by David Archer
“I’m with you, Karen,” Sam said. “Tell Indie—nevermind, I’ll tell her myself.” He cut off the call and dialed his wife’s number immediately, and she answered on the first ring.
“Sam? Oh, God, Sam,” she said. “I—I killed somebody, Sam.”
“I know,” Sam said softly. “Karen just called and told me what happened. Indie, you did exactly the right thing. Don’t second guess yourself, don’t think about what you might’ve done instead, just understand that you did exactly the right thing. When somebody threatens you or the kids, you do whatever it takes to keep all of you safe.”
“I know,” Indie said, and Sam could hear the tears in her voice. “I know I had no choice, but it still feels awful.”
“It will, for a while,” Sam said. “I wish I was there with you right now, but for right now, I want you to get out of there. Go stay with the grandmas, because Karen has Reynard thinking that they have you. I need to keep him thinking that way just a little longer. If I come rushing home right now, it’s possible he’s got someone watching me and will know they failed. Can you handle that, babe?”
“I can handle it, Sam,” Indie said. “Sam? Promise me you’re going to get that son of a bitch.”
“You’re damned right I am. Kiss the kids for me, and I’m going to bring this to an end.”
They said goodbye and Sam put the phone into his pocket. The team was all gathered at the conference table, and they had all been staring at Sam after his outburst.
“Reynard sent people after Indie and the kids,” Sam said coldly. “Indie killed one of them and captured the other, and the police have him in custody. Karen found the emails in his cell phone and sent one to let Reynard think they were successful. It’s time that bastard goes down.”
Steve nodded. “All the way down,” he said. “She actually caught one of them alive?”
Sam gave him an evil-looking grin. “Never mess with the mother protecting her children,” he said. “It’s never going to end well for you.”
“But Reynard thinks they managed to pull it off,” Darren said. “This is good, Sam. If he wanted them taken, he was probably going to use them as hostages to make you back off. He’s going to be contacting you with a warning, and you’ve got to convince him that you’re stepping back from the case, that we all are. That will make him overconfident, and that’s exactly how we need him.”
“I agree,” Sam said, “but we’ve got to be careful. With any luck, we’re about to strip him of having any power at all.”
He took out his phone again and called Harry Winslow.
“Sam? My gut tells me this is not a social call. Please tell me I am not correct on that assumption.”
“I wish I could, Harry,” Sam said. “Reynard sent a team after my wife and kids. Indie is freaking out because she killed one of them, but she captured the other for the police. Karen found a cell phone on one of them, and found the email where Reynard ordered them to take my family. She called for a press blackout and sent a message back to Reynard claiming that the job was done.”
“Well, well,” Harry said. “You must be making him nervous, Sam. This tells me that things are about to get exciting. What’s your next move?”
“I’m waiting for him to contact me, warn me to back off. When he does, I’m hoping we can find some way to figure out where he is. We’ve identified both of the principals in the crime, but Reynard is the one they hired to accomplish everything. I’m hoping to put an end to his career today.”
“Well, then I have good news, and I have bad news. Which one would you like first?”
“Oh, hell, give me the bad news first,” Sam said. “That way I still got something to look forward to.”
“Well, the bad news is that I just walked through the front door of your office building.”
Sam blinked. “You did what?”
“Of course, Sam, boy, that is also the good news. I should be in your office in about thirty seconds.” The line went dead.
Sam turned his head and looked at his office door, and simply stared when it opened and Harry Winslow walked in.
“What in the world are you doing here?” Sam asked. “Your wife is going to kill me, do you realize that?”
“Relax, Sam,” Harry said. “Kathy told me to get my ass up here. When I explained to her just who Reynard is, she insisted that I come to help.”
“But you’re supposed to be retired,” Sam said, “or have you forgotten that?”
