Cooper Security 06 - Secret Intentions

by Paula Graves

  “I’ll get out of there,” she promised.

  She felt his gaze burning into her back as she crossed Magnolia Avenue to reach the fountain. The splash of water on stone and bronze muted some of the traffic sounds of the busy five-point intersection, but it also made listening for any approaching footsteps next to impossible.

  With the time beginning to approach midday, foot traffic had picked up as people from nearby businesses took advantage of the warm day to walk to area restaurants for an early lunch hour. Evie eyed each passing person as she pretended to study the fountain artwork.

  There were men and women dressed in a rainbow array of medical scrubs, probably lunchtime escapees from the two hospitals in the Southside area. Men in formal business suits rubbed elbows with twentysomethings in sloppy plaids and jeans. Women in jewel-colored power suits, older teens in jeans and belly-ring-baring T-shirts, men in golf shirts and khakis—the variety was overwhelming.

  And somewhere in this crowd of kinetic humanity, she was supposed to be able to pick out a man she hadn’t seen in over ten years?

  She looked across the street, locking gazes with Jesse. He was on the phone but he didn’t take his eyes off her. Tension lined his face and thinned his mouth to a tight line as he watched from afar.

  Suddenly his brow furrowed and he leaned forward, his muscles bunching as if he were ready to launch himself across the street.

  From behind, a hand closed around her shoulder, making her jump. She whirled around, ready to fight, but the clear green eyes that met hers hadn’t changed a bit in ten years.

  “Leatherbrat? Love the red hair.”

  She started to relax, until she realized the smile in Endrex’s green eyes belied the tension his lean body betrayed in every taut tendon and nervous twitch. He hadn’t changed much in the time they’d been apart; he was still thin, loose-limbed and hungry-looking. He dressed a little more neatly, his sandy hair brushed back into a ponytail and his shirt a button-up rather than the faded graphic T-shirts he’d preferred when he was working in Virginia.

  “You said to meet you,” she said carefully, not sure whether she’d misread his urgency.

  “I can’t believe you actually came.” His words came out in a jittery laugh as he gestured at the fountain. “I didn’t give you much to go on.”

  “Either here or Buckhead,” she said with a smile. “You’re not the Buckhead type.”

  “Can we get out of here? It’s a little open for my tastes.” His gaze darted around, clearly looking for something.

  “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

  “Always, Leatherbrat.”

  “You can call me Evie.” She shot him a curious glance. “Do you have a name or are we just going with Endrex?”

  He looked back at her, his eyes slightly narrowed. It took him a moment to respond, but he finally answered, “Call me Cav.”

  “Okay, Cav.” She wished she dared look back at Jesse, but Cav was so wired that she was afraid any wrong move on her part would spook him away and they’d never be able to find him again. “Where do you want to go?”

  “My bike’s over here.” He nodded toward the line of vehicles parked along Magnolia Avenue. She spotted a motorcycle parked about ten parking slots down from the intersection. “I brought an extra helmet just for you.”

  Now the urge to look back at Jesse was overwhelming. He would be furious if she got on the motorcycle with Endrex—Cav—and rode away without letting him know where they were headed, even with the precautions they’d taken. And he’d be justified.

  But she needed to know whether General Ross was right. Did Cav have evidence that could bring down the Espera Group and put an end to their crimes? He was the only person who could answer that question, and thanks to their former friendship, he might be willing to tell her everything he knew. Maybe even hand over the evidence to her and Jesse for safekeeping.

  It was a risk she was going to have to take.

  “Are you in danger?” she asked before she gave Cav a final answer.

  “Like you wouldn’t believe. So are you.” He met her gaze without flinching. “You’re not surprised, are you?”

  She shook her head. “I figured that out a few days ago when someone grabbed me at my sister’s wedding and threw me in the back of a truck.”

  “After all that, I can’t believe you came here alone.” He leaned closer. “Why did you?”

