‘I knew that you’d come after me, especially when Clearwater disconnected from the grid. It was only a matter of time, really, before somebody figured out that the town was getting its energy for free without a solar panel or a wind turbine in sight. News like that travels fast when there’s money involved, so I decided to ensure that when the time came, you’d come for me first. I couldn’t distribute the fusion cage without funds, which of course no company would provide as an investment without patents in place, so I needed a really big cash injection to get things moving.’
Aaron’s voice rumbled back at Stanley.
‘You didn’t invent the fusion cage,’ he said finally.
Stanley chuckled in delight and shrugged. ‘Nope, sorry! I just plugged it in!’
Huck Seavers almost gagged as he saw an image of Seavers Incorporated stocks plunging, of the entire company folding before his eyes and legal cases piling up by the second as his support from MJ–12 vanished. He knew without a doubt that they would hang him out to dry, that his company would be bought out for a fraction of its value and that his life, his family’s life, would never be the same again. They would lose everything: the house, the boat, the holidays, the cars, the security, the happiness …
Stanley Meyer’s voice chortled at Aaron Mitchell.
‘You’re finished,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing on earth that you can do to stop it now! Mine was not the only fusion cage built!’
Aaron Mitchell stepped forward and one thick fist ploughed down into Stanley Meyer’s plexus like a freight train through an eggshell. Stanley’s cries of delight mutated grotesquely into a wretch of agony as he folded over at the waist and plunged to his knees. A thin stream of bile spilled from his mouth to stain the carpet as he clutched his belly with both arms.
Mitchell grabbed the old man’s collar with both hands and lifted him bodily off the ground, one thick hand gripping Meyer’s throat as the other pinned him against a wall.
‘Who, and where?’
Meyer’s face was twisted in pain, his eyes streaming and blurred as he struggled both to breathe and to fight the pain from the blow that must have wrenched his innards apart. Huck could hear his sobs as Mitchell spoke again.
‘Believe me, what happens to you will be nothing compared to what I will do to your family when I find them. Your daughter, your wife, everybody. I will personally exterminate them one by one unless you tell me, right now, what I need to know. Who, and when?’
Stanley, his knees struggling to pull up to his stomach in sympathy with his pain, shook his head and cried out.
‘Never! I’ll die sooner than tell you a damned thing!’
Mitchell held the old man in place for a moment longer, and then nodded. ‘So be it.’
Mitchell hauled Stanley across the suite, the old man’s legs dragging across the carpet. Mitchell used a key card to unlock the balcony doors, Stanley kicking and struggling as he was pulled out onto the balcony, five stories above the gardens below. Huck dragged himself off the sofa and staggered across the suite, one eye drawn to a large ornate vase as he heard Mitchell’s voice from outside.
‘Last chance, Meyer. Start talking or you’ll end up as nothing more than a damp spot on that lawn.’
Stanley gabbled an agonized insult, and through the white blinds Huck saw Aaron Mitchell jerk one knee violently upward. The bony joint slammed into Stanley’s groin and the old man let out a stifled, pinched groan of agony as he folded up against the railings, weeping and quivering as Mitchell pinned him in place.
‘Your daughter will go first,’ Mitchell growled. ‘Painfully, slowly, while your wife watches. I’ll take months over it, Meyer, years. Nobody will ever see them again and even if they did they wouldn’t recognize what’s left.’
Meyer twitched, his voice sawing and rasping in his throat as Huck reached the balcony and saw Mitchell drag the old man over the railings, his old head and shoulders dangling over the precipitous drop as Mitchell growled at him.
‘Your suicide from this suite will be the first news report they hear,’ he rumbled, ‘just to let them know that we’re coming for them, that they’ll never be able to escape us. One call, Stanley, one call and your family will become the most wanted people on Earth. Tell me: who, and where?!’
Stanley Meyer sucked in a final, rattling breath.
‘Go to hell!’ he rasped.
Mitchell scowled and made to lift Meyer over the railing as the old man screamed in fear.
