“What does your gut tell you to do?”
“My gut tells me I should bring you in. We can protect you, inform the media, expose all of this.”
“We need proof first. And I wouldn’t last a day in custody. They’d get to me.”
“They’re that powerful?”
“They killed the president, Jack. These people have power on a scale that’s unimaginable.”
I could practically hear the gears turning in her head.
“You’ve seen evil, Jack. You know what people are capable of. My former boss, he’s just as bad as some of the serial killers you’ve caught. Except he has the power to commit genocide on a scale that’s unheard of.”
I cast a quick glance over Jack’s shoulder, looking for Hammett. She was gone.
That’s when I saw the flashing red and blue lights. Police cars, three of them, barreling down Dearborn and coming this way.
The White House
Ratzenberger removed several tissues from the box on the Resolute desk and mopped at the thick makeup on his face. He’d been president for only seventy-two hours and was already sick of press conferences.
Hopefully they’d catch and kill that operative bitch soon. But then, there was a story about to break that would eclipse even a presidential assassination.
Ratzenberger wadded up the tissues, threw them at the garbage can, and missed. A microsecond later, Chaz pounced out from under the desk and sprang onto the Kleenex.
He pressed the button for the Secret Service. A moment later, one of his men appeared. New guy, couldn’t remember his name.
“I’m the president of the goddamn free world. Why can’t I keep a damn cat out of my office?”
“I’ll remove him, Mr. President.” The agent scooped up Chaz, then closed the door behind him.
Ratzenberger had actually looked into having the cat eliminated. But the feline had its own blog, for crissakes, and if it suddenly disappeared, he’d probably have to hold another damned press conference.
He took more tissue, wiping off the lipstick that his makeup artists insisted wasn’t lipstick but rather a color enhancer, and the phone rang.
“What?” he asked, irritated.
“Amplification is complete, Mr. President. The packages are en route.”
“Hmm? Oh, yes. Excellent.”
Silence. This guy made Ratzenberger nervous. Having him in his cabinet would make him even more nervous. But the old saying was worth remembering. Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. Ratzenberger just wasn’t sure yet which The Instructor was.
“Was there something else?”
“We’re closing in on the crippled one.”
“Good. I want this finished.”
“And my cabinet position?”
“When MD2 is in full swing, you’ll get your appointment.”
“Soon, sir, you’ll be known as the greatest president since Thomas Jefferson.”
Ratzenberger beamed at the compliment. He regarded the Louisiana Purchase as the single greatest act ever achieved by a government official. Greater even than the Declaration and the Constitution. Out of all forms of wealth in the world, land was the most valuable. Anyone who ever played the game Monopoly—or the game Risk, for that matter—knew that the winner was the one with the most property.
“And when will you arrive with my vaccine?” the president asked.
“We’ve got an entire facility dedicated to making it. With our new technique, we can make three hundred thousand doses in a day.”
“But when is my dose coming?”
“You’ll get yours. Very soon.”
The Instructor hung up, and it took Ratzenberger several seconds before he realized those final words might very well have been a threat.
Fleming
“Anyone can drive,” The Instructor said. “Only the best of the best can drive well.”
Fleming used to be an excellent driver.
Since the accident, she made do, but was in no danger of winning any trophies. The hand controls on the van made it easier, but the van itself was no match for a Mustang, and she wasn’t feeling at one with the vehicle like she used to when she had use of her legs.
Losing her tail wouldn’t be easy. But that wasn’t the only thing that plagued Fleming’s thoughts. Her most pressing issue was: how did they find me?
The Hydra sisters each had tracking chips installed. Fleming had a healing wound on her abdomen where hers had been removed. But without the chip, how could they have found her?
She stopped at the next red light, hands on her shotgun, eyeing the rearview. They were three cars back, playing it casual.
Could they have traced her computer activity somehow? Maybe when she was hacking the Hydra database?