Harry reached into a pocket and pulled out a slim wallet, flipping it open to show Sam his Windlass Security ID. “I made a deal with Ron to keep me on the payroll as a consultant, so that I can come out of retirement when I need to. My security clearance is still intact, so I am putting myself on temporary reassignment to DHS. Now, let’s start planning to eliminate the French Fox.”
Of the team members, only Darren had ever actually met Harry before. The two of them had occasionally worked together before Harry was exiled to Denver, and they shared a mutual respect for one another. Sam introduced him to the rest of the team, and was surprised when even Walter shook his hand.
“All right, let’s figure out what we’re doing,” Harry said. “Sam, you’re still in charge. I’m only here as a consultant.”
“Well, all I can do at the moment is…”
Sam’s phone rang, and the display said “RESTRICTED.” He held it up for everyone to see, then answered it as they sat in silence.
“Sam Prichard,” he said.
“Mr. Prichard,” said a voice that sent a chill down Sam’s spine. “I believe you are trying to interfere with some of my plans.”
“Then you must be Pierre Reynard,” Sam said. “Let me tell you that I plan to do a lot more than interfere. I’m going to stop your ass.”
“Oh, I sincerely doubt it,” Reynard said. “You see, Mr. Prichard, I have something to offer you, a reward for getting out of my way and staying there.”
“Sorry, asshole,” Sam said. “I don’t take bribes.”
“You should hear the offer before you discount it,” Reynard said. “Mr. Prichard, I have your wife and children. I’m certain you won’t believe me, so I suggest you try to reach them. I shall call you back shortly, after you have come to understand that I am quite sincere.”
The line went dead. Sam sat there quietly, his heart racing as he waited. Two minutes passed, and then five. At eight minutes, the phone rang again.
“You son of a bitch!” Sam said coldly. “Where are they?”
“They are not harmed,” Reynard said, “and they will remain safe as long as you do as I tell you. You will stand down, Mr. Prichard. This matter is not of your concern. I do not care if you watch it unfold, but you and your associates will cease all activity to try to stop me. If you fail to do as I tell you, your family will be killed. Oh, and just so you know, they will not all die together. Your wife will get to watch your children die, first, before she joins them. Do we understand one another?”
Sam forced himself to sit there in silence for several seconds, then spat out, “Yes. We understand one another.”
“That’s very good,” Reynard said. “Once my business is concluded, your family will be released unharmed. Your wife will be able to call you at that point, so that you can pick them up and take them home.”
The line went dead, and Sam put the phone back into his pocket.
“And the game is afoot,” Harry said. “Now is the time to move, Sam. Where do we go?”
“Karen was supposed to be bringing Tom Linden, who is Annie Porter’s brother, but I think what happened with Indie got in the way of that. I’ve got a sneaky hunch he knows we’re onto him, anyway, and that’s probably what prompted Reynard to try this. We need to find him, Harry. I’m just not sure how to go about it, if he’s hiding.”
“I’ll bet I can,” Summer said. “Well, not me, but I’ve got his personal cell number. Good chance he won’t be smart enough to turn it off.”
“Then I can find it,” Jade said.
She grabbed Summer by the arm and the two of them hurried to Sam’s desk. Jade sat down and started tapping keys on the computer keyboard. “Give me the number,” she said, and Summer read it off to her.
“It’s a Verizon phone,” Jade said. “Bingo, I got a GPS signal on it. It’s on Seventeenth Street, in LoDo. He’s at a restaurant, little place called Ruby’s.”
“Or at least, his phone is,” Sam said. “He might have ditched it.”
“Hang on just a minute,” Jade said, “and I can probably tell you. Nope, I’m looking at the activity on the phone, and he used it three minutes ago when he got a call from the headquarters building. He answered the call and talked for over ninety seconds.”
“Let’s go,” Sam said. “I’ll call Karen on the way.”