  She almost told him about Jesse then. But he looked like a skittish colt ready to bolt at the first provocation, so she kept the truth about Jesse’s presence quiet. “I want to know what you have that can bring down the Espera Group.”

  His eyes widened. “How much do you know?”

  “Enough to know they have to be stopped.” She lowered her voice to a near whisper. “I know they’ve been killing people and manipulating foreign governments to clear the path for their plans.”

  “Their hired goons are here, you know.”

  “That’s what you said.”

  “They’ve probably gone through my room by now. I got out before they spotted me.” He laughed nervously. “At least, I hope I did.”

  “You can’t go back there.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t keep the important stuff there anyway. Just a laptop they can have, for all I care.” He patted the messenger bag draped around his neck and shoulder. “I have what I need here.”

  “What about the evidence?”

  His eyes narrowed. “That’s somewhere safe.” Cav gave her a slight nudge toward the motorcycle and followed as she started walking in that direction.

  What would Jesse do now? she wondered. He had to be on the verge of chasing them down and making a scene to keep her from going with Cav.

  Please, Jesse. Please don’t do it.

  Whether he liked it or not, she had to do this her way.

  * * *

  JESSE THREW A TWENTY on the table to pay for their food and the tip, keeping his eye on Evie and her companion. He’d hoped this situation wouldn’t transpire, even as he’d prepared for the possibility. Short of leaving her behind, he couldn’t have prevented her from doing what she believed was necessary to get the evidence General Ross had died trying to protect.

  And even leaving her behind would have been a temporary fix at best. She’d made bringing down these conspirators her mission the second she realized the implications of letting the Espera Group get away with their plans. She wasn’t the sort of woman who could sit back and watch a disaster unfold if she thought she could help stop it.

  That trait was one of the many things he had come to love about her, even if it scared him out of his mind.

  Evie and the man Jesse assumed must be Endrex stopped at a motorcycle just as he reached the parking lot. Endrex handed her a helmet, spurring Jesse to move faster before he lost them. He’d been forced to park at the farthest end of the lot, where there was no good view of the street, so there was nearly a minute where Evie was completely out of his sight. Hurrying, he backed the car out of the parking slip and headed for the Magnolia Avenue exit, scanning the street to see how far they’d gotten.

  The motorcycle was sitting in the same place he’d last seen it. The helmet Endrex had handed to Evie sat on the motorcycle seat.

  But Evie and Endrex were nowhere around.

  Struggling to quell the first gush of panic pouring into his gut, Jesse turned onto Magnolia Avenue and followed the road to the five-point intersection, scanning the converging streets for any sign of Evie and her friend on foot. But there was nothing. No sign of them anywhere.

  Circling back, he drove back up Magnolia Avenue past the motorcycle again without seeing either of them. After another couple of circuits, he pulled into an empty parking slot and checked his cell phone. No messages, no texts, no missed calls.

  Damn it, Evie, where did you go? This wasn’t part of our agreement.

  He accessed the company’s GPS locator application and typed in the code of the tracker he’d given Evie before they left Chickasaw
County that morning. Hitting Enter, he waited, breathless, for a signal.

  There. A bright red flashing dot appeared on the small map, moving fast. She was in a vehicle, he realized, heading north up 20th Street toward Birmingham’s downtown district.

  Jesse’s gut coiled into a hot, tight knot.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Was this a setup?” Evie kept her voice low, acutely aware of the two men sitting in the front of the panel van. She and Cav sat in the back, their hands cuffed to a pair of hooks bolted to the side of the van.

  “I wish.” He looked authentically terrified, she noted. He had every right to be because the two men who’d shoved gun barrels into their backs and hustled them into the panel van hadn’t been playing around.

  “Make one stupid move and you’re both dead,” the taller man had told them as he cuffed them into the windowless belly of the dark green van. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, he was built like a tank, with massive shoulders and arms the size of tree limbs. His companion, the driver, was smaller and less brutishly muscular, although he looked as if he’d hold his own in a fight. He had sandy hair and very pale eyes, striking in his tanned face.