Possible. But Fleming was sure she hadn’t been tailed from the motel. She was also sure she hadn’t been tailed from the shop when she left Bradley. They’d picked her up after she’d left his condo. They had no reason to tie her to Bradley. It was almost as if…
“The van. They’re tracking the van.”
She recalled something that annoying salesman, Eric, had told her. The van had anti-theft devices.
Shit. It probably had a tracker on it. Either GPS or an RF transmitter. Her abduction of Eric had probably made the news, and they interrogated him. She knew she was taking a risk when she decided to spare his life.
Fleming blew out a big breath. OK, if the problem was the van, she had two options. Ditch the vehicle, or find out where the tracking device was and disable it.
Neither would be easy. Especially since, in a stupid effort to look as normal as possible around Bradley, she’d left her leg braces back at the shop. Which meant if she left the van it had to be in the wheelchair. With Sasha, no less.
Fleming scanned her head for information about this town, procured while searching for computer shops. She recalled the address of a department store, assumed it would be attached to a mall, and headed in that direction.
The Mustang seemed in no hurry to catch up, staying several car lengths behind. They probably wanted her alive, which gave Fleming a small advantage, because she would happily kill them once given the chance.
When she reached the mall, Fleming circled around half of it, then dialed information again and asked for a taxi service.
“I’m disabled, confined to a wheelchair. Do you have a van that can accommodate me? One with a chair lift?”
No, they didn’t. Fleming tried again, with the company’s competitor, and arranged for them to meet her at Macy’s lower north entrance in ten minutes. Then she parked in a handicapped spot, got into her wheelchair, and placed Sasha and her shotgun in her lap, covered by Bradley’s stuff.
A quick check of the Mustang told her it was several rows over. Fleming used the chair lift, which was interminably slow. After she reached ground and locked the vehicle, she forced herself to stay at a normal speed while heading into the mall. There had been two people in the Mustang. Protocol would dictate one stayed in the vehicle and watched the van, and the other follow her.
Once inside, she immediately looked for the security hallway, and found a door marked “No Admittance” to the right. She headed for it.
Locked.
With picks, it would have been open in ten seconds, tops. But Fleming didn’t have lock picks on her, and didn’t have time to improvise a set. So she rolled farther into the mall, contemplating her next move. She passed a candy shop, a shoe store, and came to an open area surrounding a staircase going down.
Sasha poked her head out of the pile on Fleming’s lap, taking in the sights. Fleming ached to look over her shoulder, to see how close her pursuer was, but instead beelined for the staircase.
She hesitated at the top. Thirty steps at least, and falling was something Fleming feared more than almost anything. Since the wire snapped in Milan and she shattered both her legs, Fleming had been petrified of heights. But even a fall of just a few feet could cause debilitating pain when you had dozens of
pins and screws in your legs.
But if she was lucky, whoever was chasing her wouldn’t think she’d take the stairs, and outthinking the enemy was her only chance.
She leaned back and gave her handrails a swift tug, balancing on two wheels. It was a trick she knew well, but this wheelchair had been modified and was heavier than what she normally used. Plus the stuff on her lap, including a squirming Sasha, played hell with her balance.
Maybe pulling the shotgun and fighting her way out was smarter. Or ducking into one of the shops and hiding. Or…
“Ah, hell.”
Fleming teetered at the top of the stairs—
—then pushed herself over.
The first step was jarring, but she kept her hands tight on the rails, keeping steady, resisting gravity and momentum.
Another step.
Another.
She focused on balance, on feeling, ignoring the siren in her head telling her this was insane, a siren reinforced by her eyesight, staring down at the thirty-degree drop into pain, surgery, and possibly death.
Sasha whined, sort of a chirping sound, obviously agitated by this turn of events. Fleming ignored her, ignored the stares of the crowd, ignored everything but the fluid in her inner ear, telling her how to position her hands and body.
