The minutes rolled by. Grover kept checking his watch, which only made it go that little bit slower. He contemplated calling Charlie and explaining that she may have left via the rear exit, but it didn’t seem wise. If she appeared at the moment he ended the call, he would still be labeled a failure by his employer, and he knew exactly how that would end.
“That’s her,” the driver said, his eyes coming to life.
Across the street, the contact Winters had provided stepped outside the building and adjusted the collar of her long, beige trench coat. It was a slim fit for a lean woman, and it suited her. She glanced over, not seeming to notice the vehicle, and then headed up the street. Her long blonde hair trailed behind her in the gentle breeze.
“All right, pull out slowly. We don’t want to scare her. Not yet.”
The driver did as commanded, which gave Grover a sense of power he very rarely got to experience. He was so used to being ordered around by Charlie that he never got a chance to make his own decisions. Even his home had been chosen and paid for in exchange for loyalty and the strictest obedience.
The limo inched forward, its lights still off so as not to alert her. But that didn’t stop her from constantly looking over her shoulder. To succeed, they had to play it safe, take it slow and make the woman question whether she was just being paranoid.
In all the years he’d been doing this, there had only been one runner—he was a young man who owed a lot of favors and even more money. He’d been made well aware of the consequences if he failed to deliver, and as soon as he realized his payments would fall short, he tried running to the police. The poor kid had no idea that eighty percent of the police force was dirty, and the other twenty percent wasn’t important enough to do anything about it.
“She’s looking right at us,” the driver informed him.
Grover peered over the seat. The driver was right; her eyes were full of fear like a puppy pitted against a Rottweiler. But still, she wouldn’t run. He drew his firearm, a Glock 42 with a suppressor to muffle the gunshot. “Go!” he yelled to the driver. The limo shot forward. Its engine roared in the way that modern cars did. The woman was right outside the door, and Grover flung it open. “Get in.”
The woman, whose name had been given to them as Rachel, gave a puzzled look—one that questioned if she should run. Her knee even lifted a little as if ready to sprint to safety. She hesitated, put it back down, and then climbed into the limo, her eyes trained on the gun.
“If you’re trying to steal some money, you’re barking up the wrong tree,” she said as if she’d done this before. Not a wisp of fear, but the paranoia lingered in her eyes. She sat across from him.
“Please. Does it look like we need your money?” Grover closed the door and they drove off. “Miss Lawrence, I’m going to lower this gun, and we’re going to talk. If you try to run, you will not get very far. Do you understand?”
Rachel nodded, every muscle in her body tensed.
Grover rested the gun across his lap, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and lowered his voice to a whisper. “We need to get in contact with Mr. Blake Salinger. Do you know where we might find him?”
Her eyes widened. She opened her mouth as if to speak, closed it, and paused for consideration. When she tried again, she said, “He was arrested only yesterday. We haven’t heard from him since.”
“We?”
“The workforce. You know my acquaintances and where I live. I wouldn’t hesitate to believe you’re aware that Blake is my colleague. If we’re going to talk, please don’t insult my intelligence.”
Grover laughed and sat back in the seat, slapping his knee with amusement. “I like this girl,” he said to the driver, who made pig-like noises from the front seat. “She’s got balls.”
“So then, you like balls on a woman? I guess it makes sense. You do look like the sort,” she said, antagonizing him.
His smiled dropped in an instant. It was like a wave of anger wiped it clean off his face. “Miss Lawrence, I can only be nice for as long as you behave yourself. Now, you must have heard about Mr. Salinger’s escape from custody. At the very least, news of the trouble he caused through Los Angeles has come your way?”
Rachel’s mouth hung open, but her eyes were more telling than the rest of her face. “I…” It was difficult to determine how much of this was show and how much was a part of her performance. She was, after all, a saleswoman, so her acting skills must have been exceptional.
“Well?”
