Stephen Frey

by Trust Fund

  Blackburn pulled out the .22 caliber pistol he kept in a holster affixed to his calf and aimed it down into the room, squeezing the trigger six times in rapid succession. He clipped one of the men who had burst into the room in the thigh and killed the other instantly with a clean shot to the head.

  Bo dragged himself to where Meg lay. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded, shielding her eyes from another flash of lightning.

  Bo and Blackburn helped her to her feet. The three of them emerged from beneath the deck and dashed ahead, the men steadying her against the violent gusts of wind as they ran.

  “You okay, Bo?” Blackburn yelled.

  “I wouldn’t be,” Bo gasped, “if you hadn’t played Tonto.” The burning in his leg was brutal. He grabbed Blackburn’s arm and pointed as another jagged bolt illuminated the grounds. Several men stood on a slight rise to their left, guns draped over their arms. “We’ve got to make it to the woods.” As they struggled toward the line of trees, Bo looked skyward apprehensively. “Gotta pray for no lightning in the next few—”

  The next-second flash was the brightest of the storm, slamming into a tree above their heads and splitting it in two. Sparks, shredded leaves, and limbs showered the three. Bo threw himself on top of Meg as a huge limb slammed to the wet ground beside them, a sheared-off branch impaling the turf a foot from where Blackburn was sprawled.

  Through the leaves of the downed tree, Bo saw them coming—at least five men, sprinting toward where he, Meg, and Blackburn lay. He dragged Meg to her feet and guided her into the woods, pushing her the last few yards. “Cover your face,” he shouted as they tumbled into the thick underbrush, Blackburn just behind them.

  They were up again quickly, scrambling and rolling together through branches and vines that tore at their flesh and snagged their clothes. Bo could hear the pursuers yell as they hit the first line of underbrush, like an advancing infantry line encountering the first enemy rifle volley. “Come on.” He took Meg’s wrist and pulled her forward.

  Deeper into the woods the underbrush thinned and progress became easier, as it would for the pursuers too, Bo knew. He veered right, wiping water from his drenched face. He glanced over his shoulder and saw flashlights bobbing up and down behind them.

  “Keep going, Meg,” Blackburn urged from behind when she slowed down. “You’ve got to keep going.”

  “I’ll try,” Meg gasped, practically dropping to her knees on the muddy ground. “But I’m so dizzy.”

  Bo glanced back once more. The flashlights were spreading out behind them to cover more ground. One was coming directly at them, visible off and on as the man weaved around trees, less than a hundred feet away. “Carry her, John,” Bo rasped. “Straight ahead no more than a hundred feet. I’m going up,” he said, pointing toward a tall tree.

  Blackburn scooped Meg up in his arms and stumbled forward.

  As the pursuer passed beneath him, Bo dropped from the tree he had climbed, knocking the man to the earth. The man’s rifle exploded as they struggled, a hot blast of steel barely missing Bo. Then Bo caught the man flush on the point of his chin with his right fist, and the man collapsed, unconscious.

  Bo scrambled on his hands and knees across wet leaves to where the man’s flashlight lay and hurled it like a grenade. It caromed off a tree thirty feet away and came to rest on the ground, still illuminated. He raced back to where his pursuer lay, slammed the man with another hard right to the jaw to make certain he didn’t regain consciousness anytime soon, grabbed the rifle, and hunched behind a tree, watching four more flashlights bobbing toward the one on the ground. The other pursuers had been alerted by the blast even over the din of the storm and had spotted the beam of light. A moment later lightning sliced the sky wide open, and Bo saw the squad of men beginning to fan out again.

  Bo dragged the unconscious man beneath a bush to hide him, then rushed ahead to where Blackburn and Meg lay curled against a tree. He knelt down beside her. She was shivering, more from fear than cold, although the temperature felt like it had dropped ten degrees in the last half hour. “Here,” he said to Blackburn, shoving the rifle into his hand. Then he lifted Meg in his arms and began moving forward. The storm’s intensity was fading and they needed to get out of here or face certain discovery.

