“How long do we have? I mean, he could be here in the next ten minutes or the next ten hours.”
I shrugged, but when he frowned at me, I held up a hand. “Okay, so obviously we’re not meant to know, but that’s the idea, isn’t it? To unsettle us and keep us on tenterhooks. But it was important to keep him talking. I heard planes in the background. That confirms it for me—they’re all at the place Brad found, like I thought. Remember Brad said it was near both the airport and the club where you were stabbed?” I glanced at my watch. “That’s almost an hour across town. And at this time of day, anyone who tried to cross the traffic in town in a rush really would be nuts. I reckon Greg will wait for commuter time to pass. Then he’ll come here when it gets dark, when there’s less chance of witnesses. Especially if he’s got Sheri with him. Imagine if he tried to pass through the site with her in tow for everyone to see?”
Niall winced.
“Yeah. It wouldn’t just be Dylan he’d be in danger from.” I thought quickly. “That’s going to be after nine tonight.”
“So there could be time to get to the hospital and back?”
I took hold of Niall’s shoulders and stared carefully into his face. I could almost see the plans rolling around in his brain. Here was a guy who was created for field work, right? “Maybe there would be time, Niall. But I’m not going to risk it. Not for Simon, not for Sheri. If you want to try it, go ahead, and I’ll cover for you. But I’m staying here until Greg comes, and I’m going to find out what the fuck this is all about. I’m going to get Sheri and Simon back, and then—then—I’m going to beat the holy crap out of this kid.”
Niall looked back at me, and I wondered if he’d chew me out for it, for not considering other options, for just sitting back and waiting for trouble to come to us, for… well, for not being him.
But he didn’t.
“Right,” he said, nodding. “Good call. We stay here. We’ll wait together. I can rig up some early warning system, and I’ll see what weapons we can get around us. We won’t be sitting ducks, if and when he turns up.” He turned from my raised eyebrows and flipped open the phone again. “We can still call Judith, ask for cover. We must be able to get through by now.” He shook the cell phone, peered at the screen, held it up to the window.
“No signal, huh?” I asked. “No coverage, no connection. Your phone’s gone the same way as the others. I understand what’s happened now.” Niall was frowning at me, puzzled. I wanted to laugh, but I was just too fucking angry. “You know what he’s done? He’s cut them off! The guy works in procurement. His section—Simon’s section—pays the bills. How easy is it for him to cancel the contracts, cut us off from each other, just like that? If we rang him back now, I expect that connection would be lost too. It’s served its purpose. How fucking obvious, how fucking mundane.” I was shaking my head, half impressed. “Until we find alternative lines or set up proper radio contact, the Team can’t communicate, can’t plan anything as a group. It’s so simple it hurts. He’s living in a cheesy thriller of his own mind’s making—and dragging us in after him.”
Niall stared. “But he’s working alone, Tanner. We can take him out, no trouble. He’s unprepared for all this. None of us were meant to survive his remote attacks. He’s been very naïve, and clumsy too. He’s making mistakes, he’s making it up as he goes along.”
“But that’s what makes him dangerous!” I saw Niall flinch. “I have to think this through before he arrives. I think he has Simon under some duress, and God knows what he’s done with Sheri. It’s not a matter of just jumping the kid when he turns up and handcuffing him. You have to realize the danger of unpredictability, of irrationality. I underestimated it once before, and I’ve regretted that ever since.”
Niall’s eyes narrowed. “You’re going on about it again. That mission –”
“No,” I said, firmly. “I’m learning from it at last.” I stared steadily at him until I saw some acceptance flicker in his eyes. We both glanced together at the door out of the trailer.
“So we need to evacuate the people around this trailer,” said Niall. “And fast.”
IT WOULD have been amusing to watch Junk arguing with Niall if I hadn’t been so tense about the coming hours. I stood in the doorway of my trailer and watched them standing at the foot of Junk’s front steps. Dylan stood between them, looking from one to the other and panting softly.
