“Wouldn’t want you to get a crick in your neck, old boy,” he murmured.
Grabbing the camera from the man, Dillard quickly scanned through the photos on the memory card. When he saw that there were none that were important, he put the camera back down next to the man’s hand, as if it had slipped out when he “fell asleep.”
Dillard took out a small penlight and checked the ground to make sure he’d left no telltale footprints, then he moved quickly to the door and opened it.
“Come on, guys,” he called softly into the living room. “Time to boogie on out of here. Our watchers are fast asleep, but they won’t be for long.”
He was just putting his dart gun back into his duffel bag when Kat and Stone came hurrying out of the front door, followed closely by Angus.
Kat glanced down at the bag. “Is there anything you don’t carry in that thing?” she asked.
He laughed. “I once had an assistant who said that I could either live out of this bag for six months, or start World War Three with its contents. He was probably right.”
Kat shook her head. “No doubt. Well, come on, you can drive us to my car in your rental. It’ll save us having to jog two miles.”
* * *
An hour later, they’d dropped Dillard’s rental car off in the agency lot and had ensconced themselves in the first of the new safe houses.
Stone stood on the front porch for a moment and looked around at the Houston skyline that surrounded them on all sides. “Right in the middle of the city, with the bad guys and unknown government agents hot on our trail.” He shook his head. “I am beginning to believe your Mr. Dillard is a genius, Kat.”
She placed one arm through his while she petted Angus with the other hand. “I sure hope so, Jordan. We’re gonna need a genius to get us out of this mess alive and healthy.”
CHAPTER 36
While Kat and Jordan Stone and Angus were getting settled into the new safe house on Memorial Boulevard, Dillard made a trip across town to get Sheila and Burton and Kevin out of their apartments without either Ashby’s men or the government agents being able to follow them.
He figured that Kevin would be seen as the least important member of the team and thus would have the least amount of surveillance attached to him.
He was right—there was only one man watching Kevin’s apartment, and he was strategically parked so he could also keep an eye on Kevin’s car.
Knowing that soon it would be too late for subtlety, Dillard pulled up right behind the operative’s auto and put his lights on bright, effectively blinding the man.
Dillard opened his door and called out, “Okay, get out of the car with your hands up. . . . This is the Houston Police Department.”
As the detective climbed out of his car with his hands in the air, he was already beginning to make excuses. “Sorry, officers. I am a private detective working on—”
Dillard didn’t wait for the man’s eyes to adjust to the blinding glare. He stepped up and smacked him in the side of his head with a blackjack.
The man went down like a load of bricks.
Dillard looked around to make sure no one was watching, before he lifted the man up and laid him gently on his backseat. He patted his cheek. “Hope your headache isn’t too bad, pal, but you’ve got to learn when you’re working for the bad guys, bad things happen to you.”
He got back into his car and called Kevin on his burner phone. “Hey, Kevin, this is Jackson. The coast is clear for you to head to the new safe house. Did you get the text I sent with the address, and are you all packed and ready to go?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Dillard.”
“It’s Jack, Kevin. Mr. Dillard was my father. Get a move on, and I’ll pick up Sheila and Burton and meet you at the house in about an hour.”
* * *
Dillon knew there would be more than one agent on Sheila and Burton, which would make getting them out clean much more difficult, especially if the government also had them covered.
When he got to their parking garage, he parked his car on the street nearby and called Sheila on her burner phone. “Sheila, this is Jackson. I’m set and ready to go, so you and Burton bring your bags, get into your Mercedes, and drive out of the garage, go around the block, and then come back to the garage and park near your safe car.”
“Okay, Jack,” Sheila said. “Will do.”
* * *
While he was waiting, Dillard poured some whiskey out of a bottle from his glove compartment and splashed it on his face and neck. Then he took up station near the parking garage entrance but just out of sight behind some bushes.
When Sheila and Burton pulled out of the garage fifteen minutes later, a nondescript sedan followed them a few moments later. When he was sure there were no other cars following, he got ready.