  Both men had professional written all over them, which almost certainly meant they were SSU thugs of some ilk.

  “Have you ever seen either of these guys before?” she asked quietly.

  Cav shrugged, his cuffs clanking, drawing a warning look from the dark-haired man.

  Panic bloomed like a poisonous flower in Evie’s gut, threatening to swamp her with full-blown terror. She couldn’t let that happen. If she wanted to get herself and Cav out of this mess, keeping her head was vital.

  They weren’t alone at least. Jesse was out there somewhere, and she knew, bone-deep, that he’d never stop looking for her until he found her. As long as the GPS tracker in her earring was working, Jesse would be able to track her location. The captors had taken the Ruger from her holster but hadn’t searched her for any other weapons, so they hadn’t found the slim, multibladed knife tucked in the bottom of her bra, beneath her right breast.

  She hoped they wouldn’t search her again.

  “What they’re looking for—” Evie paused, eyeing their captors. Neither man seemed to be paying attention to them. She lowered her voice further. “Do you have it on you?”

  He gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. She wasn’t sure if it was a yes or a no.

  She tried to figure out where they were going, but all she could see was what was visible through the van’s windshield. And their captors blocked most of that view. Still, she got the sense that they were moving away from the business district into a residential area by the way the trees lining the road ahead dappled the light coming into the van.

  Logic told her their captors would want to stash her and Cav somewhere private. Maybe a house or an old, abandoned building? It wouldn’t matter ultimately. As long as she could keep her earrings in her ears, Jesse should have a chance to find her.

  The van finally pulled to a stop, and the engine cut out, filling the vehicle with oppressive silence. The big man with dark hair turned to look at them, his expression hard. “If I hear a peep out of either one of you, both of you are dead. Understand?”

  Evie suspected he was bluffing—the SSU and the people they worked for needed to get their hands on the evidence Cav was hiding, and it would be almost impossible to do if he were dead. But she didn’t try testing her theory. Their situation was dire but not desperate enough to warrant a suicide mission yet.

  The burly man unlocked Evie’s cuffs first, hauling her bodily out of the van before his accomplice opened the cuffs around Cav’s wrists. His arm wrapped around her waist as he half walked, half carried her around a shaggy crape myrtle bush that filled her view. When they cleared the edge of the bush, she got a quick look at where they were going as the man shoved her up a shallow pair of steps into a screened-in side porch.

  Their would-be jail was an old two-story house with flaking gray paint that once might have been white. Tall crape myrtle bushes draped with aggressive kudzu vines blocked the house from most of the neighboring homes around the property. She could barely make out glimpses of the faded siding through the thick leaves and vines.

  She decided not to struggle, as she had no way of knowing if there were people in the nearby houses who might hear her calls for help. Safer, for the moment, to let the situation play out according to her captors’ plans. If these men behaved true to SSU form, they planned to use her as leverage against Cav to get him to tell them what they wanted to know. They had no way of knowing that Jesse could find her with the flick of a button on his cell phone.

  The next few hours might be horribly unpleasant, but she would almost certainly survive them. All she needed to do was to keep her head long enough for Jesse to locate her.

  The side porch door led into a shabby kitchen not much bigger than the one in Evie’s small apartment. The place smelled of mildew and stale cigarettes, and the urge to sneeze tickled her nose. “What is this place?” she asked. It must have been a home once. Had the SSU bought the property or just taken it over like squatters?

  The man’s answer was to shove her down a dark corridor to the far side of the house. He stopped in front of a small door, opening it to reveal a walk-in linen closet lined on either side with shelves. No windows and only the one door in or out.