“I didn’t know—”
Grover lifted the gun and squeezed the trigger. A whimpering sound flew from the barrel, and a loud pop went through the woman’s purse. Her lip trembled.
“You’re his colleague, his best friend, and his next of kin. The police would have come straight to you even without our say-so.” He lurched forward and crossed the limo to sit next to her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, submitting to his position of power.
“That’s a start. The sooner you stop playing games, the sooner we can let you go. Now, tell me, how is your mother doing?” The sudden panic made her face flush red, which made Grover feel like he owned the situation. It filled him with energy and power, lending strength to his every mannerism. He’d read about Mother Lawrence’s condition at the hospital, just as he knew that Rachel paid a visit to her every other day. With that information, she was putty in his hands.
“You wouldn’t—”
“You have no idea what I would or wouldn’t do. But I assure you this: if you cooperate with us, no harm will come to you or her.” He looked at her legs; they were shaking like leaves in the breeze.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked, a cry threatening to ripple through her voice.
“It’s really simple. At some point soon, Salinger is going to contact you. As soon as he does…” He removed a business card from his jacket pocket and forced it into her hand. “Do we have an understanding?”
Grover watched as she stared down at it. His hand tightened around the gun. The woman turned her head to face him and nodded.
“Good girl. Now, get out of here.” He half-stood and held the door open for her, grinning like a Cheshire cat. “Bye-bye now. We’ll speak soon.”
Rachel hurried out of the car and headed down the street, keeping an eye over her shoulder as she rushed back to the building she had come out of not long before.
“How about that, huh?” Grover closed the door and sat back down. It was moments like these that made him love his job.
Chapter Thirteen
Getting Marcy down the steps was the hardest thing Blake had ever had to do, and it scared him just how easily it seemed to come to Greg.
“You grab her feet,” he said as if it was nothing, no problem at all. “You head backward down the stairs so the weight isn’t on you.”
When they got her to the bottom, they placed her on a workbench with wheels, her short, skinny frame small enough to fit on top with only her feet dangling slightly off the edge. Blake drooped a blanket over her that he had found upstairs. He cried his way through mopping the blood up off the floor, and then said his goodbyes.
When it was finally over, he showed Greg where the phone was and took a seat next to it. He didn’t like the idea of making a call to the Agency as he didn’t understand how they would benefit from it. Greg had told him they would send someone, but was he able to handle that?
“Before I dial the number, I need to know that you’re on the team,” Greg said to him.
“What?” His eyes were raw with residual tears.
“If the worst of things happen, I need to know that we’re both in this together.”
Blake hadn’t thought about that. What if the worst did happen? He wasn’t as confident as Greg; he had little courage and certainly wasn’t a trained hand-to-hand combatant like this man clearly was. “I’ll try to be.”
“Kid,” he crouched, resting his elbows across his knees, “trying to be and aspiring to be could be t
he difference between death and survival. I’ll help you where I can—you know that—but I can’t have you running off like a coward every time someone fires a weapon.”
It made him smile a little, despite the circumstances. He’d been afraid of guns, but with all the recent events—breaking out of the police station, the high-speed chase through LA, and seeing Marcy’s lifeless body—he wondered if a gunshot would disturb him in the slightest anymore. And with how painfully tired he was, he could probably sleep soundly through a nuclear apocalypse.
“I’m on the team,” he said. “I’m on the team.” Again for his own assurance.
Greg took the phone in one hand, placed a small circular device against it and it stuck like a magnet. “Anti-Track. Useful piece of tech I picked up from a young genius in Tokyo,” he said to Blake and dialed a number.
Blake couldn’t stop shaking.
The loudspeaker made a screech of the dialing tone. It rang twice, and then a male voice answered. “Grover,” he said. “Identify yourself.”
Blake looked up to Greg and saw his eyes shine with familiarity. He must have known this man, whether he liked him or not. It hit him then—he was up against his colleagues. This man was turning on his friends and life-long co-workers to help Blake and his father. Blake admired that, was thankful for it, even, but when he looked at Greg he couldn’t shake the image of Marcy’s blood on his hands.
