by MC Lee
Anderson nodded and walked forward, pushing through the blue door with Sean hard on his heels. One of Sean’s men stepped closer to the car, his eyes fixing on the muscle in the backseat. Jack followed Sean into a small room and nodded toward Martin, who was sitting in front of a bank of TV screens. He acknowledged Jack with a curt nod, though Jack could see the warmth that flared in his eyes, taking the edge off his grim expression.
“Stand in front of the camera, please,” Martin ordered.
Jack glanced around until he spotted a camera mounted on a tripod in the corner of the room. He did as instructed and stood in front of it.
“We’re live,” Martin said.
Sean flipped a switch on a console on the table. “You’re seeing this?”
Jack turned his head so that he could see what was going on. On one of the TV screens he saw himself, looking surprisingly collected. On the other screen, his guardian was leaning up against the side of a car, seemingly totally composed. Freya was standing next to him, her eyes darting from side to side. It was obvious to Jack that she was doing the same thing as everybody else in this room—glancing between two screens.
“Ryan?” Freya said.
Anderson leaned into frame and waved a hand. “Everything’s cool here. Are you ready?”
“Just give me the word,” Freya said.
Anderson turned toward Sean. “As soon as I’m clear and I know I’m not being followed, I’ll call it through. When Freya gets back with Palmer, we’ll let Leo leave.”
“Let him go now,” Jack cut in. “You’ve got what you wanted.”
Anderson shook his head. “That wasn’t the deal. Once we have Palmer safely tucked away, your boy will be on his way.”
Jack hadn’t realized he’d moved forward until he heard Martin’s sharp voice. “Stand down, Jack.”
Jack hesitated and glanced at Leo’s foster father.
“We are doing this exactly as planned,” Martin said tightly. “Get on board or clear out.”
Jack sucked in a startled breath.
“Leave this to the grown-ups.” Anderson smirked. He quirked an eyebrow in Sean’s direction. “We ready to do this?”
“Wait a minute.”
All eyes turned toward the TV screen and Michael Palmer’s resonant voice.
“I want a word with Jack,” Palmer said.
He hadn’t moved away from the car, but he had straightened up. He seemed to tower over Freya, who glanced over her shoulder nervously. Two armed guards had moved closer to Palmer and were now clearly visible on the screen.
“That wasn’t part of the deal,” Anderson said.
“I’m changing the plan,” Palmer said smoothly. He stepped forward, and the guards on either side of him bristled. He ignored them completely as he walked up behind Freya.
“May I?”
It didn’t sound like a request, and Freya moved aside without a word.
“Jack.”
“Sir?” Jack moved forward, responding automatically to the command in his guardian’s voice. Despite the screen between them, he felt the heat of the man’s stern gaze on him.
“I had hoped that by hiding the relationship between us we could avoid this situation. It appears I misjudged. Whatever happens from here is no fault of yours.”
Jack swallowed hard against the unexpected lump in his throat. He couldn’t think of anything to say, but his guardian didn’t appear to expect an answer.
“You’re a first-class operative.” He paused, and his features softened noticeably. “And you’ve grown into a fine young man. Your parents would be proud.”
“Th-thank you, sir,” Jack stammered. He wished he could find the words to offer some reassurance to the man who was sacrificing himself to ensure Jack’s safety, but he couldn’t hope to overcome years of conditioning and the shock of recent revelations. It was too late to pretend they were anything other than an operative suddenly and sincerely indebted to his handler. “I’m grateful for what you’re doing,” he said, realizing how lame he sounded.
“I want you to follow Sean’s instruction going forward,” his guardian said, switching back to handler mode. “You still have a lot to learn.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Go easy on him,” his guardian said dryly. “You might not realize it, but everything he does is for your benefit.”
Jack nodded, afraid of what his voice would reveal if he spoke again.
“You and Leo make a fine team. Take care of each other. Now, let’s get this thing done.”