Five minutes later, Sheila pulled back into the garage and headed up the ramp.
As the sedan began to follow the Mercedes into the garage, Dillard stumbled out of the bushes and onto the driveway, singing a drunken tune and waving the whiskey bottle around.
The sedan slammed on its brakes and as the fender nudged Dillard, he screamed and flung himself to the side, landing on the grass next to the entranceway.
“Oh shit!” he heard the driver of the car exclaim as he jumped out of the driver’s side door and ran over to lean over Dillard, who lay facedown. “Damn, I think the bum is dead. He must be drunk as a skunk . . . he smells like a brewery.”
The passenger joined him, and as they grabbed Dillard’s shoulders to roll him over, he swung a fist into one’s face and rebounded with an elbow to the other’s nose.
Both men went down, lights out.
Dillard pulled them to the side of the driveway and rolled them into the bushes there. Then he climbed into their car, pulled it into the garage, and parked it on the first floor. After he exited the car, he moved to the front wheel well and felt under the fender. Sure enough, he found the GPS tracker right where he’d expected it.
As Sheila and Burton came down to the exit in their safe cars, he gave them a thumbs-up and ran to get into his own vehicle.
* * *
Instead of following Sheila and Burton to the safe house, Dillard stopped off at a KFC and bought two large buckets of fried chicken, ignoring the sour looks from the counterperson at his pronounced whiskey odor.
When he entered the front door of the safe house, Angus greeted him like a long-lost brother, putting his paws up on Dillard’s thighs and wagging his tail like an airplane propeller.
But then he stopped, sniffed twice, wrinkled his nose, and barked loudly.
Dillard laughed and held the buckets of chicken over his head and out of Angus’s reach. “You don’t fool me, big guy. It’s the chicken you’re glad to see, not me.”
“Oh, thank God,” Kat said, as she rushed to him and helped him with the chicken. “We’ve been about to starve, since no one has had time to provision the larder.”
“This will have to do for a while. I thought we could eat while I go over some news you all need to hear.”
Then Kat stopped, sniffed, and looked questioningly at him, her eyebrows raised.
He laughed. “Don’t ask. A bit of subterfuge to fool the men following Sheila and Burton into thinking I was a drunk.”
She smiled back. “I’ll tell the others so they won’t think you stopped off to have a few.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Dillard had washed off the whiskey smell and they were all seated around the house’s huge formal dining room table.
“I don’t know who owns this house,” Sheila said around a mouthful of mashed potatoes, “but they must have been entertainers. This table could easily seat fifteen people.”
“Like Jack said,” Kat added, spooning more coleslaw onto her paper plate, “even the rich have come upon hard times lately.”
Dillard swallowed the last of his cup of coffee and knocked on the table with a fist. “Okay, while you guys finish up the feast, I’m gonna g
o ahead with the latest news.”
He paused as Angus came over and put his paws up on his leg. Shaking his head, he took a piece of chicken, pulled the meat off the bone, and handed it to Angus. “Good thing Kat told me your metabolism has sped up, fella, or you’d weigh about fifty pounds by now.”
Angus took the meat gently and nodded his thanks, before trotting over to his bed in the corner of the kitchen and settling down to eat.
Dillard turned his attention back to the group. “I just heard back from my contact at the Galveston Police Department. I gave him the license plate number of the government vehicle that was following the two men following Sheila and Burton, and he hit pay dirt.”
“Whose car was it?” Burton asked, buttering another biscuit.
“It is an FBI car, currently checked out to an agent named Nicholas Fowler.”
“Oh shit,” Kevin said, then quickly apologized to Kat for the language. “I mean, oh darn. The last thing we need is for the FBI to be involved in this affair.”
Dillard stroked his chin. “I’m not so sure the Feebs are officially involved.”
“What do you mean, ‘officially,’ Jack?” Kat asked.
