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

by J. A. Konrath

  The boat rolled and swayed and heaved on the waves, much too light for even limited ocean travel, and I had to wonder if it was any more seaworthy than the tram car we’d left behind. I should have gotten Julie something bigger.

  I’d add that to my growing list of should haves.

  “This boat sucks ass.” Hammett cradled Kirk in her arms. She’d given the dog a sedative from the first-aid kit tucked in the storage compartment built into Fleming’s wheelchair, and his head lolled to the side. I couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead.

  “We’ll be fine,” Fleming said, but judging from the look she shot me, she wasn’t so sure.

  Neither was I.

  At least our cold, nausea-inducing boat trip had given me a chance to clear my head and get my emotions under wrap. Although my promise to keep Julie safe weighed at the back of my mind, the attack on the island had forced me to push my feelings about the situation into a box and slam the lid. And that’s where I intended to keep them.

  Getting back to the SUV so we could figure out how to save Julie was the important thing now. I’d deal with how I’d failed her later.

  Julie

  Julie was shaking. Not just from fear, but from cold. She sat sandwiched between the braided woman who’d found her in the lighthouse and the brute who’d carried her to the boat. Her hands were cuffed in front of her, and she was unable to move.

  Julie had experienced nightmares like this, plenty of them over the years, but she’d always jolted awake, dripping with sweat and shaking but safe in her bed, Kirk looking on with concern and wagging his tail.

  This time, there would be no waking. And no Kirk…

  She wanted to cry, but was afraid of what would happen if she did.

  Explosions popped like fireworks in the distance. Out over the waves, the night sky glowed murky, thick and orange.

  Chandler never would have let them take her. Now as the sky glowed and the smell of smoke hung in the dank air, Julie had to face the fact that Chandler and her sisters were probably dead.

  Another sob worked its way up her throat, wracking her body, choking her. Chandler had been Julie’s source of hope and strength since she’d come to the island. Now Kirk was gone, Chandler was gone, and Julie had nothing.

  Tears squeezed from already swollen eyes, and she quickly wiped them on her sleeve, hoping she’d have a chance to burn the jacket later.

  The boat glided along the shoreline. Lights twinkled up ahead, indicating some sort of civilization. Not a town, but maybe a marina or resort.

  The man steering the boat glanced into the back of the craft, the brim of his Stetson casting his features in shadow.

  “Earnshaw, darlin’, you might want to get yourself cleaned up. You can get real nasty infections from dog bites.”

  The braided woman glanced down at her leg, as if she’d just noticed the blood soaking her torn pants leg. “Got a first-aid kit?”

  A man even larger than Earnshaw rose from the seat in front of the boat, tossed a first-aid kit into the back, and Earnshaw caught it in one hand.

  “Damn dog,” said the big woman under her breath.

  Julie’s throat tightened.

  “Your fault, Izzy. What took you so long to shoot the thing?”

  Izzy held a straight razor in one hand, and was staring at her bare, bony forearm. From her wrist to her biceps were dozens of black lines. Her other arm had similar tattoos. The girl had to be close to Julie’s age, but she had the gaunt face and hollow eyes of an anorexic.

  She caught Julie staring.

  “Every line is for someone I wasted,” Izzy said in a low monotone. “I make a slash, then fill it in with ink.”

  Julie couldn’t pull her eyes away.

  “The short lines,” Izzy said, pointing to one that was half the length of the others, “those are the kids.”

  The cowboy guffawed. “Izzy, you are one scary girl.”

  Izzy ignored him, instead leaning closer to Julie. “How long should the line be for a dog?” she asked. “Or should I even bother?”

  Julie clamped her lips shut, trying to keep another sob from working free. Kirk had been taking care of her, defending her. The sweetest dog in the world, he’d only attacked because he’d known these people were there to hurt her, and he’d done his best to fight back. She didn’t have to close her eyes to see Kirk jerk back from that windowsill when the bullet hit. She’d never forget his whimper as he’d fallen from her sight.

  That this horrible woman would curse him and talk about his death like it was nothing made her want to scream. It made her want to hurt these people as much as they’d hurt her.

  But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t.