Most of Junk’s family was filing out past them, carrying small bags of overnight things, smoking or muttering. Or both. Two of the younger girls looked over to me. One of them had a tear-streaked face. I gave them a half smile and a thumbs-up.
“You have to go,” Niall repeated for about the fifth time.
“Fuckin’ don’t,” Junk said bluntly, and loudly enough for us all to hear. “Don’t have to do a fuckin’ thing you say. You’re some punk that Mac hooked up with, and you know squat about this place. This is my world, she’s my daughter, and I go my own fuckin’ way.”
I stepped down from my trailer and went over to them. “You have to go, Junk, like the man says.” He glared at me, ready to protest again, but I spoke quickly before he could. “We don’t want anyone else to get hurt, you know? You must trust us to help Sheri. This is our world now. Anyway, I need your help.”
“Huh?” He looked back and forth between us, full of angry suspicion. His head was a ridiculous mirror of Dylan’s, except without the long panting tongue.
“We need to contact our other friends, but Niall’s cell has just… died.”
Junk shrugged dismissively. “How many d’you want? Phil has a box of them.”
“No,” I said. “Our friends’ cells aren’t active either, at least for a while.” I sighed, wondering how much to tell him.
“So you need a radio.”
I looked up, startled, and met his shrewd gaze. I nodded. “Well, yeah, that’d be great, just what we could use.” I looked at Niall, who nodded too.
“Brad will have radio contact,” he said. “Wherever he is, and particularly if the cells are out of action. He’s always said he prefers using it anyway, and he’s drummed into us plenty of times the frequency he’d use….”
“…in an emergency, yeah.” I wondered how often we’d use that phrase before the night was done.
“We just need some equipment.”
Junk laughed, a short bark. “If there’s one thing Phil has, it’s equipment. I’ll take you to him, and you can choose what you need.” He snapped his head to one side, indicating for Niall to follow him to the nearby trailer.
“Then you’ll both leave the site for the night,” I said.
Junk looked back at me, and his smile was strained. “Sure. It’s up to you then, Mac.”
Wednesday 18:15
NIALL CAME into the living room dressed in nothing but a towel around his waist, rubbing his hair dry with another one. The dust had crept into our clothes, into our hair, into everything. He’d finally showered the filth off him to his satisfaction.
“I’ve been around the site again,” I said, my throat suddenly a little dry. I’d changed into clean clothes, just a pair of loose sweat shorts and a bright, logo-printed tee shirt. I’d found another set of sweat pants and shirt for Niall to use, and they were folded on the couch beside me. Should have taken them into the bathroom for him. Poor bastard doesn’t need to be wandering around looking for some decency. I stared at his half-naked body for a moment, seeing the glistening remnants of the warm water on his ribcage. My own clothes felt suddenly awkward on my body, like they didn’t fit properly. Guess he looked a sight better in my stuff than I did myself. Especially the towels.
I coughed and stood up clumsily. “Most of the trailers around mine have been emptied now, though some of the guys went more grudgingly than others. Junk went off with Phil in his truck. They rounded up some of the kids who were still playing around and took all the dogs as well.”
“Good.” He nodded. “We don’t know what to expect from Greg, so it’s best we don�
��t involve any more civilians.” He twisted slightly to catch a stray trail of water running from his hair down his back, and the muscles at his side flexed briefly along the pale pink slice of his scar.
He’d always done that to me—made the heat flare like a brand through my body.
“How long since Greg’s call?”
I cleared my throat again. Damned thing still felt like sandpaper. “Hour and a half, or so. I’ve been working on the radio you got at Phil’s, though I think it’s more your kind of thing. Just need you to tune it in. When you’re ready.”
Maybe there was something edgy in the tone of my voice, but Niall stilled. He pulled the small towel away from his hair and let his hand hang down gently against his side. He stared at me, and a slight flush appeared on his cheeks.
I found it hard to breathe.