Huck lunged and swung with all of his might, and the ornate vase smashed across Mitchell’s temple with a deep crack that sounded as though somebody had dropped a metal ball on wet mud. Mitchell’s body flailed sideways as his eyes rolled up into their sockets and the huge man thumped down onto the balcony as Meyer cried out.
Huck Seavers whirled as the old man tilted over the edge and he lunged for Meyers. Huck threw himself half over the balcony railing and grabbed at Meyer’s wrists, catching them even as they flailed. The old man hung onto Seaver’s grip and looked up at him in amazement.
‘Give me your hand!’ Seavers groaned, barely able to maintain his grip.
Meyer stared at him through eyes smeared with tears of pain. ‘Why?’ he gasped.
Seavers knew what Meyer meant.
‘Because without you I’m nothing now!’ he said in a strained voice, fighting to keep a hold of Meyer. ‘I can’t survive now with or without your fusion cage, my business will collapse! You’re my family’s only hope!’
Stanley Meyer watched Huck for a long moment, suddenly it seemed unafraid any more.
‘Las Vegas,’ he said softly, still fighting back tears. ‘My wife’s in Vegas, and headed for the Crescent Dunes solar plant. Help her.’
‘Grip my wrists!’ Huck shouted. ‘I can’t pull you up like this!’
To Huck’s horror Stanley did not grip back as his legs swung out over the abyss, his rheumy old eyes now calm.
‘No! Don’t you dare do it Stanley!’
Stanley smiled, his voice devoid of anger.
‘Be the man you’d want your family to remember you as, not the man you need to be in the now.’
Huck stared at Stanley in amazement and then the old man’s hand loosened and slipped through his and he plunged away from the balcony. Huck stared in horror for a moment and then averted his eyes before Stanley hit the patio far below. He heard a distant, sickening thump, and bile formed in his throat as he glanced at Mitchell. The agent was lying on his back, blood streaming from the deep wound in his head onto the balcony.
Huck staggered into the suite and struggled to think straight. He managed to set the vase back down on the glass table and then to fumble for his cell phone in his pocket. His fingers felt numb as he dialled a number, and then heard it connect on the first ring and his wife’s voice.
‘Honey, where are you?’
‘Oh God, Angela, you’re safe!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Get the kids, Angela, get them and get in your car and run, okay?!’
‘Huck, what’s going on?!’
‘Just do it! Run, Angela, as far as you can! Everything’s gone, Angela. There’s nothing that I can do now to stop it. Please just do as I say and run!’
‘Okay!’ Angela replied, Huck hearing the tears and the fear in her voice. ‘Where are you?’
Huck struggled to speak.
‘I have some things that I need to do and I can’t be there with you right now. Please, just keep running okay? You know how to access the accounts?’
‘Yes, but … ’
‘No buts! Empty them, all of them, and run! I’m so sorry honey, I love you and the girls!’
‘I love you too, but you need to come with us and … ’
Huck shut the phone off, his own eyes blurred now with tears as he turned to shut the balcony door and buy himself some time. He locked it with Mitchell’s key card and then hurried to a mirror in the bathroom and splashed water on his face from the faucet as he forced himself to th
ink straight.
‘Get out of here,’ he whispered to himself.
Huck straightened his suit and walked back into the suite, grabbed his Stetson and set it onto his head. He took a deep breath and strode to the suite door, opened it and walked out into the corridor. Mitchell’s two guards looked at him as he closed the door behind him.
‘He’s dealing with Meyer,’ Huck informed them, ‘and does not wish to be disturbed.’
The two guards nodded, and resumed their positions as Huck walked past them, his heart beating fast inside his chest as he reached the elevators, already thinking about his next move. He couldn’t use his car, or his jet, and only had a few hundred bucks on him.
Huck made it down to the reception hall and walked from the hotel. He barely noticed the dark–skinned Saudi sitting watching the reception hall from the nearby café. Huck was far too preoccupied with his dilemma. Somehow, he had to get to Vegas and find Mary Meyer before Majestic Twelve wiped her from the face of the planet.
***
XXXV
‘Time of death?’