Five…six…seven…eight…
She pictured her body skewered on a rod that was perfectly vertical. If the rod moved forward too much, she pushed forward to catch up. Too far back, and she leaned forward to compensate.
Thirteen…fourteen…fifteen…
Only a few more stairs. Almost there.
Then Sasha stood, trying to crawl up Fleming’s neck, and the wheelchair began to tip forward. Fleming felt a jolt of panic, unable to compensate for the shift in weight, picturing herself pitching down the last few steps, her legs snapping like kindling, the failure and agony and—
“Whoa, there! I gotcha.”
A male voice, and firm hands on the push handles behind her, stopping Fleming’s tumble, easing her down the final five stairs to a gentle landing.
“You OK there, darlin’?”
Fleming looked up, saw a handsome man in a Stetson staring down at her. Stubbly chin. Blue eyes.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“Now what made you go and take the stairs like that?”
“I don’t like waiting for elevators.”
“No kiddin’. Whatcha got there? Some cute little animal. Cat?”
“What? This?”
Fleming lifted her hands, bringing up the shotgun just as the man dove to the side. She fired as he rolled behind the staircase. Then she tore ass across the mall as people screamed and fled, picking up speed, Sasha trying to dig into her lap as if it was an underground den.
She rounded a corner, unsure if Stetson was behind her, unsure of how she’d guessed he was Rhett from Hydra Deux other than a hunch. He had both eyes, so he wasn’t Heath, and he wasn’t a bodybuilding Asian, so he couldn’t be Tristan. Something about how quickly and easily he moved when he saved her made Fleming peg him as an operative. The way he ducked before she brought up her shotgun confirmed it.
Now she had to get away, and the odds weren’t favorable to her. Especially since he was probably contacting his partner—Scarlett, no doubt—to join in the chase.
Fleming rounded a corner, heading for Macy’s, wishing among the many modifications to her chair she’d thought to include a rearview mirror.
Modifications to my chair…
Catching a glimpse of herself in a storefront display window as she rolled past, Fleming saw Rhett was right on her ass, reaching for the wheelchair handle.
She slapped her handrail, opening it up, pulling the braided length of fishing wire—
—releasing a quart of two-stroke motor oil in her wake.
An oldie but a goodie, and Fleming heard the slap of Rhett eating the tile, followed by his cursing because she’d modified a classic by adding a few dozen treble hooks from a tackle box to the oil. When you fell, you reached out with your hands to break your fall, and palms and fishhooks didn’t play well together.
Rolling past another glass storefront, Fleming saw Rhett was no longer behind her. She turned another corner, coasting into Macy’s, burning her palms on her handrails to slow herself down. Then it was a quick but careful trek through the store, keeping to the sides and staying hidden behind displays, until she found the north entrance and her taxi waiting for her.
The lift took forever, and the driver bristled when he noticed Sasha.
“No pets, lady.”
“It’s OK. I’m handicapped. She’s my seeing-eye dog,” she said.
“That don’t look like no dog.”
“Haven’t you heard of a foxhound?”
“Oh. I guess it’s all right then.”
During the ride, Fleming worked to get her heart rate and breathing under control. She considered the probability of Hydra Deux knowing where her workshop was, and decided it was low. If they knew where she was holing up, they wouldn’t have made a grab for her in a public mall.
He dropped her off at a fast-food place three blocks from the shop she’d rented, and Fleming rolled the rest of the way back, looking over her shoulder every few seconds.
When she made it into her parking lot, Fleming used a palm strike to knock a side mirror off a Toyota, with plans to attach it to her chair. When she was sure she hadn’t been followed, Fleming waited, watching for the Mustang or any other suspicious vehicle to show up. None did. After a half hour of surveillance, Fleming entered her store and locked the door behind her, hoping to see Bradley hard at work on their project.
But the very last thing she expected was for him to be gone, the padlock open, and the loop on the steel cable empty.
