by Jade Powers
“Are you going to buy anything?” asked the clerk. That woman was so annoying. Lauren couldn’t believe that some people could be so insensitive.
“No.”
“Then you should wait outside. We don’t allow loitering.”
Outside. There were a lot of subdivisions and suburbs between here and Miami. Chances were good that her kidnappers were long gone, but Lauren wasn’t about to risk it. She said, “That’s okay. I’ll wait here.”
“Not if you don’t buy something. I’ll call the police.”
“You do that,” Lauren said. She probably should have called them herself. Somehow when she got to the mini-mart, her only thought was to call Drake. Funny that. Call her ex-boyfriend to help save her current boyfriend.
Although he wasn’t really. Not yet. At the moment Lucas was just a one-night stand. She’d like more than one night. Lauren hoped she would have plenty of time to decide exactly how much Lucas meant to her.
Chapter 6
LUCAS IMMEDIATELY PUT a hand to his cheek, feeling his face. The slightest pressure on the bruise sickened him. He felt it in the top of his stomach, a queasy turbulence wanting peace. He was chained to a pole in a warehouse. The chains had some length.
Any movement sent daggers of pain to his temples. Ignoring the pain, Lucas propped himself up by leaning against the pole. Tom was chained nearby. He was unconscious, perhaps drugged. Since Tom was also shackled, Lucas didn’t think he was dead. The guy behind the other steel door, the one Lucas hadn’t seen before was chained up at another pole.
At first Lucas thought there were no guards. Until he noticed the cameras. The black half-spheres dotted the ceiling of the warehouse. When he looked up, the warehouse spun in a dizzying spiral that made him want to throw up.
Like a drunk he weaved to the pole with the chain attached at the bottom. Between the weight of the metal links attached to his feet and the head injury, Lucas could barely move. It took him a minute to realize that Lauren was missing. For the first time, the kidnapping felt real. This was no longer a game. Lucas always had a sense of indestructibility. He never really thought he would die. Like, ever. But not seeing Lauren scared him badly.
Sinking to the floor, Lucas rested his back against the pole. His wrists chafed beneath the metal. His mouth was so dry he felt like someone had lined his gums with chalk. His thirst was deep.
When the door opened in the distance, scraping against the concrete with a squeal fit for a horror movie, Lucas turned his head to see who it was. The sudden movement hurt. Lucas squeezed his eyes shut. By the time he opened them again, a man stood over him.
Morris.
Shit.
Morris was the boss, not from his IT job, but his sleuthing and sneaking for McFarland. Morris knelt down with a huge key ring and unlocked the chains binding Lucas’ hands and feet. Lucas was confused, doubly so with the head injury.
“Come on. I’ll drive you home.” Morris held out a hand and helped Lucas up, which confused him more. He was relieved, so relieved to be free. After hours expecting a bullet to the head, Lucas couldn’t believe his luck. At the same time he felt guilty, as if he were betraying Lauren by accepting the freedom.
Lucas shook his head, “What just happened?”
Morris slapped Lucas on the shoulder with that football coach grin and said, “Wanted all the glory, huh? Your little solo plan would have worked better if you’d checked in first. Joint mission. We’re working together with SpaceTech on this one.”
Lucas lowered his voice. “Wait, but I thought I was supposed to watch SpaceTech? How are we now on their side?”
“Money.” Morris stood like a weight lifter, shoulders thrown back, muscles tight. His focus shifted from time to time to Tom and the other prisoner.
“Where’s Lauren?” Lucas groaned as a sharp stabbing pain accosted his face, and he put a hand to his head.
With a deep sigh, Morris put his thumbs in the loops of his jeans and shook his head, eyes going to the rafters, “Those idiots. They were going to shoot her in that park where all the drug deals go down. She got away.”
That was a double relief. First that she got away. Second that she wouldn’t see him turned loose like the traitor he felt himself to be. Lucas wondered if Morris felt any compunction against kidnapping. He followed his boss’s gaze to the man still unconscious on the concrete. Lucas said, “Kidnapping. That’s big.”