‘Ten fifteen this morning,’ the police officer said. ‘We called you guys in as soon as we identified him. Looks like a suicide, but given what this guy’s been through we figured it the smart play.
‘You did good,’ Hannah Ford replied.
The patio beneath the balcony was partially concealed by a canvass forensics tent that flared brightly in the sunshine as Hannah looked up at the fifth floor room. Mickey stood beside her.
‘The guy’s found innocent of any crime, then he commits suicide?’ Mickey asked her.
‘Doesn’t add up,’ she replied. ‘Let’s go take a look, shall we?’
Hannah led Mickey up to the fifth floor, where the entrance to the penthouse suite was being guarded by two police officers. They walked in to see the suite undisturbed, the balcony doors open and fine white nets billowing in the morning breeze.
‘No sign of a struggle,’ Mickey said, ‘but forensics found evidence of vomit on the carpet over there by the wall.’
Hannah Ford glanced at the wine bottle on the nearby table, a half–empty glass alongside it, and the hastily applied marker tape surrounding a damp stain on the carpet nearby.
‘Gets drunk?’ Mickey hazarded, ‘takes a fall outside?’
‘Doesn’t explain the blood trail,’ Hannah said as they followed a faint trail of blood drops and walked outside onto the balcony to look down at the stain by their feet.
‘Forensics have taken samples, so whoever this blood belonged to should show up if they’re in the system. I’m guessing it’s Meyer’s though. Maybe he took a fall out here and then went over the edge?’
Hannah frowned and shook her head.
‘On half a glass of wine?’ she asked. ‘If he fell out here, why are there blood drops inside the suite? And why haven’t we found his wife and daughter yet? None of this makes any sense. The entire top floor to this hotel was rented out by Seavers Incorporated, a Kentucky mining firm, right?’
‘According to the hotelier, yeah.’
‘So where’s the company’s CEO? He’s registered as having stayed at the hotel, but was seen leaving this morning. He hasn’t booked out though. Stanley Meyer stayed in this room, so we’re told, but has no connection to Huck Seavers that we know of. Stanley’s cleared of any involvement in that commune fire and is no longer wanted by the Bureau, despite his case being classed as a high–priority, and now he’s topped himself? What the hell is going on out here?’
‘I don’t know,’ Mickey shrugged. ‘Jenkins says we need to hand any evidence found at this scene over to her, something to do with orders from Langley.’
Hannah looked about her in confusion.
‘Something else doesn’t make sense about this,’ she said. ‘Meyer was supposedly on board that jet that we intercepted at Charlottesville, right. But he’s not aboard, and neither are Warner, Lopez or Amber Ryan. We then hear they’re all alive and well in Kentucky, but I didn’t see any evidence to support that, did you?’
‘Report came in from on high,’ Mickey shrugged. ‘I guess they didn’t need to prove it.’
Hannah’s mind raced as she looked down at the pool of blood at her feet. ‘Somebody else was here. And who knew that Warner and his accomplices were both safe in Kentucky and not involved in the fire near Nathalie? One moment they’re highly dangerous international fugitives, the next we’re closing the case despite multiple civilian deaths?’
Mickey watched her for a moment before he replied.
‘There’s nothing connecting the deaths in Nathalie to Stanley Meyer or his accomplices,’ he pointed out.
‘There was yesterday, right up until Stanley here suddenly reappeared in the company of lawyers and Huck Seavers. This stinks, Mickey, and Jenkins wants it zipped up as soon as possible.’
‘I don’t like the way you’re thinking.’
‘I don’t like the way the bureau’s acting,’ Hannah shot back.
She looked down at the blood, and on an impulse she knelt down and pulled an evidence kit from her pocket.
‘What are you doing?’ Mickey asked. ‘Samples have already been taken.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘So I’m taking one for myself.’
*
Ethan did not know how the men with whom they travelled had gained access so quickly to police radios and other law enforcement agencies, although he had an idea, but they were supremely well equipped and within minutes of making a call their vehicle was travelling rapidly toward a massive hotel.