Years Ago…
Her codename was Isolde, and she’d grown up on a dirt farm in rural South Carolina.
From an early age, she had certain proclivities that smarter parents would have recognized as warning signs. They knew enough to not let her tend the chickens, because baby chicks seemed to go missing after she fed them. They knew enough to not let her tend the pigs, because one day Pa caught her poking one with a sharp stick. So her chores were mostly weeding the garden, and helping Ma sew and cook and clean, which she hated even more.
On the eve of her tenth birthday, she visited a local creek with some of her schoolmates—she considered them schoolmates and not friends because she didn’t really get along with people. Her schoolmates didn’t like her, because even at ten she was painfully thin, and she hardly ever talked except to say mean things.
But on this day, Tommy Lee Forble had firecrackers, and one of her favorite things to do was to catch carp by hand and stuff their mouths with explosives. She could remember one time where the fish lived for a whole ten minutes with most of its head missing.
She’d spotted a nice catfish, mouth big enough to hold a whole pack of firecrackers, swimming near the shore, and took off her shoes to wade in after it. Three steps into the cool water, something sharp pierced her foot. When she bent down to look, she saw she’d stepped on a waterlogged board with a rusty nail stuck into it. The nail came right up through the top of her foot, blood bubbling up out of the wound like a red volcano.
She didn’t cry out. Though she registered the sensation of pain, it felt more curious than agonizing. She lifted her foot slightly, then brought it down again, hard, letting the sensation ripple through her.
By the fifth or sixth time doing this, one of her schoolmates noticed and began to scream.
Her parents rushed her to the big hospital in Rock Hill, where a kind-faced doctor poked a huge needle into her arm that hurt worse than the nail did.
She didn’t even blink.
Isolde
“If you’re having too much fun, reel it in,” The Instructor said. “There’s nothing wrong with enjoying your work. But remember it is work, not playtime.”
Neither Izzy nor Tristan commented on the awe-inspiring maje
sty of Niagara Falls as they crossed the Rainbow Bridge into Canada. Tristan only talked when spoken to, and Izzy lacked whatever part of the brain made human beings respond to beauty. She didn’t understand art, music was white noise to her, and she’d never been able to read an entire novel.
Her anorexia wasn’t due to body image problems. Izzy didn’t like food. The tastes and textures revolted her, and she hated the smacking sounds people made while eating, herself included. She survived on protein drinks and regular intravenous supplements. The protein crap was disgusting, and half of it she threw up. But the IV…
Izzy liked needles. She liked being poked, and sliced, and burned, and scraped. She liked sex with Tristan because he hurt her. The term for it was algolagnia. Izzy was physically wired to gain pleasure from pain, either her own or the pain of others. It was a true neuropathological disorder, though Izzy didn’t consider it detrimental at all. She wasn’t bogged down by all the weakness inherent in human emotion. She didn’t love anyone, or need anyone. A happy day for her was torturing and killing a target, and then relaxing by tearing off one of her fingernails and sticking her finger in a lemon.
They reached customs on the Canadian side, and Tristan produced the forged paperwork and IDs. The customs agent asked them to open the rear of the truck, and Izzy hopped out and complied, pulling up the cargo door with a well-known soda pop logo on it, keeping a straight face as the dude aimed his flashlight at the crates of cola cans.
“Want one?” Izzy asked.
“Hot cola? No thanks.”
He checked the invoice and customs forms, and then the pinhead actually did a rough count of boxes to see if they matched.
They matched. But the ones in the middle contained weaponized Ebola.
“The taste you’ll die for,” Izzy said, quoting the slogan.
“No kidding. I’ll stick with organic. This stuff will kill you.”
“Wise choice.”
He stamped her papers, and Izzy pulled down the door and secured the latch. Then Tristan pulled into Canada, heading toward Toronto.
Flee, Spree, Three (Codename: Chandler Trilogy - Three Complete Novels) Page 75