WINNER TAKES ALL: A Dylan Hunter Justice Thriller (Dylan Hunter Thrillers Book 3)

by Robert Bidinotto

  Which would arouse their curiosity even more. The attention, questions, investigations would become relentless. They would pester Bronowski and others at the Inquirer. They would look closer into his death fight with Adrian Wulfe, at the implausibility of a mere reporter overcoming a giant mixed martial arts fighter. They would try to follow him every time he surfaced in public. That pursuit might lead them to Annie, endangering her. And through her, it could lead them to the CIA . . .

  He got up. Began to pace the room.

  It was so incredibly stupid that he’d allowed all this to happen. In his anger against the injustices he encountered, he’d violated every rule of tradecraft. Instead of remaining hidden in undercover obscurity, he’d gone off on journalistic crusades, putting himself under the glare of the public spotlight.

  And now, it was only a matter of time—days, weeks at most—that it all would come crashing down on him. At the least, he would face public exposure. Worse, he would be identified as the vigilante killer and arrested. Even worse, Lasher would find him—and then he’d be on the receiving end of a sniper round from out of nowhere.

  Worst of all, Lasher might discover his connection to Wonk, or to Annie, and target them in order to get to him.

  If he didn’t disappear once again into the wind, and soon, he would lose his freedom. Maybe his life. Maybe theirs.

  He would certainly lose Annie, one way or the other. It was inevitable . . .

  . . . unless he came up with some fresh brainstorm—some new deception that would throw everyone off his scent.

  But right now, he had no good ideas. No ideas at all.

  “Mrrraaaoooww.”

  He stopped pacing and looked at the cat. She looked back at him inquisitively, impatiently.

  Expecting him to do something.

  He went back to the sofa, sat, and began scratching her head again. She closed her eyes and resumed her purring.

  “Luna girl, you already gave Annie and me one of your nine lives, out there in the Allegheny Forest. Do you have any more you’re willing to spare?”

  She opened her eyes just a slit and glowered at him.

  “Mrrraaaoooww.”

  He sighed and sank back against the soft plush cushion.

  “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Heading into the glare of the early morning sun, Hunter left Massachusetts Avenue at Dupont Circle, then prowled east on P Street, hoping to find a parking place for the BMW Security 7 sedan. The blond wig and fake mustache, the phony IDs in his wallet, and the other pocket litter identified him as the car’s registered owner: financial services consultant Wayne Grayson.

  Hunter preferred not to wander the city under a different alias. At least, not without a compelling reason. Too many things could go sideways. But facing even greater risks, he felt he had little choice. If Lasher ever tracked him to the Bethesda apartment, then he could be ambushed while leaving the building’s garage in his Subaru Forester, or while walking to the nearby Metro station. In disguise and behind the deeply tinted glass of Wayne Grayson’s BMW, however, he could come and go undetected. If the worst still happened, the armored auto—with its array of security features and armament—offered a lot of protection.

  P Street was lined with budding trees, apartment buildings, old brick row houses, and cars that filled the available parking spots. Just before he reached 17th Street, he got lucky when a local resident pulled out of her overnight space. He grabbed the spot, lowered his driver’s visor, then bent low to quickly remove the wig and mustache, which went into a waiting plastic bag. He opened the glove compartment to swap out wallets and pocket litter, locking away Wayne Grayson’s and jamming their Dylan Hunter replacements into his sports jacket.

  Inside of thirty seconds, he emerged from the car into the frosty morning air. He made a show of stretching, which allowed him to turn and check for tails. Then he set out on foot. He continued east past 17th, crossing the street to its north sidewalk. He passed a corner pharmacy, a Thai restaurant, and a playground before turning left onto 16th.

  A massive, Gothic-style Methodist church occupied the corner, and a bus stop shelter stood nearby. A young blonde woman sat on its bench, leaning over a child in a stroller. The woman was dangling a doll in front of its occupant, a little girl wrapped in a thick pink outfit. Like the woman, both the child and her doll had thick golden curls. The girl was grabbing at the doll, and her mother was snatching it playfully just out of reach. Both were giggling.

