Killer Assignment

by Black, Maggie K.

  She choked back a sob and fell against his chest. “Where are we?”

  “We’re in a storage closet in the golf clubhouse.”

  “And Ethan?”

  “I don’t know. They left him downstairs. My biggest fear was that they were going to separate us, too.” So afraid, in fact, that he’d risked diving for the closet while he still had a gun to his back. If their kidnappers had been professionals, he’d be dead by now.

  He followed her eyes as they scanned from the door to metal shelves, mostly bare but for a few half-empty bottles of cleaning solution.

  “How do we get out of here?”

  “We climb.” He pointed up. “Up the shelves and through the skylight. Hopefully. If that fails, I start disassembling the shelves, make something we can protect ourselves with and then break down the door. Chances are, whoever tried shooting it did us a favor by weakening it. But I’d rather try to make it out of here without anyone else getting hurt.”

  He shook his head. What kind of amateur tried to kidnap someone on their home turf? He sat back against the shelf. Then he helped her sit up with her back to him. “I locked myself in here once when I was ten. Just to irritate the bodyguard they’d assigned to me. I knew every corner of this place when I was a kid. If the bolt can’t slide back all the way, the door won’t open. So, I’d just wedged bungee cord around it, fastened it to the shelf and then climbed up through one of the skylights. By the time they managed to break the door down, I was halfway to Kapuskasing. Of course, I’d brought a screwdriver in with me,” he looked up, “and I was a lot smaller then.”

  He slid his fingers down her arms and into the plastic zip tie binding her wrists.

  “I’ve got scissors,” she said, “and a nail file in my pocket.”

  He grinned and brushed a kiss over her hairline. “You are amazing.”

  She shrugged the jacket off one shoulder and helped him spill the contents out onto the floor. Her broken cell phone hit the floor with a crack—the case splitting in two. “You’re still carrying your phone?”

  “I’m hoping to be able to transfer the memory into another phone.”

  “Well, I can—” He paused. Something was blinking inside the case. But there was no way the phone should still be getting a signal. “Do you mind if I break this case open?”

  “Go ahead.”

  It came apart in his hands. He spilled the contents out onto his palm. And then he breathed in sharply. “Where did you get this phone?”

  “Work. Why?”

  “Someone’s been tracking you by GPS.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Katie leaned back against Mark inside the storage closet and waited as he cut at her bonds with the scissors. The plastic was thick, and the scissors were tiny, but already she could feel her wrists moving more freely.

  “Someone installed a GPS tracker in my phone? No wonder they were always able to find me. On the road, at that rest stop, even in the woods—they were probably tracking my every move. But if they could track me, why go to all the trouble of taking out the train tracks in Cobalt? And how something like that got in my phone, I have no idea. I’ve only had it a couple of weeks, and it’s practically been on me the whole time since then.”

  His fingers brushed against the inside of her wrists, pulling at her bonds, before going back to cutting. “The GPS was really badly installed. If I had to guess, it was installed by someone who didn’t know how to use a screwdriver and was following online instructions.”

  Maybe that explained why the phone had never really worked properly.

  “I’d almost be tempted to think that Al or Billy installed it,” he said. “Except, why would they bother if they’d already kidnapped you? This whole thing has been so sloppy.”

  Sloppy. That was a good word for it. Haphazard. Disorganized. Amateur.

  “Every instinct in my body is telling me that we’re not dealing with professional criminals. Just a bunch of wannabes.”

  Someone decided to kidnap her. So they hired Al who, while both vicious and evil, hardly seemed to be a professional kidnapper. Then he, or whoever he was hired by, placed an advertisement on a website looking for new recruits—a move so risky, so public, it was almost laughable. Anyone could have seen it.

  Then when he finally got her in his grasp, he didn’t even take her back to whoever hired him, let alone to somewhere secluded. Instead, he took his prisoners onto Shields’s property. It was almost like their captors were hoping to get noticed. She could feel the questions ticking in the back of her mind, like an ignition waiting to spark.

  Already the sunlight slipping through the skylight seemed dimmer. Had anyone seen the helicopter go down? Would they know where to look for them? Even if someone was still monitoring his GPS, they’d probably just think Mark had gone for a stroll to check up on the gift his father had bestowed on him.

  Yeah, they had to hope their kidnappers had missed the news that his father just gave him half the company.

  She shivered.

  “Cold?” he said.

  “Just thinking.” The plastic snapped off her wrists. She pulled her arms around in front of her and rolled her shoulders. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said. “Get used to feeling your arms again, and then we’ll worry about getting out of here.”

  He climbed up the metal shelving like a ladder and then braced himself against the skylight.

  “Any luck?”

  “It’s screwed shut.” He grinned. “But thankfully you brought me a nail file.”

  She stood and stretched her arms out in front of her carefully. Then she stretched her legs and her back. Like an athlete getting ready for a race.

  A screw tumbled onto the ground beside her.

  “Easy as cutting a cake.”

  She glanced up. “You sure we’re going to be able to fit through there?”

  “Trust me. It’ll be fine.”