“You know who this is.”
There was a pause on the phone with only one short thud in the background. Was it a car door closing? Finally, the man on the other end cleared his throat and spoke. “You’re in a lot of trouble. You need to come in.”
“So you can kill me? I don’t think so.”
“It’s not you we want. You know that. Bring us the boy, and you can get back to work.”
“That’s something we’ll need to talk about alone,” Greg said.
Blake didn’t like this. It was beginning to come into perspective now; first, he’d been pulled away from the police, then his stepmother was murdered in cold blood, and now this man was here, playing head games with the very people who wanted them both dead. He wondered if he would be better off alone. Alone and far, far away from this place. But then again, it could have been a bluff. There was no telling with this guy.
“There’s no way—”
Without warning, Greg slammed the phone down into its cradle.
“What are you doing?”
“The Anti-Track only does so much.” He pointed to the device stuck to the side of the phone. “I don’t want them knowing where we are until I know what we’ll get out of it. This means I need to sever the trace before it’s completed, which is about every thirty seconds or so.”
“And then what?”
“And then it has to start all over again.” Blake could tell the man wanted to smile before he picked the phone back up and dialed the number again.
Only one ring this time, and the voice sounded a little more desperate, if not pissed off. “Don’t hang up. We’ll figure something out. What is it we can do for you, Mr.—”
“I want to see an agent.”
The man on the other end made a noise like he was punched in the belly. Small wonder—it probably struck him as a surprise. “An agent? Okay, I’ll send you Richards. But where would I send him? We’ll need your location sooner or—”
“I want Matthews.”
There was a pause again, probably stalling to complete the trace.
Finally, it was Greg who spoke. “I want Matthews,” he repeated.
“Ah, Matthews. Okay. Anything—”
The phone came crashing down, cutting the connection once again. It startled Blake, who felt a bit like a child overseeing a father’s work with both unbroken concentration and intimidated curiosity. He pictured the face of the man on the other end and how agitated he must be. He couldn’t help but smirk.
Greg picked up the phone once more, and Blake almost didn’t hear it ring.
“Matthews,” the voice butted in early, presumably so as not to miss its opportunity. “No problem at all. Question is, what will you do in return?”
“This is the deal,” he said, unwavering. “You send me Matthews. He comes alone, he comes unarmed, and he comes no farther than the front gate. I want to talk to him. If what he says works for me, I will give you the Salinger kid.”
“You—” Blake spat but was cut off by Greg holding out a finger to him. He’d known he couldn’t trust this son of a bitch. Everything about him had spelled trouble since the beginning.
The man’s laugh cackled through the loudspeaker. “Just like that?”
“Just like that,” Greg confirmed, grinning at Blake.
What is he up to now?
“And what do you expect from Matthews?”
“That’s between me and him.”
The voice took a second before coming back. “Fair enough. But where are you?”
“Val Salinger’s house. You’ll have the details within a few seconds, once your tracer has worked its magic.”
The man laughed again. Harder this time. “That’s poetic. Holed up in the home of the partner you stabbed in the back.”
Blake’s ears pricked. What was that he said? He wondered if this was something buried long in the past, or if it was something more recent, something connected to all this. Greg shot him a look that told him to cool his jets, and he did. For now, at least.
“You have my terms. Break them, it’s your head.” For the last time, he dropped the phone onto its cradle and turned to Blake. “He knows you’re here. He said that for your benefit, hoping to turn you against me.”
“What if I don’t believe you?” Blake continued to shake. He’d never been good at confrontation and wasn’t especially confident around ass-kicking spies.
“I don’t care what you believe. Fact is, an old friend of mine is on his way, and he’s going to tell us everything he knows about where your father is. He’s a spiller. Always has been. He hands out secrets like they’re fliers.”
“And if he betrays you?”