  Hunter slowed as he passed, then stopped and smiled.

  “She’s adorable. How old?”

  The woman, who looked to be in her late twenties, glanced up and smiled back. She had bright blue eyes, a pert nose, and deep dimples.

  “Thank you. Nineteen months.”

  “She your first?”

  “We have a four-year-old, too. A boy.” She looked down at her daughter, who had seized the doll now and was clutching it ferociously. “My husband just dropped him at pre-school before heading off to work. It’s such a gorgeous morning, I decided Ally and I would take a little walk after breakfast. Isn’t that right, Ally?”

  “Go!” the toddler shrieked, frowning and wriggling. “Go!”

  “Okay, okay—we’ll go!” The young woman rose. “She loves riding around.”

  “Just wait till the day she asks for the car keys. Well, you two have a nice walk . . . Bye-bye, Ally.”

  “Bye!” came a high little voice. The doll gyrated wildly in her hand, as if she were waving it. Her mother rolled the stroller north, past the church.

  Hunter squinted against the sun, looking across the street. The address he sought was somewhere amid the row of adjoining buildings. He was about to cross when he heard the rising growl of a truck engine.

  A white rental box truck had just turned out of P Street and was approaching from his right. It slowed as it came abreast of him. The driver’s window was down, and a dark-bearded man hunched low over the wheel. He appeared to be Hispanic, perhaps Middle Eastern.

  The driver flashed a glance Hunter’s way. His expression was intense, irritated. Despite the cool temperature and the open window, his forehead and nose seemed to glisten with sweat. In the passenger seat beside him, a second man faced away, toward the row of buildings across the street, as if looking for a delivery address. The van slowed almost to a complete stop. Then the passenger gestured to the driver, who abruptly gunned the engine. Gears ground, and the van picked up speed again.

  Hunter stood on the curb, watching it proceed north on 16th, feeling a moment’s uneasiness. Then he noticed that the Monday morning rush hour traffic had thinned in both directions. He seized the opportunity to trot across 16th. Following the building numbers a few doors farther, he found his destination, near where the truck had slowed.

  Set back about thirty feet from the street, the red-brick building stood semi-hidden behind some trees and hedges. Old and narrow, it climbed in three stories of bay windows to a gabled fourth floor. Hunter strode down its sidewalk into an arched, covered entrance and pressed the doorbell. A young receptionist whom he recognized from Arnold Wasserman’s funeral reception greeted him and let him in.

  2

  The first thing Hunter did when entering any unfamiliar building was to check for exits. He had already done a search-engine “street view” tour of the neighborhood the previous night. Now his eyes roamed the interior.

  The foyer, wrapped in dark oak paneling, looked faintly Victorian. A wooden staircase to the right of the receptionist’s cluttered desk rose to the upper floors; he assumed there would be a rear staircase, too. A narrow hallway cut through the first floor, from where he stood in the foyer straight back to a distant rear door marked with an exit sign.

  “It’ll be just a few more minutes till our nine-thirty staff meeting,” said the receptionist, a wide-eyed brunette named Samantha. “Mr. Hatcher told me he invited you to sit in. Our conference room is right here.”

  She led him into
a room just to the right of the building entrance. A dozen swivel chairs surrounded a thick old conference table in its center. At the far end, a bay window faced the Methodist church across the street. The wall to his right was filled with framed photos of a grinning Dennis Hatcher shaking hands with politicians and a former conservative president, as well as framed copies of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. The one to his left presented a brick fireplace; its marble mantelpiece held what looked like awards and mementos.

  He declined Samantha’s offer of coffee. She retreated to her desk, and he took the nearest corner seat on the left side of the table. There, his back was to the fireplace, and he had clear views of the street beyond the window and the entrance to the room. He pulled out his notepad from his jacket and reviewed his notes while he waited.