  Bo knew the estate as a hunting guide knows his territory. He was quickly able to put distance between them and the hunters by locating a familiar dry streambed and using it as a path.

  “Where are we going?” Meg murmured, her head on his shoulder.

  “To a safe place.” He struggled along, doing his best to avoid rocks that could cause him to stumble. The rain had stopped and an eerie mist was rising from the forest floor. It was visible in the dim moonlight that filtered down through a canopy of young leaves.

  Thirty minutes later Bo had reached his destination—a cave that had been a childhood hideout. He had identified the spot by the huge egg-shaped rock which lay in the middle of the streambed. It was the way he would find the cave when he’d come out here as a child.

  “Can you stand up?” he asked. He looked up the side of the ravine to the cave’s entrance.

  “Yes. I’m sorry you had to carry me,” she whispered, leaning against a tree for support as he put her down gently. “I couldn’t have gone any farther back there.”

  “I know,” Bo said. He turned to Blackburn. “This is the plan. There’s a cave about thirty feet up the side of the hill,” he said, gesturing upward. “It doesn’t offer much in the way of creature comforts, but it’ll be dry and, most important, safe. You and Meg will stay in it while I go for help.”

  Meg too followed Bo’s gesture up the steep bluff through the moonlight. She could barely make out what appeared to be a tiny opening in the hillside. “You want us to stay out here in the middle of the woods?” she asked, her voice rising.

  “Trust me. You’ll be safe in the cave with John. It’s much better that I go for help on my own. If they find us out here, we won’t be able to evade them if John and I have to carry you.” He nodded toward the moonlit sky. “There’s too much light now. They’d track us down easily if they spotted us. And I’ll be much faster on my own.”

  Bo glanced up at the top of the bluffs. It had turned peaceful now that the storm had moved off. The only remnants of its onslaught were a few lingering rumbles from far away. He took a deep breath. The night air carried the springtime fragrance of blossoms and the pungent odor of cedar and pine.

  “What is this all about?” Meg asked, putting her arms around Bo and pressing her face into his wet shirt. “Why are people chasing us?”

  “I’m close to finding out, Meg, but I’m not sure yet.”

  “Are they after me?” she asked, her voice shaking.

  “No,” Bo said firmly. “They’re after me.” Suddenly, exhausted from the exertion, she went limp in his arms, and he scooped her up once more.

  It took them ten minutes to scale thirty feet to the narrow ledge in front of the cave opening. Bo entered first, forced to crawl through the fifteen-foot tunnel on his belly. When he reached the cave’s main chamber, he removed a small flashlight from his pocket and scoured the space. The cave was damp and it smelled heavily of mildew, but it hadn’t changed much since the last time he’d been in it so long ago. Satisfied that Meg and Blackburn would be safe here, he crawled back out.

  “Take my hand,” he said calmly to Meg, who stood on the sliver of a rock ledge clutching a root, eyes shut tightly, her body pressed to the side of the bluff.

  “It’s dark in there,” she said, her voice trembling.

  “I realize that.”

  “Do you have a flashlight?”

  “Yes,” he said, pressing the small light into her hand. “Come on.”

  She grabbed Bo’s arm and allowed him to help her into the opening. “Don’t let go of me.”

  “I won’t,” he assured her. Slowly they worked their way along the short passage to the main chamber. Blackburn followed.

&nbs
p; “You keep the rifle,” Bo said to Blackburn. “There are still four shells in it. I checked. Anybody comes in here without calling your name first, don’t ask questions, just shoot.”

  Blackburn nodded. “Don’t worry.”

  “Good.” Bo helped Meg sit down against the wall across from the opening. He knelt and brushed her wet, matted hair from her face. “I wouldn’t use the flashlight a lot,” he suggested. “I don’t know how much juice the batteries have left and I wouldn’t take the chance that someone sees light coming from the cave.”

  “Okay.” She shuddered at the thought of the men who were looking for them.

  “I’m going to go.”

  “Okay,” she said again, already missing him.