  Right. Trust. They still hadn’t heard a peep from outside the door. She didn’t want to guess what might be happening to Ethan. She shut her eyes tight and whispered a prayer for his safety. Hopefully, they had just dumped him somewhere to sober up. “If we make it out of here safely—”

  “When.” A second screw fell.

  She smiled. “When we make it out of here, Ethan is going to run straight for the telephones. The coverage he gave to my kidnapping earlier is hardly going to compare to the downright media frenzy he’ll try to whip up now.” She frowned. “It’s horrible. Through everything that’s happened, it was like he didn’t care one iota about what I might be going through. The only thing he thought about was what a big story this would be.”

  But the media was like this whenever human tragedy struck. As it was, this whole kidnapping fiasco was practically just a badly written manifesto away from being a publicity stunt.

  Then an idea shot across her mind and caught fire. Could it all be that simple? “Mark!”

  Another screw fell. “Hang on. I nearly got this.” He pocketed the last screw and then pounded on the skylight until it opened. He stuck his head outside and took in a deep breath of air. Then he jumped back down beside her. “You ready to climb?”

  “More than ready, and I think I actually have a theory about what’s going on now, or at least half a theory. I’ll tell you once we’re out of here.”

  She reached up to climb, but he placed a hand on her shoulder.

  “Tell me now.” There was something in his voice she couldn’t quite place.

  “You okay?”

  His fingers slid up onto her shoulders and along her neck, stroked the soft skin under her hairline. “Yeah,” he said gruffly. “Tell me your theory.”

  She took a deep breath, surprised to feel it prickle painfully inside her chest. “I haven’t been thinking abou
t this like a journalist. Really, the fact someone took pictures and then sent them to the tabloids should have been a red flag. Imagine you were a stupid, reckless, small-time criminal looking to get famous overnight. What would you do?”

  “Some kind of stunt,” he said. “Something violent and shocking, like kidnapping or killing someone. If pulling off some kind of large-scale attack wasn’t feasible, then the goal would be to nab someone who’d practically guarantee you media coverage.”

  “Like a reporter—and now also an editor—from a small, gossipy publication that is hungry for scandal.”

  He leaned his forehead against hers. “You’re brilliant, you know that?”

  “It’s just a theory.”

  He curled her hair around his fingers. “But it’s a good one. Angry, evil idiots have been kidnapping journalists overseas for decades, just to get their point across.”

  “Except, in this case, we have no clue what their point is—”

  Someone banged hard on the metal door with such force the noise seemed to shake the air. “Open the door.” It was Al.

  Mark cupped his hands underneath her head and tilted her face until she was looking directly into his. “Climb. Now.”

  “I promise you we have ways of making you open this door,” Al shouted.

  “Listen.” Mark slid a finger over her lips. “I will not fit through that hole. You will.”

  She could feel tears pushing their way to the corner of her eyes. No. Not like this. She couldn’t just leave him. There was another hard knock on the other side of the door. Her face turned. Their kidnappers were laughing.

  “Don’t worry.” He guided her face back to his. “I’ll be fine. I can take the shelves apart, and I’ll go through the odds and ends stored in here for anything I can use to defend myself. That’s presuming they even manage to break in before you come back with help.”

  “But if we hold them off together—”

  “Then you could get hurt, and no one will even know that we’re out here.” He slipped his lips over hers. “I trust you. I know you’ll make it. I know you’ll come back for me. Now, trust me.”

  But she couldn’t. She cared about him too much to leave him. Not here. Not now. Wherever he was, she wanted to be—

  A voice cried out in pain. Mark’s face went pale.

  “Oh, God,” he breathed, “Please no...”

  “As you can hear,” Al said, “I have your father.”

  * * *

  Katie’s hands slipped on the metal shelf as she scrambled up toward the skylight. Beneath her, she could hear Mark beginning to untie the door. He wouldn’t open it until he knew she was clear, even though with every passing second he faced the fear of what the kidnappers might be doing to Jonah.

  She reached the top shelf and slid her arms through the open window and out into the fresh air. It was so tight a squeeze that she almost didn’t make it. But then, with a desperate shove, she propelled herself out onto the roof.

  Beneath her she could hear the sound of the door opening, her heart breaking as she heard Mark calling out to his injured father. Al was swearing. He was threatening to hurt them both unless they told him where she had gone. Then she heard the sound of someone else climbing up the metal shelving.

  She ran across the roof, her eyes scanning desperately for a way to get down. She reached the edge of the roof. The lake spread out in one direction and the golf course in the other. There was a wide stone balcony beneath her with a long, weathered canopy stretching out above it. She looked back. None of Al’s army had been thin enough to follow her through, but they’d be sure to come for her some other way. She climbed down onto the canopy and slithered across on her hands and knees. Then she swung over the edge and down onto the balcony below.

  Oh, Lord, you are familiar with all my ways...even when I can’t figure out which way I’m supposed to go.