Then both of us glanced at the strangely shaped metal casing that sat on the card table. It looked like a cylinder sliced in half with a few inset dials and meters. Some electrical wires looped along the central seam of it like mustard trails on the top of a hotdog. There was an external aerial, a microphone, and an amplifier attached, so we could both speak and listen in. Phil’s “Rare Parts” business had found us something rather unusual and probably of suspicious origin. But I’d been playing with it while Niall was washing, and it had the best fucking reception I’d ever heard on a radio. It may have looked odd, but the components were obviously the best. I was thinking of asking Phil to build me some kind of wacky-but-awesome music system sometime.
Though I was also wondering if some new human body parts might be more appropriate after tonight. I had no idea what Greg might have in store for us.
“It’s good,” I said, referring to the radio, though maybe not, if I were being honest. Niall was still staring at me with that look. I bit at my lip and joked as only I knew how. “Going to pick up the early evening jazz channel as soon as you’ve reported back to the boss.”
He pursed his mouth and for a minute there was a flash of irritation in his eyes, just like the old days. Brief confusion followed, and then there was the beginning of a smile. “Idiot,” he said, his voice low but strangely affectionate. “You think we’ve got time for a song and a sax?” My jaw dropped at his rare teasing, but his smile grew broader. He stepped past me to examine the radio.
And I just let him.
IT WAS a hell of a relief to hear Brad’s voice on the radio. Niall had scorned my request for particular music frequencies as the joke it was, and spent just a few moments with what sounded like a shrieking banshee and a hissing goose until human voices came back to him from the contraption. He knelt at the foot of the couch, holding the earpiece and amplifier between us, and he spoke clearly into the microphone until he got a response.
Brad’s call barked out of the silence like a slap to the face. “Niall? At last! We lost all cell phone connectivity.”
“Yes, we did too. It’s all part of the campaign against us, Brad. We’re being isolated, we’re being manipulated and made vulnerable—”
“I know,” Brad said, interrupting him. Even with the diluted reception, I could hear the suppressed emotion in his voice. “Is Simon with you?”
Niall looked quickly up at me then back at the mike. “No, he’s being held hostage. He came after you and Greg has him—” He never got a chance to finish the sentence, as there was some kind of angry, gargled cry from the other end of the channel and a deep scraping sound as if furniture were being thrust aside.
The next voice we heard was even more welcome. “Niall? Tanner too? I need to know what’s happening at your end. Now!”
I dropped to my knees beside Niall and called urgently into the mike. “Judith! Are you okay? Do you realize who’s behind this? It’s—”
Brad was talking behind her, his voice sharp and fast and angry, but I couldn’t make out the words. “Tanner, be quiet!” Judith said, urgency in every syllable. “Brad says this frequency isn’t secure.”
“Forget it,” I snapped back. “Greg won’t be surfing the radio waves to catch us, he’s on his way over here right now.”
“What the hell?”
“Did you know it was him?” I talked right over her exclamation. “He must have been trailing us all for months. He’s got access to all sorts of places, he’s been stealing equipment and setting traps.”
“I know now,” she broke back in, and the tone of her voice was so stern that I swallowed my personal anger. “All of us here had come to that conclusion—but not soon enough. After the last attack on the office, I found all my records disturbed, some of them destroyed or damaged. Some files were removed completely, including my unofficial notes on Project Dove and the early raid on that obnoxious club, where Niall—”
“—was hurt, I know. What’s the connection, Judith? I don’t think Greg has any interest in the political agenda of Dove. It’s something far more personal than that.”
“He’s only been with us for a while.” Her voice sounded like she was struggling for control. “He took his own personnel records from my office, of course, but I have a copy of all those files at an off-site location, and I’ve had it brought to me here at the hospital. I’m searching the details now. His background checked out fine. There was nothing suspicious, no family history to concern us—an orphan, no family noted at all, actually. And we only took him on as a general assistant. We would have monitored his performance over the course of the next year or so. But somehow he worked his way up more quickly than that, making himself useful to Simon, appearing to us all as a committed and loyal employee. He joined us about six months ago, just about the time that Niall was in hospital.”