He stepped away from the console and turned his back without another word. Jack’s head suddenly filled with so many things he wanted to say, but it was too late. His guardian had already slid into the backseat of the waiting car and slammed the door.
“You heard the man,” Anderson said.
Sean gave a curt nod, and Anderson turned. “Nice knowing you, Jack,” he said. “Maybe we’ll meet again someday.” Jack spun around, but the savage curse died on his lips when Anderson held up a hand. “Don’t forget we still have your boyfriend.”
“Jack!” The warning in Martin’s voice was clear, and Jack unclenched his fists and took a deliberate step backward.
“Good boy,” Anderson taunted. He picked his car keys off the table and turned, and Jack had to force himself to stand still as Martin followed him out. He glanced back at the screen to see that Freya was now behind the wheel and the two guards had taken up position—one in the passenger side seat and one to Michael Palmer’s right.
Sean stepped up beside him, and Jack sent him a sidelong glance. “How long was the journey?” he breathed, his lips barely moving.
“Twenty minutes.”
“Are you ready?”
“Yes,” Jack murmured.
The door opened, and Martin walked in, his eyes immediately searching Jack’s face.
The mic crackled, and Anderson’s voice rose over the static. “I’m pulling out. Give me a couple of minutes to get clear.”
Martin came up on Jack’s other side so that three of them were framed on the screen. Freya kept glancing sideways, and she seemed to relax when she heard Anderson’s voice. When she turned her head, Jack felt a sharp elbow to his ribs, and he glanced sideways as Martin opened a drawer and pulled out a map, all without betraying his movements.
“Now,” Martin whispered fiercely.
Without moving his head, Jack glanced down at the map, which showed a fifty-mile radius around Washington Square. He breathed in deeply, cleared his mind of everything, and then he went to work.
He pulled up every road sign he’d seen along the route, every landmark, store name, and coffee shop, and the mental catalog he’d made of all the twists and turns the car had taken since leaving Leo behind. Anderson hadn’t bothered to cover his tracks, outside of three false turns at the beginning of the journey that were so amateurish Jack would have spotted them when he’d begun memory training at five years old.
When he’d recreated the journey in his mind, he paused for a second as the loud rumble of Freya’s engine sounded through the TV screen.
“Two minutes, Jack,” Sean said through clenched teeth.
“Almost there.”
Jack took another deep breath. He was only vaguely aware of Anderson giving the all clear and Freya’s car jolting forward. The minute she was out of camera range, he bent and pored over the map. He didn’t care that he was mumbling out loud as he played the journey he had mapped backward, tracing the route with his finger. He hesitated twice, painfully aware of Martin’s sharp intake of breath when it looked as though he’d lost the way.
Finally he straightened and jabbed a finger at a building on the northeast corner of the map.
“There.”
“You’re certain?” Sean ground out.
Jack looked steadily between Martin and Sean’s tense faces. “They’ve got Leo,” he said flatly. “I’m absolutely positive.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“I WON’T tell you to hang
back, but I will ask you to be careful.”
Jack sent Sean a quick nod, glad he wouldn’t have to disobey a direct order. He was determined to be one of the first people through the doors when they reached Mark Donovan’s hideout, and thankfully Sean seemed to accept that.
“My men are already closing in. But they’ve been ordered to stand down until I give the go-ahead,” Sean continued. “I expect the same compliance from you.”
Jack made a noncommittal grunt he hoped Sean would take as agreement.
The car carrying them through the streets at breakneck speed swerved to miss a slow-moving vehicle and shot through a light that miraculously turned green just as they reached it. Or maybe not so miraculously, Jack silently amended. One of Sean’s men had slipped into the control booth just as Sean and Jack were leaving. Given that every single light had been in their favor so far, Jack thought it highly likely that one of the Center’s operatives was manipulating the traffic signals.
Martin had jumped into another waiting vehicle, after first pulling Jack in for a brief hug.
“Sorry I came on so strong,” he said. “Had to make it look convincing.”