“Yeah. Gonna be murder, though. That’s bigger.” Lucas swallowed when Morris’s eyes cut him up one side and down the other. Lucas was going to fail this test so hard.
“Jumping walls is one thing, but this...” Lucas spread his hands out and almost lost his balance. Then he laughed, “Shit. I feel like I’m stoned. That guy hits like a tank.”
Morris wasn’t willing to change the subject. He looked like a fox, tracking Lucas, watching for any sign of rebellion. He grabbed Lucas by the arm and said, “You have to forget you saw this. Kid, they will track you down and kill you in cold blood if they get the slightest sense that you’re a squealer.”
“What about Tom and that other guy? Did they squeal? Why are their lives worth less than mine?” Lucas shouldn’t push. He knew he shouldn’t, but he was so damn tired. His head hurt and he couldn’t leave while knowing what was going down.
“Wrong time. Wrong place. Drake and his squad went off the rails. The only way to touch Drake is through his men. Damn stubborn ass.” One might think by his words that Morris hated the guy, but the admiration was equally evident.
“Morris, we can’t let this happen. Since when do we kill people? This is America. Stuff like that doesn’t happen.”
“I forget what an innocent you are. You’re a savant in the crime world.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“The fence jumps and planting bugs, computer tapping and spying. You’re a criminal mastermind until it comes to actually doing something real, then you fall apart,” Morris stood a few inches shorter than Lucas, but sometimes Lucas felt small next to him. The guy made an impression. He was balding on the top of his head, and that bald spot carried two scars. Lucas had never asked what they were from, and Morris never told him. In the two years they’d worked together, Lucas had spent enough time with Morris to consider him a friend.
“Let’s say I fall apart here. Let’s say I can’t abide the murder of those two men for whatever reason. What happens to me?”
“I’ll shoot you myself if you honk up our business.”
So not friends after all.
Lucas swallowed hard. He rubbed the bruise on his wrist, a left-over remnant from the chains. Morris could be a stone wall sometimes. Unreadable. Lucas blinked when he finally understood. Morris wasn’t kidding. When he said he’d shoot Lucas, he would actually pull the trigger himself. He wouldn’t get one of those bozos upstairs to do it.
Lucas grinned and slapped Morris on the shoulder, “You should have seen your face. Oh my god, it was so funny. I’m solid. Let’s get out of here. First I have to take a piss.”
That blank stare suddenly loosened, and Morris smiled. “Bathrooms are through that door and to the right. I’ll wait for you here.”
Lucas focused on each step. His feet felt like pins and needles. He glanced to Tom when he walked by. Tom had given himself up to save his son, Bryce, who was just a few years younger than Lucas. Hell, he met with Bryce every Friday. How was he going to explain leaving the guy’s dad to die. Tom’s eyes were closed. It didn’t make it easier.
Like Lucas, Tom wore the bruises of brutal captivity. Someone had punched him a few times. Lucas felt a bond with this fellow captive. Maybe Lucas could help.
Pushing the door on the bathroom, Lucas found a urinal and did his business. The warehouse was a veritable mine of cameras. Lucas had bugged bathrooms before. He had to assume he was being watched here as well.
After the zip-up, he leaned toward the mirror. He poked his own bruise a few times to make it look good if anyone was watching. The poke really di
d give Lucas a queasy feeling. He ran for the stall, opening the door, his gut roiling.
He thought he was fake puking. Between the heat of the bathroom and the stench of old urine, once he started gagging, it took over for real. Lucas dropped the watch with the tracking device behind the toilet while he bent over the bowl. That would lead Sven and his team to Tom. Hopefully Sven would be the next person to see that watch.
If anyone else found it, he was screwed. Morris would know what it was and where it came from. Then it would be all over for Lucas. When he was done, he washed the good half of his face, wiping with a paper towel. He nearly stumbled when he rounded the corner into the warehouse.
Morris chuckled, “Come on, kid. Let’s get you back home. You look like day-old crab meat.”