Back in part of the building where the old automotive shop had done detail work, Windlass had three special vehicles. One of them was a beat-up old Ford van, the kind that looks like it should have been in the junkyard five years ago. Sam put Darren in the driver seat, while he, Denny, and Steve hunkered down in the back. Harry, claiming the privilege of age, took the passenger seat up front.
Despite its appearance, the old van was in excellent mechanical condition. It had been built for the express purpose of clandestine work, with a five hundred horsepower crate engine that was muffled to the point of silence, except for one small hole drilled in the exhaust pipe to make it sound rough. With Darren driving, it made it into Denver in very short order and pulled up in front of Ruby’s less than thirty minutes after leaving the office.
Jade and Summer had remained at Sam’s office, still on the computer and watching to make sure Tom’s phone didn’t leave. “He still there,” Jade said to Sam over his phone. “He’s made half a dozen calls in the last half-hour.”
“Good. Everybody ready?”
Summer had sent each of them a photo of Tom, so they knew who they were looking for. When everyone was ready to move, Sam threw open the side doors and they all boiled out at once. They rushed into the building and spotted Tom sitting in a booth by himself.
He looked up, but it was far too late and he knew it. As they moved to surround him, Sam held up his ID for everyone else to see. “Federal agents,” he said. “We’re taking this man into custody.”
Denny grabbed Tom and yanked him out of the booth, took away his phone, and then slapped a pair of handcuffs on him behind his back. Darren took him after that and marched him out to the van. Tom climbed in without resisting and the rest of them followed. Darren got behind the wheel and they headed back toward the office building.
Tom looked at Sam. “You must be Prichard,” he said. “I heard you limped, so I know it’s you. You do realize you just got your family killed, right?”
“Oh, thank you,” Sam said. “You just confessed to being an accessory to kidnapping. And since two of the people who were involved in that attempted kidnapping died, you will also be charged with murder. But as for my family? Don’t you worry a bit, they’re perfectly safe. You see, my wife is a lot tougher than any of the pieces of crap that your boy Reynard could send after her. She killed one of them herself, and captured another one.”
Tom’s face went white. “You’re lying,” he said. “He already told me he got them, and if anything happens to me, he’ll kill them.”
“Sorry, pal,” Sam said. “I’m afraid it’s all over for you. You’re looking at a minimum of life in prison, and you might even be charged with acts of terrorism. In that case, you could conceivably face the firing squad, or you could spend the rest of your life inside a single room.”
Tom stared at him. “Look, there’s been some kind of…”
“Shut up,” Sam said brusquely. “Don’t even try to talk your way out of this. We’ve got you every way you can imagine, we even have a recording of you talking to Benjamin Hickam about making sure the winner of the Top Video Award gets shot. You’re hung, kid, and the only hope you’ve got right now is to start talking your head off. I want to know everything about what you were getting out of this deal, I want to know where to find Reynard, I want everything, and I want it now.”
Tom Linden started to cry. “I-I-I just wanted to…”
“I don’t want any excuses. Don’t try to tell me what you wanted to do, just tell me what you were getting out of this. Was it money? Was this all about getting rich?”
Tom sniffled a couple of times, then forced himself to stop. “A billion dollars,” he said finally. “I was supposed to get a billion dollars’ worth of stock in his company.”
“And all you had to do was arrange for some poor kid to get killed, right? Put your sister’s company smack in the middle of all the sympathy and support he could get, so that it would suddenly grow and become more valuable?”
“That was part of it,” Tom said miserably. “Once he went public, then he was going to offer to buy Annie out. My stock would have doubled, and I’d be richer than John ever dreamed of.”
There it was. That was the anger Darren’s profile had suggested they would find, clear as day.
“And that was part of it too, right? Make yourself richer than John, show him you’re not as big a waste of space as he thought you were?”
Tom looked down at the floor of the van and said nothing.
“Okay, that helps a little bit,” Sam said. “That explains why you were doing it, at least. Now, if you want to help yourself and maybe even have a chance to see freedom again someday, you tell me where to find Pierre Reynard.”
