Flee, Spree, Three (Codename: Chandler Trilogy - Three Complete Novels)

by J. A. Konrath

  “You can’t.”

  Harry shook his head “Look, Jack and I might not seem like much, but we’ve done some shit, and we’re not afraid of—”

  I held up a hand to cut him off. “If they find out you’re helping me, you’ll disappear and never be heard from again. So will your friends, your families, even people you went to high school with who signed your yearbook. These guys don’t play around. They are the baddest of the bad, and they have unlimited power and an unlimited budget. They start wars and kill millions. You don’t want to get on their radar, and even if you wanted to, I wouldn’t let you.”

  I walked out of the room, wondering what my next move was. Saving Fleming from a black site on US soil? It would be easier to go to Cuba and rescue her from Guantánamo Bay. I didn’t have a chance, and neither did poor Fleming.

  But it was worse than that. She would tell them what she knew. And what she knew made it possible to launch a nuclear strike anyplace in the world. Millions of people could die. Billions of people. And there was nothing I could do to stop it.

  Jack caught up with me on the stairs.

  “Harry and I still want to help,” she said.

  “I won’t allow it.”

  “It’s a free country. Maybe we’ll take a little road trip to Baraboo.”

  I spun on her, one hand gripping her neck and slamming her against the wall, the other pressing my 9mm into her belly.

  “And maybe if I see you, I’ll put sniper rounds through both of your knees. Or maybe I’ll just ease my conscience and do that now. Is that necessary?”

  I saw the requisite fear in her eyes, and that made me feel even shittier.

  “Look, Jack, I don’t know about Harry, but you, you’re a good person. There’s no way you can come with me on this. It isn’t just a question of them hurting you. You’d have to hurt them as well. Are you going to be OK with sneaking up on an unarmed man and slitting his throat from behind? Could you cut off someone’s fingers to get information? Could you blow up a building with innocent women and children in it to take out a target?”

  Jack’s eyes became wide and she waited several seconds before whispering, “You do those things?”

  “I do what’s needed,” I said through clenched teeth. “And I can’t have someone watching my back who cares about her fellow man. If I see you, I will shoot you. And if you break this to the media and they move my sister…”

  “I won’t,” Jack said. “You’re right. I can’t…I can’t do those things you said. Neither could McGlade. And I wouldn’t risk them taking your sister someplace else. But you can’t do this alone, Chandler.”

  I let her go and put my gun away. “I don’t have a choice.”

  “Do you have any contacts?”

  I shook my head. “No.” The only contacts I had were through Fleming.

  “I know a guy. I guess you’d call him a merc. He’s…well, he wouldn’t have a problem doing those things you said.”

  “This is a lot more than most people can deal with, Jack.”

  “So is he.”

  “Military?”

  “I don’t think so. I’ve run into him a few times. He’s a former gymnast. A while ago he took on the whole Chicago mob, and won. He’s not crazy, and he’s not a psycho, but he’s unaffected by guilt or remorse and does what is needed.”

  I considered it. “Is he stable?”

  “He’s the best I’ve ever seen. Always in total control. A pure sociopath.” Jack stared deep into my eyes. “Like you.”

  I kept myself from reacting, from letting her know how much that stung. And as much as I wanted to protest her characterization of me, I wasn’t sure if it was inaccurate, or if I just wanted to fool myself into thinking it was. “What does he charge?”

  “You’d have to discuss that with him.”

  This is what my life had come to? Working with complete strangers to fight a government I was supposed to be working for?

  “Where do I find him?” I asked.

  “I can set up a meeting.”

  “Jack…”

  “Then I’ll be out of it. You’re right. I have a fiancé. An elderly mother. I don’t want anything to happen to them. But let me call him, Chandler. He can help you. I’m sure of it.”

  “OK,” I told her. “What’s his name?”

  “I know this may sound odd coming from someone named Jack Daniels, but his name is Tequila.”