  Julie turned her head away, squeezing her eyes shut.

  “We know who you are,” Izzy said. “You really thought you could hide out on that island forever? Look at me.”

  Julie felt a hand on her face, her eyelid being pried open. She gave in, opening her eyes, then watched in horror as Izzy stuck out her tongue and ran the razor across the tip, drawing dark blood.

  “We’re killers,” Izzy said, her lips glistening red. “Death is in our blood. But we’ve got nothing on you.”

  “Enough talking,” Earnshaw said.

  She struck out with a fist, so fast Julie barely saw it coming.

  The blow slammed through Julie’s head, and the glow of the burning island, the cold of the night, the pain of losing everything that mattered faded to nothing.

  Fleming

  “Know your enemy as you know yourself,” The Instructor said. “The better you know each, the likelier you are to win.”

  Fleming was concerned about Chandler. She didn’t seem to be herself, and was making too many mistakes.

  They’d made it to the coast and back up the Kennebec River to the place Chandler had hidden the SUV, and now they were on the highway, headed for Portland. But even Chandler’s driving seemed to be a touch erratic, and Fleming hoped it was just pain and exhaustion, and not something more serious, like giving up. If they wanted to get out of this situation, hope was paramount. Once hope was gone, resolve followed. Without resolve, you might as well just shoot yourself in the head, save The Instructor the trouble.

  But that could be back-burnered for the time being. The important thing right now was to get online and figure some things out. In Wisconsin, Fleming had been using a borrowed laptop, and had returned it to Lund after cleaning her tracks. During the ride to Maine, when Chandler had been sleeping, they’d stopped on the road to get a laptop computer and a 3G plan after wiring Tequila his money.

  So as Chandler drove and Hammett tended to Kirk, Fleming connected to the Internet with a fake IP address and hacked into Hydra’s database to hunt for clues as to what the hell just happened. She was careful not to mess with anything, using a back door she’d installed previously in a rootkit, which was all but invisible.

  She’d spent time searching through the site, and had copied the source code so she was familiar with the navigation tree. Page by page, Fleming searched the JavaScript for the Hydra team member names. She knew her own codename, as well as Chandler’s and Hammett’s, were encrypted using a hashing algorithm generated by photons—a method Fleming herself had invented, and was thus far unbreakable by anyone but her.

  Ironically, it was the method used on the Hydra database. And The Instructor apparently hadn’t had time to change it since Fleming had gone rogue only a few days ago.

  She had to remote access her own computer to get the tools needed, and then cut and pasted the numerical code for the name “Isolde” into her program’s search box.

  Fleming got a hit, and pasted the results into Notepad and cleaned it up, removing all the computer language.

  Hydra Deux Abbreviated Dossiers

  Codename: Rochester—Deceased.

  Codename: Earnshaw—Stats: African American. Blk hair, brn eyes. Two hundred twenty pounds. Six feet one inch. Specialties: Hand-to-hand combat, wrestling, judo, grappling. B
ench press 500 pounds. Stamina. Loyalty. Weaknesses: Undercover ops. Seduction. Long-range weapons. Steroid abuse.

  Codename: Scarlett—Stats: Caucasian. Blnd hair, gray eyes. One hundred twenty-five pounds. Five feet seven inches. Specialties: Undercover ops. Pilot. Vehicle and machinery expert. Interrogation. Speaks English, French, German, Russian, Mandarin, Portuguese, Spanish. Computer hacking. Sniping. Edged weapons. Fourth dan black belt in karate. Weaknesses: Argumentative. Narcissistic personality disorder. Seduction. Strength and stamina. Grappling.

  Codename: Isolde—Stats: Caucasian. Brn hair, brn eyes. Ninety pounds. Five feet six inches. Striped tattoos on arms. Specialties: Edged weapons. Interrogation. Poison. Long- and short-range firearms. Pilot. Weaknesses: Borderline personality disorder. Self-mutilation. Sadistic personality disorder. Strength and stamina.