  Five minutes later he heard creaking footsteps on the stairs outside the room. The staff began to file in and exchanged smiles and handshakes with him. Mark Deaver, the vice-president, slid into the chair next to his and flopped a file folder on the table. Dennis Hatcher was last to arrive and took the sole high-backed chair at the head of the table, the window behind him.

  “We’re delighted you could join us today to discuss our progress, Mr. Hunter,” he began. “Were you able to learn anything more from the police about . . . about Arnie?”

  “Not much. They shared with me the physical evidence in his apartment that led them to conclude it was an accident. But Won—Frederick managed to chat with his mother and visit the apartment. He checked Arnold’s computer, phone, and files, and noticed some things that the police seem to have missed.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as not a single paper or computer file about his Currents investigation. Such as no related calls listed in his cell phone history. Such as emails gone missing, too—including the one you say he sent you on the night he died.”

  “But he did send it,” Deaver said, opening his file folder. He riffled the stack of papers, pulled one out, slid it in front of Hunter. “See the header? He emailed this at 6:33 p.m. on March 18th.”

  Hunter scanned the terse message, then thumbed through his own notepad.

  “Okay, here . . . Frederick has a record of his own phone call to Arnold that evening. He said the call began at 6:34. So, it looks like immediately after Arnold sent you this message, he took Frederick’s call. And then he told him somebody was at the door and he’d call back.” He paused. “He never did. It was the last time anyone heard from him.”

  Nobody spoke. Everyone’s eyes looked down, or into the distance.

  “What about you folks?” Hunter said, breaking the silence. “What did you find out when you interviewed the people at Currents?”

  “We didn’t,” Hatcher said. “We called them a day or so after Arnie’s funeral and left a message. When they called back, they said they wouldn’t meet with us, and that any further inquiries should be directed to their attorney.”

  “Oh, really.”

  “Yes. Really.”

  The sound of a noisy truck engine rumbled in through the bay window behind Hatcher. Hunter caught movement in his peripheral vision.

  A truck moved into view, left to right.

  The same white rental truck . . .

  Its pace was glacial. The passenger window was down, and a second dark bearded man in that seat stared directly at their building.

  Suddenly, the truck lurched forward, into a vacant parking spot out front . . . then nose first, jumped right up onto the sidewalk.

  Hunter bolted to his feet, knocking his chair backward.

  “Everyone! Get out of the room! Now!”

  The passenger door of the truck burst open and the occupant spilled out. He held an AK-47.

  The CAP staff sat frozen, gaping at Hunter as if he’d gone mad. He grabbed the front of Deaver’s shirt and tie, yanking him upward, pointing out the window.

  “Terrorists outside! Run! Go out the back exit! Get out now!”

  They all spun toward the window. Saw what he saw. The girl seated across from him screamed. He propelled Deaver toward the room entrance and then pointed at her.

  “Out the back door! Go, go, go!”

  She leaped to her feet and stumbled after Deaver.

  It was bedlam. The rest all jumped up at once, piling into each other, tripping over the chairs, shoving each other toward the doorway.

  Keeping eyes on the scene unfolding outside, Hunter seized chairs from the path of those on his side of the table and pushed them back against the wall, clearing a path.

  Now the truck driver, a big burly guy also brandishing an AK-47, lumbered around the front of the truck to join his companion on the sidewalk.

  “Run! Out the back, and keep running!” Hunter shouted above the din, shoving a young man past him, the last person on his side. Then he vaulted onto the table and jumped down on the other side, where three screaming people, including Hatcher, had tumbled among the chairs in a panicked heap. He seized each of them by jackets and shirts, lifted them to their feet, pushed them out the doorway.

  Then glanced back out the window.

  The two terrorists stood thirty feet away, rifles held across their bodies, staring toward the building’s front door.

  Hunter knew what would come next. He shoved the last young woman past him toward the doorway and was just about to dive beneath the table to avoid the inevitable burst of gunfire.

