directly.”
Jude frowned, searching the man’s face for any indication of what he was doing. But his expression was inscrutable. He was almost through the rope, at least. One of the thugs had taken a position behind him again, and the other three were grouped loosely past Kane. If he had to, he’d try taking them with the penknife, starting
with the one behind him. Unless it turned out Kane wasn’t lying about bringing him to the boss.
For now he kept going, kept waiting for a sign. One way or the other.
“Aw, hell,” the blond said. “Let me break him. I can keep toolin’ up on him all night—”
“Until he dies. You don’t know shit about torture, Shank. It’s an art form.” Kane’s stare didn’t leave Jude. “We’re bringing him to the boss. His car, too,” he said. “What’s the address on that big operation? I haven’t been out there yet.”
The first thug spoke up again. “Thirty fifteen Holland, by that storage place on Dam Neck.”
A quick grin flashed across Kane’s face as his finger settled on the trigger. “Thank you.”
He fired the gun.
Jude felt the wind of the bullet passing his face, and heard a thud as the man behind him dropped.
“Move faster, Boy Scout!” Kane shouted, whirling to fire again. Another thug dropped. A rapid-fire third shot winged the one who’d given the address, spinning him half around. And the blond, the one called Shank, had his weapon out.
Jude tore free of the nearly severed ropes with a single hard yank, dove for the floor just in time for Shank’s bullet to fly over him. He batted the chair aside, half-stood and lurched for the dead man behind it.
Three shots rang out before he pulled the dead thug’s gun, rolled and took aim at the action. Kane was down, attempting to line a shot from a prone position with a dead body for cover, but Shank had a bead on him.
Jude fired. A black hole blossomed in Shank’s forehead, oozing a single bead of blood as he thumped bonelessly to the floor.
“Anyone else still breathing in here?” Jude called.
There was a faint groan, some rustling as Kane shifted away from the corpse of Merc Thug Number Three. “Just the two of us,” he said. “And if you’re planning to make it just one of us, Wyland, you’d better be sure I’m dead.”