  Codename: Rhett—Stats: Caucasian. Blnd hair, blue eyes. One hundred eighty pounds. Five feet ten inches. Specialties: Undercover ops. Seduction. Explosives. Demolition. Short-range weapons. Vehicle and machinery expert. Hand-to-hand combat, tae kwon do, krav maga. Weaknesses: Attention deficit disorder. Lacks motivation.

  Codename: Heathcliff—Stats: Mexican American. Blk hair, brn eyes. One hundred seventy pounds. Five feet nine inches. Specialties: Long- and short-range weapons. Hand-to-hand combat, capoeira. Undercover ops. Seduction. Pilot. Computer hacking. Speaks English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Farsi, Arabic, Italian. Weaknesses: Women. Obedience. Missing one eye.

  Codename: Tristan—Stats: Japanese American. Blk hair, brn eyes. Two hundred sixty pounds. Six feet one inch. Specialties: Hand-to-hand combat, judo, sumo, grappling. Bench press 540 pounds. Driving. Speaks English, Japanese, French, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Arabic. Weaknesses: Undercover ops. Steroid abuse. Temper.

  She shared aloud the pertinent bits with her sisters. A short silence followed.

  “Hydra Deux,” Hammett eventually said. “Are they supposed to supplement us? Or replace us?”

  Fleming frowned. “Considering how long training takes, this group has been around for a while.”

  “Several years,” Chandler said, looking at Fleming. “I met Heath before. Previous mission. A sanction in Vegas.”

  Fleming remembered. “The eye.”

  Chandler nodded.

  Hammett looked from one to the other. “You took out his eye?”

  “With a shish kebab skewer,” Fleming said. Chandler had held her own in that mission, although in the end, it had to be counted as one of her less successful. She’d leave it up to Chandler to tell the rest or not, whatever she chose.

  “He had skills on par with mine, but I didn’t know he was Hydra.”

  Apparently she’d chosen not.

  “I wonder how many of these assholes The Instructor trained,” Hammett said. “Present company excepted.”

  Fleming scanned the dossiers again. “We were lucky to get out of there alive.”

  “How far to the vet, Chandler?” Hammett asked. Kirk’s head was in her lap.

  “Ten minutes.”

  Fleming took the time to perform a similar computer search for her own name, and came up with another group of abbreviated dossiers for the first Hydra group.

  Codename: Ludlum—Deceased.

  Codename: Follett—Deceased.

  Codename: Clancy—Deceased.

  Codename: Forsythe—Deceased.

  Codename: Fleming—Stats: Caucasian. Brn hair, brn eyes. One hundred and twenty pounds. Five feet six inches. Specialties: Computers. Programming. Math. Eidetic memory. Pilot. Vehicle and machinery expert. Undercover ops. Seduction. Leadership. Long- and short-range weapons. Edged weapons. Hand-to-hand combat, judo, karate, tae kwon do, capoeira, krav maga. Speaks fifteen languages. Weaknesses: Since accident, no longer suitable for field work. Demoted to research and development, running operations, intel.

  Fleming winced at the depiction of what she once was, and the realization of what she’d been reduced to. Rather than dwell on it, she kept reading.

  Codename: Hammett—Stats: Caucasian. Brn hair, brn eyes. One hundred and twenty pounds. Five feet six inches. Specialties: Undercover ops. Seduction. Interrogation. Eidetic memory. Pilot. Vehicle and machinery expert. Long- and short-range weapons. Edged weapons. Hand-to-hand combat, judo, karate, tae kwon do, capoeira, krav maga, kendo, jujitsu. Speaks twelve languages. Weaknesses: Antisocial personality disorder.

  That sounded like Hammett. Antisocial personality disorder was just another way of saying psychotic. No surprises there.

  Codename: Chandler—Stats: Caucasian. Brn hair, brn eyes. One hundred and twenty pounds. Five feet six inches. Specialties: Undercover ops. Seduction. Interrogation. Eidetic memory. Pilot. Vehicle and machinery expert. Long- and short-range weapons. Edged weapons. Hand-to-hand combat, judo, karate, tae kwon do, capoeira, krav maga, kendo, jujitsu. Speaks ten languages. Weaknesses: Self-doubt. May crack under pressure. Panic control.

  Chandler’s abbreviated dossier was almost the same as Hammett’s, except Hammett was nuts, and Chandler, apparently, was unreliable.