Probably smelled like it, too. The warehouse didn’t exactly have premium air conditioning. They walked outside together. Morris in his jeans and cowboy boots, looking all the world like a misplaced Texan. His long jacket hid the gun. People like Morris knew how to blend even while they stood out.
Last week Lucas would have felt safe with Morris, content in the passenger seat listening to oldies. Now he was twitchy. He forced his fingers to relax on his knee when he wanted to fidget. It didn’t help that he still felt achy and foggy and frantic to figure out what happened to Lauren.
Morris noticed. Of course he would notice. The guy caught every nuance in a situation.
Morris said, “You okay?”
“Sure.”
“You don’t sound okay.”
Lucas watched the palm trees and the traffic and didn’t speak for a moment. Collecting thoughts when your head ached was like trying to catch a run-away dog. And damn if that dog didn’t want to be found. He needed the lie couched in truth. He said, “I’m in way over my head. Those guys will remember me. I screwed up. And I’m in love with the girl, so there.”
Morris rumbled. His voice was so deep that some of his grunts and grumbles sounded like a mastiff protecting his chow bowl from another dog. He said, “You go to your other job tomorrow and forget anything happened. If you chase this girl, you’ll be murdered. She’s already on their list.”
“Why?”
“Don’t be naïve. She worked for Drake, took a job with Kendall, and within a week betrayed her new boss. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out that she’s not long for the world.”
“But why kill her? She hasn’t done anything, doesn’t know anything.” Lucas felt dizzy watching the speed of the houses and the light poles. He needed to make this right, needed to save Lauren. He was the one who had helped her—right into this mess. Without Lucas, Lauren wouldn’t have done anything. And none of this made any sense, anyway. They were all supposed to be on the same team, working toward the same goal. Infighting to the point of espionage and murder was ridiculous.
Morris explained with quiet authority. “She saw Kendall’s men, scoped out his compound, and called the cops on him. Even if he can sweep it away, and believe me, he can, she is marked.”
Lucas added guilt to his repertoire of bad feelings. Lauren would pay the penalty, even though he was the one to find the compound. He was the one to jump the gate leaving Lauren in a conspicuous place. He was the one to abandon her to an unknown fate while he fled. When Morris said all of those things about Lauren, how she saw Kendall’s men and scoped out his compound, in his mind, Lucas said, So did I.
The next logical step. They would come for him, too. “When Kendall’s men come for me, what should I say? I thought he was working against McFarland.”
“He is. This is a temporary alliance. No one will come for you unless you get involved again. If you do, you’re through with us, and Kendall can do what he wants with you. Your payment has been transferred to your account. We’ll be in touch when we’re ready for more.”
Payment. So they believed he was doing this for money, not Lauren. Lucas forced a smile. It hurt his cheek. It hurt his soul. Lauren would hate him when she found out. She would never speak to him again. Of all of the things to ponder at that moment, he thought of her long dark hair that smelled of spring and the way her mouth tasted when they kissed.
There wasn’t much he could say, so Lucas said, “Okay.”
The last few minutes of the drive, Morris turned up the music and ignored Lucas, which was fine with him. Lucas was torn between attraction for a woman he barely knew and his life.
Lucas thanked Morris for the lift. In his normal exuberance, he would have taken the stairs two at a time to the second floor in a half-sprint, half-bounce. Today, he walked like an old man.
The sun was going down, and tomorrow would be filled with tech problems. Maybe he would call in sick. When McFarland had tapped him for a spy, Lucas hadn’t gone the whole way to mobsters and mafia in his imagination. Corporate espionage seemed legitimately safe. It never occurred to him that a CEO might put out a hit on someone Lucas investigated. Now that he knew the risks and the pain, he wanted out. He wasn’t sure he had a choice.
The shower felt good to his salt-slicked skin. He scrubbed the useless camouflage makeup from his face but working around that bruise turned the whole process into a nasty gut-wrenching process. The water washed away the sweat and stench from being held prisoner overnight. It also woke him. He had the means to find Lauren. She had a tracker. If they hadn’t found it yet, Lucas could figure out what they’d done with her.