  The burly man pushed her through the narrow center aisle of the closet and into a rickety metal folding chair at the back of the closet. He grabbed both of her wrists in one large fist and fished a set of flex cuffs out of his pocket. Evie almost made the mistake of smiling, but she held it in, trying to infuse her expression with the appropriate amount of terror. It wasn’t hard—for all the hope she was holding out that Jesse would find her soon, she knew she could be in grave danger.

  But at least she’d be cuffed with plastic with her hands in front of her where she could easily get to the knife hidden in her bra.

  “Make noise and your friend will regret it. Understand?” The big man locked the door behind her, pitching the room into utter darkness.

  She heard the ragged sound of her own breathing in the close, silent room and realized for all her trust in Jesse to find her, she was still scared witless. She’d never liked close quarters, and she particularly hated them in the dark.

  Okay, Marsh. Get ahold of yourself. She breathed evenly, trying not to let the tickle in her nose send her into a sneezing fit. She needed to stay calm, keep her head.

  Only two things you have to do, she told herself silently, easing her hands under her bra to slip the knife into her palm. Stay alert and get ready to make your move whenever the opportunity arises.

  She could do it, she thought, squaring her shoulders and lifting her chin against the smothering dark.

  She’d been trained by the best.

  * * *

  THE TRACKING BEACON had led Jesse on a winding tour of north Birmingham, past the civic center and eastward toward the Red Mountain Expressway before the beacon came to a permanent stop.

  Wherever Evie was going, she’d arrived.

  On a detailed mapping program, he narrowed her location to a street about five blocks from where he currently was. He took a chance and made a quick drive down the street in question, taking in the surroundings as quickly and nonchalantly as he could.

  There were five houses in a row on a narrow street, sitting relatively close to each other, their yards grown over with weeds, unpruned bushes and a generous infestation of kudzu vines that had grown up over bushes, fences and trees alike. The general unkempt state of the properties served to isolate them from each other, blocking views and no doubt discouraging any neighborly forays onto adjacent properties.

  Evie had to be in one of them, but the tracker couldn’t pinpoint exactly which one. And if Evie was there against her will, choosing the wrong one could be a disaster, tipping off her captors that she had backup. There was no telling what kind of danger that knowledge wo
uld put her in.

  Despite the impatient fear gnawing at his gut, he parked at the far end of the alley behind the row of houses and made a phone call, summoning every ounce of control he had. After a few transfers, he finally reached his target, Birmingham police detective Briggs Cooper, his uncle Jay’s son. Briggs’s deep voice rumbled over the line. “Jesse, how the hell are you?”

  “Small talk later, Briggs. I have a situation.”

  * * *

  TWO HOURS OF WAITING for something to happen had killed Evie’s previous confidence. Only the faint glow of waning daylight seeping under the closet door drove back the unrelenting darkness, and if Jesse didn’t find her soon, even that small bit of light would be gone.

  She fought the temptation to check her watch every few seconds to relieve the gloom with the faint glow of the illuminated dial, as watching the clock seemed to make the time move that much more slowly. Was there something wrong with the tracker in her earring? She didn’t dare check for fear she would drop the earring in the dark and be unable to find it again.

  For the first time in over an hour, she heard a noise beyond her own breathing. A muffled cry—Cav, she realized, making out the words. “Hey!” he was calling. “Hey, guys? Are you still out there?”

  She listened for a response, anxiety knotting her stomach. If these guys had wanted them dead, they’d have killed them already. But why hadn’t they already started trying to use her to convince Cav to give up his evidence?

  She stifled a grim chuckle. Was she actually longing for a torture session just to break up the monotony of being stuck here in the dark?

  “Hey, are you even out there? We’ve got a problem!” Cav’s voice sounded fainter than before. She thought she heard a low, choking cough. “You think I haven’t taken steps to ensure that if I die, the evidence comes to light? You think I’m stupid?”

  The last few words were definitely punctuated by coughs. Evie pressed her ear to the wall on the side from which Cav’s voice had come. She heard more coughing.