Six months ago….
“I signed off his application,” came Judith’s voice. It was small and sounded young. It was the first time I’d ever heard her show any distress, any uncertainty. “I treated him as I treated Cissy—as Simon’s best assistant. As a trusted companion.”
I felt the prickle of premonition on the back of my neck.
The thread of anguish in her voice was unmistakable, and when I turned to look at Niall I saw that he’d heard it too; he was very pale again. No one needed specialist sociological skills to recognize overwhelming misery when they heard it. “Judith….” I drew a deep breath. “What’s happened to Cissy?”
“She was driving me to the hospital. We’d rescued what we could from the offices and evacuated. We didn’t know what other devices there might have been, what sort of timers they may be on. We left it all to the bomb squad and got out. We assumed any further attack would be directed at the building, like before. Not me, specifically. Cissy was driving,” she repeated. There was a shuddering gasp from her, and it was obvious that she couldn’t speak any more about it.
Niall stared at me.
“A car bomb?” I whispered.
“I should have checked everything.” Judith’s voice was a whisper. “Everything. But I was too busy just getting away.”
We were all silent for a moment, the horror stark and hideous in our minds. Cissy had been a friend to us all. She’d been an innocent in all of this. I thought I could hear Joe’s voice in the background, but I couldn’t be sure. I had a sudden, deep compassion for Judith, who treated all of her staff fairly and firmly, and yet showed a personal care for them. In that moment, I didn’t envy her the responsibility, or her pain.
She was the first to speak again. “I’m on my way, Tanner. Niall. You need backup.”
“No!” I tried not to snap, but I knew she’d take no notice anyway. “We can handle it, believe me.”
“Don’t be stupid, MacKay.” Like I said, she took no notice of me. But it was good to hear the imperious Judith back on track. “He’s dangerous.”
“No,” I said firmly. “He’s history. Niall and I have some issues with him, and we’re going to deal with them. On our behalf—and yours, as well.” Beside me, Niall nodded. His eyes were on me, and despite my refusal of backup, his gaze reflected my own determination. We co
uldn’t risk scaring off Greg anyway, but I was sure we were both aware now that Judith had enough to concern her.
“Judith? What you need to do is to get someone back to Greg’s hideout, the one that Brad found. Simon said he’d read up on some of Brad’s notes and was trying to follow the route that Brad took, to catch up with him. He suspected Greg as well by that time, I’m sure of it. So he obviously found the hideout himself, discovering not Brad, but Greg. There’ll be some more clues there, some evidence. Whatever—”
“Tanner,” she said, her voice firm again now, the very epitome of our efficient boss. “Leave it to us. Brad’s already left.”
I FELT both weary and tense—a strange combination. Niall had spent another hour on the radio since Judith signed off, but there wasn’t much that could be improved. He’d gone quietly into the kitchen to make coffee, and I just stood staring at the set. Neither of us wanted music on, or to go through Brad’s or my notes again. Neither of us quite knew what to do with our time before Greg arrived.
Niall was still dressed only—and barely—in that fucking towel.
When he came back out of the kitchen carrying a couple of mugs, I was rather snippy. “Why don’t you get dressed? You don’t want to face our lunatic guest in just your birthday suit. And this ain’t easy for me either, you know? I’m pretty reluctant to waste what time I may have left with a bunch of regrets.”
“Regrets?” His murmur licked around me like spilled, sticky honey. Messy, sweet, and too tasty for words. He put the mugs down on the table, and my nerves twitched with the sensual memories of many months ago. Straightening up, he gazed at me. “If you have any regrets left, Tanner, shake them off now. I think that things are moving too quickly for us to be protesting what we should have said and done in the past, right?”
I nodded dumbly. Fine words, and true. They made me feel fucking stupid at having carried my grudges and my jealousies for all this time, eating away at my pride like ravenous sewer rats. But the words also provoked in me a wave of amazing relief.
Dreamspinner Press Year Four Greatest Hits Page 92