He could see through the windows that the hotel was located amid sumptuous grounds, forested hills and broad lawns that spread as far as the eye could see in the bright sunshine. The image would have been picture perfect were it not for the flashing hazard lights of multiple police cars, a pair of ambulances nearby.
Amber Ryan leaned forward in her seat as her face crumpled in grief.
‘No,’ she gasped.
Ethan remained silent as the vehicle pulled up alongside the police cordon and Amber yanked open the door and virtually threw herself out into the sunlight. Ethan followed, Lopez behind him as Amber ran to the nearest police officer, who was guarding a cordon preventing any vehicles from getting closer to the hotel.
‘What’s happened?!’ she asked, the tension in her voice palpable.
‘I’m afraid I can’t discuss the details of the incident with you ma’am, would you kindly step back from … ’
‘Stanley Meyer,’ Amber cut across the officer. ‘Is he … ’
Amber could not complete the sentence as the officer frowned. ‘Are you family, ma’am?’
‘He’s her father,’ Lopez informed the officer gently. ‘We’ve been searching for him.’
The officer’s eyebrows raised as he suddenly recognized Lopez and then Ethan, probably from a BOLO likely issued to local law enforcement, and his hand moved momentarily for his sidearm before he then recalled that the BOLO had been withdrawn recently.
‘Can you tell us what happened?’ Ethan asked.
The police officer gestured over his shoulder to the hotel, where Ethan could see a white tent pitched in front of the building, police maintaining a cordon to prevent the residents from seeing what was happening.
‘Suspected suicide,’ the police officer said. ‘Victim has been identified as … ’ The officer hesitated. ‘I’m sorry ma’am, Stanley Meyer.’
Amber let out a wail of grief and threw her hands over her face as she turned away. Lopez moved to her side, arms wrapping around her as Ethan stepped closer to the officer.
‘Do you have any details? I’m here with the Defense Intelligence Agency.’
‘What’s the DIA got to do with this?’
‘It’s a long story, believe me.’
‘I can’t divulge any information without the say–so of my superiors and with all due respect sir, you’ve recently been a suspect in a homicide case yourself.’
‘I know,’ Ethan said. ‘The whole
thing’s a major set up and Stanley Meyer was its chief victim. All I need to know is whether this was a suicide or not.’
The officer chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment before replying.
‘The officers called to the scene reported that staff witnessed many suits travelling to and from the fifth floor,’ he said.
Ethan looked at the hotel, and up at the fifth floor balcony where a female detective was examining something.
‘No evidence of anybody else in the suite at the time?’ Ethan asked.
‘Not that I’m aware of, but the feds like to keep their cards close to their chests. Makes them feel more important … ’
‘Feds?’ Lopez asked as Amber was gently led away by her escorts.
‘Yeah,’ the officer shrugged. ‘Can’t imagine what they’re doing here, and now you’re with the DIA asking questions. Is this one of those big cover–ups or something?’
Ethan watched the detective on the hotel balcony as she produced an evidence bag from her jacket and began collecting something from the balcony floor.
‘Does this place have security cameras in place?’
‘That’s the thing,’ the officer replied. ‘They’ve been wiped.’
‘Right this morning before the suits left the building?’
‘How did you know that?’
‘Seen this sort of thing before,’ Ethan explained. ‘I think that there was somebody else involved. Chances are he’s an African–American, over six feet tall and well built, mid–fifties. If any of the staff recall seeing a man of that appearance visit the hotel this morning, you might want to pass it on to the detectives – or take a little of the glory for yourself?’
The officer virtually beamed at Ethan.
‘I’ll check it out. Anything else?’
‘Yeah, as a matter of fact. Do you think that you could get me a direct line to the DIA from here? I don’t have my phone anymore and we need to place an urgent call.’
‘Stand by,’ the officer agreed, ‘I’ll get on it.’
As the officer walked away Ethan turned to see Amber now sitting on a low wall nearby, the two escorts watching over her and consoling her as Lopez approached Ethan.
The Fusion Cage (Warner & Lopez Book 2) Page 26