  “You’ll be fine,” Bo said, starting to move toward the passage. “John is a good man.”

  “I know.” She looked up. “Bo.”

  “Yes?”

  “Please give me a hug.”

  He turned and slipped his arms around her shivering frame. He held her tight. “It will all work out. Soon we’ll be back together and safe.”

  “Promise me you’ll come back.”

  “I promise.” He began to pull away, then hesitated. “I love you, Meg.”

  She kissed him deeply, then pulled back. “I love you too. You are my life.”

  “I’ll see you soon.” With that he was gone.

  Bruce Laird fell to the ground, sucking air into his lungs madly. He was in top physical condition for a man in his forties, but he’d just sprinted two miles over difficult terrain and perspiration was pouring from his body. As he lay prone and raised the night-vision glasses to his eyes, he could hear the others crashing through the woods toward him. They hadn’t been able to keep pace.

  Laird scanned the face of the bluff quickly but saw nothing, just shades of gray and green. Then a slight movement caught his eye. He pulled back to it and focused in quickly. It was a man pulling himself to the top of the bluff. The man struggled to his feet and then limped away into the black forest.

  “Dammit!”

  “What’s wrong?” One of the men had dropped beside Laird, panting from exertion.

  “Bo’s getting away.” Laird allowed the glasses to fall to the ground, pulled out his cell phone, and handed it to the other man. “Here, call out,” he ordered. “Tell the others he’s heading northwest. You need to get people cruising state road number seven.”

  The man took the phone. “This may not be secure.”

  “Fuck it,” Laird responded. “At this point it doesn’t matter.” He gestured back over his shoulder. “I’m going to take the other two men and go after Bo. You find out if he hid his wife in the cave. Do you see the opening?” he asked, pointing across the ravine.

  “Yes.”

  Bo had told Laird about the cave at a party once after several drinks. Told Laird about discovering it as a child. Laird had found it himself one day during a lonely walk after being berated by Jimmy Lee for a mistake on a document. Now he grabbed the other man’s arm as the man began to stand up. “Be careful as you approach that thing. Bo Hancock is a very resourceful man. He may have left you a surprise or two.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Scott Trajak was exhausted. He was still fighting the effects of a terrible spring cold and today had turned into an eighteen-hour workday. He’d arrived at the office at six this morning with a raw throat, a one-hundred-one-degree fever, and an upset stomach, and it was almost midnight now. He’d been about to leave for home at seven o’clock when he’d received a call on the secure line in his office from Gerald Wallace demanding another Level Blue investigation. Level Blue meant that Wallace needed all information available on the target immediately. A federal judge in Florida was about to rule that local police hadn’t had probable cause when they’d brutally forced their way into a suburban Miami home and stumbled onto a major drug operation—not just a local crack house as they had originally assumed. Wallace and his cronies—whoever those people were, Trajak thought grimly—were afraid that the judge’s ruling would inhibit law enforcement’s ability to search and seize for years to come. Unscrupulous lawyers would use the precedent-setting case to keep the forces of justice from using surprise as a tactic.

  For the last five hours Trajak had workedOnline Associates’ computers and all of the immense resources available to him through Global Media, the American Financial Group, and their affiliated networks to uncover something Wallace could use.

  Uncover something he had. Multiple cash withdrawals by the Florida judge over the past two months in a section of Miami known to be frequented by prostitutes, as well as a single use of the judge’s debit card at a shop called Adult Pleasures. It was the same old story, Trajak thought, as his bodyguard moved into the elevator ahead of him and pressed the button for the lobby. The judge was married, with three children, and was considered a pillar of his community. Wallace’s people would approach the judge and present him with the information, probably embellishing it with a story that they had a hooker who was willing to identify him as a John with whom she’d had sexual relations. They’d threaten him with exposure, then give him what Trajak called “the choice.” Toe the line or face the music. So far, everyone had cooperated. Trajak had no doubt that the judge would choose the same course of action, falling in line to rule that police indeed had reasonable cause to attack the house in the quiet neighborhood with a twenty- five-member SWAT team (two innocent children had been killed in the ensuing gun battle), and allowing the trial of the four suspected drug traffickers who had survived the attack to proceed.