  Then, unexpectedly, the pair turned away and started to jog north, up the sidewalk and out of sight.

  He stared, bewildered, at the abandoned box truck up on sidewalk.

  Then understood.

  He raced out into the foyer, following the stragglers down the hallway. Hatcher, overweight, was lumbering and limping as the others pushed past him and out the wide-open exit door. Hunter caught up with him. There was no time to explain. He grabbed his shoulder, arresting his progress, and before the big man could know what was happening, Hunter crouched, wrapped his left arm beneath his thighs, and lifted him like a baby.

  He burst outside and saw that they had emerged into a private parking lot for another church at the far end of the block. Some ahead of him continued to run, full tilt, while others were slowing.

  “Keep running! They’ve got a bomb! Go, go!”

  Hatcher whimpered and his arm wrapped so tightly around Hunter’s neck that he felt he was being choked. Yet he was unaware of the man’s weight, unaware of any pain, unaware of anything but the desperate need to put more distance between themselves and that truck.

  Ten seconds more and he was charging through a section crowded with parked cars when a white flash lit the church before him and a sudden vibration rocked his feet and then an enormous ear-splitting thunderclap and a wall of air knocked him forward and they crashed to the pavement between two vehicles . . .

  Hunter’s ears were ringing from the blast and piercing car alarms were going off around him. He pushed Hatcher away and rolled himself against one of the car tires, closing his eyes and covering his head with his arms.

  Debris rained down, big fragments of things, thumping onto the cars, smacking against the pavement around him, just missing him, the crashing noises almost drowned out by the ringing din in his ears—then came smaller pieces that hit like hailstones, some finding his back and scalp and arms—then a rolling fog of choking dust and the accompanying stench of acrid chemicals and smoke. When the debris stopped falling, he rolled out and sat up, squinting and coughing. He yanked off his sports jacket, then pulled off his shirt and tied it around his mouth and nose, trying to filter the smoke.

  He looked around. Despite his girth, Hatcher had somehow squashed himself, face first, almost completely under the pickup truck next to him; his body shook violently. Hunter crawled over to him.

  “Are you all right?” he yelled, trying to stifle his own coughing, and blinking to clear the tears from his eyes.

  Hatcher remained huddled there, coughing and whimpering and shuddering. Hunter tried to pull him out
to check him for injuries, but he wouldn’t budge. At least he was alive.

  He rose to his feet. Chunks of unrecognizable rubble were strewn all around him on the cars and pavement. The smoke and falling dust were leaving a chalky, choking coating on every surface. Strips of pink insulation and sheets of burnt paper fluttered down like confetti.

  Then the breeze picked up and shifted, and mercifully the smoke began to clear from the parking lot. He unwrapped the shirt from around his face and put it back on. Then his jacket.

  He looked back toward the CAP building. Or where it had been. The four-story structure had collapsed into a single-story mound of smoking, flaming ruins. The buildings on either side had been demolished, too: They were sheared off at their tops, yet their remains stood slightly taller. In the distance beyond them, and looming above them, he could see that the Methodist church across the street still stood. Its windows and a section of its front stone wall had been blown in, and its belfry tower had partly collapsed. But it still looked mostly intact.

  Hunter realized that a lot of people had to have died in those buildings and on the street.

  His numbed ears picked up the faint, rising sounds of distant sirens, and of much closer gunfire. The terrorists were probably hitting some other nearby target. He gritted his teeth in helpless fury. He would have gone after them—but he had no gun on him.

  And he had others to worry about, right here.

  Leaving Hatcher, he began to search for the other CAP staff members in the parking lot. He stepped gingerly around the broken bricks, pulverized glass, sharp shards of wood, and large mangled metal chunks that may have been part of the box truck. He felt little pain. Probing with his fingers as he walked, he was incredulous that he seemed to have no serious injuries—only the ringing in his ears, the familiar sticky warmth of a small cut on the back of his scalp, and what he knew would be some welts and bruises.