“Well, after I got Agent Fowler’s name from my contact, I Googled him, both to get a look at him and to find out just what his job is at the FBI. Turns out he is not just a special agent for the FBI—he is, in fact, an SAIC, and he is definitely the man who was driving the car I saw at the IHOP.”
“What the hell is an SAIC?” Burton asked irritably.
“It means special agent in charge,” Dillard answered. “That means he is probably the agent in charge of the Houston FBI office, or at least one of them. He’s also over sixty years old and only a few months away from mandatory retirement.”
He paused to take a bite out of a chicken leg, and while he chewed he continued, “And trust me on this guys, sixty-year-old SAICs do not ever go on stakeouts or get tailing duty from the FBI.”
“Did you find out anything else?” Kat asked.
“Yeah. I took a chance and called the Houston office of the FBI and asked to talk to Agent Fowler’s secretary. When I got her on the line, I told her I was one of Agent Fowler’s informants and that I had some information for him.”
Burton laughed. “That was ballsy, Jack. What would you have done if she had put him on the line?”
Dillard smiled. “I’d have hung up—quickly.”
He got up and fixed himself a cup of coffee while talking to the group over his shoulder. “Fortunately, she didn’t do that. She just asked, ‘Does this have to do with an active investigation? If so, there is another agent in charge of the office while Agent Fowler is on sick leave.’ ”
“‘Sick leave’?” Kevin asked. “What was he doing following either us or the detectives Ashby had hired if he was on sick leave?”
Dillard shrugged. “I’m not sure, Kevin, but that is why I said I don’t think the FBI is officially on the case. I think Agent Fowler is running a show of his own.”
“But why would he—?” Kevin started to ask.
Dillard leaned forward. “Think about the amounts of money involved, guys. I think this Fowler was in charge of a team surveilling Ashby, for whatever reason the FBI is interested in him, and through that surveillance he got wind of Ashby’s plan to use your formula. And he learned not only what it might do, but what Ashby was willing to pay for it. I think that once he thought about the millions of dollars we’re dealing with, not to mention the vast potential profit to whoever owns your formula, he decided to try to cut himself in on it.”
Kevin looked confused. “So, he calls in sick and begins to follow the detectives he knew Ashby had hired, hoping they would lead him to us.”
Dillard nodded. “I confirmed that . . . I found a GPS tracker on the detectives’ car similar to the ones the detectives put on your cars, but of a different make. So my guess is it was put there by Fowler.”
“But,” Kevin continued, “why would he do that? Like you say, Jack, he’s the man in charge of a team. Why wouldn’t he just have the team do the following instead of doing it himself?”
Dillard shrugged. “I can only guess, but the only thing that makes sense is that he cut his team out of this part of the investigation so that he could make his own play. Must be that the FBI retirement pay isn’t looking so good to him now that he has this other prize in his sights.” He hesitated and then added, “Or maybe he just wants to make a big, splashy arrest prior to his retirement. It could be either motive.”
“But you think he’s gone rogue?” Burton asked.
“Probably, and the good news is that makes him a little bit easier to deal with than if we had the entire structure of the FBI to contend with.”
“So,” Sheila asked, frowning, “what do you advise that we do next, Jack?”
“If I know the FBI, they’ve got Ashby’s house wired from top to bottom, including his cell and house phones. Even if Fowler has cut his team out, he will still be monitoring those wires in hopes of getting to us and the formula. That means we need to warn your uncle, Kevin, that everything he and Ashby talk about is being overheard by the Feebs.”
“Yeah, so they can rip those bugs out!”
Dillard held up his hand. “No, you must warn your uncle not to let Ashby do that. They’ve got to let the bugs remain in place so Fowler doesn’t know we’re on to him. That way, Ashby and your uncle can use the bugs to spread misinformation to Fowler and keep him from interfering in our project.”
“Oh,” Kevin said, grinning, “right.”