  Fleming

  “When captured by the enemy,” the Instructor said, “your first priority is survival. If you tell them what they want to know, they’ll no longer have any use for you, and they’ll kill you. And if you give them the information they want, they’ll use it to kill others. If you talk, everyone loses. But they will eventually make you talk. Everybody talks.”

  When Fleming regained consciousness, she was still wearing the backless hospital gown that smelled like lemon bleach, and straps still bound her arms, torso, and ankles to a wheelchair, though this was a newer model. The morphine drip she’d enjoyed after surgery was gone, leaving the nerves in her bullet-riddled legs screaming. A tremor seized the muscles in her arms and hands, and she shook for almost a minute before getting it under control.

  A recessed light glared down at her from a ceiling of poured concrete, a steel grate shielding the bulb. Whitewashed cinder block walls, steel door, concrete floor. There were no windows in the room, and the air—its pressure, the humidity—felt like she was underground.

  In one corner, a steel chair was bolted to the floor, its arms and legs outfitted with thick leather straps. A large drain marked the floor’s center, and the smell of dampness, mildew, urine, and blood hung in the air like the thick calm before a thunderstorm.

  The hum of voices reached her from somewhere out in the hall.

  The door opened, and Malcolm stepped inside, carrying a tablet computer with a touch screen. He wore his black suit, but he’d removed his tie. A younger man followed, dressed in a gray prison guard uniform. His hair was cropped close in a high and tight that emphasized the angular shape of his head. He didn’t spare Fleming a glance, simply took position behind her.

  “You had to bring security?” she said, forcing bravado into her voice that she didn’t feel. “Seeing as I can’t move enough to scratch my nose, it makes me doubt you own a pair of balls.”

  Taking measured steps, he approached her chair, then bent close and stared into her soul. In the bright light, the skin surrounding one of Malcolm’s eyes looked even chalkier than the rest of his complexion. The strange pallor extended up to his forehead.

  “Remember our little chat, back at the hospital?” His breath smelled like wintergreen, and when he flashed his creepy smile, she could see the telltale darkness at his gum line, evidence his teeth had been capped. “Well, it got me thinking.”

  “Thinking? Good for you. There’s a first time for everything.”

  He chuckled, a disturbing sound like a rasp across the mouth of a tin can, then pushed the tablet computer in front of her face.

  An X-ray lit the screen, the ghostly images of a pelvis, a femur, and a knee. Bright white indicated the pins holding the bones together and four slugs lodged in the surrounding flesh.

  “Do you recognize this?”

  Fleming wanted to say no or fling a smart-assed comment at him. She couldn’t manage either.

  “The bullets are no longer there, of course. But I’m more interested in the pins. Hard to forget going through that much pain, I’ll bet.”

  “You want to know about pain, Malcolm? Ask your parents about the weird little boy they raised. I bet they can’t even stand to look at you.”

  He didn’t so much as blink.

  “I have a philosophy.” He pulled an ASP Friction Loc from his belt. “The threat of force is often just as effective as the use of force.”

  Often used by cops, the telescoping steel folded to about nine inches long and unfurled to twenty-seven. Fleming had taken a glancing blow to the head from one years ago and
had been carried away with a concussion. If she’d taken the full brunt of the strike, she would be dead.

  Malcolm paced the width of the room, tapping the collapsed ASP against the palm of one hand, the soles of his shoes drumming the floor.

  “Where’s my sister?” Fleming demanded, trying not to stare at the steel baton.

  “I’m surprised you haven’t heard her screaming. But then, this is a rather large facility. Care to guess where you are?”

  Fleming had no idea. By the fullness of her bladder, she couldn’t have been out for more than a few hours. But she couldn’t be sure.

  “Not even a guess? OK, I’ll tell you. You’re in a secret prison. One that doesn’t officially exist. I can do whatever I want to you, for as long as I want.”

  “I should thank you,” Fleming forced herself to say.

  “Thank me?” Malcolm appeared confused. “For what?”

  “You took my advice about the mints. Your breath was worse than anything else you could possibly do to me.”