“It worked,” Jack mumbled. “I definitely believed it.”
Martin’s car had raced northward, peeling out of the industrial complex to the sound of screeching tires.
“How much does my… uncle know of the plan?” Jack asked, still tripping over the word.
“Everything,” Sean replied.
Jack swallowed. “And if I hadn’t been able to retrace my steps?”
Sean turned his head, leaving the question unanswered. “We trusted you, Jack,” he finally said, his face still turned away. “We knew your training wouldn’t let you down.”
Jack felt as though a heavy weight was pressing on his shoulders, crushing his ribs and making it hard to breathe properly. It felt like so much depended on how well he’d been able to memorize the route Anderson had taken, it made him sick to his stomach to contemplate what would happen if his memory was even the slightest bit faulty.
“Don’t sweat it, kiddo. We weren’t totally relying on you.”
Sean’s reassuring voice pulled Jack from his dark thoughts. He turned his head to find his handler watching him, an understanding look in his eyes.
“We used your last known location to establish a baseline,” Sean explained. “Unless you’d been transported in some way other than a motor vehicle, we knew you had to be within a certain geographic radius. When you reestablished contact, we calculated time and distance based on a car traveling within the speed limit and were able to reduce the target area.”
“But that still left a radius of hundreds of miles,” Jack said.
“Correct. But that area shrank considerably when Donovan named the location where your uncle had to turn himself in. Both parties knew the swap had to take place at exactly the same time. You see how that helped us establish a more manageable radius?”
Jack nodded slowly as his mind raced through the scenario. “In order to coordinate a synchronized swap, Michael Palmer had to be at the location Donovan named at exactly the same time I arrived at Washington Square. It took twenty minutes for me to reach the rendezvous you chose, if you don’t include Anderson’s pathetic fake outs.” He frowned. “But you didn’t know how far away I was, and Donovan didn’t know you’d chosen Washington Square as your pickup point.”
“But he knew we were coming in from a private airstrip fifty minutes away,” Sean prompted. “Based on that information, he established a perimeter for our location.”
Jack’s frown cleared. “So he had to choose a place that gave you enough time to reach his destination just as I was arriving.”
“Correct,” Sean confirmed. “When you arrived and signaled how long the ride had taken, we were able to reduce the radius to a twenty-minute car ride centering on Washington Square.”
“That still leaves a lot to chance,” Jack said dubiously.
“Okay. So think it through further. What else could we do to reduce the potentials?”
Jack sighed in frustration. Only Sean could turn a kidnap situation into a teachable moment. He quickly ran through his tactical training modules, glad they’d been interesting enough that he’d actually paid close attention. He mentally pulled up the town map Martin had showed him.
“First you eliminate the obvious. Schools, hospitals, shopping centers, parks, office buildings.” In his mind he drew an X through each of those spaces. “Then you discount locations that are under constant surveillance. Fire houses, police stations, car lots, anywhere with a night watchman or daytime guard.” One by one Jack crossed those places off his mental map. “Next you scan for entrance and exit strategies, consider the amount of traffic in the area, both vehicular and passersby, calculate the distance to the quickest escape route, and consider other variables like time of day and weather conditions. That usually eliminates up to forty percent of otherwise viable options.”
Sean nodded encouragement. “So you see how quickly we narrowed our search area? In the end, there were only three ideal locations, and seven more that provided a high enough number of the right qualities to make the list. And there was one other factor that worked in our favor.”
“The location of the airstrip,” Jack said. Sean nodded approvingly, and Jack finished his thought. “Donovan knew you only had fifty minutes to make it from the airstrip to his rendezvous point in order to synchronize the swap.”
“And a fifty-minute drive from the airstrip isn’t enough time to guarantee arrival anywhere but the northern half of the city,” Sean said. “That eliminated five of the ten possibilities. In the end, given all the other indicators, you only had to provide us with two or three street names or landmarks for our system to pinpoint the exact location. So the whole thing wasn’t entirely riding on your memory.”