  The elevator doors opened and Trajak followed his bodyguard through a marble-walled lobby and out into the warm spring night toward a waiting limousine. Online Associates’ small offices were on the top floor of the four-story building located directly across Leesburg Pike from the entrance to the Tysons Corner Mall, just outside the Capital Beltway fifteen miles west of the White House.

  The bodyguard pointed a remote control device attached to his key ring at the vehicle and pressed a button. Lights flashed and locks popped open. The extensive protective measures were standard operating procedure—per Wallace’s strict orders—that Trajak usually saw no need for. But today he knew that someone had breached Warfield’s computer and found RANSACK. There had been a warning on his screen this morning indicating the violation, the first ever of its kind. “Thanks,” he muttered, easing onto the backseat while the bodyguard held the door open. Though it seemed unnecessary, he had to admit that it was nice to be driven home after a long day. At least there were some perks to working with these bastards.

  Invasion of privacy wasn’t ethical, but they had him over a barrel, just like they did all the others. He’d been about to go to prison for ten years on a wire fraud charge when they had made a deal for him, allowing him to go free as long as he was willing to use his considerable computer skills to their benefit. As they had made clear, the deal could be rescinded at any time and he’d end up being some ape’s bitch in the big house. Trajak was youthful-looking and frail, and during the negotiations Wallace had described in graphic detail what the young man could expect during his incarceration if he ever did anything to violate the security of Online Associates or RANSACK.

  “Thanks, Bud,” Trajak said to the bodyguard. He touched his throat gingerly. It was even sorer now than it had been this morning.

  “I’ll have you home in a few minutes, Mr. Trajak.”

  As the bodyguard closed the limousine door, Bo emerged from behind a column at the building’s entrance and raced through the darkness toward the hulking man. At the last moment Bo lowered his shoulder, slamming the bodyguard’s legs against the rear of the limousine, sending him sprawling across the trunk. In one deft motion Bo grabbed the man by his hair and thrust his forehead against the vehicle three times in rapid succession. The bodyguard crumpled to the ground beside a back tire, unconscious.

  Bo scanned the area quickly for security personnel—the first floor of the office buil
ding was home to upscale retailers including Tiffany and Hermés—but he saw no one. He reached quickly inside the bodyguard’s coat, pulled a .38 caliber revolver from the man’s shoulder holster, and raced to the other side of the car as Trajak thrust the door open.

  “Hold it right there, Trajak,” Bo ordered, aiming the gun into the other man’s face.

  Trajak lifted his hands in the air automatically. “Who are you? How do you know my name?”

  “This afternoon I asked your receptionist who ran the show. Answer, Scott Trajak.”

  After leaving Meg with Blackburn in the cave, Bo had hiked through the woods to a county road and hitched a ride from a passerby to Greenwich. There he’d rented a car and driven to northern Virginia, arriving early this morning. He had tried Blackburn’s cell phone number every half hour of the journey. There had been no response.

  “What do you want?” Trajak asked nervously.

  “Answers.”

  “To what?”

  “Online Associates and something called RANSACK.”

  Trajak shivered. This was the nightmare scenario. One he had scoffed at each time Wallace had warned him about being careful. “I don’t—”

  “Don’t move,” Bo interrupted, training the revolver on Trajak as he leaned down and searched the young man for a weapon. He found only a cell phone, which he shoved in his pocket. “Help me with this guy.”

  Trajak nodded, eyeing the barrel of the revolver. Now he understood why people did exactly as they were told in such a situation.

  Bo moved back around the vehicle to where the bodyguard lay. The man was just regaining consciousness. Bo leaned down and slammed his chin with the butt of the revolver, knocking him senseless once more. He rooted through the man’s pockets, found the limousine’s keys, popped the trunk, and, with Trajak’s help, lifted the huge man up and tossed him inside, slamming the trunk closed after him.