  This time he winced. But he recovered immediately. “It must have been tough. The injury. Those weeks and months and years after.”

  He had no idea.

  The thought sprang into her mind before she could catch it. She was falling for his tricks, first making her fear for Chandler, now the memories of her accident. Emotions surged to the surface, vulnerabilities that would leave her wide open to his techniques.

  She tried to push back concerns about her sister, and the thoughts of Milan—hanging outside the building, the snap of the support wire, the five-story fall.

  “All the pain…” He kept pacing. “All the rehab you must have gone through…and to no avail. You’re still a cripple.”

  Tap, tap, tap.

  “Such a horror it would be to have to relive all that pain, all those operations.”

  Tap, tap, tap.

  “The bones being set, and rebroken, and set again.” He flicked the ASP in the air, and it telescoped to full length.

  Chhhk-chhk.

  Fleming could feel the sound scrape up her spine, a visceral sound of danger, like the racking of a pump-action shotgun. She couldn’t stop herself from flinching.

  Malcolm smiled. “Now I’ll ask you again. Who do you work for?”

  He reached out with the baton. Resting it at her ankles, then running it slowly up her shins, lifting her hospital gown with it.

  While Fleming had lost the use of her legs, the nerves still functioned just fine.

  He skimmed the baton over her knees, reaching her thighs, tenderly tracing the tip along the spiderweb network of scars, then probing her bandaged bullet wounds.

  She focused on breathing, on controlling her heart rate, but sweat broke out over her skin.

  “I know the bullet wounds must hurt, but do the old injuries? Do they ache during bad weather? Do they stiffen up first thing in the morning? How about those metal pins? Can you feel them?”

  He checked the X-ray on the tablet, then moved the ASP.

  “Here’s one. Right here. Can you feel it?”

  Fleming ground her molars together. She knew what he was going to do, whether she answered or not, and there was no way she could brace herself for it.

  “Fine. I’ll make you feel it.”

  When he hit her leg with the ASP, the pain was sudden and explosive and terrifyingly familiar. A sound somewhere between a groan and a scream crested her lips.

  “So your voice does work. Good to know. I was missing your smart mouth. I’d like to hear a little more from you.”

  He moved the baton back down her legs, to her shins, this time putting pressure on it.

  “Let me consult your chart. Ah, yes. There’s another pin…right…about…here.”

  Another slap of the ASP. The sound breaking from her throat was a full-on scream this time. Tears swamped her eyes and ran down her cheeks. She tried to breathe through it, blowing out hard with each exhale, but the shattering agony refused to fade.

  Fleming had a high pain threshold, and years of training had enabled her to hold out much longer than most. But her injuries had sapped her strength. Already she felt desperate. She wouldn’t be able to last very long. No one could. The urge to mindlessly plead for relief pressed at her lips, struggling to get out. Eventually Fleming would say anything Malcolm wanted to hear just to make the agony stop.

  “We’ve only just begun,” he whispered, wintergreen breath on her neck. “We’re going to give your legs a lot of attention. For hours. Days. Weeks. And when those nerves are finally dead, we’re going to do to you what we’re doing to your sister. Trust me. That’s even worse.”

  She turned her neck and met his eyes. Sweat beaded along his hairline, and he brushed it away with the back of one hand. Again, she noticed the strange pallor of his skin, but now part of the chalkiness had been wiped away, the smallest hint of dull purple beneath.

  Makeup. That’s what the strange pallor was. He’d put makeup on his face to hide a discoloration. A port wine stain reaching from his cheekbone into his hairline.

  Maybe he could dig into her pain, make her scream, but now she’d recognized his deficiencies, too, number one being a strange kind of vanity. And that gave her a certain amount of satisfaction.

  “You should try the new L’Oréal foundation. It’s designed to match your skin tone. No one will even know you’re wearing makeup, Mr. Gorbachev.”

  Red poured into the rest of his face. Tendons stood out on his neck.