  She pressed her palm against the sliding glass door, breathing a sigh of relief when it slid open in front of her. Almost instantly, she heard the sound of a gun cocking. Billy was standing behind a desk in the dark, wood-paneled lounge. Mark’s radio transmitter lay open in front of him. “Show me how to run this thing.” With a shaky hand, he pointed the gun at her head. “Or I will make you pay.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Mark leaned back against the metal shelves and looked over at the old man sitting on the floor opposite him. It was ironic. For as long as he could remember, his father had been larger than life. Now, sitting, captured on a hard cement floor, he saw something in his father he’d never seen before—a frail human being.

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  Jonah managed a half smile. “I’m fine, son. Thanks.”

  “What happened?”

  He sighed. “I saw you run out of the press conference this morning and hoped we could talk before tonight. Albright told me your GPS had been spotted on the golf course. I presumed you were simply walking around the property, thinking and probably needing your privacy, so I came alone. I haven’t had a personal bodyguard in years. Not since I built the cabin. I just never expected to be ambushed on my own golf course by a young man brandishing a semiautomatic. Foolish of me, I realize.”

  Foolish, maybe. But also far more considerate than Mark would have expected. Another sign that his father had changed. “Don’t beat yourself up. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

  Their kidnappers hadn’t even bothered tying them. They’d just kept their random arsenal of weapons pointed at his dad’s throat long enough to realize no one could fit through the skylight. Then they’d locked them in and left. From what he could tell, they hadn’t even left anyone guarding the door. That worried him. Al and his boys had been in a hurry to leave.

  For a moment, when the door had opened, he’d considered just barreling through them—trusting that a bunch of jumpy, badly armed, drug-addled teenagers probably wouldn’t hit what they were aiming at. But that would have put his father’s life in further danger. Not to mention the teenagers themselves.

  Maybe it was odd to be wanting to save the very people putting his own life at risk. But he’d seen too many broken, hurting young people like that in battlefields the world over. At least if they were arrested here they’d be able to get the help they needed behind bars. Maybe some of them would even get a chance at a better way of life.

  “I’ve been following your company.” Jonah’s words broke in through his son’s distracted thoughts. “You do good work, and some of your solutions have been pretty inventive. I am sorry I tried to stop you. That was wrong of me—arrogant and shortsighted.”

  He ran his hand through his gray hair, mirroring the gesture Mark himself had done a thousand times before when faced with a seemingly impossible problem. “I hope you and your sister can settle matters amicably. It would be nice to think work like yours could be part of the Shields legacy.”

  Words of protest and argument sprang to Mark’s mind. This was not the right time for this conversation—and hardly the right place. But even as the words of anger and frustration echoed back within the recesses of his heart, he could hear another stronger, calmer voice reminding him it was not his job to decide the timing—only the response.

  “What happened to you?” Mark asked. “For my whole life, you were so devoted to building up the almighty Shields Corp that half the time I didn’t even know what city you were in.”

  But the words stuck in his throat as he turned and saw the broken look on his father’s face. This was no longer a defiant man hiding behind his office walls. This was one who had finally stepped out into the desolation he’d unwittingly left behind.

  Mark shook his head. No, he didn’t need to know how it had happened. He could see his father’s mind formulating a defense. But Mark held up a hand. The Lord knew his family was desperate for a cease-fire. Maybe he could be the first
to lay down his arms.

  “It’s okay,” Mark said. “Just tell me why on earth did you give up your company?”

  “The last thing your grandmother ever told me was that she thought I’d lost my way.” Jonah looked down. “I’d sacrificed my family and shut out God. She made me promise to try building something—anything—with my own two hands again. Asked me to pray, to humble myself before God again. It took time for her words to sink in. Longer still for my heart to change. But as it did, slowly the company changed around me. If I don’t make it out of here alive, please tell your sister—” He swallowed hard.

  “You are going be able to tell her yourself.” Mark stood. “I’m going to find us a way out of here. Hopefully one of these cleaning solutions will have the right chemical components to blow the lock off the door. If we can make a big enough explosion, it should disable anyone who might still be outside the door. The shelves aren’t much, but if we take them apart, they’ll give us a fighting chance. Do you have anything in your pockets that might help?”

  His father patted down his work clothes. “How about half a book of matches, a battery and a couple of nails?”

  Mark grinned. “Perfect.”

  * * *

  It wasn’t exactly easy to think with a gun pressed against her temple.

  “Talk me through it again.” The gun rattled in Billy’s hand. “How do you set up a broadcast?” His emaciated form was hidden in an oversized sweatshirt. Sweat dripped down his face.

  She closed her eyes. “Why are you doing this? Do you even know?”

  Maybe it wasn’t wise to talk back to someone holding a gun to her head. But now that she was finally looking directly into the sunken, hollow eyes of the very young man who had chased, attacked, threatened and terrorized her ever since she’d stepped onto the platform in Cobalt, all she could see was a boy who was not only capable of cruelty and violence but who was also very, very afraid.

  “You didn’t sign up for any of this, did you?” she ventured. “Someone just offered you money or drugs to follow me up from Toronto and make sure I didn’t go off course? After all, fifty thousand dollars is a lot to risk on just a GPS tracker. If I’d gotten off at an unexpected stop or lost my phone, there goes your payday. Did you know the rockslide on the train tracks wasn’t an accident? That someone wanted the train to stop in Cobalt?”