“Oh, he will. I’m absolutely counting on it.” He rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand, obviously exhausted but not letting it affect his concentration. “Now go get the bag. I said I’d teach you how to shoot, and I want you ready.”
Chapter Fourteen
Blake had never held a gun with intent to shoot, and the very idea of it threatened him. They were outside in the cool November air, where the birds squawked in gray skies. If the gunshot wouldn’t frighten them, what would?
“How loud is this going to be?” he asked, trying to postpone his imminent training.
“It won’t be.” Greg nodded at the silencer on the end of the gun. “What, you never watched an action movie before? It suppresses the gunshot.”
He pretended he understood and even paused to put on his what’s-that-noise face, but sooner or later he would run out of ways to stall. “It’s heavy.”
Greg grunted, marched up close and lifted the gun with his finger, guiding Blake’s arms upward. “There you go,” he said, moving Blake’s arms and legs to where they should be. “Now put your weight onto that leg. Dig in your heel. Lock your shoulder to take the kick.”
His mind was elsewhere, and he didn’t truly understand. How could he? In the house behind him, his stepmother was lying on a workshop table in his dad’s secret spy basement, and the man who killed her was standing here teaching him to fire a weapon.
“Take a deep breath,” he went on, snapping Blake out of his thoughts, “and as you exhale, gently squeeze the trigger. Now strengthen your shoulder. More. More.”
“Yes, all right. I get it. Shoulder. Dammit…” His words carried off with his confidence when he saw the offended look that Greg was giving him. He felt his face flash a scarlet red and urgently played on. “Aim for the bottle, right?”
Greg gave a short, sharp nod, stuffing his hands into his pockets.
Blake turned, aimed down the barrel of the
pistol. He wasn’t fond of this whole idea. Didn’t see any need to learn. Nonetheless, he closed his eyes tight, counted to three, opened them, and drew a deep breath. Like he’d been told, he exhaled and squeezed the trigger. The gun made a pop and flung back, collapsing his arms and smashing his nose with the hot metal.
“Ouch! Son of a—ouch!” He dropped the gun and cupped his bloody nose, irritated by the sound of Greg’s laughter. “It’s not funny!”
“It actually is.” He snorted. “I told you to lock your shoulder.”
“I did!”
“No, you didn’t. If you did, that wouldn’t have happened.” He pointed to the bloody patch upon his face, still beaming wide. “Go clean that up and get back here real fast.”
Blake ran inside the house, his head tilted back. Thank God I know where I’m stepping. He headed straight to the kitchen sink, ran the tap, and drowned a cloth under it before pressing it to his nose. Nothing had ever stung quite like it. To him, this was a clarification that he wasn’t cut out for this business. Still, Greg was pushing him, and he wanted nothing other than to run home to Rachel and curl up on the couch with her.
But that was a dream for another day.
When he was cleaned up, he went back outside. Although the blood was gone, his nose and the skin surrounding it stung like hell. This, though, was nothing compared to the damage done to his pride.
“You done playing around?” Greg said with no hint of a warm welcome.
“Thanks. Thanks a lot. Let’s just do this and go find my dad.”
Greg stood up and approached Blake. He shook his head in slow, wide arcs. “You think this is a game?”
“I didn’t—”
“This isn’t something you can just do or get on with. Your heart needs to be in this, and so does your head, so wise up and stop acting like a child.” He turned and stepped away, moving back to where they were supposed to be shooting.
“Why though?” Blake felt his own defiance as soon as his teacher stopped dead in his tracks. When he turned, Blake braved up and continued. “You’re the hitman-spy-assassin, whatever you are.” It came out in one desperate breath that sounded like a moan. “I’m just a salesman. I make presentations. I make coffee for my boss and go home in the evening hoping to read my book before I go to bed. I’m not cut out for this.” As he said the words, he came to realize it for himself. His voice cracked under the threat of tears. “I just want to go home and see my friends, return to my job. Dad can do whatever he wants.”
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