  She stared him down, knowing she’d probably pay. Hoping he’d get so angry he’d lose control and kill her outright, before he could torture her into giving up the secrets she’d been directed to take to her grave.

  Malcolm raised his wrist.

  Then he stabbed the baton squarely into the side of the chair, making her shudder. The friction locking the steel into its extended form broke, and the parts collapsed.

  Fleming hissed out a heavy breath.

  As much as she wanted to think the worst was over, it had only just begun. Malcolm would escalate.

  Raise the stakes.

  Raise his demands.

  Raise the level of pain.

  “I have something. Something I’d very much like to hear your thoughts about.” He crossed to the younger soldier behind her. When he returned to her field of vision, he held the transceiver in his hands. The transceiver she’d almost died trying to protect.

  Another round of tears welled in her eyes. The last she knew, it was at the bottom of Lake Michigan. How in the hell had Malcolm come up with it?

  “So you recognize this little phone? I figured you might. But it’s more than just a phone, isn’t it? Still seems to power on, even after all that time in the water.”

  He flicked the baton open.

  Chhhk-chhk.

  “Now, it seems the device is locked. And I’m guessing you can solve that problem for me.”

  “Sorry,” Fleming managed. “I’m not very good with technology.”

  “If that’s true, it would be unfortunate for you.” He started at her ankles again. This time instead of caressing her legs, he flicked the steel bar, inching up her injured flesh.

  When he reached the bullet wounds in her thighs, she didn’t even try to hold back the screams.

  “How long do you want me to do this?” To make his point, he finished the trek back down her legs, the pressure growing behind each strike.

  Fleming’s hospital gown was soaked with perspiration now, and blood had started to seep through her bandages.

  “Suit yourself.”

  Malcolm raised the ASP high for a bone-shattering blow. He hadn’t been lying about the agony she’d gone through. Breaking, setting, then long months of healing, only to have to endure them breaking the bones again. She’d been ready to give up. If not for the Instructor, she would have. She couldn’t go through it all again.

  There was only one thing she could do. One thing that would stop this.

  Fleming didn’t need to make her v
oice sound weak and defeated. It already did. “Please. No more. I’ll help you.”

  “The unlock code.”

  She drew in a long breath. “Give the phone to me. I’ll unlock it. Just no more. I can’t handle it.”

  Fleming couldn’t give him what he wanted, the activation code or access to the rest of her knowledge. There was too much at stake. The phone, if properly used, could launch a nuclear strike. She couldn’t allow that. But she also couldn’t bear the pain.

  That only left one solution. She had to die.

  And death was just a few inches away. The transceiver had a self-destruct code. There was enough PETN in that little phone to blow someone’s head off.

  Fleming wanted it to be her head.

  The strength of her resolve, the finality of it, surprised her. But she’d made up her mind, and there was really no other acceptable choice. Even if she had two good legs, escape was impossible. Better to die quickly and save millions than die in agony and be responsible for World War III.

  “Free one of my hands, and I’ll unlock it.”

  For a moment he stared at her, as if he thought he could bore into her mind with willpower alone. “No. You give me the code.”

  She met his intensity. “It has to be me. It recognizes my bioelectric signature.”

  Fleming had pulled the phrase bioelectric signature out of her ass, and she hoped it didn’t sound like the bullshit it actually was.

  There was an awful, tension-filled moment, and then Malcolm said, “Untie her left hand.”

  If anyone had ever told Fleming that the greatest victory of her life would be to kill herself, she never would have believed it. But that was about to be the case. Her only regret was knowing Chandler was still in this hellhole. But Fleming was incapable of helping herself, let alone her sister. She’d have to settle for saving the world.

  “Hold it,” Malcolm ordered his guard.

  Fleming’s hopes sank.

  “You’re a bit too eager to get your hands on this phone. I can see it in your eyes.”

  Shit.

  Malcolm brought down the baton, cracking it against Fleming’s leg.

  “What is it you want to do?” he demanded. “Punch in an erase code?”