  Fleming thought back to the many times she’d worked as Chandler’s handler. She’d been efficient in every op, always resourceful and committed. And yet…

  Chandler sometimes took too long to make a decision. That arose from doubt. And there were a few ops where she acted erratic, made mistakes, like the one where she’d encountered Heathcliff.

  Could Chandler have cracked on a mission and hid it from Fleming?

  It was possible. She was a good actress. Maybe she’d been covering her fears all along.

  Fleming turned off the computer. She glanced back and forth from Hammett to Chandler, wondering which one was the weaker link. Who was more unreliable.

  Then Fleming wondered, if the situation arose, who would be harder to kill.

  Hammett would be tough to outsmart and overpower. So would Chandler. But in Chandler’s case, Fleming had real feelings for her. They’d had a bond since Chandler had known her as Jacob. But in the last week, they’d gotten as close as two sisters could be.

  Yet Fleming could see Chandler’s recent, erratic behavior. And with Julie taken, the threat was to more than just the three of them. The threat had become global.

  Could I kill Chandler if I needed to?

  Fleming didn’t know how to answer that. Worse, she didn’t know if she wanted to answer it.

  For now, all she could do was wait and watch.

  Chandler

  “The windmill needs the wind, not vice versa,” said The Instructor. “Be the wind.”

  Our first stop was a twenty-four-hour urgent care pet clinic in Portland. I wasn’t sure how to take Hammett’s concern for Julie’s dog. The woman killed people without a thought, and yet she willingly plunked down a big chunk of our limited cash to make sure Julie’s dog got the best of care, and another chunk to make sure the vet didn’t report the gunshot wound to the police.

  “Why do you care?” I asked her.

  “Why do you care that I care?”

  “We have other things we need to be doing.”

  Actually, we really didn’t. Fleming was on the computer, figuring some things out, and that left me and Hammett to twiddle our thumbs until Fleming told us what to do.

  Hammett shrugged. “I like Kirk.”

  “There are millions of dogs in London,” I said. “If you forgot, that’s the city you almost obliterated.”

  “You still stuck on that?” Hammett rolled her eyes. “Let it go, already.”

  “Let a nuclear attack go?”

  “Attempted nuclear attack. It didn’t happen.”

  “But you still launched a nuke at all those dogs.”

  Hammett crossed her legs. “I never met those dogs. But I have met Kirk.”

  “So it’s OK if a few million dogs die as long as you don’t know them, but not OK if one dog you do know dies?”

  “I don’t think either situation is OK. In the case of London, the dogs were collateral damage. But don’t get al
l morally superior. If you had a choice, London gets destroyed, or Fleming dies, what would you choose?”

  I hesitated. I wanted to pick saving London, but part of me knew Hammett was right. I’d be more inclined to save someone I loved than a bunch of people I didn’t know. That was precisely the choice I’d made when I’d chosen to save Lund, Fleming, Tequila, and myself rather than the president.

  I elected not to pursue the conversation, instead thumbing through old magazines and trying to get comfortable in the cheap plastic waiting room seat.

  It took an hour, and the vet finally returned to say the dog was out of surgery and stable. Hammett wanted to see him, and the vet allowed it. When she returned, Hammett’s expression was so intense it radiated heat.

  “I’m going to gut the bitch that did this.”

  I was glad I wasn’t the bitch who did it.

  Next we stopped at a twenty-four-hour drugstore in Portland and picked up three boxes of hair color, a highlighting kit, a comb and a pair of scissors, plastic wrap, clip-in blond hair extensions, and a variety of makeup. My clothing was torn, burned, and crusty with salt. But since my choices were limited in a drugstore, that would have to wait until the next day.

  We made another stop to fill the SUV with gas. Then we rented a room in a run-down motel, using the driver’s license Hammett had stolen in Wisconsin.

  The place smelled like mildew and sweaty feet and was not worth the hundred-and-fifty-dollar “fall color” special they were running, especially since most tree leaves were just starting to change. But they took cash, didn’t ask questions, and at that point, for a few hours of rest and a chance to regroup, I would have paid much more.