He quashed the next thought, the idea that Lauren might already be dead. She could have been, but Lucas felt like he would know. To have the kind of connection they had. Sure, it was only the one time, but the way they fit together, he would know if something really bad had happened. He would know.
Lucas shut off the shower instantly and grabbed the towel coming out. He didn’t even bother dressing, but went straight to his computer and turned it on naked. While it booted up, he pulled on underwear and a black t-shirt. He clicked the tracking program, Global Tracking Maps and pulled on a pair of shorts. Normally he’d wear Birkenstocks around the house. Without his car, he’d have to find an alternate means of transportation. The bus and metro would be his best option. He had to assume his apartment was watched. A taxi driver could be questioned. Maybe he could call a taxi from another location.
The sun had set again, and the city had stretched and opened its eyes, leaving a thousand twinkling globes to brighten the palm fronds. Miami felt happy at night. A hallucination or mirage perhaps, but Lucas loved Miami after dark.
Lucas quickly plugged the device into GT Maps, an ever-expanding program that completely lacked information about those quiet little towns and wide stretches of forest. GT made up for this lack with abundant and detailed information about the big cities, Miami, Los Angeles, New York.
When the computer spit out a hotel name, Lucas re-ran the coordinates again. It didn’t make sense that Lauren would stay at a hotel, and this was one of those fancy hotels for the rich—unless she had found a way to contact Sven and Drake, in which case, he needn’t worry.
Lucas longed for sleep, a long comfy night on his queen sized bed. He had just washed the sheets on Friday, in case he and Lauren hit it off. They were a siren song calling him for just a few hours, just a tiny little nap.
Lucas grabbed his wallet. He knew it was a warning, that Morris had recovered the wallet for Lucas, but not the car. Lucas wasn’t to go out tonight. He should do exactly what Morris wanted, stay home tonight and go to work in the morning. Instead, he printed out the map to the hotel. It was a five mile walk.
He sighed and stepped outside, feeling sick and exhausted.
The night was warm. Earlier, Lucas had discovered a secret way out, jumping from the second floor stairs to a back wall and into the parking lot of a second apartment building, a convenient way to avoid detection. He thought he could make the jump even with a head injury. Still shaky from his injures, the landing went badly and Lucas ended up scraping knees and his right arm on the black top.
Wincing, he limped across the parking lot, avoidi
ng the street lamps. His walk to the hotel was miserable. He spent as much time looking over his shoulder and across the street for Morris as he did checking the printout to see which way to go next.
The hotel was peach and green, gentle pastels with two aquariums set into the wall. When Lucas stepped up to the night clerk, she gasped. He decided to ignore the fact that he looked like he’d been in a huge bar fight and asked straight up, “I need to speak with Lauren Nuong. I believe she is planning to stay here tonight.”
The clerk looked up the name, shaking her head, “I’m sorry. No one by that name is registered here.”
“How long have you been on shift? I know she’s here. Maybe under another name?” If only his program were more detailed. Usually he just passed the information to Morris.
“I’m sorry. I can’t release information about guests.”
“I understand. I’m going to wait in the lobby. She’s expecting me.” Lucas was sure that his face turned five shades of red from the lie. He didn’t care. He had to make sure Lauren was safe, even if he waited all night for her to come down.
Lucas sat in one of the chairs and leaned his head back against the wall, closing his eyes. He wasn’t asleep even if he sounded like it. At eleven o’clock the clerk left her station. Lucas pushed up and hobbled to the front desk, feeling stiff after sitting so long.
The computer was unlocked, but a camera was watching the front desk. Lucas didn’t even care. He slipped around the desk and opened the registration screen. Most of the day’s registrations had been couples or groups. Only three single women and two of those had paid with cards. The one woman who had paid with cash registered as Mary Smith, as non-descript and unremarkable as they come. He scribbled down the room numbers for the three women. He would start with Mary Smith.
Taking the elevator to the fifth floor, Lucas knocked on Door 587, his heart in his throat. It was late. Most vacationers would stay up all hours of the night and sleep in until noon. A single woman in the city, if she wasn’t Lauren, would be here on business. She’d want to sleep early.