Jack felt the weight suddenly lift off his shoulders, and relief flood him.
“That’s not to say your role wasn’t vital,” Sean said. “Without your skills and level head, this would have been a lot more difficult.”
“You think we’ll get to Leo in time?” Jack asked.
“I think we have a fighting chance.”
Jack inclined his head as a sudden thought struck. “You insisted Leo couldn’t leave until Michael Palmer vouched for his release. Martin nearly tore my head off when I tried to force them to let him go early.”
Sean raised an eyebrow. “And you’ve figured out why?”
“You want to ensure they take my guardian to the same place they’re keeping Leo. Otherwise they could let Leo go while Michael Palmer is in transit, and then clear out of their hideout. And we’d never be able to trace them.” He shuddered as the other unsecured risk they were taking hit him squarely in the gut. There were no contingencies in place in the event of a double-cross. Mark Donovan could just as easily decide Leo was expendable, and if that happened, no amount of breakneck speed would save him.
“That’s good work, Jack,” Sean said. He shook his head. “I only hope they don’t figure it out as quickly as you did.”
JACK RECOGNIZED the area as soon as they pulled up at the end of the road that led to the warehouse complex. There were two cars parked outside, the one Anderson drove and the car Jack had last seen his guardian climbing into.
He had just grasped the handle of the car door when he felt Sean’s fingers close around his arm.
“Not yet,” Sean breathed.
“Leo’s in there…,” Jack started.
“And in a few minutes, he’s going to be coming out.”
Jack shook Sean off, but he didn’t try to get out of the car. Instead he took the binoculars Sean held out to him and scanned the area, looking for any sign of Sean’s men but coming up empty. Sean pulled a phone out of his pocket and sent a quick text. A few seconds later, his phone pinged with a return message.
“We’ve got eyes on,” he said.
When the door opened and Anderson stepped out, dragging Leo be
hind him, it took everything Jack had to stay where he was. Leo’s arms were bound behind his back, and he grimaced when Anderson tugged hard, making him stumble.
“Hold your position,” Sean growled.
Jack hissed out a breath when Anderson pushed Leo hard against the car door, holding him in place as he looked over his shoulder.
Jack forced himself to drag his gaze away from Leo and swing his binoculars back toward the door. This time Michael Palmer walked out, seemingly unconcerned as he strolled toward the second parked car, even though two armed guards followed, their weapons plainly trained on him. He stopped briefly and said something to Anderson, who suddenly spun Leo around and slammed him back against the car door.
Jack watched Leo’s face as his guardian spoke, reading a flash of confusion that made him wonder what Michael Palmer had just said.
“Keep it together, Jack,” Sean said.
Jack exhaled loudly and continued watching. Palmer lifted his arm and patted Leo on the shoulder, and Sean let out a soft curse.
“What?” Jack asked.
“That was a signal. Donovan isn’t at this location,” Sean said.
“Fuck!”
When the door once again opened and Freya stepped out, Anderson grabbed hold of Leo and began to push him toward the open car door.
Sean pushed a button on his cell phone and said, “Now,” and suddenly the alleyway was swarming with armed men, all training their weapons on Donovan’s people.
In a blink of an eye, Jack found himself outside the car and running down the alley toward Leo. He realized he must have shouted Leo’s name when his head came up sharply and their eyes met, but the relieved expression on Leo’s face transformed into one of pain when Anderson suddenly appeared over Leo’s shoulder and locked an arm around his neck.
It was only when Jack stumbled forward that he saw Anderson was holding a gun to Leo’s temple and that he was using Leo’s body as a shield. Jack skidded to a halt in front of them, holding his hands away from his body to show he wasn’t armed.
“Stay back,” Anderson ordered.
Leo stiffened, and Jack tensed as a trickle of blood ran down Leo’s neck where the small cut had reopened. Sean had come up behind him, but he maintained a wary distance.