* * *
Fowler finished his shower, shaved, and headed back out to check in on the detectives Ashby had following the scientists. He’d hated to leave them unattended, but his personal hygiene had gotten so bad from spending the last couple of days in his car that he could hardly stand himself.
Now, refreshed, he was ready to get back on the job.
He checked his laptop, and it showed the GPS signal of the detectives’ car to be located at the husband and wife’s apartment building garage. Good, he thought, that meant the two were probably in for the night. If so, he might be able to get a few hours’ shut-eye while the detectives kept watch.
He wasn’t worried about watching the young man or the other woman doctor so much. He figured where the husband-and-wife team went, the others would follow.
When he got to the garage, he drove slowly past the detectives’ car. He was surprised to see that no one was in it.
Damn sloppy work, he thought. One of the men should have stayed with the car at all times in case the couple decided to leave on short notice.
He parked his car a couple of spaces over from the detectives’ car and decided to take a stroll around the garage to see if he might be able to spot them.
As he was walking down the ramp, he heard a muffled moan from the entrance to the garage.
Trotting over, he saw a disheveled man come crawling out of the bushes next to the doorway. His nose was bent to the side, and he had dried blood streaking his face.
Uh-oh, Fowler thought. This doesn’t look good.
He stepped behind a nearby pillar and watched as the man moved back to the bushes and half-lifted another man up by his armpits.
“Matt, wake up. Are you okay?” the man asked, lightly slapping the groggy man on the cheeks.
“Doug? Is that you?” the man stuttered. “What happened?”
Johnson answered angrily, “That drunk suckered us! The bastard pretended to be drunk so he could take us out.”
“But why?” Gomer asked, rubbing the knot on the side of his head.
“Five will get you ten the subjects have flown the coop,” Johnson answered.
Gomer looked at him in alarm. “Oh shit. Gelb is gonna kill us.”
Johnson shook his head. “Forget about Gelb—it’s that fellow Ashby I’m worried about. All Gelb can do is fire us, but Ashby is liable to really kill us if we’ve lost them.”
Fowler shook his head in disg
ust. “How could these men be so incompetent?” he asked himself as he ran to his car.
He immediately checked his laptop and saw that the icons for the husband-and-wife team’s cars were still located in the parking garage.
That meant they either had other cars without bugs in them, or they had been taken away by the new player, the man who took out the detectives.
He decided to do a black-bag job and enter their apartment. Maybe that way he could find out where they’d taken off to. Otherwise he’d just have to monitor Ashby’s bugs and see if the billionaire could lead him to the group.
As he walked up the ramp toward the elevator that would lead to the couple’s apartment, he had a sinking feeling that things were getting out of his control.
CHAPTER 37
Dr. Tom Alexander sat at his desk after seeing his last patient of the day and took a deep breath—it had been a hectic and trying day. Jeannie, his head nurse, brought him a cup of coffee and set it on his desk in front of him.
“What’s this?” he asked as he arranged his call slips on his desk blotter so he could call back doctors and patients who had left messages for him to return.
Jeannie grinned. “That’s a little reward for working so efficiently that it looks like we may actually get off work on time today . . . for once!”
He held up his hands. “Message received, loud and clear. In fact, you may tell the receptionist to cease making any appointments for the next couple of weeks, and please get Dr. Madry on the phone. I’ve decided I need a break and I’m gonna see if he’ll take my calls for the next couple of weeks.”
Jeannie smiled again and patted him on the shoulder. “You have been looking tired, Dr. Tom. I think it’s a good idea that you take a little time to recharge your batteries. Let me know if Dr. Madry agrees, and I’ll go through your schedule and make new appointments for those already scheduled.”
“Thank you, Jeannie, and don’t worry about the surgeries. . . I’ve already rescheduled the routine ones and the urgent ones I’ll kick to Dr. Madry.”
Before he could pick up the phone to make his first call-back, his cell phone rang with the ringtone “Bad to the Bone,” the one he’d reserved for his nephew Kevin.
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