Tom shook his head from side to side. “I don’t know,” he said. “All I’ve got is a phone number, but it bounces around the world before it ever gets to him. He says that’s so it can’t be traced. I know he’s here in Denver, somewhere, but I don’t know where.”
Sam looked at him. “He’s here in Denver? Then there is something else here that he needs to do, isn’t there? What is it, Tom? Why is he still here?”
Tom stared at the floor of the van for a moment, then suddenly looked up at Sam with pure rage in his eyes. “You’re too late,” he said. “He’s going to kill John, and he’s already on the way.”
30
Sam’s eyes flew wide open. He snatched out his phone and called John Morton, and John answered the call only a second later.
“Sam?” Morton said as he answered.
Sam cut him off. “John, Pierre Reynard is on the way to kill you, right now. Where are you?”
“To kill me? I’m in my office, what are you talking about?”
“Annie’s brother Tom was the inside man,” Sam said. “I’ll explain it all later, but he’s been stealing money from you to hire Reynard, to build up your company, and then kill you. He made a deal with Benjamin Hickam to get a billion dollars’ worth of stock in Hickam’s company, and I guess they figured that once you were dead, they could force Annie to sell out to him, as well. You need to get out of there, right now. We are on the way, but you need to grab Annie and find somewhere to hide.”
“Oh, my God,” Morton said. “Annie just went down to the lobby, somebody came in and said they needed her to sign for a package.”
“Don’t go down there,” Sam said. “If that’s Reynard, he’s out to kill you, not her. You go and hide somewhere, right now. We’ll be there in just a few minutes, we’ll handle it.”
Darren had shoved his foot to the floor, and the van was flying through the city. Sam turned and looked at Tom. “Well, at the moment it sounds like Reynard has your sister,” he said. “We’ll do everything we can to keep her alive, but you may have gotten her killed.”
Tom stared at him. “No, he knows not to hurt Annie,” he said. “He knows that.”
“Young man,” Harry said, looking back at Tom. “If he feels trapped, he will kill everyone near him. It won’t matter what he promised not to do, it won’t matter what he was paid to do, he will kill everyone as he makes his escape.” Harry looked at Sam. “We should throw this piece of crap right out in front of Reynard. Then he’d find out firsthand just ho
w loyal an assassin can be.”
“Oh, no,” Sam said. “I want this boy to live a long time, and remember what he’s done.”
It took them four more minutes to get to the Web Wide Awards building, and Darren slowed the van as he drove up to it. Its nondescript appearance might give them an extra moment of advantage, and he was planning to squeeze everything out of it that he could.
He pulled up as close to the front door as he could get and tried to see through the glass on the front of the building. “No sign of anybody in the front lobby,” he said. “Sam, I don’t even see the security guard.”
Sam reached for the side door handle, then looked up at Harry. “Harry, do me a favor. Keep your gun pointed at this piece of shit, and blow his brains out if he tries to run.” He snatched open the door and he, Denny, and Steve leapt out. Darren jumped out of the driver’s door and the four of them rushed for the front of the building.
As Darren had said, there was no one visible in the lobby. Sam didn’t even slow down, but ignored the pain in his hip as he ran. He opened the door and rushed inside, pistol held out in front of him as he looked around for potential threats.
Denny ran to the front desk, glanced over, and then turned to Sam. “Security guard is down,” he said. “Dead, bullet through the brain.” He moved behind the desk and started looking at the security monitors. “There! Top floor, headed for Morton’s office, it looks like. Him and the woman, and he’s holding a gun pointed at her head.”
“Let’s go,” Sam said, and he started toward the elevator just as it opened. A dozen people came spilling out, several of them screaming when they saw the men with their guns. The second elevator opened a few seconds later, and more people came rushing out. “Stairs,” Sam shouted, and they all headed for the fire stairs. Darren yanked it open and the four of them started up.